Puras Vidas para todos (pure lives for everyone). I have more news on the Abanico “housing crisis” that I described in my last post. Abanico is the name of the town where 60ish houses are being built for people with few resources aka poor. The problem is that 40 houses are already complete but sit empty and everyone wants to know why. Well here are some reasons why:
-The gov. does not want anyone to move in until all the houses are complete so they can build a sense of community.
-The families will need the housing voucher to be able to buy the house, which the gov. has suspended for the time being.
-Of the original 130 families that applied for the houses, only 5 families qualified.
-The gov. has a gynormous amount of requisites the families must comply with before they can purchase and move into the home.
-There is a big pile of sand and stone blocking the entrance of vehicles into the housing project.
The list goes on but basically the story goes that Habitat got a big loan from a somewhere in Europe to build these houses. They decided to build all 60 at once to utilize cost savings from ordering in bulk. That makes sense and all but then you should beef up your construction resources. I was there the other day and they had maybe five ppl working. Knowing that you can’t move ppl in until you are complete should put some pressure on the construction schedule. However everything seems pretty pura vida as of right now. I think the bigger issue is not having all the families lined up. We were going to interview in August families who wanted to move to the project but I’m guessing it is hard to find families that qualify due to the recent economic crisis, with costs going up and wages staying the same or lowering due to the devaluation of the colon. It was brought up why the project couldn’t be done in say 3 phases of 20 houses each? Build 20, move 20 families in, then start the second phase etc. That would get you around the government road block at least. The downside there is you lose the economy from ordering in bulk, prices could go higher, and who knows they may only have a certain amount of time to use the loan or they will lose it. There are a lot of things that I would do different, but who knows what kind of other restraints are put on a project like this to cause it to go like it is. There are a lot of things that haven’t been well thought out, like where are these ppl going to work, how are they going to get transportation etc. The site was selected because the land was cheap, however it means driving down a bumpy stone road for 2-3miles to arrive at a small town with a school, church and convenience store. What is going to happen to when 200+ ppl move in at once?
Anyways let’s back up a little bit. In my last post I mentioned I would be spending a day with donors from the US on a day trip that happened last Friday. As usual you never find out exactly what is going on until you get there the day of. What was going on last week in San José was a big Latin America Habitat conference, where fundraising personnel from different US affiliates were invited to participate. I didn’t know this but US Habitat affiliates are required to donate a percentage of their earnings to International Habitat offices. The people that came to this conference represented different regions of the US and also were the ones that solicit the big bucks from the major donors. So this conference lasted the whole week with Friday being the day trip excursion for the group. I got invited as the group wanted to meet the long term volunteers.
We went to a souvenir shop, visited a Habitat house and then we went to a swanky hotel/spa resort for lunch with a view of a volcano Arenal. I thought we were going to stop at some smaller Costa Rica typical food restaurant but we passed through the resort town and headed for the volcano where the higher end tourist destinations were, me all along looking out the window at all of these places that I never thought I would see from the inside until we pulled into Montaña del Fuego. There we ate a pretty decent lunch and then went to Abanico to plant trees and see the project. We had thirty ppl and thirty trees so everyone would get to plant one, however the group became very tired and so only about half of the trees were planted and we left the rest for the construction workers to plant. The group got so tired that they passed on dinner to return to the hotel. I don’t know how they got so tired but it was funny to see the look of disbelief on the faces of the Costa Rica Habitat ppl. They couldn’t believe they weren’t going to go and eat dinner, even though it had been already paid for.
I felt pretty spoiled the whole day and felt a little out of my comfort zone. Travelling with US people, on a tourist bus with air conditioning, and eating at a palace all made me feel a little out of place. It was ok though, it is nice to have that break from the norm. I found out about the tropical storm in Florida and caught up on some college football news. I also got to chat with the National Director for Habitat in Costa Rica and met some other people from the national office that I hadn’t met before. One guy in particular found out from the National Director that I spoke pretty good Spanish so he wanted to test me to make sure I was for real. Well I passed his test no problem but I’m always hesitant to jump into a conversation after someone says yeah talk to this guy his Spanish is excellent. We spent most of the time talking about places in the US because he lived there for 9 years and had travelled all over the place mostly by train.
After we finished in Abanico the bus went back to San José but I stayed behind because some friends of mine invited me to go out to the disco with them. This disco had a huge first floor for dancing and a second floor mezzanine with a bar. There weren’t a whole lot of people so everything was on the mezzanine. One thing to note about the disco in Costa Rica is that they play all types of club, reggaeton, reggae, techno, and pop but also mix in salsa and meringue and sometimes cumbia. They play each genre for maybe 20min and then switch to the next genre. Well I went about 30-40min without stopping because they played salsa and meringue back-to-back. And Latin dancing is not like club music where you can dance at your own pace, with this you have to keep the beat and lead your partner well. Somehow I survived (till 4am) as the ticas (Costa Rican women) that I danced with never got tired. I have to say Latin dancing has become probably the most enjoyable thing that I do on a weekly basis. I finally found the right class that matches my abilities, so I’m excited to see how good I’ll be in December. Another thing that I enjoy immensely in Costa Rica is how laid back things are.
