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.