Everybody knows "the black woman of Celia Sanchez", especially the patients; but since she appeared in the social networks, Holguin has been talking about her and the 60 liters of hot herbal tea that she makes every morning for the patients of Covid-19 in this university headquarters, transformed into a high-risk hospital.
"I am a simple brigade chief of a work shift here - she says - and what we do is part of our team, of our boss, and the dietician because the good Cuban wakes up with a good cup of coffee but since we didn't have any we decided to replace it with herbal tea. As a result of Covid-19 we took up the initiative again."
"I look for the medicinal bushes that my grandmother and great-grandmother taught us that could alleviate respiratory ailments. I started then to make a "cocktail", as I say, of copal (Protium cubense (Rosc) Urban), cotton, soursop and others, and it was in such demand that I make 60 liters of herbal tea in the morning and they are gone in a blink of an eye."
Yamilé López Arcos has nothing special as such, but her popularity is so great that the people themselves are have urged their fellow citizens, through social networks, to send her leaves, and even in the doorway of her house in the neighborhood of Alcides Pino they leave her the segments of any plant with medicinal properties. They also see in her a healer, who alleviates, with her infusions, the pain of many people.
"I get up early in the morning, go around the neighborhood and collect the plants, put everything in bags, in tankettes and arrive at the headquarters like a madwoman full of leaves. Because of the publication on the Internet, yesterday when I woke up, they had put a bushel of bejoco ubi (Princes vine) and copal in my doorway, I picked them up and brought them here".
People say that Yamilé's herbal tea has aché (magical gift). For her, although aware of the properties of these infusions, its effect is nothing more than that of something that is prepared with a lot of love, and the best wishes.
"That aché is mainly love and the desire to do my job well. I go into the red zone all the time, I see the desperation, the impatience, the discomfort of the patients. This work is sad and beautiful at the same time because I rejoice to know that this tea is going to relieve people who are in bed. What I do is to look for all the plants that I remember, my colleagues also bring me some and we always put more, a little more because it is done with all the love of a work group".
It all happens in the school kitchen, where Yamilé leads a group of people who are pleased that the patients and even the health personnel claim the tea, when they don't see it coming.
"Even the health personnel also make me crazy asking for the herbal tea when they see me", she says, laughing. She has been working in this center for 18 years, practically since its foundation, and has seen it be everything: hotel, university, isolation center for travelers and finally a hospital. The vocation to serve, in all cases, has identified the service personnel of which she is proud to be a part.
"It has been months of sacrifice, of a lot of effort, of hours and hours dedicated to the patients. I bring breakfast, snacks, lunch, lunch, snacks, if any patient needs hot water or a formula, we do it without a problem because in the last time we have had here are elderly, 80 and 90 years old, very old, who require special care."
Yamilé is a woman of faith, one of those who believes in doing good without looking at whom, one of those who is convinced that in this battle against Covid-19 it is necessary to want to do and only with that we will have won a great part of the ground.
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