El Salvador

I made it. Más o menos 20 hours in a bus and voila! Whole other country. Whole other world would probably be a better description. I am again finding that my vacations from my Peace Corps life seem more like what I thought my Peace Corps life would be like. It's kinda throwing me into a quandry.

Hope everyone had a good Christmas. Mine was very, very mellow. Carlos' family really doesn't celebrate x-mas with much fanfare, so we didn't do much of anything. They do their family thing on New Years so will have more to report later. We did distribute toys to the kids in the neighborhood so that was pretty cool. I got some pictures I will try to get posted soon. It was much harder to snap candids as they don't tend to get a lot of gringos here so I stuck out and the weird thing I kept pointing at people got a couple looks to. When I showed the kids the photos of themselves they burst into giggles, which was actually more foto worthy than the actual picture. The kids also loved the toys of course. Without a doubt they were the only ones they got this year.

Other than that I have been running around with my friend Carlos. The first night I was in town I helped him and some of his friends coordinate a romantic dinner to help him win back his girlfriend. Poor guy needed all the help he could get. It was looking to be hit or miss there for a while, but she was no match for the Mariachis. It was quite a show. Mission accomplished.

Last night I hung out with another friend, Alejandro, that I actually met on the bus ride the last time I came up here. He is actually one of the very, very few small business owners in El Salvador. He showed me around the city. San Salvador is a very interesting city. There are a number of architectually beautiful buildings and parks in the center but extroaordinarily bad government has buried them behind poverty and delinquincy. It's really a shame. There are also an incredible amount of Gringo stores. All the fast food, of course, but also a lot of malls and big name American stores. I actually saw a 9 West store. It is a very interesting place. The contrast between the haves and have nots is overwhelming. Hopefully one day El Sal will be able to reclaim their cultural landmarks and heritage.

Anyhoo... that's all I have to report for now. I am here until the 3rd. I am not sure I will be able to write before then. Internet is definately more challenging here. Hope everyone has a Happy New Year!

On my way....

I am in San Jose. I am headed to El Salvador on the bus at 3 a.m. I am hoping to stay awake until then so I can sleep as much as possible in a bus. I am already fading though so I don't know how well that plan is going to work.

Anyhoo.... Hope everyone has a Happy ChrismaKwanzaHannukka!

Critter

I have a new part-time roommate. It is a cat. I was going to say that I got a cat... but I didn't really get one. There was no effort whatsoever exerted in the aquisition, much like all my other critter roommates. It officially belongs to a neighbor but hangs out at my house. I decided to let it stay because I figured it may help fend off the rats. For those of you that have witnessed my apathy for animals this may be surprising. However, I have found that the cat and I have come to an mutual understanding of tolerance if, and only if, acknowledgement is unavoidable. The cat is also bi-lingual, meaning that it disregards me in English as well as Spanish. It has actually brought me some peace of mind in that I now can assure myself that it is just the cat making strange noises at night.

Semana de talleres

Wow! Where has time gone? I just finished up a whirl-wind week and things do not seem to be slowing down at all. I went to two workshops this week. The first one was about physical punishment for kids. It lasted two days and was a collosal waste of time, I kept having . But there were about 6 other fvolunteers fromt he vicinity that came into Puntarenas to share in the mind-numbing glory so we hung out at my house to recover. Priya, who is Indian-American made some incredible Chicken Curry for us at my house which made up for the fact that she broke my key off in my door that morning. All is forgiven. :)

The second workshop was with the local women's office and was about HIV/AIDS. It was a little crazy but night and day better than the first one. I made some good contacts for the workshop I am putting together for early March. So hopefully all will go well.

Yesterday, a fellow PCV, Brandon came down from Liberia with a friend that is visiting him. We took the Playa Naranjo Ferry (a.k.a. Booze Cruise) and had a great time living up the PCV lifestyle. Today is Friday and I spent the day trying to get caught up, if not ahead. I am headed to El Salvador on Wednesday to spend the holidays there. I will be back on the 3rd of January. Hopefully at some point I will have email access but communication is much more difficult there. My phone will also not be of any use so for those of you who call me from time to time (both of you) no need to bother for a while.

