After coming back from a fulfilling school year of studying abroad in Japan, I was ready to experience another country by going to Colombia with other HELM Fellows, with HELM Board Members, and with staff. Before the trip, I had anticipated seeing the kind of communities I had seen on previous experiences, such as a visit to a the Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota. And while we did see sadness, pain, and frustration, we also saw hope.
During our time in Colombia, we visited groups of Internally Displace People (IDPs) who have been forced to flee their homes due to armed conflict. One community had been displaced for nineteen years and was hand sewing their stories into tapestries to share and to sell. Everywhere we went the many families had hope for going back, for living their lives as they had, and even trying to create better education and opportunities for their children. In a community that had been displaced just over a year ago, we visited a school full of children that helps them have a place to learn and provides them with lunch, which is sometimes their only meal of the day. The internally displaced Colombians we met did not lose their culture but their homes, lifestyles, and ways to grow food and earn money. Their stories were all still raw with emotion. A father was shot in his own home while the guerrillas demanded everyone leave the village. A family returned only to have their teenage son step on a landmine in a terrible accident, leaving him with an amputated leg. Community leaders were rounded up and shot. Livestock was stolen. Farms ready to be planted were forced to be abandoned. Many of the communities had the same feelings of pain but also the same faith in their hearts.
It was hard to be in Colombia without seeking to help, but we were there to learn. To learn about the peace accords, the current situation for IDPs, how they lived before, about the history of injustice and how complicated the current situation is. Their stories still race through my mind. My heart hurts for them and I think it always will. But I will also remember their faith in God and their hope for a better future.