Ambassador Vasquez blogs from Colombia

3 October 2008

Where Does the Vicious Cycle End? October 3, 2008

Across the board, all of the development professionals in Colombia have told me that internal displacement affects children most. They pointed out that individuals and families are generally not displaced once but multiple times. With each move, the displaced restart a vicious cycle of uncertainty, hunger, fear, and despair.

I wrapped up my three-day visit to Colombia yesterday evening by comparing notes with the seven reporters who accompanied me throughout this journey. We reflected as a group on the diversity of humanitarian projects we saw this week and marveled at the tireless work of the United Nations in coordination with USAID, the Colombian government, and local NGOs that are often staffed by female volunteers.

Foremost in our minds were the urban garden and school feeding programs we visited Thursday in Soacha, a large neighborhood built into a deforested mountain on the margins of the capital city of Bogotá. Upon arrival to Soacha -- at what seemed to be the highest reaches of the barrio -- as soon as we exited the cars, children surrounded us. They enthusiastically took us by the hands to met their 64-year-old “abuelita” (little grandmother) who spends the better part of each day mixing local ingredients with lentils and vegetable oil donated by the United States to make lunch for the school kids. They also introduced us to their “abuelito” (little grandfather) who teaches them about agriculture in the community gardens supported by the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization.

At every step the kids were quick to tell us about their gratitude for our support and their goals. One young boy made a joke about my shirt, and when one of his classmates learned I work in Italy, he started repeating the only Italian word he knows – "bambino, bambino." The kids touched us in the hour we spent together, but the fact is, they touch people in their community everyday. That’s why the volunteers do not hesitate to pile up heavy sacks of donated rice, flour, and sugar in the school kitchen’s storeroom, why parents sacrifice to send them to school, why UN agencies are pooling their resources and talents with strong U.S. support to work more strategically in areas where the need is the greatest. We simply cannot let any of them down.

There are not always clear answers to the question posed in the title of this blog. An end to the cycle will not be possible without giving children an opportunity to learn and their parents the economic opportunities to support their growth. Food should always be a part of that solution.

Colombia: Brighter Futures Through Entrepreneurship, October 2, 2008

Around the port city of Cartegena today I traveled in and out of poor neighborhoods that would make even the most optimistic person despair. Urban slums with precarious living conditions: putrid water seeping down crevice-filled dirt roads and pooling in front of makeshift houses without windows, donkeys attached to carts, young kids in their underwear standing in doorways. A place called home for the displaced of Colombia and for many of its Afro-descendants.

Families on the run who are drawn to these quarters find few if any social services. The group of Latin American reporters accompanying me on this trip and I were deeply moved by this reality and by the work of an 80-year-old Belgian nun who helps to keep women and children of Barrio Nelson Mandela from slipping through the cracks. An education in nutrition is what Sister Ines and her staff offer the young mothers, some in their early teens. With food from the United States delivered through the World Food Program, medical practitioners welcome mothers to the clinic to teach them how to provide the necessary care to their newborns to keep them alive and well.

Education comes in the form of useful training at the Minuto de Dios Corporation’s vocational center supported through a World Food Program food-for-training initiative. I was impressed by students engaged in an array of programs the center offers, from the art of hair dressing to Baking 101. The students learn skills that they can apply immediately in the local market.

Due to such excellent training programs, even in these cramped neighborhoods, entrepreneurship is taking root. Today I witnessed a community in San Basilio de Palenque, a UNESCO cultural heritage site recognized for its strong ancestral ties to Africa, working together to create a village micro-enterprise of production and marketing of traditional sweets. They compete for funds provided by the UN’s International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD). My group also spent time learning how two young displaced men transformed their lives through small businesses. One has built a thriving sausage factory with twelve employees out of a one-man, backyard production operation. The other operates a mini-market in Barrio Olaya Herrera. These examples showed us how the displaced, through emergency humanitarian assistance, are lending a hand to their neighbors who have even greater needs.

Tomorrow we travel to Bogotá, Colombia’s capital, for a stop in Soacha, the neighborhood that receives the highest number of displaced in the country. Hasta manana.

Living With Volatility, October 1, 2008

All eyes are on the United States. Not on the presidential campaign, but on Wall Street and Capitol Hill. Yes, the markets are volatile. There’s no doubt we are vulnerable. Yet while traveling in Colombia I realize how fortunate we are that, unlike the world’s poorest, volatility is not a constant for us.

For the millions of displaced people in Colombia instability is a fact of life. Today in Guajira, the northernmost Colombian state, I met a few communities who are making strides to manage their risk to hunger, disease, and poverty. With the help of the United Nations and U.S. food assistance, they are reestablishing their lives and maintaining their culture, even steadfastly avoiding displacement from their ancestral land.

What keeps them going against great odds, often after having lost family members and suffered from the violent Colombian domestic conflict? Quite simply an opportunity for something better, a more stable life with economic opportunities. For a group of over forty families outside of the town of Riohacha, a slice of land on which to settle pays great dividends. Leadership and determination has turned this diverse, rural community with displaced from around Colombia into a cohesive group that helps one another build family homes. For this and other labor, they receive food from the World Food Program to supplement the crops that they grow.

Stability for indigenous groups does not come easy. The indigenous make up 3% of the total population of Colombia but more than 6% of the displaced. School feeding programs aim to minimize one of the side-effects of displacement: loss of educational opportunities for youth. I marveled, as I have done elsewhere in the world, at how a simple meal maximizes learning and is an incentive for parents to send their kids to school. In the case of the Wayuus in rural town of Dibulla, a well-balanced lunch also preserves an indigenous language and traditions.

The young girl in the photo is from one of the vulnerable indigenous groups that live in the Sierra Nevadas. Her elders welcomed us to a site to which they had walked more than three hours to receive a ration of food that includes enriched U.S. flour and vegetable oil. Illegal armed groups and isolated living conditions make their access to food difficult; however, through a UN partnership with a local indigenous organization, supportive local government officials, and USAID, they have been able to retain their land.

We’ll take a close look at how the urban poor cope with displacement tomorrow. Stay tuned.