Every day I’m able to wake up at my own pace and get to work, a leisurely 2-3min walk from my house. Everyone gets in around 8am and the first thing we do is eat a light breakfast, usually bread and butter with coffee and chat about whatever till almost 9am. From there we do work till about 12pm and then we have lunch until 1pm. During that hour we close the door and lock it and we don’t take phone calls or nothing. Then from 1-330 or 4pm we work and then have another 15-30min coffee break with crackers and then we close up at 5pm. Pretty awesome if you ask me, I used to feel bad if I took lunch longer than 30min, where here 3 breaks a day seem mandatory. Granted not everyday is like this but it happens pretty frequently as a cultural norm.
Life should get a little interesting the next few weeks as we are going to start managing the construction of some model homes. I’m working right now getting the budgets and schedules and spreadsheets together to track the progress of the construction. A lot of outsiders I find have a hard time understanding what exactly construction managers do. A lot of people here think that I’m out working on the houses each day. When I tell them I don’t do that then they think I am the engineer or architect. It actually involves quite a bit of things that put together requires someone to manage them. There is the schedule, the budget, the scope of work and customer satisfaction that all must be managed by someone. They are the ones who get all the glory and take all the heat based on the success of the project.
Other notes this week:
-Is it just me or does it seem like Obama is going to take this thing in a landslide? I think he would win Costa Rica in a landslide if it were part of the US. My family is glued to CNN this week because of the Democratic Convention. We’ll see how the Republican Convention goes.
-Apparently US Open tennis takes priority over preseason Monday Night Football in Costa Rica. That better not happen during the regular season.
-Travelling last weekend I was able to avoid the rain for two straight days. I don’t know if I was just in the right place at the right time or the storms/hurricanes in the Caribbean are messing up our rainy season.
-I’m totally hooked on the national Costa Rica soccer team. They had a World Cup qualifying game against El Salvador which they won 1-0 but I couldn’t sit still most of the game. It must be a hang over from when I watched them play in the World Cup of 2006 but sometimes they give me the jitters just like the Packers.
-My host mom makes incredible hamburgers.
June 4th: I'm so proud to be... tico
Great job US, how am I supposed to defend myself after that 3-1 shelling that Costa Rica gave you last night?
jueves, 28 de agosto de 2008
jueves, 21 de agosto de 2008
When in Rome, La Rumba, matrimony, housing crisis/process...
When living in a foreign country I always prefer to do things just like the locals. I always take public buses; I speak as much Spanish as possible and almost always do things on my own. A lot of people here when they find out I’m from the US will ask me who I came with, thinking that I’m with a tourist group or some big group from the US. I’m always confused by that question because it never crosses my mind as a question that might come up. In the US when you meet a foreign exchange student, they are usually there by themselves, not with a big tourist group. I guess though when your country is known for tourism, ppl think to ask that question more often. I’d compare this question to the “where do you work/study” question of the US. Usually it is the 2nd or 3rd question asked when getting to know someone in the US as our jobs are a bigger part of our lives. That being said I made a major break through the other week when one of my friends from my salsa class told me that he thought that I was Costa Rican. I was pretty impressed with myself as I had talked to him before and asked him about where he worked and such. Usually I’m a dead give away even before I speak, usually due to the t-shirts that I wear advertising some fundraiser that happened three years ago. The only other time I had made a semi-breakthrough was when I was leaving Costa Rica for the first time and I got to the airport and a taxi driver asked me if I wanted a taxi and I told him I needed a plane, to which he replied asking if I was going to Spain.
In my quest to blend in I requested to live with a host family while doing my volunteer work. It has been pretty nice, they take good care of me. Making sure to serve me three meals a day, wash my sheets and clothes each week, and occasionally we’ll go out and do something like visit a volcano. Within my house though it is definitively very macho. Macho, as in machismo or male dominated I guess. It’s not always very noticeable but the women culturally have the responsibility of anything that relates to the daily operation of the house. It’s not like their enslaved by their spouses but it’s more little things that don’t always make sense to me. For example; we always eat dinner and then the dogs are fed by my host mother. Sometimes we finish eating and me and my host dad we’ll be watching tv in the room adjacent to the kitchen while my host mom is upstairs studying (she never graduated high school and is now going back to finish). Anyways the dogs start whining for food and all my host dad will do is announce to the upstairs that “Laura, the dogs are hungry.” Eventually she will come down and feed them but why couldn’t he just feed them? What’s funny is that they think nothing of it as it is part of their culture, while I’m sitting there about to get up and feed them myself. That is just a typical example of the machismo here. I have to say though my host dad has assumed all responsibility for sweeping and mopping the floor, which he does 3-4 times a day. Yeah, they also find it weird that we (college aged kids) can go weeks without vacuuming or cleaning bathrooms, when they do it almost every day. I should point out though that both my host parents work at home, the dad painting and finishing the construction of the house while the mother bakes bread to sell at the bakery and does the domestic goddess thing.