It was really an exhausting week. The family I hang out with in my barrio didn't see me at all and nearly sent out a search party. I wasn't even able to make my dance or exercize classes so I feel like a perezosa. I was able to get some work done but it feels like it was lost in the black-hole of downtime in captivity. Oh well.

I will be in San Jose on Tuesday so hopefully I will have time for one last post before I go.

Christmas Tamales

I spent most of last Friday afternoon making Christmas tomales with my "little old ladies" that I teach aerobics to. They were making them to sell and we ended up making about 200 tomales. They were so excited that I was helping them and learning to make tomales so that I could make them back in the states and/or for my Tico husband. They couldn't seem to decide which outcome they would rather see but had a great time debating the two.



It was a lot of fun and the tomales turned out ricisimo. Here's what I learned....





First you roast the banana leaves

Then you cook some stuff....

The tomales are masa (corn meal dough stuff), rice (no lack of carbs here), potatos, carrots, green peppers, pork, and chayote (a tropical vegitable) rolled in plantain leaves.

Then tied with love by little old ladies (Emphasis on the little, I don't think that either of them hit 5')

That's it!

Que torta

The rats have carried off my toothpaste.

Día del Pavo

Thanksgiving 2006 has officially been declared a "raging success." Gracias a Zoey. We spent the holiday in a lodge like rental just outside of San Marcos del Terrazu, South of San Jose. We had everything... turkey (2), stuffing, sweet potatoes, hummus and pretzle jello. We stuffed ourselves shamelessly. We played games, we chortled, we drank. It was a thoroughly enjoyable time. I even got the pictures uploaded and sent out. I am quite possibly one of the best foto sharers in the Peace Corps. :)

Anyhoo... hope Turkey Day for all back home was good. Love you and miss you all. Next year, I'll eat, drink and play games with you. Si Díos quiere.

Saturday Morning

I wake up this morning at about 6:30 and go for a run. In another month it will be way too late in the day to do this without risking a heat stroke. But this morning is slightly cloudy so I am able to run for just over forty five minutes with only the usual rivers of sweat. I get back to my house and realize I have nothing whatsoever to eat for breakfast so I wait about 20 minutes for the sweat to quit sreaming and walk to the conejo to buy a couple of things. On the way I great Carlos' grandfather who is retired from whatever he worked at and now spends his days telling his neighbors that it is "a pleasure to greet you." At the market, I have avocados, tomatos, cream cheese and natilla. (I was going to buy some tuna because I have found that the conejo is the only place in town were I could buy a can of tuna in water for under $1, never mind that I live 2 miles from a cannery, but they aren't carrying it anymore. Salada yo.)

I say "Hi" to the butcher who is also my only remaining English student. I was all set for a nice breakfast. I get to the counter after about a 15 minute wait in line and the guy tells me the credit card machine is down. I don't have enough cash so again; Salada yo. I walk to a bakery on the corner that I walk by at least twice a day but have never been into. No reason really, just havn't. The guy is really excited that I am there. He asks me how long I have been in Costa Rica and if I like it. He calls me Reina and mi Amor about fifteen times in the three minutes that I am there. I walk down to the pulperia passing nasty bar owner who implies that he likes what he sees. At the pulperia I ask about some natilla, a yogurt like dairy product that I initially hated but have aquired a taste for. It costs 300 colones and I only have 200. Julian tells me I can bring the other 100 later. I head home and greet my neighbor who has about half a dozen roosters tied to pegs in the park. Funny they never seem to have hens.

I go home, make toast and organic coffee I bought at the AVC that was grown by another volunteers community. I dip my toast in natilla, only 2/3 paid for, read a September issue of The Economist that has been passed, and will continue to be passed, from one volunteer to another. I drink my coffee. I eat my breakfast. I read my magazine.

¡Que Barbaridad!

Apparently I wasn't the only one that lost my right to vote this year. Although I do have to say that the reasoning behind mine was much more legitimate, assuming of course that there was reasoning. A nice reminder that, although we put ourselves as the world leaders of democracy, we still got some kinks to work out.

Anyhoo... since I didn't get to vote, I am going to scold: I am also sorely disapointed in the results, specifically that Musgrave and Tancredo were re-elected and that Amendment 46 passed and Referendum 1 didn't. Unfortunately, intolerance and discrimination continue to reign....

