Water, Water Everywhere...

We are in the midst of “summer” here. This means no daily rains, high midday temperatures and surprisingly cooler nights. A couple of days ago the water from our faucets cut off. This is nothing unusual. After a heavy rainstorm this often happens. Sometimes the water source is clogged with leaves or sand even without the help of heavy rains. This day without water happened without the aid of rain and on a day tenser than most in the community. The night before, the Colombian army had passed through, on the side of the caserio or clump of houses that is La Unión. I heard the dogs barking like crazy at the strangers trudging through and realized something was amiss. The next morning we were awoken by a couple of the internal council members, letting us know that many troops had indeed passed but some had stayed and set up a mini camp on community property right outside the caserio.

As US citizens you might need to pause and readjust your idea of what this means. If the National Guard suddenly was camping out in your neighborhood you might feel they were doing so in your interest, providing some sort of protection. This is not the case here. The community holds the Colombian military itself responsible for many of the killings they have suffered over the years. The collusion between military and paramilitary forces is widely known and recent testimony by detained paramilitary boss Salvatore Mancuso has finally given official testament to the ties between the legal and illegal armed actors. So for the community, the army is no different than the paramilitary or the guerillas. None are permitted on the private property of the community. Not to mention that the mere presence of one of these groups makes any civilian near them a clear target for any of the other groups. So the sight of the army stringing up hammocks in the cacao field directly behind the last row of houses was a bit disturbing. Usually the community would go talk to the soldiers and politely explain to them the parameters and principles of the Peace Community, but most times this is easier said than done. No matter how peppered with formal niceties one makes such a speech, he who is listening is holding a really big gun.

Around mid morning we were informed that a couple of men from the army had entered through the gate at the edge of the community to the nearest house to ask for water. But we were without water, if you remember, and had been since the day before. Around midday, I was out visiting with folks and doing my best international Nancy Drew when one of the women here (who happens to share my birthday) asked if I would accompany her up to the water source so we could get it flowing back into our pipes. After talking it over with Mireille and an internal council member we decided that Bellanira and I would go and Mireille would stay nearby the phone in case I needed to satellite phone anything in.

So, true to our astrological tendencies, off we went, confident and determined. As we left the community gate, at the edge of the caserio, about 50 feet later I was shocked to see all of the soldiers, sitting and swaying in hammocks in clear sight right there – steps away from the community and still on community property as it extends up and out from the caserio, marked by gates and cultivated fields. Bellanira offered a bold “Buenos Dias” as I kept my mouth shut and kept following her up, up, up until we finally reached the small river from which our water comes. From so high up it doesn’t seem right that a war could be played out in such lush and beautiful surroundings. The task of fixing the stopped up water seems like the only reasonable venture. We got to work as I followed Bellanira’s lead and began to scoop out leaves and dirt from the first small holding tank into which water is funneled.

Here is how it works(pictures on this post aid the following description): Nature provides the downhill flowing river, which is almost an hour, straight uphill, from the community. Two long PVC pipes are then placed in such a way that they are able to catch a constant flow of water, these are held in place by rocks placed firmly by their sides. The piping funnels water into a felled tree trunk that has been canoed out and acts as a sort of open funnel (this lessens the chance that debris could clog this part) to move the water into the first cement holding tank. Water from this tank then flows into more long PVC piping that is suspended across the river by plastic twine (Mireille always calls this stuff “the duct tape of the campo”, a perfect description) tied to overhanging trees. This pipe delivers the water to another small cement tank which then continues on its way down hill through an incredibly long chain of more piping until it reaches a super large cement tank (about a 25 minutes walk up from the community) and once again flows downhill through pipes until it shoots up into our faucet and into our very own cement holding tank. Our tanks are rather deep and next to it is a space to wash laundry and dishes. We scoop water out with dried out calabash-like bowls. For cooking purposes we have a plastic container, which we fill directly from the faucet and allow silt to settle at the bottom and scoop water out from the top. For non-boiling purposes we have a simple and effective filtration system of two plastic containers fashioned together, the top with filters installed in it and the bottom with space for the filtered water and a spigot.

