American College Girl in Disguise

On the rutted dirt road up to the water treatment plant in Tamara is a meticulous white brick house with a dozen beautiful potted plants out front. It is the house of Doña Blanca and Don Geronimo, an elderly couple. Both must be in at least their seventies but they live independently and happily. They sell bananas they grow in their backyard and charamuscas, plastic baggies filled with sweet fruit juice and then frozen into a treat similar to the “Mr. Freezies” we have in the United States. Having passed their house hundreds of times on the way to the plant and having purchased hundreds of bananas, we know the couple pretty well. They always invite us in for a sit and a chat.

I think Doña Blanca and Don Geronimo stay young by working. When you ask Doña Blanca how she is she’ll often tell you “Estoy bien porque aqui estoy haciendo oficio. (I’m doing well, because here I am doing housework.)” She maintains her house meticulously and is quick to apologize if you come in the morning before she has swept. Don Geronimo, although much frailer than Dona Blanca, is often found in the back yard cutting weeds with his machete in one hand and his metal cane in the other. Don Geronimo has two elderly brothers living in Tamara who are just as spry as he is. His brothers can often be found out for a stroll through Tamara. One afternoon I encountered one of them roughhousing with a couple of teenagers in the pool hall. Although they have their fair share of wrinkles, these three little old brothers have found the fountain of youth.

When my mom and godmother Kathy came to visit the treatment plant in Tamara, we stopped by to meet Doña Blanca and Don Geronimo. Doña Blanca was busy fixing a leak in the roof that day. She was standing on top of a 55-gallon drum to reach the tiles she was rearranging on the roof. After a long chat, the couple took us on a grand tour of their expansive backyard, Don Geronimo precariously shuffling along with his cane and Doña Blanca taking advantage of the tour to collect some firewood.

Doña Blanca and Don Geronimo on their porch surrounded by Doña Blanca’s beloved flowers

In January, when the group of students from Cornell was visiting, I stopped by Doña Blanca’s place looking for some bananas. In the front patio I found what looked like a young teenage girl in her pajamas sweeping the patio with a home-made broom. “¿Esta Doña Blanca? (Is Doña Blanca around?)” I asked her. “You must be looking for my grandmother,” the girl replied in perfect English. “I’ll go get her.” It turned out the young girl I found cleaning up the patio was Dona Blanca’s 22-year-old granddaughter who is studying biology at the University of Rhode Island. She lives in Rhode Island with her parents and comes every year to visit family in Honduras. She had come the day before from Tegucigalpa to spend the night with her grandparents.

I am still amazed that a college girl on winter break from the University of Rhode Island could fit in perfectly sweeping Dona Blanca’s patio in Tamara with a homemade broom. That feat clearly takes an adaptable person. But being a grandchild of Dona Blanca and Don Geronimo, she must have the advantage of good genes.

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