Berkshire Eagle: Accents in the Berkshires

It took a lot of bubble wrap to get Jorge Aguilar’s statue of the “Virgen del Cisne” afely to Pittsfield. The four-foot tall statue was built for him in a workshop in Ecuador, his home country.

Aguilar left his hometown of Girón for the United States when he was 16. Now 30 and a proud homeowner and landlord in Pittsfield, he still very much misses his family back in his South American country.

“I have my faith in this Virgin,” he says in his Taylor Street living room where a votive candle burns as part of a shrine. “This is another thing that makes me feel at home.”

In his window, leggy seedlings grow toward winter light that’s not really adequate.

“It’s too early,” Aguilar agrees.

But he is a farmer’s son and says that his love for gardening – “for growing things” – connects him to his native land as well. He shows off an Ecuadorian variety of beans he can’t wait to plant again and shows pictures of a zambo squash you won’t find in your local supermarket.

“I like it here,” he says about Pittsfield. “The peace I have in my hometown is the peace I have in this town.”

Her children are grown up now, but Estervina Davis is still not sure about the American custom of sleepovers.

“In my country, you don’t do that,” she says. “Everybody sleeps in their own house. I would have never even asked my parents if I could because I knew they would say ‘no’.”

That was an unsettling cultural difference she had to adapt to when she moved from the Dominican Republic to the Berkshires in 2004.

Music Credit:

"Quasi Motion"

Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)

Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0

Maybe it was an honest mistake, maybe not. But either way, it was the moment that Maribel Teyssier passed her English exam.

“I went to the supermarket and I pay my groceries with a bill of 50 bucks,” she says. “He gave me change for just 20. I got kind of angry because maybe he noticed that I didn’t know good English.”

She pointed out the mistake. The cashier apologized and gave her the right change. Her eyes twinkle when she recalls, “That was my first experience forcing me to speak up in English."

Music credit:

"No Frills Cumbia"

Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)

Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0

The Brazilian community in the Berkshires used to be larger. Thiago Oliveira recalls 75 or 80 worshippers at Sunday services in the Assembly of God Brazilian church in Pittsfield. The 2008 financial crisis caused many of them to leave. Oliveira says, “They returned to Brazil or moved to larger cities in the United States.” Oliveira became pastor of the congregation when church founders Marcelo de Santiago and his wife, Albertina, moved back to Sao Paulo. Mornings, he opens up Guido’s Fresh Marketplace on South Street and works there in the produce department. But in the large storefront space at 55 McKay St. that houses his church, it becomes clear quickly that he sees his ministry as his most important job. “I don’t do it for money,” he says about his pastoring. “It’s a very emotional thing, just to try to help anybody that I can help. I am very honored that God gave me this opportunity to do what I love.”

Dr. Tony Makdisi, a hospitalist at Berkshire Medical Center in Pittsfield, was inspired to come to the United States by “wanted to be just like” the American doctors who trained him at Damascus University in Syria. He holds on to the hope that Syria can find peace again.

Octavio Hernandez was born, raised and educated in Mexico City. He earned law degree there and for years practiced corporate law in the banking sector in Mexico and abroad: “I managed assets, worked with financial instruments. That sounds a bit dry, but at the time it was very exciting.” Now 58, he came to the Berkshires 15 years ago.

For Klara Sotonova’s parents in the Czech Republic, 20,000 koruna was a lot of money. The equivalent of about $800, they had saved that sum for when their daughter would get married. And at 19, a wedding was more or less what was expected of her. Preferably soon.

Instead, Klara asked for that money to buy a plane ticket to America. It was 10 years after the Velvet Revolution of 1989, the events that ended communism in what was then still Czechoslovakia. Many young people were leaving.

Getting threats on your life from more or less anonymous sources is one thing. Having guys with guns show up at your house to kidnap you and your family is something else.

“We weren’t actually at the house, we were two miles down the road going into town,” recalls Camilo Manrique. “We got a phone call from the caretaker telling us to get out of there because they were coming to get us.

“So we booked a flight the next day and we came to the Berkshires.”

Goundo Behanzin doesn’t want to name the bank that turned down his business loan application. He laughs about it now, proud of his Berkshire International Market on Pittsfield’s North Street.

But some resentment lingers when he concludes about the bank: “They were wrong. I am an accountant teacher, but they couldn’t see it.”

Behanzin, 56, taught accounting in Abidjan, the largest city in French-speaking Ivory Coast, for nine years. Abidjan is to West Africa what New York is to the world, Behanzin explains: Both cities are a mix of cultures, crowded, a magnet for people from all over.

“I am actually from two countries,” Behanzin says. “My father was from Benin. He met my mother in Ivory Coast, that’s where I was born. Then we moved to Benin where I went to my first schools."

The Eagle introduces a new feature called “Accents” to, one by one, tell the unique stories of our many immigrant neighbors living and working here in the Berkshires. Reinout van Wagtendonk, a Dutch-born journalist and longtime resident of Lee, is the host and producer of Accents, which consists of a beautifully produced podcast interview you can listen to online at BerkshireEagle.com, along with this story and even a special recipe provided by the guest that's representative of his or her native country. Van Wagtendonk debuts Accents today with an interview of Elisa Fuller, a resident of Pittsfield who hails from Ecuador.

Music: "Sardana", "Sancho Panza Gets a Latte"

Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)

Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/