We're not in Kansas anymore...

Here I am in Bogotá, ahead of schedule. And how did this early exit from my home in the campo occur? Well, the very same night after the initiation of the community soccer games, the fantastically horrible and largely absent immune system of old Amanda Jack gave out once again, a seeming fare-well-round of nasty that left me so weak and dehydrated that the community sent me down in a hammock. This was an experience unto itself. Not wanting to be remembered as the second FOR volunteer to be taken down the mountain by strong campesino men carrying a tied hammock to a tree trunk, I insisted on riding a horse down and with that proclamation, got to my feet and promptly face planted on the floor. The hammock it was. (Even my friend the baby can keep herself up on a horse)

When we reached San Josecito, my teammates consulted on the best plan of action while community members placed cut potatoes and cold compresses on my head to try and get my fever down. Then I was flown to Bogotá after we decided that because the Apartadó clinic had only days ago assured me that nothing was wrong with me it might be a good idea to get a second opinion. My teammate Camila had been down in San Josecito the night the gross hit so I was by my self up in La Unión being looked after by friends and neighbors. The way in which the community rallied together to take care of me - from packing my bag, to answering the phone, to ignoring my stubborn disposition and thus carrying me down the mountain in the mid-day sun to offering to send someone with me on the plane so I wouldn’t be alone, was completely overwhelming. Granted, I had an incredibly high fever, but tears kept spilling down my cheeks as I recognized the absolute concern and, yeah, love that was surrounding me. I guess 11 months in a place will do that. And even though I felt worse than I maybe ever had, I also felt incredibly grateful to experience this demonstration of love and care. Reflecting on that sense of true community during these last couple of weeks in Bogotá, I am beginning to realize how difficult it will be to finally say goodbye to this community, this big, extended family.

So I spent a few days in the hospital on oxygen and IVs and amazingly bland hospital food. But, as if that wasn’t enough, my first day out of the hospital I went online and was greeted with the mug of Hollywood darling Al Gore, alongside a headline proclaiming that he had been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize! This is outrageous to me. As I’ve mentioned in this blog, the Peace Community was also nominated for the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize and I just can’t comprehend a process that would decide Al Gore is more deserving of such an honor. Don’t get me wrong, I definitely dig all he is doing to raise environmental awareness, but the Peace Community is caught in the middle of a war that has taken more than 180 leaders and family and friends and children from them and yet they continue to actively create peace amidst violence. What does Al Gore have on that? I mean, COME ON! He already won an Oscar, isn’t that a more fitting award for the work he is doing? But the Nobel PEACE prize? I get that it would be quite challenging to work for peace in a world that had no ozone layer or polar ice caps, but shouldn’t he instead by awarded the Nobel Prize for Best Use of Celebrity Status to Push an Issue that Scientists Have Been Pushing for Years??? Anyway, fine by me. The Comunidad de Paz doesn’t need no stinking international prize, they ARE international peace.

Other than unmitigated feelings of anger towards Al Gore and the Nobel committee, I’ve been taking it easy and enjoying the comforts Colombia’s largest city and capital has to offer. Refrigerators, movie theaters, high speed internet (meaning Skype and ESPN) at my fingertips, all Very Good Things. And not to be outdone, the capital city has its share of violent political turmoil. That same first day out of the hospital I was rather surprised to see students at the National University engaged in a full-on protest that was met by the police force and their urban tanks. The University campus is literally across the street from our apartment so my Bogotá teammates often share stories of protests filled with tear gas and homemade non-lethal explosives and police hosing and tear-gassing and all around student anarchy. So while Mayra and Janice were largely unsurprised and unaffected, I wondered at the reality of it all as tear-gas-sponsored tears streamed down my face. We are that close that the tear gas filled our apartment for a chunk of the afternoon. And what were the students organizing around? Well, a few things. This was one more in a string of daily protests in memory of the murder of Ernesto “Che” Guevara, killed 40 years ago in Bolivia. Down here, he is not just that dude on the red tshirt – his revolutionary spirit is still inspiring people to lash out against the establishment.

On this particular day, a couple days after the anniversary of Che’s assassination students were organized in remembrance of the assassination of Unión Patriotica (UP) 1986 presidential candidate and charismatic leader, Jaime Pardo Leal, killed on October 11, 1987. He was killed by a 14 year old boy, an example of the sicarios used by paramilitary leaders. In this case, Pardo Leal's murder was arranged by José Gonzalo Rodríguez Gacha alias “El Mexicano” (now imprisoned and one of the many paramilitary leaders giving testimony of former atrocities as part of the Justice and Peace Law). Pardo Leal’s murder in 1987 was a major blow to a political party that by 1988 had suffered over 500 assassinations of its political leaders and elected officials. The systematic killing off of this alternative political party is largely considered political genocide. In 2004, lawyers representing the victims of the UP presented a case for political genocide aided by the complicity of the Colombian government to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, this included an official death toll of over 1100. A vast majority of these assassinations, as in the case of Pardo Leal, were directly attributed to paramilitary groups, which had both obvious and more hidden ties to the Colombian government itself. (Even though I’ve repeated myself a bit, one of my first posts goes into the UP with a tiny bit more context, if you are interested) This case is still pending in front of the Inter-American Court but the memory of the UP is still fresh in the minds and hearts of Colombians organizing for political alternatives. The present day “alternative” party is the Polo Democratico Alternativo, created in 2005 and the most recent incarnation of Colombia’s political left rolled into one party. The Polo has been enjoying success and recent fame for the strong opposition to “Uribismo” provided by outspoken Senators like Gustavo Petro (now a frequent visitor to the halls of US Congress) Antonio Navarro and Party President Carlos Gaviria. It looks like they will enjoy success in the upcoming elections, too as Polo candidate Samuel Moreno Rojas seems positioned to win the mayoral race in Bogotá.

Point being, even though the tear gas employed by the National Police in efforts to disperse the angry and politicized students was not the delectable carnival-for-the-senses that one might expect, it did make me very aware that student movements here in Colombia have not forgotten past revolutionaries and their protests are regularly met with force and those big metal scary looking street tanks. And while I am currently a long way from the campo and the daily realities of the war as it unfolds in rural areas, things here in Oz are just as instantly volatile and I am still in a country that is far from being at peace.