Toyi's War Experience Chapter V

Friday, September 29, 2006

Hey guys, here my 2 cents…Well things kept getting uglier, my Dad started talking to us very seriously and specially to me the older one, he taught us where to hide in case military or gunmen came to raid the house, but he also said “if they see you please stay were you are and don’t move” and do what they tell you. Since we had a big yard with lots of trees, we were told which trees we could hide, and feed from, we had some good amount of "Jocote" In English called Yellow Mombin and we could eat its leaves big time in case that family died or were very wounded and we had no way to eat or even if we just couldn’t go outside for food, The funny thing about the trees was that after we knew we could eat those leaves, we wouldn’t wait until war was on lol we had to get correction ‘cause we kept eating the leaves of the trees, the restriction was “Eat them only when there is nothing else to eat” lol wow but those leaves were soooo tasty, now a days I still get the urge for those leaves, they are sour and if you add Soya sauce, a pick of salt and lemon… uhm yumi, they are just delicious, but be prepared… if your stomach is not used to it, don’t eat a big amount to start or you will get a trip to the bathroom and a lasting stomachache, we also had a Mango tree in the middle of the yard, that tree was very productive but anytime you walked under the tree, you had to pay attention to the falling mangos, we could actually sense it cause was easy to ear the mangos falling and hitting the branches making noise un their way to the ground, it was a very tall & thick tree, we also kept water in containers that were never touched just in case (because if electricity goes off then water goes off automatically and so… we wouldn’t want to be caught off guard), a little jar with gas and some covered wood for an improvised “mud stove” granny had made in case we didn’t have electricity, (Cause guerrillas started hitting infrastructure and we were getting energy cuts few times a day, but it was just about time, it was easier for Guerrillas to blow power towers than Gov to replace them. Granny made sure we had grains because grains are very lasting and they don’t need to be frozen; all you need to eat them is boil them in water, she made sure to update the grains once a month or so, (Lents, rice, Peas, etc) why we never had canned food? Because was imported and was very expensive, we couldn’t afford it… one canned item would cost around $0.25 which was about 3 colones (ES Money), with one can only one person could eat, but the grains were cheaper and full of vitamins, with 3 colones we could get grains for a month and family would be able to eat.
Our family had a plan for encounter for war, Okay here we have the 1st encounter of war and was the first time we were going to use the plan.Oh 1AM BOOM, BANG, BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM. There was a chosen room, this room didn’t have any wall near the street so it was basically protected and perfect to shelter, didn’t have windows either (that was a bedroom were Granny’s granny died she was hit by a speeding biker on her mature age and that hit broke her hip, she never recovered from that and remained in that bedroom until she died, when I was 3 years old I remember that I always had the curiosity to enter that room, the door was always closed when people walked in the door never opened all the way and closed behind their backs, one day I manage to make it to the middle of the bedroom, it had a funny smell when I got caught, all I could see was somebody well covered under lots of bed sheets but couldn’t see her face, she was taken out of there the day she died), okay coming back to subject…everybody had few seconds to bring their pillows and Petates ( to sleep on the floor), petates are very common in Latin America, they are made by hand are far from comfortable they are fresh to minimize the heat cause the place we live is very hot and dry (100-110 degrees), a mattress could be deadly I am not kidding because they are hot and if you sleep on them for too long (if you can ever sleep cause gets hotter indeed) then you can develop Kidney problems (this decease is very common in LA ) and maybe the reason why you now can understand why Hammocks and Petates are very popular in LA, no is not because they are fun like you might think.
My family decided to arrange kids in one place, the only kid that stayed on a hammock was my cousin (she was 2), oh I had a quiet funny experience that night because in some way I was lined up with my cousin’s hammock swinging direction, okay well I am asleep and next thing I get water coming rapidly through my nose and mouth, oh my body reaction of course imediatly sit coughing and shocking in the darkness and then I get knocked by the moving hammock, my aunt (mother on my cousin in the hammock) turns a flashlight & points at me, and she starts laughing unstoppably and out loud because she realized that while she was smoothly swinging my cousin’s hammock to keep her asleep from the bombing; my cousin had peed and I got the shower, family wakes up and laughed like crazy and I got very mad lol well at that time we had no electricity.