Tortillas, flowers, cofee, and Cock fighters

Agnostic Gringo in Costa Rica during Semana Santa

Well to start out, I hope everybody had a nice Easter with family, friends, or loved-ones. I wish I could have teleported myself home to eat some good old mom’s cooking; I’m sure it was great mom! But there will be many more Oregon Easters to come so missing one or two will not be the end of the world. Anyway, on to my stories; I’m looking at this experience as an opportunity to try new things and see others’ perspective on life, so I’m keeping an open mind and jumping in headfirst. So as holy week approached I was invited to partake in traditional Costa Rican holy week activities, which I gladly accepted. The Sunday before I went to my host relatives home in a somewhat more rural area to make Miel de Cheverre and miel de coco (2 delicious customary Tico desserts) Cheverre is a vegetable that most likely resembles a watermelon from the outside and inside is stringy unflavored substance. We took machetes to the cheverres and got all the eatable substance into a huge caste iron wok looking thing that was filled with water and built a fire underneath it. We let that boil for a good 45 mins occasionally stirring it and then emptied the water. Next we put about a kilo of dulce (basically brown sugar) in with the Cheverre and stoked the fire once again. We walked through their garden and collected some orange tree leaves and cloves to add to the sweet mixture. We let that cook for a while and finally removed the leaves to get to the finished product; which my host cousin and I happily licked each leaf like it was a spoon with batter from cookies back home. My cousin´s name is Puala she´s studying pharmacy in the University. Her family is real nice, her dad owns a coffee plantation and that night we watched Slumdog Millionaire (translated to “Quien Quiere Ser un Milionario” who wants to be a millionaire) which I hadn’t seen and was really good even dubbed in Spanish, no wonder it won all those Oscars! Later we made Empanadas de Cheverre and put it also on Arroz con Leche (rice with milk), which was muy rico.

Costa Rica happens to be a Catholic country so holy week is no god damn joke; they have the entire week off. No school all week and the few businesses that are open, are only open till Wednesday. After that the busses don’t even run. This might be one example of why things just take longer to get accomplished down here; the pace is much slower. Unfortunately the United States Government doesn’t agree so we had training until Wednesday. It was nice to have some time off, some friends and myself jugamos bola (played soccer) and Frisbee in the local field. I also used this opportunity to spend more time in a church than I have my entire life, minus skate church of course. I’ll be honest here, I lied to my host family; my uncle asked me if I believed in god in a manner that there was only one right answer. He asked this after just talking about how loco somebody was in the community for being 7th day adventagist, how Jewish people are weird and wrong for not believing Jesus is their savoir, and how gay people are going to hell. I saw how incredibly closed minded he was so the last thing I wanted was to stir up a lecture on religion; so I said, “of coarse I believe in god”. When in reality I don’t really think I believe in shit! Why should I believe in Christ, Buddha, Allah, or the Feathered Serpent (the Mayan god, who had a more concise calendar than we use now thousands of years ago) In my personal opinion religions are foretold by a combination of factors including; location, genealogy, and social-economic status. Take Costa Rica for example; this region was conquered by catholic missionaries and religion has been passed down from family to family. Let’s not forget that it is a relatively poor country. It’s no coincidence that developing nations have a higher amount of religious constituents. There are indigenous communities in parts of the world who do not know who Jesus Christ is, and that is just fine. They do not need to be saved; they’ve gotten this far, they’re doing all right. As for gays, I think that their desires are weird and different, but it shouldn’t condemn them by any means. I am fully aware that this is a huge stereotype, but I had to say it anyway. Probably for the fact that I sit back and watch people prejudge others here on their religion, which I do not agree with. What really matters is the quality of your character, and that can originate in any religion or non-at all. This is also not to say that the Catholic religion is not a positive aspect here, I just had to rant for a bit. On the contrary, the vast majority of people in semi-rural Costa Rica that I have met show very positive morals, many that far exceed those of my own. All in all, my religious experience here has been interesting, I have no idea when to sit or stand in church, went on four processions, two of which depicted the crucification of Jesus. One guy walked about a mile with a large wooden cross on his back and then they actually put him on an even bigger cross, minus the nails of course. And this was in the heat of the Costa Rican sun. (I should have pics showing this) In the end the processions were actually very interesting and I am glad that I got to see them, it was an experience that I won’t soon forget. I did have a funny incident that occurred during this holy week; after going to “bastante” masses at the church one day we decided to play some ball in the local field, afterwards we went to the “Super Corazon de Jesus” (Super Heart Of Jesus) the local grocery store get something to drink. And a beer sounded mighty nice, but unfortunately I was unaware that it is illegal to sell beer or booze during holy week. This was a big bummer; but I survived.

