Three Ironies

Yesterday we went to visit a resettlement community. It was the kind of scene you see in a World Vision commercial.  It's the kind of place a government likes to imagine doesn't exist.  When we asked one of the pastors we talked to there how many people lived in that community, he said that nobody knows.  He estimated around 6,000.  Newly displaced people arrive there everyday.

There was garbage everywhere.  In the middle of the valley was the 'laguna negra' or as I called it, the Black Lagoon.   It had rained heavily the day before, and everywhere we walked there was brown mud, but the lagoon was so polluted that it was still black.  There was a river flowing out of it that bubbled up more than any bubble bath I've ever taken.  Everywhere we went, our guides told us not to draw attention to ourselves by taking out our cameras.  The female volunteer worker we talked with says that she lives there, but she doesn't go out after 5:30pm because it is not safe.  This was a place with infrequent electricity, unreliable running water and all of the hopelessness and violence you could imagine.

We were encouraged by the work of partner agencies there, and we left feeling amazed by so many things.  There were three images though, images of utter irony, that stuck out in my mind.

The first place we visited was a small building that served as a church, school (offering classes for children and adults) and soup kitchen.  It was a tiny building, but they used their space well and were even looking into installing a garden plot on the roof to make better use of the space.  Besides teaching the local children, providing them with uniforms, and treating them with love like they deserved as children, the volunteers also gave the children a free lunch, the only meal many of them would eat that day.  A sing hung over the door with the name of the church, information about when it was open and what services they provided, there was a scripture verse printed.  We had to do some impromptu translation, but we discovered the verse was, John 10: 10b, "I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full."  Certainly our partner churches were doing their best so that those children could have a much fuller life, but that scene did not seem like a full life to us.

Then we went for a short walk from one of the churches to see the neighbourhood.  We met a man whose house had been hit hard by flash floods the day before, a flood that could have been avoided if the city maintained the drainage system under the road.  We met a woman who earned a living by carrying washing machines around to be rented out, and while she had scraped together a modest profit from it, the machines were now broken and wasn't strong enough to lift them anymore.  We met a man who fled his farm in rural Columbia for the safety of his remaining children after three of his daughters had been murdered.  Then, we meet a woman whose story is similar to the rest, and she is wearing a Disney sweatshirt with a picture of tinkerbell and the slogan beneath it, "Wish upon a star."  I'm sorry Disney, no amount of wishing is going to will ensure that anything her heart desires will come to her.

We crossed the road beside the lagoon and left behind the area named "los pinos" (which means 'the pines' but there were no pines there anymore).  Along the way we met a woman who was on her way to the funeral of a young person who died as a result of gang violence.  Then we saw in large spray painted letters, the name of the next community we were visiting, "El Progresso."  Certainly there were a number of agencies active in that community that provided food, job training, government assistance application help, and so many other things, but so little of what we saw there looked like "Progress."

Grappling with what we have seen has not been easy.  We provide no easy answers, because none were provided to us.  But that we left there with even a shread of hope is a testament to what our new friends are doing in those dire circumstances.