My friend Dora stood in my kitchen the other day showing me photos from her trip to a tiny Guatemalan village high in the mountains of her native country. Each year, twice a year, she and her husband, Freddy, travel there as assistants to a medical team serving Guatemalans in need.
Like the other volunteers, Dora and Freddy use their vacation days and pay their own expenses on these trips. Sometimes I help them with fundraising, or by contacting friends in the medical field who manage to donate vitamins, medicines and supplies. Dora says she and Freddy get back more than they ever give. I’m used to these kitchen debriefings from Dora, but when she finishes telling me about this trip, I see for the first time that this work pays Dora back with a rare kind of treasure.
Dora’s three-day medical brigades usually focus on city-dwellers in dire need of medical attention. But this February the group traveled to the remote village of Boca Costa, high in the southwestern mountains of Guatemala. The two busses loaded with volunteers from across the U.S. left Guatemala City early that morning and bounced along mountain roads for hours until they reached the unpaved tracts leading to the village.
Boca Costa runs itself. The village is too remote for reliable help from the police or the army. As the busses rolled up, the villagers raised their gate to welcome the foreign doctors. “They wore their finest clothes for us—what they wear for ceremonies and special days,” Dora said, pointing out the dark blue woven cloth of the women’s skirts, their creamy embroidered blouses.
Even in the long line of villagers, the old woman caught Dora’s attention. She was frail but sturdy, clearly blind, or nearly so, but somehow stood up straight, a guide by her side. Her jet-black hair belied her nearly 80 years of hard work in these beautiful but unforgiving mountains; the burns on her wrinkled dried out arms did not. The Mayan-to-Spanish interpreter passed the woman’s words to the Spanish-to-English interpreter.
“I can’t see my cooking fire any more. Can you see my burns? I’ve come so the doctor can put her hands on me and heal me. So I won’t burn myself anymore.”
Dora looked on as Ellen—a new doctor from Chicago—examined the old woman, but could tell by the doctor’s expressions she wouldn’t be able to help the ancient villager. The interpreters worked through the message, as gently as possible, until the Mayan words finally reached the old woman’s ears.
“No,” the old woman said, “No!” She is a good doctor. Tell her I know that! She must try. Try something!” The old woman leaned closer to the doctor, felt for the doctor’s hands to put on her own head.
The American doctor held the old woman’s hands and, again, tried to relay the message, this time explaining the treatment for cataracts, that the woman needed surgery, that the doctors couldn’t operate now—here. The interpreters, Dora, the doctor, and the old woman were all in tears as the message passed through the languages and the thin high air of the mountains.
The old woman sat quietly for a moment, wiping her face with her hands, letting the words sink in. “Tell her to touch me. Please!”
Dora and the doctor bent down in unison and started digging into a box full of glasses, placing one pair after another into the old woman’s hands and guiding them toward her face. The old woman put each pair on with pride and squinted into the haze in front of her, lifting her face to catch the light she needed, but no light shone through. Then, after many attempts, inexplicably, one set of glasses gave her just enough vision—just enough. The old woman stood up beaming. She declared herself cured. The doctor tried to explain, but the woman was too happy to hear about warnings and realistic expectations. She begged the doctor not to leave until she returned. Dora, the interpreters and the doctor only nodded as they, again, recovered from another cry.
After a while, the old woman returned, wearing her new glasses, her guide nearby, and a gorgeous white hen in her arms.
“I want to give the doctor my best hen. She is a very good hen. She will lay many eggs for you,” she said lifting the fat serene hen in the air.
Everyone looked at the startled doctor as she struggled to find the right words. The doctor hugged the old woman, thanked her, tried to explain about planes, and customs agents, but the interpreters were laughing and crying too hard and maybe that’s why the old woman never really grasped the difficulties of hens during international air travel.
“Just tell her!” the old woman insisted, “She must understand that this hen will lay the best eggs and then she could even get the hen to make more chickens. Doesn’t she understand?”
For the fourth time that morning, the women in this circle of helpers, so high in the Guatemalan mountains began to cry together. And the old woman finally understood.
“Tell her, then, that I will never sell or kill this hen. That I will protect and cherish her in the doctor’s honor, because she helped me see light again.”
And the circle of helpers, already used to each others’ tears, let them flow one last time that morning in the village of Boca Costa.
Ana Hebra Flaster is a freelance writer and Lexington resident. Ana’s work has been featured on NPR and the Boston Globe.