Ok enough holy week talk… Going back to a week ago Saturday, I got my first tourist experience in Costa Rica. My host dad being the director of the school had planned a fundraiser to go to Jaco beach. If you don’t know what Jaco beach is its one of the more popular beach destinations in Costa Rica and filled with gringos. He told me about it a few weeks prior and said there were some open spots so I should invite some other trainees. Not wanting to over extend the welcome I told two other trainees about it and they were excited to finally get to see the beach. I had actually gone to a beach in Guanacaste the week before while visiting a volunteer in his site, but this would be for the entire day. To my surprise my host dad informed me that there were 12 spots on the bus and he wanted me to fill them, so I was able to invite 9 more people to spend the day at the beach. So my friends were pretty stoked with me and more importantly my host dad. It was a 4 hour bus ride each way and we left at 4:30 in the morning but all totally worth it. The water was warm and the sun was even hotter. We tried to keep as much Peace Core issued 30-sun screen on as possible but inevitable some of us gringos got burnt, my back was a little pink, but others turned out like a lobsters. At lunch I got some ice cream with some friends and enjoyed some shade. We got talking about how weird it felt to be in probably the touristiest beach in Costa Rica. Up until this day, we had been kept so busy that we had not been able to experience any of the tourist spots. Even there in Jaco Beach where we probably heard more English than Spanish it was weird because we might have looked like tourists, but we’re not and we’ll be here for another two plus years. Which is crazy to think but also great to know I should have time to see some of Costa Rica’s beauty. Around 4:00pm I decided to pay about a dollar to rinse off the sticky salt water and sand that I had been playing in all day and decided to have a cold beer with a friend before sitting in the bus for four more hours. I don’t think one beer had ever tasted so good!

The other day I was over at a fellow trainee’s house named Kyle but the town has renamed him el gigante (the giant) because he’s 6’5’’ which is taller than 99.9% of ticos. He’s got a cool family as well, his host sister speaks really good English and has been in the US a few times; she’s a manager for HP computers and only 26 years old. Her older brother lives behind their house in a house that would be considered nice in US standards and likes to plays soccer with us. Ricardo’s twin daughters are 11 years old and along with the grandma are probably the cutest people I have met. They also took pleasure in showing us their neighbor’s gallinos de pelea (Cock fighters) and explained how the neighbors fight and sell the roosters. Cock fighting is illegal in Costa Rica but this isn’t the first time I have heard about it, so I’m not sure how much that rule is enforced. (I should also have some pics of the roosters)

Well that’s what I have been up to lately so nothing too exciting but I’m still enjoying it! This Saturday I am looking forward to a dinner dedicated to welcoming our training group and saying goodbye to Tico 16 a group that is finishing their service. Afterwards we all rented rooms at a hotel in San Jose called the Royal Dutch, which is supposed to be a great time when all three groups get together, there’ll be about 100 of us gringos there. On the second floor there’s a casino and a bar on the third floor so needless to say it shouldn’t be too hard to have a good time. All right, until next time, pura vida mae!

Tuesday, March 31

Tuesday March 31, 2009

Well, I made it back from my first sight visit with no problems and had a great experience! Saturday morning I took a 4-hour bus from San Jose to Liberia the Capital of the Guanacaste region, which here in Costa Rica is there Cowboy country. The bus ride was nice, a 27 year old Tica named Marybeth sat next to me, who was on her way to Coco beach where she lives and goes to college. She was very nice like many Costa Ricans I have met and while I wasn’t able to sleep the conversation in Spanish was pleasant. At the end of the bus ride she gave me her email address and phone number and preceded to tell me to call her if I’m ever near Coco Beach, which I thought was very nice of her. From there I switched busses and made my way to Cuajiniquil a rural fishing village in the northwest part of the country only about a half hour from the boarder of Nicaragua. This is where a current volunteer was waiting for me. His name is Rob and he has been in Costa Rica for about a year in the same program as myself. So it was nice to get an idea of some of the things I could be doing in my future site.

