Update: The link in my last post was wrong. The link for my new blog is: http://ajob4chaim.blogspot.com/
Actualización: El vínculo en mi artículo anterior fue un error. El vínculo para mi nuevo blog (lo cual es en inglés) es: http://ajob4chaim.blogspot.com/
No hay suficientes horas en el día...
Les voy a extrañar todos y todas. En este momento estoy enfermo y me estoy dando cuenta de que no voy a poder ver todos mis amigos durante los siguientes diez días antes de salir para Costa Rica. Lo más que puedo esperar es ver algunos de ustedes y tener una despedida lacrimosa.
Mientras entiendo la razón que voy a Costa Rica, nunca voy a poder entender por qué me he vuelto un viajero internacional que viaja con tanta frecuencia. Yo sé bien que parte de ello se debe a mis ganas incesantes de conocer el mundo y la falta de vínculos familiares aquí en Seattle. Siento que tengo mucha suerte por tan solo saber en dónde está mi hogar y agradecido de ser bendecido con una riqueza de amistades y relaciones profesionales aquí. También siento afortunado de vivir en la tierra de Tajoma ([tɪkəˈbɪt] en Duwamish) y la gente Duwamish, la gente del salmón y la música grunge. Aunque la cultura de Seattle es verdaderamente rica, mi proyecto de tesis en la universidad me demostró que padecemos de ciertos tipos de conocimiento ecológico. Ya que no podemos, lógicamente, arrasar todos los rascacielos al suelo y mágicamente volvernos jardineros comunales de todo el año como los shuaras, siento que voy de rumbo a encontrar otro paso intermedio entre la vida urbana y la vida de los selváticos. Si logro formar un vínculo con la comunidad de Colonia Libertad que también sea de valor en mi búsqueda de excelencia académica, seré muy feliz.
Aprendí un montón de lecciones valerosas la última vez que fui a Costa Rica. Esta vez regreso como un viajero más experimentado. Se cambiaron las tornas y seré yo dando lecciones, no solamente de la gramática y la ortografía sino la ontología de las empresas en busca de materiales primarias. Estoy seguro de que los estudiantes tendrán por lo menos tantas lecciones para enseñarme a mí.
Por favor, siéntanse libre de seguir mis pensamientos y experiencias en este blog mientras sigo la brisa hacia Alajuela. Perdónenme si no logro verlos todos antes de irme. Tendremos mucho de qué hablar cuando vuelvo en septiembre.
paz amor y la esperanza
Jaime
Monday, September 27, 2010
Sunday, September 12, 2010
10 de febrero de 2010
Note: I am beginning a translation of this blog to keep my translation skills sharp; it is no longer an active blog. To read my active blog, please check out "The seemingly never-ending job search" at http://ajobforchaim.blogspot.com/. Also, if anyone knows how to move blogspot entries to a different blogspot address, please don't hesitate to email me.
Apunte: Estoy empezando a hacer una traducción de este blog para poder poner en práctica mis aptitudes de traducción. Este blog no es activo. Para leer mi blog actual, dirígese a "The seemingly never-ending job search" en la dirección de Red http://ajobforchaim.blogspot.com/. A propósito, si alguien sepa cómo trasladar las entradas de blogspot a otra dirección de Red, no dude en contactar conmigo por email.
Si encuentre un error grave en la traducción, también sería bueno que contacte conmigo por email. Siempre es mi intención esforzarme al máximo en el campo de la letra.
De regreso a Centroamérica
Casi tres años exactamente después de terminar mis estudios en el extranjero en Costa Rica, regresaré por ahí como maestro el 17 de marzo de 2010. Voy a ofrecer mis servicios de buena voluntad a una comunidad rural y pequeña que se llama Colonia Libertad, la cual se ubica en las montañas de la provincia de Alajuela. Me hospedaré en la casa de una finca sustentable de la macadamia. Esta finca se forjó de la jungla por los colonos hace algún tiempo.
En esta área se padece de recursos estatales para la educación, así que se ve la necesidad de programas como el Proyecto Ganas. Esta es una situación parecida a la que observé entre la gente indígena de las áreas rurales de Costa Rica durante mis estudios en el exterior en el 2007. Espero descubrir un nuevo sentido de solidaridad dentro de esta comunidad mientras examino los vínculos que ellos tienen el uno con el otro tal como su vínculo con la tierra. Voy a seguir explorando el concepto de Conocomiento Ecológico Tradicional dentro de comunidades sostenibles.
Esto será una oportunidad de leer mucho, visitar a algunos amigos viejos, quizás cruzar la frontera al país vecino de Nicaragua y de desarrollar mi ser. Me espanta encargarme de mi primera aula. ¡Deséenme suerte!
http://www.projectganas.org/home.html
Friday, August 20, 2010
20 de agosto de 2010
It's Check Out Time...
¡Hola amigos! This will be one of my last posts, if not the last post, on the Colonia Libertad blog. Thanks for following. This time in Costa Rica has been interesting, wonderful, exasperating, challenging, and fun. I got to know my third rural community in much greater depth than either the New Mexican goat dairy or Numpaim del Noroeste in Ecuador. I was able to form bonds with families in that community that I hope will last a lifetime. And, I was able to get a firsthand taste of the difficulties of top-down organizing vis-á-vis the frustrations that I experienced while trying to teach English in a community with minimal interest in learning a foreign language.
I'd like to go over the history of this project and some of the highlights in this last post. I also hope to provide a sample of what I have learned about the culture of this stalwart people.
I found out about Project Ganas in December at a benefit dance with live music. I met Sara Sanford, the director of the project, who said that she was looking for people with teaching experience to go down to Costa Rica and live in the community. I was super excited about the prospect of returning to Costa Rica, where I had studied in 2007. After a brief interview, I decided it was for me. During the interview, I was told I had the choice between having my own house or staying with a family (a home stay). I opted for having my own house.
Of the information obtained in the interview, I wrote:
State educational resources in the area are lacking, creating the necessity for programs like Project Ganas -- a situation similar, but not identical, to what I discovered among rural indigenous groups during my 2007 study abroad. I am hoping to discover a new sense of solidarity within this community and examine their ties to one another and to the land as I continue to explore the concept of Traditional Ecological Knowledge vis á vis "sustainable" communities.
I had no idea. State educational resources in the area are nearly nonexistent. There is a school with four classrooms. All of the faculty except for two persons are part-time. The students receive less than three hours of education per day, including recess, which is often extended due to a lack of available staff. Materials to help the students, who are significantly behind in all subjects, are scarce. The first graders, half a year into their instruction, could not tell me the difference between five and six. The fifth graders could not explain the difference between three halves and three quarters. This is, in fact, similar to the situation faced by rural indigenous communities in Costa Rica.
I was able to form strong bonds with the community and learn about the community's agriculture. The agriculture of Colonia Libertad is "conventional," which means that they use chemicals to create healthy-looking monocrops. The people are generally aware of the environmental dangers of using such chemicals, but they are also unwilling to allow their crops to be eaten by the bugs. I have noted that the Shuar family I stayed with, the Chiriap, didn't seem particularly concerned about rainforest bugs in their family garden. I'm not sure what the differences in practice are that create the "necessity" for pesticide use, but it deserves further investigation. One obvious difference is that the "ranches" of Colonia Libertad are seen as permanent or semi-permanent spaces of food production, whereas the gardens of the Shuar are temporary and move from place to place on a cycle of anywhere from three to seven years. The Shuar also practice a swidden-fallow technique that could deter insect life from taking root. In addition, the Shuar view their environment as sacred, which the people of Colonia Libertad do not.
As for sustainability, I have noticed that since the time I began writing my thesis, environmental sustainability has become a catchphrase for just about any green label seeking to market its products to conscientious consumers. As such, it's become a topic I wish to avoid. I can say that the lifestyle of a person from Colonia Libertad is much less ecologically destructive than that of the average American (viz., citizen of the United States), but I can't make any judgments as to their overall sustainability. The Institución Costarricense de Electricidad (ICE) has overwhelmingly opted for "green" power producing options such as wind, water and geothermal energy, but I'm not sure that the energy consumption of the Colonia would be sustainable if it were forced to produce its own electricity. In addition, the demand for larger televisions and more powerful personal computers is bound to drive up the need for energy in the foreseeable future. The burning of plastic and other disposable products (styrofoam, paint containers, etc.) is of moderate environmental concern. The eutrophication of the immediate water supply is evident and most likely permanent as long as the current water system remains in place. There is a nearby river, jalapiedras, which has drinkable water and is suitable for bathing. There is also a steady water supply from a nearby mountain that seems likely to remain a good source of clean water for as long as the community population does not exceed the maximum water supply. All in all, I would say that the ecological health of this area is resilient and does not overtly threaten the existence of the nearby cloud forests.
Returning to the overview of my experience with the community, my welcome to the community was lukewarm and indicative of a lack of preparation. When I arrived in Colonia Libertad, people thought that I was perhaps the famed Peace Corps volunteer. I have since met the Peace Corps volunteer and I have decidedly decided that we are not the same person. She is fantastic, though; her name is Andrea and she has done a really good job of working with the local government to determine what types of projects the community would like to have in the works. I think that this would be a good angle for Project Ganas, too. If I'd had my druthers I would have liked to begin with the Association (the local government) to see how someone of my skills could have been of better use to the community. By the time I finally did meet with the Association, there had already been some major miscommunication and I wasn't able to establish clear objectives other than "come on over to my ranch sometime to talk history."
I would have liked to have learned a lot more about the history of the Colonia. I feel that I was able to learn a good deal about the culture and a rudimentary amount of history, but I would have liked to have had time to really explore in-depth the histories of individual people. I honestly feel that attempting to organize English classes in the community was such a waste of time. The people would have appreciated a person interested in their personal stories much more. I feel that when and if I come back to the community, I will make sure to dedicate some time to recording the histories of the community's members.
My first conversations with the community members were about religion. Religion forms a central part of the ontology of Colonia Libertad. There are two options for religion: Catholic, and Evangelical. People were surprised to learn that I had religious dietary preferences that they were unfamiliar with. Everyone in the community believes in God as the primary reason for the existence of everything they see and as the driving factor behind everything they experience, a fact that I found mildly annoying at first, but learned to accept. (I am an agnostic with some lifestyle habits left over from years of religious searching.) I even learned to say "Que Dios le acompañe" as a salutation when leaving, which means "May God go with you."
I found the stay in the community to be much different than I had imagined. For one thing, it was hotter than 100 degrees just about every day during March and April, and it was impossible for me to adjust to this steady high temperature. I was constantly dehydrated and often sick. There was not internet; I learned to travel to nearby Guayabo to be able to make my blog posts and keep in touch with friends. Eventually, I learned how to activate my iPhone in Costa Rica in order to spend less time away from the community. 3G phone service is the primary mode of access to the internet within Colonia Libertad, with Nokia being the preferred brand (Nokia makes internet tethering extremely intuitive). I became known as a technical go-to person, a guitar player and teacher, a singer and an adamant English professor. I felt that things in the community were going quite well.
Pet peeves of mine were the constant doubts about my living situation (detailed in prior blog posts) and the lack of a concrete schedule for teaching classes. I came to really like the night group, because at least they always met at the same time, even if they didn't always come to class. I became really good friends with the police across the street from the school, and they became my nightly audience as I played off all the songs I know on the guitar one by one. Eventually I was able to find a fan in Guayabo and I was able to cool off a little bit. I also got accustomed to the Colonia Libertad dialect of Spanish. I learned that a teja was 100 colones and a caña was 1,000. I learned that "si la güila se cae, se va a romper la choya." (If the little girl falls, she's going to break her head.) I learned that "al chile" means "la pura verdad" (the whole truth). I can now maintain a conversation with anyone from this area.
I've already talked enough in other posts about leaving the school and moving in with a host family, so I don't see any point in belaboring the subject. When I was told that I couldn't continue to teach the school students that I came here to teach, my opinion about the whole project changed irrevocably. Honestly, I should have just stopped trying to teach English at that point and started doing a bit of history or ethnography. The last three months could have been put to much better use. And truly, as a male in this community, in order to be seen as part of the community you have to get up in the morning and go do something that has to do with farming or community infrastructure. It took me a while to learn this, and once I learned it, it sort of frightened me. I knew that, with my flat feet already taxed from walking on rocks all day, and having suffered several sprained ankles already, there was no way that I was going to be able to do physical labor. This is exactly what makes me doubt the integration of differently-abled persons within subsistence farming communities, although I am told that there are communities that do it quite well.
