My last few days in Bogotá, at the beginning of February, brought an awesome visit from Fernando. We talked about old friends and Guatemala and saw a concert and drank beer at sundown in the bustling capital I then called home. He brought Rosa de Jamaica Quetzalteca and letters from dear friends back in Xela. Good for the soul. My last few days in Bogota brought an Austrian delegation from FOR Austria and were filled with meetings at the Congress and with other NGOs. My last few days in Bogota had me bumming in parks with Lisa and Luna and Cristian and making dried floral crafts with Jon. And packing. And freaking out. And then taking two planes, one jeep ride and hiking two hours to arrive in La Union. Home.
Two of the CdP kids, my two best pals, met me in the terminal (surprise!) in Apartado and (bless their teenage souls) carried up my bags. I arrived in La Union to no electricity and no co-workers (petition to La Resbalosa had Emily and Carla 7 hours through the jungle and Elisabeth was with aforementioned Austrian delegation in Bogota). I had two days to sink back into it. My legs ached from the hike home (what happened to my cut November physical condition?!) and I was sweating 100% of the time (god, this really is uncomfortable) and every mosquito within a 1,298,377,456,309 mile radius found my ass cheeks (within 20 minutes!) and the shower was freezing (is it really necessary to clean myself?) and my body was on serious cheese withdrawal (this no fridge thing is for the birds). I also had two days to greet people and look around and take it all in…
In my absence the garden had grown. A pineapple planted a few rotations of FOR volunteers back was sprouting in the garden and the baby papayas on our tree when I left are now huge and tempting. The AVOCADO TREE IS FLOWERING! The very first FOR garden avocado harvest will happen in May! Whoever was on the team many years ago when the tree was planted should be hugged and thanked for their long-term strategic planning. In the event you read my blog: dear ex-volunteer, THANK YOU! Love, future volunteer who will be here in May.
In my absence bellies grew. And babies were born.
In my absence Sapa had a liter of three and developed a skin rash. She now has a beauty cream to be applied daily and kittens that live in my bed.
The rainy season ended and paths with knee-deep mud turned to dusty caminos with loose pebbles. Rivers then waist deep are now all but dry. The lush, thick greens of the jungle gave way to less dense and varied greens and more bright flowering jungle colors. The rainy season’s thickly cloud covered sunsets gave way to whispy, near cloudless sunsets where the sun drops out of the sky a fiery red or fuscia pink. Colors that, to a midwestern gal, look like a painting of some fake tropical paradise. Because this is some tropical paradise- only real.
The guava trees of November have small seeds and now it is the poma and passion fruit and guanabana that are being ravanged by children and birds and Ginas.
Like always there is sugar cane. Like always there is cacao. There are troops and combats and death. There are baby cows and baby horses and there are young boys chasing after baby cows at night to tie them up so that in the morning the mother cows have milk to give these boys. Like always there are children running barefoot over rocky fields and women cooking over smokey stoves. And stories of life and death and how the former breeds the later and the later inspires the former.
And then Emily and Charlotte came back. And there was an emergency night petition, and before we knew it, Emily and I were working together again in the campo- hiking (she in tip-top ten month jungle condition, jumping like a mountain goat up rocks and then I- struggling in the dark and vertical hill, to not actually keel over and die from the pain in my legs) as fast as we could with flashlights behind our campesino neighbors, also running, as it was an emergency. On our way back down the two men we were with and Em caught me up on what happened here over Christmas. And we sang a couple songs and shared a few brainteasers. My favorite of the midnight mind games: “Which side of the coffee cup has the handle?”
