ELIANA

Our camp sits between the towns of Record and the larger town of Challhuahuacho (pronounced Chal-you-a-wacho but all smooshed together). Challhua, for short is the local big town. Record has a small Puesto Medico or clinic but with a medical technician who has very little in the way of resources. Challhua has what is basically a small hospital.

The second to the last night I was up at the project, I had to give some doctors a ride to our camp at the end of a health campaign that they are doing at our behest. At the medical clinic a woman begged me for a ride to our camp. Actually they were three women and a little five year old girl, Eliana. full with the doctors headed to our camp, my truck had no room to give the women a ride but she asked me to take her five year old daughter to her husband in the camp.

Little Eliana rode in the back with the doctors all of the way back and chattered. I did not pay a lot of attention but for the fact that she spoke Spanish quite well. I arrived at the camp and the guards told us that her dad, Ciprian had already left for Challhua.

I decided to go back after the women walking towards the camp from Record. I dropped the doctors off and told them to put Eliana in the front seat to go back with me and I just hoped she would not freak out. Not only did she not freak out but chattered away with me ceaselessly about her, “Nueva ropa típica… mi mama me la compró.” She was really proud of her new set of traditional clothes and wanted me to be very clear that her mother had bought her a set of her own. I was duly impressed and asked her if she would let me see it the next day. She assured me that she would show it to me the next day, being Sunday.

By the next day, I had forgotten the whole ropa típica saga until I walked down by the gate and there outside stood little Eliana. She had come in her Sunday-go-to-meeting clothes just for me to see. I implored her to let me take her picture and she gladly accepted.

Eliana in her ropa típica: