Colombian games

Before I write about the the amazing things I have seen and experienced in Colombia this week, I wanted to share with you one of the best games i have played in a long time. Its called Tejos.

It is basically a Colombian version of Bowls or Petanque, except you throw lead discs into a square box of clay. The closest to the middle gets the points and if you get it in the centre ring, you get even more points. You play in pairs, and each throw two discs each. Simple…….

….except the difference is that they place explosives in the central ring, so the idea is to hit them and blow them up! Not too sure what this says about Colombians, but it makes for a bloody exhilarating game.

Me and LG were duly asked to join in and paired up with our colleagues. You could see us baulking and jumping every time a ‘tejos’ was thrown from miles off, much to everyone’s amusement. There was further amusement when I kindly declined their offer of taking a few lead discs and explosives home to teach young people in the UK! I duly pointed out that explaining to the security at Miami airport that “they were only explosives given to me by my Colombian friends…Its only a game, I promise” as they lead me off to Guantanemo Bay may not be the most water tight excuse.

As it happened I ended up blowing it up! Much to mine (and LGs considerable) surprise. I may now enquire if there is a local tejos club nearby…..it may just catch on

(You can see the small explosives in the clay behind the thrower – they have two’ ends’ like in Petanque, so you throw from in front of the other box of explosives!!)

In Honduras, they don’t just talk

I’ve made what we call in the business a ‘pictures to music’ of my time in Honduras.  I think the music really fits, as i’ve mainly used pictures from the amazing march of young people I saw. Me and LG had an amazing week working with our colleagues there on a campaign, which is facilitating young people too to campaign for their rights in the criminal justice system and against the state sponsored murder and repression of young people.

The young people we worked with, and the stories we heard of young people taking action and campaigning in Honduras were a true inspiration.  They know what needs to change in their society, not just for them, but for others, and are prepared to act to change it. If only we had half of that feeling of civil responsibility and empathy here, the UK would be  a much beter place to be for us all

Biting the hand that feeds

The USA has recently given a huge aid package to Honduras to help with the problem of the gangs. The organization I’m visiting was asked by the US Embassy to apply for some of these funds to do work with young people. They decided to say no.

Odd you my think for an NGO to turn down money – to bite the hand that feeds it. But on hearing the story and reason, I could not help but wish more NGOs felt strong enough to take such decisions.

As with everything that originates from the US, there is a political context, and a rather sinister one at that. The money was intended to help Honduras with the issue of gangs. The US earmarked 90% of that funding to go to the government and state mechanisms for ‘repression and control’ of the gangs. The repression that had led to over 3000 young people being killed in extra-judicial killings and prions fires. They allocated 10% for prevention and rehabilitation projects. This is what the organization was offered. The word tokenism springs to mind.

As they work with the young people who are being directly affected by the state repression of them, it seemed barmy for them to ‘consent’ and acknowledge this funding. So they made a political point of not taking the money and have been advocating for other NGOs to do the same. If we accept this money they argue, we justify the 90% the US is pouring into the state mechanisms.

So they did indeed bite the hand…and quite right so.

A Palm Sunday to make the big man proud

As a 1000 young people ran towards me cheering and singing slogans, holding the traffic up on the main roundabout in Tegucigalpa, I was in awe at how people here are prepared to stand up for what they believe is right and the risks that needed be taken to change things.

I was on a march of over 1000 young people, marching against the violence and murder that blights their lives, both violence by the Maras gangs, but also the police and military as they arbitrarily clamp down on young people in general.

What made this march all the more powerful is that it was being organised by the Catholic Church. Now i´m not getting all religious on you readers, but i could not helped but be moved.

Christians throughout the world celebrate Palm Sunday by marching through their cities and towns in a traditional sign on “witness” to others of their faith.
Yet this was different. There was no smug “witnessing”or “evangalising” as you usually see on Palm Sunday marches, just people saying that their society was unfair, and as Christians, they wanted that to change and they were prepared to march through the streets to get that change.

I had a great vision of Jesus watching with a wry smile and a lot of pride.

After all, his original journey into Jerusalem, that Palm Sunday remembers, was a massive political statement itself, not a self indulgent self-serving act, as he rode in to the heart of Roman and Jewish power that was Jerusalem. He did not do this in a chariot or surrounded by an army, but on the back of a donkey, with people waving palm trees as a sign on peace.

