It´s been 3 months

Bueno, tanto tiempo que no escribo nada en mi “blog”. Sera porque los dias se pasan tan rapido? Será porque aun estoy absorbiendo estos instantes tan nuevos para mi ser que necesito más semanas, más noches y más dias para hubicarme y entender lo que sucede a mi alrededor? Tál vez es por todo lo contrario: Porque ya me “amañe” y los días se pasan y me visita la lluvia de esta temporada, estos inviernos que me parecen caer de las mismas nuves que me miran en Los Angeles, bajo el mismo cielo que se disfruta desde culaquier parte del mundo.En realidad, prefiero pensar que es un poco de todo. -May 28th

It is extremely challenging to try to conceptualize all that has been absorbed and felt in my being since I came here to the Urabá region of Colombia. It has been twelve weeks and I don’t know if I should phrase this introduction as, “It’s only been twelve weeks”, or “I can’t believe twelve weeks have already gone by”. In so many ways, I am still foreign to this place. I am the newest FOR team member (although I’m not so new anymore) and am still in the process of resolving what all of this experiential learning entails. So many events have taken place in these past few weeks that only little time was left for me to write in my blog. Recently, the community released a Comunicado (public notice) regarding Francisco’s death, (former leader in a Humanitarian Zone which are regions designated as being conflict-free zones and are protected by the Inter-American Court on Human Rights). My teammate has been recovering from the lingering typhoid she acquired sometime in December (along with leptospirosis and dengue) and has had to go numerous times to town for check-ups and updates on her health (she all better now). Two weekends ago the entire kick-ass team FOR got a chance to finally reunite during a retreat in Medellin. Nonetheless, on early Sunday morning we get a call informing us that the FOR office/home got robbed in Bogota. This forced us to reschedule our plans for the next couple of days, cut our retreat short, and get back to where each team member needed to be (Please see AJ´s & Janice´s Blog for more details). Right after we came back from our retreat, we had to say good-bye to our senior team member, Mireille, who spent a year living here in La Unión and is currently traveling across the country. And while all this has taken place, so many other things have remained unchanged. I am still getting bitten by mosquitoes, the rain continues to wet our grass and nourish the fincas (land plots), the mountains are still forest green, and the armed conflict continues.

Being here can be so contradicting and paradoxical in so many ways. Some days are so tranquil, full of life uninterrupted by any worries—days when I just enjoy the gifts of nature; fully satisfied while listening to the pouring rain and the variety of animal sounds nearby; admiring the stillness of a sky that could easily inspire a masterpiece on a canvas. And there is the counterpart to this with active days of continuous phone calls, pending emails, meeting notes and weekly reports. Weekends here are usually spent with both children and adults visiting us for the most random reasons. The kiddies come to borrow a puzzle, soccerball, crayons, dominoes, or simply run around our house. One of my favorites visitors is little four-year-old Esteban who comes in with a line of gooey green buggers dripping from his nose. After I get some tissue and wipe his runny nose, I can’t help but pick him up and give him a tight hug and a piquito (little kiss on the cheek). And, we have our regular guest, Miss Bruja, who comes daily to chitchat about the latest gossip and to have a good laugh with the FOR team (aka the gringas, well I am the not-so-gringa-gringa). Her visits usually include laughter, lots of jokes, some cigarettes, and a running around the house. Oh, I forgot to mention how she continously patronizes us for speaking “incorrect Colombian-campo Spanish.” This is usually followed with AJ singing with her amazing opera style voice (which means really loudly) provoking laugher in all those who witness or hear it from a distance. Miss Bruja has to be one of the most unusual/unique individuals I’ve ever met (and believe me, there are many “weirdoes” in my life J). She epitomizes the non-conventional femme in La Unión with her 4ft’9 petite self, a to die for smile that includes four missing front teeth, a boy-style haircut consisting of shaved sideburns, a tiny duck-tail and an almost Wesley Snypes early 90’s movie hairstyle that she likes to style with some gel. Her wardrobe consists of ONLY dresses and she looks like a tiny doll when she wears her blue and white strawberry dress along with her black rubber boots and walks around with her machete on the side. Who said that females in La Unión are not allowed to have ducktails and shaved sideburns? Apparently no one. And no, she is not butch, although could easily be judged as one in my hometown.

