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I wake up at 6:00am again today, but this time I won’t have time to work out because today is my day with Aide! She cooks amazing meals for us every day and today, I am her helper. I’m also excited because I want to learn more about cooking…it’s not something I did much back home. It’s time I learn; so here we go!
“Buenas Dias Aide!” I greet her as I walk in the kitchen. “Buenas dias,” she replies with her one of a kind smile. “You make the pancakes,” she tells me in Spanish. Ok, something I can do. She had already mixed the batter. I just need to butter the pan and pour in the mix for each pancake. Not wanting any of them to burn and waste pancake batter, I count the seconds until each one is ready. Sixty seconds on the first side and then forty-five seconds on the other. I’ve got it down to a science.
Now for the juice…she has to help me out on this one. She hands me the mora berries, the blender, a sifter, and a pitcher to make the juice. “What is the sifter for?” is my first thought. She helps me do the first part as she pours water into the blender and then adds the mora berries. I hold the lid down as it blends and then she shows me how to pour it through the sifter into the pitcher for the finished product. Ok, simple. I can do this. Maybe not so simple…I poured too much water and berries into the blender. It fit just fine, until…I turned on the blender. At that point, it went everywhere. Ok, so pour a little out and we are good. Clean up the mess, sift the juice, repeat the process, and voila! Juice!
We serve breakfast to my team who absolutely loved the pancakes and juice, including me. Then, we begin preparing for lunch. Aide made the mushroom soup and had it simmering on the stove while I help her with cutting up the Yucca and the Potatoes. She begins chopping up the Yucca. Right then, someone calls her from outside so she leaves the kitchen. I step in and try to imitate how she cut it, but it is much tougher than she made it look. I guess cutting up a root wouldn’t necessarily be an easy task to begin with. She comes back and slowly removes the knife from my hand, hinting that she is worried that I am going to cut myself. Apparently I have not passed the necessary level of my cooking class with Aide yet and I am not ready for chopping up Yucca. Ok, so we are on to the next thing, the potatoes. She peels them as I cut them in to fry shapes…or something close. I make the juice on my own this time…starting to get this cooking thing down. Everyone gets a tuna sandwich for dinner. “Do you like Tuna?” Aide asks me outright. “Umm, not normally, but I will eat it for dinner,” I respond. “What would you like instead?” she asks me. “You are privileged since you are helping me in the kitchen,” she says with a smile. “In that case, I’ll have an egg sandwich instead,” I reply back with a smile.
As we are cooking, I start to ask Aide questions. I learn that she has three kids. Her daughter is 21 and in college. Her daughter studies a lot and even though her mom is a cook, she is not. We both laughed at that. She was married two times, but she said, “Jesus is my husband now.”
“Where did you work before working on the farm?” I ask her.
“I’ve never worked anywhere else. I started working here when I was 24 in the 1980’s,” she told me.
“What is your favorite part about working here?” I ask her. “My favorite part about working here is the boys,” she says simply.
“So, do you know Yilmar and Carlos?” (Two of our friends from the church in Medellin. We see them on the weekends and they both graduated from the farm a few years back.)
“I do. I’ve seen all of them. I’ve seen boys leave and come back. Some graduate and move on. Some of them have been killed in the streets,” she says quickly.
The thought of the 5 precious boys at the farm now being on the streets breaks my heart. I’m not sure why I didn’t think that would happen. This place seems so peaceful and seems like such a perfect home for the boys. I hadn’t thought of the possibility of boys leaving to go back to the dangerous streets of Medellin, Colombia. I definitely hadn’t thought of the possibility of them dyeing on the streets before coming back. Death is part of normal every day life in Colombia. We deal with this in the states, but it is different in Colombia. People very close die all the time. It is part of life. They know it is coming and that it can happen at anytime. They prize life more than most people I know because of this very real fact. Aide has seen these hard things happen to these boys and it motivates her to serve and love the ones who are there who choose to allow Jesus’ love to penetrate their little hearts. This is her heart. This is her life.
I learned about life, love, and happiness in the kitchen with Aide that day. I will never forget it.
