Newsletters

Date: April 2nd 2010

by Liz and Bill Branch

Three days of nonstop meetings with the accompaniment program evaluation team, both U.S. and Colombian, have left our brains filled with information, our ears filled with facts and ideas in both Spanish and English, and our hearts filled with love and admiration for our Colombian brothers and sisters and hope for the future of our accompaniment partnership. In spite of being physically tired from the intense discussions and lively field trips, we are buoyed up by the willingness of 30-some people to labor at visioning new possibilities for the accompaniment program.

While it is too soon to tell how our brainstorming and dreaming will impact the program, it seems to us that some changes will come out of the exploration. The Colombian church reports that through the presence of U.S. accompaniers, some lives have been saved. While the violence is now less obvious and more sophisticated, it is still a reality in Colombia. There is much work to do through our Colombian/U.S. partnership.

Last week we visited two communities of people displaced by groups who threatened their communities of origin and forced them to move to Barranquilla. To us estadounidenses came the question, "What will happen when you go back (to the U.S.)?" The question came from the second group of displaced people we visited. In fact, we heard it from both groups, but the first group asked the question just as we were leaving, and they seemed to be satisfied with our answer. The second group was more insistent. They pressed us. Then they took us to see the local evangelical pastor, who also asked, "What are you going to do?" Why had they told their story over and over to accompaniers, and yet their situation has not seemed to change?

We told both groups that we would try to be their voice, speaking to churches, friends and people in government, especially in Washington. We told them we would tell their story of being displaced, that few in the U.S., including members of Congress, know. They listened to our frustration, especially about reception, or lack of it, of their story in Washington. Our pleas for change of policy toward Colombia seem to "fall on deaf ears", to fall into a political system that is difficult to change. They seemed to understand, since the same thing is true of the democratic system in Colombia. The pastor ended his conversation with us by saying that his people, the displaced people of that poor barrio, would be praying for us as we try to make a difference.

We told him and the women that we would also pray for their communities, where the children attend small, crowded, ill-equipped schools; where students rarely finish high school, and when they do, there is no work for them; where the streets are dust-dry most of the year but turn to rivers of mud during the rainy season; where families of up to 8 or 10 live in small two or three-room concrete block apartments with concrete floors; where there is no air-conditioning; where the younger men seem to be absent, at least in the daytime; and where the women have little to do except watch TV, grieve for a world and family they have lost, or long for a world they know cannot be--without a major change in the system that is clearly stacked against them.

A couple of bright spots: the leader of the first group was Elizabeth, a resilient woman, mother of four sons, 10 -18 years old. She had been selected by her community to take a leadership role and speak on their behalf. As we talked, a delivery, containing about a dozen boxes and a 50-pound bag of an unnamed something, came to the house. This was food supplied by the U. N. High Commission for Refugees, for children 3 months to 5 years. The food would supplement the children´s otherwise meager diets. We learned that the 2nd community receives similar shipments. The mothers described how hard it is to feed their older children, for whom there is no U.N. aid. In all cases, the women agonized not for themselves, but for their children. They want conditions to change for the young ones.

When we got back "home", we were exhausted physically, mentally and emotionally. We were very hot, even by Barranquilla standards, but strangely enough, we were not very hungry.

Another day we visited a couple of schools run for the state by 1st Presbyterian Church of Barranquilla.
Yesterday morning brought us more eye-opening experiences. In the company of a pastor and his parishioner, we saw two schools, both administered by 1st Presbyterian Church, Barranquilla, in the barrios of Santo Domingo and Santa Maria. The former has about 500 students, the latter, about 2500.

When we saw 20 students per classroom in the small school and 40 students per classroom in the big school; when we melted under the relentless heat outside and in; when we heard stories of how addictions, violence, family dysfunction, and sexual abuse tear up the families of the students, we could see why the pastor and the school administrator described their task as "difficult". Lord, Lord, how any teacher could get anything across in that environment is beyond our understanding. What odds these people are up against! But 1st Church is gamely trying to make a go of it.

For both schools, the state provides the funds, but it is up to the church to provide the administration. Since the land for the smaller school is owned by the community, the state has to get community permission before the state can build a new school building. The administrators long for a new building, but they don´t know when their hopes may be realized.

For now, the school is housed in buildings arranged around a small courtyard. Rooms are small. Nothing, not even the offices, is air-conditioned, and one set of rooms has only a tarp for a roof. A social worker said that the homes in the barrio are ruled by violence so the students feel that violence is the only way to "solve" a problem. They have seen violence and sexual abuse at home (even experienced it) and many are already into use and abuse of alcohol. Much of the faculty time is spent dealing with the social issues that the children bring to school with them. There is a social worker, a psychologist, and a chaplain on the staff of the school. They had some university student interns to work on nutrition with the students.

The larger school, in stark contrast, has modern, colorful buildings spread over a gated campus. Sparkling tile floors contrast with the concrete and dirt floors of the first school. While the classrooms are not air-conditioned, they do have ceiling fans; and the offices are all air-conditioned. An auditorium, a library and an athletic building are all under construction.

These students also come from a barrio, Santa Maria, that has many of the same difficult social issues as Santo Domingo. This school has similar support staff. The pastor said that a number of the teachers in the two schools are in his congregation and that 90% of the faculty is "Christian", which in Colombia means Protestant. We had earlier seen a third school on the grounds of the church that the church also administers; three schools under the church's care! This is a major ministry undertaking for a congregation of only about 100 members.

It is also an interesting mix of church and state for the benefit of the nation's children. In the 1820's the Presbyterian Churh in the U.S. was asked by the Colombian government to take over the school system for the nation of Colombia. The U.S. Presbyterian Church refused because they were committed to the separation of church and state, and they believed in a non-sectarian public school system. What is more, the Presbyterians of that day were not sure that they could administer such a massive undertaking. How interesting that small congregations in Colombia are now doing what, two centuries ago, a whole denomination was not able or willing to tackle. May God bless the efforts of the Colombian Presbyterians.


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