This was a massive political and social statement. The church and young people here clearly seemed to have remembered this.

 

Would the church in Europe be able to mobilise such large numbers of young people for purely political reasons? and also feel confident enough to take such a political stand against the government and military?

Disorientate me

I sometimes get very confused and disorientated. I have just travelled through 4 Latin American cities in 5 hours, as we flew from Tegucigalpa, via San Jose and Panama City onto Bogota.  This on a day we had woken up in a rather ropey hotel room overlooking one of the most beautiful lakes I’ve seen after a ‘day off’ after a week of work.

Travel can really disorientate and confuse and I sometimes have to check myself in with where I actually am. I know it may seem glamorous, but it can sometimes be quite angst inducing.

Sitting in a vaguely confused state in Panama I realised with LG that the previous month, in the space of 4 days we been through 5 airports – Heathrow, Belfast City, Belfast International, Geneva and London City.

Having said all that, I love what I do and I won’t even mention the words carbon and footprint……

Not so smug…..

I’ve often written about how I can be a bit of a smug vegetarian when I travel. (Read ‘Smug Vegetarian’ and ‘back with a few things off my list‘).Well I have got my comeuppance on this visit. It seems impossible to be one here. Literally every meal has meat in it. Full stop. Firstly, people look very strangely at me when LG tells them i don’t eat meat, and then rather sweetly say that I can have the chicken then. Once we then explain i don’t eat that either, there is usually a shrug of the shoulder, a look of pity and i am served a meal, with the meat simply removed!!

 

Association in the ‘hood’

San Francisco is one of the most notorious ‘colonia’ in Tegucigalpa, literally stuck to one side of a mountain that surrounds the city. As we drove up the ridiculously steep roads to get there, as the sun set, I could not help but feel a bizarre mixture of anxiety and excitement.We were doing everything we had been told not too – not only were we out at night, but we were driving into one of the colonia, whose gang crime and poverty defines modern day Honduras. But how could we understand this problem if we stayed away from the very places that are at its root and didn’t meet met the very people whom are considered at its core.

We had spent most of the day there, which had been a fantastic experience as we spent the day with a schools project that teaches citizenship and advocacy classes, and also been to visit a recreation centre. But this was different. It is at night when the Maras take charge and the Barrio and Colonia of Tegucigalpa become ‘hot’, as people say here.

We were going to spend the evening with a self-formed youth group supported by the ACJ. They meet on a street corner, by a broken wall to be precise. This is youth work at the extremes.

The young people began to gather and come over, intrigued byt the two new arrivals! The two yotuh workers (both volunteers) who lead the group seemed to have such a great rapport with the group and spoke very passionatly about what they ave been doing. They meet, talk and discuss the problems in their Barrio. But they don’t just talk…they have spent the last few years organising themsleves to do small development projects in the area, such as laying roads (which when you see them you’ll know how important that is!), collecting rubbish and working with other young people in gangs

The young people said how great they felt to be part of the solution in their communitites and prove wrong the steroetype that all young people in these areas are criminals in gangs. They also spoke about how they were efffectivly in a gang, but not the gangs we instantly associate with Honduras. But a gang of young people who care about their commuity and will work hard (and at considerable risk) to make it better.

Our night in the Colonia came to and end and as we drive away I could not help but be moved and inspirred by the group we had met. You learn alot about the principle of ‘Association’ in youth work, and the need for young people to feel part of a group, to have a sense of belonging and purpose. When we loose this, either due to family breakdown, leaving school or other social problems, many people here think this is why people join the gangs that blight the society here. They get that ‘Association’ in their new gang…a feeling of selfworth, hope and belonging…but more importnantly a feeling of being valued and supported. When society fail to probide this, young people turn to the gangs, who provide it in abundance.

This project also provides it in abundance…and has created something quite magical.

Childish I know

Language can sometime bring such funny moments and this has been so true here in Latin America. I’ve writen about this before. It has provided rather childish moments of light relief in what has been a week dealing with some really hard issues.

Last night me and LG just couldn’t stop giggling as we were taken out by Fanny to a bar opposite the huge neon sign of the local ‘One Cok’ restaurant opposite us.