Last Thursday I went on my first Latin dance outing in Costa Rica. Since Mother’s day was last Friday, there was a big dance at La Rumba, a big dance hall/bar-restaurant in a pretty nice part of Alajuela. As big as the dance floor was though, it filled up quickly to the point where there was no room. That is what I hate most about going out and dancing. There never is enough room to display your full repertoire of combinations without hitting anyone. It is even more nerve-racking for the guy as it is his responsibility to protect his partner from getting stepped on. One cool/funny part of the evening was when they invited a Mexican Mariachi band to the stage. The cool part was they were really good and had a saxophonist who played one note for about 5min without stopping. The funny part was the whole dance floor cleared out for them. Nobody danced while they played. I don’t know if it was more as a sign of respect or that no one knew how to dance to Mariachi. I think it was more of the latter; ticos don’t dance to Mariachi but rather sing karaoke to it.
That was fun, was out till 1:30am but thankfully I was in Costa Rica and everybody gets the day off for Mother’s Day so I didn’t have to worry about getting up and going to work the next day. With the extended weekend I decided to hang around in Alajuela as one of my co-workers was getting married that weekend. I’d never been to a foreign wedding and even though it was catholic it still varied from a little from US weddings. I only went to the mass as they were having a small party later for family members. What I liked most about the wedding was that it was a lot simpler. I don’t know if that was because of custom or lack of money but it worked for me. There wasn’t 4-5 bridesmaids and groomsmen all dressed to match and those who came to the wedding were dressed more laid back than what I was used to. The mass went pretty well with only two awkward moments, one being when the bride was supposed to say I do, but forgot that she was supposed to say it then, so there was a hold your breath moment. Also at the end of mass it just kind of abruptly ended. They didn’t even have an exit song. The mass just ended and they started taking pictures. Kind of awkward for me but not so much for them I guess. Two emotions that I always experience when I’m at weddings; one is I start to imagine how my wedding is going to be, how I’ll have to get married twice, once in the US and once in my bride’s country…, and how big/small my parties are going to be etc. After that emotion passes though the next feeling I have is one of total immaturity where I sit there and almost laugh to myself as I watch the bride and groom promise to be together forever. I mean that is a long time. How nervous they seem to me, it’s like there getting their ball and chain fitted instead of the wedding ring. Usually right then I realize that I’m definitively not ready to get married anytime soon.
From the work standpoint things have kind of stalled as of late. Habitat in Costa Rica works as the bridge between the government agencies and the people that apply for gov. housing. You wouldn’t believe the number of tramites (steps) that one has to go through to build a house. They have job positions down here called tramitadoras, which basically is someone who runs around and does all the paperwork and permitting because it is a chore. Things have slown down as of late because the gov org that gives out the housing vouchers has suspended this activity as they are revising their budgets to determine how much money they don’t have I would assume. With construction costs doubling in the last year and the colon (Costa Rica’s currency) getting weaker has caused the vouchers to be issued for more money than in the past and now there is less money to go around. So for the moment we haven’t started construction on any new houses in the past two weeks. Today I heard on the news that 43 thousand people live in slums in Costa Rica and that the President promised to construct homes for at least 20 thousand living in slums, but he hasn’t done anything yet since he was elected 2 years ago. So business should be booming, right?
Yesterday I went and visited a project of 60 houses (see photo). We got there and they had about 40 completed, 5-10 half way done and the rest had yet to be constructed. What I don’t understand is some of these houses have been completed for months but nobody has moved into them yet. We were supposed to go and interview ppl for the houses this month but I doubt that is happening anytime soon. I don’t understand why families who live in substandard housing must remain like that, even though there are decent homes available that sit vacant. They say they have to take out a loan and do all the paper work and a lot of ppl don’t qualify and blah blah blah. I don’t know, maybe I’m missing a big chunk of the story but it kind of boggles my mind. Tomorrow I am going back to the project with a bunch of major/potential donors from the US and other countries to plant some trees at the project site so I’m sure more of the story will come to life. I mean, we’ve even started projects without permits before (ok we did it once, and that was because we had a huge US group coming and didn’t have any other sites available to send them to) so I don’t know why these houses remain empty. Maybe we need another kick in the behind from the US?
