(A-89) Status: Not Sponsored
Needs: food, kitchen, electricity
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They built the new house right next to the old one, where in front of both a concrete corridor separates the structures from a long drop of forest.
The action of the trail leading to the houses goes straight up along switchbacks and rocks that would not stand uncertain steps, as in their holds they are also crumbling.
Eulalio is 84 and rheumatic and avoids leaving the house if he can, since it seems likely he would not make it back up the cliff.
He occupies the weaker house on the side of the sturdy one, built for the daughter by those who sponsor her to go to school. It has one room. Now, between she and her father, there are two. They painted the tin sheets and rotted wood of the old house to match the concrete exterior of the new one, so that, maybe in melon, the homes of high-life would not seem unequal.
In the trees of the garden Eulalio tends he's hung barbie dolls, CDs, tin cans, bottles, jewelry and other toys that neither chime nor glitter in the sun. While their purpose is dubious, they are a distraction from what was to what is now: the man and his daughter used to live alone together in the derelict house where the sign of a storm sent Maria Christina seeking refuge at her half-brother's.
During the rainy season storms pass daily, washing out the route of the trail to the house.Their home and their way to it wrecked rather than welcomed them.
But you don't notice the way things were: you notice the ornaments and flowers and the colors of the doors and the walls.
Two geese and a caged parakeet interrupt our conversation, centered on the state of the kitchen: the walls are wrapped in tarps and wire, precarious as the old house was, where it seems a breeze will blow it over.
In her concrete room Maria Christina does not worry about earthquakes, rain and landslides. She makes the money for herself and her father, working in the preschool. She brings him lunch from the Program everyday so he won't have to climb the rocks.
Her mother, who was the much younger, second wife of Eulalio, had gotten sick and died; all the children from the first marriage scattered.
They cannot support their father; none studied in school because they were poor. All five have families now: one has 9 children, another 8, the others 5, 6 and 7 of their own.
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