Today I thought you might like to meet Don Ipolito.
Don Ipolito is pretty sure he's 93. Here he is riding back from the nearest town with supplies for his granddaughter's eatery, a 5-hour trip he does every day. He was born an actual serf on a large farm estate near the seaside village where he now lives, which is called Oystery (Ostional) for obvious reasons. He grew up in appallingly miserable circumstances, he never went to school, never got vaccinated, can't read and write and barely speaks Spanish. He worked all his life out in the fields with a machete, on sugarcane crops, on a monotonous menu of rice and beans and perhaps a little cheese curd. He was already 63 when the Sandinista Revolution turfed out his landlords and gave the land to the serfs, who in general managed it very badly, except for in Ostional where the cooperative held and there were enough capable people to administer it. He was a complete inspiration to meet. I and three other middle-aged aid workers sat at his feet like children and he told us that in his 93 years, he has never had more hope and faith in the future his descendants are to have than he has right now. We hear that so rarely that the four of us burst into tears. Suddenly it all seemed worth the fight.
But what I could not get out of him was... he is in the middle of a rainforest and has just ridden for 5 hours. How the hell does he keep his shirts that clean and ironed?
Love you
Marianne
No comments:
Post a Comment