12. The mysterious don Geraldo

The mysterious don Geraldo  In Quito, Dra. Máxima and Sergio, the Argentine singer, were very busy that weekend. Máxima had to help her daughter with her homework and Sergio had an applause presentation at the House of Culture, which was attended by Máxima, her daughter and her parents.

On Sunday night, Sergio accompanied her to the Quitumbe terminal, where he took a bus to Machala, where he would have another presentation before continuing her presentations in Peru.

Máxima traveled overnight on a direct bus to Muisne. It was 7 in the morning when she arrived. She went to the dock to take a boat to the island. The boat in which she wanted to embark did not take her, she had the positions of her. She then she was approached by a man of medium height, well dressed.

-Good morning miss, I'm going to Muisne in my boat. If you want, I'll take it.

-What is your boat?

-That blue yacht.

-A big yacht, I see it.

-What happens is that I make trips to Manta.

-Well, I've never been on a yacht.

There wasn't much time for conversation on that short drive.

- My name is Geraldo.

-I am Dr. Máxima Umiña.

- I knew a doctor Umiña, a long time ago. in the 1980s, when she came to do a cycle called pre-rural in the hospital, with another doctor who had been in the Sandinista Front.

-Yes, he was my father.

-Then let me invite you to eat a good breakfast in Muisne. I know a place where they make very good chicken near the park. I had very dramatic moments with his father that I would like to remember. '

-Well, of course I do.

After disembarking at the island's dock, Geraldo offered to carry Máxima's heavy backpack. Only people and tricycles circulated on the street at the pier. The warehouses began to work, they offered everything. There were sellers of cheese, peeled coconut, coconut juice, cane, orange, on the street. An old hotel that preserved the original architecture of the island, which was made of wood. and in front of the first pharmacy in town, they sat down to eat an appetizing roast chicken.

 In front was the park with a huge statue of Arcangel San Gabriel.

"They put that statue in place of that of Don Buche, who used to be in the center of the park," Geraldo said.

-Well, he was going to tell me about the adventures he had with my father.

-The most dramatic thing was when he returned to do a malaria research with the University of Heidelberg. I was hired to take the team of researchers on my boat, who collected blood samples from all over the world and captured mosquitoes with straws, which they put into bottles, which made a deafening noise.

  One afternoon I took his father to Sálima, where he worked and cared for the population. There were no doctors, no sub-centers, or health clinics. only shrimp pools. His father slept in the hotel on the court in front of the canteen.

We arrived at the town at night, after dropping off the others from the team in Chamanga, with the tide going out. To return I had to wait for the tide to rise around 3 in the morning, it was better for me to stay and I went to the canteen which, as it was Saturday, started the noisy engine and put on music. Everything was fine until midnight, then what almost always happened when the ladies of company did not come, with their heels in their hands, walking from Chamanga. The men began to drink and fights broke out, one of them was stabbed in the armpit.

The women began to shout "doctor!" The doctor, his father, who was already used to this. A few weeks before he had had to suture another wounded man who had attacked him with machetes, he sewed him from head to toe. People wanted to see the doctor's work, there were people sitting on the floor, standing and others on the tables. A pregnant woman who wanted to see closer to her, she began to vomit when an artery of the wounded man splashed blood on her face. Incredibly, the man was saved, because he was big and very strong, but the doctor said that an important artery had been cut off him, that we had to take him urgently to the Muisne Hospital.

"But we have no tide, we will have to wait," I said.

-Can we push the boat to a deeper place? He asked me.

I went to see if the tide had risen, it was possible to advance only with the wounded man and the doctor, pushing with the oar in mud. Thus we advanced about two kilometers, in which we could move with the motor and two relatives of the patient got on. The night was dark, the moon had not yet risen. When we reached the estuary, the moon came out, I was sailing at full speed while the doctor checked the pressure or changed again and again the serums that he squeezed them to compensate for the lost blood.

When we got to Boca de Bolivar, the sea was choppy, the waves looked huge, there was a great risk of sinking, that the boat could turn and we would all die.