Other busy days includes going to Apartadó to either accompany someone from the community or run errands. We have to hike down for about an hour and half (depending on the trail and on our energy level). We walk through grass fields, green mountains, horses, cows relaxing on the grassy or muddy earth, and a few isolated houses along the way. We jump across puddles, and skip on stones to avoid the groovy mud, often trip and sometimes fall along the way. The hike down is sometimes interrupted to have a quick “pee break” or to chug some water but mostly to take a drink of fresh campo air. We have to cross the river in three different locations (some are small crossings). Consequentially we end up walking with wet socks and ounces of water inside the rubber boots that inevitably make gushy sounds as our wet feet rub against the water and creates friction. After finally arriving to La Holandita (the community settled here after they were displaced due to the establishment of a police post San Jose in 2005) and greet every one in the caserio, we make our way to the international house and remove our rubber boots and change into some dry clothes. All this is done while we are on the lookout for the next Chivero (public transportation which costs about $1.75) to pass by. One usually passes through every hour. When we finally hear one coming we run out and crowd in it along with 13-14 other travelers (technically the chivero should only fit 11people) including the driver. The Chivero goes to Apartadó but usually stops along the road to load sacs of yucca, avocado, and/or other goods. Apartadó is the largest city/town closest to us and where we go to buy supplies, groceries, pay bills, eat cheese, and try to make it back to La Holandita before 3pm. If it did not rain a lot and the river is not too high, we load up our backpacks and start the two-hour hike back to La Unión. Sometimes we make it before dark (my personal preference), but often times end up walking through the muddy paths with our headlamps for what seems like hours and hours under the night sky. It feels like an adventure every time despite the fact that I’ve done it way more than what I should admit to. I usually arrive back hungry, wet, and tired and call it a day!

Being here has enabled me to embrace mother earth on a daily basis, which is difficult (if not impossible) to do when you live in south-central L.A. and have to drive across the 110 and the 101for most of the day. It is makes me feel weird at times (for lack of a better word) to be so far away from urban demands such as beating traffic, showing up to a designated workplace, pumping gas, picking up the homie, meetings with people in offices, waiting in line for hours at such and such place. My body is somehow used to the city noise, the traffic lights, the gray air, the dusty windshields, and of course the city rhythm. But there is another kind of busy here that is just as real and can be just as demanding. I have to wash my FOR shirts and my five other (non-FOR t-shirts) garments almost every three days, not in a Lucy’s or a local Lavanderia, but in my own living room! Which actually takes a while and this requires time to soak muddy clothes in a plastic bin, scrub it, rinse it, and then put it out on the clothesline. My clothes usually stay out for two or three days for a couple of more rinses since the rain unexpectedly shows up before the clothes get a chance to completely dry. And to prevent bringing in damp clothes, I leave them outside overnight, and over days. You can't imagine how mold can actually can be quite awful when it mixes with your own sweat. I have learned to accept my new scent here in Lau Union: sweaty person, with strong B.O. wearing a moldy-smelly FOR shirt. That is me about 7 days a week.

Then, of course, there is the imperative office work that we must execute with unreliable dial-up Internet and an old laptop that still has a few viruses. Sometimes there are “errors” and “failures” on our Outlook Express service and we just have to patiently wait until the dial-up works and the internet stays on for us to successfully accomplish something that would have taken 15 minutes back home. So what do I do while I wait? Probably fill up the water tank, clean the bugs off my mosquito net, or cobwebs from my bedroom walls, burn the toilet paper in our back yard, cook some quinoa for lunch, and/or all of the above. All the necessary activities we must carry out makes work here far more interesting than working in between clean white walls, on an actual desk with fast-speed internet on a new HP wide screen laptop inside an air-conditioned office. “How sterile,” says the up until 12 weeks ago city-gal Mayra. I like to think that our office is a good “el campo office.” It is about 6X12x14 ft in actual space and is all made out of wood (including the desk and shelves). By wood I mean large pieces of wooden boards that are in their natural color and texture (with uneven surfaces and splinters). We have old ID’s on the wall of former FOR teammates, a stack of CD folders with a variety of music (including some country but please note that it is NOT mine), a collection of “Arrested Development DVD’s that good ol' teammate AJ recently brought from home, heart stickers, a list of people’s birthdays from the community, and a snowman key chain hanging off a rusty nail. There is also a cluttered corner with a poster, pens and markers in an old Nutella jar, a cell phone and random pieces of papers with doodles or important notes on it. On the left corner there is a poster of a woman with vines growing across her torso and face with the words Fumigation = Miseria (misery) written on it. And well, there are spider webs, old nails still piercing our walls probably since the house was first built, cables and electronics with dust on them, four rolls of duck tape, flat soccer balls in a corner, and stacks of SEMANA (weekly published political articles) magazines under our desk. The space is far more interesting at night when the light bulb attracts flying ants, mosquitoes, wasps, beetles, and who knows what other unidentified insects come to visit the working FOR team once the sun sets and we are still trying to send out an email.

And, so the days continue, some seeming like only 10-hour long days when I end up wondering where the other 14 hours went and others seeming like 40-hours days where I wish I could just crawl under the mosquito net and place my head next to my moldy-smelly pillow. And as I end this blog entry, I scratch the mosquito and bed bug bites that have my body looking like a minor case of chicken pox. Feeling sexy these days? Not me !