ELIFASI
Another blog submission so soon, but things are happening… yesterday I got a shock as I learned that Elifasi, one of our most favorite and effective farmers, one who led the group I first trained in September and one whom I was looking forward to working closely with in the months to come on the ex-pat farmers’ market – this is a farmer who I had a picture of from my first month here and I would always check in on that picture because Elifasi was so smart and so busy, that I wanted to be sure we weren’t wasting his time with ineffective meetings or trainings- probably the strongest leader of our farmers and in his community- father of five young kids, always helping his community, widely loved and admired, anyways, you know what is coming- I learned yesterday he got killed Saturday evening in a freak car accident- truck rolled back down a hill and hit him as he was walking home after dark. Today I went with a couple of our trainers to visit his family which had people from all around gathered, people will be there day and night for a week- tomorrow we’ll go back for the funeral. It was really hard not to cry, but Sommy our trainer saw some of my tears, and said, ‘be strong! If they see you cry they’ll cry too!’ The trainers and I were thinking of ways to support his family as school is only free through age 13. One of the former volunteers long ago took on one of his kids to sponsor. We may run an educational farm tour that stops at his farm- as it was a model example of our work, if we can get his widow to keep it up- she could earn some of the revenue from the tours. I see that it’s almost a luxury just to be sad when a person dies because you’re heartbroken and will miss them so. For many it’s distressing because you know with his death your children’s future is in jeopardy. In this case it’s surely both- people all around are stunned, in disbelief, and heartbroken to lose the great Elifasi, and also it’s a tragic loss of a critical resource to his family and community. The thing with Elifasi and with Moses, a young translator we lost to a motorcycle accident back in September, is they had internal bleeding from trauma, and there’s no trauma surgery here. Both Moses and Elifasi survived their accidents long enough to talk to people on their cell phones, but died under hospital lack of expertise.