Date of Birth: March 30 1975
Hometown: Victoria, British Columbia, Canada
Previous work: Forest firefighter, tree planter, worked with Social Justice Community of Montreal and International Freedom of Expression Exchange.
PBI location: Colombia Project, Uraba subteam.
Groups accompanied: Peace communities of San Jose de Apartado, Cacarica. Justice y Paz and CINEP. Visited Medellin briefly.
Why did you join PBI?
It was a natural choice for me, as I had always worked with human rights groups. I began being politically aware in high school, worked to save old growth forests in BC. I read some Chomsky, Turning the Tide, and started to think about and study the history of Latin America. I heard about it by word of mouth and it was the perfect fit for me.
My experience of protective accompaniment:
If an actual attack happens, that means we’ve been ineffective. But there was one instance in Uraba. We were walking up from the town center of San Jose up towards the outlying hamlet of La Union, which is also part of the peace community, and one of the local farmers came running towards us and told us that further up the trail there was a group of soldiers that had captured two youths and were questioning them, and he was worried that they might be disappeared.
We continued up the trail, and we came across the soldiers, we didn’t see the youths. We started talking to the soldiers very amicably, wished them a good day and started chatting with them. My PBI colleague was Eva Scarfe, one of the longest serving PBI members, she was in Guatemala for years, remarkable woman, she said in the middle of chatting that “We heard there was trouble in the area, a couple of youths, what can you tell us about this?â€?
The soldiers looked a little stunned and went to talk to their commander and came back, and we kept talking with them, but we weren’t going to leave until we found out how those youths were. Five minutes later, they just released these two boys, and we hadn’t made any demands at all. We found out later that they’d had one of them tied to a tree blindfolded and were waving a machete in front of his face, threatening him. People said, if you hadn’t been there, something bad could have happened.
What did you get out of being a volunteer?
I used to hear people talk about their experiences when they came back and I thought it was a bit affected, a bit of an act. People would talk about what a privilege it was to work with these people, so now it feels funny saying it, but I really did learn a hell of a lot from those guys. They’ve been struggling to live in dignity in the middle of this war that’s been going on for half a century, and some of them have a real inner strength.
But not everyone makes it. I saw people who had been crushed, lost family members and then their sanity as a result. Most of the people who did pull through, though, have so much to teach about appreciating life to its fullest. I think if you threw a bunch of Canadians or Americans into that situation, you’d have to have that joy. People would tell the blackest jokes!