Maria Tuilia

So very much has happened and since it´s my day off today, I thought I´d take some time to let you know a little about what´s been going on.

First of all... I told you about my teacher Maria, she´s amazing! I love love love her. More than just a spanish teacher she has told me some incredible stories about her time ¨fighting¨ in the war. There´s a couple stories she told me yesterday that brought me to tears and oh how I could explain to you how beautiful this woman is because of all she´s had to fight through. I´ll give you a quick version of one of her stories because, well, I´m not that great of a writer (she is and I told her she needs to write a book... she´s gonna) and because I think it might take me forever.

During the war she slowly was working at a Catholic school as a teacher. One of the preists that also worked at the school started telling Maria and her friend that they should start reading the daily paper to be better informed about what was going on with their country and with the war. They did. After learning more about the war and what was going on in Guatemala, they asked the preist what they could do to be not only informed, but involved. He gave them some small easy jobs. Jobs like watching for the governments military our in the streets to see where they were going, and how many of them there were. After some time, they wanted to do more. The preist was a part of a guerilla movement called ORPA (Organization of People in Arms). I´ll jump a little more forward here... the more she got involved, the more she wanted to do. At this point she´s 27 years old and ORPA has just offered her an opportunity to be a nurse. She had never be trained in anything other than being a teacher so this was a huge decision for her to make. They offered her a car and because one of her dreams had been to own and drive a car, she said yes. (how awesome is that!)

Her very first ¨mission¨ was to go pick up a wounded soldier in the guatemalan mountains. The house they gave her was in Mexico because they didn´t want to risk being in Guate for their own safety. The house was, I think, in Chiapas Mexico. Orpa gave her a husband too...well not really but kinda. She moved in with a guy/pretend husband named David who had also recently joined the movement. On the way to her first mission, she had a car in front and one in back, both with Guatemalan preists who were like her security. Once she got up to the top of the mountain where the soldier was to be waiting for her, she saw him. He was a mess. His face was completley disfigured, two of his fingers had been blown off and he had shards of bomb lodged into his face. He could still walk but his hand had a horrible infection. His left arm had been amputated previously, she thinks with a swiss army knife in the mountains and now his right hand was missing his pointer finger and ring finger and part of his palm.

His name is Pedrito. For the 15 days after the bomb explosion, he lived under a coffee plant in hiding. He had very little food, if any at all, and a severe infection in his hand. His fellow soldiers couldn´t take him out of the front lines because it was too dangerous so they waited until the fighting settled a bit before they got him help. 15 days. During the explosion, his left eye had been blown off and his right eye became blind too.

Maria took him and changed his clothes so he could be a little cleaner and less obvious when they crossed back over the border. He looked like death she said but his spirit was incredibly hopeful. After putting him in the car, she drove back to her house to start treating his wounds. Luckily the guards at the border let her pass without question and she arrived home. Once inside, she stuck him in the bath and cleaned him up. His hand was the worst of it. He had pus and a bunch of maggots there living in his wound. After cleaning out his wound, she called a friend to find out how to get the maggots out. Apparantley, boiling some water with basil in it and then putting it on your maggot infested wound makes them scurry off.

Eventually they got him food, antibiotics, and prostetic devices for his arm and hand. He lives in Mexico City now with a group of blind people. Maria says that he kinda fell in love with her during the time she took care of him. During that time he would ask her what she looked like and they would spend lots of time together, especially during meals when she had to feed him. She never had feelings for him so it never really worked out.

I guess what I find so great about this story is that she was never trained to do anything. She had no supplies and no training but it seems like she did everything perfectly. (from a nursing student´s standpoint that is) He would have suffered without her help yet her hours and hours of time and care got him back to a place of functionality and life. Eventually she got some medication and some supplies and a little bit of training but for the most part, everything was on the spot, think for yourself kinda stuff. Seems to me she did okay.

She has told me some other stories too. Stories of amputations in her house, getting arrested and tortured by the mexican police. Stories of running an underground radio station. Stories of being dropped off in Cuba after being beaten. Stories of being awesome.

Listening to some of her stories, I asked her if she was scared (like before she was stripped naked and tortured). She said no. I said yeah right. She said well... I´ve studied psychology so I know that fear is man made and your fear only had as much power as you give it. Who says that? Maria Tuilia.