ser arrancado en Colombia

We were invited to take off our shoes, to feel our skin against something deep. On the morning of our second day in Colombia, we gathered in the small flower garden of Pinares, a retreat center cared for by the Daughters of Charity in Bogotá, and began to reflect on the day’s theme: Internal Displacement and Refugees in Colombia. What does is mean to be uprooted? I suppose it is to have roots, and then somehow be torn away – though I have never felt that aching tear, that gash beneath my feet. I have moved, relocated, felt nostalgic, missed home, and struggled to find myself, but never have I been ripped away, stolen, forced, or displaced. Colombia is now home to the second largest internally displaced population in the world after Sudan. Approximately 4 million Colombians are internally displaced, most fleeing violence in the countryside and coastal regions of Colombia and migrating to large cities in search of work. In the capital city of Bogotá alone, approximately 1 out of every 8 people is displaced, totaling about 1 million. So what does it mean to be uprooted in Colombia? What does it look like? How does it feel?

As part of our morning reflection, we walked barefoot in the garden. Then after taking a handful of soil, we were instructed to meditate on our piece of earth in a separate area of the garden, later returning the soil to its rightful home. My hand felt invasive and disruptive as I sunk my fingers into the earth, reluctant and intrigued. I walked to the other end of the garden and sat staring at the teeming pile of life before me, considering the history and complexity of just one handful. The more I concentrated, the more the day weighed on my heart as I watched pieces of soil crumble and spill from my greedy hands. My thoughts quickened: I shouldn’t have taken so much, I can’t hold it together, I won’t be able to put it all back. I stared at the earth slipping through my fingers, uprooted and incurable. Suddenly I remembered Oti, a woman who accompanied me very closely on my journey in El Salvador. She once spoke to me about the difference between curing and healing, explaining how her work in her community never offers a cure, an elimination of pain, an end to sickness, the erasure of memories, poverty, violence, or loss. Rather, Oti’s work offers healing – a way of becoming conscious of suffering and the lasting weight of former pain, finding liberation in the midst of this reality. For Oti, healing was remembering. When I put the soil back, I remembered. I remembered the hole I dug in the earth, and the pieces I left behind at the other end of the garden. I remembered that I cannot fix it, that the pieces are too small and too many, and that the day would carry more than can be cured.

The day before, we looked upon the capital city from the top of Monserrate, a hill in the center of Bogotá that lies about 3,000 meters above sea level. It is a beautiful view - expansive, breathtaking, and peaceful. Yet something felt uncertain, detached, distant…What really lies beneath the clouds, past the fog, behind the buildings, over the mountaintop? Though the view of the city reached the horizon, our backs once again faced South. Little did we know that behind us was Ciudad Bolívar, an endless sea of makeshift shacks and cinderblock houses nestled against a backdrop of stripped and eroding mountains, downwind of a massive garbage dump that keeps expanding despite promises to the contrary, and home to nearly 1 million people. And below us, in the shadow of the presidential palace, was Tercer Milenio Park, now filled with approximately 2,000 displaced families crowded in small shacks and tents made of plastic tarps and plywood.

So what did it take to turn around, to look deeper, and to not simply look, but to truly see? I suppose it took Norma pushing me into the crowd to see the struggle for food inside the displacement camp. It took Memo tightening his arm around my shoulder and telling me to look at the man sleeping in the street. It took smelling the garbage. It took a man’s hungry shouts outside the church. It took the weight of a crowd, of men and women parting the plastic flaps of their tents to reveal children sleeping on dirt floors, asking us to make them visible. It took children, grabbing our hands and giving us flowers and broken toys. It takes pressure. It takes faith. Slowly, with the help of friends and community, we began to fall into the cracks, peer into the crevices, and immerse ourselves in the shadows. We began to turn around and see a different expanse: the pervasiveness of poverty, violence, loss, and death that are also Colombia. When I was walking through the displacement camp, the only response I could give to the pressure and questions of the crowd that followed us was a promise to tell their story, and by remembering, to help heal.