Dina

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In the Quichua village I have been teaching in for the last few weeks, a woman, Margarita, runs a small tienda next door. One day, Christopher and me noticed she had a little girl with her. I picked the little girl up, she must not have been a day older than one, and started playing with her. My student, Hilda, said she was her cousin. When I asked Hilda the girl’s name, Hilda said she didn’t have one yet. I was to find out later that it was normal in the Quichua culture to call a baby ¨bebe¨ or wawa, Quichua for baby, until the mother found a name. I joked about calling the wawa Dina, and Hilda, after taking to the mother, told me the mother like the name and was going to call the baby Din! Next day, when i was playing with the baby, I had a feeling she was born a Gemini, and surprisingly Dina was born on June 4th, just 16 days before my birthday, and was definitely a Gemini. And that’s how a little Quichua wawa in Chuchuqui, Ecuador was named after me.

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