P.S. I haven’t officially given up on my US citizenship; it just makes more sense to refer to the US as the US when I’m not in the country. However, I think I’m completing already 8 weeks in Costa Rica this week. I lost track about 6 weeks ago but thankfully my host family is good at remembering for me ;)
In my quest to blend in I requested to live with a host family while doing my volunteer work. It has been pretty nice, they take good care of me. Making sure to serve me three meals a day, wash my sheets and clothes each week, and occasionally we’ll go out and do something like visit a volcano. Within my house though it is definitively very macho. Macho, as in machismo or male dominated I guess. It’s not always very noticeable but the women culturally have the responsibility of anything that relates to the daily operation of the house. It’s not like their enslaved by their spouses but it’s more little things that don’t always make sense to me. For example; we always eat dinner and then the dogs are fed by my host mother. Sometimes we finish eating and me and my host dad we’ll be watching tv in the room adjacent to the kitchen while my host mom is upstairs studying (she never graduated high school and is now going back to finish). Anyways the dogs start whining for food and all my host dad will do is announce to the upstairs that “Laura, the dogs are hungry.” Eventually she will come down and feed them but why couldn’t he just feed them? What’s funny is that they think nothing of it as it is part of their culture, while I’m sitting there about to get up and feed them myself. That is just a typical example of the machismo here. I have to say though my host dad has assumed all responsibility for sweeping and mopping the floor, which he does 3-4 times a day. Yeah, they also find it weird that we (college aged kids) can go weeks without vacuuming or cleaning bathrooms, when they do it almost every day. I should point out though that both my host parents work at home, the dad painting and finishing the construction of the house while the mother bakes bread to sell at the bakery and does the domestic goddess thing.
Last Thursday I went on my first Latin dance outing in Costa Rica. Since Mother’s day was last Friday, there was a big dance at La Rumba, a big dance hall/bar-restaurant in a pretty nice part of Alajuela. As big as the dance floor was though, it filled up quickly to the point where there was no room. That is what I hate most about going out and dancing. There never is enough room to display your full repertoire of combinations without hitting anyone. It is even more nerve-racking for the guy as it is his responsibility to protect his partner from getting stepped on. One cool/funny part of the evening was when they invited a Mexican Mariachi band to the stage. The cool part was they were really good and had a saxophonist who played one note for about 5min without stopping. The funny part was the whole dance floor cleared out for them. Nobody danced while they played. I don’t know if it was more as a sign of respect or that no one knew how to dance to Mariachi. I think it was more of the latter; ticos don’t dance to Mariachi but rather sing karaoke to it.
That was fun, was out till 1:30am but thankfully I was in Costa Rica and everybody gets the day off for Mother’s Day so I didn’t have to worry about getting up and going to work the next day. With the extended weekend I decided to hang around in Alajuela as one of my co-workers was getting married that weekend. I’d never been to a foreign wedding and even though it was catholic it still varied from a little from US weddings. I only went to the mass as they were having a small party later for family members. What I liked most about the wedding was that it was a lot simpler. I don’t know if that was because of custom or lack of money but it worked for me. There wasn’t 4-5 bridesmaids and groomsmen all dressed to match and those who came to the wedding were dressed more laid back than what I was used to. The mass went pretty well with only two awkward moments, one being when the bride was supposed to say I do, but forgot that she was supposed to say it then, so there was a hold your breath moment. Also at the end of mass it just kind of abruptly ended. They didn’t even have an exit song. The mass just ended and they started taking pictures. Kind of awkward for me but not so much for them I guess. Two emotions that I always experience when I’m at weddings; one is I start to imagine how my wedding is going to be, how I’ll have to get married twice, once in the US and once in my bride’s country…, and how big/small my parties are going to be etc. After that emotion passes though the next feeling I have is one of total immaturity where I sit there and almost laugh to myself as I watch the bride and groom promise to be together forever. I mean that is a long time. How nervous they seem to me, it’s like there getting their ball and chain fitted instead of the wedding ring. Usually right then I realize that I’m definitively not ready to get married anytime soon.
From the work standpoint things have kind of stalled as of late. Habitat in Costa Rica works as the bridge between the government agencies and the people that apply for gov. housing. You wouldn’t believe the number of tramites (steps) that one has to go through to build a house. They have job positions down here called tramitadoras, which basically is someone who runs around and does all the paperwork and permitting because it is a chore. Things have slown down as of late because the gov org that gives out the housing vouchers has suspended this activity as they are revising their budgets to determine how much money they don’t have I would assume. With construction costs doubling in the last year and the colon (Costa Rica’s currency) getting weaker has caused the vouchers to be issued for more money than in the past and now there is less money to go around. So for the moment we haven’t started construction on any new houses in the past two weeks. Today I heard on the news that 43 thousand people live in slums in Costa Rica and that the President promised to construct homes for at least 20 thousand living in slums, but he hasn’t done anything yet since he was elected 2 years ago. So business should be booming, right?
