Reflections after intense days of travel

We are all connected. That's the painful and powerful reality that keeps resounding in my head after the week of Seed workshops and travel to visit the placements in both the city of Medellin and the department of Choco. As Seeders, we are members of a team, and although we spend most of our time working within our individual jobs and communities, we also are necessarily linked with our fellow Seeders. This means that, as a team, we somehow have to figure out how to handle vast differences in living style, work requirements, and contexts. We have to negotiate the differences in a way that doesn't make us resentful, and allows us to confront our own choices. It's a challenge in dialogue- can we talk our way through circumstances that try to separate us?

Colombia's vast geographic diversity manifests itself in incredible regional differences. At the start of the Seed program, our facilitators told us that each region was almost its own country, because of its particular accent, culture, industry, level of poverty, climate, etc. I didn't fully realize just how different the regions were until seeing three- Medellin (Antioquia), el Chocó, and the Carribbean Coast in a space of two weeks.  

I have spent the last seven months adjusting to life on the coast. I live in an extremely rural, isolated context, in a community where everyone farms, even the teachers and shopowners. There is no industry, and everyone, although rich in food resources, is very poor. Many are illiterate. The schools opened two months late, there is no health clinic or even nurse for two hours in every direction, and in the rainy season, the road becomes completely impassable. Also, the community is rebuilding their former strength after being violently displaced by paramilitary and guerrilla forces twelve years ago, then returning slowly over the last ten years. The community is made up of fiercely independent Afro-descendent and indigenous Colombians, who have organized into a community council that struggles to unite the community in its search for economic development and social healing. My work is often difficult, and made up of thinking about how to address high levels of material needs and the complete lack of services or economic opportunities, alongside the distrust and reluctance to collaborate among the wider community.

As I boarded the plane to Medellin, my stomach sank with worry. I didn't know how I was going to react to being in one of Colombia's beautiful cities, especially visiting the work and apartment of my dear friend and fellow Seeder, Jessica Sarriot. I have become quite defensive about the difficulties of the coast, both in the work and in the lifestyle, and being in Medellin was just going to make things worse. I spent the first few days amazed at just how opposite our lives were, as we took taxis, drank the tap water, and visited with some of her professional, well-studied collegues and friends. One of the evenings, we went downtown to the largest sports complex in Latin America to play beach volleyball. I became more and more confused. How could we enjoy this, I thought, when most of the coast doesn't have adequate roads? Of course, there was a huge group of police searching the grounds outside the stadium for knives, hidden while people attended the soccer game, reminding us that Medellin has one of the highest levels of urban violence and narco-traffiking in the world. How can we relate our work- on one side almost completely defined by the poverty of the region, and on the other, connecting the work of the church with the context of urban violence? How do I keep from resenting her internet access, metro system, and botanical gardens, and how does she keep from resenting my I've-got-it-the-worst attitude? Above all, how do we understand and work in a country where one region has world-class social and cultural institutions, prolific industry, and strong public services, and another isn't even able to open its schools on time?

Then we went to Chocó, and things got more complicated. The heat as the plane door opened reminded me of the coast, but disembarking, I realized that it was completely different. Just forty-five minutes away by plane from Medellin, we were in the middle of dense, humid forest, where almost all transportation is by river. However, I was amazed as we arrived at Istmina, the town where the Seeders Carolina Perez and Cellia Maria Vasquez live, at just how developed it actually was. I was expecting something similar from the isolated, poor, small-scale farming towns of my region, and was completely unprepared to find a bustling city.

Choco's industry is mainly gold mining or coca cultivation, both of which yield much more money than standard crop farming. Perhaps there is more money moving, but the region is startlingly precarious. Because many farmers have switched to grow coca, food is imported from the same Medellin, at sky-high prices. Environmentally, gold mining threatens the richness of the soil and the entire water supply, especially the massive river systems. The presence of the federal government is laughable, made up mostly of army fumigation campaigns and corrupt police stations. As we walked through gold mines where mercury is used for extraction then discarded in the water supply, talked with coca farmers, and quietly discussed the obvious presence of guerrilla and paramilitary groups in the towns, we began to realize just how huge the threats to stability and peace actually are.

I grappled with the new information as we saw more of Chocó and returned to Medellin. The puzzle of Colombia was becoming more complicated with each new piece that we added. The Seeders gathered for a discussion about how to understand differences in context, especially relating to vacation and days of rest. This conversation and various others that took place that week weren't easy, but I found myself profoundly grateful for the perspective offered by the other Seeders. We discovered that, now matter how good our intentions, we still compare and feel jealous or guilty about the difficulties of our placements. Some of us can see fellow Seeders more often; others are more in touch with their families. Some of us have the anonymous freedom of cities, while others are in small communities where everything they do is known. Although we naturally compare, we have to recognize that every place has its difficulties and strengths, and each of us must be allowed to feel freely, without guilt or resentment.

