MOTHER'S MILK

 

I met a man attending a funeral and, to make conversation, I asked him if he knew the deceased man. This is how the conversation went.

~ Kao un tungo' i difunto?

(Did you know the deceased?)

~ Hu tungo' håye gue' sa' man besino ham gi annai man dikkike' ham. Lao achok ha' ti gos amigu-ho gue', menestet na bai hu fåtto gi entieriu-ña pot otro na rason.

(I knew who he was because we were neighbors when we were small. But although he was not a close friend, it was important that I come to his funeral for another reason.)

~ Ya håfa ennao?

(And what is that?)

~ Gi annai sais åños yo', man hugåndo ham ni famagu'on gi tatten guma' ya ha danche i matå-ho un pedåson kriståt annai ma panak un boteya ya måffak. På'go mafañågo i difunto pues humånao si nanå-ho para as nanå-ña i difunto para u fan ayao leche ginen i sisu-ña si nanå-ña ya ma åmte i matå-ho ni lechen i nana. Pues hu didibe i difunto meggagai sa' an ti mafañågo gue' ti u gai leche si nanå-ña guihe na tiempo.

(When I was six years old, we kids were playing behind the house and a piece of glass hit my eye when they hit a bottle and it broke apart. The deceased was just born so my mother went to his mother to borrow milk from his mother's breast to treat my eye with the mother's breast milk. So I owe the deceased a lot because if he had not been born his mother wouldn't have had breast milk at that time.)

Some blog readers always ask to hear how the Chamorro sounds :

BREAST MILK AS MEDICINE

Science tells us what Chamorro mothers knew all along.

Breast milk has a lot of health benefits, even for the mother! But not only is breast milk good for the baby to drink and put inside the body, the anti-bacterial properties of mother's milk can be used to treat external problems such as skin rashes and pink eye.

Different cultures use breast milk for all sorts of conditions. Chamorros in the past used it to treat eye ailments.