Internal Displacement

Due to its very violent history and high prevalence of armed groups, Colombia has the highest rate of antipersonnel land mines and the second highest rate of forced displacement in the world behind the Sudan (source: Refugee International). Sadly, this number does not seem to be lessening, and ReliefWeb even claims that the country currently has the highest number of war refugees in the past 23 years.

One of the most worthwhile Rotary projects that I’ve witnessed supplies prosthetic limbs and training on how to use them for victims of antipersonnel land mines. It is certainly life-changing in many ways for the recipients, and I've been really impressed with what the Rotarians have been able to accomplish for these innocent victims of this conflict.

Another related project that I recently undertook was translating accounts of displaced women who’ve arrived here to Cali from Buenaventura. It was a little challenging because the women spoke in their own informal vernacular, but here are some of their testimonies:

INTERVIEW 1
Name: Sandra
Age: 23

“The reason that I became displaced with my three kids and nephew is that my husband was shot three times in a shooting in La Independencia. I was living in La Independencia when the shooting began. I was on my way with my son to buy some medicines for my daughter because she suffers from asthma. The shooting began in the neighborhood of La Independencia, and by chance, some shrapnel hit me... They killed a boy, and by chance, my son left running and hit his forehead really hard on the ground, and the shrapnel got me, and I knew because I felt the heat... I want the community or some group to collaborate with me because we are displaced; some days we have absolutely nothing, we are passing a lot of time without work... My cousin is the one who helps me, but she is not working now because she had an accident; now we are going through a very difficult situation; I am going hungry...I want to work, but now nobody has given me work because of the problem that I have in my leg; I want to continue studying and begin to work...

INTERVIEW 2:
Name: María
Age: 55

“I lived in Buenaventura in the neighborhood of Unión de Vivienda; I lived with my son. My son was formerly of a group [the Colombian government has a program to get young men reintegrated back into normal life if they vow to leave their past in armed groups behind], so the “paras” [paramilitaries] of the other group attacked us; they shot at us, then they destroyed my house; my son belonged to the FARC, but he was demobilized by the government and wanted to start a new life, but they were after him... I got myself out of there, and he left, too... My son was 32-years-old; they killed him here December 2nd in Cali in the neighborhood of El Refugio [by the way, that’s MY neighborhood!!] , and since then, I am fleeing from one place to another to another; I live in a shelter now... They call me to the telephone, saying: “Watch out, if you accuse us of killing your son, we will kill you.” I am threatened; I spend all my time shut up; I don’t go out into the street; my neighbors give me food; sometimes, they take my clothes to iron because if I leave with the clothes, I’m surely going to get killed. For seven months, I have been threatened; they call me, saying they’ll give it to me; whenever they see me, they’re going to get me. And where there are people that know me, they tell them, “Tell that lady to take care because we’re going to kill her. Until we have gotten rid of all of them, we can’t be at ease,” and I don’t even know what group it is...”

INTERVIEW 3:
Name: Yamileth
Age: 34

“They killed my husband. I lived in Buenaventura; I lived with my husband and my three children in Bellavista, then soon after they killed him, they continued after me... I got out of there; I left the house because they chased me, it was just unbearable there...I worked in Buenaventura selling “chontaduro” [a chestnut-like fruit]; I left my work to come here...I don’t leave the house now because it scares me that they call to threaten me; I had to change my telephone number; in the race to get away, my phone fell, but they call me where I’m at now...Now they aren’t shooting people in the street like they used to do all the time; now, they are making people disappear and taking them to whatever beach is nearby. They ask you what you know, and sometimes what you know is nothing, and so they keep asking you things that you don’t know how to respond to, and if you respond in any way, the person kills you because you’ve thought of something like that...”

INTERVIEW 4
Name: María
Age: 41

“We lived in Buenaventura: me, my husband, three children, and mother-n-law. My husband worked in a launch boat; he was the owner of this little boat that loaded passengers for coastal trips…. The FARC began to chase him, or at least that’s the story I got about who they were, and the story went that they already waited for him there. In his business where he worked, they stalked him; he could not come out to the business any more; we just left it alone. They came to look for him in the house; they called his cell phone and told him that they already knew him, and people said that strange people were around, and they came and knocked on the door of the house. Because of all that, we left and came out there. We lived in La Independencia, near where they threw a bomb that shattered all the glass in our house; we were not super-close, but it was able to break all the glass in the house and everything, and already the kids could not sleep peacefully... For that reason, we moved and now we are in this neighborhood here... We arrived that day to the place of one of my brothers, but we were so many people in one house—him with his family and those daughters and me with my family. We arrived to the neighborhood of Manuela Beltrán, and from there we looked for a little room and pawned everything we had, so we have been able to survive from then until now, but we don’t have anything anymore...Everything that we had there was damaged, and now we are renting a house in Manuela Beltrán; neither my husband nor I is working... This is horrible...”

