Agros Blog

His strong and gnarled leathery hand closed around the hat-covered brow, hiding the trickle of tears flowing down his cheeks as he recounted the scene 24 years ago, “We’d hidden behind our shanty-town shacks, in hopes of being left to ourselves after the patron (farm owner) had fled the fighting and bloodshed. The soil was stained blood red by the senseless slaughter of our men, women and children. Now, however, its eerily peaceful, save for the distant peal of shower-laden thunderclouds. Once that thunder was brought by the flying machine-guns. We now have a cemetery where our feeble shacks used to stand.”

Now age 56, Sebastian fields all our questions. At 5’5” his slightly stooped stature - from the many seasons of carrying the sweet-wet bundles of cane of the coastal plantations - regally belies the labor-laden years. He tells us of the horror of 100+ men, women and children murdered in cold blood, all his family lost in this nightmare. I look to my right as I’m interpreting for the team and notice that the tears wiped away by Sebastian’s rough hands now streak the faces of my group as we’re all humbled by Sebastian’s tear-sown path.

As the team recounted this story later, we remembered how Sebastian stood proudly before us, softly and tearfully telling his story only so that he can point us to the future his entire village now envisions.