A post long overdue!!!

I believe I wrote my last blog post around May 20th, about my one month anniversary of HNGR.  Well, right now it is month four and a half.  Three and a half months have passed.  Three and a half months of sometimes busyness, sometimes slowness.  Highs and lows and in betweens.  There is no way I could sum up three and a half months well.  But even if I wrote every single week, it would be hard to sum up a HNGR experience.

They say that a picture says 1,000 words.  So here are some pictures from the last three and a half months that give a snapshot of not just what I am doing here but the rhythms of daily life.  This is a LONG post with a lot of pictures, finally this week...after four and a half months, I got a flash drive and was able to download photos off my phone to another computer then transfer them to my computer because my computer doesn't have a slot for a memory card. Rather than trying to explain three and a half months of words, I think pictures will give a better idea of what life is like.  Most of these pictures come from the little, ordinary moments of life and are rather disorganized, but that is a bit accurate of life here.

My host brother cooked "enyucao," a cake made with grated yucca, coconut and other yummy things, cooked on a stove and wrapped in a banana leaf.  This pic deceptively looks like I made it, I just helped with the hard work of eating it :)  

A fellow volunteer who was here in June and food from Manuela's Restaurant, or what I like to  call the food my host mom makes, very yummy and probably mango juice!!  Qué mango!

A pretty typical lunch: rice, salad (really just lettuce, here chopped lettuce=salad which makes me a little sad), fried plantain slices, stewed chicken leg, and a lentil soup

Of course there would be a chicken on the beach in Colombia...

A restaurant on the beach, or "la playa" at a little retreat we had for volunteers.  This glorious plate of food is the typical plate of food on the coast (AKA, go to any of the restaurants on the beach and this is the only option on the menu--good thing its super yummy!)

"Que el guerra duerma en paz"  May war rest in peace!!

This is not a baby monster, or a villain from Veggie Tales, although the size and spiked outward appearance  would say otherwise.  It is the guanabana, a wonderful creamy white fruit that is kind of like vanilla frozen yogurt.

We had so much watermelon one day from the farm, our family decided to name it "El Festivo del Día de la Patilla" or the festival of the day of watermelon, a tradition I think we should propose to the national government :)

When it is the temporada, or season of a fruit, this is what the kitchen table looks like.  This was the season of the guanoabana!

Plumeria on the farm, almost too perfect to be real!

Narcissi killed two snakes in one day, very very poisonous, but we always wear rubber boots when walking on the farm, which Narciso is displaying in this picture.  Recently we have had a little bit of a snake problem because of neighbors slashing and burning on their property, driving the snakes to ours, where we do not slash and burn.

A sunset and papaya trees, what a marvelous combination!

Days on the farm can be long, and one of the things I have taken up in my free time is painting and drawing.

I made homemade bread!

A meeting at the Sembrandopaz office (and the day our dog Chiqui came, definitely not normal to have dogs at meetings, but I like that idea).  This was our mid-year evaluation meeting where we evaluate all of the accompaniment work that we do in the communities.  Sembrandopaz is a peace building organization that works closely with several primarily campesino communities on the Caribbean Coast.  As an organization, we focus on accompaniment rather than projects, with a defined start and end goal because peace building cannot be defined by projects.  

Meet the anon.  A delicious tropical fruit that is as much seeds as fruit, but reminiscent of the guanabana--aka vanilla ice cream.

The field of eggplant on the farm, also starring Tommy.  Here one can see a lot of the agroecological practices of the Finca Villa Barbara at work.  In this field we are intercropping eggplant and canavalia, a legume that helps to fix nitrogen.  In order to prevent soil erosion, we have planted rows of lemongrass horizontally along the slope.  And that funky blue contraption is a dew catcher--condensation will collect in the web, drip down into a channel beneath, and be used to irrigate the field.  

This is a wild fruit tree called the Hobo fruit.  Maybe not the most pleasant or exciting name, but the fruit happens to be both pleasant and exciting--like the hybrid of a peach, apricot, and cherry.

My wonderful host sisters and dog, and my attempts to draw them! 

Fried Okra, pt. 1 (channeling my Southern roots or at least pretending--this was the first time I cooked okra in my life)

Fried Okra, pt. 2

Fried okra, Pt. 3 (not bad, eh)

Shoutout to Hannah if you read this, thanks for this great piece of room decor from Vietnam!

