Jaimito

Somber in his thoughtfulness, I felt a connection with him immediately. The ability to open up to his soft and probing eyes, the eagerness with which he absorbed a new idea. His lack of defensiveness; I believe they call it humility. His ears and nose are prominent traits from his father and mother, respectively, and he could never be as handsome with any other feature. He has skin that you can fall into, his hands obviously accustomed to hard work, lacking the near delicate nature of the rest of his physical body. Named for his father, the diminutive “ito” is to distinguish between the two men in conversation and in yelling for either of them in the house.

He is a father himself. Three girls. A husband, too. He would never leave his wife, loves her as much as he did when they married at the age of 15, but there is trouble in paradise. Not to be glib. The situation is complex. They depend on one another and face the same troubles most marriages come to face after 17 years and 3 children. Divorce is not the status quo.

The angst of the universe overcomes him sometimes, and when he was unemployed due to his political affiliations it was the worst. He stopped eating, “por la tristeza”, he said. His only joy came from his youngest child, Camila, who was learning to walk.  They laughed, played, snuggled together, were permanently attached at the literal hip.

I tried to motivate him to create his own work – he is incredibly skilled in a variety of things - and for brief moments after our talks he seemed to liven up with inspiration…but he was in a mindset where

nothing could be created. Only that which already existed vied for legitimacy. So, he left. To Costa Rica he went and not for the first time, I would later find out. His only brother lives there with his wife and their two children.  The worst part was that Jaimito and Camila were apart. She was starting to talk and would say a few words into the phone when he called to check in over those months.

When he finally, finally came back, I was asleep. I woke up to the sound of his voice and people joyfully calling his name mixed in with stories about the trip back home. He was leaner than he had been when he left which was quite a feat. Seeing him again was as wonderful as seeing my biological brother. Everyone was beaming that night.

Luck found him upon his return. He started working in the health center as an assistant in the laboratory, and moved on to driving one of the ambulances.  The ambulance job has no set hours – often he has deep, dark lines under his eyes from lack of sleep– but he loves the hard work.

When he was 11 they moved to Rancho Grande. Before that they lived, and he studied, in Mataglapa. He says as children he and his 3 siblings never fought, not really, and only a little once they were teenagers. It is hard to picture him fighting with anyone if you only know his sensitive side, which is an overwhelming part of his personality, but I have seen him smack his middle child, ignore his eldest daughter for days when she became pregnant at 15, and refuse to go home due to issues with his wife.  I have heard from his own mouth that he wished his wife didn’t work, and that he feels justified in having an “other woman”; pieces of the machismo culture that have clung to him.  He listens very intently and respectfully to me when I half-berate him for his infidelity and common or narrow perspective while at the same time not judging him as an evil person. We are all victims of our culture.

There is honesty between us that is a precious commodity in any relationship. “You can trust me,” he says to me one recent evening, sensing a sadness within me.   I was thinking much about death – it was near the time of my grandfather’s departure from life.

You want what he says about trusting him to be true, and for all the trust that he has put in you, you, with a sense of relief that you had almost forgotten exists, talk about how you feel, thus strengthening the ties of this new friendship. 

 When I first got to Rancho, he asked me why I was so quiet. Nobody had really asked me anything up until that point. He made an effort to sit with me and understand me a bit more. I told him that I was faced with a new culture, a new language, new food, new climate, a new job, far from my family and friends... I began to weep a little, and he, slightly embarrassed, surely, said, "I understand you now. I understand". In that response I gleaned his gentleness, his curiosity, his polite nature, but more than that his empathy, which is a characteristic that I find comforting and rare. To find that in such a new situation had a similar effect as pulling a blanket over yourself in the middle of the night when it has gotten cold.