Upon arriving at the fishing village Rob asked if I would be interested in watching the Mexico vs Costa Rica soccer game, which I gladly obliged. We ended up getting invited to the local bar to watch the game with a local fisherman named Cola who is also part of the development committee and has befriended Rob. Unlike most Ticos Cola is a big man; well over 6 ft tall and broad shouldered. During and after the game we chatted over some beers with Cola and some other locals. Trying to understand slang fishermen bar talk was somewhat challenging but a good experience. Throughout the night I was taught to pretty funny Costa Rican sayings that I will not soon forget. Although it was a fun night, Costa Rica lost. Towards the end of the night we were invited to a development meeting in the morning so we elected to call it a night so that we could wake up without a hangover for the meeting. We tried to split the tab, but Cola would not have it and payed for all of our beers, unnecessary but a nice gesture.

Sunday morning we went to the 9am meeting at another fisherman’s house at 9:30 to be on Tico time(Ticos are notorious for being late); where there were 8 people discussing different upcoming projects. The most interesting was a project that will help the community with tourism. They are receiving 4 boats that have been donated to put into use as scuba diving and snorkeling tour boats. I had heard about these Costa Rican meetings where people just sit around and talk for a few hours over coffee and snacks but don’t get a lot accomplished except for planning another meeting. So it was a good experience to see first hand.

Afterwards we made it back to Rob’s house where we where trying to cool off in the shade of his front porch (Guanacaste is also one of the hottest regions in Costa Rica) when a truck pulled up looking for us. It was a man named Alvero (but he said I could just call him Al, lol) He has to be the funniest Tico I have met. He reminded me of Ed Brower for those of you that know Ed; you probably get the idea. Al and his wife own the one hotel in town that is a nice little bungalow kind of thing that specializes in snorkeling, kyaking, and other tours. He had a busy night the night before at his hotel but all his clients had left that morning so he was looking at it like a day off. His wife had left to go hike the tallest pike in Costa Rica Mt. Chirripò where on a clear day you can see both the Pacific and Caribbean seas (A goal of mine). We didn’t have much planned for the afternoon so it wasn’t to hard to convince us to come back to his hotel and sit outside in the shade to watch the Brazil vs Ecuador soccer on his flat screen tv game and drink Casique with him. It turned into a very enjoyable and needed afternoon with some delicious shrimp pasta, sediche (a lime cured fish platter), and guaro. Al even tried to get us to stay in one of the air-conditioned rooms, although tempting in the 90-degree weather, we elected not to. He also wanted to take us out snorkeling the next day but we had work to do. So we said our goodbyes and walked back to the house I was staying at to take a cold shower before trying to sleep in the blistering heat.

Monday Morning we had to take some blue prints for the community center into Liberia to the DINADECO office. DINADECO is the national development association that gives money to a lot of development projects in Costa Rica. They will be my counter-part and a very good resource to get to know for my own experience. So needless to say I was happy to go to the office and get some sort of an idea of how things work. We brought the plans that Rob has be working on and just got the money approved to start the construction. I enjoyed learning about this sort of infrastructure project, and could see myself helping on a similar project if necessary in my future community.

Around the heat of the day we arrived back in Cuajiniquil and took the employee at the DINADECO office’s advice and made our way to the beach! It’s about a half hour walk so we were very ready to jump in the ocean once I saw it! The beach we went swimming at was another beautiful Costa Rican view of a national park and an island that would have made a great picture. I even brought my camera this time but realized when I went to take a picture that although I had brought the camera I left my memory card in my lap top back at my host family’s house so that was a disappointment. After swimming a baking in the sun for a couple hours we decided to make our way back to town to prepare for and English class we were supposed to teach. The walk back made us pretty thirsty and we were looking forward to chugging some water when we got back to the house, unfortunately this rural town has some problems and one of them is that sometimes you cant count on having running water. And that was the case when we got back. Luckily there was a bottle in the fridge, but we would have had a couple more glasses if there was more. Hydration is a concern for me, it seems like the locals in Costa Rica don’t drink any water only coffee and refresco, or agua dulce (a sugary water drink that I’m not a fan of). And personally I drink a ton of water and I think my host family thinks this is weird that I would rather have water than a sugared down refresco, lol. Anyway the point being, I’m trying to stay as hydrated as possible.