A very campesino breakfast: yuca slices, Costeño cheese, scrambled eggs, cabeza de gato (translates "head of a cat:" don't worry no cats were involved in the making of this--it is smashed boiled plantains mixed with onions and garlic, normally served shaped into balls)

A sunset in Cartagena.

Hostel El Viajero in Cartagena.

"Museum of Cacao and Chocolate" in Cartagena, Colombia.  There was no way I was going to  pass this by without stopping in (and sampling everything)

Hmm sounds pretty accurate "The show of Trump: profile of a seller of smoke"

Cartagena! 

I cooked a candy make with caramelized green papaya called "caballitos" 

A little more sugar to celebrate my 23rd birthday, with a strawberry lime cake.   Half cake, half frosting in true Amy fashion :)

Birthday dinner: arroz con pollo (chicken with rice) and hot chocolate.  Arroz con pollo sounds deceptively simple but my host mom does some magic with simple ingredients rice, chicken, and vegetables, and it becomes debatably the best food you can eat in Colombia (in my opinion, that is)

A new kitten was added to the animal fam about a month and a half ago, her name is "bruja" or witch.  

A harvest from the farm, including dried corn kernels, eggs from the hens, tomatoes, and dried shelled beans.  

The first chicken I killed (**tears**).  I thought my host dad wanted me to go watch him kill a chicken, but that was apparently not the case...

Chicken stew, from above chickens.

Fried fish, yucca, huyama.  I am perfecting my technique of eating a whole fish without ingesting the hundreds of little spines.  A chore, but worth it!  

Host cousin, exploring the farm!!

This wasn't as dangerous as it looks (only almost)

Host brother and sister and dog on the farm!

A stand at the beach.

I went to the Sincelejo Pentecostal Convention.  The most Pentecostals I have been around in once place, very neat, but very Pentecostal 

5th National Convention, "Walking in the Spirit," Pentecostal Church of Colombia, July 2-3 2016.

Me with host brother and sister at the Convention.

Cooked tacos with a friend in the community of Pichilín.  A very un-Colombian food, contrary to popular misconceptions.

July 16 was the Festival of the Virgin of El Carmen.  I visited El Carmen for the weekend with fellow volunteers Liana and Katrina, where Sembrandopaz also has a small office where it bases work in the Montes de Maria, a region made of many small pueblos where Sembrandopaz works.  Here in Colombia, a predominantly Catholic society  (or at least that was its heritage in the past, it is not as evident currently), many pueblos have a patron saint.  Well on this day to celebrate, there is a large procession down the principle street in the town.  So here we are, waiting for the procession to pass.

Everyone marching in the streets, holding candles, and the light in the distance  is from the statue of the virgin of El Carmen, being carried down the street with a ton of people following both in front and behind.  We decided to follow the procession.  It involved a live band playing the same short song over and over again...and after three hours we made it to the town center, what an experience!

Introducing my new favorite Colombian fruit, the Mamón.  If the pink Jolly Rancher became a fruit,  this would be it.

The night I cooked dinner (well, sort of).  Black bean burgers, fried yucca,  arepas, and rice with huyama (winter squash).  In celebration of Colombian food and carbohydrates.

In the rural community of Libertad, drinking maté and making art!  Maté is a tea, similar to green tea that is either native to or at least very popular in Paraguay--there they have these special cups and straws that one uses to drink this tea as seen in this picture.  I am at the house of a friend and SEEDer who lives  in the community.    The Mennonite SEED program is a program where volunteers live in several communities, getting to know the community and accompanying the community in the processes of peace building that Semnbradopaz supports and facilitates.  Thanks to the SEEDers and their knowledge of the community, I have been able to the project of agricultural and food surveys for Sembrandopaz.  

Art + maté, a great combination.

A house in Libertad; very typical style with palm roof.  

Libertad.

Libertad is located right on the Colombian coast.  It is a rather large community, and its northernmost boundary is the Caribbean Sea.  While in Libertad, I was able to visit the beach for a short bit.  

Beach in Libertad.

