Luisa of the Remarkable Attitude

Regarding my last couple of blogs I was fairly judged as having become cynical and rather than getting all defensive and stirred up over my bruised ego, I accept the possibility that the years have jaded me somewhat. I won’t be retracting any of my comments just contributing a less curmudgeonly sort of blurb this go around. Maybe I will even do two…

I am not the tender sort I used to be in many respects, that is for certain. I get irritated with the banal and insipid and am more suspicious of people’s motives after years of being seen as the potential source of the solution. Hence when I come upon the remarkable I tend to be more than impressed. I truly do have wonderful experiences in my rumblings and ramblings albeit, something out of a novel sometimes. I never take what I do for granted. I realize that I have been privileged to work where few will ever go and to make friends of people who know and respect me for the care and concern that I have for them far beyond what I need from them. I will miss all of this one of these days.

A while ago I met a wonderful little girl that I truly fell in love with the first day I met her. Her name is Luisa and she is truly a spark. A charming young woman, she is a couple of years older than my daughters and just amazes me. She teaches sewing to some of our campesinos. She also told me that she had worked cleaning houses, had been a hair dresser, a manicurist, knows how to break horses… the list was impressive.

I had just met her and knew that she was from a little burg called Velille on the way up here to our project. She is pretty and smart but I could tell that she was just a kid so I asked, “How old are you?”

To which she replied, “I am going to turn 20 next month!”

I then asked her when she started to work and she told me when she was 7 and her older sister took her to Lima. The sister convinced their parents to let her take Luisa to Lima where she left her in a park. Luisa sat there for two hours or so, until a kindly woman asked what was going on and Luisa told her that her sister had left her there.

She went to live with the woman, wrote her parent’s names and where she came from down so she would not forget. The kindly woman did not have wherewithal to care for her so Luisa had to work and do her part. I have not asked her level of education but she told me, “¡Nada malo mi sucedió y mi vida ha estado linda!” indicating that despite her terrible story she considers her life to have been a charmed one. I consider that remarkable given all that she told me. Having denied an adoption attempt at ten by some kindly North Americans just so that she could go and look for her parents, she found them at fifteen and lives with them now in Arequipa.

I asked about her sister the abandoner and she told me that she helps her with her finances. She said, “She has problems.” I was goggle eyed. Luisa is an example of a positive attitude that I cannot imagine. She asked me to be padrino in her baptism and I could not tell her no. It has been a remarkable experience to know Luisa.