The next day (as in, less than 24 hours later) we had a goodbye soiree for Emily. We made a nice arroz con leche. People came over. We chatted. And took photos. And then Emily was, once again, walking away from me down the hill and Charlotte and I were holding down the fort in the campo (Elisabeth still MIA with Austrian delegation, who were all to descend upon us in the campo later in the afternoon.) I think I confused some of them seeing them Monday in Bogota and then welcoming them on Saturday to La Union…
Then another petition came. And 48 hours later, Charlotte and I were trekking through the jungle to La Esperanza. We hiked a new route which took us alternating back and forth between dense jungle thickets and highland fields with expansive sweeping views of the upcoming jungle and surrounding mountains. It was good to by hiking in the day time, and the paths are SO different without knee-deep mud. We saw tall blooming trees with fiery red and orange flowers, transparent orange and electric blue butterflies with wings the size of my palm, green lizards and black snakes on the dry brown path. In La Esperanza we watched the community play soccer on the soccer field. We slept in hammocks with a hot balmy breeze on the porch of the house. We bathed in a nearly dry river and watched men chase cows. And listened to babies cry and children imitate barn animals (after about a half an hour of which Charlotte got a laugh outta me by commenting, “these kids need to learn how to read.”) We saw parrots fly in trios across an expansive blue sky. We saw chickens climb up trees in the last light of the evening sun and the matriarch of the household milk cows at it’s first showing in the morning. We saw boys carry bunches of bananas and plantains bigger than the boys themselves and we watched the bigger boys hack machetes through thick sugar cane fields. At night, from my hammock on the porch, I could look out over the dark fields and see an outline of the mountains in the near distance. Above the darkness of their shadow, millions of stars sparkled in the valley with no electricity and below their outline, in the darkness, fireflies flew over short dry-season grass. Sparkling glittery stars above and blinking fireflies below. A dream for open eyes before dreaming with closed eyes.
The day we left La Esperanza Charlotte turned 25 years old. On her 25th birthday we hiked 6 hours through Colombian war zone jungle. Woah. We arrived at home tired, but excited to do something to celebrate. Considering I had now been in La Union for two weeks without going down for food, we had NOTHING to make. We went house to house collecting ingredients- wood for the fire, a large pot to cook in, a chicken, onion, yucca, plantain, spices, (“You see, it is Carla’s birthday and we simply must make a birthday soup! We have been working so very hard in La Esperanza that we haven’t even thought about our own sustenance! Can you help us? Pretty please? Of course, you are invited to the celebration!”) And our neighbors (of course) rallied. One volunteered to kill the chicken if I wasn’t up for it. Another got right on heating up the fire for the stove. And more came around to congratulate Carla on surviving another year and eat chicken soup. I had commissioned birthday cakes before leaving, and we arrived in time to see them decorated. All in all, a very good turn out for ¼ century birthday party. After the food (straight sugar high for the vegetarian who ate a dinner of birthday cake) I literally fell into my bed of exhaustion and, after all those nights in a hammock, I slept oh so well.
We had, count them, two days between Charlotte’s birthday and our next petition. One of those days I went for food (solid decision). My legs, on the way down to town, were so tired that I fell (or better put, melted to the ground slowly in surrender) a few times, sending my neighbor with whom I was walking into a laughing fit every time. On the way back up, from the back of the jeep, I saw my first ever jungle cat. It ran across the road. I was so excited I nearly jumped off the jeep to chase it. My neighbor looked at me as if I were insane, but later conceded to my excitement and agreed that it was rare to see them. This and only this made the pain that would befall my entire body upon arrival at home made the trip for food worth it. Ok, this and the fact that we could eat again.
Our next petition was for Mulatos. Again Charlotte and I were on the move, this time with hundreds of Peace Community members and national and international human rights activists and supporters of the Peace Community, hiking through the jungle to the location of the 2005 (most recent) massacre against Peace Community members in Mulatos and La Resbalosa. Here is a (very) brief history on what went down there on February 21st and 22nd, 2005:
In Mulatos, on Feb 21st, alongside the river, eye witnesses saw uniformed military detain three community members (one of which was a leader and founder of the community, the other two were his wife and child). The three were tortured and massacred.
In La Resbalosa (an hour or so hike up a vertical hill from Mulatos) on the 22nd: Workers saw the military approach and ran, one Peace Community member went back to his house, where his family was. He, his family (two children) and a worker on their farm were tortured and massacred.
This long story of this massacre and the ensuing judicial processes, wikileaks, press statements, armed forces denial of involvement etc. is something I would be happy to discuss with anyone interested, but for the blog I’ll just note that this massacre led the Peace Community to officially enter “ruptura” with the Colombian state. The impunity for these acts and the lack of a thorough, transparent and complete investigation into the joint military and paramilitary responsibility (in this massacre and others) are two main reasons that the Peace Community is not willing to enter into dialog with the Colombian state at this point in time. One quick quote to give you an idea of the level of denial in Colombia (from the Colombian Minister of Defense at that point in time, Jorge Alberto Uribe, quoted in a national newspaper, in response to Peace Community members being killed): “One can’t talk about neutrality because there is no conflict!”
