Gordita

Yours truly. Gordita. Little fat one.
I don't mind. Gordita means you look healthy, good, and your mom fed you well.
Peruvian women love calling me Gordita.
It's a compliment.

This Gordita is feeling tired, excited and inspired.
The end of this week Maggie and Gordita ventured out with G&C, our hopeful future allies in the fight against poverty here in Cajamarca. Went to the campo, just below the gold mine. I was scared, would people throw rocks at the car, as I have heard, in protest against the mine? I carried my business cards as my shield, no, no, I work for a different organization. I am on your side.

We went to visit health progress within family homes.
Goal sheets posted on dirt walls with pictures so that everyone can understand. We dream of a clean house that is in order. We want a new kitchen. A mirror. Clean toothbrushes. Clothes hung up on a thin thread, but not on the ground. A new stove in mid construction. Proud yet humble faces greeted us at every door. What big effort for small changes. Sustainability for a better day. Truly I was inspired and touched that these families, much like the families I work with, have taken steps to make their home a better place. Little things. Posters that reminded the family to drink boiled water. To brush their teeth every day. Not so little things, because they are milestones for a family that "never knew another way, because no one ever taught us." Our young teen truck driver safely brought us down the rocky road. We flew past the mountain curves, me ever thankful we didn't fall off the cliff that hugged the other side of the road. A return to Cajamarca with a new vision of changing lives through health education.

Gordita embraced the weekend with a soccer game. In the nice stadium. Where usually only the men play. This morning the women owned the stadium. We had few fans; empty stadium seats surrounded us with a background of mountain midst. This Gordita may not stay gordita, not if the stadium invites us in every weekend and if she dances the carnival in the street all night long. Gordita might become Flaquita.