Yesterday I went and visited a project of 60 houses (see photo). We got there and they had about 40 completed, 5-10 half way done and the rest had yet to be constructed. What I don’t understand is some of these houses have been completed for months but nobody has moved into them yet. We were supposed to go and interview ppl for the houses this month but I doubt that is happening anytime soon. I don’t understand why families who live in substandard housing must remain like that, even though there are decent homes available that sit vacant. They say they have to take out a loan and do all the paper work and a lot of ppl don’t qualify and blah blah blah. I don’t know, maybe I’m missing a big chunk of the story but it kind of boggles my mind. Tomorrow I am going back to the project with a bunch of major/potential donors from the US and other countries to plant some trees at the project site so I’m sure more of the story will come to life. I mean, we’ve even started projects without permits before (ok we did it once, and that was because we had a huge US group coming and didn’t have any other sites available to send them to) so I don’t know why these houses remain empty. Maybe we need another kick in the behind from the US?
P.S. I haven’t officially given up on my US citizenship; it just makes more sense to refer to the US as the US when I’m not in the country. However, I think I’m completing already 8 weeks in Costa Rica this week. I lost track about 6 weeks ago but thankfully my host family is good at remembering for me ;)
martes, 12 de agosto de 2008
Getting out of dodge, lenguaje, environmetal stress and fun facts...
-So are you ever coming back to La Lucha?
-No.
La Lucha. It was my home for six months, quiet and peaceful. A small farming community amongst the tropical forests and volcanic region of northern Costa Rica. The families are big, the children go to school and later join the farm, never straying far from home. Well that was 2 years ago and now things have changed.
Recently one of my old host brothers got a job working at a hot spring in the la Fortuna tourist zone about an hour away from La Lucha. Between work and English class four nights a week he barely has time to study, let alone sleep. I was lucky enough to catch him on his day off this last weekend in La Lucha. Despite how busy he is, he says he loves it. His job is easier than the farm, he gets paid better, and receives benefits such as health insurance and a free buffet when he is working. With his English classes he is hoping to move up in the tourism industry, eventually into hotel reception work. I can’t tell you how happy his mother is for him. Most mothers in La Lucha would rather their kid’s stay close and safe, however Magdalena (my old host mother) is part of a different breed.
Despite having seven kids and living on a farm her whole life she has been out and about selling pots and pans for Kitchen Fair and is on the Costa Rican board for boy/girl scouts. She wasn’t always like this and because of that her older children have stayed on with the farm and manage to get by with the basics, but it is never easy. Her younger children she has encouraged to get off the farm and go to higher education so they can get better jobs and live a better life, and little by little things are starting to change.
Come to find out that also one of my neighbors in La Lucha has also left to work in a beauty salon in la Fortuna. I used to bug her all the time because she didn’t finish high school and just hung out at the house all the time saying that she wanted out and couldn’t stand the boredom anymore of the town. Now she tells me little by little she is moving up to the bigger cities and hopes one day to make it to the US. She also has a younger sister who still has a year left in high school and I ask her what she is going to do and she says she is definitively getting out of La Lucha. It is exciting for me to see ppl doing what they have always talked about doing. It will be interesting to see where people are in a few years time. Now that they are in La Fortuna it´s “hey you got to come up this weekend and we’ll go dancing at the club.”
Another town I have spent a lot of time in has been a town called Santa Clara. I imagine it was similar to La Lucha about 10-15 years ago. This town is located closer the capitol city of our region and it has more going on as far as schools and retail and restaurant business’. There the jobs are better. A small percentage farm but a lot of ppl have city jobs. With the better income they are able to invest in different things, such as Costa Rican folk dancing. A group of thirty students and parents are currently participating in a folk dancing convention in Peru this week. They are very dedicated though as they told me their plane ticket was $1,000 and some families sent more than one person. I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have paid that much for the plane ticket and they were taking out loans to cover the trip costs. They have to perform like six dances, each with different outfits too. To digress I was visiting the other weekend and one of the families was selling tacos to raise money for the Peru trip. I have to tell you the tacos here are nothing like taco bell or even what we typically make tacos with. Imagine putting ketchup and mayo on your taco… and loving it. Their style is pretty basic but they wrap the meat in a taco shell and then deep fry it to seal the meat entirely in the taco shell. Then they put lettuce and ketchup and mayo on it and you eat it and it is good. I can’t even describe it; I’ll take a picture of one sometime. Random trivia fact: tacos are also what the call soccer cleats.
