On the Field

Happy fourth of July! I hope the day is going well.

Today I went with my story team to visit the healer, whose name is Genaro Martinez. My team consisted of Anna, who is the photographer and Nacio, the audio reporter and me, the designer. Nacio drove us; the ride took about an hour. We saw lots of nice scenery on the way there. Farms, plenty of hills and houses with dark pink roofs in the distance. We stopped at an interesting cemetery on the way and walked through it, some of those graves were so old that moss covered them completely.

We had a little trouble finding the house, and thankfully Nacio (who is from Chile) can speak both Spanish and English. He asked these people who were sitting outside of a house where we could find Mr. Martinez’s place. Turns out Mr. Martinez was one of those people sitting there!

Although Anna and I couldn’t understand most of what he was saying (he spoke about 80% Spanish and 20% Galician according to Nacio), he was really nice and fed us bread and cheese. He also has a winery in his cellar. We all had a sip of wine. It tasted very strong; I didn’t like it much. 🙂 The white wine was better than the red wine, though.

He showed us around his house and property, it was very interesting. Many little doors and hidden areas that you wouldn’t notice on first glance. He had a dog and several cats in an enclosure in a sunporch area. The dog’s bark sounded very hoarse. From the sunporch was a door that led to a room full of lambs. He also had a turkey, roosters (that were all going “cockledoodledoo), HUGE rabbits and a horse. He also had huge slabs of ham hanging, I think he sells those.

Turns out he no longer does the healing, because as times have changed, people go to more modern hospitals. We can’t do the story on him, then. Even though he’s interesting enough to be a subject! The plan is to see if we can find another active healer; if that falls through then we’ll think of a new story subject entirely.

On the way back we got lost again, but managed to find our way back. There are a lot of roundabouts on the highways here. I don’t think I’ve seen any in North Carolina. We also had to travel on a toll road. You take a ticket when you enter, and when you come back, you pay.

Now I’m back in the lab. It’s 9:32 and still light outside. The sun won’t set for another hour or so. The group is going to meet in the Square at 10:30 to have dinner at a bar that celebrates American holidays. It should be interesting.

Just a few things I’ve noticed – first, the weather is strange. It will be warm during the day and then the temperature drops rapidly in the evening. It’s not humid at all. Second observation – people here LOVE dogs. Especially small dogs. I am constantly seeing people walking small dogs. Final observation – there’s a pond near the campus where these large ducks and other birds have taken residence. They sleep there at night and swim around in the water during the day.

All right, that’s it for this entry, I’ll post again soon.