My Dad Would Be Happy

 This is Evangelisto, the 17-year-old son of my Indian farm worker, Alfonso.  

When Evangelisto first came to Boquete from the Gnobe Bugle Indian Comarca (something like an Indian reservation, only the Gnobe Bugle weren’t put there, but petitioned the government for this huge hunk of the country that’s bigger than any of the Panamanian states) he was 15.  Nikki and I picked Alfonso, his lady friend at the time, their baby, and Evangelisto up in Boquete to take them to Palmira.

Now you have to understand that all of his life this kid had lived near, not in, a tiny little town in the Comarca called Soloy.  It’s really just where there are two tiny Indian stores, a few bars, and a tiny church.  It looks like something out of a movie set!  There are no cars, except the occasional 4 wheel taxi that comes in.  There are horses tied up in front of the two little stores and Indians load up a big rice sack with a month’s groceries and head up the mountain to their homes.  Evangelisto lived with his grandparents up the mountain, so when he got to Boquete it was like being plucked from Nebraska and dropped in Time’s Square!  He was like a deer in the headlights!  We couldn’t all fit in the car, so I took Evangelisto with me in the truck.  He couldn’t figure out how to get in, had no idea what a seat belt was, and couldn’t figure out how to get out. 

When we finally got him enrolled in school Nikki took him and his dad to David, our nearest city, to buy clothes.  It was the day before the first day of school and David was packed with parents and kids buying school uniforms.  It cost about $130 to outfit him for school – this when his dad makes $40 a week – so we took care of the cost.  He was bewildered . . .

Now we have one store that has an escalator . . . you got it!  His dad and Nikki got on the escalator without thinking that this kid had never seen an escalator.  So he stood at the bottom, watching, trying to figure out how to get on.  Finally he just jumped.  Fine, he was on.  But at the top . . . he hadn’t the foggiest idea how to get off and so he just went splat on the floor.

At first we though Evangelisto might be “slow” . . . “learning disability” isn’t in the vocabulary here.  And how do you judge a kid who really has never been to much of a school?  He always turned his head kind of funny, and we thought, “Well, he’s different.”  The First Lady of Panama has a program to check kids eyesight in school and when it finally got to Palmira they decided he needed glasses.  So we went to David to get him glasses.  The eyeglass doctor said he needed glasses for the one eye, but the other eye was almost completely covered with a cataract.  Ah-hah! Dumb us!  That’s why he always turned his head kind of funny.  So she referred him to a specialist at the huge local maternal and child care hospital for cataract surgery.  After many attempts at appointments he finally got to see the specialist and it turns out he has a detached retina, and they say they can’t do anything.

So . . . if you’re an MD eye surgeon reading this, and you want a project . . . call me!!

Evangelisto is really, I think, a smart kid.  He’s learning English faster than I’m learning Spanish!  And for Christmas last year I got him this really neat GOOGLE ENCYCLOPEDIA in Spanish.  So now he comes up with interesting questions about global warming and what happens to the fuel tanks jettisoned from the space shuttle.  He’s anxious for us to move to our new house in Palmira since he wants to learn how to use the computer.

Anyone with an old laptop to donate?

So now what does my Dad have to do with all this?

Evangelisto never heard of the Nittany Lions or Penn State.  My Dad went to Penn State, was a Lions fan always, and in retirement lived 2 blocks from the Altoona Campus of Penn State and rented rooms to engineering students.  (He figured they would live with his very restrictive rules: no parties, only study.)

When my Dad died about 3 years ago and I went back to Altoona and was taking truckloads of his stuff to Goodwill I suddenly had an inspiration that some of this stuff would fit Alfonso and Evangelisto.  So I crammed every suitcase I could get on the plane (the skies were still somewhat “friendly” back then) and brought his clothes to Panama.  And Evangelisto still appears regularly in stuff I recognize as my Dad’s, like this Penn State T-shirt or a maroon “Altoona” shirt.

My Dad would absolutely love it!!

PS – I’m serious about the laptop and the eye surgery.  You volunteer to do it and work out the stuff with the local hospital and I’ll be there with Evangelisto.