Moving?

We have just gone through moving houses once again (the third time since we came to Colombia), and were complaining about how exhausting and stressful it had been. However, to think that moving from a comfy house to another (a bit smaller mind you, but nice anyway) had caused us such stress, made me reflect of the pledge of the millions of Colombians who have had to move in different circumstances. Last Saturday, these reflections came back as we accepted an invitation from the man who works as the janitor of the condo where we live, to go and visit his family and perhaps see a plot of land or two we might want to buy (well, he thinks we can afford such a thing... it´s a good excuse to go to the countryside anyway). We drove half an hour along a good road and another half hour along a fairly reasonable dirt one, peppered with leisure, week-end "cottages", some of which can easily cost 2 or 3 hundred thousand USD. Our friend´s family live very humbly though, but even so they were able to provide us with a hearty lunch with what they produce themselves: a chicken, plantaine, potatoes and herbs soup... delicious! And we even went back home loaded with onions and coriander and mangos. Once we got home, Paty reflected that so many millions in Colombia (around 4 million, they say) are people who one day have that, a small piece of land they can live off, and then, all of a sudden, because of someone else´s greed or hatred or simple evil, they are violently forced to join the army of displaced people that beg for coins at a street corner. One day they can feed their kids with their work, and grow some crops and tend to a couple of cows, and enjoy their mountains or their plains, and the next they sit by the curb, perhaps mourning one or two family members killed or lost as they fled, despised and looked at with suspicion by a city that cannot understand them and does not want to show any sympathy to them... a city that very often does not even want to acknowledge they are there; or does not want to acknowledge their hunger... of food and of justice... a city that so often just sneers and cries "let them work... don´t let them be lazy!".

You can see them all over Colombian cities(if you decide not to avoid the pain of even looking into their eyes, of talking to them, of asking their names) , you can see them perplexed, confused, disorientated.

Yes, there are so many crying, so many desperately lonely, so many humiliated and vexed... and so many of them are our brothers and sisters... would you believe it?