Ojo

"I'm not sure I believe in ojo," Andrea said on the way to Austin yesterday. "It is a Mexican old wife's tale."

We were talking about her kids, and a photo of them in folklorico costumes that had been in Van Horn's old promotional brochure. They are beautiful kids.

"My daughter wanted to dance with the other girls, but she was too small." Andrea told us. "But she went to the classes and she was better than the bigger girls. The teacher said,"Your girl has to dance, get her a dress, or get me material and I'll sew her a costume."

So Andrea got some pretty orange fabric and the teacher sewed her daughter a costume. On the day of the folklorico dance performance, the daughter danced beautifully. "But she got sick right after.....it was the ojo," Andrea said.

"Ojo means eye, and putting the ojo means seeing with envy," Andrea said. "If you look at someone and want it, you have to touch it or else that person will get sick."

"So, that's why our blonde daughters were always being touched when they were little," Jeff said.

"Yes, so they didn't get sick. There are some people who know how to cure the ojo, Brenda's mom knows how to do it, but I don't know exactly how to do it. You run an egg over the sick person's body in a particular way, you run it all over their body, and when you're done the egg is practically hardboiled from the heat of the envy. And the sick person is better. If you break open the egg you can see the red spot of blood. If the spot is big, there was a lot of the 'ojo.' But I don't know if I believe it. But my daughter did get sick after she performed her dance and people liked it. Everyone said it was the ojo."

This morning we attend the state department of transportation commission meeting, the first step in our attempt to get continued funding for our program. Then the long 7 hour drive back home.