Bristol Couple go to Colombia with Christian Peacemakers' Team

Martin and Ros Parkes are off at the end of September to Colombia, to work with Christian Peacemakers' Teams. They invite you to follow their adventure on their Blog.

Martin and Ros write:

"There still seems like a lot to get organised, but I think we’re on top of it all. Please pray that we don’t forget anything essential! We are getting a clearer idea of the community we are going to meet and the difficulties they have been facing. This is my simple understanding of it from all the information we have recieved so far:

In Colombia there is a tradition (I’m not sure of its exact legal status – I think it is probably a grey area) that if you work a particular area of land for 3 years, then you inherit the land and it become yours. We are going to meet a community of rural peasant farmers that had been farming their land and being self sufficient for 10 years or so, but in July this year they were forced off of it so that multi-national corporations could farm the land for African Palm Oil for export. The community are now living in a tent village, their crops that they should be harvesting are going to waste and their animals have been turned wild.

We are going to meet members of the community and hopefully some of the legal authorities responsible for evicting them and in whatever way we can, work with them to bring a peaceful resolution to this situation".