Susana Candelaria Expósito, whom her neighbors know as ‘Yaya’, is called from all over the Island and the Peninsula. And it is that she Yaya inherited from her mother, well known in her native Tacoronte, a power to cure those ailments or ills that did not find a solution in traditional medicine.
This adopted guanchera has lived in the Santo Domingo neighborhood for 58 years, she learned to make the sign of the cross from her mother “and out of necessity, because she had five small daughters and did not have a car to take them to pray for them when they were sick,” she says.
His mother had the papers written down and learned them. She still keeps some of the spells inside a plastic sheet, as if it were a treasure. She does not know who taught her mother, but she deduces that she learned the same way.
Granny prayed to her daughters and then to everyone who came and comes to see her. It is by “word of mouth”, since she does not charge. She never did, because when she starts to profit, the prayer has no effect. “If they want to give me something, I have a piggy bank where I collect money for the church,” she clarifies.
He has five daughters, ten grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren. One of them, Marga, present during the interview, finds it hard to believe in things that have no scientific explanation, but she recognizes the healing powers that her mother has because she has experienced them directly.
There are seasons when it receives up to four people a day and others when no one goes. Even during the toughest time of the pandemic, he did not stop caring for people who needed it. With a mask, keeping safety distances, “they at one end and me at another.”
He explains that for each ailment there is a specific prayer and practice. For the evil eye, you have to pray to San Luis Beltrán; passing through the empacho, which in the case of children “massages the tummy”; herpes, which is cured by biting red geranium leaves while imploring the saint in question; or ‘the open’, a condition of the hand that causes the person to run out of strength. In this case, while it is invoked, a cloth is sewn because supposedly “your hand opens”, or the fingers are tied, because the muscle is immobilized.
She does not hide her prayers, but none of them work if there is no faith and she does not lack it because she is very devout. She yawns while she heals but knows how to channel the energies of others so well that it does not harm her. “I’m unique,” she jokes her.
Reason is not lacking. He is 85 years old, cultivates his own garden and practices yoga and cycling despite the fact that years ago he suffered a very strong fall that according to the doctors, would prevent him from even eating on his own again.
It was in 2013 and the diagnosis was not exactly good. She fell down two steps and broke her arm and five ribs, ruptured her liver and bruised her lung. She was bedridden for 20 months. When they saw her again, they took photos of her to expose her case and asked her if she had undergone rehabilitation. She replied that she did, but that the best result she had achieved was by doing things for her house and working in the garden. “I didn’t give a dime for her arm, so the next time I send someone to rehab, I send them to their garden,” one of the professionals told him.
He gets up at six in the morning and does 40 minutes of cycling. He repeats the same exercise at one in the afternoon while she watches Roulette of Fortune, a television program that she loves. In October she started practicing yoga. She is admirable as she touches the tips of her feet with her hands. “Look,” she tells me. And immediately afterwards she shows a posture that consists of resting the sole of one foot on the leg of the other and uniting the palms of the hands with the arms at chest height.
When she got married she learned to jig with her mother-in-law. She became one of the most recognized jigsaw workers in the municipality. “It was a Chinese job,” she jokes. She dedicated herself until the euro arrived, in the year 2000, and that type of work began to lose value.
But his biggest escape route is his garden, where he enjoys a couple of hours in the morning. “Do you want to go see her?” she asks me proudly. It dares with sweet potatoes, cabbage, chard and spinach, two papaya trees, garlic, parsley, beans, coriander, onions and above all, many flowers, among which are “the roses with the flag of Spain”, because they are red and little little by little they turn yellow but in a moment the two colors coexist. There, at that exact point, rest the ashes of her husband and that of her daughter, Marga de Ella. Perhaps that is why the orchard shines, as does the adjoining garden, full of pots.
He used to grow coffee. Those who know her assure that the one prepared by Yaya “is irresistible”. She buys the grains in Tacoronte that she herself roasts over wood on a barbecue, grinds them every week and stores them in a container with a dispenser.
It never gets bad. “God forbid,” she says. Her sister Susa de Ella, 91 years old and who lives with her, agrees. “If she gets sick, who cooks for me?” she points out laughing.
Because Yaya also likes to cook. And she puts all her heart into it, as well as into everything she does. There she finds her true power.