And so, I was halfway wrong about the community's "work ethic." I was working mostly with youth who seemed to be apathetic and interested in material wealth, but I didn't get to know the elder generation until I moved in with a family and was able to observe their lifestyle. When I did, I came to the conclusion that the community is in crisis, and not just because of a lack of Western academic education. The spirit of the community seems to be dying, or at least undergoing major transformation. The twenty- and thirty-year-olds either have major developmental problems (e.g., alcoholism), are involved in work that does not involve agriculture, are raising children, or have permanently moved out of the community. The teenagers do not seem to be interested in agriculture. Hence, the community as it stands today may have a certain amount of economic and/or ecological resilience, but the outlook for the future is not what I would consider hopeful.
I'm going to leave it there for now, I may try to post again in the near future with some pictures (if I can find a decent internet connection) and a few last words. In the mean time, if you're looking for more reading material, you can check out my guest blog at mexmigration, a history and politics of Mexican Migration blog. I will also be opening up a personal blog to share my thoughts about searching for a job in the recession, which might cover more than one geographical location and will deal with the continued difficulties faced by a recent college grad trying to find work (me). I hope you'll check it out.
Until the next time, then!
From Escazú, Costa Rica
Chaim S. Eliyah
Wednesday, August 4, 2010
4 de agosto de 2010
There but for the grace of God, go I
Today officially marks two weeks since my return to Colonia Libertad. It's been an interesting time and I think I'll be going back a little sooner than expected.
I just poured beans from an old plastic gas can (I don't think it ever had any gas in it, but who can be sure?) into a metal bowl to be used in the kitchen. Doña Magdalena, my host mother, explained to me that the beans are grown, dried in the sun, and then put into the plastic cans at night, which are then capped off during the day (all of this to prevent "sweating" or the beans getting little bubbles). I also learned that these beans can be put right back into the old ground in December to make beans for the next year! Wow :)
I finally started English classes last night; none of the former students could get together until then, and new students have been hard to find. To paraphrase my friend from the Peace Corps, there's just not much interest in learning English here.
I'm going to complain for a while now. To skip the complaining, click here.
After coming back to town, my host mother described me as "sad." I suppose I have been a little sad about the overall outcome of this trip. After being kicked out of the elementary school, lied to about the possibility of continuing to teach at the high schools, and reduced to teaching a single night class in which only five people stayed the course, you could say I lost a bit of the enthusiasm I came here with. When I first started teaching English here, you would have thought I was reading from the gospel of St. John. But after seeing the results of my labor drift into the wind several times, I'm feeling a bit more like Job.
Several days ago, Pablo from Finca La Anita came to tell me that my host father had gone to the Asociación de Desarrollo Integral (The Association of Integral Development), which is the governing body of the town, to talk about the nature of my stay at his house. He purportedly said, in a nutshell, that it's costly to have me around, that there didn't seem to be any classes, that I should work out some kind of rent with my host family, that I didn't seem to be conforming to the rules of a fairly religious household (viz., I've had my girlfriend over late at night), and that they've had a lot of problems with volunteers who are afraid of work. I tried to take this speech in stride as much as I could, although for me it was quite the slap in the face. I have organized classes four times here, and was in the process of doing so again when Pablo had this talk with me. I explained to Pablo that it's sometimes a little hard to get the community moving right away, and that I thought a week and a half was still within the reasonable time limit for organizing classes. I also explained to him that I am a volunteer and that I'm not prepared to pay rent while I'm working for free. He replied that he would never do volunteer work, but that the volunteers who have been respected in the community have been the volunteers who were out sweating trying to build the community. It definitely seems like there is a lot more respect here for physical endeavors than intellectual ones. I guess I feel like if I had signed up for physical labor it would be one thing. I was told there was a need for teachers and that I would be a teacher in this community.
Pablo's response to everything was basically "I'm just the messenger." This is interesting, because I tried to follow his advice and take these matters up with Changuelo (my host dad) at some point later that evening. Changuelo admitted he had talked with the former President of the Association (they just changed governments) but said that he was asking for support for me, the volunteer, from the Association. I'm not sure what got lost in translation, but I know that I am just about fed up with having to deal with drama and politics here in the community. It's entirely true that a visitor to a foreign culture cannot expect the culture to conform to them (Pablo's words), but I have bent over backwards to be as easygoing and dependable as possible, I have knocked on all the right doors, I have offered the best of myself even when I knew I was being lied to, I have fixed more than half of the computers in the community for free or next to nothing (sometimes more than once), and I'm just not getting paid enough to deal with this crap anymore.
To make matters worse, I stopped by the police station the yesterday to talk to my friends there, and they informed me that someone wrote a letter to the police department saying that I should be investigated as a terrorist suspect because of my name. As near as I can tell, this didn't come down from INTERPOL or the CIA or anything of the sort; this was a letter from a local community member. Apparently the U.S. is exporting more than just beans these days.
Well, there are some positive notes. I got word from El Centro de la Raza that they absolutely loved the 60-plus pages of translation that I did for them. If you're interested in seeing the results maybe you should check out their Learn, Teach and Grow maternity classes in the fall. They're going to give me a letter of reference as a translator! YEAH! Also, the class last night went swimmingly well. There was plenty of laughter and learning, a good consensus about what type of schedule we should have. A lot of the students are now able to translate basic English phrases on their own. Lo veo como el Gollo: sólo bueno. (There's a business here in Costa Rica called "Gollo" that has the advertising slogan "Only Good." I see it like Gollo: Only Good.)
So, I'm sorry for the rather negative blog post. It's been grey skies down here. I'm coming back August 26th and I'm going to grab the first thing that looks like a real job and just get lost in work for a while. It could be Starbuck's for all I care. Most of all, though, I'm sorry to the people in the community who really want to see me stay longer. I've formed a lot of positive bonds here and I hope those will develop into some kind of ongoing relationship in the future. Maybe Project Ganas' dream of having an early childhood and maternity education center here in the Colonia will come true after all.
Until then, I will be excited to come home and see all of my friends in Seattle and Keizer.
From Colonia Libertad,
Chaim Shalom Ammi Eliyah
Today officially marks two weeks since my return to Colonia Libertad. It's been an interesting time and I think I'll be going back a little sooner than expected.
I just poured beans from an old plastic gas can (I don't think it ever had any gas in it, but who can be sure?) into a metal bowl to be used in the kitchen. Doña Magdalena, my host mother, explained to me that the beans are grown, dried in the sun, and then put into the plastic cans at night, which are then capped off during the day (all of this to prevent "sweating" or the beans getting little bubbles). I also learned that these beans can be put right back into the old ground in December to make beans for the next year! Wow :)
I finally started English classes last night; none of the former students could get together until then, and new students have been hard to find. To paraphrase my friend from the Peace Corps, there's just not much interest in learning English here.
I'm going to complain for a while now. To skip the complaining, click here.
After coming back to town, my host mother described me as "sad." I suppose I have been a little sad about the overall outcome of this trip. After being kicked out of the elementary school, lied to about the possibility of continuing to teach at the high schools, and reduced to teaching a single night class in which only five people stayed the course, you could say I lost a bit of the enthusiasm I came here with. When I first started teaching English here, you would have thought I was reading from the gospel of St. John. But after seeing the results of my labor drift into the wind several times, I'm feeling a bit more like Job.
Several days ago, Pablo from Finca La Anita came to tell me that my host father had gone to the Asociación de Desarrollo Integral (The Association of Integral Development), which is the governing body of the town, to talk about the nature of my stay at his house. He purportedly said, in a nutshell, that it's costly to have me around, that there didn't seem to be any classes, that I should work out some kind of rent with my host family, that I didn't seem to be conforming to the rules of a fairly religious household (viz., I've had my girlfriend over late at night), and that they've had a lot of problems with volunteers who are afraid of work. I tried to take this speech in stride as much as I could, although for me it was quite the slap in the face. I have organized classes four times here, and was in the process of doing so again when Pablo had this talk with me. I explained to Pablo that it's sometimes a little hard to get the community moving right away, and that I thought a week and a half was still within the reasonable time limit for organizing classes. I also explained to him that I am a volunteer and that I'm not prepared to pay rent while I'm working for free. He replied that he would never do volunteer work, but that the volunteers who have been respected in the community have been the volunteers who were out sweating trying to build the community. It definitely seems like there is a lot more respect here for physical endeavors than intellectual ones. I guess I feel like if I had signed up for physical labor it would be one thing. I was told there was a need for teachers and that I would be a teacher in this community.
Pablo's response to everything was basically "I'm just the messenger." This is interesting, because I tried to follow his advice and take these matters up with Changuelo (my host dad) at some point later that evening. Changuelo admitted he had talked with the former President of the Association (they just changed governments) but said that he was asking for support for me, the volunteer, from the Association. I'm not sure what got lost in translation, but I know that I am just about fed up with having to deal with drama and politics here in the community. It's entirely true that a visitor to a foreign culture cannot expect the culture to conform to them (Pablo's words), but I have bent over backwards to be as easygoing and dependable as possible, I have knocked on all the right doors, I have offered the best of myself even when I knew I was being lied to, I have fixed more than half of the computers in the community for free or next to nothing (sometimes more than once), and I'm just not getting paid enough to deal with this crap anymore.
To make matters worse, I stopped by the police station the yesterday to talk to my friends there, and they informed me that someone wrote a letter to the police department saying that I should be investigated as a terrorist suspect because of my name. As near as I can tell, this didn't come down from INTERPOL or the CIA or anything of the sort; this was a letter from a local community member. Apparently the U.S. is exporting more than just beans these days.
Well, there are some positive notes. I got word from El Centro de la Raza that they absolutely loved the 60-plus pages of translation that I did for them. If you're interested in seeing the results maybe you should check out their Learn, Teach and Grow maternity classes in the fall. They're going to give me a letter of reference as a translator! YEAH! Also, the class last night went swimmingly well. There was plenty of laughter and learning, a good consensus about what type of schedule we should have. A lot of the students are now able to translate basic English phrases on their own. Lo veo como el Gollo: sólo bueno. (There's a business here in Costa Rica called "Gollo" that has the advertising slogan "Only Good." I see it like Gollo: Only Good.)
So, I'm sorry for the rather negative blog post. It's been grey skies down here. I'm coming back August 26th and I'm going to grab the first thing that looks like a real job and just get lost in work for a while. It could be Starbuck's for all I care. Most of all, though, I'm sorry to the people in the community who really want to see me stay longer. I've formed a lot of positive bonds here and I hope those will develop into some kind of ongoing relationship in the future. Maybe Project Ganas' dream of having an early childhood and maternity education center here in the Colonia will come true after all.
Until then, I will be excited to come home and see all of my friends in Seattle and Keizer.
From Colonia Libertad,
Chaim Shalom Ammi Eliyah
Saturday, July 24, 2010
24 de julio de 2010
Back in La Colonia, Back in La Colonia, Back in La Colonia Libertad
(sung to the tune of Back in the U.S.S.R. by The Beatles)
Well it's back to the daily grind, if you consider being lost in the cloud forests of Costa Rica to be a grind. I like to think of it as more of a sauna, given the heat and humidity here. As in, "I'm off to the daily sauna, I'll see you later."
I arrived in Costa Rica on Monday and made my way to the 25 de julio neighborhood by taxi, where I was greeted by my beautiful partner. After some much sought-after gallo pinto (a Costa Rican plate consisting of rice mixed with beans), avocado and natilla, we headed off to a hotel room in Liberia. After putting my bags inside, we met up with our hairstylist friend to have a couple of drinks. I discovered that a blue margarita is very much like a regular margarita, but blue. I enjoyed two of them before changing back to my regular fare.
On Tuesday, I headed to Guayabo, the nearest thing to Colonia Libertad that could be considered a city. Guayabo reminds me a lot of Walla Walla, Washington, except that there's no prison. Instead, the town seems to thrive on various forms of consumerism. There's a furniture store (the kind where they make their own furniture, like the one owned by my friend's family in Ecuador), a domestic electronics outlet of ALFA, several clothing stores (sporting American clothing styles), a clinic, a dentist, a stadium, and a lot of houses and cheap motels known as cabinas. Among these I've selected a favorite, run by the Ledezma family (Cabinas Ledezma, +1 (506) 2673-0608).
