La panare

Knock! Knock! Knock! I heard on my door. “Yes? Who is it?”, I cried. No reply was heard, so I went to the door and opened it. In front of me was a beautiful golden, brownish, black-eyed little panare girl aged 5 or 6 with another girl in her teens who appeared to be her sister, both of them guarded by an elderly woman who seemed to be their grandmother. “What can I do for you?” Silence and staring were the answer.

The teenager could speak some Spanish and said with a harsh voice, “We are hungry. Give us something to eat!” People are hungry; they must eat. And off they went.

Two days later. Knock! Knock! “Yes?”, this time not as politely as the first time. “Give us something” was the message transmitted by the empty hands. The Spanish-speaking girl had not come along. I remembered the saying: “A good deed never goes unpunished” and wishing it was the last time or that the next would come in a long, long time, I did what I had to do. No thank-yous. Nothing. No names, no words, only gestures.

A few days later… Patience, solidarity, good humor and loving attitudes started fading away and the thought of throwing them out came over me. This time, the same old lady from the first encounter came to visit. I was having lunch at the moment and pretended to ignore her. She started shouting in a sweet, unintelligible language. Everybody started asking her to leave. Rage and impotence begun to stir inside me. It was outrageous. Until then, no sign of appreciation, only demands were expressed by her. Since she allegedly did not speak nor understand Spanish, she ignored our words and continued screaming and asking for our attention. Only panares could understand that language in Caicara del Orinoco.

My husband and I were at the end of our rope. He opened the door willing to ask her to go home. As he opened it, she sneaked in. There was a gleam in her eyes; she was grinning, and there was something in her right hand - a sugar cane. She had brought dessert.