One of the seeders recently told me that a good blog has about 700 words. I can’t imagine describing the past few days in 700 words, let alone the entire month I have been absent from my blog. So I’ll catch you up to recent past by saying that November was a ridiculous month and I was gone all but 2 days, travelling. Check out the Seed website to see some of what we did as a group and on top of that, I travelled to do our first round of visits to Seeders. (We also had an MCC retreat, of which there are a few pictures) It was a long month of travel that wore me out quite a bit and I came home excited to have the month of December to relax and be home.
...Well, that didn’t happen. December started with a police stop on the side of the road to check papers, to which I kindly complied and handed over my Colombian identification card. The police officer took it, studied it, looked at me and asked me if I had an updated card because this one was expired. Thank goodness he was wrong – it expired in 4 days. This, however, was very bad news because I was supposed to renew my Colombian visa when I was in Bogota during November, but I completely forgot. So for the next few days I ran around like crazy trying to get papers together, travelled to Cartagena because they were not being cooperative in Sincelejo, and I finally got a document that allows me 30 extra days to get my visa renewed, which I will be doing next week in Bogota…
So the month started off crazily, and it has continued further and further in that direction the more the month paces on. On Sunday, December 11, I headed to Mampuján, one of the communities we work with on the coast (many of you may remember this community as the one A Common Place focused on almost two years ago now), to being a long journey of 4 days. Mampuján is the only community in Colombia who has gone through a public hearing about their massive displacement and massacre, and had a sentence given by the Supreme Court defining parameters of reparations. This is a pretty big deal and is making Mampuján currently a very popular community, nationally/politically speaking. More than a year has passed since the sentence was given, however, and there have been no moves from the government to show that progress is or will be made to fulfill the promises made by the Supreme Court. So in meetings with Ricardo Esquivia, the community decided to act. In a symbolic gesture of walking, the same act this community had to do, carrying their homes on their backs the night they were displaced, the community of Mampuján marched 75 kilometers to Cartagena, where the corresponding government resides. We left Mampuján at 4am on Monday morning after a full day of planning and organizing Sunday (and many meetings weeks in advance), walked more than half way the first day, slept at a school overnight, and continued into Cartagena on Tuesday afternoon, stayed the night in another school in Cartagena, and returned to the government plaza until they attended us in a meeting on how to take steps towards the reparations and returned late Wednesday night. These were some of the longest days of my life. It was like having fish fry 24 hours a day for 4 days straight.
There was a small group of us who were in charge of logistics, me specifically doing most of the leadership, and as you can imagine, I was in my prime, giving orders, constantly on the move, I don’t think I ate for three days straight and I slept a max of 3 hours each night. It was a crazy amount of work. Women from Mampuján cooked every meal, which meant carrying firewood, enormous pots and pans, bricks to set the enormous pots and pans on, food, and more in large trucks, loading and unloading every time we had a new place to eat. It meant buying HUGE quantities of food – did I mention there were more than 500 people that participated in the march? – and dividing it up into 10 piles for the 10 cooks three times a day. It meant constantly giving out water to marchers, seeing blisters bigger than I’ve ever seen in my life, giving orders as to how people should sleep, loading and unloading their bags every morning and evening, making announcements about how we would serve food, how people can only have one juice box, how they need to make lines to receive food, how they need to walk in rows, how they need to not pass the yellow tape lines in marching, how they should…..….unbelievable. I lost my voice the first day. On top of this was also managing all the money which NGO’s were giving to support the march, provide the food and water, buses that went slowly down the road with the march, etc, which meant trying to remember how much money I had given who and what receipts they had given back to me and how much change I needed from them and how much money we were short still. My mind was a whirlwind and I went to bed around midnight every night, after making sure the next day was somewhat in line…then at 3am every day I was awoken by Ramon yelling “Jessie! Jessie!! Wake up, the cooks aren’t cooking yet!!!” So I would get out of my hammock and, in pitch dark, give out food to cooks, give announcements about what the meals were, how the day would go, etc. I hardly have words to explain how it all was, but what I will say, too, about the march is that it was an awesome experience. It was incredibly powerful to see a community organized, marching together toward a common purpose, participating in the act of walking, the very act that was required of them to leave their homelands and save their lives. When people were feeling down, others were there to encourage them, we had megaphones and had chants going as we marched, and when we arrived to Cartagena and walked down the main strip, around the old city and to the governing buildings, you would have thought there were no blisters at all – people were screaming, crying, excited and relieved. On Wednesday morning, after a few hours of occupying the plaza and waiting for the government to attend to us, they finally allowed everyone to go up (they refused to do a public, open air meeting, as had been agreed upon…) into a tiny conference room and small steps were taken to set up a working group that will do follow up on the sentence. We made front page news three days in a row and were on every mainstream news channel there is.