During a late night discussion in Chocó, Carolina and I talked about the word “solidarity.” Even as we seek to be in solidarity with our communities, we have to remember that Seed is also our community. If the way we live doesn't allow us to be in solidarity with the other Seeders, we have to question ourselves. If my lifestyle means that I close my heart to empathy with Jessica in Medellin, I need to make some changes. If my defensiveness about the hardship on the coast means that I can't see the justice issues in Chocó and talk about them honestly with Carolina and Cellia, I need to take a look at myself.   

Perhaps it is a big jump, but I believe that these conversations are the same ones we must have about the various strange puzzle pieces of Colombia. The regions are so different, but we can see uniting threads of economic hardship, violence from illegal armed groups, the enticement of illegal crops, government abandonment, and many more. The challenge is to refuse to divide and separate, but to see every problem as interconnected, and to likewise build an interconnected movement for peace and justice. In the same way, perhaps, we Seeders strive to look at a wide field of experience and difficulty, and construct a community vision of solidarity and hope.

As I dig deeper into the Seed program, I am finding a richness that challenges me in ways I did not expect. Through community, through dialogue, through walking with each other and talking things out, we are challenged to wake up to difficult realities, and not just shrug at difference, but try to actually wrestle with it. I am so grateful to those who are walking with me through these days.

  

   

Stiiiill camping!

Reasons why I am on a two year camping trip:

Bug bites. Unbelievable in their variation and constancy.

Well, after the first 4 months, I no longer shower out of a bucket, but I still wash my dishes in one. And my laundry. With the rain water from outside tanks, note, because the only tap that works is the shower.

My fridge broke, and for the two months that it took to fix it (yes, it takes forever to figure out how to fix anything because there's certainly no one in the town that can), I figured out about how much time I could leave specific types of food on the counter until they went bad.

I walk up and down the road looking for cell phone service.

I cook on a gas-powered hot plate.

I am never fully clean, especially my feet.

I wake up before the sunrise.

Bats fly through my house at night, and lizards crawl on the walls during the day.

Rain radically changes the possibilities for the day. It's kind of like planning a hike- if it rains, you stay in the tent and play cards. If it rains here, you could tramp through mud just to find yourself stuck on the wrong side of the river, soaking wet. So you stay in the tent.

I never know where my next meal will come from, or what it will be. The neighbors are constantly placing a bowl of soup or an ear of corn in my hands, which I must eat, hungry or no. There is no place to buy fruit and no one will hear of me paying them, so I have to wait to see if someone will gift me some (they usually do). Sometimes there are no vegetables. For three months, there was no milk. It's hard to plan how it will all work out, so I just make sure I have a lot of oatmeal.

I still brush my teeth outside with a cup of water.

I always leave with a backpack of things to fix, books to return to our communal bookshelf, lists of errands to run... and return with a backpack full of food that you just can't find in the mountains (which occasionally includes four pounds of oatmeal).

You know (Emma, Jess, Hannah, Sara, Tyler, Lucas) how when you are camping, something unexpected will always find you, and it might be a disaster or a blessing, but the crisis moment is inevitable. Like when your car breaks down in a rainstorm, but you meet a few cute Wisconsin-ite mechanics, or when you drive for hours to find a camping site, but when you get there and set up, the moment is all that much sweeter because of the struggle. Or when you get stuck on an island during a massive storm, but it means that you have the whole beautiful thing to yourself, or when you haul 21 plastic milk jugs down half the east coast and end up with too much fresh water after all. Or tossing your shoes when you get to the beach only to be attacked by prickly grass bushes. Or when you almost leave Virginia for Florida with no oil in your car. Or when you drive for four hours through a blizzard up mountains with faulty windshield wipers and your dear friends try to keep you from going too crazy (and also somehow figure out how to feed you bean soup from a Nalgene as you drive...)- but you get to the house in the mountains, and wake up to a stunning sunrise.

I suppose what I'm trying to say is that my days here are all like that. I never know how they will turn out- maybe I'll hear about a community conflict that's recently hit the fan, or negotiate a failed crop in one of our food security projects, or be invited to a church revival meeting. Maybe I will play soccer with the girls, or the meeting will be canceled, or someone will get in a huge argument about one of the projects, storm out, and then show up five minutes later wondering what all the fuss is about. The electricity will die. I'll drink a cup of juice that turns my stomach. Everyone will be two hours late. I'll have an encouraging, honest, completely unplanned conversation about religion on the back porch. I'll be invited to go wild-honey-hunting. People will agree to contribute to the community fund, without objecting. My phone will completely stop working.

I told Jess once that I constantly feel like I'm surfing- catching my balance minute by minute as the waves appear. I'm trying to learn how to take the unexpected for what it is- crisis or epiphany- and calm it down, make it real, and deal with it. Reacting to the excitement of the wrenches that are thrown in your work doesn't actually help your work, but trying to understand from where and why the wrenches were thrown does. My mom helped remind me the other day that we who work with people work with ecosystems. We work with living beings, who are never predictable and never relate to each other or to us in predictable ways. It's hard, and it requires damn good balance, flexibility, willingness to get your hands dirty, and relentless hope, but at least it's not boring. Kind of like a good camping trip.

(PS. My fridge broke again.  Peace out, folks.)

One big sigh.