Going along with the language trivia I find myself advancing to the next level of dominating a language. When you first start speaking a new language you think of what you want to say in your first language and then translate it and then say it in the new language. That works well until you actually begin to think in your second language, which I don’t think happens until you have lived abroad and have used it extensively. I have a handle on the language where I have no problem thinking in that language no matter where I am. The next level of dominance though is speaking without even thinking. In the past few weeks I have found myself doing this and it has been a little weird for me. Weird as in I can’t control it. Sometimes the words leave my mouth so fast I don’t even know if I’ve said everything correctly. Spanish being my second language I’m a stickler in making sure I say everything in the right tense and address the right group of people. I always listen to others speak and I catch a lot of their mistakes, however they are so fluent that people don’t realize they have mis-spoken. The best English example I can think of are the good ‘ol Wisconsinites who sometimes say yeah I seen it, when really they should say saw.
And now for my environment editorial: Last Friday I hitched a ride to La Lucha with a friend of mine Don Jaime, who is a vet/doctor and started Proyecto Asis animal rescue center in hopes of teaching ppl to live in harmony with nature and not to destroy it. He definitively cares for animals as the center has well over 100 animals either in recuperation or living there. Well we were about 15mins from Asis when in the middle of the road was a litter of 4 kittens that couldn’t have been more than a month old. Of course he stops the car and I know for sure that we are going to pick these kittens up and take them with us. There was another guy with us and he thought we were crazy but after knowing Don Jaime long enough I was not surprised at this. However when we got to Asis he proceeded to tranquilize them and then put them in a bag full of carbon monoxide, effectively putting them to sleep. Now this I didn’t see coming. The response I got was that these kittens had no mother, nobody wanted them, and if they kept them at Asis they would hunt other animals and screw up the natural habitats of the other animals. He made it clear that he didn’t want to put them to sleep, but it was the only good option as he said they weren’t going to live a very good life. Truthfully, I know he’s right.
I see a lot of stuff here that I don’t agree with. A lot of families have small little chirping birds called perrícos (mini-parrots) that they keep in a cage and clip their wings. I don’t believe these animals are meant to be domesticated. They justify it by letting them out of their cages and letting them walk around the house, however to me it just doesn’t seem right. Cats and dogs are ok, caged parrots not so much. That is just an example of a bigger cultural problem that Don Jaime and Proyecto Asis are trying to change by educating on how to live in harmony with the environment. I was visiting a farm with one of my Costa Rican friends and there were leaf cutter ants carrying leaves across the trail and she decides to put a stick in the middle of their path to block them. I just kind of looked at her in amazement like a what are you doing kind of look and I really got no response. And to think her dad used to work in a national park! Anyways I’ll get off my soapbox now knowing that it is tough to change a culture that has become accustomed to having their way with nature. I’ll put the links up to web sites if you want to know more about the mission of Proyecto Asis.
I’ll sign off with some interesting things that may or may not interest you:
-If you are a mother this is your week to be in Costa Rica. Mother's Day is this Friday and we have the day off from work because of it. Gotta love it. ¡Te amo mamá!
-It has rained everyday in Alajuela except for two days I think since I have been here. It always rains in the afternoon or evening, except for one day last week it rained from 4am-9am.
-They now sell digital cameras that have a smile mode. If you don’t smile it won’t take the picture. My boss got this camera from her dad as a birthday gift and it’s for real. I wonder how much money it was to add that feature.
-I was able to watch the Packer game last night as we get MNF on our espn station down here. I forced my family to watch the whole second half while I tried to explain the whole Brett Favre saga. They really could have cared less. They were more intrigued by the stadium and the cheeseheads.
-My host family is an Olympic fan. They were all up at 6am last Friday to watch the opening ceremony and now all we watch are the Olympics.
-I planted a tree two years ago on one of my family’s farms and I just went and saw it and it is already bigger that I am. They say it is going to really grow a lot the next five years.
-People down here say I look like Micheal Schoffield from Prison Break. I kind of do though when I shave my head; all I’m missing are the tattoos. It goes without saying that the ticas love it ;)
-No.
La Lucha. It was my home for six months, quiet and peaceful. A small farming community amongst the tropical forests and volcanic region of northern Costa Rica. The families are big, the children go to school and later join the farm, never straying far from home. Well that was 2 years ago and now things have changed.
Recently one of my old host brothers got a job working at a hot spring in the la Fortuna tourist zone about an hour away from La Lucha. Between work and English class four nights a week he barely has time to study, let alone sleep. I was lucky enough to catch him on his day off this last weekend in La Lucha. Despite how busy he is, he says he loves it. His job is easier than the farm, he gets paid better, and receives benefits such as health insurance and a free buffet when he is working. With his English classes he is hoping to move up in the tourism industry, eventually into hotel reception work. I can’t tell you how happy his mother is for him. Most mothers in La Lucha would rather their kid’s stay close and safe, however Magdalena (my old host mother) is part of a different breed.
Despite having seven kids and living on a farm her whole life she has been out and about selling pots and pans for Kitchen Fair and is on the Costa Rican board for boy/girl scouts. She wasn’t always like this and because of that her older children have stayed on with the farm and manage to get by with the basics, but it is never easy. Her younger children she has encouraged to get off the farm and go to higher education so they can get better jobs and live a better life, and little by little things are starting to change.