Reality

Nothing prepares you for the reality of seeing some one being beaten…and I hope nothing ever does.

After 2 days in the office talking to young people and organisations about the reality of violence here in Tegucigalpa, we took a late evening walk with some of them into town. People are naturally so protective here so we had spent most our time indoors, so it was nice to get out in the air and take in the beauty of the city views and chat with our friends here. As we walked past the football stadium we heard whistles and then saw a young person being chased by 3 policemen. As they caught up to him he slipped and fell right into the fist of one of them. They then proceeded to hold him and beat him very hard over his chest and face, before leading him away out of view.

The young people we were with simply shrugged and said that thats the state repression we have been telling you about…and walked on calmly, which eirly showed to me how this is now the norm.

This is not the first time I have seen people beaten by the army or police, but what struck me about it here was the sheer normality of it. The sounds (that deep echoing sound when someone is hit in the chest) and the random brutality of it naturally shocked me and LG so much, yet the world just carried on around us.

Juxtaposition

There is always a juxtaposition in places I visit.

I have been so surprised by how beautiful Tegucigalpa is. The stories of the city and the country are always so negative and full of the gang crime and murders that blight this country. Yet the city is based in the valleys of two joining rivers, meaning it is a very green city based almost entirely on small hills and mountains that we you are always either driving up or down – god knows how many new clutches they sell here!

On our first afternoon before our work was due to start we were taken up into the hills above the city to a national park, from where you get the most stunning view down over the city…yet conversation turned very quickly to the violence against young people we are here to work on. Stories began of the recent killings, many of them graphic and the patches of bares mountain in amongst the houses, caused by mud slides from Hurricane Mitch are still visible, as bare scars to the tragedy that hit Honduras in 1998. It was impossible to be somewhere just for its beauty and not get engrossed in the stories.

So once again, I was in a beautiful place hearing the most un-beautiful stories. I was again stuck by the juxtaposition of natural beauty with the situation people find themselves in. This has always hit me; Standing on the beach in Kanyakuari in the ruins of homes hit by the Tsunami, doing workshops on conflict with young people at No2 River in Sierra Leone and sitting on the mountain edge in South Africa talking about Apartheid in South Africa are other times when it has really hit me hard.

The beauty of our world can sometimes sit so uncomfortably with the realities of the lives of those who live in it

Miami nights

There is an old tale that goes around NGO workers that if you fly to Latin America with work…if you are very lucky…you fly via Miami. If you are even luckier, your flight connections will mean you get the spend the night there. So I was lucky enough to find that was the case with my latest trip!

In a job where I feel we are made to consistenly feel guilty about taking time off and time for ´us´ when we are working , this was one of the few times when we could justify to oursleves a night out in Miami. An almost guilt free ´perk and ´us´time to relax. We weren´t choosing to do so oursleves, it just happened to work out that way.

The longer I do this job and the more time I spend with other Youth Workers and people in similar chairty jobs, the more I realise how all consuming it is, and the more I see how it is ingrained in us, in our training, to always self-reflect and constructivly criticise what we do.  This is great and makes us better youth workers. Yet the more I see of this, the more I can how damaging it can be, when it becomes a habit to always reflect on what we can do better . This escalates into almost consistent self-criticism. “We are good youth workers so we sit around and beat oursleves up about how bad we are at our job”. By focussing on the 10% that we can do better, we naturally overlook the 90% we have done well. This means we don´t ever think we have done a “good job” or take the pride, confidence and motivation from that, which we need as human beings to keep going.

I meet some unbelievably inspiring and talented youth workers on my travels and i just wish they´d realise that more and give themslves the hug and pat on the back they deserve.

I´m the worst at it, I know, but I did try to say to myself about Miami to just “enjoy myself”, and ”I did deserve a night on South Beach”. And that I certainly did. The late evening swim on the South Beach was awesome and we walked along the sea wake as the sun set. The bars were amazing, the crab dinner unbelievable and the dancing and club (where we go ID´d!! So happy!!) brilliant fun. Our “One night in Miami” was one to remember.

We then had to get up and fly off to Honduras and Colombia for some hard work. Should I feel guilty for having some fun? Am I beating myself up about it? …hmmm…..