The last two days, Rhonda and I (Sarah) went on a ‘treasure hunt’ looking for a couple people from the clinic this summer to follow up with. Of the five names, only one had an address with an actual house number. The others had either the neighborhood and street names, or just the neighborhood. So we set out, determined to find at least one of the women. We decided to start easy- the one that had a number. Unfortunately, having the house number does not guarantee that all the houses along the street have numbers on them. We followed the advice of our leader and got as close as we could, then just started asking people. We asked for #39 in a salon (#33) and the lady pointed us up the hill. As we crossed the street, we came across #31. It seemed to us that we were going in the wrong direction. We asked in a tortilla shop and none of them seemed to even know what their address there was. So, we took an educated guess and went back past the salon and down the hill. As we got closer, we asked a few more people for the woman by name and were able to locate the house. A young girl answered the door and said the woman was her aunt, but she was at work and wouldn’t be home until after 6. At least we found the house!
Feeling a little encouraged, we tried the next name on our list. This time it wasn’t quite as easy. We found the neighborhood and street fairly quickly and felt pretty hopeful as there were only about a dozen houses on the street. The address didn’t have a number, so we went to the houses without numbers first. At the first one, a small girl answered and when we asked for Maria, looked perplexed and said there was no Maria there. We went two doors down and a middle-aged teacher answered the door. She ended up being our teacher for the next hour as she went from house to house asking for Maria. Everyone would stop and think for a moment then say, “Who could that be?” We were ready to give up and assume she had just been renting on the street and now had moved out. However, our teacher wasn’t as easily dissuaded. From house, to store, to another house, getting farther and farther from the street we had named, she led us along asking everyone who knows anyone where this house may be. Finally she said, “Last stop.” The woman there didn’t know Maria, but knew a family with her last name. We went there and the man said his wife’s last name was what we were looking for, but her name wasn’t Maria. However, she had gone to the ‘clinic of the foreigners’ this summer, so maybe it was her. We went back the next day, but she still wasn’t home. Her daughter also thought that her mom had gone to the clinic, so we’re hoping soon to find Maria.
We have yet to look for the other three women.
Lesson learned: Ask, ask, ask, and don’t take ‘no’ for an answer.
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