For more than 40 years, different armed forces have been fighting an internal conflict in the cities and countryside of Colombia. It’s given Colombia the second-highest rate of Internally Displaced People in the world, second only to Sudan.  According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), between three and four million Colombians are displaced from their homes.

Abel Puentes, his wife and their f our children are just one of the many families who faced the very difficult decision of leaving their lands and their livelihoods behind in order to save their lives.

Abel knew that he couldn’t wait much longer. He had to leave the countryside he’d known his whole life, take his family and flee to the city. His wife, Andrea, was being threatened by rebel soldiers in the area, forced at gunpoint to wash the men’s clothes. She was nearly nine months pregnant.

Abel also knew that his nine-year-old son would soon be big enough to carry a gun. As each family was required to sacrifice one child to the cause, armed groups would soon come and claim the boy for combat.

It was bad enough that Abel had been required to feed the soldiers, turning over a percentage of his crops. This “vacuna” or fee allowed his wife and four children to live in relative peace. “There were no laws,” remembers Abel. “You had to stop feeding the children to give food to the armed groups.”

Breaking point

If paying the fee was the extent of it, Abel might have considered staying on the land. But the threats to his wife and son pushed him close to the breaking point.  Then, one day, the couple received warning that they’d better be gone by morning.

“You have to leave the next day without anything,” explains Abel. “You have to be ready to lose everything,” he says, “because they won’t let you sell what you have, either.”

This was the way the Puentes family was forced to flee. They left behind their pueblo, their land, their livestock and their extended family. They took nothing more than the clothes they were wearing, leaving with no funds for transportation or even food.

Odyssey to the city

Often times, families who leave the countryside find themselves in even more difficult situations than before. Abel and Andrea’s odyssey from their village to the slums of a big city took them 15 days. Making it to their destination brought no relief, in fact, things got worse.

“We didn’t have anywhere to go,” says Andrea.  Many families have the good fortune of a family member or a distant friend living in another city that can help them start over. Not the Puentes family. 

Not only were there no welcoming arms to greet them, Abel had no means of earning an income. “A person who was brought up in the countryside is not ready for life in the city,” says Abel, who was not even able to finish his primary schooling back home.

With no job and nowhere to go, Abel, Andrea and their five children, including the newborn baby, spent the first six weeks on the streets, begging for scraps of food. “The children were very malnourished,” remembers Andrea.

Feeling helpless

Eventually, Abel was able to find a temporary, informal, job which allowed them to rent a small room in the slums. He had to walk three hours each way to be able to earn a meager sum of money. Only then could he buy a little food for his children.
 
Although the Puentes family was no longer living on the streets, things were still miserable. “In our rented room, the water came in when it rained and because we had the mattresses on the ground, they got wet. During the day I would put them out in the sun to see if they would dry. If they didn’t dry, we would have to put the kids to bed on the wet mattresses,” she says.

Andrea saw her children suffering, but was helpless. “One day Myller told me ‘mom, why don’t we throw ourselves in front of the truck and die, because that would be better than this?’” she remembers.  As a mother, all Andrea could do was cry.

Turning to God—and World Vision

When it felt like life could not get any worse and there was no hope, Andrea turned to God. “One day, I was sad and frustrated and I said, ‘God, please put someone in my path that could help us,” she remembers. That was the day she met Claudia Sanchez, a World Vision staff member.

Although Andrea hadn’t finished primary school, she could read a little, just enough to read what was written on Claudia Sanchez’s vest. “It said `World Vision,’” she remembers. “I had heard of World Vision, that they help a lot of people,” she says. “Claudia told me, ‘don’t worry, we are going to help you,’” remembers Andrea, with a smile.

Claudia went to their house immediately and was shocked by what she saw. “They were living in very dangerous conditions where residual waters came into the house. The children were very sick. That day they only had a bag of lentils that someone had given them to eat. They didn’t have anything else,” she remembers.

That day Claudia was able to get the children enrolled in one of the local community kitchens in the neighborhood where World Vision works. Here, the children come every day with their plate and utensils to receive at least one hearty meal, along more than 100 other neighborhood kids living in similar situations.

Through World Vision, Claudia was not only able to provide the children with food to help them begin recovering from severe malnutrition, she also got the two oldest kids, Myller, 9 and Nielson, 6, enrolled in school. Linel, 4, and Wison, 3, began preschool.

“I am so thankful for World Vision,” says Andrea. “It has been a great blessing for us,” she says with a smile.