I'm not sure when the honeymoon stage ended, but it's definitely been done for a while. I'm sure you've all noticed that my last blog post is about two months ago, and I can only explain (other than the usual lack of internet excuses) that I have been too muddled to write. I commend my dear friend Jess Sarriot (if you are also reading her blog) for her January entry, for putting uncertainty, doubt, and confusion down on the page. I couldn't. I'm still dreading this post, because it means trying to articulate some of the mind tangles that I've been in recently, but bear with me.

One of the basic difficulties of living in another culture is that you do not understand the cultural cues. I live with folks who have never left their hometown, which is profoundly isolated, which means that they have mental encyclopedias of information that I will never know. To an extent, I can learn the Spanish dialect on the coast, make family trees to remember who is who's cousin, hike around to get to know the farmland, etc., but I'm mostly lost. The most frustrating thing about this is that I will never understand- I might think I'm grasping something, but the rich fabric of really knowing because it makes up part of my life experience- I will only have that about my two years in Colombia, not about the past. I spend hours a day listening to stories: who sold what land to who when, what happened when the community tried to petition the govt. for a better road the last time, why this neighbor refuses to talk to this neighbor, what went wrong in the last project SembrandoPaz worked on there... and I am still lost. I don't know how to make informed decisions, other than to just make decisions with what I know and hope that the repercussions aren't that huge. This is true about half the time.

I have made some really faulty decisions because I don't have all the information. I've traveled on a dangerous road. I've spent time with people who are considered untrustworthy. I've implied that I'm friends with a certain group of people, and not with others. I've misinterpreted the parameters of who I work with and who I don't in the community. I've mixed up names and dates and meeting times. I've confused (or offended) people countless times because of my ignorance of what it means to me to be: polite, a woman, a member of the church, friendly, honest, a good communicator, a rep. of SembrandoPaz... I just don't know and can't know so much. I remember back to doing community organizing at EMU, where I still made plenty of mistakes, and sigh to remember the ease of culturally knowing who to talk to, how, when, and what to say. I knew the paths.

Another trap that has me completely at a loss is the level of distrust and gossip that happens in Berruguita. I remind myself daily that it's a community that was literally torn apart from within- same families, same siblings, same neighbors- by armed groups, and that it was mostly arbitrary who was killed and why (at least the victims and their families were never told why). Also, the authorities who were supposed to help them betrayed them. The army, police, and politicians are notorious in the region for at best turning a blind eye to the violence, and at worse, actively collaborating. To illustrate, the same paramilitaries who had killed community members were incorporated into the army group that welcomed back the displaced people of Macayepo after their seven years of flight. It makes you sick. Because of what I know of trauma, I forgive the distrust, again and again. 

It doesn't mean it doesn't hurt- me personally and generally for the pain that it generates in the community. Most days, I listen to someone describe their land struggles- how they were unjustly treated by their neighbors or how the legitimately posess the land, but don't have their papers in order, or why they deserve this land- and I'll empathize, and then later in the day I'll talk to someone who will tell me that the other is lying and can't be trusted. I feel really yanked around between alliances and individuals, and I keep wondering if my policy of transparency and honesty is helpful or just making it worse. I try to speak up when something someone says or does is hurtful or unhelpful to the process, but in so doing, I've created enemies. I try to empathize all around, but people tell me then that I'm letting myself be fooled. I trust universally, and people tell me I'm naïve. Then I stop trusting someone, and someone else becomes offended. Sigh, again. I mentioned before that my strategy has become on of honest disclosure and reliance on the process. I try to keep my personal feelings out of things, and use the language of work to respond to people's actions, even if they just piss me off. For example, recently a huge weed of conflict has been growing (can't get the VeggieTales “Rumor Weed” episode out of my head, sorry folks) around the money that is currently still out on loan from the Community Council. Certain people refuse to pay because certain others haven't paid yet, or they don't approve of our work strategy, or they don't like me personally... etc. I try to respond with the truth of any organization- that if your budget isn't in order, no one will collaborate with you or trust your work- instead of my personal feelings of frustration that people refuse to pay, and my own hurt that people don't trust me.

And while I'm venting, let me say that it's a LOT HARDER to keep your head about values and principles while working in the field than while hanging out in a classroom. I think back to my neat conversations about sustainability and community process, about restorative justice and participatory democracy and human rights and empowerment, that I had at EMU, and I wonder how on earth to pull all that along. When I am working with an already-established organization (with fabulous vision, but occasionally sketchy followthrough), in a community of folks with very different views of how the world works (I attend a legalistic, conservative Adventist church where dancing/alcohol/worldly music/working on Saturday and some of my closest friends were in the army), trying to deal with problems of root poverty (income generation projects are hard to keep sustainable) and violence (we really need the army presence sometimes... or do we?), in a culture that I don't understand... how the hell do I make decisions based on my values, or our values of good work? The factors and considerations are huge, and compounded by the fact that I live mostly without internet and cell service and touch base with my organization every month or so, which means that I make a ton of decisions on the fly, with the people they affect standing right in front of me. It's hard to keep things straight. I trust my local community leaders immensely, but wonder how to strike a balance in between letting their style and beliefs influence me, and sticking to my values and trying to influence change.