Overall... shameful and humbling results on many levels.

Nationally though, the picture is much better. So I just may make it back to US soil... Maybe.

Raise your Voice

Well, it's election day. This is my opportunity to remind all of you that you don't have to travel halfway around the world to make a difference. The least you can do is vote. Unfortunately, this election cycle I have been stripped of my right to vote as my absentee ballot did not arrive. I am sure it is some kind of conservative conspiracy. :)

Anyhoo... get out there and VOTE. You might also take a moment while doing so to appreciate all the first world conveniences that make doing so, so darn easy.

Also... on a personal note. You should also be sure to vote correctly. If the laws in Colorado scream ignorance and intolerance, I may not come back.

AVC

The All Volunteer Conference is officially over but I am still in San Jose. The conference was really amazing. I got to know my fellow volunteers better and am newly inspired by the work that they are doing. I have to say that the people I have met through the Peace Corps, as a group, are some of the most amazing people I have ever had the pleasure to know. (Besides, of course, my lovely blog-reading public.) We also had our Halloweeen party, we were the Black Eyed Peas... get it? it was fun... I will send pictures soon. My computer is acting up so I am going to keep this short. Hope all are well.

"Falling on my head like a tragedy..."

Well, the rains have finally hit. It has been pretty dry here, but the last week or so has been quite rainy. I must explain here that it is not rainy like it is back home. The biggest difference being that there is not that fresh clean smell after a shower. Here, it POURS rain. As in water-comes-into-the-house-and-destroys-furniture rain. As in streets-become-rivers-rain. As in smells-like-ass rain. What happens is that all the stuff that had been sitting around as aesthetic polution, trash, feces, rotting fruit, etc. begins to float and due to some magical scientific chemical process begins to smell... so as I said, that last description is not an exageration.

It has given me a very clear picture of the devestation that floods cause, not by the initial water damage but by the influx of diseases that follow. People are getting sick. There is talk of Dengue. (Of course, there is always talk of Dengue.) It's subtle, it's not an epidemic, it's just what happens when it rains. We had just a couple of strong days of rain, I can't imagine, although now I have a better idea, what it would be like if it were really flooding.

Anyhoo, I am headed to the AVC (All-Volunteer Conference) next week. We are all getting together for halloween this year. Should be interesting. Sure to be cold. Well, cold for Costa Rica. We will all bundle up. This year should be particularly freezing as now that I have become accostomed to living on the sun, if the temp drops below 80 I start to shiver.

Another Holiday

I came into San Jose last night. I was actually suppose to go to visit another PCV in Ostional on the Guanacaste coast and watch the turtles come in to lay their eggs, but she ended up with Dengue (which I thought was very inconsiderate). So I came in to San Jose and we watched a movie and I harrassed her for getting Dengue.

We watched an Inconvenient Truth. I was pretty shocked that it was being shown here since we generally only get the no-brainer movies but it is here and we watched it. It was really quite good and I highly recommend that everyone go see it. Two things occurred to me as I was watching it: One, that if the sea level rises 20 feet... there will be no more Puntarenas. So I would be S.O.L. Two, probably the most "world-saving" good deed I have done in all of this is that I have not driven a car and have been completely dependent on public transportation for over a year now. I don't think I even have to mention that I don't even mess with adjusting a thermostat. :)

Anyhoo... watch it. It's good and then do your part. Even Byron is on board. :)

Que Pereza

I find myself running around like crazy but I really can't identify anything I have actually gotten done. What happened to my Pura Vida lifestyle? I have had a hard time getting back into work since I got back from MST. I am still busy though I just don't have any idea what I have been doing. But it seems like the days keep passing and the list of things I have NOT accomplished gets bigger and bigger. So... life seems a lot like life here.

The big news on the block is that I have a new site mate. Marianne has moved into El Roble which is where Andre was. It is about a 15 minute bus ride from my barrio. It is kind of nice to have someone I can hang out with and we don't have to check out tits. Although we have already made a pact that we can't follow up every tedious and pointless meetings with an afternoon of drinking. Just the really tedious and pointless ones. That should keep us down to no more than once a week.

I am hoping to have something quasi productive to report soon. ALthough it is October and the holiday season is coming up which means that it is really time to start slowing down. :) What a life!