When Wednesday was finally done, I was more than exhausted. I couldn’t even make sentences make sense. We headed back to Sincelejo late and around 11am hit a donkey. Donkey was fine, got up and walked away…but we busted the radiator. I had nothing left to give, I fell over if I tried to stand up straight, so I gave up and slept on the pavement right there on the road as Ricardo spent 2 hours calling and trying to get someone to show up and help us get out of there. Finally, at 2:35am we got pulled into the nearest town and slept in a hotel for three hours before we headed home Thursday morning.
The events of this week are hard to put into words. I don’t know how it could be possible to have you understand how I felt and what all I did and what happened during these days. I have hilarious stories and it was an amazing experience. If you’d like a well written play-by-play of the 3 days of march, check out Larisa’s blog (seeder who was also helping) here: http://movingfromitowe.blogspot.com/
So that takes you up till a week ago. I got home, exhausted, and had one day to break before I got on the 4am truck (the only truck that goes) to a Seeder’s community to visit and do evaluation meetings since she is the only seeder who had not been visited since we arrived. We killed a tarantula in her house before falling asleep and Sunday afternoon returned to Sincelejo. Sunday evening, as I was walking home from my house, a motorcycle came up to me and a young guy jumped off the back with a knife ready to attack. I gave him my cell phone and he stepped closer so I gave him my bag, he hopped on the back of the motorcycle and they rode away. We didn’t even exchange words. He only got an old, beat up cell phone and about $25usd out of the deal, but I lost all my documents, contact numbers, and now have to do a whole bunch of running around to get that stuff back, which is frustrating.
…Then Monday morning I woke up and there was ANOTHER tarantula in my room, which came crawling out from under my bed.
Yesterday morning we also found out that my uncle, Michael DeShield, died. So more than any of the ridiculous events of my past weeks, I think of my family, pray that there can be good moments of reflection, and closing, and wish I could be with them. Mike was an amazing man I am lucky to have known and be loved by.
Now it’s finally break and I’ll spend the next few days relaxing and then will head to Bogota to do a back-packing trip with friends in a national park, disconnected from all things that have to do with work, out wandering in the mountains, which I’m very much looking forward to. This, of course, was much longer than 700 words, but I hope it gives you a picture of the past weeks. I’ll put up some pictures, as well – still am no good at taking pictures, but some friends have passed me some of theirs, so thanks to them for these…
Much love to you all, I miss you lots at Christmas time. Hope your holidays are restful and renewing…keep writing!
walking downtown cartagena, arriving at the governing plaza...demanding that they attend us
we were exhausted...
finally in a meeting with the governor...
juana announcing that we will not leave until they attend the entire community
on the march...still smiling! :)
walking around the old city, downtown cartagena...
the incredible cooks - i don't know how they did it.
unloading the truck..
more cooking...
stopping up traffic!!! love it...
who are we? MAMPUJAN!!! what do we want? REPARATIONS!
getting the kids involved - three hours at 330am to sort through bags, i get tired just remembering it all...
reading christmas stories and making ornaments/decorations at retreat...
on a walk with mcc, enjoying the mud...
and then there's the tarantula that was in my bedroom...crazy.
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