Today, I learned, is National Penguin day. When I hear about penguins I always think of Juan Ignacio Vergara, the leader of a group of kids from Chile who stayed in Davis in the early 1980s. Juan Ignacio was the leader, who stayed with us for the three weeks. I don't remember how we got "penguins" as a thing between us, but it was a special deal and I sent him lots of things with penguins on it and think of him whenever the subject of penguins comes up.
Juan Ignacio was a physician and I think he was appalled by the conditions under which he had to live for three weeks (in addition to the usual chaos, we were undergoing a major ant attack at the time and he once told us he could make an "ant sandwich" by putting mayonnaise on a slice of bread and turning the mayo side down on top of the kitchen counter....and the counter was clean in those days!) He always had this air of detached bemusement mixed with a sense of being appalled, yet by the time the group left, he seemed genuinely sad to say goodbye to all of us.
Juan Ignacio was one of those people who made me believe in the "small world" theory. We took him to Muir Woods, near San Francisco, to show him the giant Coast Redwood trees. In the middle of Muir Woods, he ran into a guy he had gone to medical school with in Santiago.
The group prepared empanadas and other things and demonstrated the cueca, the national dance of Chile. The house was decorated with Chilean and American flags.
We lost contact with Juan Ignacio for many years and then out of the blue we received Christmas cards from him for a few years. He had finished his residency and had established a proctology practice. He had married and had a couple of kids. Then we lost track of him again.
I didn't hear from him again until his group re-surfaced on Facebook. Turns out that in the intervening years, Juan Ignacio had become the head of the military hospital which cared for former dictator Augusto Pinochet before his death and was the spokesperson for updates on the president's condition, so there were lots of newspaper articles, with more recent photos.
I did finally hear from him when the Chilean group started getting active on Facebook. I had written to him to invite him to join all the fun everyone seemed to be having reminiscing. He explained that he was not computer literate and didn't want to join Facebook, but that he was very happy to hear from me again, and gave me an update on his family.
I'm not sure when he died, but I heard from someone that he died of bowel cancer (an interesting disease for a proctologist!) and I still think of him whenever I hear about penguins.
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PHOTO OF THE DAY
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