These are some of the things that keep me up at night. We have some great momentum, and good projects going, and I'm excited about where things can go. I get exhausted, though. Most days I sort of shrug and say my Colombian mantra- well, something happened, and it was probably good. I'm just trying to take one step at a time, but I'm hoping the fog clears out a bit more so I can see where I'm going.

three days of madness and inspiration

I have to write this down before the details slowly slip from my brain.  So, on the morning after the craziest four days so far in Colombia (in my life?!), I'm going to give you all a rough sketch of what we were doing, and what actually happened:

One of my fellow SEEDers, Anna Vogt, is accompanying the community of Mampujan in their process of return to the land they were displaced from 12 years ago.  Six years ago, Mampujan became the first and, to date, only, community in Colombia to receive a sentence under the Law of Justice and Peace.  The sentence delineated specific reparations that the community would receive- like the establishment of basic services (electricity, a health clinic) in their now deserted town.  There has been no follow-through, and the community is losing patience with the government's reluctance to admit wrong and give them what is rightfully theirs.  So, they decided to march non-violently from the community to Cartagena (the capital of the department and the seat of the governor) to demand their complete reparation- not just bags of flour or a  new house- but a dignified return to their land.

I came to participate and support Anna, and also to help out with the logistics, as the complexity of helping over 400 men, women, and children walk 72 kilometers (and feeding them for three days) was huge, and also handled by a team of about 10 people, mostly from SembrandoPaz, my partner organization.  Here is where the craziness started, and here is where I begin listing things, because it's too much for details.

Pre-march day:

wake up afraid that I won't be able to leave the community because of the massive rainstorm the day before and the deteriorating road, but a truck and two buses later, I arrive in Mampujan
realization that most of the logistics were finally organized THAT MORNING
two hour search for firewood and pots for cooking
hugs for the highly stressed Anna and Jes, who have been working on this for weeks already
hugs for the incredible community leaders, who are handling a thousand details
distributing of food for 400 between 12 cooks for dinner the next day
discovery that we don't have nearly enough water for everyone
search for hammock (which I had forgotten to bring)
sleep at 11

Day 1:
up at 3:15 to load the cargo trucks that will come with us- with food, cooking pots, firewood, water and the bags/mattresses/hammocks of the marchers
distribution of signs and wristbands
marchers depart at 4am, walking on one side of the road, accompanied by police traffic control in front and behind
we depart at 5, after tying a thousand last minute loose ends
catch up with the marchers, walk until breakfast at nine, trying to keep people walking at the same pace so they don't spread out along a long stretch of road (impossible)
are joined by the Guardia Indigena de la Pista (an indigenous group that provides an alternative to the traditional police force in non-violent crowd control, organization, and security for the march for the next few days.  seriously the most amazing group I've ever worked with- ceaselessly calm, uncomplaining, hardworking, motivated, and fiercely proud of their identity)
arrive for breakfast (packed and carried by the marchers) in the parking lot of a gas station, joined by members of other communities also affected by the sentence
joined by several hippie NGO workers
sun comes out- HOT! not enough water!
people start to lose patience and either walk way faster or slower than their counterparts- we get super spread out, try to reunite, basically impossible
it starts to rain, rains for an hour while we walk
(I'm marching but in the meantime, the other SEEDers (3 of them) and Jes are running around like crazy people getting dinner set up and organizing the break stop)
1:30: break stop under a bridge, passing out scalding plastic cups of coffee and bread to 400 people who do not want to make a line
more walking
3:00: finally arrive, way behind schedule although we have been walking quickly, at lunch stop, exhausted after 11 hours of walking
decide to bus folks to the night rest stop (after realizing that it would be another 5 hours of walking)
arrive to see 12 cooks spread out in courtyard, cooking massive amounts of food over wood fires, applaud them
frantically run to buy more water (water in school not potable)
don't sit down for the next five hours running errands
usher people to the nurse for Band-aids and pain reliever pills
Guardia has a mediation session with the bus driver after he tells them that he won't let them sleep in the bus like he said he would- he relents
I eat two bites of dinner and then the donation from the mayor of Cartagena arrives- a THOUSAND small but heavy bags of food (tuna, spaghetti, flour, cornmeal...)
move all the bags from one truck to another
run frantically to buy more water, buy the store out
brush my teeth and wash my face
hang hammocks at 11, eaten by bugs for the next 3.5 hours while we try to sleep

