Surprise!

Case and I went to the campo for a short trip this weekend. We left Friday morning and came back last night. But in those 36 hours we were out there, we had a number of surprises.

First, when we got to San Luis, where we were planning to attend a meeting, we found that half the people in the meeting we’re waiting in line for a government service being offered that day only. So the meeting moved to inside the place where the government was operating. Surprise, you’re now at a meeting among hundreds of people lined up to wait for government assistance.

This was just one of the lines. They stretched around and through most of the buildings on the block. And they were going slow enough that the organizers had provided chairs.

 

Surprise number two came the next day, in San Carlos, where the meeting we were planning to attend had been cancelled due to the same government program. So, instead, we interviewed one of the leaders of the reconciliation work there. Casey asked her about locally led peacebuilding work – something that all the national and international level people tell us doesn’t exist, but what Casey’s thesis will prove does. The woman pulled out a 20-foot-long decorative timeline showing all the work that had been done over the years in just this municipality. Surprise, here’s a sh_t-ton of evidence for your thesis.

Along the green-bordered path are cutouts of footprints, each of which has text documenting another act of grassroots peacebuilding.

Finally, at some point in the weekend, we were sent the photo below. We regularly get great photos of our nephew, so this isn’t really a surprise, I just wanted to include it because the kid’s so darn cute!