So Monday evening as we were preparing English class with no running water, when power went out. So some of the problems that plague the poorer parts of Costa Rica are unstable power and water systems. I have seen power surges at my host family’s home and at the retreat center but this time it was more like a long nap than a surge. The lights went off around 5pm and didn’t come back on till after 9pm. Needless to say we weren’t able to teach an English class, when the lights go out people don’t really do much of anything, so we sat around Monday night talking to some locals in the dark.

Tuesday morning I woke up and made my way back to San Jose by about 2:00pm. I stepped out of the bus terminal and thought to myself, “wow, it looks like it might rain”. And sure shit, it did, hard! Luckily for some reason I packed a light rain jacket that was easily accessible and that came in handy. It didn’t help that I was wearing shorts and Chaco’s. I had about 15 blocks to walk from the bus terminal to a different bus stop that would get me back to my community of San Juan Sur. It rained the entire walk and my shorts were soaked, but my jacket did its job and my backpack got its first passing test in a tropical rainstorm. I did learn that standing in soaking wet shorts for an hour and half packed bus ride is not fun. But there happened to be about 10 other trainees who had made it back from their trips to different parts of Costa Rica who were just as uncomfortable as me. It was interesting to hear how they liked their visits to other volunteers as well and I think the consensus was that the majority had positive trips, so that was reassuring.

All in all, I had a great weekend! I traveled by myself to a rural community to see some positive things that the PeaceCorps does. Not to mention I saw a community who had completely accepted a gringo, which is comforting and a future concern of mine. As well as got a chance to relax and have a little fun, which was really necessary since they have been keeping us real busy in training. I just hope that when I get my assignment I will be accepted and help make a difference with my community. Ok, I have rambled on enough…
-Hope you enjoyed it!

Hello everybody from San Juan Sur

Thursday March 26, 2009

Well hello everybody from San Juan Sur, Costa Rica! I’m writing from my host family’s house up here in the mountains about 1.5 hours from San Jose (where I will save it to a flash drive until I find some internet). I really lucked out with my living situation in my training community. I live with the principle of the local school Don William, which down here is just about the most respected person in the community. Along with his wife Dona Yorleny and their children Francisco or better known as Franciscito. (Costa Ricans put “ito” or “ita” on just about anything to show that something is small or young) who’s 10 and Nazareth their daughter who’s 14. The family is great, they are as nice as it gets and their food is good as well. I think the mom is trying to fatten me up, but she says that she only has 3 months then I wont be ably to eat much because I will be in a much more rural and poor barrio. I usually eat fresh fruit along with rice, beans (Gallo Pinto) and an egg for breakfast, more rice and beans and a salad for lunch and a small soup or more rice and beans for dinner. Alone with the family is 5 dogs including Bruno my favorite who’s only 3 months old, a parrot, 8 little birds, a rabbit, and 40 chickens / roosters. So as Nazareth put it, their home is a zoo, lol. The house itself is actually very nice for the community, minus the cold showers but I’m getting used to those and even starting to think they’re refreshing. Between our house and the surrounding family members houses we have just about every fruit and vegetable imaginable, and there are lots down here that I have never seen or tasted up in the states.

The Tica mom takes pride in cooking and doing the chores so its fairly hard to even dish my own plate for dinner let alone do my own laundry, she even irons my tee-shirts. But I try to help out as much as possible. Their customs here are much different from those back home. Family comes first here in Costa Rica above all things. For example my immediate family goes to church every Saturday night together, while my host dad’s mom and sisters go Sunday evenings and he gladly drives them and picks them up (a whole half mile away), as well as walks up to his mothers house ever night to talk to her and other family members over cafecito. Even as late as 9:30 after an hour and half bus ride from San Jose he takes most nights of the week because along with being a principle he’s also in Law School studying to be an attorney.

