Flying solo

I’m in Pinalito alone this week. Melanie is traveling with her parents for several days, and I have opted to stay in the village to attack my to-do list. Although I put on a great “tough-girl face” when Mel and her parents drove away last Friday, I have to admit to some shaky nerves throughout the first few nights alone. It is pitch dark by 6:30 these days, and my routine dinner-for-one—a peanut-butter sandwich-- takes a mere 20 minutes out of the evening. I’ve never known three hours to crawl by so slowly!

Much like a blind man will rely on his hearing to compensate for his lack of sight, I turn to the village to compensate for this empty apartment. In the morning when I wonder who is awake and making tortillas, I only need to listen to the coughing coming from the smoky kitchen. When the boys file into the mission gate to make their daily rounds, it’s easy to tell who’s who by the swing of their machete or their whistling.

Desperate to fill my daylight hours with voices and activity, I have redefined a 9-5 workday by spending it with the village. By 7 a.m., and I am making eggs for the boys. By 8, a few women have arrived to get their work assignment for the day. Now that my garden is well weeded, and mostly eaten, (advice on insecticides, anyone? I am finished with organic!) I spend the day outside the mission, checking on sick, swollen bellied children or planting beans and cucumbers in a neighbor’s garden. Even when it is dark, I’d rather be kicking the soccer ball around than inside my lonely apartment. The kids love having Sarita all to themselves… I forget to be a grown-up—to wash dishes and sweep the constantly dirty floor—when there is no one here to notice my mess!

And the village never fails to keep me occupied. Over the past two weeks, Pinalito has experienced two deaths. Freddy, who I have mentioned and pictured in previous blogs, returned to Pinalito after only a few days on the coast as a 14 year old “working man”. His mother Maria, having long suffered from chronic pneumonia, died last Sunday. Freddy got home in time to wrap his mother in a grass mat and bury her in the cemetery. He is orphaned now, along with two older sisters, three older brothers and his 11 year old sister, Rosa


Although I didn’t know the other man very well, Cleto was once a fixture of Pinalito. He was shot is a drunken argument before I arrived in July. Unable to purchase sterile dressing and to keep his wound clean, his family had been using plastic grocery bags to draw out the fluid in his body. Cleto has suffered infection and malnourishment throughout the 3 months that followed the gunshot, and he has been delirious since I met him. This death arouses an anger in me that is so deep… anger at myself (unfounded I know) because I don’t know enough about infection and antibiotics, and anger at the unfairness of his death. This man would have lived had he been in the U.S. His wound would healed easily in a hospital, and today, he would be working with a physical therapist and drinking protein shakes to work his abdomen back into shape.



When a death occurs in Pinalito, the villagers respond with extreme anxiety. An afterlife is a source of great anguish in an area that supports so little living. The people seek every possible supernatural assurance that their relative is no longer suffering. While making tortillas with Freddy’s sister-in-law this week, I noticed an altar built in the corner of the cabin. Inside a “crib” of several dozen pine branches, there was a fat Guatemalan-style cigar, a bowl of water with a piece of a banana leaf floating in it, a whittled wooden cross and a candle. This altar stands in the corner where Freddy’s mom once laid suffering. It is a mixture of more religions than I can relate… Christianity maybe, Catholicism and witchcraft. The family is unsettled about Heaven, worried that Maria’s long struggle in life has not ended with death.




This is another reason why I am working as a missionary… When Paul Farmer wonders why the people of Haiti mix medicine with voodoo and religious iconography, a wizened Creole woman challenges, “Well Doctor, aren’t you capable of understanding complication?” Well, I can understand complication. I really do. I understand the reckless desire to find something tangible in a place that otherwise offers so little assurance. But I also understand the simple abundance of God’s love. And although I cannot explain it to Pinalito in perfect Spanish, I can plant a garden with them, kick a flattened basketball for hours, and listen to a staticky radio while eating a bowl of bland black beans. Through this routine, I slowly find the words (and the courage) to share my faith in the simplicity of God’s grace. Jesus lived and died selflessly, so that we don’t have to anguish over our entrance into Heaven. Pinalito deserves the peace of God’s plan, and it is my task to share it with them.

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So the week started out slow and sad, but as I collect my thoughts for this blog, I am happily exhausted. A week of “flying solo” has pushed me to depend on the people of Pinalito, and on God. I am not lonely, for my neighbors Maribel, Gladis and Rosa insisted on keeping me company tonight. I forced myself to set aside my book and chamomile tea, and I read fairy tales to the girls instead. I offered them a hot shower, which all three took together, and then I combed and braided their hair while they drank hot milk. My apartment is a now wreck of empty milk cups, muddy footprints, and gassy Guatemalan children sleeping in the bunk beds next to mine. It has been a memorable slumber party.

Good Night!