Lisboa. Bogotá/Luz de la Costa
(if you are a child, and we all are...this post contains some violence that might be hard to handle fyi)
She invited me...in that way you can't say 'no' to...to her house for lunch. Her son was in the choir-- Estefan, a quiet, sweet boy who wanted to learn, he had that want in his eyes, the same one that was in his mamma's eyes. We walked along the dirt streets of Lisboa-- further than I had anticipated, through the dust and trash to her place. It was a humble 4 small room apartment-- a bed and computer for her son. A bed for her. The kitchen, a room with lots of clothing, sewing? Clean. Neat. Showed me photos of her family in the Atlantic Coast, who she hadn't seen in years. Told me her story. She misses them. Hadn't seen them, not since they airlifted her to Bogotá. 5 years ago. Many men from an armed military group gang raped her outside of her apartment in the coast. Watching was her baby 4 year old boy. She was somehow connected to some opposing group through family or something. Escaped to the plane in the night, in a car hidden under sheets so they wouldn't stop her. She wants to start a new. A better life here, where she can make money and live with her son, where he can get an education- but she is still full of fear. If anyone finds out who she's connected to they could 'shut her up'. So she doesn't talk. Like most of the women in the community of Lisboa, she doesn't talk out of fear. She tells her story to few. Her eyes show her past when she is telling me this, as we walk along the street back to the center. Her smile though, shows her optimism and want to live. Her want for her son to get out. I didn't know what to say, so I say nothing but smile and hug her and thank her for lunch.
She serves me fresh fish fried with plantains, rice, salad, jugo de mora- probably costing more than she makes in a week. She teaches me to eat the fish with my fingers (as they do in the coast), and reaches on to my plate to show me how. I leave some meat on the bones without meaning to, and she looks over saying, I'll get that for you, and takes it for her. At the end after I have tried to get it all, and eat everything she gave me, she says 'you left the best part, Profe', 'los ojos'!. So I think, 'there are probably worse things to eat somewhere else in the world than fish eyes, and there is no way in hell I am insulting this woman who fed me lunch out of the kindness of her heart by saying I don't eat fish eyes'. She says 'make sure to get the socket'. I suck the eye along with the socket down, and then the other one. Yum. A smile spreads across her face- she knows I have never eaten fish eyes before.
Thank you, Luz for teaching me more than how to eat fish eyes.
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