I stayed in Guayabo a couple of days while I tied to make sure I had everything that I needed for my stay in the country. We met up with my partner's aunt, who lent us her husband's SUV for a day. We ended up traveling out to Bagaces and buying some Bailey's and Bacardi Añejo, then going back to the aunt's house to party with the aunt and two underage persons, who shall remain nameless. ;~)
So, since about two days ago I have been back in Colonia Libertad. I've been received with smiles and a lot of questions about my journey to Seattle. I have been doing my best to cope with the heat; yesterday, I went through three towels and as many shirts.
First I stopped at my partner's house and said hello to her grandparents. Her grandfather is the town plumber, in the sense that when the water goes out, he's the go-to guy. As a matter of fact, later on today he and I will be headed to the headwaters of the community's water supply. I'll try to take some pictures. His name is Ines, and he worked thirty years as a police officer in these parts. His wife's name is Trinidad, and she has had (as near as I can tell) nine children, most of whom live outside the community. Only one, my neighbor Laura, has stayed behind with her son.
After lunch, I started trying to track down the artifacts I left in La Colonia and began moving back into my room at Changuelo and Magdalena's house. Changuelo is a subsistence farmer who moved here with Magdalena from El Porvenir when she was 15 (I'm not sure how old he was, but it was a runaway wedding). El Porvenir is about a four hour walk to the north, along the Nicaraguan border. The garden that these two have would put most small farms to shame. In case you're wondering, it resembles the huerta familiar of Mayan repute.
I slept late the next day, probably on account of the heat. When I finally got up and around I spent most of the day organizing my things. I was invited to a presentation at Finca La Anita, where high school students from Minneapolis, Minnesota presented their findings on their experiments with leaf-cutter ants. This is of particular interest to the community because leaf-cutter ants have been destroying a lot of the crops around here.
Leaf-cutter ants, atta colombica, are among the more interesting species that I have come across. Like all ants, they have a queen, who lays several different types of eggs. There are basically four sizes of worker ants, all of whom have different roles within the colony. These are called minims, minors, mediae, and majors. The ants themselves are farmers; they eat a special type of fungus, which they feed with the greens that they collect from all around their nest. The ants also produce an anti-fungicidal medicine (for the fungus) from various types of bacteria that they collect from the environment.
All of these activities are obviously of particular interest to biology students, who were quite excited to be studying and experimenting with the colonies in La Colonia. (Yes, the irony is pretty thick.) The students did experiments on how to erase the ants' scent trail with bleach and alcohol, how to get the ants to select different food based on sugar content, and observations to determine what types of bacteria are found on the ants' bodies.
I haven't contacted any of the high school students or faculty yet about the possibility of publishing their results here, but I would like to note that bleach is one of the major contributers to eutrification, and both bleach and alcohol will kill just about anything that doesn't have skin (and, in sufficient quantities, those species that do). Killing microfauna is a bad ecological decision because it furthers the biodiversity-reducing effects of reductionist agriculture. So, while I understand that both alcohol and bleach supposedly break down in sunlight, I would just like to express my objection to using these chemicals as methods of pest control. The Shuar use no such chemicals in their gardens, and they seem to manage to avoid several species of rainforest ants.
Well, that's all for now and my internet toy has run out of battery juice. I will try to post some pictures, really I will, I promise. I'll probably upload a bunch of photos to Picasa for all to see, and I'll post the link in a few days.
Until then, take care of your environment.
From Colonia Libertad,
Chaim
Monday, June 28, 2010
30 de junio de 2010
Back in Seattle...
Hey everyone. So the first round of English classes finished in Costa Rica about a week and a half ago, with five students having completed the basic English course. There isn't a whole lot of other news about Costa Rica. I swear at some point I will go through my photo album and try to add some pictures here. If you're connected with me on Facebook, I already posted a mountain of pictures there. (Was that Spanglish?)
Coming back has been an interesting experience. I still had some bites from the rainforest dwellers that I wanted to get checked out while I was here, and one of my friends--who was gracious enough to open her door for me--freaked out about the bites and decided she couldn't stand even a minute possibility of parasites living in her apartment. Understandable, I suppose, but now I am basically living out of my car. I've seen the inside of a couple of motels and I've stayed a few nights now with an old friend of mine from the Jobs with Justice days.
I never could stay in one place anyway.
Calls to Costa Rica and computer operating systems are still in Spanish. Everything else is in English. It's funny how quickly your second language can slip away while your mother tongue always stays fixed in your mind. My translation work for El Centro de la Raza is going at a snail's pace. I would like to just get it done but I am too busy procrastinating; I'm supposed to be studying for Saturday's English GRE test, and so of course everything in the world seems more interesting, which is probably why I finally got around to this blog post. When I actually start "studying," I guess I'll probably finish the translation. And life goes on.
I managed to pick up a day of work last week for an interesting political campaign. The legislature of Washington state, from what I understand, has approved a tax on candy and soft drinks to help save health care and education. It's worth about $300 million to the state budget, according to one source. So naturally, national and state companies put together a campaign to block this bill. I was able to work with one of several organizations trying to save the bill. I saw it as a microcosm of the daily struggle between the financial interests of large companies and governmental entities tying to balance their budgets. While I was working on the campaign, I also got to find out a little bit more about the organizing going on behind I-1098, the "Tax the Rich" campaign. It seems like a lot of people are very excited about this prospect. Filmmaker and Seattle historian Shaun Scott has remarked that similar campaigns have already happened in Washington several times before, most notably in the 1930s, 1970s and 1980s. It will be interesting to see if, in light of recent financial events, we are actually able to pull it off this time without facing some type of major catastrophe.
I wonder how much of the state budget goes to cleaning up candy wrappers and soda bottles from our sidewalks, streets and highways? One thing I have noticed since coming back here is that we produce, as part of our daily routine, a considerably greater amount of waste than they do in Colonia Libertad. Sure, we don't burn our plastic--most of it winds up in our rivers, lakes and streams and eventually finds its way to the ocean--but we do use a lot of it. That, and styrofoam, and all sorts of labels and decals and wrappers and clothing tags and bumper stickers and a whole host of other things that you just don't find in a place like Colonia Libertad. Of course, we're not comparing apples to apples here; this is a bustling metropolis, and Colonia Libertad is a community of less than 500 people. Still, if you added up enough Colonia Libertads to equal the population of a city the size of Seattle, I'm pretty sure the Colonia Libertads of the world would be producing less trash than Seattle, and that's something to think about.
Well, before I get into another discussion about how nobody really wants to be poor and a lot of people think they're poor but really aren't as poor as the people who have no resources to fall back on even when they're cash poor, I think I'll leave it there and go find some coffee somewhere. And yes, I will BEG the barista to not put a plastic lid on my cup.
From Seattle,
Chaim Eliyah
Tuesday, June 8, 2010
8 de junio de 2010
You guessed it! Rice and beans!
Hey everyone. It's been a long month, sorry for not writing. Some time at the end of May I got kicked out of la casa de los maestros. It's kind of a long story. I was initially told that someone in Aguas Claras had complained to the Ministry of Education, and for that reason I couldn't give classes anymore and had to move. Then my former roommate told me that surely I was looking for someone to blame and she hoped I wouldn't blame her. Then, last week, I found out that nobody at the high schools in Colonia Blanca or Aguas Claras knew anything about a complaint at the level of the Ministry of Education. I'm chalking it up to a married mother's desire to not have a male roommate and the general desire in this part of the world to avoid direct confrontation.
So, after pounding the gravel (there's no pavement) a little, I have managed to organize new English classes with the support of the Development Association, which is more or less the governing body of Colonia Libertad. I am staying in the guest room of the house of two benevolent and wonderful people, Changuelo and Magdalena. Changuelo is a subsistence farmer who worked for years at the nearby ranch but is now retired. Magdalena is a housewife and the mother of nine children, some of whom still live here in the community. There are less mosquitoes (zancudos) here than there were by la casa de los maestros, but every once in a while those and other bugs still come around to nibble. I pay less attention to their nibbling now, although I am still having minor allergic reactions so some of the bites. I have a plug from Raid that has little exchangeable tabs that are "lightly toxic" and have the pleasant effect of killing all the mosquitoes in the room. I also have a fan, which seems to scare them off for some reason. I don't think I'll be dying of hemorrhagic dengue, but if I do, I'll be sure to blog it.
I am now giving free intensive English classes to the community for three hours a day each day. Between lesson plans and correcting homework, this takes a good chunk out of the day, but I am still finding time to play guitar and argue with film producers and Environmental Justice professors. If there's anything that can change a state-eschewing Marxist's mind about the world, it's coming to live in a backwoods, roughneck Christian community in the middle of Central America. I've learned to accept my nationality with stride, to identify with the materialist desires of the youth here (to do otherwise would make me a total hypocrite), and to be thankful for whatever guiding force is driving my interactions with the community. My attitude about Christianity is still the same: The bible sucks, but Jesus was pretty cool. But my appreciation for the love of human beings acting within the context of a community has grown immensely. The only thing that kind of bothers me is the way people treat their pets here. But you know what they say, never look a gift horse in the mouth.
Rice and beans form the centerpiece of any meal here. You can expect a couple of plantains (they may not be ripe) and rice and beans no matter what the other ingredients are. As much as I love rice and beans, I have to admit that every once in a while I crave a big ol' pizza or some fettuccine alfredo. The really interesting thing is that even though we live in the middle of a farming community, food is often brought in from well outside the community. At the house where I live, ants are a big problem and have been eating the crops; other farmers in the area are involved mostly in cattle ranching. There are relatively few farms that grow the area's staples. Changuelo just supervised the planting of a huerta escolar at the school, so soon the school will be growing their own corn and yucca. The students are expected to take part in this process, but I don't know to what extent they will.
The smell of burning plastic really bothers me. It's not just that I know that the dioxins can give us all cancer, it's that I don't understand why so much plastic is allowed into a community that can't process the resulting waste. I suppose it's like that in the whole world and that's why we've got all that plastic floating in the ocean:
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/08/090820-plastic-decomposes-oceans-seas.html
Still, I have to admit that I do use products with plastic even though I try to avoid it. I'm trying to take a proactive role in educating the community about the dangers of plastic, and recently the Asociación said they might be interested in getting a truck to haul recyclables out of the community once a week or so. More on this later.
Mostly I am grappling with the same concepts as the Asociación; how to give this community the economic resources that it wants and needs without destroying its knowledge of subsistence farming and its sense of autonomy. When I came here, my biggest concern was teaching English; now, I see languages as a tool and I think the real problems are much more complex than any one set of theories would suggest. For instance, one major threat to the community is the breakdown of families within the last generation. The conservative bloc in my mind swears that this is because liberalism has eschewed family values, and part of me knows that this is true. Our individualism and our careers have become more important to us as a people than maintaining our family relations, and this phenomenon is spreading across cultures. You can blame capitalism or you can say that the state should stay out of family affairs, or you can start a debate if you like about whether clans or families came first, but I think it is noteworthy that our sense of community has become so diluted that many of us prefer corporate responsibilities and solitary lifestyles to communal living. People here think I'm friendly, but emotionally distant, and honestly I find it a little hard to imagine living as they do, i.e. in constant contact with one another, all the time!
Speaking of which, I am going to finish this blog post off and try to post again soon. I really want to go through my recent facebook discussions and apply the arguments there to what I am learning here. At some point I also want to do an in-depth discussion of the differences between living in Ecuador, among the Shuar, and the lifestyle of the Colonia here. I will be working on those posts, but in the mean time I am going to think about what might be for dinner.
See you next time,
Chaim Eliyah
Hey everyone. It's been a long month, sorry for not writing. Some time at the end of May I got kicked out of la casa de los maestros. It's kind of a long story. I was initially told that someone in Aguas Claras had complained to the Ministry of Education, and for that reason I couldn't give classes anymore and had to move. Then my former roommate told me that surely I was looking for someone to blame and she hoped I wouldn't blame her. Then, last week, I found out that nobody at the high schools in Colonia Blanca or Aguas Claras knew anything about a complaint at the level of the Ministry of Education. I'm chalking it up to a married mother's desire to not have a male roommate and the general desire in this part of the world to avoid direct confrontation.
So, after pounding the gravel (there's no pavement) a little, I have managed to organize new English classes with the support of the Development Association, which is more or less the governing body of Colonia Libertad. I am staying in the guest room of the house of two benevolent and wonderful people, Changuelo and Magdalena. Changuelo is a subsistence farmer who worked for years at the nearby ranch but is now retired. Magdalena is a housewife and the mother of nine children, some of whom still live here in the community. There are less mosquitoes (zancudos) here than there were by la casa de los maestros, but every once in a while those and other bugs still come around to nibble. I pay less attention to their nibbling now, although I am still having minor allergic reactions so some of the bites. I have a plug from Raid that has little exchangeable tabs that are "lightly toxic" and have the pleasant effect of killing all the mosquitoes in the room. I also have a fan, which seems to scare them off for some reason. I don't think I'll be dying of hemorrhagic dengue, but if I do, I'll be sure to blog it.
I am now giving free intensive English classes to the community for three hours a day each day. Between lesson plans and correcting homework, this takes a good chunk out of the day, but I am still finding time to play guitar and argue with film producers and Environmental Justice professors. If there's anything that can change a state-eschewing Marxist's mind about the world, it's coming to live in a backwoods, roughneck Christian community in the middle of Central America. I've learned to accept my nationality with stride, to identify with the materialist desires of the youth here (to do otherwise would make me a total hypocrite), and to be thankful for whatever guiding force is driving my interactions with the community. My attitude about Christianity is still the same: The bible sucks, but Jesus was pretty cool. But my appreciation for the love of human beings acting within the context of a community has grown immensely. The only thing that kind of bothers me is the way people treat their pets here. But you know what they say, never look a gift horse in the mouth.
Rice and beans form the centerpiece of any meal here. You can expect a couple of plantains (they may not be ripe) and rice and beans no matter what the other ingredients are. As much as I love rice and beans, I have to admit that every once in a while I crave a big ol' pizza or some fettuccine alfredo. The really interesting thing is that even though we live in the middle of a farming community, food is often brought in from well outside the community. At the house where I live, ants are a big problem and have been eating the crops; other farmers in the area are involved mostly in cattle ranching. There are relatively few farms that grow the area's staples. Changuelo just supervised the planting of a huerta escolar at the school, so soon the school will be growing their own corn and yucca. The students are expected to take part in this process, but I don't know to what extent they will.
The smell of burning plastic really bothers me. It's not just that I know that the dioxins can give us all cancer, it's that I don't understand why so much plastic is allowed into a community that can't process the resulting waste. I suppose it's like that in the whole world and that's why we've got all that plastic floating in the ocean:
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/08/090820-plastic-decomposes-oceans-seas.html
Still, I have to admit that I do use products with plastic even though I try to avoid it. I'm trying to take a proactive role in educating the community about the dangers of plastic, and recently the Asociación said they might be interested in getting a truck to haul recyclables out of the community once a week or so. More on this later.
Mostly I am grappling with the same concepts as the Asociación; how to give this community the economic resources that it wants and needs without destroying its knowledge of subsistence farming and its sense of autonomy. When I came here, my biggest concern was teaching English; now, I see languages as a tool and I think the real problems are much more complex than any one set of theories would suggest. For instance, one major threat to the community is the breakdown of families within the last generation. The conservative bloc in my mind swears that this is because liberalism has eschewed family values, and part of me knows that this is true. Our individualism and our careers have become more important to us as a people than maintaining our family relations, and this phenomenon is spreading across cultures. You can blame capitalism or you can say that the state should stay out of family affairs, or you can start a debate if you like about whether clans or families came first, but I think it is noteworthy that our sense of community has become so diluted that many of us prefer corporate responsibilities and solitary lifestyles to communal living. People here think I'm friendly, but emotionally distant, and honestly I find it a little hard to imagine living as they do, i.e. in constant contact with one another, all the time!
Speaking of which, I am going to finish this blog post off and try to post again soon. I really want to go through my recent facebook discussions and apply the arguments there to what I am learning here. At some point I also want to do an in-depth discussion of the differences between living in Ecuador, among the Shuar, and the lifestyle of the Colonia here. I will be working on those posts, but in the mean time I am going to think about what might be for dinner.
See you next time,
Chaim Eliyah
Saturday, May 15, 2010
15 de mayo de 2010
Struggling students
Hey everyone! I've been out of touch for a while. I've been sick and abandoned and left for dead in the middle of the rainforest. But it's all getting better. Here's a short recap of where we are so far and a review of what needs to be done here and why.
Okay, just in case you don't have a good idea where I am, I am about 20 kilometers south of the Nicaraguan border, in a small settlement on the outposts of the Aguas Claras district in the Upala region. There is a long dirt road leading out of Aguas Claras that eventually ends just near the Nicaraguan border, and the fourth colony on that road is called Colonia Libertad. I am teaching English to students from Aguas Claras, Colonia Blanca, Valle Verde and Colonia Libertad.
I have been organizing the English lessons since I arrived here. When I arrived, there was confusion in the community about when I would be arriving and where I would be staying. At first, people thought that I was from the Peace Corps and that I was there to do infrastructure projects. It took me almost two weeks to nail down a solid place to stay, which ended up being at the exact house that I was told I would be staying in--but only thanks to a strange turn of events that replaced one teacher with another who lives close by, thus freeing up a space at la casa de los maestros (the teachers' house). After that, I tried to establish an afternoon schedule with Mayra, the schoolmaster, only to eventually find out that the majority of the students aren't at school in the afternoons. School ends after "lunch;" lunch is at 10 or 11 am, depending on the day. This means that the students have an average of 3 hours 20 minutes of actual instruction each day. My English lessons usually last about an hour, which means that the students must take that hour out of their other studies. Subjects that the students study in school are not reinforced in their homes due to a lack of general education in the community. I have established a new tentative schedule with the schoolmaster. More about this in a minute.
I have also traveled to Aguas Claras to talk with the director and the head English teacher there about the problem that the students are having with graduating from high school. Both of them agree that there is a problem, but they have been exceedingly bureaucratic about letting me teach there. The two times that I have taught there, it has been to conversational English students who don't really (in my humble opinion) need additional help. I have come to the conclusion that maybe I can solve the Aguas Claras graduation problem closer to home by holding English workshops here in Colonia Libertad.
In addition, I am now teaching two days a week at the high school in Colonia Blanca. In this case, when I say "high school" I am talking about a single-room building where students sit in different groups to learn subjects. The high school collaborates with the Ministry of the Environment and Energy so that they can have extra space in which to show videos and teach classes outside of the Common Room. I am there Wednesday and Thursday. Thursday I lead a practice discussion with students from three grades. When I came there, the students were paying attention to everything but the discussion; now, they seem much more animated to learn.
I have encountered the same basic argument every step of the way here: It would be nice to do more, but we can't. We can't have more than three hours of school. We can't hold students after school, even if they are in sixth grade and don't know their multiplication tables. We don't have money to fix the chalkboards. The students can't learn how to use the computers because the parents complain that certain students are being treated with preference. I have seen children being written off as having "learning disorders" who can understand and reproduce basic grade-level ideas perfectly well. I have been called a "tourist" instead of a volunteer by the regional director of the Ministry of Public education. And honestly, I am infuriated. I am infuriated because I see that these children are being robbed of their future, and nobody seems very much disposed to doing anything about it.
I have talked with the owners of Finca La Anita about this and they say that they struggled for a long time with the bureaucracy here before finally deciding to send their children to school in Liberia, 2 hours away. I can see why. I don't know that I have all of the solutions to the problems here, except I must admit that I am constantly forced to acknowledge how lucky I am to have had the opportunity to attend and work in schools with much better infrastructure and with much greater focus on high achievement for all students. Every day here, I have no choice but to look at myself as privileged; privileged economically and privileged in terms of education. Privileged because I come from the United States. People here equate my abilities with my nationality; those of you who know anything about my political leanings must know how infuriating that is. But I can't deny it here. I can't deny that I had a better chance, and knowing that is precisely what keeps me here. Because if my beliefs in solidarity and egalitarianism mean anything at all, it is that I have an obligation to stay here and share what I know with the students and those who are in charge of their futures.
At least we have internet now; I will be able to download some resources for the students and I will try to post again soon. When I get around a better connection I'll try to put some pictures up too! The valiant students who are braving these rough seas deserve to be known. :)
From Colonia Libertad,
Chaim Eliyah
Hey everyone! I've been out of touch for a while. I've been sick and abandoned and left for dead in the middle of the rainforest. But it's all getting better. Here's a short recap of where we are so far and a review of what needs to be done here and why.
Okay, just in case you don't have a good idea where I am, I am about 20 kilometers south of the Nicaraguan border, in a small settlement on the outposts of the Aguas Claras district in the Upala region. There is a long dirt road leading out of Aguas Claras that eventually ends just near the Nicaraguan border, and the fourth colony on that road is called Colonia Libertad. I am teaching English to students from Aguas Claras, Colonia Blanca, Valle Verde and Colonia Libertad.
I have been organizing the English lessons since I arrived here. When I arrived, there was confusion in the community about when I would be arriving and where I would be staying. At first, people thought that I was from the Peace Corps and that I was there to do infrastructure projects. It took me almost two weeks to nail down a solid place to stay, which ended up being at the exact house that I was told I would be staying in--but only thanks to a strange turn of events that replaced one teacher with another who lives close by, thus freeing up a space at la casa de los maestros (the teachers' house). After that, I tried to establish an afternoon schedule with Mayra, the schoolmaster, only to eventually find out that the majority of the students aren't at school in the afternoons. School ends after "lunch;" lunch is at 10 or 11 am, depending on the day. This means that the students have an average of 3 hours 20 minutes of actual instruction each day. My English lessons usually last about an hour, which means that the students must take that hour out of their other studies. Subjects that the students study in school are not reinforced in their homes due to a lack of general education in the community. I have established a new tentative schedule with the schoolmaster. More about this in a minute.
I have also traveled to Aguas Claras to talk with the director and the head English teacher there about the problem that the students are having with graduating from high school. Both of them agree that there is a problem, but they have been exceedingly bureaucratic about letting me teach there. The two times that I have taught there, it has been to conversational English students who don't really (in my humble opinion) need additional help. I have come to the conclusion that maybe I can solve the Aguas Claras graduation problem closer to home by holding English workshops here in Colonia Libertad.
In addition, I am now teaching two days a week at the high school in Colonia Blanca. In this case, when I say "high school" I am talking about a single-room building where students sit in different groups to learn subjects. The high school collaborates with the Ministry of the Environment and Energy so that they can have extra space in which to show videos and teach classes outside of the Common Room. I am there Wednesday and Thursday. Thursday I lead a practice discussion with students from three grades. When I came there, the students were paying attention to everything but the discussion; now, they seem much more animated to learn.
I have encountered the same basic argument every step of the way here: It would be nice to do more, but we can't. We can't have more than three hours of school. We can't hold students after school, even if they are in sixth grade and don't know their multiplication tables. We don't have money to fix the chalkboards. The students can't learn how to use the computers because the parents complain that certain students are being treated with preference. I have seen children being written off as having "learning disorders" who can understand and reproduce basic grade-level ideas perfectly well. I have been called a "tourist" instead of a volunteer by the regional director of the Ministry of Public education. And honestly, I am infuriated. I am infuriated because I see that these children are being robbed of their future, and nobody seems very much disposed to doing anything about it.
I have talked with the owners of Finca La Anita about this and they say that they struggled for a long time with the bureaucracy here before finally deciding to send their children to school in Liberia, 2 hours away. I can see why. I don't know that I have all of the solutions to the problems here, except I must admit that I am constantly forced to acknowledge how lucky I am to have had the opportunity to attend and work in schools with much better infrastructure and with much greater focus on high achievement for all students. Every day here, I have no choice but to look at myself as privileged; privileged economically and privileged in terms of education. Privileged because I come from the United States. People here equate my abilities with my nationality; those of you who know anything about my political leanings must know how infuriating that is. But I can't deny it here. I can't deny that I had a better chance, and knowing that is precisely what keeps me here. Because if my beliefs in solidarity and egalitarianism mean anything at all, it is that I have an obligation to stay here and share what I know with the students and those who are in charge of their futures.
At least we have internet now; I will be able to download some resources for the students and I will try to post again soon. When I get around a better connection I'll try to put some pictures up too! The valiant students who are braving these rough seas deserve to be known. :)
From Colonia Libertad,
Chaim Eliyah
Monday, May 3, 2010
3 de mayo de 2010
They don't teach campesino Spanish in college
So I continue settling in here. I haven't traveled further than the nearest town in several weeks now. I am working at two high schools, an elementary school and doing a number of private classes as well. The locals are beginning to recognize me. They still snicker because I don't understand the local speech. This is a subject that brings out the language fascist in me; can't we all just use established norms of communication with one another? Of course, the answer is no, unless you're a fan of strict hegemony and/or academic elitism (which I'm not). So, I've been doing my best to learn a new dialect.
So, last week I had internet through my iPhone and then the iPhone encountered a mysterious "error" and wouldn't boot. To restore it, I had to (according to Apple) upgrade to a new software package, and that software package destroyed my ability to use my phone in Costa Rica. C'est la vie. I'm working on another method of getting internet out to the boonies, but I'm only in the planning stages. Basically it involves a 3G USB modem. And when I get it set up, I am going to use my iPhone to make all the Skype calls I can just to spite Apple and AT&T.
Let's see. So it was the 26th that my phone broke. That was about the same day I got over the cold that my new friend Frenzel gave me. On the 28th there was a big to-do at the school and I was part of the entertainment. I got to play guitar for about 30 visitors from the Ministry of Public Education. They asked for an encore. It was pretty sweet. Everyone in Colonia Libertad is pretty intrigued by my guitar playing. People listen to me play for hours on end. This is because they don't mind country music. In Seattle I'm usually seen as a good guitar player but I seldom play for people for hours and hours because most of the songs I know are country songs. This is a little known fact about me that has now been published. What's to become of my reputation? Maybe I can apply for amnesty in Nashville?
Nobody showed up for the high school/adult evening English classes last week. There is this attitude in the community that has been explained to me as "if someone's neighbors don't do something (like get up in the morning) then they probably won't either." This sort of lack of individual initiative has proven to be a barrier to organizing a coherent schedule for English classes. With the kids, for example, I was going to teach English to them on Thursdays and Fridays so that I could free up the rest of the week for providing help where it's most needed (to the high-schoolers). But, I saw pretty quickly that Thursday and Friday are considered goof-off days and that the majority of the kids are allowed to leave by 11 a.m. or so. I have had a number of talks with community members about the importance of taking advantage of the free English classes.
Yeah, I know. Learning English should not be a prerequisite to survival in a globalized economy. In fact, people shouldn't have to depend on a globalized economy for their survival. What's more, subsistence farmers don't need some gringo to come and tell then about rugged individualism and the values of anglo society. OK. While I am a proponent of these concepts, I have to admit that this trip is definitely testing the strength of my conviction. Yes, Colonia Libertad is full of subsistence farmers. Yes, if all 8 of the bridges leading to their homes broke tomorrow and were never fixed, they would be able to survive just fine. But Colonia Libertad has a major problem, and that is that the non-campesino world is coming to them via satellite and cable, and they are often more interested in that world than they are in their own world. This is a situation similar to that of the Shuar youth who I met and talked with on my visits to Ecuador. The youth here are very interested in the Honda Evo 6, they are very interested in SUVs, they are very interested in PlayStation and Wii and portable computers, they are very interested in American rock & roll and hip hop (especially of the gangster rap variety), and they are not very interested in subsistence farming.
The kids here are playing Metallica and Guns N' Roses on their guitars just like I did a decade ago in high school. They are wearing American clothes. Their parents pay a high price for this, a price that I would venture to say they can't really afford ("afford" in capitalist, protestant-ethic terms). This is an interesting representation of identity given that these same teenagers live in shacks. Don't get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with living in a shack, but the aspirations of these young people exceed their means, and at some point I feel like they are going to become very disappointed with their lot and disillusioned with life in general if they cannot find a way to procure the things that they want for themselves.
I know. It's just as well that they become disillusioned with the capitalist system, because that disillusionment will fuel the fire of the multitude and eventually the multitude will band together and create another more equitable empire. And that's pretty easy for me to say coming from a privileged perspective. I make the choice to not have a steady income. I make the choice to be a neo-hippie. I make the choice to be a Marxist. And yet here I am in a motel room that most of my students' families can't afford writing a blog (what's a blog?) on my MacBook (what's a MacBook?) and what hits me more than just the injustice of the situation is the hypocrisy of the Marxist perspective in certain situations.
What I mean is, the majority of the kids I am teaching are perfectly capable of becoming university associates. They are perfectly capable of finding the kinds of jobs here that will allow them to fulfill their material desires. Not all of those jobs require English (some do), but they all require a willingness to conform to the work ethic. We can debate that notion until we're blue in the face; I happen to hate the term "work ethic" because it pertains to a set of ideas that tend to imply that "someone" can make a millionaire out of themselves no matter what class they were born into. This is a sociological falsehood, even if it remains a remote economic possibility. Nevertheless, it seems shameful to deny someone the choice between becoming part of the capitalist rat-race (if that's what they really want) or becoming an individual force of anti-capitalism (if, by their own initiative, they decide that capitalism must end) or, as I do, taking from capitalism only the things that they want while helping to organize communities so that they can demand a greater measure of social justice.
This is not meant to be an apologia pro insignare angleis. It's meant to be a rambling discussion that brings the socioeconomic and educational situation of people who are considered "marginal" or "peripheral" by "first world" economic fascists to the center. These are ideas that I will most likely be struggling with for the remainder of my stay here. Anyone who reads this is welcome to chime in.
Che Gringo
In other news, once I was pretty sure I would be able to sell it and recoup some of my loss at the end of my stay, I went ahead and bought a motorcycle so that I could fulfill my teaching appointments without having to depend on the bus and getting stuck overnight. Of course, it's only sensible to use the motorcycle when it's not raining, which provides another set of challenges, but I am much more mobile now.
The motorcycle is an off-brand "que ni se sabe" (that nobody knows) called ChanLin. It has a Suzuki drivetrain, 125cc. The day I bought it was definitely one of the best days of my life. Riding my new motorcycle was liberating, to say the least. It only took me an hour to learn, and when I was riding back home on the dirt road at 40 km/h with the sun shining and the wind in my hair, with the silhouettes of the mountains around me, I felt unstoppable.
Of course, the next day I found out that motorcycles are anything but unstoppable. My chain broke on a rock and I had to push the darn thing to a local handyman to get help. But since then I have been tearing up the local highway. I can't go very far yet because I don't have the plates and registration stickers. But I do plan to post some pictures of my adventures with it.
I might even be able now to haul out some of the plastic that will otherwise be burned. We'll have to save the discussion on the environment of Colonia Libertad for another time. I gotta go teach!
From Guayabo,
Chaim
Thursday, April 22, 2010
22 de abril de 2010
Missing in Action
Hey people, sorry for being out of touch. The adventures continue. So far in the last 10 days I have managed to narrowly dodge disaster a number of times. I never did manage to explain my rant from 13 April, but don't worry, I'm working on a version of it that doesn't need additional explanation for the May issue of Ruckus newspaper. I'm also working on an anti-anti-panhandling rant, but I don't know if I should ask Ruckus to publish two rants at once. Does anyone know someone from Eat the State?
So I am presently hanging out in Colonia Libertad, staring wistfully at the gorgeous volcanoes that surround us here and drowning in a pool of sweat. Yes, I know, that's gross. It's terribly gross to go through, too. Today, for example, I went through three shirts. I am getting more accustomed to the environment, though; now, when mosquitoes bite, my bites don't swell up and excruciate me. Of course, I have been using a fair amount of cortisone and DEET. Yes, I know, chemicals are awful, but I have discovered that I am not above using them in certain situations. Of course, finding the construction materials to repair this house adequately would be a much better option, but I honestly wouldn't even know where to start. Probably with the failing concrete on the southern wall and the broken windowpane in my room.
People keep asking if I'm going to have a girlfriend while I'm here. This is a typical tico conversation topic. Even the people who have long-term partners and/or spouses often make jokes about who they want to be with. I am, of course, modest to a fault and so I'm holding out on them. But I'm going to have to learn the banter somehow. Flirting is part and parcel of this culture, and as long as it's just flirting, it doesn't seem like anything's off limits. People accept that risqué comments are fair play, giving rise to the expression "él que se enoja, pierde"--the one who gets angry loses.
The community is a little shocked by my agnosticism. Yes, there it is in writing, my agnosticism. It's hard for them to understand how I can be so doubtful and yet know so much about religion. I don't blame them, I've been wrestling with the same question for years. Nobody seems to mind, though. It's actually nice because it reminds me of the days when agnosticism would have shocked me. It was hard for me to imagine a world without a god when my world was still relatively small. As I began to fill my head with various philisophies and scientific observations, the concept of divinity seemed ever further out of reach. I suppose that from a biblical perspective, this could represent a form of idol worship, whereas from a secular perspective it might tend to reinforce the concept that spiritual beliefs are a replacement for empirical knowledge. Of course, traditional ecological knowledge usually manifests in spiritual form even though it embodies the real-world experiments of multiple generations. Maybe this means that Nietzsche was right, and that religious beliefs are reserved for the masses, while exceptional people must make and follow their own code. But what if those who think they can make their own code suffer the same fate as Raskolnikov did in Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment? I digress.
The first few weeks here have definitely been somewhat Augustinian, but thank the Lord, I've survived. I have a great relationship with the children and teenagers in town. Most of the adults are pretty nice too, but a lot of them seem skeptical. I don't blame them. I have definitely come to appreciate a lot of things about my gringo lifestyle since coming here. Just as the rainforest of Ecuador taught me that I am not a shaman, living here in the country has definitely shown me what a city boy I am. Aside from this house (in which the refrigerator is snoring and the toilet is whispering), I have missed being able to feed my constant addiction to high-speed technologies and I have missed having more than just Snickers bars to choose from in the junk food section of the store. I miss my cars. I know, it's terrible, but I do. I feel like I don't have much freedom of movement here, even though I have been taking day trips all over the countryside. I miss fans. As soon as I find a good fan, I am going to chant nam myoho renge kyo ten times.
Most of all, I miss the people back home and our little everyday interactions. It's amazing how isolated you can feel after a few weeks of not having a drinking buddy, or an activist group, or some old friends, or just a bunch of rowdy pro-union folk to hang around. Of course, isolation can bring solace as well, and I have definitely had my fair share of thinking time lately. I've been playing a lot more guitar and reading much less than I expected. I've been spending a lot of time teaching. Today, for example, I started teaching at 8 in the morning and finally finished at 7 at night. Granted, there was a two and a half hour break in there, but that's still nine and a half hours of giving classes. There is definitely a need for me here, and that feels good. The smiles of the students are the only payment I require.
I'm off to bed--it's really late here, considering most people are up and around by 6--but I look forward to posting more soon. Hopefully I'll find a connection where I can upload some pictures. My posts should get more detailed now that I am moving more quickly through the transitional period and becoming more in tune with my surroundings.
From Colonia Libertad,
Chaim S. Eliyah
Hey people, sorry for being out of touch. The adventures continue. So far in the last 10 days I have managed to narrowly dodge disaster a number of times. I never did manage to explain my rant from 13 April, but don't worry, I'm working on a version of it that doesn't need additional explanation for the May issue of Ruckus newspaper. I'm also working on an anti-anti-panhandling rant, but I don't know if I should ask Ruckus to publish two rants at once. Does anyone know someone from Eat the State?
So I am presently hanging out in Colonia Libertad, staring wistfully at the gorgeous volcanoes that surround us here and drowning in a pool of sweat. Yes, I know, that's gross. It's terribly gross to go through, too. Today, for example, I went through three shirts. I am getting more accustomed to the environment, though; now, when mosquitoes bite, my bites don't swell up and excruciate me. Of course, I have been using a fair amount of cortisone and DEET. Yes, I know, chemicals are awful, but I have discovered that I am not above using them in certain situations. Of course, finding the construction materials to repair this house adequately would be a much better option, but I honestly wouldn't even know where to start. Probably with the failing concrete on the southern wall and the broken windowpane in my room.
