Medellín, Colombia was the most beautiful and heart-wrenching month on the Race. While I would have loved to document it all, I took maybe 15 photos the whole month.
I could say that my decision was based on a desire to truly “live in the present” and experience the moment, which, to some extent, it was. The more pressing reality is that there is now way to do justice to certain scenes and experiences with shaky, amateur hands and an iPhone camera, voyeuristically interrupting and invading intimate, personal spaces.
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The city of Medellín nests quietly in a valley in northwestern Colombia. Surrounded by steep, verdant mountains and clouds that cannot determine whether to stay above or below the horizon, the red brick and tiled roofs of the city stretch out below the hillside of Ciudad Refugio, our home for the month, which is a church and rehabilitation center and an international ministry of Times Square Church in New York.
Just twenty-five years ago, under the ruthless reign of the Escobar family drug cartels, specific permission was required even to leave your house to go buy a quart of milk. Even today, many of the taxis in the city still have their license plate numbers posted boldly on the roof of the car, numbers once used by rooftop snipers to identify the city’s coming and goings. It’s still illegal to have two men on a motorcycle together, though the days of drive-by, automatic rifle, moto assassinations are somewhat of a legend.
In the midst of this gruesome and dark past, the city is rising. New civic developments include internationally-renowned libraries placed in the hardest neighborhoods, revolutionary forms of public transit including flights of open-air escalators and ski-lift gondolas to reach the formerly inaccessible barrios on surrounding mountainsides. A new, entrepreneur and small-business incubator pumps technological conversation next door to the freely accessible botanical gardens. City beautification projects abound and every new development is required to have sidewalk features in place to care for the visually-impaired and physically-disabled.
Yet under the surface of this metropolitan phoenix, the effects of the drug cartels are still individually present in raw and painful ways. Our ministry this month consisted of living and working within a drug and alcohol addiction center for men and women. While Patrick lived for a week with the men in the program (see his blog here), I lived the month with two men my age who had recently finished the program and were working as coordinators for the center. Donald was a former illegal arms dealer and Manuel was a soldier turned homeless (Names changed). I would tell you more, but out of respect for my friends and their stories, I can just tell you that life on the streets in Colombia is worse than you can think.
On Wednesdays, volunteers from our church piled in to a truck for Panela y Pan, a ministry to the worst drug colony in Medellín, where we would distribute the hot, sugarcane drink and fresh bread while praying with residents under the overpass bridge on the River that runs through town. It seemed simple, but this was the hardest ministry I’ve ever participated in. I wanted to vomit every time we arrived, not so much from the overwhelming smell of urine and refuse, but from the heartbreaking trances and decayed-mouth mumblings of the dozens and dozens of emaciated crack addicts, whose grimy pipes softly lit their aged and emotionless faces. I wanted to simultaneously cry and keel over. I wanted to grab the shoulders of the thin, middle-aged woman in her denim jacket, to shake her and tell her that she is loved, that she should go home to her children, that there is nothing for her here.
And I admit that I failed as a “missionary.” My roommate Donald and I would travel as pairs to hand out information on our church-shelter-rehab, to listen to and to pray for the men scattered along the ground, heaped under ragged quilts and tarpaulin. While he would tell them the redeeming work in his life, I would just shiver and glance at the chaos of drugs around me. I wanted to open my mouth and say encouragement, to pray and share scripture, but I was overwhelmed by the darkness around me; I couldn’t think of what to speak to a man who is so high or drunk or both that he can barely keep his head from lolling.
Yet in the midst of my failures, Panela y Pan clearly has an impact. It was the first ministry of Ciudad Refugio and continues to be the only source of true light in the rejected community of addicts under the bridge. The most beautiful thing I saw was the heart of a 9 year-old girl, my friend Paula’s daughter. Unfazed by the darkness around her, this girl volunteered with her mother and this ministry every week, fearlessly approaching the addicts and the homeless, loving them unconditionally, with the faith and heart of a child, praying confidently that the Lord would break open their hearts.
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Our contact Harry Dietrich challenged us to find one person this month. One person to whom we would minister, to whom we would be the light of Christ. During our late night conversations over tinto (export-rejected coffee, over-roasted and loaded with sugar; a cheap, familiar Colombian staple) and crackers, it was clear that Donald and Manuel were my “one.” We spoke some of their pasts, but mostly I wanted to hear of their futures, what they wanted in live for, what the Lord was continuing to teach them, continuing to work on in their lives. Even after the Christian rehabilitation program, past struggles can sometimes rise up and overwhelm.
During our first week, Manuel and Donald had their birthdays. After Manuel woke up at 4:50 AM to rouse the homeless who stay in our first floor shelter each night, I quickly strung up a colorful, pennant banner I made for him across his bunk. I waited expectantly – pretending to be asleep – for his return, and when he walked in, he didn’t make much of a comment but I could tell he didn’t know how to handle it. Later in the day I purchased some better instant coffee, crackers and dulce de leche to celebrate. We had a little party of four with the staff member who lived above us, while Eva, an intern from Germany, crooned a beautiful Marilyn Monroe-esque version of “Happy Birthday.” As we were sitting and enjoying our merienda treat, Manuel turned to me and said that in his thirty years, this is only the second time that he celebrated his birthday.
Later in the week I made another colorful banner for Donald and hung it over his bed. We laughed and had more coffee for his birthday as well. He later confided in me that this was the first time he had ever celebrated his birthday.
After these fun celebrations, another alum of the program came up to me and said how meaningful it was to have these guys recognized. For people who have lived their lives constantly thinking of the next drug fix, or where the next gang happening is going to take place, or even where the next place to sleep is, to have a recognition, a celebration of just being a human, loved by God and loved by friends, is an overwhelming taste of the joy outside of addiction.
I won’t lie and say that this month was only full of happy times. Living and working within a rehab facility is tough. Several fistfights arose out of nothing this month, resulting in some men being forced to leave the program. I struggled to minister to the homeless each night in our shelter; our center offers a safe, clean place to be, but I want so much more for the familiar faces that arrived each night, I wanted them to take the opportunity to encounter the Lord through Ciudad Refugio’s recovery program, rather than just spend the night. At Panela y Pan one night, we encountered a childhood friend of Donald, now living in the streets and another night we encountered a former resident of the rehab program, stuck in his former life once again.
But I continue to have hope, hope that creeps like a flowering ivy out of the quiet streets of Medellín, “City of the Eternal Spring.” While urban and economic renewal slowly change block by block, I trust that the Lord is continuing to use Pastor Douglas and his staff to renew the hearts of the Colombian people. While it is hard to see a glimpse of what street life is like in Medellín, the beds of the Ciudad Refugio program are always full, men are still trickling in, of their own accord, and discovering the restoration available to all, through the redemptive work of Christ.
