My mom is the greatest

Happy birthday to the woman who gave me life! The Spanish for “to give birth” is “dar a luz” which literally means, “to give into light”. How beautiful is that? There have been two new babies given to the light in the community over the holidays. And on this day I am thinking about my own dear mom and the miracle of motherhood. Women are the pillars of this community. For example, the houses are referred to by using the woman’s name, not that of her partner. In part this results from the many men who have been killed by armed actors, leaving behind the women to raise their children and continue on with the process of the community. It also seems to me that the women are just very steadfast in their devotion to caring for their extended families. The older women also serve as the historians of the community. Their accumulated history is not detached and objective, but full of personal pain and loss alongside testimonies of survival and tales of joy. Great grandmothers wake up early to prepare the morning meal, wash clothes in the hot afternoon, cut and carry firewood to stoke the fire over which they cook the evening meal; all the while caring for their children’s children and finding time to share their stories with curious internationals. I suddenly find myself surrounded by the careworn faces and kind souls of grandmothers who embrace the “gringa gorda” as one of their own.

Yesterday we hiked up to visit with one of the amazing women of this community who told us that she was the first to decide to move further up the mountain. It took us a little over an hour to get there, a steady to steep incline the whole way, two of the young guys leading us. As we neared her house we walked up through banana, coffee, cacao and bean fields as the temperature seemed to drop and the fresh wind picked up and made the heat more bearable. Once I caught my breath and turned around I was greeted with an absolutely incredible view. I didn’t take my camera but I’m not sure if it would be able to capture the sweeping valley that unfolded below and the steep mountain that continued above. A view full of different greens and speckled with those tall and thin mountain trees, the leaves of which flatten out on top, reaching side to side, but are stunted in vertical growth by the constant wind. The woman we visited with told us how the military often passes by on the nearby ridge and the paramilitaries are just on the other side of the mountain crest. We spent most of the day there as she cooked us an amazing meal and told us that her husband was killed 11 years ago, that she had been threatened by the military and accused of helping the guerillas, that she had given up being afraid of death as it is not a surprise that any of us are going to die someday. We played dominoes for hours and finally left as night began to fall.

When we were leaving the community that morning for her house people asked us where we were headed. “Oh,” they would respond, “her house is just p’aca, just over here”. This is said in response when asked the location/distance of just about anything. I am finally beginning to learn that “just over here” or “really close by” could mean anywhere from next door to a couple hours away. The non-specificity of this campesino life is really amazing. People are always leaving “ahorrita” or “right now” and that could mean, in this moment or hours later. Mireille told me that when she first got here she didn’t get why Paul (the teammate I replaced) was always speaking in such generalities: “We’re just going right over there and we’ll leave around right now”. I find myself easily slipping into the vernacular. When playing dominoes yesterday, a game my grandfather taught me, I found myself responding to Mireille’s question about the reason the game starts with a double domino by saying, “Because that’s how it starts”, as our friends from the community echoed my articulate explanation.

Besides the vernacular, the solutions for common problems are also priceless. Two nights ago I went over to the other house (we sleep/work in one house and have a kitchen in the other) to make dinner. I was surprised to find a full on invasion of ants. They were absolutely covering the walls and floor, streaming in from every window, every crack and crawling up my legs. I was a bit overwhelmed, shouted for Mireille and soon we had enlisted the aid of one of the young guys. He began tossing water everywhere, until we had dead ants floating all over. (In my head I was humming the BC marching band’s show-stopping piece from our college days: music from the hit motion picture: ANTZ! Ok, I wasn’t really, I just wanted to throw a little something out to my BC girls). We cleaned up the soggy mess of insect and so far we have been sparred from further attack.

Yesterday was the “Dia de los Reyes” or the Day of the Kings. You know, gold, frankincense and myrrh, we three kings of orient are. In some places in the Americas this means a “king cake” with a tiny, plastic baby Jesus hidden inside. Once, on a college immersion trip to Mexico, I was the lucky one to almost choke on the plasticized Emmanuel. This supposedly meant I was to return and host the party the next year. I didn’t. (Sorry baby Jesus) Here in the community it meant….wait for it…a DANCE! Although the dance was much smaller and not quite as lengthy. Mostly it was a night in which the kids were running around like I have never before seen. We were chasing kids, playing hide and seek with kids, tossing kids in the air, swinging kids in the air and, as energy waned, sitting around with kids on our laps, at our sides, passing stories back and forth. One of the older girls challenged me to an exchange of rhyming limerick-like verses. Now, normally this is totally my bag, I am quite adept at the rhyme in my native tongue, ala the “Princess Bride”: Stop this rhyming now I mean it. Anybody want a peanut? But I have a long, long way to go in Spanish. Not to mention the fact that she was simply reciting verses that everyone seemed to know while I was inventing them on the spot. I got at least a few rounds of applause, so I think I held my own. It was a really pleasant night with a cool breeze and a growing sense of familiarity and ease with this place, these people. I feel blessed to have been given into this light by my mom.

Happy my mom’s birthday to everyone!