There's the official story and then there's the truth....

Quick update....

I made it through MST (Mid-Service Training) It was a little early, October 1 is my official anniversary date. The year did seem to fly by and everyone says the second goes by even quicker. I will let you know. Anyhoo, training went well. It was nice to hang in luxury again. Although it has made it much harder to come back. It is amazing how quickly you get re-accustomed to not having to pick bugs off of you.

Speaking of which...

I ended up having to go back into San José yesterday to get x-rays on my toe cuz I jammed it big time. It is actually not that big of a deal, nothing is broken and the official diagnosis is "ugly". I have pictures... you will see. I know you are all probably wondering how this could have happened. Well, the official story is that I was attacked by a band of 40 thieves. A struggle ensued wherein I had to fight them off with my Jackie Chan-esque fighting technique. In the struggle, I suffered a sprained big toe. Yup... that's the official story.

The truth is that I got into the shower and when I turned on the water I startled a mouse that had apparently been hanging out in the shower curtain. He ran across my foot, I jumped and came down on top of my big toe. Little bastard! I am hoping that this will even out my rodent karma after tossing the rat over the fence.

3rd World Living Lesson #184

Have you ever tried to burn a pile of tropically-moist leaves and grass? It takes a good amount of lighter fluid and produces a significant amount of smoke which naturally wafts directly into the house.

I happened to have some lighter fluid lying around as I mistakingly assumed that "alcohol multi-uso" was the Spanish translation for "rubbing alcohol" and not "lighter fluid." To say the least, my new earrings are sterile.

Web links

In addition to Tom's rural Costa Rica website project that includes tourism opportunities to see the "real" Costa Rica, I also posted a link to a website for a coffee co-op that Zoey has been working with. You can order coffee online that is environment and humanitarian friendly. It is also really, really good coffee.

Check them out and support the cause! :)

Poop on a bus

Here's a little something they didn't mention in the brochure...

I complete my first year of service at the end of the month. Which means that I will be in San Jose next weekend for Mid-Service Training (MST). Basically this entails those of us that have survived the first year (25 of 32) get together and try to figure out how to report what we have accomplished... as in... how do you justify the fact that your biggest accomplishment so far has been learning to point with your lips. The other fun part is that we will be hit with a barrage of medical exams and consultations to make sure that we are still alive and, relatively, well. These tests do include three consecutive days of getting a stool sample analyzed. The kicker is that you have to get the sample to the lab within 4 hours of its creation. As fun as that is normally... let me just tell you that it makes navagating transportation that much more fun.

Campo exchange

Quick update. We finished up in San Jose with the Cadena (PCV newsletter). All went well; good reviews from the director and no "revisions for content" required. I thought you all might be interested; a fellow PCV and Cadena editor, Tom, has set up a website for the women's group he is working with. The address is www.ruralcostarica.com. It is in English as well for those of you who are Spanish impaired. There is also a really great pig picture. :) I will put a link up on the right side of the blog.

Anyhoo... I am back in my site and although I am missing the bourgeois living I did at the hotel in San Jose I am happy to be back in dance classes. I am actually teaching my instructor to do Country Western dancing. It is quite amusing. Mostly because I don't know it very well and in order to describe the the Country Western "technique" I have been referring to many farm animals. As in: "Stiffen your arms and elbows like a chicken" and "walk like you you've been on a horse for two days." The hardest part is explaining to him that there is no hip motion. It's a ton of fun though. I'll keep you posted.

