Myette.org

Friends-

“I didn’t ask to be conceived, in a loveless embrace. Still we learn to be a warm sun, in a very cold galaxy.”
- Beth Orton “Conceived”

Pedro came to us in 2001 a sad, sick, malnourished little boy. Passed from parents to aunt, to community member and finally to adoptive parents who brought him to the farm out of desperate understanding that she could not help him fully recover from the damage done in the four short years of his life. A life until then filled with despicable conditions, violence and hardship began to be slowly healed by the love of the Farm. Brought to the farm by his loving adoptive parents and a parish priest he began the next leg of his journey which now finds him as a warm sun and a smile in the midst of our lives.

Five years later the social work team was reviewing his file and we realized that once he was brought to the farm we had little contact with his past life. His adoptive parents visited twice in the first few months but we hadn’t seen them since 2002 and no one had ever visited their home or tried to maintain contact. We even thought he had a sister somewhere but we didn’t even know her name.

I was helping the social work team traveling and get some corrections made on a birth certificate near where Pedro was originally from so I volunteered to see if I could track down his adoptive parents and hope against hope maybe even find his sister. So Jayasree (his social worker) and I set out for parts unknown with the barest of information about his past. A few first names, the name of a priest and the village where he was from were all we had to go on.

Setting out on the farm we hitched a ride in a pickup to Trujillo where we promptly discovered we had left half of our money at home. With a little more than $30 we thought we could make it if we spent wisely so we continued on. After two more buses and 5 hours of traveling down dirt roads we arrived in Limon a town of 5000 people where we began our search with the parish priest. He gave us good news that he had just seen Maria Crisanta, Pedro’ adopted mother, two months before and as far as he knew she still lived in a village named Plan de Flores. He gave us directions but warned us the last bus back toward Trujillo departed in 2 hours and if we went to Plan de Flores we would be moving in the wrong direction.

We decided to take the risk and got on the next bus. On the bus we met a woman who remembered Pedro and guided us to the house of Maria Cristanta. Sadly she also told us that Jose Trinidad, Maria’s husband and Pedro’ adopted father, had been shot and killed without provocation just the month before. Despite this sadness our arrival at Maria Cristanta’s house was joy filled as we shared pictures of Pedro who she hadn’t seen in 4 years. He had grown since then from a sick little boy into the energy filled 8 year old he is today. We shared with her Pedro’ story since she had last seen him and took pictures of the family to take back to Pedro.

She also told us about his sister. Ana. Not only did we now have a name but also really good directions and names of her adoptive parents (relatives of Maria Crisanta). The down side was that it was four more hours to find Ana and of course in the wrong direction. As we took our leave we thanked her for her hospitality and her promises to visit Pedro. We promised her we would be in touch and hopefully bring him to visit during his vacation over winter break. As we left this woman of humble means who was struggling with the emotional and financial loss of her husband pressed 40 lempiras into our hands and asked us to give it to Pedro.

Back on the road Jay and I had a choice to make. Take the last bus back to Trujillo and make it back in time for our myriad of responsibilities (teaching 5th grade, library, meetings) or keep going to find Ana. Jay hadn’t brought anything with her because she had her mind set on getting back that night, I had toothbrush and a clean shirt but my biggest concern was we were running out of money. It wasn’t even really a question and we knew what we had to do. So we set out again away from home and toward a nine year old girl who has never known her brother. We hopped in the back of another pick-up, this time perched on comfortable seats high atop big jugs filled with gasoline bound for villages with no gas station. Hanging on to the sides we breathed the fresh air and dodged the dust kicked up by vehicles heading the other direction. Beats sitting on a bus any day.

After a half hour ride we jumped out in a town called Icotea. We looked for the local delegate of the word, the community member who organizes the church services in a town where a priest only comes once every month or two. We were trying to score a free place to stay on a church floor, but struck out because he was out of town. We found a woman who rented rooms and got a room for the night ($3 for a bed and bathroom). It turns out she had been to the finca and was related to a priest we knew. We scoped out the town, ate some chicken while watching a soccer game, bought water and some cookies for the next day and settled in for the night. Our room had no electricity but we did Sudoku and read Brothers Karamazov by candle light.

The next morning we got up by five am. Got ready and set out on the long part of our journey. Guano is a 3 hour walk from Icotea. We had to get to Guano, meet Ana and get back before the last bus left at 1pm. We scored another short pick-up ride to help us get started and then spent the next two hours walking filled with excitement and hope. Jay and I were by now 24 hours into a conversation and hadn’t really stopped talking. This might seem natural except that just isn’t the type of person Jay is. I kept expecting her to just switch off and get tired of talking to me, but it just never happened.

Lots of conversation and 8 or 10 miles later we walked into Guano, followed Maria Crisanta’s directions, walked up to the house and met Julio Murillo, adopted father of Ana. We were a little nervous because we didn’t know if she knew she wasn’t their biological child or that she had a brother. Lots of things could go wrong.

But Julio reassured us that she knew everything. He called her and her mother Blanca over to meet us. We sat down and once again shared pictures of Pedro. Talked about him and his past. Learned more about Ana, the first few years of Pedro’ life, and found out what little they knew about other relatives that Pedro had. We got pictures to take back and after about an hour we said our goodbyes, filled with promises of meetings to come and a reunion between siblings.

As we walked out of Guano to begin our long trek home we marveled at the trip we had made. We were 5 hours from the nearest paved road after 3 pickups, 3 buses, and a 10 mile walk to find family.

The trip home was uneventful and just 8 hours after meeting Ana for the first time, I walked into my own home to see Michael, Jacob and Erika after a long two days apart. As my sons were crawling into my lap Jay went to house three to find Pedro. They walked to the office where for the first time he saw pictures of his sister.

I am so blessed.

Michael-John