INTERVIEW 5
Name: Anabel Gutiérrez
Age: 45
“A year ago, I left my homeland of Buenaventura; I left with my three oldest daughters: they were 13, 10, and 2 years-old when I left. I left from the neighborhood of Panamericano. The dad of the girls had disappeared 2.5 years ago when I was pregnant with the last one, when he left one day for a trip to Panama... I started working selling food in the neighborhood of Palo Seco. Every once in a while, the police had search warrants to search around because in Buenaventura they’ve said that the guerillas are in one neighborhood, and the paramilitaries are in another. And the neighborhood where I was supposedly had the guerilla fighters, and I put my little food shop there, and I had my friendships with people there, and I had no problem. And, even though everyone there was completely civil, one day they did a search with a search warrant, and they searched the house where I was living, and the same police told me that it was very dangerous for me and my girls to be there; that the neighborhood was a hot zone for shootings that could happen at any time. And, as the house was on the corner and made of wood, they said that a bullet could bounce over to us and could hurt me or one of my daughters, so they suggested that I look for another neighborhood. Nothing was happening to me in this neighborhood, but no one can be saved from a stray bullet, so I found a friend in the Panamericano Neighborhood who let me rent a little place. I began to sell food again...Then, day by day, my sales lessened and lessened, and soon I was only selling about 10,000 pesos [about $4.75USD] worth in a day. I was asking God with all of my heart what was wrong; the children didn’t play with my daughters anymore; no one came at all; those who came were those who came from far away and didn’t know anything. What happened is that my same friendships from the other neighborhood where I had lived before came to the new neighborhood saying that I came from a neighborhood of the guerilla, and that I was a member of the guerilla forces; they said that I was a spy, that I was an informant. They said I had an alarm that I could set to make a bomb explode, so the people became afraid and didn’t get close to me. The few people who bought were those who had not realized this yet, and thank God, they didn’t see a man in the house, and nothing happened to me...

There was a festival in Cali, and so I left in one of the small buses with my three daughters, and I came here. I left with the bag of my daughter; I just put in an outfit for each one of us. This was on the 28^th of September, 2007—a Saturday, the day that we came here. At one in the morning, the pastor was sending me back to Buenaventura with everyone else, and I told her, “No, pastor. Please don’t send me back there because I’ll have to sleep on the docks. I’m not going to Buenaventura. Everything of mine is damaged in Buenaventura...”... And that’s when here in Cali I learned what hunger and humiliation are. When they hear my age, they deny me work. I am 45-years-old; I have three daughters who look like they’re my granddaughters. My suffering has caused me to age prematurely; my stress has damaged all the fillings in my teeth; because I was skinny, I’m lacking calcium…. I am doing a Project that SEDECUR, an entity that performs social action, is arranging for me. They give us a little training so that we can start a little business, so that we women can get started. Meanwhile, we have to be paying for our bus rides; they don’t give us money for transportation or food or anything; you just have to put up with it, as there’s not anything else to choose from. My daughters can’t pay the 5,000 pesos [about $2.41USD] for school supplies for each one, and for not having this 10,000pesos [about $4.81USD] to pay the school supplies for the two of them, they won’t accept the girls in the school...

It has been hard in Cali because I didn’t know anything about living in a city. I didn’t know how to catch a ride; I didn’t know how to catch a bus; I didn’t know anything, and they had to pick me up and bring me home. During the first few days, they help you, but then after a week, you become a nuisance… They have trained me in fast food preparation, and through the SENA, the Carvajal Foundation, and the Bienestar Familiar [Institute of Family Well-Being], they have the girls in a home…What the Bienestar Familiar [Institute of Family Well-Being] told me was that, if things continued as they were, I could give up the three-year-old, but I didn’t come to give away my daughters. The problem is the house; I don’t have money to pay for rent—because you can’t just go to live anywhere with three girls. Asking God for permission, I hope to find a place to live for me and my girls…”

Although I am far-removed from a lot of the violence and suffering, reminders like these regularly keep me aware of the many problems found in this country.