muddy is what you make it

We just got back from a muddy, sweaty, rainy, beautiful trip to Mulatos, a far flung vereda which made its first and only appearance in this blog back in February as the site of a yearly pilgrimage to remember those killed in the Feb 2005 massacre. This time we went, not to remember the past but to look towards the future. We accompanied a small group of community members in order to plant fields and prepare for what hopefully will eventually be a return to the area as the community looks to expand neutral space for civilians who have long been displaced from the fertile and more remote areas of the zone. It only took us 7 hours to get to the house and land of one of the men in our group. The walk was up, up, up and incredibly muddy, rainy and at the top of the mountains we were climbing, actually cold. I realize now that I am in much better hiking-in-rubber-boots-through-mud-and-mountains shape than I was during the first trip to Mulatos 7 months ago. The muddy path sucked my boot off only three times, granting me the squishy mud feeling both inside and out of my boot. One of the times I managed to achieve such stickiness that it took a muscular fellow both hands and a couple of strong tugs to free the boot. Much to his chagrin, about two minutes later, I was knee deep and once again only in control of my muddy, stocking-foot. If nothing else, I am always good for a comedic set up.

We arrived at the house, now covered in vines and mountain life, with about an hour until dusk fell. The group immediately got out machetes and started the process of reclaiming the house from the vegetation. In about an hours time they had cleared the area, strung up hammocks and started a wood fire to make dinner. It took me that same hour to clean all the mud off my body, supporting once again my decision to set low expectations for myself this year. Now 28, our friend and his family displaced from this house due to killings, disappearances and threats when he was 8 years old. Amazingly the house is still standing, despite armed groups setting fire to the wooden roof beams and using it for grenade practice. A grenade hole actually came in handy as we wrapped rope through it and the nearby window in order to hang the hammocks which we slept in. The house was also covered in graffiti from every imaginable armed group. This photo shows the ¨BCG 33¨ tag - the Counter Guerrilla battalion of the 17th Brigade - and cradled in the first ¨3¨you´ll find evidence of the FARCs presence. We shined flashlights over the walls and realized that we were just one in a long line of groups that had been using the partially-roofed housed for shelter from the chilly and wet nights.

The next three days were spent building a kitchen, settling in and clearing land. Camila and I hung out with the group, listening to their stories and chatting it up, while pretending to work on our personal statements for our law school applications. (Dear Law School, I´m in the northern jungles of Colombia, staring through a grenade hole thinking about torts and hoping you´ll let me study them next fall.) The kitchen was made by cutting wood to construct a frame and then using the traditional palm leaves to make a roof. These roofs totally hold up, too - everyone in the community has the same kind of kitchen, all you need is some wood, some twine, some palm leaves and a group of campesinos to make it happen.
The nights were freezing with blowing rain and not much shelter from the storm. It was even raining inside the house, what with the roof having been partially burned. And Camila and I had hammocks inside, meaning walls offering some kind of protection as opposed to the guys who were sleeping mostly outside, hammocks huddled together under little bits of roof overhang. The younger boys kept waking up at 3:30 in the morning, singing vallenato because they couldn´t stand the cold anymore. We were a quick community. I was easily comfortable and content and genuinely sad when we had to leave four days later. But we will be back soon. The group is planning on being there until the fields are planted and we have committed to accompanying them as much as possible.

The journey back was much shorter and full of sun and an even muddier path due to the constant rain of the prior days. I stayed on a mule the whole way. I was not thrown off this time, instead executing a couple rather spectacular feats of balance and poise as the mule teetered and sunk into sometimes unpredictable mud. The leader we were with, agreed with me that I was now a professional mule rider, and I don´t think he was mocking me. Oh, the things I am learning this year. The view from the field atop the main rise was spectacular, lit by the eye-blue sky and marshmallow clouds. As does the hike to La Esperanza, this spot also offers a view of the ocean, this time it lays more to our east, but its perfect crescent of blue seems deceivingly close. And there is a better view of the big city below, even if Aparatadó seems strange and out of place rising up out of the fertile green valleys, flush with banana trees.

We got home to, of course, no water due to the heavy rains the night before. So, dirty and sweaty we waited. As we waited Camila cleaned a corner of the house that I had never seen free of some form of junk and found a snake. She yelled for me - I was busy burning our used toilet paper in the back yard - and this time, instead of calling out for man-help, I grabbed the machete and quite calmly, if clumsily, chopped its head off. A bit later, one of the men stopped by the house and Camila told him that I had just killed a snake. His observation? "Well, she will never get a boyfriend is she keeps that up." This of course sums up my life in a succinct and honest, if a little chauvinistic, way.


And what of happenings in the rest of this big, beautiful and complicated country? Well, in a somewhat surprising turn of events, Hugo Chavez of Venezuela has been tapped to negotiate humanitarian exchange of kidnap victims with the FARC. One of the major paramilitary leaders has been kicked out of the "Justice and Peace Law" benefits by President Uribe. "Macaco" was found to be, surprise!, still controlling paramilitary groups from his jail cell. So, he is now eligible to be actually tried for his many crimes as well as be extradited to the US. Hope glimmers. Back home, the Senate passed the foreign aid package, which was akin to the more humanitarian focused House bill, if less balanced. This means, that pending a joint committee to work out the differences, it seems that the more balanced ratio of military to humanitarian aid has succeeded. There is, of course, much more happening, but having spent most of this month out in the mud, I am not as up to date as I would like to be. And I´m overwhelmed with how fast my time is slipping by. Less than two months to go in the campo and then come mid-November it is off to the big capital city. Bogotá, get ready, I know how to ride a mule.