Coffee with Bread
Mayra Feliz Pérez (1993) Batey Cuchilla, Barahona. She’s not married and does not have children. She reached the 4th year in high school. She is not currently studying. She sells candy as her main source of income. She has a national identity and an electoral card [cédula].
My story begins when my father found himself without work, he came down from the capital to the batey, but there was no work there, only agriculture and making charcoal. He had to do whatever there was to do at the time, but he did not know how to chop the wood nor set up the oven—but we already knew how to. Since my father did not know how to, he preferred to opt for a loan to pay other people to cut the wood and set up the oven. When my father saw how difficult it was, he wanted to leave, but my mom saw this as unnecessary and my parents fought everyday because of this.
There came a moment when nothing came of making charcoal and the money had been spent. There was barely anything to eat for the day, just coffee and bread. We were used to having everything easy, calling him and asking him to send us money when he worked in the capital, but then everything changed. There was no longer anything to eat…Only coffee with bread: at breakfast, lunch and dinner. One day my little sister came home from school, thinking she might find something different. She saw that it was the same: coffee with bread. she said: “Every day coffee with bread,” …and she began to cry.
My parents’ arguments grew bigger every time, from seven at night until two in the morning. To avoid arguing with my mother, my father got up early and went to the mountains to clear a piece of land he had to make a small farming plot (conuco). He made the conuco, sowed it, and with time we harvested corn, beans, cassava, plantains, etc. Things were changing, it was no longer coffee in the morning, in the afternoon and at night… we ate rice, beans and meat, although not every day.
Overnight, he decided to start making charcoal again, but the loan money was unpaid and had already been spent. The crops harvested from the conuco were not enough to pay off the loan, so my mother decided to make bicuites that are made with flour, yeast, oil, sugar, butter, grease, salt and water. The flour, butter, salt, sugar, yeast, grease, and water are all mixed, you mix everything until it forms a dough… let it sit about fifteen minutes for the yeast to rise a little. Then pieces of the dough are cut and a bottle is used to flatten, put it in a hot pan, with a piece of zinc on a fire until it is golden. It’s sold at five pesos each. She sold up to 500 and 1,000 pesos a day. She would buy bags of charcoal to go to other communities to sell them on a donkey we had. In this way she was able to pay off the loan.
My mom was sick. She would feel a lot of pain in her stomach and back. Since the age of three she has had this pain… when she would get those pains…she would argue and fight with everyone, whether it was over something good or bad. It was cysts and myomas that she had. At two o’clock in the morning my mother would feel the pain, she started a fight with my dad because my dad didn’t have a job. He spent five years without working; our livelihood depended on the conuco, charcoal and the bicuites my mother made.
We spent a week without any arguing. My siblings and I said there were no more arguments, but overnight another fight broke out between my parents, from one to three in the morning. My father decided to pick up his things to go to the capital, he called a motorcycle taxi (motoconcho) to take him to batey 4 to wait for a bus. That night we did not sleep, we called a friend who lives in a batey called Isabela to go find him and bring him back to the house. He found him and brought him back to the house.
My siblings and I did not want him to leave with only the money for his travel ticket. So we all raised some more money, made sweets to sell, and gave him the money to leave for the capital. The same day he arrived in the capital he got a job, he is doing well and is finishing building a house he bought in Las Américas. A month later, my father sent money so that my mother could go get the operation, it has now been two years since she had the surgery.