Barrio Silvestre

You don’t have to be a PCV for long before you discover that there are certain aspects of Peace Crops life that are indisputably distinct from your former existence. My “Treaty with Urban Wildlife,” as I have come to refer to it, is a good example. It runs something like this: Spiders are welcome in the house although physical contact is highly discouraged. Webs are left in tact except when erected in high traffic areas. Cockroaches are prohibited within the house and trespassers are swept outside. The occasional toads that wander in from the rain and are gently escorted to the nearest exit. The presence of mice and ants is also banned but compliance is erratic at best and negotiations continue. I am rather proud of my harmonious co-existence with the barrio creatures. I sometimes think of myself as the “Ghetto Goodall.” I am significantly less interactive and amorous with my wildlife subjects than the renowned primatologist but I am living with nature… sort of.
However, in the past few weeks, rodent treaty negotiations have intensified and are putting into question my “Goodall” status. Gnawed masa bags and nocturnal scampering escalated negotiations to full combat operations. I had resorted to setting out poison after my efforts of dissuasion and bartering had gone unheeded. The poison was only out a short time before my Buddhist sensibilities began to get the best of me. (Interestingly enough, my Buddhist sensibilities have not evolved to the point of vegetarianism, although I have developed a personal policy of not condoning the killing of any creature I am not personally willing to eat.) I finally decided that I did not want to be responsible for the karmic repercussions of destroying a living creature, even if it is a vile living creature. All illusions of having avoided butchery come to a halt when I walk onto my back patio and discover a dead rat lying under my sink precisely where I place my right foot to brush my teeth. My immediate reaction is a jerky, disjointed spastic dance. Once that is accomplished, I reassess the situation. It holds that there is a dead rat under my sink precisely where I put my right foot to brush my teeth.
I live alone, so this is not a problem I can ignore and hope it goes away. At some point I am going to have to brush my teeth. What exactly is the Standard Operating Procedure for rodent carcass removal? I check the PCV Handbook and find no answers. I figure my best bet is to burn it with the trash. Cremation sounds karmically acceptable; ashes to ashes, blah, blah, blah… I need a shovel to transport the corpse from beneath my sink to the trash pile. I look around and I’ve got nothing at all shovel-like. Then it hits me…BAM! I am a woman living alone in a machista culture. I so don’t have to deal with this. Granted… I don’t have a father, brother, husband or boyfriend BUT no importa, I can borrow my neighbor’s. Suddenly tolerating all of Fat, Nasty Bar Owner’s catcalls will pay off. I go next door and with all of the innocence and feminine docility I can muster I ask how one goes about removing a dead rat from under a sink. The marido takes the bait.
I show him the carcass and he exclaims, “¡Hue’pucha! ¡Qué grandota!” He kinda makes a face and I can tell that he really has no desire to remove my rat carcass either and is probably wishing “que no me hubiera dejado el tren.” He looks around, and then, apparently not finding whatever he is looking for he picks up the rat by the tail and holds it away from himself exactly as if he were holding a dead rat by the tail. I am thinking about rodent diseases and am about to remind him to wash his hands when he swings the thing down and then tosses it like a horseshoe over the concrete wall and into the neighbor’s yard. I stand, mouth agape, and as I watch it tumbling through the air head-over-tail over head-over-tail and then disappearing from my life forever I can’t help but feel like my entire plan has backfired.
Okay, let’s make the best of this situation. What I have now is an opportunity to teach, to challenge the status quo and instill higher values. That’s what I’m here for anyways, isn’t it? I ready myself to explain that “out of site” is not “out of mind,” that we need to work together as a community to solve these pressing concerns, that environmental and sanitation issues especially require collaboration and cooperation. We can’t just toss our problems into our neighbor’s yards and expect that we won’t experience repercussions. I take a deep breath and say:
“Gracias.”
Well…. it was implied.

Herein lies the problem, somewhere between intention and execution. Apparently all that first world, liberal-educated indignation with which I watched the rat fly over the wall was significantly overshadowed by a stark sense of relief. In reality, my number one priority was removing the carnage from my dental hygiene staging area. Punto.
Puro Peace Corps. We arrive full of bright-eyed idealism. There are answers. Take my hand. I’ll show you. We’ll do it together. We begin and there is buy in. There is energy. There is excitement. There is cafecito. Then it starts to crumble. There are obstacles. There is conflict. There are excuses. There is pereza. We think we’ve failed. We think we’ve failed because we have failed. The problem is not failure. Human beings are a flawed species. Our collective failure and frustration are born not from our inability to realize the Utopia we’ve imagined but from trying to escape the fallibility of the human condition. One day one may travel thousands of miles from home to “make the world a better place,” and the next toss a dead rat into a neighbor’s yard.
In regard to a treaty with the untamed human barrio creature…negotiations continue and are conducted, as often as humanly possible, with patience and compassion.

(The above is the article I wrote for La Cadena, the CR volunteer newsletter.)