Day 2:
2:30: up to wake up cooks to start breakfast at 3
divide breakfast supplies
unload and unpack 350 of the bags of food received yesterday, repack some of the food into portions for lunch and dinner the next day
manage 30 children who are helping (and doing a tremendous job)
finish at 6, load heavy bags back in truck
frantically look for more water for the cooks
drink a very deserved and delicious cafe con leche
cooks wash all of their enormous cooking pots (seriously, these ladies are impressive)
simultaneously load bags, cooking pots, and bricks used to hold pots over fire (still hot!) onto trucks, usher people into the road to start marching, pick up huge amounts of trash / sweep (one of the community leaders single-handedly cleans the over-used bathrooms), load a huge amount of bags of water into another truck, run up and down line of people giving out water, help cooks onto another bus that will take them to the next site to cook lunch...
MOVE OUT! to march on Cartagena
wave to news crews
cooks revolt, decide to stay with march instead of going to cook early- we are excited that they want to march but worried about lunch timing- decide to march with them for an hour
singing!  chanting!  provoking huge traffic jams!
buses of passing people curiously read our signs and give us the thumbs up
hop on bus to take cooks to lunch site- sure enough, we barely get lunch done on time
500-600 people arrive exhausted, eat lunch, then re-mobilize to march to the center city
we turn around lunch cleanup to dinner prep in an hour, find replacements for two cooks who have decided not to cook anymore
run to center city to catch up with marchers
cry upon seeing the long lines of farmers, laborers, victims, rural folks, Afro-Colombians with aching feet... entering rich Cartagena with its white tourists and designer stores
cry upon seeing Afro-Colombians still demanding rights and liberation as they walk past the site where the slave trade used to take place, where their ancestors were sold centuries ago
shout with triumph and exhaustion- quienes somos? desplazados! que exigimos? reparacion! ("who are we?" "displaced people!" "what do we demand?" "reparation!") as we walk along the sea walls to the central plaza
stand yelling in central plaza until they come out to talk
governor addresses crowd on balcony, calls meeting with 10 community leaders
we wait until the end of the meeting, in which they establish that there will be a public panel dialogue the next morning to talk about demands
bus people back to rest site, eat two bites of dinner while running errands (try to ignore blisters and swollen feet)
realize that the bread and milk tentatively promised from one NGO will not arrive for breakfast
run to store to buy milk, refuse to pay too much to a taxi to take us back, carry milk, drop milk, another taxi driver is compassionate and takes us for less money
11pm: nowhere to hang hammock, sleep on cement floor until...

Day 3!
4am: up for breakfast organizing
5am: leave to try to buy a thousand rolls/pieces of bread from nearby bakeries.  they are surprised, we buy about 300 and head back while others keep searching
6:30am: breakfast- mad rush for bread, no lines, nowhere near enough
7:30: more bread arrives, no lines, not quite enough because some people took way more than they should have, some people are very angry about not getting bread, we secretly buy more and pass it to them individually.  we eat one egg and three bites of bread each for breakfast.
folks leave on buses for plaza
we figure out lunch supplies (also what to do because three cooks are now missing, but the other wonderful ladies decide to chip in and cook their portions)
run to central plaza to join march
pay way too much for a very necessary coffee
realize that the governor is now both reluctant to have a public meeting and to show his face to the waiting people
waiting people become angry after governor only offers to let 100 people into the meeting, refuses to go
we plan a potential storming of the offices, idea is nixed by our boss because it isn't legal/non-violent
finally, they agree to let the whole community in
meeting begins, but we are all so exhausted that the community leaders have some trouble finding focus, many are waiting outside, and Anna and I cry frequently
in the first statement of the meeting, one of the community leaders starts crying at the enormity of what they have accomplished and the enormity of their need for justice, and the whole crowd follows him into tears and encourages him to keep going
Governor shows up really late, but agrees to the community demand of establishing a working group to nail down a detailed plan to address the specific demands of the reparation- first meeting is planned in Mampujan for next Friday. meeting adjourned
3:00pm: utterly exhausted, we wait for the last bus, while the other folks go ahead of us to organize lunch and transport back- by the time we arrive, there is scarcely any lunch left, so I do damage control with the frustrated folks and find them enough to eat
three hours of madness- packing, cleaning, carrying food, finding band-aids, trying to organize the extra buses that the governor has agreed to pay for, passing out the packs of food donated by the mayor's office, people wait on the buses (voluntarily), getting hotter and more frustrated by the half-hour
some of the funding hasn't been transferred through bank accounts yet so we all empty all of our accounts (it still isn't enough to completely pay the bus drivers)
buses finally arrive
6:30pm: finally leave as it starts to rain (have not planned dinner)
8:30pm: arrive in Mampujan, unload the mountain of leftover food and all the bags, congratulate all the folks that are so relieved to be home and proud of their work....head out!

BUT, that isn't the end.  Half an hour down the road, we hit a donkey, crack the radiator, are stranded on the side of the road for two hours (with some nice policemen), literally so tired that we are falling down, find a car, are towed to the next town, sleep for three hours in a hotel, I find out that I am unable to get back to my village today, and thus end up in Sincelejo at 8:30 in the morning.  I shower, and am finally able to relax.  I'll head to my real house at 4 tomorrow morning.  Wow.

That's the story.  I hope that you can understand some of the madness and all of the beauty that made it all worth it- blisters, dehydration, stress and exhaustion.  Learning about organization.  Walking for rights with the displaced community of Mampujan. Demanding to been seen, listened to, treated with dignity.  What an incredible experience.  I hope you are as inspired as I am, and not nearly as exhausted.

'bout time I told you about my job...

I suppose it's time to write about my work, actually. I've been introducing you to my community (although the lack of cell phone/Internet capabilities there makes my descriptions few and far between), but haven't explained anything about what I actually live there to do. As I'm leaving Internet land again tomorrow and I have a million things on my to-do list, I'm going to make you a list.

