It’s Complicated

"I am only one, but still I am one. I cannot do everything, but still I can do something; and because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do something that I can do."

-Edward Everett Hale

Many of my posts have been funny stories, anecdotes, events, strange things, difference in culture, and the history of the country and communities.

It’s pretty easy to write about that stuff: laughter, surprise, intrigue… But there is so much underneath all of these stories. And this underneath stuff is really hard to share. One reason is that it’s hard to find the words to describe exactly what is going on in the government, in the region, in the communities, in my relationships, in myself. Second of all, I don’t even understand a lot of it…

As most of my conversations end with my colleagues, it’s complicated.

I want to try to share some of complexities that we deal with here. As I said, I often don’t have the words and I don’t understand so many things, but here we go:

*I live in a community of farmers without land. Many sold land to large land owners who now use the land to graze cattle. The other part of the land is in the hands of a large shrimp company, but it went bankrupt two years ago. Many of the people in the community left farming to work in the shrimp company. Now there is no shrimp company, no land, and few skilled farmers… How does a community like this support itself? How can economic opportunities be created so that people do not have to leave in order to support their family? As an Afrodescendent community, they have rights to collective land… but if there is no land nearby for them to buy, then what? If they did all the work to submit the papers to get a piece of land for the community and never got a response from the government, then what?

The community suffered a lot of violence and because of that they are one of the pilot communities in the region for collective reparations. The reparations include many things that the community lacks, like an ambulance, advanced medical attention, specially trained police, centers for community congregation and events, adequate water and drainage systems, specialized classrooms in the school, among many other desired necessities. Not only have two years passed since this plan was approved and the community has seen nothing done, but many of the things that are included in the plan are already rights that the community has as Colombians or as Afrodescendents. Reparations should be things that are in addition to the rights that the people already have by law. How can the government take advantage of their own people like that? The community has been pushing and trying to get the entities to complete the promised reparations/rights with no response from the government or the different entities in charge of developing them. What more can the community do to call attention to the situation? What can the government do when they don’t even have the resources to complete what they promised the community they would do?

The community has a good number of leaders with good leadership skills and the desire to help the community move forward and grow. However, there are so many things in daily life that keep these leaders from being able to truly focus their efforts and complete their work. The lack of resources to travel to meetings or carry out projects, gossip from within the community saying that the leaders are taking money, fear of powerful people that may not want them to be doing the work of community leaders, the necessity of looking for ways to support their family, and taking care of sick loved ones are all factors that complicate the lives of community leaders. How can one expect someone to step up to lead a community if their life is threatened? Or if they don’t have enough money to send their children to school or to feed them in the evening? How can one expect someone to be a leader of the community if they are accused of doing it for the benefit of their own pocket?

People dying from lack of an ambulance and good medical attention but not receiving any help from the politicians who come promising money for votes; having to dig in the arroyo to find water to cook and bathe if there is no water arriving at the house because a truck broke a pipe in the aqueduct and doesn’t want to pay to fix it; having police in the town but no presence when a fight occurs; having a history that forms a culture of looking out for oneself over others and aggression over peace… These are only a few of the things that come to my mind when I think about the challenges in this rural community.

As I said, most of my conversations with my coworkers end the same way: “It’s complicated…”

But totally worth it.