This is a story from Pisco that continues to inspire the students. Marcelo (none of us knew his last name) was along with Percy, one of the hardest workers in making the floor for Abuelita Ana. We knew he was not related; he lived across the street. Why was he working so hard on our project, we wondered.
One day at sunset, while I waited with Mr. Daggett for the concrete to dry a bit before he finished polishing it, I sat with Abuelita Ana on a bench by the slab. We watched the sun set slowly over the Pacific Ocean, only a couple hundred feet from her house.
She explained that Marcelo was a child ten years ago. He and a friend of his hung out by the beach every day, child-age beach bums, if you will. One day, they went swimming, but his friend disappeared. Marcelo did not know what to do, so he just sat at the beach waiting. Abuelita Ana noticed him there and talked to him. Marcelo had no family to return to. After a week, the body washed back to the shore. Marcelo continued to stay at the beach, listless. Ana took him in to her house, and he has been with the family ever since.
She noticed that Marcelo sometimes goes into epileptic seizures, but cannot afford the medicatons to prevent this.
Marcelo rarely spoke while we were there. He would just grab a shovel and begin mixing or carrying load after load. When we tried to spell him, as we had to do for ourselves, he would wave us off and keep working. When we said our goodbyes, he broke into sobs and kept hugging us, with an emotion the men in Peru rarely display.
All of us remember Marcelo´s great devotion to the family and to us.
