Monday, February 1, 2010

Guanacaste; the cowboy frontier



The Rains have gone and we are gradually drying into a dusty, hot and browning jungle. Maybe that sounds unpleasant for you, but to me it reminds me more of home every day; The Southwest with its rustic adobe desert laid out over a palette of browns and reds and oranges. I miss it sometimes and I swear I will forever call it home. But here is beautiful too. As leaves dry and fall to the ground in big heaps I am reminded of autumn in Colorado growing up. The only difference is it continues to heat up instead of cool down. This time of year here is called summer or the dry season while April through November is termed winter or the rainy season. Sounds simple, but I assure you the bustling wilderness that envelops every village and town keeps living here anything but boring and simple.
Projects are also bustling to life. I continue to teach weekly adult English classes, a course that is demanding and time-consuming for both teacher and students but offers a certificate of completion with the name of the well-known teaching institution Centro Cultural. I began with 19 students and am down to 15, but this is actually a better percentage of maintenance than many volunteers have. At the beginning of January I began a girls youth group called Chicas Poderosas. We meet weekly to discuss themes like self-esteem, nutrition and health, relationships, decision-making, and future goals. I have ten girls who are special and unique each in their own way and I truly enjoy the discussions and activities with them. The kids will begin school again in a couple weeks and I will start my English classes in corroboration with their classes. I will gain three little boys to first grade and lose three girls to the high school. That will be quite a change. In terms of infrastructure projects, we have three going in the town. First, the decades old church was flattened right after Christmas in December in preparation for the construction of a new, more modern building. Plans have been drawn up and we are beginning to collect funding to get the construction started. Next, Quebrada Grande will soon be home to a computer center… with Internet!!!! At least this is the hope. The town Association solicited for computers from an organization of the government and we will be receiving 6 machines shortly. The only catch is that we, the townspeople are in charge of assuring a secure location for the computers. We were able to get materials donated and we began the construction last week of the very simple building that is in front of the school. I organized a chart of work times for all the able-bodies workers of the community to donate work time to help complete the building rapidly. We should be done by the end of this week. And then I will begin giving basic (and I mean basic!) computer classes to both kids and adults in the community. The third project that I am in the works of planning is a new kitchen/ cantina and bathroom for the town soccer field. The one we have is extremely old, dilapidated, and in my opinion, unsanitary for cooking and selling food. The restroom too is incredibly uninviting. The Association has given my approval to move forward in writing the proposal to search for funding. I hope to have this completed by the end of the year. One more project I just got started on involves photography. It’s called Dog Meets World, (www.dogmeetsworld.org) a non-profit organization that was founded in 2008 to promote, educate and sustain appreciation of the fact that many people in the world do not have access to personal photographs. A previous volunteer in my area (Anna Meyers, Tico 12) came back to visit for a week in January. She brought with her this project which includes a totally sweet little digital printer with all the pieces (paper, ink, etc.) The idea is to educate kids about the process of the making of a photo while giving them their own personal photo as their property. To Americans, a photo of ourselves is incredibly easy to come by. We probably have thousands spanning throughout our lifetimes. But here in rural Costa Rica it is very rare to have more than one or two personal photos and even then, the kids themselves don’t really have ownership of them. This non-profit project is just getting started but it has already spanned across the world as world travelers bring along the compact printer with them on their trips abroad. Peace Corps Costa Rica is Dog Meets World’s first initiation of the project in cooperation with Peace Corps. The founder hopes to expand this and have printers circulating Peace Corps countries as volunteers initiate the project. I implemented the project first during my girls youth group and it went over fabulously. My second run will be when school starts this month and I can include all the community children.
In personal news I am the happy renter of my own home where I cook my own meals completely free of rice and beans. I now grow cilantro and oregano in my back yard garden and I am hoping to plant some veggies for the future. I am learning to cook a lot from scratch actually. I like to make my own tomato sauce, stirfries, and a bunch of different baked goods. I found a place to buy whole wheat flour in Nandayure and I make whole wheat pancakes. Totally delicious. The locals find it incredible I survive without rice and beans, and I just shrug attempt for the millionth time to explain that I need variety and especially vegetables to be happy and healthy. I have now gone two months and one day without consuming rice or beans, and honestly I still have no desire for the Tico traditional dish. One thing I have completely conformed to is the coffee tradition. I get free, fresh organic coffee from my neighbor’s farm and make it every morning and every afternoon for cafecito. I also always receive a bunch of fruits and sometimes vegetables from town members. Although I am not a big squash fan, it is good in a soup with garlic, cilantro and beef. As you can see, I have begun to enjoy the art of cooking, and experimenting, which go hand in hand. Without a TV, a car, a million commitments, I’ve discovered the goodness in slowing down and enjoying cooking and eating good food. But this certainly doesn’t mean I don’t miss New Mexican food, especially Frontier.
December and January are big party times here due to the rains stopping, Christmas, and the end of the coffee harvesting. I went to my first bull riding event and watched as insane men swung around erratically atop angry and lethal torros, a custom of the cowboy frontier of Costa Rica, Guanacaste. It was very exciting to see in real life. Thankfully and surprisingly, no one died. These fiestas also include bailes-dances where we shake our booties to meringue, kumbya and reggae. My parents and grandparents came for a week in December and my mom gave the kumbya a try with a local guy. I have pictures to prove she enjoyed it.
I recently took a trip to the Island of Chira off the east coast of the Nicoyan Peninsula. A Tica friend of mine has family there, so she and I along with two other friends rented bikes (the most logical and popular method of transportation there) and pedaled around the island. It was hot, tropical and everything you’d want from an island. I want to go back and spend the night in some woodsy cabins there that are run by the island’s women’s association. They are very organized and as their husbands continue with the centuries old tradition of fishing, the women have turned to local arts and crafts as they ignite the sparks of rural tourism. Gabriella, Nuri, Marjorie and I enjoyed very much our weekend trip and decided to start a little tradition of monthly outings for us girls. At the end of February we head for Playa Samara where Marjorie’s parents live to enjoy the beach and ride the horse’s her parents own. I am so thankful to finally have some girl friends here.
The first week of March (just around the corner) Tico 20 will arrive- the next bright-eyed and bushy-tailed group of Peace Corps volunteers to serve here in Costa Rica. I will host a volunteer for a site visit in April during their training and I am also a mentor to an incoming volunteer. I have already begun exchanging e-mails with her (a new and useful facet of the peer mentoring program PC initiated). How amazing to think this means I have been in this country for nearly a year. Wow. In some ways it has drug on tremendously. In others, I don’t know how it swept by so fast. Either way, I am doing well and have not yet lost the idealism and motivations that fueled my coming in the first place.