Come to find out that also one of my neighbors in La Lucha has also left to work in a beauty salon in la Fortuna. I used to bug her all the time because she didn’t finish high school and just hung out at the house all the time saying that she wanted out and couldn’t stand the boredom anymore of the town. Now she tells me little by little she is moving up to the bigger cities and hopes one day to make it to the US. She also has a younger sister who still has a year left in high school and I ask her what she is going to do and she says she is definitively getting out of La Lucha. It is exciting for me to see ppl doing what they have always talked about doing. It will be interesting to see where people are in a few years time. Now that they are in La Fortuna it´s “hey you got to come up this weekend and we’ll go dancing at the club.”
Another town I have spent a lot of time in has been a town called Santa Clara. I imagine it was similar to La Lucha about 10-15 years ago. This town is located closer the capitol city of our region and it has more going on as far as schools and retail and restaurant business’. There the jobs are better. A small percentage farm but a lot of ppl have city jobs. With the better income they are able to invest in different things, such as Costa Rican folk dancing. A group of thirty students and parents are currently participating in a folk dancing convention in Peru this week. They are very dedicated though as they told me their plane ticket was $1,000 and some families sent more than one person. I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have paid that much for the plane ticket and they were taking out loans to cover the trip costs. They have to perform like six dances, each with different outfits too. To digress I was visiting the other weekend and one of the families was selling tacos to raise money for the Peru trip. I have to tell you the tacos here are nothing like taco bell or even what we typically make tacos with. Imagine putting ketchup and mayo on your taco… and loving it. Their style is pretty basic but they wrap the meat in a taco shell and then deep fry it to seal the meat entirely in the taco shell. Then they put lettuce and ketchup and mayo on it and you eat it and it is good. I can’t even describe it; I’ll take a picture of one sometime. Random trivia fact: tacos are also what the call soccer cleats.
Going along with the language trivia I find myself advancing to the next level of dominating a language. When you first start speaking a new language you think of what you want to say in your first language and then translate it and then say it in the new language. That works well until you actually begin to think in your second language, which I don’t think happens until you have lived abroad and have used it extensively. I have a handle on the language where I have no problem thinking in that language no matter where I am. The next level of dominance though is speaking without even thinking. In the past few weeks I have found myself doing this and it has been a little weird for me. Weird as in I can’t control it. Sometimes the words leave my mouth so fast I don’t even know if I’ve said everything correctly. Spanish being my second language I’m a stickler in making sure I say everything in the right tense and address the right group of people. I always listen to others speak and I catch a lot of their mistakes, however they are so fluent that people don’t realize they have mis-spoken. The best English example I can think of are the good ‘ol Wisconsinites who sometimes say yeah I seen it, when really they should say saw.
And now for my environment editorial: Last Friday I hitched a ride to La Lucha with a friend of mine Don Jaime, who is a vet/doctor and started Proyecto Asis animal rescue center in hopes of teaching ppl to live in harmony with nature and not to destroy it. He definitively cares for animals as the center has well over 100 animals either in recuperation or living there. Well we were about 15mins from Asis when in the middle of the road was a litter of 4 kittens that couldn’t have been more than a month old. Of course he stops the car and I know for sure that we are going to pick these kittens up and take them with us. There was another guy with us and he thought we were crazy but after knowing Don Jaime long enough I was not surprised at this. However when we got to Asis he proceeded to tranquilize them and then put them in a bag full of carbon monoxide, effectively putting them to sleep. Now this I didn’t see coming. The response I got was that these kittens had no mother, nobody wanted them, and if they kept them at Asis they would hunt other animals and screw up the natural habitats of the other animals. He made it clear that he didn’t want to put them to sleep, but it was the only good option as he said they weren’t going to live a very good life. Truthfully, I know he’s right.
I see a lot of stuff here that I don’t agree with. A lot of families have small little chirping birds called perrícos (mini-parrots) that they keep in a cage and clip their wings. I don’t believe these animals are meant to be domesticated. They justify it by letting them out of their cages and letting them walk around the house, however to me it just doesn’t seem right. Cats and dogs are ok, caged parrots not so much. That is just an example of a bigger cultural problem that Don Jaime and Proyecto Asis are trying to change by educating on how to live in harmony with the environment. I was visiting a farm with one of my Costa Rican friends and there were leaf cutter ants carrying leaves across the trail and she decides to put a stick in the middle of their path to block them. I just kind of looked at her in amazement like a what are you doing kind of look and I really got no response. And to think her dad used to work in a national park! Anyways I’ll get off my soapbox now knowing that it is tough to change a culture that has become accustomed to having their way with nature. I’ll put the links up to web sites if you want to know more about the mission of Proyecto Asis.
