Everyone knows Rosario Macey as Fostá. She counts 103 almanacs lived and is the owner of intense energy, the kind that only comes from strong and well-seasoned souls.
Perfumed, next to one of her two children, she assured us that we would have to ask God the recipe for her longevity because only he knows it. Moreover, she smiled, knowing that she is a lucky woman, lucid and surrounded by the affection of her loved ones.
Her life story is also exciting, because Fostá was born in Haiti, near Port-au-Prince, and arrived in Cuba with her mother when she was four years old.
She says that it was his uncle Emilio who worked the miracle of grouping the family here and brought them to this country to join his father, who was already working in the surroundings of San Miguel del Junco, near the premises of the then Central Francisco.
There, and later in a place known as Los Ciegos, the descendants of Haitians and the elbows, which was the name given to the young people who arrived here from that country, worked together. They could be seen working in the sugarcane harvest as well as in other agricultural work or the clearing of wood.
The girl who was Fostá became a woman from that exquisite mixture that is forged when related cultures intertwine; with Creole, the language of her people, and with the speech of this region and its singularities.
She says that it is good "that everyone does things in their way" and then talks about zombies, witchcraft, and saint's food, which she learned to make, yes, but over time, and says of everything she intuited as a child because she was not allowed to participate.
Fostá grew up between the sound of the gadá and the congó, eating pigeon pea beans, fish, jutía, goat, sweet potato, and cassava; happy.
You can see it in the many times she asks us, cleverly, "Why do you want to know all that?"; in the strength with which she looks you in the eyes, despite the enormous calm that surrounds her in the wide doorway of her batey house.
Like her, many Haitians still roam among us; people who came by the hand of their elders to open a different path in these lands and have become great, gestating, by force, a better time.
