Can you write the caption for this one?

Can you write the caption for this one?
Originally uploaded by ancho and lefty.

Walking, eating, winning, and whining... in no certain order

My 4:15 a.m. alarm was not welcome this morning. 4:15 is not so odd in the country, but here in the “big city” of Acosta, even my hosts weren’t going to get up with me to see me off this morning. They showed me how to work the coffee maker the night before, and that’s what is really important after all. I had to get up at 4:15 because I wanted to get to an agricultural market in San Jose in time to actually see some of the produce and one of the vendors told me that things sell out by 9:30. Why so soon? It’s a small, organic market with a loyal and early-rising clientele.

I took a 5:15 bus to San Jose and arrived at the market by taxi around 7:30. The bus ride was excruciatingly long because there were many pick-ups along the route and because there are some not-so-pretty places in the pavement due to recent earth shifting and mudslides as of late.

When I arrived at the market, it was otherworldly. The clientele was a mix of internationals and Ticos. I spied a male vendor wearing rainbow striped socks and a flowered apron (you will not see this in the countryside where I conducted my research). Vendors struggled to convince potential clients of the healing wonders of bee pollen and fish oil.

There was REAL bread.

When I say real bread, I mean the kind of bread that, once inside the loaf, one encounters firm, dense, innards, not the useless, tasteless paper fluff that passes for bread here. The national past time here is to eat bread, but the problem is that the bread bites. Our guidebook for Central America says that Costa Rica’s national chain bakery should be jailed for crimes against bread and pastry. And it’s true.

The first time I lived here, I was initially excited to see so many bakeries. But looks can be deceiving. Sure, they have long skinny baguette bags, but that long skinny baguette-looking object in it is in no way, shape, or form a baguette. To make matters worse, in addition to eating the bad bread, I have seen many people (for whom I otherwise have great respect) slathering their bread in Numar, a foul tasting margarine that is popular here. The point here is that my Costa Rican bread experience is sort of like the antithesis of my bread experience studying abroad in France in 97. And I won’t even start about the cheese here.

But the purpose of all this ranting is really just to contextualize how happy I was to encounter a loaf of bread that made a convincing argument that it might actually taste like a loaf of bread as opposed to say, those Styrofoam nuggets people chuck in fragile mail packages. So, I bought two loaves of bread.

I also bought organic raspberry preserves, some hard candies to gift to my hostess, a beautiful Peruvian wrap (light blue Alpaca wool, a steal at 12 bucks), and some organic baby corncobs from my friend and former neighbor in the country who has an organic farm.

When I got home, I toasted a big slice of the sourdough I bought, added some REAL butter pats, and topped that off with some Raspberry preserves. I was so happy. I ate so much bread that I had to go out and walk six miles to make myself feel like I had burnt into the ridiculous amounts of carbohydrates I had consumed.

Costa Rica is a nation that will never embrace the low carb diet scheme. Here’s proof: last night my hostess offered me macaroni and cheese with a side of rice. In the rural community where I did my research, people thought it queer that I did not want to eat rice, potatoes, tortillas, and yucca in the same meal. Macaroni and other pastas are slowly working their way into the diet, but they manifest themselves in strange combinations. Most people here seem reluctant to take on the idea of actually making a tomato based spaghetti sauce, even though all the ingredients one would need to do such a thing (tomatoes, tomato paste, garlic, rosemary, oregano, parsley, onions, red wine, beef/chorizo) are readily available.

I have to say that my hostess here (whom I lived with in 2003) seems to be more into cooking than I remember. The macaroni and rice example does not do her justice. She has concocted some fine meals. Tonight, for example, black beans and rice (hardly a surprise) with a nice red cabbage salad that contained onions, cilantro, and carrots. It was lightly dressed in vinegar. She also made small hamburger patties (called tortas) seasoned with cilantro and onions. We also had a plate of tomatoes. Since I had walked several miles before dinner, I was excited by the feast that stood before me. I ate with much gusto.

Yesterday morning, she was up bright and early making potato empanadas, which I have to say, are probably my favorite thing she does. I ate three. Then I went out and walked 5 miles.
Now, about all this walking I have been doing. Let me explain. There are great places to walk here, and everyday I wake up the first thing I truly want to do after one cup of coffee is walk up to this one road that runs along a ridge line. It’s a haul. First, to get to the road you have to walk about a mile and half UP UP UP. You meander through the center of town, up to another community called San Luis and then you hit the gravel (mud road) that is just the best place in the world to walk. It’s hard to stop walking because the views from the ridgeline just keep getting better and better. One side of the ridge looks out at the great mountain called El Dragon, where Ancho and I once went walking with friends from our community. The other side looks down into Acosta and surrounding communities.

Because I am on country time, I can get up, walk for an hour and half or two hours, and get back to the house by 7 or 7:30. It’s a great way to start the day. Another perk about walking here, is that because I lived here before in 2003, I don’t have to start from scratch learning my way around.

