A few days ago I spoke to A., a 6 year old girl from the Peace Community.
Her mother had warned me: A. wants to tell you what she is doing, how she is doing, the small and large achievements of the children of her age.
Now A. speaks very well so that understanding each other is simple.
Some time ago the dialogue would have been a little more complex.
So she begins her story by talking to me about the school, the arrival of the rainy season, the family, the mare, the mules.
She shows me how much she has grown (she is marking her height on the wooden part of the house) and her mother, there with her, points out that her temper has also started to grow.
We both smile.
Then she starts talking about plants, flowers, field crops, yuca, ñampi (a tuber similar to yuca), rice, plantain, bananas, beans, fruit plants: papaya, pineapple, coconut.

It is mango and avocado season now in Colombia so she takes them from the kitchen and shows them to me in all their glory.
Let's go back to school.
Since 2005 the Peace Community has developed an alternative educational system based on Paulo Freire's pedagogy according to which "nobody educates anyone, nobody educates alone, men educate together, with the mediation of the world".
Thursday, community work day even for the little ones of the school, had just passed and I therefore spontaneously asked her what they had done that day.
Her answer was also spontaneous and immediate.
An answer that embodies the essence of that group of people so beautiful, strong, resistant, who for years have been struggling and experiencing the only effective therapy to heal this sick world, that is to believe in nonviolence, to cry out for truth and fight for justice: “Sembramos remedios” (We have sown remedies/cures).
That day, the boys and girls of a school scattered in the Colombian forest had sown plants and medicinal herbs in their community garden.
A. wanted to tell me this.
The mother smiles and explains to her daughter that it is the plants that have been sown and that remedies such as ointments and syrups are produced from those plants.
I take a piece of paper and immediately note the answer of little A.
Sowing remedies ... if only we were all capable of doing it!

Silvia