PROVIDENCE – It has become a tradition for ConvergenceRI to honor the Rhode Island workplace tradition of taking a planned vacation during the first few weeks of July, as explained in detail in the story, “Happy July 4 – to survive and persevere in perilous times.” [See link to story below.]

Ever since my inadvertent dance with the full-sized refrigerator in my apartment in late January of 2025, I have been struggling with a number of chronic health conditions that have made me dependent upon the kindness of strangers and my neighbors.

During the last six months my reporting skills at ConvergenceRI have been focused on storytelling, giving voice to those who are caregivers at the front lines of the delivery of health care.

As I have written many times, our personal stories are our most valuable possession. And the act of sharing those personal stories is what makes us more human and humane. It creates a connection through empathy, establishing a sense of belonging to a large neighborhood, finding common ground, no matter where we might actually live.

Today’s story begins with my neighbor, a legal U.S. resident originally from Guatemala, who has been extremely helpful to me as I cope with my struggles to accomplish many of the daily tasks required for a better quality of life.

The last six months have been a painful time for her [let’s call her Maria], having lost both her grandfather and grandmother. Maria and her partner are departing Rhode Island for a new home. She agreed to talk with me and share some of her story, because she believes it is an important story for all of us to listen to and to understand.

We are living in disruptive times, and there is risk in simply talking with me and in sharing her story. Maria has a belief, as do I, that good people will always find each other.

“If you can take our voices and stories and express it to any of Rhode Island leaders,” Maria said, talking about her reasons and hopes for being willing to share her story. “We are not here to hurt anybody or be a threat to anyone. We are here to improve ourselves.”

“We are a really humble people,” Maria continued. But given the current political climate in the U.S., she and her partner have decided to maintain a “very low, low, low profile.”

Her family on her mother’s side had been farmers from a mountainous region of Guatemala, cultivating crops of corn and beans and pumpkins. Maria spoke of remembering her early life and her responsibilities of milking the cow.

ConvergenceRI: You talked about the importance of corn to your family. Could you share why was corn so important?    
MARIA: Corn was the main source of income for my family, when I was growing up. In my village, the farmers mainly harvested corn. Some would harvest tomatoes and potatoes and different vegetables. But the main source of income for the whole village was corn.

ConvergenceRI: So, everyone in the village grew corn?    
MARIA: Everybody. Some would do other vegetables as well. But, everybody would do corn. Corn is the main thing you use for a tortilla. It is like the daily bread for everybody. The season for corn was all year round.

ConvergenceRI: You would sow the field twice?    
MARIA: Mostly my parents were the ones who did most of these jobs. When I was growing up, I didn’t really do too much. I helped out when I could. But to work in the fields was mostly what my grandparents and my parents did.

Usually, twice a year, they would grow a hundred bags of corn, a 100 pounds each bag. And beans as well. Beans was also one of the main sources [of income] for my grandparents. Corn, beans, milk, and cheese.

ConvergenceRI: The milk was from cows?    
MARIA: From cows, yes. We never had goats. Because goats are really hard to deal with.

ConvergenceRI: They don’t behave very well?      
MARIA: It was headache to raise goats. A lot of the people in my village used to have goats. But my grandparents mainly raised cows and some mules. They also grew pumpkins. We did potatoes as well. But mainly corn.

ConvergenceRI: It seems like corn has a strong connection with your family.    
MARIA: I would say that we value corn. Corn is something that I respect a lot. Not just for the fact that it provided food, but because I grew up around it. The corn is like a guide. We would always care for it; we would never waste it.

ConvergenceRI: It has been a difficult year for you. Both of your grandparents died.    
MARIA: My grandpa died in December and my grandma died in April. I was very close to them. I grew up with them. They were the ones who pretty much raised me. My grandparents, which were my mom’s parents, they were the ones who I grew up most of life with when I was living in Guatemala.

ConvergenceRI: Have you been able to stay connected with the other Guatemalans who live in the region?      
MARIA: Not so much now, since I am all grown up. When I first moved here, I did. I did connect a lot to them. I went to Hope High School.

When you focus on yourself, you can lose the connections. Now that I am all grown, I do my own thing. I don’t have too many connections with the community, sadly. I know if I go back to it, I know that I will be really welcomed back to it. But I distanced myself a little bit. I focused more on my nuclear family – like my mom, my dad, my partner.

I go to my community to find food. I go to the bakeries. I go to the market. If I need to fix my car, I will go to a Guatemalan mechanic.

ConvergenceRI: There still seems to be a strong a connection there, as a way you can define community.      
MARIA: I still go and look for my roots, absolutely. Sometimes, I go for a breakfast out in the morning, I will go and buy from a Guatemalan restaurant.

