There is an old woman in our village who is possibly the most
affectionate person I have ever met. Her skin is soft and wrinkled. Her warmth
is effortless and comforting. She strokes my arm as we sit for hours talking
about everything and nothing. She has an age of Colombia’s history in her, has
outlived five of her seven children and has a beautiful spark about her in
spite of the horrors she has witnessed. From her house, she can see the back of
ours and is always comforted when she sees our lights come on in the evening
and knows we’re home.
There’s an old man who likes to come to our house to drink coffee. He
tells stories in his own peculiar way and has such a strong accent it’s hard
for foreigners to understand him at first. He likes to quote the bible to make
the most absurd arguments and in ways that simply don’t make sense. He is
always the first to tell anybody and everybody who arrives that we are the
reason they are respected. He is also the perfect example of how a community
can work so well. He has no family here. Everybody here is his family.
There is a woman my age who is hard-working and caring. Her father was a
powerful community leader and was killed in the massacre of 2000. She is part
of that generation. She is one of the ones who so easily could have gone to
fight with the guerrilla to seek revenge. She didn’t. She stayed and walked
with the community, choosing active non-violence over vengeance.
There is one leader who is so pessimistic it’s unbelievable. Whenever you
talk to him he laments the direction the world is going in. Everything is
getting worse, day by day. We call him Eeyore. He doesn’t believe there can
ever be justice. He doesn’t believe non-violence stands the remotest of
chances. And yet he dedicates his entire life and all his energy to a project
which insists on justice and non-violence.
There is one woman who is gossipy and infuriating. She is one of the
most intelligent women I have met, a female leader in a community dominated by
masculine, machista dynamics. She has
a dark sense of humour and is incredibly cynical. I love her laugh. We laugh so
much together. Her dedication to this life, her convictions of its value and
its worth, run deep. She has travelled the world representing the community and
sees no reason to be anywhere else but here.
In ways accompaniment work did not get easier over the last year. As
time went on, new and tough challenges came up. The boundaries were not always
clear. In fact, they never are. With these friendships and my emotional
attachment to these people, I still wonder where the boundary is. We as FOR are
part of the history of the peace community. By living here for an entire year,
we as individuals are written into their story. How do we remain
non-interfering when this is the case? How can we claim to be neutral from a
community that could not and would not exist without us?
I have learnt so much from these people throughout this past year. I
have learnt how hard it is to be neutral in this war zone. I have learnt the
intricacies of war, the logic behind the strategies and the tangled web of
criminal and political violence which has become meshed into the social fabric
of Colombian culture and society. I have learnt to relate to campesinos and open myself up to this
existence with empathy and solidarity. I have (at least tried) to be patient,
to not judge, to not impose my standards, to stand back and to observe, to let
these people carve out their own path and make their own mistakes along the
way.
Leaving is hard. As I try and grapple with difficult goodbyes and worry
about the future of these friendships, I must remember that the peace community
is written into my story now, just as I am written into theirs. And these personal
friendships will slot into a broader mosaic of a collective relationship of
international solidarity which will continue to open up the space for them
to walk their path in the future.