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A trip to Colombia - 7. The return. Keeping a balance between reality and faith…
7/08/2005
Leaving Colombia felt just as sad and intense as I knew it was going to feel even before having arrived. What makes it so particularly intense is that leaving a country in violence is not an ordinary leaving. You leave your parents' home and you can't quite think that they will be quietly getting old while you are away, that your brothers and sisters will marry, buy a house, have kids, but all you can think of is that sooner or later your daily life could be disrupted by some tragic news overseas, that you have to be prepared for that. But, what right do I have to complain? What makes me feel more special than the thousands of other Colombians who have had to leave because of really compelling reasons? The ones escaping death threats or kidnapping, the many others escaping the spectre of poverty? Compared to them, I don't think I have any real reason to worry. The reality is that, if asked for a quick balance, I would probably say that I found my country going through the same tough situation it has been going through for years, but the only certain thing I can actually say is that this is only my own perception, affected by the life I have been living here, plus the people I talked to and places I visited there.
It seems clear that after moving to the States I have gotten unaccustomed to situations that in the past I, as everybody else down there, had developed emotional defenses against. Besides, the places I visited over there were not places for the tourist, partly because I wanted a more personal experience, partly because it wouldn't have made sense to eat in a luxurious restaurant and end up paying a check that can easily equal one-third of the local monthly minimum wage. I rather preferred having an ice cream in a middle-to-working class neighborhood, and re-experiencing what real life is, or was for me.
It was probably because of my personal election that I came to be exposed to particular situations that in my unaccustomedness I felt so affected by, like the moment in which there came inside an ice cream place a quite skinny man, who clearly had been wearing the same clothes, decent but dirty, for various days. He was exhibiting a handful of disposable diapers, and while shaking them he began telling his story in a loud voice for everybody inside to hear. He had been traveling from the Caldas department, some like 200 miles north. His newborn son suffered a heart murmur. The man had been to several hospitals on his way to Cali, and the hospital in the city was the only one that demanded from him to bring disposable diapers, not accepting the ordinary washable ones he carried for the baby. Disposable diapers were expensive for him. With the money he had been collecting in the streets, he had been able to buy a few diapers by the unit, and had gotten eight so far. He still needed more. At that point of the story, he began crying with a tone of defeat. Most of the ice cream fans just ignored him and continued their joy.
There is this idea that people asking for money in the streets are drug addicts. It is true that levels of drug addiction in Colombia have grown beyond control, and the old saying that "drugs are an American consumption problem, rather than a Colombian production one" is rather obsolete today. But this man was asking for some diapers for his very sick son; he was crying. I decided not to make any further considerations and gave him money, at least for my own and very selfish peace of mind. I knew that I wouldn't be doing him any favor if he was just a tricky drug addict. Besides, such small amount wouldn't help him so much in solving his kid's health problems either; but at least I would feel better myself. It was pure selfishness. He thanked me several times and unnecessarily loudly. Thank you sir for this money you have given me. I was embarrassed with my selfishness. I didn't know how to tell him that I didn't feel I deserved his thanks.
Then I decided that, despite the warns on the contrary, plain compassion would be a good way to emotionally survive so much toughness you can face at the most unexpected moment. Be discriminative. Don't give money to children, or to people who look evidently in drugs. But listen to people, and trust them, no matters if in some cases they can fool you. The following occasion, on Sunday before traveling, I was sitting by a kiosk on the sidewalk when a woman came, carrying a little girl who had fallen asleep as the woman walked. She asked for money in a tough, cautious way, as if she was already prepared for a "no." As I made a gesture indicating I would help, she said to her sleeping daughter, pretending she would listen, I'm finally getting something to put some food in your belly, mija. I gave her enough for a lunch and again earned some undeserved thanks.
People say that giving limosna or money to beggars is a way to stimulate poverty. People make numbers about how much money can a limosnero or beggar make per day. They can indeed make much more than the minimum wage. These two persons, although already tanned and dirty after days of walking, were not professional beggars. Given how recently have hit the latest waves of violent displacement of farmers from their lands, it is still easy to differentiate who are and who are not, because of the way they dress. The hats, the long skirts of the displaced talk about a past life that was suddenly broken apart, a life from which there still remains some dignity; some tears, some pre-caution when asking for the limosna. These internal refugees are going to be asking for limosna for a while, until they stabilize in the city. It is a fact that they are going to end up having to recommence their lives in the city, because most likely the majority of them will not receive back their de-facto expropriated lands. Until they stabilize, they will be begging, because at this point they don't seem to receive the support they are supposed to.
As a consequence of the hardening conflict and the recent wave of displacements, in the most recently published UN statistics of asylum seekers, refugees and others of concern, Colombia occupies an uncontested first place, almost doubling Iran, the second country, and with a number well above those of Iraq, Sudan, Rwanda, Somalia, Syria and China altogether. Only in 2004, the number of internally displaced grew in 240.000 more, and the percentage of those who left the country as refugees increased in 25 percent. There is a lot of money coming to help the internally displaced too, told me O a few days ago. The Japanese government, for example, has sent millions of dollars. It is being stolen by corrupt politicians. You see the juridical processes against these politicians being archived; then you see them having elegant dinners in the Intercontinental Hotel, with the money sent for the displaced's food, he ended.
I heard someone saying recently that if Colombia has not totally collapsed as a society, despite the awful realties of its day after day, it is because at the other side of those who trigger the chaos and profit from it, there are also people working in silence, tirelessly and courageously, with the faith put in a better country, a fairer country, a more sensible one.
There are many Colombians whose excellence personifies the pride and affection we all feel for the country. There is a Nobel Prize winner. There is a scientist who discovered a cure for malaria, and gave the patent away to the World Health Organization. There is a medical doctor who is among the founders of modern neuroscience. There is a Formula 1 auto racer. There are several Grammy winners and a recent Oscar nominee. And, as always, there is the soccer team. It plays really good soccer, but it seldom wins championships. That is not important at all, because Colombia and Colombians are great in many other fields. But it is funny how we don't forgive ourselves not to be among the best in soccer, and how, if the team fails, it is like if everything else is worthless.
At a psychological level, it is good what those remarkable Colombians do for us. They are very inspiring for everybody. A more real hope resides, however, in those other Colombians who work to make through smaller acts a better country and are not commonly acknowledged for that. Colombians who have found in solidarity and silent hard work the best way to express their love for the others.
It is very hard not to be moved by those people who have become the unintended victims in a war that everybody has agreed on calling with such a delicate term, "the conflict;" but the effort from those who are working for a better country is similarly moving. Everywhere you go in Colombia, you will find people making small but meaningful things for the better. A farmers' coop prepares jelly out of exotic fruits for export. A blind woman makes high-relief greeting cards. Another woman picks newspapers to recycle. Another, very resourceful one, rents a 10-inch castle for decorating party cakes (and says she can perfectly live out of her mini-real estate.) A professor insists that architecture students must look at their own traditional architecture, before looking at those from the US and Europe. Another retired professor writes papers on how Colombia can become a developed country, and mails them to the president, and to every single other president he can think of. A blind Afro Colombian mayor maintains the belief that people are good by nature and you have to trust them. A large group of concerned citizens walk to protect 700 trees in danger because of a transportation project...
To all of them, and to the thousands like them in the anonymity: thank you for helping to build a better Colombia. Thank you for holding the dream, for not letting it collapse, despite there still persist reasons to fear, sometimes, that it could indeed collapse.
Or, perhaps, it is just that I am forgetting how resilient can we Colombians get to be...
Acerca de este artículo
Some final thoughts about the experience, now from the distance...
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