Basically, I work with a group called SembrandoPaz (Sowing Peace) that has been a peace and social justice resource for communities affected by the armed conflict on the Carribbean Coast. Most of the communities they work with are displaced- either in the process of return of to their former land or post-return and trying to rebuild their former security and stability. This basically adds up to a focus on human dignity: attempting to rebuild the fractured social fabric through processes focused on dignity. Here's a list of some large and small things that make up that wide vision.

Productive projects: these are agricultural projects that focus on supporting people to work the land again. Because of the Free Trade Agreement and climate change and a zillion other factors that make this region vulnerable, a lot of my current focus is on food security.

Example: The community is frequently left isolated by the rain, meaning that basic food/supplies can't get in. I'm working with several projects that intend to produce things normally imported. One job: I've been sitting around, laughing, teasing and planning a chicken raising project with four young women from the community. It'll incorporate both mass market chickens because they generate capital faster and local, strurdy Criollo chickens, with the hope to eventually phase toward the local chickens. They are about to sign the loan and get started!

Securing farming as a lifestyle: this is part of my job, no big deal. Seriously though, the world over small-scale farming is becoming more and more insecure (working on an article about the role of the FTA in all this, stay tuned). We're trying to support and validate small-scale efforts, attempting to make small-scale more viable as the temptation is to sell out, look for work in the city, or shift to cash crops instead of food production. One of the related strategies is funding/encouraging seed saving- to build up the ability of farmers to continue to produce food, year by year, without needing to use their few resources to purchase new seed. I've been hiking up and down steep hills of ñame plants (described in the last post), checking in on the farmers, making sure they are saving seed, encouraging them, etc. I love this part of my job, especially because it means that I know almost everyone in my community and can stop them in the street to ask about their crops. We have great early morning conversations about rain, market prices, and the quality of ñame.

Women's empowerment: I just wrote an article for the SEED publication about my community and it has a lot in it about gender roles- I'll post that soon, so I won't go into detail here. Suffice it to say that the community is very machista- women always have the second say, and have no choice or way to look for change in their work. It's their place to hand wash laundry, supposedly, and that's the way it'll stay. This is where I have to be the most clever. In a male-dominated community, if I start talking about liberation and mujerismo (womanism), I will likely alienate the men and make enemies fast, for both me and the women in the community. We have to look for ways to reinforce empowering ideas/skills/attitudes in culturally-appropriate spaces. As I work with the women on the chicken project, their husbands are also occasionally present. It's a small thing, but I always direct my attention, questions, and ideas to the women, never to the men. Chicken raising is a gender-appropriate job for women, but they have rarely been in control of the planning, finances, and organization. Having a women-only project is a way of giving them some decision-making power that they desperately need. Also, when I get back, I'm planning a bread-baking workshop for women in the community, as a space for us to get together and start building community outside of kids/husbands. We're going to make naan bread over wood fires.

Hanging out: Literally, hanging in my hammock or hanging around drinking cups of sweet coffee with the neighbors. One of the things that we're finding in our communities is that people are acting on such a level of necessity that there is little time or energy to reflect. Mouths need to be fed, which means early to the fields, hard days, lots of household labor: energy spent on the basics. It's a very reactive pattern- people are so occupied by basic necessities that there is little space to reflect and plan for long term action. I see a lot of my job as hanging out and talking with people, giving them the chance to reflect on their experiences and daily life and wonder about the future. I ask people how they feel about living close to their families, having children so young, not having gardens anymore, gender roles... I ask, paraphrase, process, reflect, encourage.

And the last part of my job- animando, or encouraging: Most of my friends/neighbors/community members are just tired out. They've endured the horrible trauma of displacement and return to empty land and the incredible task of rebuilding. Often, their attitude is a sort of an “it is what it is” feeling. Corruption, violence, individualism, rich robbing from the poor, flooding... these things happen, and there isn't very much you can do about it. So why try? I'll explain more as I explore this feeling in the community in the coming months. For now, one of my jobs is working with a group of young men (I call them The Dude Men in English because they are really into their fashion, hair styles, and being cool) to start a fish farming project. Most of them work a small amount of land or hire out for other farmers, but are frustrated at their dependence on the “old people,” as they call their parents, and lack of options. Our first meeting, I sat with them and asked them a few questions about what their goals were, then struggled to keep up as they threw out ideas, work plans, and started to organize their project. I cheer them on (and remind them of the importance of organization and follow-through).

These are my jobs! I'm working on a framework of values/principles so I can feel more centered in my work, but for now, this is what I understand. Of course, my job is so dependent on the community's goals, desires, styles, processes....that I often find myself in balance-and-adapt mode. We'll see how it changes in the coming months.

I have rain boot tan lines (late October post)

Rain has been my constant, frustrating companion and patient teacher these last four weeks. Yesterday we had the blessed break of a sunny afternoon, but most days have been the gray of thick clouds and the brown of muddy paths. Winter here means rain and lots of it, but I can't help but attribute some of the excessive downpours to the chaos of climate change. I think about all of the rich farming regions of the world and how they are bewilderingly trying to adapt to less or more rain, like this village of farmers who dig their living out of the mud. I have been both despairing of and thankful for the rain these days, but I have been constantly reminded how important and defining the rain is for this region. I'm going to share a few stories of the reality of life here, on the rainy days.

