Over the past few months I’ve been knee-deep in helping to settle a refugee family – a lovely Syrian family. It gave me a lot of joy to welcome a young family at the airport and to see their distress fade when settled in a peaceful home!
This whole experience raised memories of the time I was a refugee myself with husband Harold and our 4 kids. It happened when we found ourselves in the center of the bitter drug wars in Colombia.
We had been stationed in Medellin for 2 years working with a church agency. We were used to roadblocks, police checkpoints and seeing soldiers with big guns on street corners. Our own home in this picture (with our kids and me on the balcony) had been hit with a bomb 2 months earlier. The windows were now freshly replaced but two walls inside were pockmarked.
Then, on August 18, 1989, the drug lords assassinated Galan, the favorite running in the presidential campaign.
Everything changed. Bombs exploded all over the city. Police and soldiers were massacred in great numbers.
Kidnappings and massacres had already been a regular part of life in Colombia. Journalists brave enough to speak out against drug trafficking or corruption faced death threats. During the previous 10 years more than 80 journalists had been assassinated.
Now banks, stores, offices and radio stations were blown up. During that first week of the drug war, 17 bombs exploded in our city alone. And the drug lords claimed to have 4000 bombs and missiles to destroy anything they chose. Everyone was terrified. The mayor begged the president to send 3000 police reinforcements. The papers said only 100 came.
By the second week most foreigners and many Colombians were leaving the city. The 6 o’clock news showed lineups of foreign university students in the capital, Bogota, at the airport going home. That made me cry.
The mayor of Medellin ordered a 10 pm curfew. Anyone seen after that hour could be shot without question.
The school our kids attended closed down. We had to leave.
But with only 24 hour notice to leave, I remember feeling confused. What to take? What is most important? We were leaving our home and everything in it. It felt surreal. Surely the war would end in a few weeks and we’d be back! We didn’t get to say goodbye to many dear people – Colombians as well as fellow ex-pats, some we’ve never seen again.
Most foreigners were leaving the country altogether but that seemed too extreme to us. We were such idealists, dead-certain we were meant to be there. That God wanted us in Colombia and we had work to do. We decided to go to Bogota, the capital. We couldn’t drive of course, as the narco terrorists would have roadblocks. Just getting to the airport was touch and go, a 45 minute drive up through the mountains.
I told the kids, “You can each take one thing that is precious to you.” Rebecca wanted to take her little dog, Mitzy, a miniature Doberman Pincher. But we had no idea where we would stay. I had to say no. That was a heart breaker.
“We can each take one bag and carry one thing in our hands,” I told them.
This family photo was taken just a few weeks before we evacuated. (Taken by my brother-in-law Wally Schmidt, now a professional photographer in Victoria, BC.) Matthew the eldest, then Rebecca, Andrew and Conrad.
The beautiful glass-domed airport was in semi lock-down. All doors were locked but one narrow entrance. Security had been set up right at the door and only passengers were allowed in. Every bag was scanned and each person frisked.
Bogota had been quite peaceful until then, but the day we landed there a major bomb blew up the building of the country’s main newspaper. It was the first of many bombings in that city. During our next 7 years in Bogota the bombings, kidnappings and assassinations escalated. Quite a few people we knew were killed. Others kidnapped. That’s another story.
During the time we were refugees we stayed in a series of temporary shelters. A small apartment, then 2 rooms in a guest house, then the empty house of a family that had evacuated from the country.
My brain was in dislocation. I never knew what the next day would hold. Of course, even in normal life no one knows what the next day will hold, yet while life goes on in its routine way, we think we know. And that gives stability. A refugee knows they don’t know and that throws the mind out of kilter. It’s hard to think straight about anything at all.
Eventually we recovered our belongings and even were reunited with Rebecca’s little Mitzy.
Gratitude was the biggest lesson I learned. Not enough beds? But we have a roof over our heads! Not enough plates? But we have food!
Did my past experience prompt me to help a refugee family find safety? One more reason to count my scary days in Colombia worthwhile.
Dorothy Siebert Author & Editor 