44. El Faro and Las Gaviotas the other side of the world

The first person that Dr. Maxima went to visit in El Faro was the curandera Dona Briseida, who participated in the Puerto Viejo promoters' workshop.

Her house located next to the church, in the park, was now a place where the images of the church were, among them San Francisco, the patron saint of the town.

-What's all this doing here? she-she asked the old woman, who was the one who led the prayers in the church, she had cared for the children of the town in the children's center, and she was the one who cured them of fear, evil eye, and bad air.

-I have them here while they repair the roof of the church, they are changing it.

At that moment, her son Alejo arrived, who was very excited to meet the daughter of one of her dearest friends, Maxima's father.

- Are you Dr. Máxima? He-he asked as he gave her a very heartfelt hug, which made the doctor smile.

- Yes, nice to meet you.

- The pleasure is mine.

- Well now that I'm here I want to take the opportunity to take the pressure. The auxiliary Rosita told me that you had problems with your heart.

- If sometimes my blood pressure rises and drops.

Upon examination, the doctor discovered a severe cardiac arrhythmia and unstable pressure.

They tell me that you walk to the dispensary, and from here to there it is only three kilometers.

-But I walk slowly.

After visiting Briseida she went to the school where the rector had also been a friend of her father since 1982 and of her mother since before when she was a student in La Esperanza. Professor Jose Santoro, was also from Quito, like her, he was a basketball player, and now he was the rector of the school, after 35 years as a teacher at El Faro, where he even had boys who lived and lived with him, like his adopted children Well, he never married.

- Good morning Doctor.

- Professor Santoro, nice to meet you, my father told me a lot about you

. They told me that you are the daughter of Dr. Rafael. Nice to meet him, we are good friends with him, and we work together even after he left, when he sent volunteers to the town to help with English classes at the College. Come on doctor, let me introduce you to the students and teachers. This is an agronomy college and we have a guinea pig and rabbit farms, orchards, we produce humus with worms, and we even have a garden of medicinal plants.

-That's good because my garden of medicinal plants in Santo Tomás, where I was working, was destroyed by the president of the affiliates.

- Here you can have medicinal plants and nobody is going to touch them.

After recognizing the dispensary and visiting the school, and some of the townspeople who remembered her father, she had to choose where to live. The problem was that the other community where I had to work 3 of the 5 days a week called Gaviotas, did not have transportation from El Faro, you had to go to Santo Tomás and from there take a ranchera that meant almost an hour of travel, and more than 60 kilometers, the best thing was to live in San Medardo or Santo Tomás and from there travel to the Lighthouse or Gaviotas. with which the time was reduced by half,

In San Medardo he had a good friend, Don Gonzalo Ramos, over 80 years old, with asthma, but with an intellectual lucidity that amazed him, he was a good healer who used coca, marijuana, tobacco, and other plants that grew and even treated them. some cancers with kreolin, which is a poison and disinfectant.

After finding the house to live in San Medardo, which he had to paint and fix but it was made of cement and much better than another house, he had water well and installed internet and even satellite TV.

Then he went to visit the Gaviotas dispensary, which was nice, comfortable. Upon entering, he found a sign that had Doctor Almost Cute, at the entrance, The ugly are not cared for here. That sign irritated her and she asked the assistant an Afro, chubby, tall, and kind.

-How was it possible for people to support a guy who puts this on the front door of a health clinic in her dispensary? This is not the dispensary of that bastard, it is one of the affiliates of the Network, of those who come here to be treated and surely he was as rude as with the patients of La Gaviota, where he went out furious to silence the people who were waiting in the waiting room and sent them home without attending to them, yelling at them. What amazes me is that no one has protested.

"They feared you, doctor," replied the assistant.

- I see, while here they feared the doctor because he treated them badly, they treated me badly in Santo Tomás, they held assemblies to get me out, I tried to treat them with the greatest respect, consideration and even worked overtime without pay, gave talks for television, I visited the houses, attended to home births, gave theater therapy to children with problems at school, while here surely the doctor did not visit anyone, yelled at them, treated them badly. That reminds me of Stalin.