Shells on the beach.  This is not a tourist beach as can be seen by the abundance of shells.  Rather than having a bunch of tourists, the shoreline is linked with small fishing boats, representing the livelihood of many in the community.

Dr. Lewis and Ia visit!  This was the first night when I cooked them some Colombian food outside the Sembrandopaz office.  I was happy to demonstrate my Colombian cooking skills (avocado salad, arepa, sliced fried eggplant from the farm, cheese, and sliced fried plantain.)  I'm glad I decided to make food because later in the week when we went searching for a restaurant, it was surprisingly hard to find!  Here there is a tradition of going out to restaurants for lunch.  The experience is not at all like an American restaurant and it is very cheap, even for Colombian standards (typically between 5,000 and 8,000 Colombian pesos, or approximately a little less than 2 USD to a little less than 3 USD).  There isn't a menu but rather a few "corrientes" or options of the day which one can choose from, usually a few cuts of different meats and a vegetarian option.  One the side are a variety typical Colombian staples: always rice, sometimes fried plantain, sometimes beans or lentils, a salad usually of lettuce and tomato, sometimes pasta.  The meal almost always starts with a soup--a meat and bone broth based soup with either yucca, green plantain, or ñame (a potato-like root vegetable).  And it is almost always served with "aguapanela"  a drink made with brown sugar like panela, water, and a little bit of lime or orange juice.   

Some animal friends we have on the farm, a baby capybara and a rabbit.  

Dr. Lewis and Ia, learning about the Finca Villa Barbara from Lillian of Sembrandopaz, who supervises my work on the farm.

Kira.  Cats of HNGR pt. 1.

Plaza de Majagual, located close to the office of Sembrandopaz, a great spot for people watching.  

Cats of HNGR, pt. 2.  Cats vs HNGR HW (to name one of the many distractions that one might face when trying to get HNGR HW done).

Meet the Corozó!  I have no idea what this grape-like fruit is in English...It is vaguely like grapes but way more tart with a thick skin and big seed in the middle.  Amply sweetened, it makes a lovely juice!

This was a photo I took at an activity at a workshop in one of the communities, Berruguitas (a rural, agricultural community--and rural in the sense that we had to cross six rivers to get there, in a truck--almost getting stuck once).  I was just there really to watch, but it was neat to be able to attend.  One of the goals of Sembrandopaz is capacity building and development that starts within the community and is defined by the community.  The goal of this meeting was to map out community resources and challenges--what challenges does the community face, what resources do that have, and how might they utilize their resources to develop as a community?

Art in Berruguitas.  When an outsider enters into this community, they might not see a lot of potential.  But what the community has is resources and an amazing sense of creatively, that can make something beautiful. 

This was from an agroecology workshop in one of the communities that I was able to attend--the principles of agroecology.

The advantages and disadvantages of burning and not burning the land before planting--this is what those at the workshop came up with.  

Finca Villa Barbara in the early evening.

This was taken at a celebration for peace (before the signing of peace and before the vote for peace) in a town called El Carmen.  

Talking about the peace agreement the day that the peace agreement was signed--in this event, a variety of voices spoke about their past and about what the peace agreement will involve for Colombia now and in the future.  This was before the plebiscite vote--and part of the event was to encourage people to vote yes to the peace accords between the government and the FARC.  

I was able to be in Cartagena, where the peace accords were signed between Santos (left) and Timochenko (right,  leader of the FARC).  The signing of this accord occurred before people voted to ratify the accord (still not exactly sure why this occurred...But basically everyone very much expected that the vote to ratify the accord would win).  This occurred a week before the plebiscite vote.  Even though it was very much expected that the "Sí" or yes vote would win, the "No" vote won by an extremely small margin.  All of this deserves a whole other blog post of its own, that is my next goal.  

Colombian celebrates a hope for peace, near where the peace accords were signed in Cartagena.

Cartagena, same location as above, united hands for peace.  

The coastline of Cartagena...so beautiful!

I gave my host sisters permission to do my makeup for my birthday, and this is what happened :)

My crazy host sister :)

A typical campesino breakfast with an ample portion of my new favorite food, huyama (winter squash ind of like butternut squash but less sweet and starchier).  Also represented, the ever-present yucca as well as eggs.  

My other host sister :)