Disappointingly, there were no motorbike rides during my latest trip to the Coast. Instead we got a minibus right to the entrance to the church where we were holding our first camp of the year for our children’s club leaders. Over 50 came to receive training and teaching from the life of Paul.

On Saturday night, there was a huge thunderstorm which went on for hours. The rain hammering off the corrugated iron roof kept me awake until minutes before it was time to get up, or so it seemed, and the power was out until mid-morning.

As I came to from my ten minutes of sleep, I heard somone singing, “I’m going to live this day as if it were my last.”

When I got up I saw the most amazing sunrise, a blaze of orange reflected in a lagoon, a sight so beautiful that I gasped.

And I found everybody calmly getting on with their mornings, clearing up the mess caused by the storm, queuing for showers and waiting for breakfast. The ladies who were cooking for us had come barefoot through the mud because motorbikes couldn’t handle the terrain.

Everything started an hour late but nobody minded.

Welcome to the Colombian Coast.

Where nothing is ever a crisis.

One of the best things about the camps last month was the open time at the end where the participants could say something they had learned or experienced at the camp.

Here is the one the made the biggest impact on me, the story of an older lady:

I am ill, and I am only here because my medical appointments were changed at the last minute. I miss my mum who died a year ago. There were twelve of us and my 5 older brothers were murdered.

At this point, my face showed my shock but not a single local person listening showed any expression on their face. In the region we were in, 90% of the population were victims of the conflict.

The lady went on, so our first brother was murdered, then the second said he would get revenge and he said it in public so they killed him. And the same with the third and so on. Our sixth brother had special needs and he died of a heart attack. And then my mum died. She is the one that said over and over, we must forgive, we mustn’t take revenge. My sisters are scattered and I feel alone.

But I look at you all and you are my new family.

I’m just back from a wedding in a town on the Coast. To get there, I had to cross the mighty River Sinú, not as impressive as the Cauca or Magdalena Rivers but still a formidable barrier. Until a long-promised bridge is built, the way to get across is on a rudimentary wooden ferry.

The ferry is the focal point for local people to trade – the specialty seems to be flat bread rolls – but a family got on to sell their produce – aubergines y cucumbers. A little boy was helping his mum, carrying a heavy bag of vegetables and looking hopefully round the passengers of the minibus I was on.

I hope he goes to school from Monday to Friday but on Saturday he has to carry heavy bags about.

Chikunkunya is a mosquito-borne virus that has just arrived in Colombia.

It’s debilitating, causing high fever and terrible joint pain but not usually fatal

unless there is some underlying health issue.

I was sitting chatting with a group of people on the Coast and almost all had had the virus over the last few months (and one was about to get it). In typical Colombian fashion, they were making light of the illness and laughing about how debilitated it had left them.

You know, one said, even my parrot got it.

Really?

Yes, his wee claws were all twisted and he was obviously sick,

so we ground up an aspirin in water and sieved it and he drank it and he got better!