Squalid poverty for Venezuelan refugees in Colombia

Almost everybody had lost a family member.

Johnny Huerta had been on medical missions before, but this time he could speak the language, and what he heard from the Venezuelan refugees in Colombia appalled him. What he saw shocked him.

“People can live with little and still be happy, but this was not healthy,” said the Santa Monica native. “They bathe in an unsanitary river, and that’s why they get lots of infections. They also drink out of that river.”

Before the Convid-19 pandemic exploded in the United States, Dr. Bob Hamilton and his medical mission team were already in Colombia on the border taking care of Venenzuelan refugees, pushed into crisis by government-induced starvation that had nothing to do with the pandemic.. During Colombia’s protracted internal armed conflict, Venezuela had received refugees from the war-torn country; now it’s Colombia's chance to return the favor.

Johnny had been to Africa on the Lighthouse Medical Missions before, but he was running the inside logistics of the medical mission. Now, he was out and about, handing out food to starving refugees, and talking in their language.

The part-owner of Gilbert’s El Indio Mexican Restaurant in Santa Monica was flabbergasted.

“They have makeshift huts built out of garbage,” he recounts. “Babies are walking around naked. They pretty much have nothing. It was one of those shocking situations where you say, ‘Wow people are waking up and living like this every day with unhealthy conditions.’”

Some 40 doctors, nurses and other volunteers landed in Cucuta, Colombia, on March 7, to stage emergency medical clinics and feed the hungry for a week. When they returned March 21, the United States was suffering its own upheaval as Corona virus went pandemic.

Lighthouse Medical Mission got its start over 20 years ago in some of the poorest war-ravaged nations of West Africa but lately founder Dr. Bob Hamilton of the Santa Monica based Pacific Ocean Pediatrics has staged clinics in Latin America too.

Johnny was glad he went to Colombia.

“It was hard to even remember that I paid to go there. It was like I owed something,” he reflects. “It felt like they let me go there and I was just thankful they gave me the privilege of being able to go with me. You feel like you get more out than you put into it. I’m more mature in my faith and in my life than I was before.”

Johnny said he joined the team handed out 3,000 meals a day, in conjunction with World Central Kitchen. But mostly he was translating.

In addition to providing free grub, the volunteers attended to hundreds of patients and gave free medicine to the sick. They worked in Cucuta and Pamplona, Colombia, and in a small makeshift village of Yukpa natives from Venezuela.

Almost everybody told him about relatives left behind in Venezuela, lost or killed.

The stories were staggering.

“We were swarmed by people,” Johnny tells. “They were grabbing us, grabbing us, like, ‘Pray for me. Pray for me.’”

Michael Ashcraft teaches journalism at the Lighthouse Christian Academy in Santa Monica.