Date: November 23rd 2009

Camelot Upside Down
by Phyllis Stutzman, November 11, 2009

Not the knights of King Arthur at a round table. However the displaced people in today's Camelot, located 30 minutes outside the major Colombian city of Barranquilla, do sit together and imagine a different world. They strategize. Then they take action.

Their children lack access to public education. So families of 50 elementary age children are paying a Colombian bank rent for one tiny house which they use for their education efforts.

There are no textbooks for the 50 children who crowd into the space from 7 a.m. to noon each day. The tiny space becomes a kindergarten in the afternoon; on the weekend it's an adult education classroom. The adults are continuously in contact with the Education Ministry to make Renacer a public school with textbooks and teachers.

There's no fancy castle in today's Camelot. People live in very close quarters, tiny one-room dwellings in some stage of construction on sun-baked, eroded soil.

"You can meet people from all parts of Colombia with a visit to Camelot," according to a community leader, who with her husband and children fled home and land in the mountains of a distant Province. People who did not know each other until their common fate brought them together, share common dreams:

Sufficient food
Education
Employment
A health clinic
Community kitchen
Space for children to play.
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Pictures can be viewed on Phyllis's blog: http://www.phyllisstutzman.blogspot.com/

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