People keep asking if I'm going to have a girlfriend while I'm here. This is a typical tico conversation topic. Even the people who have long-term partners and/or spouses often make jokes about who they want to be with. I am, of course, modest to a fault and so I'm holding out on them. But I'm going to have to learn the banter somehow. Flirting is part and parcel of this culture, and as long as it's just flirting, it doesn't seem like anything's off limits. People accept that risqué comments are fair play, giving rise to the expression "él que se enoja, pierde"--the one who gets angry loses.
The community is a little shocked by my agnosticism. Yes, there it is in writing, my agnosticism. It's hard for them to understand how I can be so doubtful and yet know so much about religion. I don't blame them, I've been wrestling with the same question for years. Nobody seems to mind, though. It's actually nice because it reminds me of the days when agnosticism would have shocked me. It was hard for me to imagine a world without a god when my world was still relatively small. As I began to fill my head with various philisophies and scientific observations, the concept of divinity seemed ever further out of reach. I suppose that from a biblical perspective, this could represent a form of idol worship, whereas from a secular perspective it might tend to reinforce the concept that spiritual beliefs are a replacement for empirical knowledge. Of course, traditional ecological knowledge usually manifests in spiritual form even though it embodies the real-world experiments of multiple generations. Maybe this means that Nietzsche was right, and that religious beliefs are reserved for the masses, while exceptional people must make and follow their own code. But what if those who think they can make their own code suffer the same fate as Raskolnikov did in Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment? I digress.
The first few weeks here have definitely been somewhat Augustinian, but thank the Lord, I've survived. I have a great relationship with the children and teenagers in town. Most of the adults are pretty nice too, but a lot of them seem skeptical. I don't blame them. I have definitely come to appreciate a lot of things about my gringo lifestyle since coming here. Just as the rainforest of Ecuador taught me that I am not a shaman, living here in the country has definitely shown me what a city boy I am. Aside from this house (in which the refrigerator is snoring and the toilet is whispering), I have missed being able to feed my constant addiction to high-speed technologies and I have missed having more than just Snickers bars to choose from in the junk food section of the store. I miss my cars. I know, it's terrible, but I do. I feel like I don't have much freedom of movement here, even though I have been taking day trips all over the countryside. I miss fans. As soon as I find a good fan, I am going to chant nam myoho renge kyo ten times.
Most of all, I miss the people back home and our little everyday interactions. It's amazing how isolated you can feel after a few weeks of not having a drinking buddy, or an activist group, or some old friends, or just a bunch of rowdy pro-union folk to hang around. Of course, isolation can bring solace as well, and I have definitely had my fair share of thinking time lately. I've been playing a lot more guitar and reading much less than I expected. I've been spending a lot of time teaching. Today, for example, I started teaching at 8 in the morning and finally finished at 7 at night. Granted, there was a two and a half hour break in there, but that's still nine and a half hours of giving classes. There is definitely a need for me here, and that feels good. The smiles of the students are the only payment I require.
I'm off to bed--it's really late here, considering most people are up and around by 6--but I look forward to posting more soon. Hopefully I'll find a connection where I can upload some pictures. My posts should get more detailed now that I am moving more quickly through the transitional period and becoming more in tune with my surroundings.
From Colonia Libertad,
Chaim S. Eliyah
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
13 de abril de 2010
Blog Update
I think we can all agree that sexism is an ugly thing. At least, I would like to believe that anti-sexism is one of our values as a society. I have just had my second life experience in which my writing has affected someone else gravely. This should not have been the case, as I did not relate anything that could have been used against another person by the patriarchal inquisition; but naturally, as a power structure, patriarchy does not require logic. It only requires two participants who are involved for their own reasons.
Friendship, I suppose, is also a power structure. But it seems to me that friendship involves a great deal of justice, whereas I have come to see patriarchy as being founded in the emotional insecurity of monads defined as men, who use their socioeconomic privileges to trap and contain another human being for their own emotional security. Ironically, "great" men in our society are painted as stoic and strong. Yet I fail to see anyone who lacks integrity and who uses, in Roddenberry's words, "power without constructive purpose," as strong.
I hope one day we all wake up and realize how patriarchy traps and seeks to define and delimit us. I hope we bring it crashing down and that we cheer in waves at the final destruction of an archaic self-imposed imprisonment. Until then, however, I am headed back to the Colonia to teach my students.
From San José,
Chaim S. Eliyah
I think we can all agree that sexism is an ugly thing. At least, I would like to believe that anti-sexism is one of our values as a society. I have just had my second life experience in which my writing has affected someone else gravely. This should not have been the case, as I did not relate anything that could have been used against another person by the patriarchal inquisition; but naturally, as a power structure, patriarchy does not require logic. It only requires two participants who are involved for their own reasons.
Friendship, I suppose, is also a power structure. But it seems to me that friendship involves a great deal of justice, whereas I have come to see patriarchy as being founded in the emotional insecurity of monads defined as men, who use their socioeconomic privileges to trap and contain another human being for their own emotional security. Ironically, "great" men in our society are painted as stoic and strong. Yet I fail to see anyone who lacks integrity and who uses, in Roddenberry's words, "power without constructive purpose," as strong.
I hope one day we all wake up and realize how patriarchy traps and seeks to define and delimit us. I hope we bring it crashing down and that we cheer in waves at the final destruction of an archaic self-imposed imprisonment. Until then, however, I am headed back to the Colonia to teach my students.
From San José,
Chaim S. Eliyah
Monday, April 12, 2010
12 de abril de 2010
The Less-Than-Holy Week
Picking up again with last weekend, I have to say that I have really been laying some rubber on the road and doing less teaching than I expected. Part of this has to do with my reaction the environment of Colonia Libertad--i.e., bugs (to which I am allergic) and heat (pant, pant)--and part of it has to do with the general state of disorder in that community. I can definitely see the need there for exigence.
I left Liberia after the Semana Santa and headed back to Colonia Libertad. I was a little disoriented once I got there. I had checked over the emails from the Project Ganas mastermind, Sara, and it seemed to me that her idea had been that I was supposed to stay in the teachers' house by the school. The two teachers staying in the house by the school, however, insisted that I was supposed to stay at the house of the schoolmaster's mother-in-law. So I headed up to Finca La Anita to talk with Pablo and Ana and to see if they knew anything. Pablo, as nicely as possible, said that he was troubled by the whole situation, that he had a business to run, and that he would be willing to meet with me the next night to work everything out once and for all.
I stayed the night at the house of the schoolmaster's mother-in-law. She seemed a little begrudging about the whole situation, and I suffered--I counted--28 mosquito bites that night. The next day, I taught a class to the first graders and tracked down Mayra, the schoolmaster. She concurred that I was supposed to be staying at her mother-in-law's house, and told me that that was what had been discussed with Sara. I had my doubts. That night, when we met with Pablo, he essentially pleaded with Mayra and the other teachers on my behalf, pointing out that all I needed was a decent room and that I was in fact there working as a volunteer. Somehow, it came about that Isabel, the kindergarten teacher, went to stay with her mother-in-law and I stayed at the teachers' house for the next two nights.
I worked the next day with a few students who were interested in learning about computers. I taught them the anatomy of the desktop computer and showed them how to work a mouse and a keyboard. They typed some sentences for me about Colonia Libertad. The students have a great desire for learning, which is why I was a little perturbed the next day when I noticed that the students were getting out of school between 12 and 1 p.m. everyday (they go to school at 7:30 a.m.). I also began to feel more and more like an outsider. I really was enjoying eating the food that everyone cooked for me, but somehow without a monetary exchange involved, I felt less than self-sufficient. Whatsmore, I noticed myself unable to catch the drift of a lot of the conversations. I decided that since I had tickets for the Guns N' Roses concert on Friday anyway, maybe it was time to check out and head for more familiar territory. Yes, that means Heredia.
I stayed the night again in San José. I've become quite fond of a particular room at the Molino Rojo hostel. It's a bit on the expensive side, but there are very few bugs and it has a nice atmosphere. It's a good place for writing blogs, you might say. Eventually, I'll have to find other San José digs, but for the moment it can't be beat. Since it's a hostel, there's plenty of space to move around in and there are a lot of North American-style restaurants close by where they don't seem to mind gringos struggling with getting by in a different culture. It's also walking distance from La Avenida Central, which is San José's biggest shopping area, where there are a lot of little artisan bakeries and cafés mixed in.
After a long and satisfying chat session with some people back home, I had an excellent night's sleep. I ate pudding bread in the morning (which meant around 1 p.m.) and headed out for Heredia. Heredia seemed a lot more familiar arriving in daylight. I headed towards UNA (la Universidad NAcional, the most well-renowned private university in Costa Rica) and had a late lunch at a Lebanese food joint. The cook was a druze man and we had a short conversation about Middle Eastern geography. His Spanish was exactly the kind I love--the kind learned during adulthood.
Later on, I hooked up with my friend and got settled in on zir sofa. I downloaded Appetite for Destruction on iTunes (damn not having my CDs and backups) and we started getting excited for the Guns N' Roses symphony. The next day I headed out to walk around a bit and I found a couple of Guns N' Roses shirts, which of course I picked up. I came back to the pad in the afternoon super excited to go to the concert. I showed my friend the shirts and ze was super excited too.
Much to my dismay, however, zir friends informed me that the concert had been--you guessed it--cancelled.
OK. Near as I can tell, what happened is that some idiotic stagehand, or a group of them called 28 Productions, tried to build a professional rock concert setup on top of wood that had been soaked through by rain in the preceding days. Why anyone would do this when working for a professional rock band, I have no idea, but they did it, and the stage collapsed when they tried to put the band's super-size LCD screen on it. From what I understand, Guns N' Roses didn't even make it to sound check. Naturally, the Ministry of Health wouldn't let the concert go forward with the stage in an unsafe condition.
I was bummed out. Guns N' Roses was the first rock band I ever listened to, thanks to Josh F. from Lynnwood, and I had never gotten to see them in concert. (Yes, I know, Axl Rose is the only original member left.) I moped around zir pad, trying in vain to find the inspiration for a blog post, and finally crashed out. In the morning I headed for the swimming pool to relieve some stress. I was a little disappointed with my performance, though. I guess the air here is different or something. Several hours later, I realized that I had forgotten to put sunscreen on.
So that's been the week, I am still recovering from one of the worst sunburns I have had in years and still waiting for Guns N' Roses to come rock my world. Now if I can just find where I put the number for the school and let them know what's going on, everything will be groovy. Catch you this weekend!
Picking up again with last weekend, I have to say that I have really been laying some rubber on the road and doing less teaching than I expected. Part of this has to do with my reaction the environment of Colonia Libertad--i.e., bugs (to which I am allergic) and heat (pant, pant)--and part of it has to do with the general state of disorder in that community. I can definitely see the need there for exigence.I left Liberia after the Semana Santa and headed back to Colonia Libertad. I was a little disoriented once I got there. I had checked over the emails from the Project Ganas mastermind, Sara, and it seemed to me that her idea had been that I was supposed to stay in the teachers' house by the school. The two teachers staying in the house by the school, however, insisted that I was supposed to stay at the house of the schoolmaster's mother-in-law. So I headed up to Finca La Anita to talk with Pablo and Ana and to see if they knew anything. Pablo, as nicely as possible, said that he was troubled by the whole situation, that he had a business to run, and that he would be willing to meet with me the next night to work everything out once and for all.
I stayed the night at the house of the schoolmaster's mother-in-law. She seemed a little begrudging about the whole situation, and I suffered--I counted--28 mosquito bites that night. The next day, I taught a class to the first graders and tracked down Mayra, the schoolmaster. She concurred that I was supposed to be staying at her mother-in-law's house, and told me that that was what had been discussed with Sara. I had my doubts. That night, when we met with Pablo, he essentially pleaded with Mayra and the other teachers on my behalf, pointing out that all I needed was a decent room and that I was in fact there working as a volunteer. Somehow, it came about that Isabel, the kindergarten teacher, went to stay with her mother-in-law and I stayed at the teachers' house for the next two nights.