I’ll sign off with some interesting things that may or may not interest you:
-If you are a mother this is your week to be in Costa Rica. Mother's Day is this Friday and we have the day off from work because of it. Gotta love it. ¡Te amo mamá!
-It has rained everyday in Alajuela except for two days I think since I have been here. It always rains in the afternoon or evening, except for one day last week it rained from 4am-9am.
-They now sell digital cameras that have a smile mode. If you don’t smile it won’t take the picture. My boss got this camera from her dad as a birthday gift and it’s for real. I wonder how much money it was to add that feature.
-I was able to watch the Packer game last night as we get MNF on our espn station down here. I forced my family to watch the whole second half while I tried to explain the whole Brett Favre saga. They really could have cared less. They were more intrigued by the stadium and the cheeseheads.
-My host family is an Olympic fan. They were all up at 6am last Friday to watch the opening ceremony and now all we watch are the Olympics.
-I planted a tree two years ago on one of my family’s farms and I just went and saw it and it is already bigger that I am. They say it is going to really grow a lot the next five years.
-People down here say I look like Micheal Schoffield from Prison Break. I kind of do though when I shave my head; all I’m missing are the tattoos. It goes without saying that the ticas love it ;)
viernes, 1 de agosto de 2008
Panama and tico words
Hello everyone, it has become apparent to me that i'm not very good at blogging. I've been reading other ppls blogs recently and have realized that mine are really lame compared to theirs. I used to be a lot better as far as sharing feelings and emotions instead of just play by play at what i've been doing. I think part of the reason is that Costa Rica is not a new place for me, I've been here many times so I'm used to a lot of cultural norms that might suprise other people. For one, everyone is probably wondering why the blog is called Pura vida or Tuanis.Pura Vida or Tuanis really means the same thing down here. Pura vida means literally pure life but people use it to describe anything pleasant. Like how are you: Pura Vida. How do you feel: Pura Vida. How was the food: Pura Vida etc. Tuanis is like the slang word for Pura Vida. I would always be asked, "Pura Vida or Tuanis?" and it didn't matter what the response was. Maybe there is more meaning to it but this is how I have come to learn it. They are two words that you really can't translate and can only learn to use after hearing the locals speak it enough.
The reason behind my web address being ticodustin is that tico means Costa Rican. It is their local touch that they will add on to any word, such as momentico instead of momento. There is a lot of variation on the language and I've been learning my fair share of pachuco (street talk). It is almost like learning a new language within a language. They have their own dictionary just related to Costa Rican words. I've been getting accustomed to this dialect so it was interesting for me to travel to Panama this last week.
First off, it was 12hrs one way on the bus, which sounds painful but the bus was nice and had a/c, bathroom and movies and was about half full so it was good for sleeping. I was looking forward to going there to see my aunt and uncle and cousins who were there visiting family on my aunt's side. Also I liked how you can speak a lot more informal in Panama than in Costa Rica which is all very formal, but can be harder to figure out at times just who you are talking about. Language people you know what I'm talking about. Also Panama has just as much slang as Costa Rica except I know none of it which makes it hard to keep up with the locals sometimes. I couldn't call them Maes (buddy) or tell them i had filo (hunger) and wanted to hamar (eat). After being in Costa Rica for a month I realized how little Spanish I could speak outside of Costa Rica. It really wasn't that bad, I just wish sometimes the slang could be a little more universal.
As far as Panama though, I had an excellent time. The landscape where I was was one of rolling hills, tall enough to climb, but not mountainous. We climbed one that was pretty steep, but from the top you look around and see a bunch of other hills all kind of lined up and scattered about the landscape. Very pretty. I also got a sneak peak of carnaval- the huge 4 day party that happens every year right before ash wednesday. The town Santiago, was about an hrs drive from where we were and we got there at about 6pm and the party had already been going for 8hrs and wouldnt stop until 5am. The easiest way for me to explain carnaval is to think of a small town and their main street... and then think of a huge football tailgating party in the street. And it is big, taking up the whole street with music blaring out of the back of vans on each side of the street with the dj screaming something every 30sec. Everybody comes out with their coolers (or cardboard box if you're like us and couldn't find ours and didn't want to pay $80 for one at the grocery store, talk about price gouging...) and they pick a spot in the street and just start drinking and keep going until who knows when. I kept thinking the kids at the U of Minnesota would love this because we never want to stop tailgating and go watch the game and the police always come around and kick us out whereas the tailgate party here is the main event. It was pretty fun overall but I don't know how they do it for 4 days in a row.
The next few days were pretty mellow before I headed back to Costa Rica, we visited with more extended family and enjoyed the cerveza (beer). I still can't get over how a can of beer is only 50 cents, where it is at least a dollar in Costa Rica. Maybe that is how they go for 4 days in a row. I'll have to start training for February soon...
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