While the reason for this commemoration is obviously serious and somber, there is also something inspiring about hiking in a large group of people through thick jungle and over ridges, laughing and talking and enjoying snacks and views. After keeping up with the front end of the walkers in the first lag of the trip, I arrived to the top of the hill with two of my neighbors and we saw a heavy presence of helicopters flying very low near where we live. One of them said, “looks like there is combat in Arenas Altas.”
Upon arrival in Mulatos, everyone hung around and did what they pleased for the rest of the afternoon. I bathed in a low water, near stagnant river with a child. She said, “Why do you have so many mosquito bites on your backside? Don’t those itch?” I said, “They sure do… thanks for noticing.” I also got a good laugh while unpacking my bag and finding basil, a bikini, an extra video camera, three pairs of sunglasses, perfume, and a bunch of other useless items that I myself did not pack. It seems I left my bag alone outside before departure and my neighbors added a couple of kilos of weight. On the video camera was a video of them doing it: “Quick! Here she comes! Close the bag!”
And then there was another petition at night, because the last group to leave La Hollandita never arrived. And we were off, running behind our neighbors to look for the lost community members and human rights activists from Bogota. But we found them, and we rejoiced, and it seemed everything was great. But on the walk back one of the neighbors with whom I was at the top of the hill watching the combat said to me in a near whisper, “Gina, it looks like that combat took Antonio’s son. And Marlober. They sent the news from La Union that he should good home.”
Padre Javier gave mass on the morning of the 22nd and told the story of Luis Eduardo and his family in Mulatos. And we listened to an interview with Luis Eduardo, which talked about the founding of the Peace Community. And we heard his famous quote, from a month before he died, which I posted in my last blog. Enough to give you the chills. And we listened to Padre Javier as he told us that the death of peaceful leaders has inspired this community time and time again to resist violence. And when I said this I looked at the father who had lost a son, but he didn’t seem to be registering anything at all. We then hiked to La Resbalosa and heard the story (from testimony of eye-witnesses) that happened there. We listened to it at the site of the massacre. We sat in a cacaotera and heard about a massacre. The same way that this community does every year. They remember their dead and where they came from and how hard it has been for them and I feel that after one year I know all of these stories by heart, because I do. But these people know the whole story. The lives of these people, from the day they were born to the day they died. All of them. And the story repeats itself, over and over.
The last night in Mulatos was, of course, difficult, but we tried to make it fun. Because this community knows how to celebrate life. People sang and danced. A pig was killed and rice was cooked. I was stung by three bees. I walked with a two year old to the soccer field where, from at least 200 yards away she identified all of our neighbors (I didn’t know whether she was right half the time, but I was amazed nonetheless). In the morning we walked home, the same way we came and arrived to La Union in time for a funeral.
Weeks ago Charlotte told me about a conversation she had with a new mother who was grateful to have a baby girl: “it’s definitely better to have girls here, because the war takes away our boys.” Had I heard this, I probably would have nodded in agreement, but I thought about this because that day we were morning the loss of one girl and one boy. It all seemed so equal and all seemed so unfair. The story of how these children (20 and 21 years old) is enough to make you vomit, so I will spare the details. The boy I did not know personally, as he left the community many years ago, at the age of 14, to fight with the FARC. The girl, however, was not a member of that organization. The girl was just a neighbor of our community, who lived further up the path at a farm. And I did know her. She came to my birthday party and she came to town (as in, our town, the biggest in the area) to visit friends. I have a photo of her walking, three months ago, in the last funeral procession. Her back is to the camera, following the casket. Her now orphaned 1-year-old girl is looking back at me over her shoulder. And while neither of these individual were members of the Peace Community, they both grew up in La Union. And they were to both be buried in the Peace Community cemetery. And vigiled in the Peace Community kiosk.
And one neighbor said to me, “a funeral every three months! Dear God.”
And his mother said to me, “Gina, why is it that we are so good at dying?”
Accompanying the funeral procession, as my neighbors carried up the bodies of their dead on the same path they walk everyday, on the same path they carried these babies up when they were born and their mothers were in hammocks, and on which they are now carrying their caskets, while people cried and the men sweat through their shirts alternating four at a time carrying two heavy caskets, I thought again about Liza’s comment: “it’s pretty amazing the different realities that people live on this planet.” And at the final plateau, before entering town, the men changed and his father and brother carried him to the kiosk for his overnight vigil and my stomach had to turn.