ConvergenceRI: We have talked about the sense of caring, as a neighbor, as someone who is not mobile, making it difficult to get around easily. How does that sense of caring for others connect with you? Why is it important to you?    
MARIA: It’s a big, big thing for me. I always saw that in my grandparents. When I was little, I saw how my grandparents would always help all the people,

But they always would help out.

Now, I feel like that it grew on me. I help. And I also feel, if I help someone, I help my people as well. If I help a neighbor, that will eventually come back. Not for me, but for the people I love. I also like you.

ConvergenceRI: It’s a sense that good people will always find each other. Do you believe that?    
MARIA: Absolutely.

ConvergenceRI: I have a belief that people find each other.    
MARIA: Yes, they do.

ConvergenceRI: And, I trust in that process that good things will happen. If you believe…    
MARIA: It does happen.

ConvergenceRI: It seems that you are very competent and talented diligent, that you can do a lot of different things.

MARIA: I really have not had a chance to build a career. It makes you have an ability to do anything so that you can survive.

Growing up in Guatemala, education was a big thing, money wise. You might have the money to go to school, not in my case. But if you don’t have the connections, you won’t get a job. There is a lot of corruption down there…

ConvergenceRI: Really? [laughing]    
MARIA: [laughing] By the time I got here, I was focused on working, sending money to my grandparents, so that they didn’t have to overwhelm themselves [by working] too much, in harvesting.

I didn’t have a chance to build a career. That is what it comes to my own survival skills, pretty much – to have a little bit of everything.

ConvergenceRI: If it is OK to ask, you are currently working as a bus driver, is that correct?    
MARIA: Yes. It was something to focus on. I will not say easy, because when I got my license, my English wasn’t really good at all. But it was a way to get a license and to have a stable job.

I was working as waitress before I got a chance to be a bus driver. I like it. I have stayed there. I have five years doing that.

ConvergenceRI: You are now moving. Are you planning to get a new job as a bus driver there?    
MARIA: I have been trying to find a job down there. They don’t really seem to be too much interested in someone driving. I am also thinking about getting something in the medical field, with certification to get into the medical field, to see if I can get better pay.

Right now, I am going to school to learn how to be a technician, to learn how to clean the medical instruments.

Once I pass the exam for that, I still have to do like 400 hours to be able to get a license. So, I am working on that.

ConvergenceRI: From your perspective, what stories would you like to share? The things that are important to you? Or, things that were important to your grandparents?    
MARIA: When I was growing up, some memories that I have are waking up early, milking cows, taking them to a pasture where they can eat all day.

For me it was, aargh, I have to milk the cows again. I have to wake up early again, and do all of this. Now, that I am grown, and I see that actually, it’s gets me nostalgic. When I was little, I said to myself, I don’t want to do this. Now, I feel really sad when I think about it.

Another memory is going in the river. This is something that my family would always do. Like, on the weekends, my grandma would kill a hen, and we would prepare it, and then we would go to the river, and we would do a fire pit.

ConvergenceRI: A picnic?    
MARIA: Yes, and cook the hen. And, me and my cousins would swim in the river. It was beautiful. Now, it’s sad, a lot of my cousins are not there anymore, my grandparents are not there. Some memories, they don’t come back.

ConvergenceRI: Have you been able to go swimming here at the ocean, at the shore?      
MARIA: Yes, I have. But it is not the same. The only places you can swim here are like at the beaches. There’s not like a river where you can swim. Back in my country, you can swim in the rivers. The rivers here are dirty.

When I was little, after milking the cows, there was a big meal for us. We would take two-days-old tortillas, they are crispy, and cut them up into little pieces, put them into a bowl, and then the milk that we get from the cows, we pour it in with the tortillas, with a little bit of salt, and eat the milk with the tortillas. That’s how much tortilla is the essence of life, that we even eat it with fresh milk, like it is a bread.

ConvergenceRI: What are the skills of survival that your grandparents taught you?    
MARIA: One of them is about planting and harvesting. If I were down there, I would never be scared of not having enough food, because we plant it.

I feel like my grandparents were kind of the roots of my family. I don’t think that since they are no longer here, my family is going to get together like that.

I feel like every time grandparents die, the cousins go this way, the aunts go that way. There is not like there is a main birthday or a main holiday that we celebrate.

ConvergenceRI: For me, story telling is what my enterprise, my business, is all about.  In creating a sense of connections to those stories. I often focused in on health care. Of late, I have tried to shift the focus, not just talking about what the leaders think should happen, but capturing the voices of the caregivers and what they believe should happen, because they are the ones on the front lines. And, we often don’t hear their perspectives.

 Giving them a voice, and an opportunity to be heard, has been my focus in the last couple of months, after my inadvertent dance with the refrigerator in my apartment.      
MARIA: Have you had any luck with your doctors here?

ConvergenceRI: Not so much as I would like.    
MARIA: I am struggling, too, with my mom. My mom’s doctors have been canceling appointments on her. The Rhode Island system of health is really messed up; it is really bad.