The Valley

Below is a story I wrote for our in-country volunteer publication, La Cadena. 

The Valley

 “…just like the cholos in Talamanca.”

                I grow flush with frustration, but it’s not like she’s going to notice.  How is my Spanish ever going to improve if my own host family doesn’t let me speak?  For three weeks I bided my time, waiting for this very vacuum:  an empty corredor, a silent TV, no one but Doña Ivonne and me pushing around the humid air with our breaths.  As important as the Spanish practice was, sharing my story of the Peace Corps Guinea evacuation was the real reason I waited so long.  It’s a huge part of my recent past.  It’s why I’m here, in her house, serving her community.  Shouldn’t she be interested?  Four sentences:  Ramadan, Muslims fasting through daylight hours, us volunteers sneaking lunch so not to offend, the communal eating style.  I made it to four sentences this time, probably a record.  Her eyes were glazing over even before she interjected.   Am I that boring?  Or is it the years of blaring telenovelas?  They must’ve sapped her interest in anything but Doña Bella’s latest exploits, or at least her attention sp…

                “They eat from the same bowl.  When I worked in the Valle, they used to come down from the mountain once a month, carrying a hollowed out husk to share between them whatever drink we’d serve.” 

                …or maybe that well of hardship is so deep that any faulty step—any misfired word—sends her tumbling back into sixty years of memories.  Think about what Nisha just wrote in her letter:  “…90% of my day is spent listening to people talk.  Everyone likes to tell their story, and I’m letting them.”  This woman is scrolling through a whole chapter of her past.  So let her. 

                “Wait, Doña Ivonne, you lived in the Valle de la Estrella?”

                “Fifteen years.  I worked there on a bananera.”

                “Were you with Don Carlos back then?”

                “No, this was way back aooouuuuuuuuuuu, right after I separated from my first husband.  We had been living in Guácimo.  His father would beat me and demand coffee; and he’d beat me again if he didn’t get it.  My husband did nothing to stop it.  He already wanted out at that time.  So we split.  I took Ananías and Roberto with me to the Valle and started working on a bananera.  There my neighbor Estela took care of the boys while I was gone in the fields, bless her heart, for I was out there for hours on end. 

                “Anyway, the indigenous tribes came down about once a month.  The men usually congregated at the only cantina in town.  The women would pass from house to house, demanding what they saw.  They carried what they claimed in these beautifully colored textiles that hung from their heads down their backs.  We’d hide what we could; but if I had left a shirt out on the line to dry and a woman liked it, she would point to it, waiting…”

                “And you gave it?”

                “Yeah we gave it.” 

                “Everyone just gave away their belongings?  I imagine there were some pleitos, people who didn’t want to give up their stuff.” 

                “No, actually.  It was quite tranquilo.  We did it out of respect—respect  and fear.  We were afraid of them.  Those who refused or who didn’t offer a meal would come down with a bout of bad luck or an illness.  They’d hex you.  So I’d always cook up a pile of arepas and coffee.  They’d gather in a circle.  The coffee would go into the husk and get passed around, and they’d divide everything equally between them.  Once the arepas were gone, they’d move to the next house and sit again in a circle.

                “One day, as the groups were joining back together to leave, a woman and man returned to my house.  He was older, and I could tell he was important.  He motioned me to come with them.  I was hesitant, but he wouldn’t leave.  When he pinched his fingers together and held them to his mouth, I realized they were inviting me to dinner!  I was afraid and excited all at once.  Estela took the kids for the night, and I set off with the group up the Talamanca mountains for what seemed like an eternity. 

                “The paths thinned until we were putting one foot in front of the other just to keep from falling into the monte.  Finally, it opened up at the top of a hill.  There was a small hamlet in the clearing, but let me tell you not one of the homes was more than a handful of sticks holding up a roof of banana leaves.  There weren’t even walls.  Still, you wouldn’t believe how well swept a dirt floor could be until you saw one of these homes with your very eyes.

                “The largest of them was like their salón communal. There the women were preparing dinner in an enormous clay pot with three legs, shoving leña underneath.  Everything—absolutely everything—was getting thrown in.  Yucca, banana, plantains…they even slaughtered a pig and threw him in piece by piece, bones and all.  A group of men was just outside preparing the chicha.  Up to five of them shuffled around the pot at the same time, stomping the life out of the corn in a beautiful rhythm.  Finally, they covered it, saved it for another day to drink.  

“Everyone gathered around the clay pot once the sun had set.  I couldn’t concentrate for the silence. They were all looking at me.  Their knees pulled close to their chests, they waited for me to help myself, but I just couldn’t.  We stayed that way for a couple minutes, me just waiting for someone else to spare me of this anxiety and make a move.  Finally, an elderly woman reached over and grabbed my wrist, dropping my hand into the stew.  Plao!  All at once the pot was filled with hands reaching for their share.  And no wonder:  it was absolutely delicious.  When we could see the bottom of the pot the chicha started getting passed around. 

                “Except for the youngest girls, everyone was drinking from thin, dried out gourds.  An old woman grabbed an empty one with three fingers, dipping it into the vat until it filled to the top.  ‘Tome,’ she said.  I told her I didn’t drink.  ‘Tome o no se va,’ she answered.  It was then that I tried to head home on my own.   I stepped outside.  The moon was out, and I could see that there wasn’t just one path leading from the house, but what seemed like dozens fanning in every direction.  I picked one and started out.  Five minutes later I was back at the village, having made a loop without even knowing it.   There was no way I was going to find my way back.  So I went back inside and reached for the chicha that was still awaiting me, plugged my nose, and swallowed it all.  Oh man did my stomach start churning!  The woman didn’t make me drink more, for which I was thankful, because it took an effort to keep it down. 

                “After I drank the chicha the older women warmed up to me a lot.  They were very curious about me and of very good humor.  Through the one man who knew Spanish we shared our stories and jokes, pantomiming most of the time.  And that’s how the night wound down, with us laughing ourselves to exhaustion as we retired one by one to the hammocks hanging in the moonlight on the hill.”