SOLEDAD

Soledad was walking along the dusty gravel road outside Nuevo Progreso on a very hot day. She looked old and tired and she carried a small heavy bag in each hand. Lloyd suggested we stop and offer her a ride to wherever she was going. She was headed out of town and had to be going quite a long distance on foot.

The friendly little woman gratefully accepted our offer and with a little help climbed into the back seat of our Jeep. "Where are you going?" we asked. "To Rio Rico," she answered in Spanish as she proceeded to tell us that Rio Rico was a little settlement to the east of Nuevo Progreso.

Soledad told us that she started out early that morning and walked all the way to town to buy medicine for her son who is crippled. She thought it took two hours to walk the great distance from Rio Rico to Nuevo Progreso. Soledad is seventy-nine years old!

In Rio Rico we met Soledad's husband and her son who is about forty years old and cannot speak or walk. Then she was proud to tell us that there are three churches in the tiny village and two of them are near her house. She took time to show us around her yard which was bare dry ground with many pots of plants and flowers. She told us they had lived on that place for thirty-four years. We wondered how many times during those years Soledad had to walk the four miles one way to Nuevo Progreso.