Land Mine Nation

Colombia led the world in land mine casualties in 2005. A tiny shelter in Bogota tries to provide hope for some of the victims.

BOGOTA, Colombia - Gustina Roma watches the boys play in a sunlit, upstairs room in a house on a quiet Bogota street. Her 8-year-old grandson Jonathan picks up a yellow Lego block with his left hand and snaps it into place with the stump where his right hand used to be.

Gustina's son Jesus, also eight, rolls his completed Lego truck across the carpeted floor. He cocks his head to the side, almost like a bird, to compensate for his blind right eye.

It's been almost a year since the day in June 2005 when both boys came running home bloody and burned.

"We were walking home from school when I saw the bomb. It was close to my house," says Jonathan. "I thought it was a plastic microphone, it was all white." With his left hand, he draws the shape on my notepad, a stick with ball-shaped fins at one end.

"I picked it up and we both were looking at it. Then I squeezed it and it exploded. We both ran home. We felt like we were burning up," he says.

"I washed off the blood from them after they arrived at the house," Gustina says, "then I went out looking for Jonathan's hand. But I couldn't find it."

The explosion happened at 3 p.m. that afternoon, but it was 12 hours later before Gustina could reach the nearest hospital in rural southern Colombia equipped to treat the boys' serious injuries.

The boys are just two of the estimated 1,077 Colombians killed or maimed by land mines in 2005 — the highest toll in the world last year — according to the Colombian government.

Colombia signed an international treaty to ban land mines in 1997, but remains one of the most heavily mined nations on earth. With a conflict spanning more than 40 years, multiple combatants — including leftist guerrillas, right-wing paramilitaries and the Colombian armed forces — all share responsibility.

"Both the guerrillas and the paramilitaries operated in the area," Gustina says. "Anyone could have planted it. When I ask them, they both blame the other. No one takes responsibility."

But while no one will take responsibility for causing their injuries, St. Bernabe's Refuge — where the boys have spent the last year — is trying to assist in their healing.

The small, Presbyterian Church-run shelter in west Bogota has cared for the shattered bodies and broken spirits of land mine victims for more than 20 years.

"Mama Lissi"

German-born Lissi Hansen Victoria (residents call her "Mama Lissi") has run the shelter for its entire existence. It provides food, shelter and a sense of community for victims while they wait for prosthetic limbs to be constructed and fitted, or for the multiple operations most victims have to endure following a mine injury.

"I've had to struggle in life and people helped me," says Hansen. "I want to help other people."

"Here in the house they've helped me with everything," says 57-year-old Alfredo Avila, who lost nearly half his body to a landmine. "Mama Lissi is a blessing from God."

Avila was picking lemons three years ago in his hometown of Puerta Rica Meta when he stepped on a mine and lost a leg, arm, eye and ear, all on the right side of his body.

"I woke up in the hospital and they told me not to worry, that I would live. But when I saw what had happened it was so hard. I thought about taking my own life," he says.

He says medication and the sense of community he feels at the St. Bernabe Refuge have helped him get past the desire to die.

He has been here longer than any other victim, ever since his accident. He's endured multiple operations, including one in which doctors constructed another ear for him using the curved bone of one of his ribs. He has been fitted with a prosthetic leg, but now is waiting for an arm.

Alfredo Avila

Avila now spends his time playing board games with other residents and joking around while he shuffles around the house using a cane. He says when all his treatment is complete, he wants to return home.

"My normal life has ended," he says. "I won't be able to work. I just hope God remembers me."

There are usually about 50 residents in the small, three story house at any time, says Hansen, who has an operating budget of only around $25,000 a year.

"It's very basic," she says. "Everything you see is donated — all the tables, furniture and much of the food. The house is owned by the church so there's no rent. What we provide our residents is shelter and a human touch."

That's especially important for younger residents like 22-year-old Johan Geraldo, who lost a leg to a landmine eight months ago while working the coffee fields of Florecia Caldas.

"I thought I was going to die. I saw my leg and knew it was gone," he says. "I told my friends to just leave me there — I had already lost everything."

But his friends made a stretcher out of the burlap sacks used to hold coffee beans and carried Geraldo to a center where he could be treated. It took nearly nine hours.

"God's given me a second chance," he says. "I want to learn to read and write; maybe be a cattle rancher someday."

For some of the residents whose injuries are more severe, like 45-year-old Heliberto Prada Ardila, mustering hope for the future doesn't happen so readily.

Heliberto Prada Ardila

"I was walking out a gate and there was wire stretched across the bottom connected to a mine. When I tripped the wire, the mine exploded," he says. "I lost both hands, my right eye, a testicle and all my teeth. These scars you see on my face — they're all from the mine."

Ardila says the trip mine was set by the National Liberation Army (known by its Spanish acronym ELN), Colombia's second-largest guerrilla group.

Ardila's tragedy is compounded by the loss of his brother, shot dead by the Colombian Army when he didn't obey orders to stop. His brother, he says, was deaf. Ardila says his father was killed later by another armed group, but he's not sure which.

"It's us campesinos [peasant farmers] who are the ones that suffer," he says, "both from the paramilitaries, the guerrillas and the government. Campesinos are never allowed to live in peace."

Ardila says after his accident in 1993 he had to beg on the streets for five years to make enough money to pay for an operation on his remaining eye. Until that time he was completely blind.

The trauma of his experiences continues to haunt Ardila. Unlike many of the other residents he keeps to himself.

Unlike the loss of a leg, which can be hidden with pants covering a prosthetic limb, the loss of an arm is not so easily concealed. Ardila's abbreviated arms stick out from his white-sleeved shirt, each tapering into a stump at almost the exact same spot. In the 13 years since his accident, he's become adept at manipulating objects without fingers, opening doors, pushing his glasses up on the bridge of his nose.

In one of the bedrooms at St. Bernabe's, he picks up his prosthetic arms, connected by a complex harness of web straps. He slips them over his forearms, pushing the straps over his head and across the back.

"The fingers don't move," he says, "but the thumbs do. They are only good for things like picking up glasses. If you get them wet, you can really damage them."

Once he has them on, Ardila is able to move them around and manipulate the thumbs using wire cables that react to the flexing of his upper arm muscles.

"My dream is to have my own place," says Ardila, "to open up a little store and to live off of that. But life for mine victims is extremely difficult. The government doesn't help at all. When I leave here I'll probably have to go back to begging."

Homemade prosthetic

The high cost of prosthetic limbs and the long wait in a country with such demand has made some residents, like 31-year-old Alvaro Armando Toro, solve their problems creatively.

He lost a leg six months ago to a mine set by guerrillas. He says he got tired of waiting for a prosthetic, so he made one himself — out of a log.

"I haven't fallen once since I made it," he says, demonstrating its effectiveness with a walk down the block.

Some of the others clap and cheer him on.

Back upstairs in the shelter, Jonathan and Jesus continue to play as Gustina still watches, happy that the boys are now safe.

"It's bad but it could've been worse, like Alfredo," she says, referring to the lemon-picker who lost half his body. "But it's still very hard. I have ten other children back at home and we've had to be away for almost a year."

Outside, an ambulance pulls up to the house. From the back the attendants pull out a collapsible gurney holding a middle-aged woman  — another landmine victim and the next resident of St. Bernabe's Refuge.

If you would like to help St. Bernabe's, you can mail a check or money order to:
Hogar Regugio San Bernabe
Calle 65 No. 16-65
Bogota, D.C. - Colombia

Or email St. Bernabe's here.

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