So, to keep all those pipes and plastic containers filled, Bellanira and I spent time scooping those first two tanks clean. Soon the water was flowing faster even though the small river was really low and clearly in need of rainfall. We walked back down, sucking on refreshing cacao beans and chewing on sure-fire cavity inducing raw sugar cane. As we neared the community, the same soldiers were still there and we were quite surprised to open the gate to the caserio to find three soldiers on the porch of the nearest house. As soon as we approached, they left. But not before one of them handed me a flower. This was quite confusing as I’m pretty sure the hippie is supposed to hand the soldier the flower. Once they were out of earshot the guy they had been chatting up told us that they were reinserted FARC members who had been camped out with the FARC just under a year ago in a nearby area. Reinsertados as these folks are called, come from both guerilla and paramilitary forces. They can be really dangerous as they are reinserted for access to their “useful” information, which can sometimes be invented in order to remain useful.

Seeing young men with guns inside the community sent all kinds of bells and whistles to sounding inside my head and gave me my first dose of fear since arriving. I went and got Mireille and we talked with community leaders and decided we would call the brigade to see just what was going on. Mireille made the call while I tried the faucet. No water. Sometimes it takes a while for it start flowing again and it finally sputtered back to bubbling life about an hour later. As the sun was setting the troops packed up and headed back down, through the community, towards town. A collective sigh of relief was heard and I went home from visiting and took a shower.

Today the water is back off. This is expected as yesterday we had a crazy downpour in the afternoon. Just as the chiva pulled up to San Josecito to let me off the sky opened up and began to soak the dry earth. I waited for about a half hour and then decided that, as I was making the hike for the first time alone, it was better to do so in the daylight downpour than in the night. So, with folks from San Josecito questioning my sanity, I took off for La Unión, my already heavy pack getting heavier as it sopped up the torrential downpour. At first I emptied out my rubber boots as soon as they filled up to avoid stepping with the excess weight, after a while I tired of that and just slodged ahead, realizing it was no longer possible to be any wetter. The mountain path that had been so dry for the past many weeks was suddenly changed into a mini rapid-ridden river and more than once it threatened to carry me away, back downhill. The three river crossings that had barely covered the toes of my boots the day before had suddenly surged and now hit me at mid thigh. As I slowly but surely continued my determined ascent I couldn’t help but laugh out loud almost the entire walk. I mean, how did I reach this particular life moment? Walking through a conflict zone, on a path that military forces were currently using, by myself in a thunder-and-lightening rainstorm. I was laughing so hard at one point I had tears streaming down my face alongside the huge drops of rain that were quickly turning me into a prune.

Just as I reached the second to last gate of the community, the rain suddenly stopped. This is when I laughed the hardest. About two football fields away from home and the sky cleared and the biblical-seeming rain stopped. And now, of course, that the rivers beds are not bone dry, we have no water. Apparently though, we are not in danger of an extra dry summer season. Some folks told us that this past week was some form of campo Ground Hog Day. It was described by a word I can’t remember and the tradition says that if no rain was received at some point on the 24th of January, we would have no rain for the rest of the summer season. That evening we had a light rain, so apparently we are not in danger of drought. It is still early on in my stay here but I have already developed a much deeper appreciation of water.

