It’s been over a year in site. Your service begins to change. You’ve stopped fighting, wriggling, struggling- you’re in the final stretch of the marathon and you can feel your weariness fading to the background as you commit to every step; each one brings you closer to that miraculous finish line, and each one is a small accomplishment along the way. Even if you achieve nothing else, you’ve come this far, and there’s much to be said for your experiences with the Peace Corps.
I had an epiphany in church the other day. That’s not something I say often. A friend and member of our artisan group, Yaya Hilaria Trejos, died of hantivirus last week. She was in her 70s and more susceptible to the illness. It’s carried and spread by rats and has flu-like symptoms, but can develop into severe respiratory failure and other complications that hospitalized her for three weeks before she passed away. Her death is a terrible loss for the community.
As I’ve mentioned before, visiting your neighbors is a daily routine for people in the campo. I have, on average, four people come by my house to chat or check in. I’ll go bounce from porch to porch, talking about anything that comes to mind. And the conversation is easy without any pressure or expectation. You come to find comfort in silence, and it’s a skill you develop to feel no sense of urgency to fill it. But as I walked from house to house, I found that no matter who I was visiting, everyone spoke about Yaya. Every day, we passed updates though a network of neighborly concern. And it was never gossipy, nor morbid curiosity. It was never forced nor faked. These people genuinely care for every single one of their neighbors, and whether they knew them well or hardly at all, they cared. Their lives pause when they grieve for the dead. There is a vigilence at the house of the deceased for 7 days after their death, and then the family and friends will cook all day while the neighbors come to pray over the safe passage of their loved one. They’ll sit for three hours, and then they all get up and shuffle down the dirt path to the church for a service with the district Father, who will also give a service for another two hours. Then, usually at 5pm, everyone receives a boxed dinner, endures the echoing sobs of the bereft resonating in the renovated halls of the church, and solemnly go home. Yaya was 70. She lived alone in a small house set far apart from the community, yet she spent every day making her way from one house to another. She was solitary, but she was never alone. She has a family of over 200 people, and they came in buses for her funeral.
In the United States, so few communities like Guánico exist for us. There are a handful of small towns, but our lives seem so large and exposed compared to the home that the people in this coastal village created. Their lives are simple and some people would feel unfulfilled here, but there is no shortage of love and connection amongst these people. Their devotion to one another is learned from childhood, and every year after a loved one’s death, they’ll reassemble to remember them. The same can rarely be said for the US; usually close friends and family are the only ones to feel those reverberations of loss. But in this community, and the hundreds like it across Panama, every person within the 3 mile radius will know the date and time and they will be there, come rain or shine. Not because its obligatory or because its ingrained in their culture. It’s because that’s what we do for the ones we love completely, and in Guánico, everyone truly loves their neighbors.
It took a loss for me to truly value what has been here the whole time. I went to funerals and masses every other week at first, but I never understood the services nor knew the deceased, and I oftentimes didn’t even know the family. It was a publicity act for me mostly, an attempt to integrate. I did it because my job required it. Yaya was the first community member I worked with to pass away, and I at last experienced the profound depths of this love. This is a beautiful thing to be a part of, and I urge everyone who serves or considers service to appreciate being invited, even if only as a guest, into the tight embrace of a community.
Sushibear Goes to Panama 