I worked the next day with a few students who were interested in learning about computers. I taught them the anatomy of the desktop computer and showed them how to work a mouse and a keyboard. They typed some sentences for me about Colonia Libertad. The students have a great desire for learning, which is why I was a little perturbed the next day when I noticed that the students were getting out of school between 12 and 1 p.m. everyday (they go to school at 7:30 a.m.). I also began to feel more and more like an outsider. I really was enjoying eating the food that everyone cooked for me, but somehow without a monetary exchange involved, I felt less than self-sufficient. Whatsmore, I noticed myself unable to catch the drift of a lot of the conversations. I decided that since I had tickets for the Guns N' Roses concert on Friday anyway, maybe it was time to check out and head for more familiar territory. Yes, that means Heredia.
I stayed the night again in San José. I've become quite fond of a particular room at the Molino Rojo hostel. It's a bit on the expensive side, but there are very few bugs and it has a nice atmosphere. It's a good place for writing blogs, you might say. Eventually, I'll have to find other San José digs, but for the moment it can't be beat. Since it's a hostel, there's plenty of space to move around in and there are a lot of North American-style restaurants close by where they don't seem to mind gringos struggling with getting by in a different culture. It's also walking distance from La Avenida Central, which is San José's biggest shopping area, where there are a lot of little artisan bakeries and cafés mixed in.
After a long and satisfying chat session with some people back home, I had an excellent night's sleep. I ate pudding bread in the morning (which meant around 1 p.m.) and headed out for Heredia. Heredia seemed a lot more familiar arriving in daylight. I headed towards UNA (la Universidad NAcional, the most well-renowned private university in Costa Rica) and had a late lunch at a Lebanese food joint. The cook was a druze man and we had a short conversation about Middle Eastern geography. His Spanish was exactly the kind I love--the kind learned during adulthood.
Later on, I hooked up with my friend and got settled in on zir sofa. I downloaded Appetite for Destruction on iTunes (damn not having my CDs and backups) and we started getting excited for the Guns N' Roses symphony. The next day I headed out to walk around a bit and I found a couple of Guns N' Roses shirts, which of course I picked up. I came back to the pad in the afternoon super excited to go to the concert. I showed my friend the shirts and ze was super excited too.
Much to my dismay, however, zir friends informed me that the concert had been--you guessed it--cancelled.
OK. Near as I can tell, what happened is that some idiotic stagehand, or a group of them called 28 Productions, tried to build a professional rock concert setup on top of wood that had been soaked through by rain in the preceding days. Why anyone would do this when working for a professional rock band, I have no idea, but they did it, and the stage collapsed when they tried to put the band's super-size LCD screen on it. From what I understand, Guns N' Roses didn't even make it to sound check. Naturally, the Ministry of Health wouldn't let the concert go forward with the stage in an unsafe condition.
I was bummed out. Guns N' Roses was the first rock band I ever listened to, thanks to Josh F. from Lynnwood, and I had never gotten to see them in concert. (Yes, I know, Axl Rose is the only original member left.) I moped around zir pad, trying in vain to find the inspiration for a blog post, and finally crashed out. In the morning I headed for the swimming pool to relieve some stress. I was a little disappointed with my performance, though. I guess the air here is different or something. Several hours later, I realized that I had forgotten to put sunscreen on.
So that's been the week, I am still recovering from one of the worst sunburns I have had in years and still waiting for Guns N' Roses to come rock my world. Now if I can just find where I put the number for the school and let them know what's going on, everything will be groovy. Catch you this weekend!
Saturday, April 3, 2010
3 de abril de 2010
The Holy Week
(will it ever end?)
Sunday
Hola compañer@s. The journey out of Heredia went as well as can be expected. On Sunday, reeling from my $52.00 two-night stay in Hotel Heredia, I decided to get out of there as soon as possible. I caught an early bus to San José and went exploring, hoping to find some recognizable landmark that would tell me where the correct bus station was (there are about 14 of them). After walking around San José for half a day, I finally settled down at a little place called the Molino Rojo. I was too tired to argue about price, so I graciously paid the ¢5500 (about $11.00) and put my blistered feet up in a hammock (and, later, a bed).
Monday
I took off at a lively 4:45 am to go catch the bus to Bagaces and Aguas Claras. Lo and behold, this bus actually had to be paid for in advance--something I only figured out once someone told me that I was in her seat. Later on I was grateful for the advice, as a good 20 people were standing in the aisle. This was well worth the ¢3050 ($6.10) ticket. I dozed most of the way to Aguas Claras and immediately hopped the bus for Colonia Libertad (which, in case you ever make it up that way, costs ¢700 [$1.40]). Once there, I quickly walked to the finca (ranch), hoping to catch the 1:00 bus after grabbing my debit card and some extra cash.
I ran into Pablo, the husband of Ana and
co-owner of La Anita ranch. He was honestly about the nicest Costa Rican guy I've met so far. He was very concerned about my living situation and told me that he would help me work it out. He let me into the "Love Shack" (a house where people who work on the farm often stay) and I got a couple changes of clothes and a new towel. Unfortunately, I discovered that I had left my much-loved pink towel at the Hotel Heredia. So much for the wise advice of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Feeling somewhat refreshed, I took off without further adieu and walked as quickly as my aching feet would allow toward the bus stop.
The bus, of course, had already gone--for the last time that day, as it would happen--by the time I got there. I asked the two policemen across from the school if they had actually seen the bus leave (not that you can miss a large beige bus in Colonia Libertad) and they answered in the affirmative. I asked them if it was indeed the last bus, and once again they concurred that there were now no other buses to be leaving from Colonia Libertad. I thanked them for the reality check and headed on my way--on foot.
About three and a half minutes exactly after I started heading out, a delivery truck that was headed my way came into view. I hailed the driver, who graciously stopped, put all of the things that were strewn about the passenger seat back into the broken glove box, put the glove box itself back into one piece, and invited me in. I asked him how far he was going and he said Aguas Claras. Life was looking positive. He drove the old trusty Isuzu like Mario Andretti might have driven a rental car and I was at the bus stop in no time. We passed the beige bus on the way and I managed to suppress a snicker of joy. I was so appreciative of his lifesaving attitude that I laid ¢5000 on the cab seat before getting out. He tried to hand it back to me but I refused. When I can, I like to provide incentives for random acts of kindness.
The rest of the trip to Liberia was fairly uneventful, although I did have to go through Bagaces to get there. Once in Liberia I looked around and saw a couple of different signs for hotels. After deciding that the "hospedaje" closest to the bus station was a little over-priced, I dragged my feet up to the Hotel Guanacaste ($11.00/night) and settled in with the ants. The Guanacaste had a great wireless connection and was the temporary residence of a whole host of interesting world travelers, so it seemed like a great place to spend a few nights.
The first night, I had dinner with the Project Ganas director, Sara, and her partner, and said goodbye to them and thanked them for the opportunity of teaching here. I met two young Belgian ladies, an Australian mate and a tico mae. We got into a long discussion involving "typical" Americans, geography, and languages that lasted several beers. When the conversation degenerated into an academic argument about the causes of the two Great Wars, we decided to head over to the bar next door to see what was going on there. A few beers afterwards, I had been characterized as emasculated for failing to invoke chauvinism in my interaction with the waitress. Go figure.
Tuesday
The next day involved a good amount of recovery. I chastised myself for drinking beer, promised to never drink beer again--all of the usual comments one makes to oneself when recovering from hops. The next night, however, I was at it again, this time with two American girls who had been traveling through Central America learning about geography and Spanish. After a while we started talking with a couple of ticos, and after a few beers we decided to drive around in a car and smoke. The two girls said it was probably the best last night they could have asked for. Awesome.
Wednesday
The next day was almost wholly uneventful. I was supposed to go to the beach, but it didn't work out so well. I stayed in my hotel room for most of the day, which convinced me that it was probably time for a change in hotels. It's a little hard to be living around bugs and all that in a hot, stuffy cramped room with no light. Great for a couple of nights, but not for a week's stay.
Thursday
So the next day I packed up, turned in the key and headed off to Hotel Wilson ($28.00/night). Though considerably more expensive, the Wilson has elegant rooms and a staff much more disposed to being friendly and complaisant. Still a little bit worn down from the dreariness of my Guanacaste digs, I settled into my room, unpacked my backpack and started watching TV (yes, I know--quite out-of-character). The only thing on was a program about the patriarchs of Israel (or, depending on your perspective, of Islam), and so I shut off the TV and turned to Skype for help. Shout-outs to sloth, purple and metuka for cheering me up. Also, thanks to Mario for taking me to (insert name of corporate fast food joint here).
Friday
I woke up in a good mood after a good sleep on a good bed in a good hotel with great lighting. I also had a pretty good morning. I saw the procession forming for Good Friday on my way to go say hi to my tico friend at the Guanacaste. He and I watched the procession go by, talked about agnosticism, and then took a walk around town. We parted ways at the central park and I came back to the hotel. For some strange reason, I ended up taking an extremely long nap, which is why I am still up at three in the morning writing this post. Blah. Why do I insist on doing this to myself?
Tomorrow, things like buses should start operating again. Unless disaster befalls me, I'm probably going to head to the beach and come back here to the Wilson for one more night. Henceforth I should be making these posts on weekends when I travel out of the Colonia. We'll see how long it takes me to set up some kind of internet connection in Colonia Libertad.
(will it ever end?)
SundayHola compañer@s. The journey out of Heredia went as well as can be expected. On Sunday, reeling from my $52.00 two-night stay in Hotel Heredia, I decided to get out of there as soon as possible. I caught an early bus to San José and went exploring, hoping to find some recognizable landmark that would tell me where the correct bus station was (there are about 14 of them). After walking around San José for half a day, I finally settled down at a little place called the Molino Rojo. I was too tired to argue about price, so I graciously paid the ¢5500 (about $11.00) and put my blistered feet up in a hammock (and, later, a bed).
Monday
I took off at a lively 4:45 am to go catch the bus to Bagaces and Aguas Claras. Lo and behold, this bus actually had to be paid for in advance--something I only figured out once someone told me that I was in her seat. Later on I was grateful for the advice, as a good 20 people were standing in the aisle. This was well worth the ¢3050 ($6.10) ticket. I dozed most of the way to Aguas Claras and immediately hopped the bus for Colonia Libertad (which, in case you ever make it up that way, costs ¢700 [$1.40]). Once there, I quickly walked to the finca (ranch), hoping to catch the 1:00 bus after grabbing my debit card and some extra cash.
I ran into Pablo, the husband of Ana and
co-owner of La Anita ranch. He was honestly about the nicest Costa Rican guy I've met so far. He was very concerned about my living situation and told me that he would help me work it out. He let me into the "Love Shack" (a house where people who work on the farm often stay) and I got a couple changes of clothes and a new towel. Unfortunately, I discovered that I had left my much-loved pink towel at the Hotel Heredia. So much for the wise advice of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Feeling somewhat refreshed, I took off without further adieu and walked as quickly as my aching feet would allow toward the bus stop.The bus, of course, had already gone--for the last time that day, as it would happen--by the time I got there. I asked the two policemen across from the school if they had actually seen the bus leave (not that you can miss a large beige bus in Colonia Libertad) and they answered in the affirmative. I asked them if it was indeed the last bus, and once again they concurred that there were now no other buses to be leaving from Colonia Libertad. I thanked them for the reality check and headed on my way--on foot.
About three and a half minutes exactly after I started heading out, a delivery truck that was headed my way came into view. I hailed the driver, who graciously stopped, put all of the things that were strewn about the passenger seat back into the broken glove box, put the glove box itself back into one piece, and invited me in. I asked him how far he was going and he said Aguas Claras. Life was looking positive. He drove the old trusty Isuzu like Mario Andretti might have driven a rental car and I was at the bus stop in no time. We passed the beige bus on the way and I managed to suppress a snicker of joy. I was so appreciative of his lifesaving attitude that I laid ¢5000 on the cab seat before getting out. He tried to hand it back to me but I refused. When I can, I like to provide incentives for random acts of kindness.
