Joe DeRaymond sharing a sunset with Ivan and Perrucho in La Union, 2003I'm sitting in a little Damascene cafe, preparing for my Monday morning presentation on International Humanitarian Law and its relevance in today's world, sipping a slightly bitter lemon juice. Usually I come here with my friends to play chess or smoke the sheesha or just chat after school, when the place is bustling with students, writers, idiots and thinkers. Now, on a Friday morning, it's quiet and calm.
Actually, I wish it were a little busier right now. I suddenly feel drained of energy and there's a whirling pit in my stomach which makes me feel a little dizzy and off-balance. I just learned that Joe DeRaymond, a solid, long-time revolutionary and my former FOR companion in San José de Apartadó (Colombia), has passed away after a long struggle with brain cancer.
It wasn't just Joe's massive physical presence that impacted you (I remember all the donkeys were too small in San José to carry Joe 2 hours up to La Union, so despite his leg pains, he'd bow his head and quietly trudge up the mountain), it was also his intellectual capacity and ability to empathize with oppressed people everywhere. He gave everything to the struggle.
I was a crazy 21-year old eager to run up the mountain and swing a machete and be crazy, and he was a cured fighter, quietly whittling away at discarded pieces of wood with his pocketknife and fashioning them into little figures which he would set on his windowsill, or give to people who stopped by the old school where he slept. I remember one time, I came to that windowsill and watched him carve and he slipped and cut his finger. He roared a profanity that scared the shit out of me and everyone in a 2 mountain range-radius, but later continued his work. He was funny.
Don Ramon one time came up to us and told us that he was constipated and couldn't seem to expel anything. Joe, the medic, had some raisin and told him to eat it. The next day, Ramon came back, visibly relieved, and we all shared a hearty laugh.
Joe, also an amazing writer, wrote a paper last year after coming back from El Salvador, when he first learned of his brain cancer. Perhaps he risked his own life by reporting on atrocities and injustices committed against others.
Thanks, Joe, for everything you did and for being a regular hero and a comrade. We'll miss you.
P.S. FOR (Fellowship of Reconciliation), the group Joe and I worked with for a year in Colombia, is currently going through a process of independentization and they need your help. They are still doing some awesome work in San José, accompanying the Peace Community, but have also extended their solidarity to other groups in Colombia. If you are able and willing to donate a few dollars to their awesome project, click http://www.forcolombia.org/ for more information, or contact Liza Smith at liza@igc.org.
