Article archive / February 2023
Originally published: . Volume 14, No. 2. Source pages: 2.
Clementi by J. Nelson
In 2001, our oldest child was awarded a Fulbright scholarship to study ethnobotany in the rainforests of Panama. While Archimedes and I sweated bullets the whole time, the experience was enormously enriching for her. It was also enormously enriching for me, which is what this story is about.
For her research, our daughter, Cass, lived with the Ngobe Indians, the indigenous peoples who inhabit the Bocas del Toro Archipelago. The Ngobe live out in the forest in grass-roofed huts without electricity or technology. They are a reserved, quiet and polite people who maintain their culture and community. But, the majority live below the poverty level.
Cass told us how she wandered through the rainforest sampling medicinal plants, interviewed shamans and medicine men, and listened to the choruses of tropical frogs raise their voices after a downpour, until the sound filled the forest like a choir echoing through a cathedral.
She also told us the story of Clementi. Clementi had worked on the banana plantation until the truck transporting workers turned over on a mountainside. Clementi was paralyzed from the waist down. Since the Ngobe carried things around a lot, Clementi's wife could sometimes be seen carrying him piggyback around the village. Cass said that all the people in the community were poor but Clementi’s situation was the worst of all.
When Cass was finishing up her research, I asked her to give Clementi some money before she left. It was Christmas time and she put the donation in an envelope and went to see Clementi and his family in their hut.
She talked with them for a while and handed them the envelope. They bashfully accepted it and thanked her graciously, but did not open it while she was present.
"When I was walking away from the house," she said, "across the wide expanse of green space, in the silence, cheering and excitement broke out from inside their house."
Hearing that, I was hooked, and became a benefactor to Clementi.
Since 2001, three times a year, I send a donation. Cass, who is fluent in Spanish, receives a phone call from Mauricia, Clementi’s daughter, who lives in the town. (There’s no such thing as a savings account or a checking account for the traditional Ngobe). Somehow Mauricia collects the cash from Western Union and delivers it to her dad and mom.
This has been a joy for me for 22 years.
Last month Mauricia called to tell us Clementi had died. He had taken ill and passed away at the hospital in town. Mauricia requested funds to help get Clementi’s body home.
Clemente‘s wife was relieved and grateful, Mauricia told Cass, when she realized that I intended to continue my donations. I had always intended that, knowing the toll on caregivers.
Mauricia said “Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for being so noble with us–always. Your heart is with us even though we are far away. Thank you for being on this path with us.”
Cass told her our prayers are with her and that we are sad too for Clementi. She told Mauricia that we are very glad to help and have always felt good about helping Clementi and the family especially because of the suffering in his life.
I never met or talked to him, in any language, but I wish I could have said one time to Clementi that I loved him. I like to think he knew that, I hope he knew that.
This article is part of a historical newspaper archive. Read the original issue for its original layout, photographs and graphics.