Delegate Diaries

The engine roars. The wheels spin. Mud splatters onto the windscreen.
Stuck again. Huberth our moustachioed field officer and driver gets out of the Landcruiser to examine the situation.
Last night's rain has relandscaped this portion of the unpaved mountain road into a criss-cross of mud-filled gulleys.
What's new.
Up here in the mountains of the Serranía de Perijá, near Colombia's north-eastern border with Venezuela, rain and bad roads are not uncommon. More engine roaring and wheel-spinning and five minutes later we're on our way again.
There are five of us in the car heading northwards to the tiny hamlet of Las Vegas where the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) is supporting a horticultural project.
My job as field delegate is to find out how these isolated communities are coping with the presence of armed groups or the army nearby. The others are specifically focussing on the viability of the horticultural project and the economic circumstances of the people living in the area.
Las Vegas is no 24-hour, desert-located gambler's paradise.
It is rather a collection of small coffee and fruit farms scattered around a mountain valley, 6 hours walk from the Venezuelan border. It has a school and a church.
The nearest shop is half an hour's walk up the mountain-side to the nearby hamlet of La Frontera.
Las Vegas is situated in the rural zone of the municipality of Codazzi which the ICRC has identified as a priority zone for its field activities in Colombia. It has been working with a number of communities in this area for around three years.
It is a region long known for having the presence of armed groups and the communities of this mountainous terrain have watched as these different armed groups have fought for control of the area.
Communities that had been accustomed to live with one group would suddenly find themselves under the dominion of another.
Food restrictions, disappearances, extrajudicial killings and threats were a constant and immense pressure on these communities. For many it was too much to bear and they chose to abandon everything and leave the area, relocating themselves to Codazzi or further afield to the bigger urban centres of Valledupar and Barranquilla.
But in the last year and a half things have gradually begun to change for the better.
Attacks against the civilian population have reduced dramatically. Families are returning to their farms. People feel able to go and work in the fields.
The ICRC's activities in the region originally focused on bringing health services to the local population, first with only ICRC medical staff, and then jointly with the local hospital.
We also carried out construction projects, building latrines and classrooms for a local school and then last year, we started the garden project in Las Vegas that we're here to evaluate.
The community organised themselves into 7 groups, each of which was to create and tend its own vegetable garden. By being able to grow their own vegetables families reduced their need to travel so often to Codazzi to shop – a journey that is time-consuming, expensive and at times risky.
The money saved on food could also be spent on other basic needs such as clothes for the children, medicines, tools for the farm, etc. Each group was supplied with tools and seeds for its garden and we visited every couple of months to carry out horticultural training.
Of course the value of the project lies not only in providing families in a difficult economic situation with another means of feeding themselves. Through its presence the ICRC gives confidence to the community.
Logically, or not, they say they feel protected by the fact that the ICRC is visiting them. It also allows us to understand what is really going on in the area. An important part of the CRC's role in conflict situations is to monitor how armed groups are respecting International Humanitarian Law (IHL), the law that governs the conduct of armed conflicts.
When the ICRC receives allegations of violations of IHL, such as extrajudicial killings and disappearances, it follows up with the commanders of the armed group believed to be responsible to discourage them from further acts of this kind It is hoped that such dialogue can lead to an improvement in the conduct of hostilities.
By early afternoon we've reached La Frontera, which is as far as the road goes.
The local shop owner, prepares us a hearty chicken soup before we brave the steep descent on foot down the mountain to Las Vegas.
Three o'clock in the afternoon finds us gathered in a circle with our community gardeners. Tomorrow morning we will all ascend the mountain to one of the seven gardens where Gloria will give a final training session on compost and pest control. Afterwards our final evaluation will calculate how much of each different vegetable they produced, what proportion they ate and what they sold or gave away.
Planning done we head back up to the car where Huberth has already set-up camp for the night in an unused old billiards room. Food, chat and card-playing and then by 9pm we're all bedded down in our mosquito domes, worn out by the day’s journey.
We're up early the next morning and after cold showers and breakfast we set off up the very steep path to the farm of one of the local farmers. Despite our somewhat slow walking pace we're not the last to arrive and there's time to catch our breath, cool off and have a tinto (coffee) while waiting for everyone to arrive.
It's moments like these that are often the most important on field trips as we chat informally with those who have already arrived. Of course gaining people's confidence to get them to open up about such delicate subjects is a slow process but these garden projects are a great tool, facilitating regular contact between us and the community and providing plenty of opportunities for informal chats.
Within half an hour everyone has arrived and we're all getting our hands dirty in the garden looking for pests that have been eating the cabbage leaves. The group shows off the results of previous training sessions: a compost-maker consisting of a large wooden trough full of old leaves and soil slowly being turned into rich compost by an army of worms. Soon we're all delving into the compost to see who can find the biggest worm.
Back down at the school in the afternoon it's pens, paper and post-its for the final evaluation. What were the pros and cons of the project? How much cabbage did they eat? Who managed to keep seeds for replanting next year? What could have been improved?
While they're busy answering these and other questions I'm called aside to talk to a woman whose husband disappeared last month. Listening to her I'm reminded that this trip isn't just a horticultural lesson.
Despite the beautiful scenery and friendly people this is still a place where horrible things happen and often happen to ordinary people.
What can we do for this woman?
In the case of disappeared people who we know have been taken by an armed group, when we have good contacts with the group, we can try and ask them whether the person is alive or dead and, if alive, the possibility of passing a message to him from his family. If the person has been killed and the family has been able to bury the body we can help the family with the funeral costs.
Frustratingly, sometimes the real help we can offer is often very little. Nonetheless the mere fact of being listened to, and feeling that someone is taking an interest, is often a support in itself.
Back up in our billiard-room hotel we exchange views on the day's evaluation. The project is deemed a success. In production terms the gardens were well-tended and yielded a good crop of vegetables, having a real impact on the basic food and economic security of the community.
The participants had also felt that the project had contributed greatly to community cohesion offering a space for them all to come together and get to know each other better.
The most significant impact, agreed by everyone, was that the project had come at a time when the persecution and fear that the community was experiencing was leading many to seriously consider abandoning the area. The arrival of the ICRC, they claimed, gave people the confidence to stay and see how the situation developed.
Bouncing and sliding back down the mountain to the beat of the local Vallenato music playing on the car radio the next morning, the conversation turns to next steps. With the agro project complete, is that it for ICRC involvement? The consensus seems to be no. The situation in the area is definitely improving but has not yet normalized. To withdraw now would be premature. It looks like a few more adventures in the mountains of the Serranía de Perijá still await us.