After flying from Bogota to Barrancabermeja (a flight of about 40 minutes north) on Monday, we took on Tuesday this week at 7 AM again a "chalupa", the river boat public transport very common in the large Magdalena river delta. After a boat ride of three hours (very sore butt in the end), we arrived near our destination Santa Rosa del Sur. Here is our arrival point where they were cleaning fish and had a very particular early "customer" looking for some left-overs.....
After a short taxi ride we arrived in Santa Rosa for two days of community project stakeholder sessions. We started off with a visit to the mayor's office. A humble man who has a background as an artesanal miner. In his office he had an interesting collection of archeological finds of the area:
Leaving the mayor's office, you get a good view of the housing in the central village area. Not sure if everybody has building permits for everything and if so, whether they construct according to building codes..... Let me give you an impression of the streets of Santa Rosa del Sur. Photos do not really do the atmopshere justice, but let's walk around a bit in this town of about 20,000 people:
People chatting everywhere and lots and lots of motorcycles... the main form of transport in these kind of towns. Some people are quite creative with the paint job on their motor cycle:
In the late afternoon we attended part of a weekly meeting of one of the local miners associations and we invited them to come the next day for the working groups to express what their interests are for increased SENA training programs in their community:
We had a few good meals during our days in Santa Rosa del Sur. All fresh food and the portions are quite large (as observed already in earlier posts). Because I know Sue, Kyla and others are interested to see what the food is, here a few photos:
One of the many excellent soups served with the typical "patacones" (the types of bananas you can not eat raw, but which are delicious when fried/cooked). The rice dishes are also very rich:
These are "patacones" with fillings of meat and lots of local made cheese. And then there are many local fish and meat dishes, all with rich cheese sauces, sweet sauces and other toppings:
The second day we had a stakeholders session of about six hours with a lot of active participation. About fifty people were welcomed and registered. Most of these sessions start with protocol national anthem, local municipality song and this time also a SENA student's song:
After some short opening speeches, Bibiana and Sandra started the day off with a presentation on our EFE (Education for Education) project, and then the audience was divided up in smaller groups who discussed for about 2 hours their insights. The groups were facilitated by both SENA staff and some volunteers from the government's social agency "Unidos". Very good and lively discussions. In the end all the groups reported in a plenairy session. Some of the miners voiced very clearly their fear for large companies coming in (and "stealing" their livelyhood) as well as government corruption. Some of it is based on a variety of truly bad experiences, but a lot of it is fed by low levels of education and a lack of understanding of citizenship. Informal economies are a bit "free for all" but also full of very serious risk of no social "safety net" when accidents happen. In addition, informal businesses do not contribute to the society through taxes which then results in a municipality not having enough funds for local services from infrastructure to medical & sanitation services just to mention a few. Having the people discuss all of this, and having a listening and open attitude, will hopefully create a good base for getting the miners and farmers willing to get involved in the project and the training programs which will be developed during the cooperation between SENA and Canadian colleges.
In one of the restaurants they had some good photos of the area on the walls. Above a photo which shows you a bit of the large Magdalena river delta, an area rich in gold and other minerals. The mountain on the photo below is full of gold, but it is in an area declared a national park. You can imagine the debates such decisions cause.
This photo shows the community about 30 years ago with some of the early gold diggers.
In between our meetings, Bibiana used the visit to meet with a few groups of SENA students in a variety of currently offered courses in the town (topography, environmental management and also an orientation session for high school students interested in SENA courses).
We ended our two days by attending a session for local farmers hosted jointly by SENA and the provincial Ministry of Agriculture (about the use of chemicals in farming). The two days were jam-packed full of activities and meetings. This community has about 50-50 balance between formal and informal businesses and is improvig on that scale compared to 10-15 years ago. They suffered a lot from the isolation caused by the 50 years of conflict between the government and the guerilla groups. There is a lot of hesitation about outside companies and influence, but on the other hand people also realize that they need to adjust. A few farmers and miner associations had started reforestation projects (the miners use a lot of wood for the mine-shaft construction and of course the farmers need land to do their work). It was again - just like in the Barranco de Loba municipality two weeks ago and the areas we visited in Antioquia last week - an emotional roller-coaster.... lots to think about.
No comments:
Post a Comment