The time has come. Finally at 11:00 a.m. after last errands, we meet our cab driver and we drive to San José de Apartado.it is raining in torrents and at the same time very warm. One feels like in a greenhouse and always wants to open the door.
The road is difficult to drive on but is being repaired. The Consejo (the elected responsible body of the community) had to leave at short notice together with representatives of the Paloma (an international group from Italy), who can now be here in the community again after the Corona crisis. They are the only international aid workers on the ground. All others were withdrawn two years ago, and so the community was left to its own devices for a long time.
We are warmly welcomed. I would like to single out Brigida, who has been with us in Tamera a few times.
She tells us about life here, about what the community went through during the Corona times, and also about the difficulties within the community.
It sounds a bit similar to what I hear from many communities. It takes a high strength of perseverance and attachment to the vision. ” The difficulties we go through are everywhere. All over the world. We all go through the same processes in communities.” she says
The community has shrunk tremendously. When we met them there were well over 1000 members. It was more of an emergency community to defend themselves against the threat of the military and paramilitary. Together with Eduar Lanceiro (who died a few years ago) and Padre Javier Giraldo, they founded a non-violent movement of Resistencia. (More information can be found on our website: www.tamera.org) Furthermore, two days ago a wonderful article was published in Rubikon, where you can also learn more about the background of our work: A Presence without War | Rubikon Magazine
Some have left the community because they were offered money, others because they simply lost faith in the vision.
Brigida tells all this very warmly and without any kind of condemnation. She says: “It is good, those who find it too difficult should leave. We stay in good contact. Those who stay here really want it and know why they are here”.
We sit on their small terrace. More and more residents join us. Andrea, who is the spokesperson for San José from Tamera, has visited the community the most. She brought her knowledge as a nurse at the time of the Global Camus, knows the history of the individual residents particularly intimately and is loved by everyone here. She has the direct contact with the people and it is enormous with what language skills she moves here. The people love her.
We walk about the place, greeting the people, the stone placements that we placed here many years ago during a Global Campus with the community, the small chapel that they later built. In the chapel they have installed with much love stained glass windows, each window makes visible a cosmogram, which we have worked out together and which were also chiseled into the stones. We have dinner, settle into our “five star hotel” surrounded by cats, mosquitoes, children, chickens and a lively hustle and bustle. We are staying in the international house. It has been empty for several years. A wooden barrack, through the cracks the wind blows, if it rains particularly hard, with comes with the gusts of wind also water into the house, it is covered with a corrugated iron roof. We feel at home here! And are glad that we can be here. On the wall there is a painting by Bijou, a co-worker of Tamera, and on the shelf there is a small box of Tamera salt from Aldeia da luz.