This week in Colombia

This week I was assigned to collect the coyuntura which translates to something like the current situation. So I read a lot of different news sources cut pasted and summarized. So here is what happened in, or pertained to Colombia this week.

Five families are suing Chiquita brands for the deaths of their husbands because Chiquita Brands was paying the FARC for protection and they were kidnapped and killed by the FARC.

Ingrid Betancourt who was a leftist presidential candidate and dual french citizen is in bad health. She was kidnapped by the FARC in 2002. The Colombian gov has offered to eliminate many of the restrictions for prisoner exchanges in order to work out a deal with the FARC.

The problems between Colombia and its neighbors continue. At the beginning of this week Ecuador was accusing Colombia of murdering one of its citizens who was completely innocent during the cross border raid four weeks ago. However by the end of the week it came out the the Ecuadorian had actually been helping the FARC.

President Bush is trying to push through the Free Trade Agreement with Colombia. It will probably be reintroduced in the Congress on Tuesday.

In the Washington Post there was an article about extra judicial killings in Colombia. The newest PBI bulletin is also about this theme the English version should be out soon I will post a link when it is .

In more personal news. Alessandra(an Italian who got here at the same time as me) and I did do a couple of things on our own. We have weekly meeting with some of the organizations that we accompany and we went to one of those by ourselves. We also tried to accompany a lawyer from one of the lawyers groups that we accompany to a hearing but when we got there it was postponed.

Crater Lake

On Sunday we took a hike to this crater lake. It was pretty nice to get out of the city and not be in training workshop mode. It was actually quite a long hike about 12 Kilometers. I am not sure what that is in miles but it took us most of the day. It used to be a sacred lake and many treasure hunters went to great lengths to try and see if they could find gold or valuable artifacts at the bottom but to little avail. You can see the cut out in the side of the lake just above the guard rail where people dynamited a huge slash in the crater in order to try and drain the lake. Although they did manage to reduce the water level by about 50 meters they still did not find any treasure.
On Thursday morning we said goodbye to two of the people who had been training with me as they headed off to their respective subteams. Now the real work begins Thursday was filled with meetings about the structure of the Bogotá team and also deciding who will be the new liaisons for the various sections of the project and the different orgs that we accompany. Today I worked on a risk analysis for an upcoming accompaniment. Here in Colombia most people have off Thurs-Mon for Semana Santa so things are pretty tranquilo.

I Made It Finally

I have finally arrived in Colombia. It was kind of a long journey. So I was supposed to leave on Sunday but about an hour before my flight was supposed to take off the gate agent started asking for volunteers to get take the next available flight because the plane was to heavy. They had to have to much fuel on it or something. And they said if they did not get volunteers they would kick people off starting with those who had booked their tickets last. Well that probably would be me since I only bought the ticket a few days prior so I just went ahead and volunteered. But they could not get me to Bogota that night instead I went to Chicago and then to Miami and stayed the night in Miami. They put me up in a hotel in Miami so it was not that bad. I got here at about 1 and only missed one workshop of our training. So all in all I did not miss much. Plus I got $300 to use on American Airlines. I did have to jump right into things as soon as I got here. I got some lunch and then it was straight to work with a presentation of the organizational structure here in Colombia. We have a full week of trainings and presentations and getting documents in order before we actually start working but it should be pretty interesting.

Colombia!!!!! ...Almost

So first there was the problem with the visa. Well not really a problem just a waiting game. As I said before I applied for the visa two weeks and a day before I was supposed to leave. But I could not by my plane ticket until I actually had the visa. So I did get the visa and bought a plane ticket for two days later. I should have left this morning however I got a call at 5:45 in the morning saying that my flight had been canceled. Wha whu. It was actually not that surprising. For those of you not in the Cincinnati region we just got whacked by the biggest snow storm in 5 years or something we got anywhere from 8 to 12 inches in a 36 hour period. So I am rebooked on the same flight tomorrow (Sunday). Hopefully they can clear off the runways by then.