A Long Road to Water

Back in Bogota from Bucaramanga, I couldn’t find sleep last night, my mind whirling on overdrive from the past two days’ journey, but, I did dream, in a way. I dreamt of how much better their future will be than their past, free from violence, we pray, and now able to grow food because of a new water supply. Due to a Lutheran World Relief project working with local leaders a single water line now irrigates the crops and the hopes of these brave residents of Nuevo York. “Water means life for everything that moves,” Emerson stood up proudly to tell us at the celebration marking our arrival.

But what a road it was to get there! For us, perhaps, but especially for them. First a little about our travel. It doesn’t take too long going up this off-road, mud-and-stone path of about 10 miles to figure out how their mountainous remoteness isolates them. Knowing the condition of roads in some previous international travel, especially Jamaica, Zambia and Hong Kong, I somehow presumed myself to be shock-proofed. I presumed wrongly. When you hear LWR folk talk about working at “the last mile,” that includes the literal meaning of that phrase; in this case, a community of 22 families tucked away in the breathtakingly beautiful Andean range. But the grandeur and greenery was not the only thing that took my breath away. Our expert driver, though in control, was slipping and sliding a few feet from a six hundred foot drop. There are no guardrails. He thankfully didn’t need them either.

But as treacherous as our trek was, these Colombians, largely from indigenous groups, had a much rougher road to get here. Husbands and sons murdered. Wives and daughters raped. Grandparents who’d farmed for generations being forced into exile. Good crops fumigated by U.S.-funded spraying aimed at illicit crops. Story after story, heartwrenchingly reported to us, because somehow they believed that U.S. Lutherans care about making a difference. “We don’t want war, that’s why we’re here” tearfully reported one humble peasant farmer, “but we’re going to need help, a hand up in a time of war, and you’ve been with us a long time.”

Our "being with them" is made tangible in the water that now runs to their community. Water means peace. Water can be a dream come true. “Dreams are as dangerous as they are necessary,” a leader commented. Water means hope even in danger. Water means life even in death. We, who have been splashed in the name of our threefold God, know how water places us also into a new community extending past the place where the road ends, joining us to God’s people in all places for all time.

I’ve got so much more to say, but it’s time to pack up again. Yes, we’re back in Bogota from Bucaramanga, but not for long. Today we’re off to visit Afro-Colombians near the Caribbean.