A rather fruitless day really. Last night there was a storm with wind and rain and the electricity went out. It hasn’t returned all day.
We went to see the waterman today
With a view to following up his offer of a house to live in.
but he was busy oranizing the water supply which needs electricity to pump it. Then we went on down to the church and I read for a bit whilst Grant worked and Mungo sploshed about in puddles.
Luis (Georgina’s brother) today has announced himself sick and has gone to bed with two aspirin and two more for later. Soledad said, smiling, that baby Victor is sick and has sores on his legs. Apparently a child dropped him.
May 9th Tuesday 1972
Last night I went out to meet Grant at about 5 o’clock. I walked down to the Juzgado [court house] but Grant wasn’t there and hadn’t been there all day. I felt a bit weak and low so thought I’d visit the matrona. I think I got her out of bed. She invited me into a room after running around with an air freshener. The storm the night before had taken its toll cos there was a pool of water on the front room floor. We sat in her room and I told her about Soledad and how rotten I felt not giving her things. She told me Soledad was a bit mad anyway
She said Tula (her friend) was being thrown off the island for homosexuality and drug pushing. She was told by a friend who said “Do you know you have a friend who……” The gossip she hears is certainly vicious. She played the guitar while we talked – I feel I don’t know her at all.
On the way home I met a girl from Papiano’s house who was hurrying along with an oil bottle. She walked with me up the short cut but I got lost after I left her and ended up coming over the fields in the dark which was very difficult.
Today I’ve been quite busy. When I got up this morning Rosa wasn’t up and the kids were romping around being aggressive and difficult. They’d peed on the bathroom floor and thrown banana skins about. I gave them breakfast and cleaned up a bit and then Grant and I set off for the padre’s house. I alphabetized his cards and then went to the ECA where I got talking to Carmen Duke, the wife of a carabiniero [policeman] who claims to have learnt Pascuence in a year. Very few people at the ECA today though I was a bit late. I also bought some cheese at the co-op at 60 escudos a kilo.
When I got home Luis was carving a statue and Rosa had made a chicken stew. It was a bit watery but Mungo ate some. After lunch, at which the children behaved piggishly I wrote to Mum and prepared my lesson for Maria. At about two Rosa came in and said she was going to get camote [sweet potato] for the baby [and would I mind the baby and I explained that I had to go around 2.30.
Anyway she didn’t show up at three and all the doors and other bedrooms were locked so I went over to her house to check. I couldn’t see the baby and was alarmed but apparently the baby was locked in her bedroom asleep.
She came back and then I went to Maria’s. We had a nice time there. Grant joined me around 6. I learnt how to make sopaipillas – a sort of fried bread – and gave my lesson. Maria was a bit unwell. I had a good Pascuence lesson which I taped.
We had meat and tarot for supper and caramelized condensed milk. A lot of boys gathered in the course of the evening to go to the cinema.
Maria told us she used to have a photographic memory (in the real sense of the term) and would tell stories to her friends in the old days but she was very ill when she was pregnant six years ago and had to have several blood transfusions and it affected her memory and her general health. Now she mustn’t get anxious or overworked and needs change. She says she is anaemic.
Over time, the lessons with Maria covered all sorts of olden times stories and practices.
I met Ivan today who says that Victor is better but Rosa’s baby is ill tonight. It has a cold and swollen glands. Before I realized it had swollen glands I gave her a third of a children’s aspirin for it. Now I wish I hadn’t because if it is seriously ill it won’t help and I’ll probably get blamed. And in any case I shouldn’t have given someone else’s baby aspirin under a year old when the instructions on the bottle begin. It was extremely foolish not to say criminal of me and I shall never do it again. But one wants to help so.
The baby of course was perfectly OK but it was a good lesson.
I met Tula today. He says he’s being thrown out for bothering women tourists!
Mmm.