Yesterday, I accompanied six campesinos to, literally, dig their living out of the mud. We were pulling out ñame, a giant white root that is probably in the yam family and the most common food here. The organization with which I'm working, SembrandoPaz, started a seed-saving project last year, in which they give out a sack of seed in agreement that the farmer will demonstrate that they have saved at least the same amount of seed at the end of the season. My job is to check in on the farmers to make sure they are “capando,” or pulling out the root to eat or sell but leaving the vine to grow seed. Because ñame grows best at high altitudes, this collective of farmers (12 in total) pooled their seeds to plant high up in the mountains. In other words, we set out early for a two hour trek, crossing the river twice and walking through a stream for at least half the time. We all rode, some mules, some donkeys. This was the only day in the last two weeks that the journey was possible, because of the mud and the swollen river. After a dry day and night, the river had decreased some, but it was still hip-deep where we crossed. We had to dismount for the last mile or so of the trip, to let the animals struggle up and down steep, muddy hill faces. We finally arrived to do the same steep, sliding work on the ñame fields. They are almost vertical faces, planted with vines. The work is to find where the vines enter the ground, cut off the vine, and dig/lever/haul out the root (average size was 10 pounds) with a pointed stick. After four hours of standing on the steep banks bent over digging and hauling out roots, the men (with my small contribution) had accumulated about 16 50-kilo sacks of ñame, about 1900 pounds in total. The animals hauled out 12 of those sacks and we walked out in our rain boots. Imagine, a donkey fighting for purchase on a muddy, vertical path, loaded with an additional 240 pounds of ñame, with us following them, urging them on. The work is downright hard, made even harder by the constant rains.

The day before, I had enjoyed my morning coffee watching out the front window at the road. The week before had been vacations for the schools, so many of the teenagers studying in Sincelejo had come home to visit. Because of near constant rain for three days, the river was neck deep in places and running fast. No trucks had been able to cross it, so the only way to get in or out was walking or riding. That morning, I watched about a hundred donkeys and horses, laden with sacks of yucca or ripe avocadoes, walking out. The crops had been ready to ship out but sat slowly spoiling as they waited for the trucks. I also watched the teenagers, after missing two days of classes, riding out with their backpacks.

Shipping things in is equally difficult. When the trucks can't get in, the local stores, who depend on the same few trucks for everything, slowly run out- of meat first, then cheese and sugar, even rice. A few folks went on donkeys to fetch their orders, which had gotten stuck downriver, returning with wet sacks of cigarettes and limp vegetables.

School was out for an extra week as well, since the teachers have to cross the river three times to reach the school. We scheduled a community meeting, but the rain came exactly ten minutes before and stayed for two hours. No one came, logically, because the road had turned into a swamp. Today was election day, and solid rain for four hours in the morning must have been discouraging for the politicians. I watched several people going to vote, walking with towels or plastic bags on their heads, carrying their shoes. Most rode, but many stayed home. (The ironic part was that the road was so bad that the government had to helicopter the vote-collectors in. You think they would realize that the road condition really is dire.) The rain is also discouraging or encouraging for the crops, depending on what is growing. It's impossible to predict how much it will rain a given rainy season (last year, for example, it rained for 10 months straight), so most farmers guess for the best. Right now, those who planted rice are delighted, while others with corn, sesame and ñame are worried. The crops are drowning, they say.

It's a tricky game- guessing when the rain will or won't come. When to do laundry, when to travel, when to order more rice, when to pick avocadoes. The other game that comes hand in hand is guessing when the electricity will go out. Usually it goes along with the rain, although sometimes on a sunny day it will blink out surprisingly. Today, I woke to rain for the next four hours, and had a hankering to do some rainy-day things- finish writing this blog post, for example, and bake bread. Unfortunately, both require electricity-for the computer and my toaster oven. I wondered for the first few hours if the power would go out, playing with the idea of putting bread to rise (if the power went out, I couldn't have even put it in the fridge to wait, since the fridge also turns off). When it didn't, I went ahead. I'm still crossing my fingers as it rises.

As I've said, I'm learning a lot. I'm learning not to try to get something done even though it looks like rain, because you might get stuck across the river overnight. I'm learning to ask people if they think it will keep raining. To take advantage of electricity when I have it. To give thanks that I bought a gas-not electric- stove. To understand why people miss meetings. To consider learning to cook bread over an open fire. To appreciate when the power goes out and the neighbors can't crank their soundsystem. To sit around and simply talk as the rain pounds on the tin or palm roof. To slow down, a little, although I'm not sure I'll ever learn that quite like the folks here.   

Bienvenida a la comunidad!

Well. This is the town I'm going to live in for the next almost two years. I've been grappeling with this realization for the last week, which has been full of many strange and beautiful encounters with Caño Berruguita. I feel inept at presenting an in-depth view with my few observations, but I do think I can sketch some things out. I think I'll just make a list- bear with the disjointedness, please.