This town is beautiful it sits up in the mountains outside San Jose, which on the other hand is in my opinion ugly, crowded and sketchy for us gringos. Up here we have a supermarket, school, church, and a few little stores, along with even an internet café, which is slower than 56K, if you remember dialup. (WOW a quick interruption, a BIG ASS spider was just crawling up my leg, that’s another thing I have to get used to, lol) So San Juan Sur is the third town in a string on 4 communities that our Rural Community Development program is split up in. There are about 5 trainees in every town. I can fairly easily walk to 2 of the other communities where some of my friends are at, but when people do meet up its usually in my town, because we have the only internet café and its in the middle. My week starts out on Monday and Tuesday with language training in my town where I’m trying to improve my Spanish, which is a necessity if I’m going to be able to interact with the community in my future site. Four other trainees and myself have one language facilitator as the PeaceCorps calls it. Her name is Karla, and she is very supportive and that helps out a lot. It also doesn’t hurt that she is a beautiful 25 year old Tica. Wednesdays myself and the other trainees take the bus to Jerico, the 1st town in our string of communities where we have technical training with the other Rural Development trainees in ingles, which is nice. There we learn more about what rural community development is and usually have a current volunteer tell us about their experience. Then Thursday is back to language training with Karla in San Juan Sur. And Fridays we have to make the journey to San Jose by bus. There we meet for safety training with all 52 trainees in country from all 3 programs. Which is nice to see some other faces that I met and became friends with at the retreat. It’s a relief when I go to San Jose that I’m in the RCD program because I know that I wont have to live in San Jose. The city is not a pretty place and from the sounds of it, it can be more dangerous than the rural areas, and the people aren’t as eager to talk to you. Last Friday we learned about all the horrible things that have happened to volunteers in the past. Its good to learn about because we do stick out like crazy down here and bad things have happened, but its sort of depressing to learn about muggings and sexual assaults on a Friday afternoon. Needless to say as much as everyone wanted a beer in San Jose, we decided to get back to the safety of our RCD communities…

Last Saturday we had more training in San Jose so Sunday was our 1st day off since arriving in Costa Rica. We all were very happy to have it! I started my day a little later around 8:00am, which is surprisingly late with all the noise from the animals (They’re all outside, but between 40 roosters and barking dogs, and the strong Costa Rican sun; that’s late!) I took a jog to the neighboring community, which got the sweat going that makes cold showers more tolerant, a little trick I found out quickly. Then I played a little Soccer with Franciscito. In the Afternoon I met up with a few friends who came in from the neighboring town and went to something similar to a Saturday Market. After that Don William was nice enough to drive the visiting trainees back to their town, which saved them a 20 min walk. He actually took a detour for us and drove 15 min up even further into the mountains to a viewpoint that is up there for one of the best in my life! Miles and miles of rolling Costa Rican mountains, forests, and coffee plantations. Unfortunately I didn’t bring my camera so I wasn’t able to photograph the view, but it was amazing. While we were there some clouds came in and we could feel the mist as they rolled by, this was the first and only moisture I have felt since arriving. Everyday I would say its around 70-75 degrees and sunny, in the evenings clouds come in and make awesome sunsets in the mountain range, I’ll try to photograph this phenomena but I think that it will be hard to capture it.

Saturday I take a 6 hour bus ride up to a rural coastal town in Guanacaste by my myself to visit a current volunteer and stay with him until Tuesday. This should be an awesome experience to see what an average volunteer’s day is like. I actually met the volunteer last week he happened to be a guest speaker in my training class on Wednesday. He seems like a cool guy so it should be fun, interesting and helpful. I just hope I get there around 5 in the afternoon that’s when Costa Rica plays Mexico in a soccer match, which is one of the most anticipated games of the year. I do know that his sight isn’t too rural and will have tv’s around to watch the game. So ‘si dios quiere’ (if god wants) we’ll be able to watch the game. I’m excited to go to this sight but kind of bummed on the other hand because from what he has told me is its an unusually large community around 2000 people unlike some rural sights that I would have to take a couple hour boat ride to and definitely couldn’t count on a tv, lol. I do have a couple more sight visits in training so I’m sure I will get to see what I can expect to get for my sight. Nevertheless, I’m stoaked for this viaje.