Felicity: Crossing the Bridge

Cartagena, Colombia — White-sand beaches and teal Caribbean waters draw thousands of sun worshippers to the nearby Islas de Rosario, but no tourists have ever stepped foot in the neighborhood locals call "Isla de Leon."

There is no ocean here. Nor is there a single tree providing shade, or any sign of a café offering cold gaseosas or a respite from the blistering sun. Even the weathered-wood homes, however colorful, are unfit for the most rustic beachfront resort.

But the worst part about living on this desolate spit of land, says 36-year-old Felicity Losada, is the soil. On hot summer days like today, it is dried and cracked like a parched tongue. During winter rains, it is so impervious to water that floods force the island's 100-or-so families to evacuate. They cross a rickety footbridge to get to the other side of the 20-foot-wide ditch of greenish sewage that separates Isla de Leon from roads and services, and stay in a nearby school for as long as two months.

The land is so inhospitable to gardening that Felicity has no hope of planting tomatoes, yucca, garlic or mango — all of which she used to cultivate on her modest ranch in the country. "The land there was productivo," she says, nodding her head for emphasis. "We grew enough to buy or trade whatever we needed to eat. I had everything I needed in life there."

Tears wells in her eyes as she explains what brought her family of six to Cartagena in 2002. The country's decades-long armed conflict had come to town, and neighbors started receiving threatening letters. Leave within 24 hours, they said, or else. "We don't know if they were guerilla or paramilitary. But many people lost their families," Felicity says. "We didn't want to wait around for the letter."

Winter floods require residents to stay on this side of the waterway that separates Isla de Leon from roads, services, schools and jobs. Photo: Miguel Samper for Mercy Corps

Officially, there are 10,000 households of internally displaced people living in Cartagena, but a Colombian human-rights organization that tracks "desplazados" estimates there are seven-and-a-half times more. Most of Isla de Leon's families fled homes in the countryside, as did most of the 450 Cartagena families participating in Mercy Corps' program. The agency is helping them to move beyond their past tragedies and to establish peaceful, productive lives.

The program, funded by the European Union and administered by Mercy Corps' local partner Volver a la Gente, features a series of trainings and workshops, including courses in conflict resolution, human rights, sex education, and how to participate in the city's planning process. Life counseling is also offered, as are weekly trainings to become a conciliador, a kind of small-claims mediator that is recognized by the Colombian justice system. Felicity is one exam away from becoming certified as one.

Two upcoming phases of the project offer Felicity more tangible benefits: she will have the opportunity to start her own backyard hydroponic-gardening operation — growing vegetables in a substrate of rice hulls and coarse sand so that they grow faster, attract less pests and use less water. She'd also been recently interviewed by project staff about her work history, educational background and job skills — information that will be used to help Volver a la Gente refine its upcoming vocational-skills training and its efforts to assist the desplazados in forming small enterprises.

Felicity looks forward to these income-generation projects; she says her economic situation hasn't changed much in five years. She scrapes by on housecleaning jobs in other parts of town, plus what little money her estranged husband sends from his odd jobs in another city. What has changed, she says, is that she now has greater peace of mind.

"The trainings you've given us — about our rights, the sexual revolution — have improved our self-esteem. When I arrived, I had nothing, and no sense of how to provide for myself," she says, sitting outside in the sliver of shade provided by her corrugated-metal roof. "I didn't know how we were going to survive. There were times when we didn't know where our next meal was coming from. The uncertainty was mentally debilitating."

Felicity's 11-year-old daughter Kelly entertains herself amid desolate surroundings. "Here, the kids don't have a place to play," her mother laments. Photo: Miguel Samper for Mercy Corps

Felicity's house isn't much. Inside, it's essentially two tiny bedrooms and an open kitchen, and in the afternoon it can be downright sweltering. Many of the studs are made of driftwood, and the foot-long floorboards creak and bend with every step. Drinking water comes out of a hose from across the river, which fills a large black tank on a table in the kitchen.

Still, the living conditions are better than what they were. Soon after arriving in Cartagena, Felicity and her kids left her mother's increasingly cramped home, also on Isla de Leon, and took over a plot on recently vacated land. She put up a shelter with sacks of rice, then made something sturdier from cartons and plastics, then finally erected her current structure with what looks like leftover wainscoting, donated by a construction company.

Felicity says she's not sure whether to make more improvements or try to find better housing. "I'd like to find steady work," she says, if only so her kids, who range in age from 4 to 11, wouldn't have to survive on a diet of rice and eggs in lean times.

She won't venture back into the countryside — she doesn't know what happened to her land, and she says conditions there remain perilous — so her future is in Cartagena. As she leads her visitors back to the footbridge, kids in tow, she flashes a weary smile, slightly embarrassed by her impoverished surroundings. But her spirit is unbowed.

"Don't forget us," she says. With our help, she's determined to cross that bridge, too.