Cows, Coffee, Chocolate and Corruption

Life continues to be full of new discoveries and a growing feeling of comfort and ease even as we see and hear about large amounts of Colombian military passing near the community. There are adorable children everywhere who can’t get enough of Mireille and I tossing and twirling them around. They are continually amazed by pressing the button on my watch that illuminates the face in a satisfying green for about 3 seconds. There are well worn paths all over the community that lead to fields and cultivations that I slowly coming to know with my own eyes. There are fresh cacao and coffee beans to be bought from folks here, shelled and ground into addictively seductive and rich brown substances. The Colombian government continues to be full of scandal and political maelstrom as the true face of the unabashedly named Law of Justice and Peace, created to aid the demobilization process of paramilitaries, is finally unveiled in all of its ironic grandeur to the public at large. Lions and Tigers and Bears! Oh My! Allow me to share some thoughts:

Holy Cow:
Last week we played some soccer with the kids on the field that is cleared for play in between houses and the swimming hole. Recently a goal has been built out of bamboo, it looks more like a field goal post and doesn’t have a net so as to deny the would-be-scorer of the satisfying swish as the ball finds the back of the net, but it more than serves its purpose. The goal at the other end has yet to be built so we chose some appropriately distanced rocks and got to the business of soccer. The most dangerous part of the game was the multitude of cowpies that decorated the field. I hail from rural America so the smell of such natural and rich fertilizer is a familiar, comforting smell, but I have never played on a pitch so covered in crap. Each pile of steaming excrement was like an extra defender. The purveyors of said obstacles have recently been roaming around the community and have sufficiently freaked me out at night at least twice. Theirs is a gait different than the horses and pigs and chickens that routinely roam around; and in the sometimes-eerie quiet of night, I can easily confuse them for malevolent people creeping past our wooden house.

Coffee and Chocolate:
Last week we bought some coffee beans and cacao beans from some of our neighbors here in the community. The dried out beans must be toasted, then shelled then toasted again and finally ground. What could be a tedious task quickly becomes a process that involves lots of visiting and chatting. The coffee beans don’t need an initial toasting and are first shelled by asking our next-door neighbor to use her large version of the mortar and pestle. We dump the coffee beans in and start pounding away. This is a lot harder than it seems it should be and harder yet for out of practice gringos. We mashed up the hard little beans and then, to separate the shells from the amazingly whole beans, we used the slight breeze to our advantage by pouring the beans and shells from one container to another, allowing the wind to blow away the lighter shells as the beans fall into the receptacle. The beans are then toasted by our grandmother figure here, Doña Lola. Once toasted the same Doña Lola looks on with her crinkly eyes and loving smile as we use her large hand grinder to transform the coffee beans into aromatic splendor. Coffee beans are not oily like the cacao beans and we found it surprising difficult to grind them, as visions of electric grinders floated through our minds.

The coffee grown here is not as rich and dark as the coffee from further south in the same department, Antioquia, where the mountains are higher and more conducive to the famous, rich Colombian coffee. Not much is grown here as it doesn’t fetch a very good price. But I like the smoother taste and there is something amazing about drinking a hot cup of caffeine that comes from the organic coffee fields that lay just up the way from the community. I think it is worth noting that the famous Juan Valdez has retired and been replaced this past year. While reading “Semana”, Colombia’s version of Newsweek/Time I came across a blurb about the switch over. The Coffee Growers Federation elected a 40-year-old Antioquian campesino named Carlos Castañeda out of an applicant pool of 406 aspiring icons. He replaces Carlos Sánchez, the Juan Valdez we have known and loved over the last four decades, and will soon set off on a world tour, I’m unsure if the donkey has also been replaced. I had no idea that there was an actual man out there traveling the world and promoting Colombian coffee, I thought it was just a picture on a coffee can.

href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjB3zbWUE_DGpdo9UloMNNNEGw5o65nfMXSAXpIV5E0HMT7G3uVDpkxJri6MWcMkyITW5UjMWCVZAqWm6ka1MQmuilBjj4UPr0R7EZSXxMf94QdmMR4PYSLlSbKZ6IyPXG8P7CcEQ/s1600-h/desgranando.jpg"> While I am rather confident there is no living caricature for Colombian chocolate, cacao does go through a similar production process. I showed a picture of the beans in their shells earlier on this blog – they are covered in a citrus tasting membrane and plucked out of their yellow-orange pods and then dried on roofs here, specially designed for such a process. Before shelling the cacao by hand, (as we are doing in this picture) the beans need to be roasted, and then the somewhat long process of shelling can begin. This is where folks stop in for a visit before long we have many hands helping the process along as we get to enjoy visitors to our house. Then it is back to Doña Lola’s where she roasts the beans for us, heats up her grinder and then we get to grind the beans into this fantastic paste of rich and bitter fresh chocolate. We then add in some panela (pressed raw sugar cane juice) and nuts to make chocolate bars that are simply delicious.

