So I’m actually not all alone down here come to find out. Well actually I knew pretty much the whole time that I wasn’t alone, it was just that I thought my compañera (friend from work) lived relatively on almost the other side of the world. Well I thought that until I went to visit her town this past weekend.
Habitat has kind of like an adopted community where they built a bunch of houses and are now trying to develop the community and they have a volunteer to help them. She is teaching English classes, helping with a folk dance team, starting a recycling program and helping with many other projects like a community child care center. It is probably the most ambitious project, but they already have land donated for it and I’m working on getting them an architect to do some drawings for them. After that it will be a matter of fundraising $10-$15 grand to build and operate the center. Anyone want to chip in? Needless to say she is the most popular gringa (person from the US) living in a Costa Rican community that I have seen, and I’m a little jealous of her because of that ;) Anyways my beach plans for the weekend got cancelled so I gave her a call and she bailed me out by inviting me to her town because they were having festivals that weekend.
It’s maybe three hours traveling to get to her town from my town but it could be another country. For one, the landscape is not at all like the jungle-scape (see pics) that most people think of Costa Rica as. The best comparison I can make is maybe to that of N. Ireland. We are up way high in the mountains above the clouds, it rains a lot, is very cloudy, green and extremely cold. And by cold I mean that people have wood stoves that they cook with but also use to warm the house. Now for my North American readers I must add that I am really over-exaggerating the cold. The coldest it got was maybe mid 50’s at night, but I’m used to mid 80’s and humid so this was a big change. It felt like camping in October. I got to wear my sweat pants and hooded sweatshirt for once and I slept with legit blankets. Not just the landscape was different but the people too talked differently, had their own phrases and were more pasty white because it is cloudy 90 percent of the time.
I lucked out as the town was having a festival so they had carnival games, dances and a bunch of good food cooked up. No tacos, but the churros and tamales were pretty good. Saturday night we went to a small house party and everyone was chill and we were watching the Costa Rican equivalent of Dancing with the Stars. Well that ended and then they got out their sound system and started playing salsa music, something I’ve never heard at a house party. We danced a little and later they switched to club music and brought out a broom stick to dance with (or to be a stripper pole). It was getting close to my turn to dance with the broomstick when I made probably my best cultural save ever. Not being a big pole dancer I somehow turned it into a limbo competition. Everyone loved it and totally got into it. The game ended when we started trying to jump over the stick and it broke. (I wonder how they are going to explain that to their parents.) Mikey (la compañera) and I just kept chuckling to ourselves as we had never been part of such a lively limbo competition.
Sunday was pretty laid back however they were supposedly having a parade, which never arrived but they had a dance which was ok. It was ok mostly because Central American dj’s never shut up. They can’t let music play more than a minute without cutting in and interrupting or advertising stuff. It wasn’t even good commentary, mostly “Who wants free beer?” or “Raise your hand if you like girls.” So annoying, ay por el amor de Dios cállese y deje que la música se oiga (For the love of God shut up and let us hear the music). Anyways I now have another place in Costa Rica that they told me I can visit whenever I want.
Last Friday was a very interesting day as I went with three other Habitat employees to visit a very poor family in Northeast Costa Rica. The journey itself was pretty cool as we had to go over mountains and we passed some waterfalls and got some pictures. For me it was just fun to hang out with co-workers and be the only foreigner. It is funny though as everyone knows a little bit of English and some more than others but there are English words that are pretty much part of Costa Rica, or at least Habitat Spanish. For instance when we would pass by a waterfall or something cool everyone would say “Take a picture”. What, sorry and next are also other words that have gained acceptance in the Costa Rica language. Anyways the family we visited was the poorest family that I have seen in Costa Rica. We were way off the beaten path to even get to their wooden house. We went paved road to stone road to dirt road and then had to walk 100 meters (300ft-ish) to the house. The family had six kids the mother had cancer and the two youngest twins were noticeably malnourished. We brought them a whole bunch of clothes, and food and got them started in the process for getting their own home. There is a big donor group coming in December to help build and pay for this families house as there is no way they could afford their own home. There isn’t a lot of work and it is sporadic so as a family they might only make $6 a week. What is even sadder is that the work they do get I think is cutting down trees for lumber companies. Luckily this family had city friends that had been helping them get by month to month by bringing them food and supplies. Hopefully this story has a good ending 6 months from now as one of the older boys really wants to continue studying so hopefully he can get the help he’ll need. The walk from their current home to school is 3hrs so there really isn’t much chance that any of the kids will have a very high education level and will end up repeating the cycle of living in extreme poverty for generations to come. I’m confident Habitat will be able to help them out though.
In other Habitat news my jefa (boss) accepted a new job with the International Habitat office in San José and will be leaving us for good in November. They are going to pay her literally double what she is making now so I can’t blame her. Since I’ve started here about three ppl have left for other jobs and it has been because they’ll be earning double what they make at Habitat. So it goes in the life of non-profit orgs. My job is shifting a little bit also. With her departure I’m going to be focused on developing processes for Habitat construction projects. It’s hard to explain but we have to submit estimates to the banks that give us the housing vouchers and they want to make sure the money is being spent as efficiently as possible. So I’ll probably be buried in more estimates but I’ll also be working out of the San José office more often and there will be other day trips to go on. I currently work in the Alajuela office which is tiny-er so it will be nice to get out more often and head to the big house.
That’s all for now, is summer really over?
News and notes (updates):
-I’m pretty sure Obama will dominate, or Costa Rica is extremely liberal. The Republican convention didn’t get hardly any tube time in my casa (house). I even told them it was going to be in my old college town, but tropical storms take precedence.
-Speaking of tropical storms we are all messed up because of the indirect effects of the storms. We have big time flooding going along the pacific coast, so much that my beach plans have once again been cancelled. I don’t get it, the Caribbean coast isn’t getting any rain and they are closer to the storms.
-Alajuela’s soccer team La Liga, my favorite team here played such a bad game last night it made me upset. They almost give me Costa Rica National Selection team jitters but they played so bad I might disown them. They didn’t complete more than two consecutive passes the entire second half. I’m half glad they lost because they didn’t deserve to win. It’s not hard to pass the ball back and forth more than twice. It’s like a handoff in football, not that hard or risky. Speaking of football Americano…
-Is it Sunday yet? My football fever is in full force this week. I tried to avoid it up until now but I honestly can’t wait for the season to start. I think I’ll learn my lesson being out of the country during football season. I think ESPN deportes will be my savior though as I was able to watch last night’s game from my house, so I’m optimistic.
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