As I left the EBAIS (main clinic) of La Casona today, where I had been chatting with Maria the midwife and the indigenous community health worker, I walked towards the taxi that had just pulled up and saw a Ngobe woman with whom I am well acquainted getting out of the car with shopping bags. So I greeted her with a smile and we discussed her trip into town (San Vito), which is unaffordable for most La Casona residents. She told me money had been pooled to buy things for a sick woman and she lifted the bags to show me the purchases. Our goodbyes followed, and I closed the door behind me. Before I could utter my greeting to the driver, he turned to me and said in Spanish with a grin, "Wow, you know alot of people here in La Casona, don't you?"
The truth is, I am getting to know people. Today I found myself stopping in the road to chat with passing women who I had interviewed at some point in the last two months and waving to families sitting in the shade by their homes. Nothing is more warming to me than when a Ngobe woman smiles with recognition as we're walking in opposite directions and actually stops to chat.
My last day of interviews with the women of La Casona thus presents me the answer to a question that I have been asking myself for weeks: where should the year after my graduation be spent?
After all that these women have offered me over the past few weeks, I owe it to them to come back to La Casona and continue working as an advocate. If I can develop my ideas and find the funding, I hope to find myself back here again in a year.
No comments:
Post a Comment