Most of you probably picked up on my frustration as my arrival here was delayed a week. There are a few obvious truths about this place- one is that the road is simply terrible. As it was raining everyday the week I tried to leave, I waited and waited but couldn't leave. I finally put my foot down and picked a date to leave. Although it didn't rain the day before, on the way up the trucks in front of us repeatedly got stuck and had to haul each other out of the river/mud/road ruts. My truck didn't get stuck, because my driver is awesome at lurching around on this track. Luckily, we arrived, although I couldn't move any of my things. I have been sleeping in a hammock, living out of a backpack, and eating at the neighbors' this last week. Rain willing, I will move the rest of my things (think kitchen, bed, fan, books) next week.

I live in a small, comfortable house with a tin roof and lizards crawling on the walls. I have a bathroom with running water that isn't connected yet, so I've been hauling water. Moving in has been a small view of how different time and schedules are here. People are excellent at saying that things have to be done (for those of you who speak Spanish, that means a lot of “hay que...” and “claro”), and less good at follow-through. For instance, people kept agreeing that we had to move out the stove, washing machine, bags of compost, and various other things stored in my house, but five days after coming, they were still there. I enlisted the various children around (who are my new and dear friends) to help me move stuff out, after which we threw buckets of soapy water around my house to clean it, using the mop handles as microphones to sing the bits we could remember of Costeñan (from the coast of Colombia) love songs. So many people stopped by and apologetically said that they had meant to do this for me, but ran out of time. I shrugged and made a mental note that it might be hard to get things done quickly here.

My house is built on the land of an excellent family- the matriarch is Dorca, son is Ivan, grandson is Merkin, and nephew is Tingito. What I should really say is that I live in the town of an excellent family- Dorca is one of 12 or so siblings and has 12 children herself, as do most of her siblings. One of her brothers has nineteen kids. As such, EVERYONE is related to Dorca. Most everyone addresses her as Aunt Dorca, which could be understood as a nickname, except that it's 99% true. Anyway, they and Anyi, an 11-year-old neighbor girl, have been my guides, family, conversation partners, and explainers of how things work here. Anyi hung her hammock in my house so I didn't have to sleep alone the first week, and loves to hear me read out loud in English. Merkin likes telling ghost stories and today fetched water on a donkey. Ivan eats more at dinner than I thought was humanly possible, but then again he spends all day pulling up ñame (more on this later) or sowing corn in the hot sun. Dorca is totally in control of the family (often this means the community, as before noted), and spends all day cooking, explaining how life works, and generally being a steady and stalwert lady. Tingito is also a most interesting character. He lost his left arm and part of his left foot about 6 years ago, but still continues to farm. Incidentally, the coast calls its own variation of Spanish Costeño, and it's generally much faster- and people don't pronouce many of the letters. Tingito is the hardest to understand of anyone I've met so far, and by the way, the person who has taken it upon himself to show me around the whole town! After a week of hanging out, I understand about 65% of what he says.

Another wonderful part of this week has been eating with the aforementioned family. Wonderful because I get to spend very comfortable, natural time with them. Tricky because they somehow think I should eat as much as Ivan, who, as I said before, works all day farming. I work all day visiting. I do not need to eat a mixing bowl of rice. Also, the most common foods are ñame, yuca, and plantains, all slightly different types of white starch- the first two are giant white roots. Breakfast is a plate of one of these things, usually with a chunk of cheese and some sweet, sweet coffee. Lunch is a plate of a different one, probably with meat. Dinner is rice with a salad of vegetables or more meat. It's been an overwhelming amount of the same thing, but now that I'm in Sincelejo cooking vegetarian with my fellow SEEDers, I actually miss my plates of boiled white roots.

As most of you are probably wondering why I'm fooling around having adventures and not working, I'll fill you in on that a bit too. My main work will be working with the Consejo Comunitario (community council) on projects that empower and reinforce community and help work to overcome the devastation of the desplacement. This will probably mean various agricultural projects related to accessing materials, technology, and knowledge and organizing growing cooperatives and collective projects like vegetable gardens. It may also mean things as wide-ranged as seed saving, a women's group, computer lessons, and documenting stories. For now, the critical work is getting to know the community. I can't work with them or advocate for them until I know them. This has meant chopping plantains, sowing sesame seeds, hiking through steep fields and talking about diseases that attack the avocado, swimming in the river, hearing stories about the displacement, calling two meetings of the Consejo, and taking care of babies. It's varied and exciting, but difficult also to wrap my head around the fact that my job is to accompany this community in the process of empowerment and resilience. What on earth will that look like for the next two years?

I'll leave you with that. Sorry this is so rushed, but I am trying to take advantage of the internet in myriad ways this weekend, so I still have a lot to do. For those of you who don't know, I have an internet device that works only with cell signal- and the only place in the community with signal is on top of a high hill behind the neighbor's house. It's beautiful but not exactly convenient, so I'm likely going to be out of contact for the next month. I hope to catch up with those of you I can for now, but also ask for patience as I sort this out. I am so grateful for the support from home in this crazy time of adjustment, and hope I can keep you all updated as much as possible.