Life Beyond War

Gabriella Lundy

Colegio Colombo Británico. Grado once.

Ilustración: Laura Corredor. Grado 9. Colegio Colombo Británico.

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Believe me when I tell you that war has taught me only one thing. Not how to cope with the loss of loved ones, or learn to leave everything behind. War hasn’t taught me to hold back my tears, to keep my pain hidden from the world.

War has taught me that forgiveness is possible.

On the first of May 2002, Bojayá was as peaceful as ever. The humidity was ever-present, the mud splashing the roads. As I walked out of my house, I could immediately see the wide expanse of trees that were full of life. When people think of Bojayá, they imagine a poor village, excluded from the outside world; a place where dirt, mud and blood is everything there is to see. Yet in eyes that have scanned this horizon for years, my home is so much more. It is laughter in the street and passionate dances. It is running barefoot and knowing every single villager. It is food and culture and happiness… It is life.

But life was extinguished from my town. Extinguished so suddenly that many of us thought it was a dream. A flicker of the candle before it would light again in all its splendor. A glitch, malfunction, mistake; anything but reality.

It is hard. Hard to walk the same streets and remember that day. Hard to read the list of names of those gone. Hard to turn around and see children chasing a ball, before realizing that your eyes are playing tricks on you and that the kids you swore to see were nothing more that ghosts crafted by your mind.

On the first of May 2002, I walked my son to school. The war was coming, that’s what the men said. The paracos had already arrived in Bellavista. And the FARC was moving faster than expected. But the government said not to worry. Again, and again, we were told not to worry. We were safe, we were guarded. They wouldn’t harm us because we were civilians… As if that had ever stopped them.

With him still clutching my hand, we entered the school. The property was basic: four separate rooms, with no doors or windows. Tufts of overgrown grass decorated the place, and a faded sign showed the name of the school. As soon as we arrived on the courtyard, my son turned around, gave me a kiss on the cheek and ran off to play with some other boys. Running after a football and dirtying their uniforms, you could hear their laughter; a sound so innocent, so pure, that war was forgotten for just a minute.

That was the last time I heard him laugh.

By noon, the tension had grown. I hadn’t told my son -what use was scaring a five-year-old? – but there were rumors of confrontations. People were saying that we should worry, that the government was unable to protect us, that they were coming, coming fast. Many were saying that running away was futile; they would kill us all. That this was our doom. Our death.

At the end, we hid in the church. I ran back to the school and took my son in my arms. He didn’t understand what was going on, but he didn’t cry. Alongside us, men and women were sprinting, finding refuge. There were cries and curses rising through the air. War turns us into something else, something not human. We were not individuals at that time; we were just a mob moved by fear of war, weapons and death.

The church was filled with 700 bodies, clustered together in vain attempts to lock away the reality. This isn’t happening. War isn’t here. Not in our peaceful home. Kids cried, women prayed, men talked and yet the war continued. They were out there, fighting for something we couldn’t understand. Hearing the screams, it was easy to forget that they were also human; people with families, stories and dreams. Kids who had been pulled at night and given a rifle. Parents who had done everything to keep their children alive. Men and women forgotten by the country. How often do we forget that?

The night came and went, and the battle continued. No one dared  to leave the church. Not when hell was waiting outside the door. The paramilitaries were scuttering through the street, closing in on us. They were moving fast, using our own houses as bunkers. And the FARC were farther out, planning, plotting, firing. They were tracking the position of the paracos, waiting to find a shot that would bring them all down.

When the rays of sunlight were filtering through the crack in the door, our future was shaped. It came in the form of a gas cylinder bomb. A bomb that went awry. One second I was there, patting my son’s head, drinking in the miracle of life, of children, of parenthood, and the next second everything went black with blood and rumble and death.

On that day, we lost 79 souls, 48 of them were children. One of them was my son! I would never feel his hand on mine, hear his laughter. I would never see him grow, start a family. I would never get to say, with the love of a mother, that he was my biggest gift.

But years later, I say forgiveness is possible.

Possible in a way that I have forgiven my son’s killers. That my neighbors no longer cry when they remember the day. That the entire town has stopped seeing blood instead of rain; heard cries instead of laughter.

It has been a long road. A road of sorrow turned to hatred, turned to despair, turned to understanding,  turned to healing,  turned to forgiveness. A road where many Colombians still find themselves. A road that seems endless.

A road.
But all roads must end.
And at the end of this journey we must find what we have been looking for all these years.
Peace. At last.

The End

Gracias por leer mi escrito.

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