Corruption and Government, synonyms in any language:
I hear that President Bush has figured out how to fix the humanitarian disaster we have created in Iraq by sending in more troops. I am not surprised. The US has been “helping” Colombia in the same manner for years. We were lucky to attend a community workshop this past weekend given by a human rights lawyer on the International Criminal Court. Forever the nerd, I was fascinated, took furious notes and had about a million questions to ask. The lawyer spoke about the creation, the advantages and disadvantages of the court and the status of the community’s case with the ICC. At one point he referred to the US as a “bad neighbor” who instead of throwing water on the burning house that is Colombian, elects to throw gasoline. At the end we also talked about the aforementioned “Ley de Justicia y Paz” that was established to provide a legal and just way to demobilize illegal armed forces. According to the government, paramilitary demobilization has been achieved, never mind that the commanders are unpunished and the troops themselves have been reformed into new groups all over the country. Here in our zone, the Aguilas Negras now roam where the Bloque Bananero once controlled and terrorized.

The first of detained paramilitary leaders to give official testimony, Salvatore Mancuso, has so far listed 336 people whom he had ordered killed or kidnapped. He has named Colombian military men as complicit in many of these killings and massacres and said that his group had a monthly budget of $400,000 to pay off Colombian police and military. This official testimony serves to corroborate the obvious links between paramilitary and military forces. However, the men Mancuso has named are already dead or imprisoned. It remains to be seen if any active military commanders will be accused in his continued testimony or if Mancuso follows through on his insinuation that he will name politicians. This comes on the heels of the Supreme Court’s orders to arrest three current members of congress for ties to the paramilitary while six more remain under investigation. This was a major scandal as the year ended and was accompanied by the continuing scandal involving the former head of DAS (the Colombian FBI) who has been implicated in crimes of collusion with paramilitary leaders, taking bribes and making deals to personally benefit his financial gain.

Mancuso’s testimony continues to be carefully monitored by victims and victims’ advocates. Under the “Justice and Peace Law” Mancuso is eligible to receive a maximum sentence of eight years for all the horrific crimes he claims responsibility for as well as remain safe from extradition to the US for narcotrafficking charges. Eight years! And he has already listed 336 people he was directly responsible for killing! This is indeed an interesting form of justice. As “Semana” said in its year end issue, “If corruption had a face, it would easily be the best candidate for the magazine’s Person of the Year”.

Here is a picture of non-corruption...our entire team while on retreat in Medellin, celebrating 25 years of Mireille. From left to right, Janice, me, Mireille, Gilberto. Janice and Gilberto man our outpost in Bogota, and Gilberto is soon to leave us for other adventures.

My mom is the greatest

Happy birthday to the woman who gave me life! The Spanish for “to give birth” is “dar a luz” which literally means, “to give into light”. How beautiful is that? There have been two new babies given to the light in the community over the holidays. And on this day I am thinking about my own dear mom and the miracle of motherhood. Women are the pillars of this community. For example, the houses are referred to by using the woman’s name, not that of her partner. In part this results from the many men who have been killed by armed actors, leaving behind the women to raise their children and continue on with the process of the community. It also seems to me that the women are just very steadfast in their devotion to caring for their extended families. The older women also serve as the historians of the community. Their accumulated history is not detached and objective, but full of personal pain and loss alongside testimonies of survival and tales of joy. Great grandmothers wake up early to prepare the morning meal, wash clothes in the hot afternoon, cut and carry firewood to stoke the fire over which they cook the evening meal; all the while caring for their children’s children and finding time to share their stories with curious internationals. I suddenly find myself surrounded by the careworn faces and kind souls of grandmothers who embrace the “gringa gorda” as one of their own.

