A few weeks in

Over the past three weeks that I have been living here in the Peace Community (PC), I have been settling in well to this new way of life. Not only have I learned how to scrub my clothes by hand, clean the drinking water filter and weed our garden with a machete, but I have also been discovering more and more about the purpose of this community and of my work within it as an international accompanier and human rights observer. On the outset, life in this rural village may seem fairly simple. Each day in order to live, these farmers (los campesinos) have to work in the field (la finca), mainly with tiny bananas and cacao, take care of the household duties and prepare the daily food for the family. However, as basic as these tasks may appear, the complexities run so much deeper than an outsider can imagine before taking a deeper look into the meaning and the innerworkings of this place. Life in this PC is not just the hardwork of el campesino, but is moreso a collective struggle for survival in which las fincas contain more than just bananas and cacao, the homes house more than merely immediate relationships and the family needs more than food and water in order to persist day by day. Each aspect of daily living is made that much more intensely difficult because of this intentional decision to create life here in the PC. The PC is more than a group of campesinos living communally; it is the best alternative for neutral living within this area of conflict.

Each factor of life in the PC affects every other part. A relationship one has may either positively or negatively affect another. A decision one makes may drastically change one's life. Catching a cold can have a severe impact on one's ability to work, as to work is to survive. Making the commitment to live within the PC for these campesinos means declaring to uphold the values and the purpose of this lifestyle, despite all other variables that try to influence one's life. In order to live within the PC, an individual has to commit to live by three main principles:

1. Not to participate in the war either directly or indirectly;
2. Not to carry arms;
3. And to participate in a collective work group within the community.

While these basic tenets may seem somewhat simple to understand as well as easy to maintain, the ability to continuously carry out these concepts in reality can become an intense struggle between ultimate survival and a call for peace. Although these precepts have been established to sustain life in this area, the true manifestation of peace has time and again been compromised by more or less external factors. Once again, each aspect of life dramatically influences another. For instance, the decisions one makes about to whom to sell the crops or the relationships one has with people outside of the PC are two contributing components to the reality of the complications. The PC was created eleven years ago on the 23rd of March in 1997 to provide refuge for displaced persons (desplazados) in search of a way to live separately from while inevitably surrounded by the armed conflict. However, this attempt at peaceful neutrality is not finalized by one's membership in the PC, as over the past eleven years have there been about 185 PC members killed. Evidently, members of the community are by no means exempt from the harrassment of the war nor shielded from the temptations amidst the conflict; nonetheless, the genuine commitment to the PC does seem to bring life to those who thought they could never find one.

The value of this region to all parties does not lie alone in the strength of the PC nor the strategic location of the area, but also in the richness of the land itself. The hills are covered with fertile farmland that reliably produces both subsistent and cash crops. Not a day goes by that people do not bring us gifts of avocadoes or mangoes or plantains fresh from their fincas. It seems as if the land is eager to produce life, perhaps compensating for the other factors that hinder comfortable living. Each time it rains, the smells of this jungle eminate from the surrounding mountains and fortunately cover the other less pleasing odors of the animals that freely wander around our community. As the thunderstorms subside, the ground remains wet and soft, presenting us with the formidable challenge of walking on rock tops to avoid a muddy fall. Attempting to walk around the mud is only most strenuous when making the hike up or down the mountainside to reach our village (la vereda) of La Union, home to about 140 people. Dirtying one's rubber boots is not a problem as crossing the rivers provides opportunities to wash them; however, stepping too deeply into the mud is the real obstacle that one tries to avoid.

I recently had my own unforgettable encounter with the seemingly harmless mud on a recent climb up the mountain. I have by this point made many trips up and down the mountain and feel very comfortable with the path. At the beginning, this hike was a fairly difficult one for me, not because of the slope of the mountain or the sometimes high water at the river crossings, but rather simply because of my lack of a sense of direction. It took several times before I was able to recognize the turns in the path and the shortcuts through the fields that were initially indistingushable to me. Yet over time, I have become more accustomed to the trek and perhaps now take less caution with each of my steps. However, amist all my confidence in my hiking abilities, this self-assuredness did not save me from my own struggle with the muddy terrain. Unable to determine the actual depth of the mud along the trail the other day, I took one step a bit too carelessly and apparently too firmly as all that came back out of that step was my foot while my boot remained in the mud. At first my colleague tried to advise me on how to be able to remove my boot along with my foot from the mud if I twisted my ankle just so. Feeling as if I was about to break off my foot, I relinquished the boot to the mud. As if prying the boot from quicksand, the more I pulled, the more it seemed to get lodged into the ground. I dove in with both arms deep into the mud in order to grab the boot by the heel and dig the shoe out. A few falls and many grunts later, I managed to free my boot from the mud without getting the rest of my body stuck in there as well. I put back on that muddy boot to continue on our way, all the while appreciating just another day in the countryside (el campo).

We have started working on our vegetable garden (la huerta) in the backyard and have come a long way with the help of one of our friends. Past volunteers have kept up la huerta on and off, but we discovered it to be a little bit overgrown when we arrived. Therefore in the process of weeding the whole thing with our hands and machetes, we uncovered a number of bluming crops already. So far we are growing a long list of vegetables, fruits and herbs including spinach, lemongrass, ginger, papaya, yuca, beans, mint and more. We are looking forward to planting more seeds in the coming weeks. And of course, nothing can be completed here in the community without a musical accompaniment. At any time of day and sometimes at night, one can hear different songs blasting from all directions of the hillsides. An atuned listener can even distinguish from which homes certain music is blaring although all the noises may at times be competing for the soundwaves. As for me while working in la huerta, I found it most appropriate to turn up some tunes from my own countryside: some Texas classics of Pat Green and Robert Earl Keen. My colleagues didn't seem to appreciate as much as I did the various references to George's Bar, Austin or Southbound I-35. But nonetheless, a little taste of home.

When I am not digging my boots out of the mud or working on our huerta, there is all the other work that we are doing here with FOR (not that everything else doesn't seem to come along with the whole package of life in el campo). We have been extremely busy for the past few weeks that we have been here getting to know the community and the this northwestern region of Urabá. We have already completed several accompaniment trips for the PC which has send us on foot or by bus all over the place. With our other time, we spend analyzing the security of the area and reporting on the human rights situation in and around the PC. But of course, many of my favorite moments have been getting to know the individuals living in our own vereda. Visiting their homes and often receiving visitors at any hour have provided a great source of both insight into the heartbeat of the PC as well as personal joy in making these meaningful connections.

As I mentioned before, I am learning more and more each day that I am here. But I cannot help but often feel as if I will never fully be able to understand the all the deep complexities of this place. I am not sure that an outsider ever would be able to understand the complete picture nor sympathize with the lives of these campesinos. Nonetheless, I am attempting to do as much as I can as I believe in the work of FOR and in the struggle of the PC.