“Ramirez needs help,” Inez explained to Kelly on Thursday. We know it is true. He is one of the hardest workers I have met in my life, but in the last couple of years a heart or lung condition has prevented him from doing as much as he desires and needs. Anytime his work requires significant exertion – anytime he walks the steep path to his field, or the 40 minutes to Inez´s pulperia or the bus stop in Las Mangas – his chest pains him and he can’t breathe well. Which makes a hard life harder.
Ramirez is also one of the most ingenious men I’ve known, never short on ideas of how he can provide for his wife and four young boys. He has planted 70 licha trees, squash, tomatoes, pepper, mustard, pineapple, oranges, sugar cane, and rice, along with the traditional corn, beans, and yuca. They also keep numerous chickens, two hogs, and five turkeys. And last time I was there, they had captured a young capybara-type rodent -- good for eating -- and were trying to raise it to slaughtering size.
But this year’s bean harvest suffered with the heavy rains, and now he must go looking for produce he can sell whenever he needs money. The other day, for example, when his son Cristian was barely breathing with a bad case of asthma, Ramirez was on the front porch, hurriedly sorting through beans so that he could sell them in Ceiba and afford the hospital bill. Finally we bought 30 pounds ourselves and loaned him the rest that he needed.
Now he talks about going to the states to work – if the next bean crop doesn’t pega. “We know a coyote in Ceiba,” Rubenia explained to Kelly. When Kelly objected that crossing the border can be very dangerous, and that his living in the states wouldn’t be ideal for their family, Rubenia simply replied, “I know. But we have to do something.”
We are hopeful that things will begin looking up for them – that his heart trouble would vanish without a trace, that we could find a profitable crop or another job. And we are doing what we can to help. Larry visited this week to work with him, and discovered that he has some really good looking jalapeno peppers and possibly some habaneros, both of which sell very well in La Ceiba. We want to help him finish his oven for baking bread, which was a profitable enterprise for him in years past. Peter bought them a new molina (hand-grinder), and we are hoping to take Ramirez and Cristian to a clinic in town.
And we pray that God who knows them better than anyone else would guard them.
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