Yesterday we hiked up to visit with one of the amazing women of this community who told us that she was the first to decide to move further up the mountain. It took us a little over an hour to get there, a steady to steep incline the whole way, two of the young guys leading us. As we neared her house we walked up through banana, coffee, cacao and bean fields as the temperature seemed to drop and the fresh wind picked up and made the heat more bearable. Once I caught my breath and turned around I was greeted with an absolutely incredible view. I didn’t take my camera but I’m not sure if it would be able to capture the sweeping valley that unfolded below and the steep mountain that continued above. A view full of different greens and speckled with those tall and thin mountain trees, the leaves of which flatten out on top, reaching side to side, but are stunted in vertical growth by the constant wind. The woman we visited with told us how the military often passes by on the nearby ridge and the paramilitaries are just on the other side of the mountain crest. We spent most of the day there as she cooked us an amazing meal and told us that her husband was killed 11 years ago, that she had been threatened by the military and accused of helping the guerillas, that she had given up being afraid of death as it is not a surprise that any of us are going to die someday. We played dominoes for hours and finally left as night began to fall.

When we were leaving the community that morning for her house people asked us where we were headed. “Oh,” they would respond, “her house is just p’aca, just over here”. This is said in response when asked the location/distance of just about anything. I am finally beginning to learn that “just over here” or “really close by” could mean anywhere from next door to a couple hours away. The non-specificity of this campesino life is really amazing. People are always leaving “ahorrita” or “right now” and that could mean, in this moment or hours later. Mireille told me that when she first got here she didn’t get why Paul (the teammate I replaced) was always speaking in such generalities: “We’re just going right over there and we’ll leave around right now”. I find myself easily slipping into the vernacular. When playing dominoes yesterday, a game my grandfather taught me, I found myself responding to Mireille’s question about the reason the game starts with a double domino by saying, “Because that’s how it starts”, as our friends from the community echoed my articulate explanation.

Besides the vernacular, the solutions for common problems are also priceless. Two nights ago I went over to the other house (we sleep/work in one house and have a kitchen in the other) to make dinner. I was surprised to find a full on invasion of ants. They were absolutely covering the walls and floor, streaming in from every window, every crack and crawling up my legs. I was a bit overwhelmed, shouted for Mireille and soon we had enlisted the aid of one of the young guys. He began tossing water everywhere, until we had dead ants floating all over. (In my head I was humming the BC marching band’s show-stopping piece from our college days: music from the hit motion picture: ANTZ! Ok, I wasn’t really, I just wanted to throw a little something out to my BC girls). We cleaned up the soggy mess of insect and so far we have been sparred from further attack.

Yesterday was the “Dia de los Reyes” or the Day of the Kings. You know, gold, frankincense and myrrh, we three kings of orient are. In some places in the Americas this means a “king cake” with a tiny, plastic baby Jesus hidden inside. Once, on a college immersion trip to Mexico, I was the lucky one to almost choke on the plasticized Emmanuel. This supposedly meant I was to return and host the party the next year. I didn’t. (Sorry baby Jesus) Here in the community it meant….wait for it…a DANCE! Although the dance was much smaller and not quite as lengthy. Mostly it was a night in which the kids were running around like I have never before seen. We were chasing kids, playing hide and seek with kids, tossing kids in the air, swinging kids in the air and, as energy waned, sitting around with kids on our laps, at our sides, passing stories back and forth. One of the older girls challenged me to an exchange of rhyming limerick-like verses. Now, normally this is totally my bag, I am quite adept at the rhyme in my native tongue, ala the “Princess Bride”: Stop this rhyming now I mean it. Anybody want a peanut? But I have a long, long way to go in Spanish. Not to mention the fact that she was simply reciting verses that everyone seemed to know while I was inventing them on the spot. I got at least a few rounds of applause, so I think I held my own. It was a really pleasant night with a cool breeze and a growing sense of familiarity and ease with this place, these people. I feel blessed to have been given into this light by my mom.

