Gregoria

I had been worried for Gregoria.   We had driven the winding road where she lives a couple of weeks before and didn’t see her house.  It can be easy to miss if you’re not looking, but usually you can make out her store front, lined with her beautiful woven traditional straw hats.  This past year had been unusual and extremely rainy.  All of the hillside houses were constantly threatened by landslides.  This day I drove up the winding road and saw her wooden shop where she kept her supplies.  Barely standing above the little shop was half the facade of what once was a little house.  I glanced up the road and caught glimpses of a row of hats meticulously strung across another small porch.  I make my way up the wet road.  It had started to pour again.  There hadn’t been a day that had gone by for the past 6 months without it pouring at some point, and most days just poured all day.  I walked up the steps to the little house and peered into the dark room only lit up by a TV playing Tom and Jerry.  Gregoria steps into the light and greats me with her familiar, friendly smile.

We sit in the doorway of the tiny house owned by her sister.  Its pouring rain all around, and we sip slowly on the strong Dominican coffee served in a tiny espresso cup.  Gregoria shares the story of the day the mudslide came ripping through her house.  It was morning and raining hard, but she went out to the colmado to purchase some sugar and coffee.  When she came back, she noticed that water was coming in through her back wall.  She stepped out to get the bucket and mop, and while she was out the mud and water came crashing in through her house.  She believes it was God who saved her.  If she hadn’t gone out for the cleaning supplies, she too would have been swept away with her house.

I asked Gregoria about her craft.  She said she has been weaving hats for 69 years.  Her fingers told the tale as they moved effortlessly while she talked.  Her mother had died when she was very young, and she started learning to weave hats from her step mother when she was 10 years old. On her door you can see a picture posted of herself and her aunt who was also a hat weaver.  Gregoria can make one hat in a day and charges about $3.20 for her handiwork. I asked if the younger girls were learning the craft.  “No,” she says, “the younger generations are going to school.” And materials can be hard to come by. Sadly its a craft and tradition slowly fading away into the days gone by…