Padre Javier came up to give the funeral mass and when he talked about these two kids’ baptisms I started to cry. He talked again about pain breeding resistance and death inspiring life, but the dad of this child still hadn’t eaten. People came from far and wide for the vigil of these two kids. And every young person in La Union stayed up all night. They talked about these two kids “when they were young” and I looked at them wide-eyed thinking in my head “YOU ARE ALL STILL SO YOUNG!” because they are, at 15 and 16 and 18 and 20 years old.
And all of this, the death and the vigils and the funerals and the youth and the dealing with it all and the community cemetery and the community mourning and the community everything… it all just blows my mind. And it makes for such profound thoughts and statements as: war is not good for children or other living things. I wore a button that said that for a couple years when I was in college. I believed it then, I really did. And I protested the war then, I really did. But now… man oh man… to think that that is the best I can do to sum up how I feel about everything that happens here… that a button I wore in college is the best I can do to sum up how I feel about war… man oh man.
On the night of their joint vigil, the sun fell out of the sky a burning candy red and the moon rose a sliver, barely illuminating the candled kiosk. A cow was killed. People played cards and sat silently in the kiosk. I fried potatoes at 3AM and took a nap in a hammock with my neighbor around 4am.
In the morning two graves were dug. At the joint funeral people wailed. And military watched from afar. And after a nap, I walked up to the kiosk over looking town to just take a deep breath. From there, I could see him alone, attending to his son’s grave. I walked down to see if I could be of aid, but by the time I walked there he was gone, so I just sat there for a moment. I thought about this girl and this boy. And I looked around the cemetery and remembered all of the funerals of the last year and surprised myself with the amount of people I knew who are buried here. And I thought about “community member” versus “non-community member” and how at the end of life, that doesn’t really matter all that much… since everyone buried here grew up here, and even though they made different decisions and chose different things for themselves, they are all so connected to this place. They grew up in this communal small town, and at some level, they are family of everybody, because that seems to be how it works in a community like this. At the end of the day they are part of the same community history. And some of them are even part of my history.
Later that night, playing cards, his dad asked me in front of his card playing buddies, “Were you over there a little bit ago?” I said, “Yes.” He said, “I saw you there.” I said, “I saw you too.” And he said, “Thank you.” And I said nothing.
The last few days of February were spent in LU. I finally got into the garden and tried to revive all of the water-starved plants that had basically been abandoned since I’d arrived. Cristian helped me to weed and water and replant and chase out the chickens. While he was going machete crazy on my trees, I said: “Hey, watch the machete!” And he said, “Do you want a jungle or a garden… you can’t have both!” I had to borrow sharp machetes and when I went barefoot to return them a neighbor leaned out of her house and said- “here comes Soila!” as I reminded her, apparently, while barefoot and with a machete in each hand, of the local schizophrenic woman.
While picking beans, a neighbor confided that Leap Years were good for planting big crops because they had a reputation for luck and large yields. I said, “Yeah for Leap Years!” Then he got serious and said, “Yes, on that side of the coin, but they also have the reputation for a lot of death.” More food and less people to eat it. On the later point he seemed slightly prophetic.
In the last few days of February I got sun-kissed on the roof of my neighbor’s home. I ran through the cacaotera and climbed poma trees. I listened to vallenato blast from neighbor´s homes and swung with a friend in hammocks at the kiosk. I drank sugar cane juice and gave away kittens. Charlotte and Elisabeth and I finally found ourselves all three in La Union (was to be a short reunion) and finally finished all of our reports and documents from the five petitions in the previous three weeks. We made work plans and analyzed the next petition. And we talked about Dominique’s arrival and training. Because she will be here soon. And it’s hard to believe that I am more than halfway through my two month term here.
"We have always said, and in that we are clear, that until this very day we are resisting. And our work is to continue resisting and defending our rights. We don't know until when, because the truth we've lived in our story is this: today we are here talking; tomorrow we may be dead."
Their persecution continues. Less than three weeks ago, on February 4, Jesús Emilio Tuberquia, Peace Community legal representative, was violently attacked in the town center of Apartadó. It was one of many situations that have made him fear for his own life. Recounting his experience, he was shaken: "This was just another attempt to destroy our community. It's obvious that they want to see it fall apart."