Happy my mom’s birthday to everyone!

all that´s fit to print

invierno, gone
bright shines the oppressive sun.
i really miss cheese

Who Needs Times Square? We've got choclo!

It is 11:36 in the morning, new years day, and the music is still playing. People are still dancing. I have still not fallen asleep since leaving the dance around 3 last night. I am not so in love with the community right now, as the dance was once again in the building next door, meaning that the music has been shaking our house since last night at 6pm.

Actually the fact that there are still people dancing is a reason to be completely in love with the community. There are still people dancing! Last night Norbey and I dazzled with our cunning display of agility, grace and ability to cover the entire dance floor in only 10 hops. I've also decided, upon further observation, that the dancing to vallenato music is of the bobble head variety. You know those things they give out at baseball games? That's what the hip shake/bored face dance ends up looking like. Fantastic.

Some folks from the community had put together “el Año Viejo” the day before. A “man” stuffed with dried banana leaves and dressed up with clothes from community members. At midnight one of the older girls read a poem she had composed to say farewell to 2006. It was a long piece full of clever couplets about folks in the community. Mireille and I even had a couplet and it felt really special to be included. They set el Año Viejo on fire and folks gathered around to watch him burn as everyone wished happy new year to everyone else with a hug and a kiss. There was a really happy and carefree feeling in the air. As the well wishing continued and the Año Viejo burned, the consejo leader and his wife handed out buñuelos and natilla. Buñuelos are sort of like donut holes, only made from special buñuelo flour and cheese then fried into delicious goodness. Natilla is the special holiday treat of Colombia. It’s a custard-like treat with cinnamon and cheese and milk and some other things I can’t remember. The community made at least 654 pounds of it yesterday and since Mireille is a vegan the portion they gave to both of us earlier in the day was really for me to eat.

Other than the natilla and buñuelos, I managed to eat mostly things made only from fresh corn on the cob, or choclo. We were fed mazamorra de choclo, colada de choclo, torta de choclo and arepa de choclo. The torta was the most surprising as it was almost exactly the corn fritter I know and love from home (especially from Eat ‘n Park, Erin remember me eating a dish of them this fall?). The mazamorra is like a corn soup made only of corn, some whole kernels, mostly ground kernels. Colada is the water that runs off when grinding up the corn. And arepa is the Colombian tortilla, but arepa de choclo is really big and thick and more like corn bread than tortilla. All in all, delicious. (All the corn reminded me at lot of V and her 5th grade “state” costume.)

Point is, it was good to work off some of the days eating with dancing. And since the same 15 songs are played in constant rotation, I really felt that I truly knew and understood the music this time around. We left the dance around 3 but knew that we weren’t going to get to sleep for some time so we popped in a movie that we rented at this place in town that charges about 50 cents for a movie. Of course, they are all burned so it’s a coin toss to see if they actually play in my computer. But, it worked and based on Brie’s suggestion we watched “GOAL!!!!” and she is right, it is my new favorite movie ever. It’s not just the mediocre acting and the swelling melodramatic musical moments that merit my adoration but also that it includes an undocumented Mexican immigrant, a Scottish man, soccer and the message of the importance of family, teamwork and overcoming all odds to achieve your GOAL!!!!, plus a love story. Fantastic. Absolutely fantastic.

Today folks in the community have already killed a turkey and I have given wheelbarrow rides to two of the boys, only tipping them out once. It is another scorcher and the music continues to play. Happy new year to you and yours! I hope that 2007 is a year filled with laughter, love, corn on the cob and cheesy sports movies.