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| Washing on the wire. |
There
is a place where the road tracks through an valley opening, with flat
land, empty of houses, making a change from dense tree cover and
river crossings. Fifty or so cows bellowed through one of the
pastures, threading through shrubs and mudholes to a gap in the
fence. A mustached man atop a gray horse reined it in and ceased his
herding for a moment. He dropped the reins and stood in his stirrups
to bend the thick branch of a guava tree and snatch a ripe yellow
guava. In between bites, he bellowed the cows to the road, chasing
the white calves behind their huge-eyed, solemn mothers.
The
skinny boy who stays home unless his mother sends his long legs up the road to buy rice appeared at the neighbor's one day.
Within minutes, he was smiling shyly at Abuela, conversing fluidly
about ant-killing pesticide. Within more minutes, he had walked
his bare feet up the nearest palm tree and was kicking down
coconuts, but only the dry brown ones. Within a few more, he had
dusted himself off and passed me walking up the road, not even
quietly saying hello.
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| Family photo (Neguith and 5 sons: Neiver, Gleider, Gleiner, Leiver, Eider). |
She's
ten, but there's no way to know that from the palms of her hands.
She is wiry, perhaps because sometimes there is
only clean yucca for lunch, that is to say, yucca with nothing. She
crouches in the dirt and scratches first a knife, then rubs
handfuls of sand back and forth over the soot-encrusted pot. The
pots are decades old, but there's no way to know that from the way
they shine when she finishes.
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| Afternoon futbol practice (Juancho, Anyi, Indris, Yeiris, Merkin) |
They
holler a greeting, the same every Monday, as their animals wallow
through the mud to the next village, where they collect payment for
the fresh, bright clothes they sold the last Monday. The tall
sister, crowned with comb-defying black hair, rides by on her tall,
thin palomino mount. The short sister, with smoother hair and wider
hips, perches on her squat, sturdy donkey. The donkey scrambles less
for footing as they round the curve and disappear, hello shouts
washing back on the breeze.
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| Watching futbol (Cesar, Mañe, Moyses, 2 from the next town). |
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| New rice (Luis) |
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| Husking corn for seed (Jorge) |