The rest of the trip to Liberia was fairly uneventful, although I did have to go through Bagaces to get there. Once in Liberia I looked around and saw a couple of different signs for hotels. After deciding that the "hospedaje" closest to the bus station was a little over-priced, I dragged my feet up to the Hotel Guanacaste ($11.00/night) and settled in with the ants. The Guanacaste had a great wireless connection and was the temporary residence of a whole host of interesting world travelers, so it seemed like a great place to spend a few nights.
The first night, I had dinner with the Project Ganas director, Sara, and her partner, and said goodbye to them and thanked them for the opportunity of teaching here. I met two young Belgian ladies, an Australian mate and a tico mae. We got into a long discussion involving "typical" Americans, geography, and languages that lasted several beers. When the conversation degenerated into an academic argument about the causes of the two Great Wars, we decided to head over to the bar next door to see what was going on there. A few beers afterwards, I had been characterized as emasculated for failing to invoke chauvinism in my interaction with the waitress. Go figure.Tuesday
The next day involved a good amount of recovery. I chastised myself for drinking beer, promised to never drink beer again--all of the usual comments one makes to oneself when recovering from hops. The next night, however, I was at it again, this time with two American girls who had been traveling through Central America learning about geography and Spanish. After a while we started talking with a couple of ticos, and after a few beers we decided to drive around in a car and smoke. The two girls said it was probably the best last night they could have asked for. Awesome.
WednesdayThe next day was almost wholly uneventful. I was supposed to go to the beach, but it didn't work out so well. I stayed in my hotel room for most of the day, which convinced me that it was probably time for a change in hotels. It's a little hard to be living around bugs and all that in a hot, stuffy cramped room with no light. Great for a couple of nights, but not for a week's stay.
Thursday
So the next day I packed up, turned in the key and headed off to Hotel Wilson ($28.00/night). Though considerably more expensive, the Wilson has elegant rooms and a staff much more disposed to being friendly and complaisant. Still a little bit worn down from the dreariness of my Guanacaste digs, I settled into my room, unpacked my backpack and started watching TV (yes, I know--quite out-of-character). The only thing on was a program about the patriarchs of Israel (or, depending on your perspective, of Islam), and so I shut off the TV and turned to Skype for help. Shout-outs to sloth, purple and metuka for cheering me up. Also, thanks to Mario for taking me to (insert name of corporate fast food joint here).
Friday
I woke up in a good mood after a good sleep on a good bed in a good hotel with great lighting. I also had a pretty good morning. I saw the procession forming for Good Friday on my way to go say hi to my tico friend at the Guanacaste. He and I watched the procession go by, talked about agnosticism, and then took a walk around town. We parted ways at the central park and I came back to the hotel. For some strange reason, I ended up taking an extremely long nap, which is why I am still up at three in the morning writing this post. Blah. Why do I insist on doing this to myself?Tomorrow, things like buses should start operating again. Unless disaster befalls me, I'm probably going to head to the beach and come back here to the Wilson for one more night. Henceforth I should be making these posts on weekends when I travel out of the Colonia. We'll see how long it takes me to set up some kind of internet connection in Colonia Libertad.
Saturday, March 27, 2010
27 de marzo 2010
Adventures Galore
So I arrived to Colonia Libertad last week expecting, you might say, a hero's welcome. At least, I felt like a hero after my first flight was delayed for 4 hours and I didn't even yell at a single Continental employee. Needless to say I missed my flight into Liberia and I had to stay overnight in one of those hotel-airline ventures, a place where it was obvious to me that nobody of their own volition would ever stay there without having been directed to do so by an airline. The room was nice, though, and I got my first bath since November (ahhhh!) so really I didn't have anything to complain about. When I arrived in Liberia, I was waiting in line when I realized that the diary containing my passport had been left on the plane. So I moved to the back of the mob (you couldn't call it a line) and I had my first chance in years to show off my Spanish skills to a Costa Rican. I even managed to throw in words like "mae," "pura vida," and "tuanis." I was quite proud of myself. In spite of all the positive notes, however, the length of the journey from Seattle had already started to get to me by the time I reached Liberia (the city, not the airport) and I ended up giving into the Taxi driver who was desperate to take me all the way to Aguas Claras. After an argument with the Taxi driver over what we had agreed on (he wanted more) and another stopover and an hour-long bus ride to Colonia Libertad, I was exhausted and hungry.
Nobody seemed to know that I was coming. This was a surprise to me. They said something about a Peace Corps volunteer arriving and asked if I was him. I answered in the negative, but only after briefly considering if imitating a Peace Corps volunteer would get some of my loans forgiven. There was certainly no house waiting for me (which was, in my mind, a condition of performing my volunteer duties) and eventually a semi-retired anthropologist with some relationship to the area gave me a ride up to the farm, where I met Ana, who graciously offered me a cabin to stay for a few days.
Waking up to the Costa Rican mountains was amazing. There were horses munching away on grass, quite contentedly, and two little dogs that followed me to the school (for which I was later reprimanded). I spent the day at the school fixing computers (oh, joy) with sweat pouring down all sides of me. Lunch was the typical Costa Rican rice and beans, but there was pork, so I was less than enthusiastic but too hungry to complain. When I got back to the cabin area, I was exhausted. There was no dinner on my account, although Ana gave me a few containers of leftovers and told me to go ask the help for a microwave. I was planning to do this but I was interrupted by the offer of an ice-cold Pilsen from my neighbors, who became my newfound New Yorker friends, so I never really got around to dinner.
Alejandra, Iván, Tracy, Gabriela, and Cheila
The next day I gave my first English class to grade school students who were less than enthusiastic about the idea of learning English (I could have imagined better things to be doing with my time in first, second and third grade as well). I ate lunch with the students (pork again, this time with Spaghetti) and headed to pack my stuff to get out of there. I wasn't about to hang around for a Semana Santa (that's Easter Week for you gringos) with nothing to do. I had it all planned out: I was going to Heredia.
However, I was about to embark on the "best" adventure yet. As soon as I got to San José, I realized that I had left my debit card in with the things I left in Guanacaste (Colonia Libertad is in Guanacaste). I also realized that I had just slightly more than $10.00 left to my name. The cheapest hotel in Heredia is $28.00 and the trip back to Guanacaste would have been $7.00. Although the more logical choice seemed like heading back to Guanacaste, it was already nightfall and I had no place to spend the night. Whatsmore, I was stuck in the most crime-ridden city of Costa Rica with all of my favorite electronic devices in my backpack and no weapons to my name. So, I made the decision to head to Heredia, because I figured it was better to be broke in a small city than in a big one.
Remembering the geography of Heredia wasn't quite as easy as I had hoped it would be. It took me over an hour to find the Hotel Heredia, and by that time I was so exhausted that I could barely talk. After a long and torpid discussion with the hotel manager, we worked out that I could leave my $200.00 camera in hock for one night's stay. I had a fitful sleep and headed out in the morning to try to resolve my problem. I asked the people at Wal Mart (d.b.a. Más X Menos) if I could get money sent with the copy of my passport and they said "no." Also, the only other Western Union location in town appeared to be closed for Saturday (at least, they weren't following their online schedule). It seemed like I was in a catch-22: I had no way to get my money or my passport without my money and my passport. I started to get pretty scared. I envisioned an enraged hotel manager throwing me and all of my things out onto the street.
Then, I talked to my partner in Seattle. Suddenly, everything seemed a little brighter. I explained the situation and said partner assured me that everything would be in order by the time I found a place to receive the money. I walked back to the Western Union location which had, by some miracle, opened in the time that it took for me to make a phone call, and the cajero told me that sí, he would accept the copia of my passport as identification. Several phone calls and two hours later, I was an American again--and shamelessly so. I headed back to resolve my unpaid hotel bill. I'm planning a trip back to Guanacaste just as soon as I can figure out how to get out of here.
So I arrived to Colonia Libertad last week expecting, you might say, a hero's welcome. At least, I felt like a hero after my first flight was delayed for 4 hours and I didn't even yell at a single Continental employee. Needless to say I missed my flight into Liberia and I had to stay overnight in one of those hotel-airline ventures, a place where it was obvious to me that nobody of their own volition would ever stay there without having been directed to do so by an airline. The room was nice, though, and I got my first bath since November (ahhhh!) so really I didn't have anything to complain about. When I arrived in Liberia, I was waiting in line when I realized that the diary containing my passport had been left on the plane. So I moved to the back of the mob (you couldn't call it a line) and I had my first chance in years to show off my Spanish skills to a Costa Rican. I even managed to throw in words like "mae," "pura vida," and "tuanis." I was quite proud of myself. In spite of all the positive notes, however, the length of the journey from Seattle had already started to get to me by the time I reached Liberia (the city, not the airport) and I ended up giving into the Taxi driver who was desperate to take me all the way to Aguas Claras. After an argument with the Taxi driver over what we had agreed on (he wanted more) and another stopover and an hour-long bus ride to Colonia Libertad, I was exhausted and hungry.
Nobody seemed to know that I was coming. This was a surprise to me. They said something about a Peace Corps volunteer arriving and asked if I was him. I answered in the negative, but only after briefly considering if imitating a Peace Corps volunteer would get some of my loans forgiven. There was certainly no house waiting for me (which was, in my mind, a condition of performing my volunteer duties) and eventually a semi-retired anthropologist with some relationship to the area gave me a ride up to the farm, where I met Ana, who graciously offered me a cabin to stay for a few days.
Waking up to the Costa Rican mountains was amazing. There were horses munching away on grass, quite contentedly, and two little dogs that followed me to the school (for which I was later reprimanded). I spent the day at the school fixing computers (oh, joy) with sweat pouring down all sides of me. Lunch was the typical Costa Rican rice and beans, but there was pork, so I was less than enthusiastic but too hungry to complain. When I got back to the cabin area, I was exhausted. There was no dinner on my account, although Ana gave me a few containers of leftovers and told me to go ask the help for a microwave. I was planning to do this but I was interrupted by the offer of an ice-cold Pilsen from my neighbors, who became my newfound New Yorker friends, so I never really got around to dinner.
Alejandra, Iván, Tracy, Gabriela, and CheilaThe next day I gave my first English class to grade school students who were less than enthusiastic about the idea of learning English (I could have imagined better things to be doing with my time in first, second and third grade as well). I ate lunch with the students (pork again, this time with Spaghetti) and headed to pack my stuff to get out of there. I wasn't about to hang around for a Semana Santa (that's Easter Week for you gringos) with nothing to do. I had it all planned out: I was going to Heredia.
However, I was about to embark on the "best" adventure yet. As soon as I got to San José, I realized that I had left my debit card in with the things I left in Guanacaste (Colonia Libertad is in Guanacaste). I also realized that I had just slightly more than $10.00 left to my name. The cheapest hotel in Heredia is $28.00 and the trip back to Guanacaste would have been $7.00. Although the more logical choice seemed like heading back to Guanacaste, it was already nightfall and I had no place to spend the night. Whatsmore, I was stuck in the most crime-ridden city of Costa Rica with all of my favorite electronic devices in my backpack and no weapons to my name. So, I made the decision to head to Heredia, because I figured it was better to be broke in a small city than in a big one.
Remembering the geography of Heredia wasn't quite as easy as I had hoped it would be. It took me over an hour to find the Hotel Heredia, and by that time I was so exhausted that I could barely talk. After a long and torpid discussion with the hotel manager, we worked out that I could leave my $200.00 camera in hock for one night's stay. I had a fitful sleep and headed out in the morning to try to resolve my problem. I asked the people at Wal Mart (d.b.a. Más X Menos) if I could get money sent with the copy of my passport and they said "no." Also, the only other Western Union location in town appeared to be closed for Saturday (at least, they weren't following their online schedule). It seemed like I was in a catch-22: I had no way to get my money or my passport without my money and my passport. I started to get pretty scared. I envisioned an enraged hotel manager throwing me and all of my things out onto the street.
Then, I talked to my partner in Seattle. Suddenly, everything seemed a little brighter. I explained the situation and said partner assured me that everything would be in order by the time I found a place to receive the money. I walked back to the Western Union location which had, by some miracle, opened in the time that it took for me to make a phone call, and the cajero told me that sí, he would accept the copia of my passport as identification. Several phone calls and two hours later, I was an American again--and shamelessly so. I headed back to resolve my unpaid hotel bill. I'm planning a trip back to Guanacaste just as soon as I can figure out how to get out of here.
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