they still believe in miracles

the last month has been weird. not actually a whole lot to report. still haven't started any projects of any real significance, still living with the host family, still not allowed to leave my site.

what is getting interesting is understanding more and more of what people are saying. like being able to pick up subtleties. last night as my family and i sat around the table eating yet another cake for what i wrongly assumed was a birthday celebration they started talking about death. this led to two very interesting side discussions. one being about the donation of organs, which is apparently not very popular here, for what i can only assume are logistical and cultural differences. there was also some talk about the sale of organs and even when organs are donated the doctors still charge a lot of money, so it's not like anyone gets a new part for free. and the act of taking someone off of life support seems to be viewed as killing the person... but the really interesting part was the idea that the person may not actually be dead. several older women told stories of friends of friends who had a loved one "misdiagnosed" as dead. one was about a woman whose husband was pronounced dead in a hospital.. the woman swore he was not dead. the doctors came back and checked... still dead. she couldn't believe it, his body was still warm (or something-- spanish getting better but not great). sometimes it takes a while to cool down they told her. after several more back and forths the woman devised some way to check. the man was in fact not dead. he went on to live for another 14 years.

the other story was about a woman who i think is somehow a distant relative of my host family. my sister-in-law told the story of this woman's funeral. apparently she was in a casket that had a glass pane sealed at the top, for viewing. she re-iterated that the seal was tight, as i guess they always are. but somehow there were beads of condensation inside, what she could only believe was a sign of the ever-slightest breathing. the woman was buried none-the-less, but my sister-in-law swears she was buried alive.

all of this was part of a larger discussion of what we would more or less consider miracles and dismiss without much thought. but here they believe. these things happen. people who are thought to be dead go on to live. doctors, the kind with medical licenses, prescribe herbal medicine. and eating donkey cures asthma. i hate to say they, but so often the differences between cultures is so huge that it feels fair to separate. they still believe in miracles.