So, as you can probably gage from this entry, I am happy to be in Acosta. It was hard to leave the community where I have spent the past year. I am consoling myself with the knowledge that I am going back there this coming weekend to spend the weekend with friends and to say good-bye. I thought it would be easier to say good-by without the added stress of packing up my house and waiting for a taxi.

Tomorrow, I am off to a meeting of agricultural producers in a nearby town. All this coming week, if I am a good girl, I will be hauling my fanny down into San Jose to do the last dregs of archival research duty. The week after, I am taking a short trip to Turrialba to visit an agricultural library there and meet some other folks from the states doing research in Costa Rica (anthropological and ecological).

In closing, I would like to give a big shout out to the UK football team who managed to win an SEC Homecoming game in a season they would probably all like to forget. It takes coconuts to keep trying in the face of severe adversity. And I think severe adversity is an apt descriptor for the UK football program this season. So anyway, good job. I tuned into to the last 2 minutes of the game on-line and was pleasantly surprise by the score. This talk of UK athletics makes it quite tempting to begin chatter about UK basketball, but I will save you all from such nonsense. I am just thankful I will be home for March Madness 2006. If you don’t understand why this makes me so happy, then you don’t really like college basketball.

I write this to you all (all five of you who read the blog) with much love,

Lefty

My god, I even use my hands in Spanish

My god, I even use my hands in Spanish
Originally uploaded by ancho and lefty.

You never know what to expect of any birthday party, but that goes doubly so when you are dealing with a birthday party in another country, in another language, and in another culture. I have had plenty of experience with Costa Rican birthday parties--- they were easy enough to negotiate as a mere invitee, but as the guest of honor I was a little unsure if I knew just what to do. Add to this the fact that Ticos (or at least my beloved neighbors) like to change plans without telling you, invite people without making you aware, and generally refuse to follow USA birthday protocol, and I was pretty unsure of how the whole thing would unfold. But, if there is one thing I have learned in my time here, it is to go with the flow. All that control freak business got chucked out the window around March.

And so, it was with little surprise that as I sat in my house painting my nails at 2:15 this afternoon that a truckload of people from Acosta arrived unannounced at my house. They had been invited to the party by my landlady. She did not bother to tell me that they would stop by 1 hour and 45 minutes before the party started.

But it wasn’t 1 hour and 45 minutes before the party started, because the party magically got changed to starting at 3. And so there I was in my house- Laundry strewn throughout the living area (because it sure as hell can’t dry outside), my nail polish and paint remover, my plastic bottle of diet coke, my general state of unready to entertain seven, yes SEVEN people who appeared. Aaahh, but as Stevie Winwood once sang, “you just roll with it baby.”

And so I rolled with it.

As I hung out with my new guests, and one of them took over duties of painting my nails, I got to talking about the party. I thought, maybe I should ask them if they knew precisely where the party was to be held. As of the night before, the party was happening at 4 at Tio Jose’s house, but since things had obviously been thrown into an upheaval, I thought it would not hurt to ask. My guests told me they did not know. So, I asked my landlady who happened to be passing by.

“The party is at Jose’s right?”

She replied, “No, it is at Flor’s.”

“Oh. O.K.”

And so I rolled with it.

The party itself was quite easy to roll with. One of my friends and neighbors made the cake and her sister decorated it. It was beautifully done with a pink frosting as a base and then a hardened chocolate layer overtop the pink. She also crafted some beautiful roses. It was probably the prettiest cake I have ever had for a birthday (sorry Mom).

We ate carne asada (seasoned grilled beef), which was pretty decadent. At most parties we eat arroz con pollo (rice with shaved chicken). My neighbor Oliver manned the grill. My neighbor Flor hammered out tortilla after tortilla, cooking each one on a woodstove. I imagine she probably made 75 tortillas today. Incredible.

The food was good. The cake was delicious. The presents were sweet. It was a party I won’t forget. Luckily, I made it on time to the right house. It was my party after all.

This photo does no justice to the pretty cake

This photo does no justice to the pretty cake
Originally uploaded by ancho and lefty.

Turning Thirty

Turning Thirty
Originally uploaded by ancho and lefty.

Huberto- Mudslide Superhero

18 Octubre 003
Originally uploaded by ancho and lefty.

Tomasa's Tree

18 Octubre 032
Originally uploaded by ancho and lefty.

Not for your pizza

18 Octubre 022
Originally uploaded by ancho and lefty.

Blue eyed goat

18 Octubre 001
Originally uploaded by ancho and lefty.

What a difference a day makes

In the past 36 hours I have walked umpteen miles, met a blue-eyed goat, been rescued from the mud by a piece of earth-moving equipment (a man named Huberto was my hero), milked a cow, visited a rock with a huge hole in it where my informants tell me lived the last “Indian” woman in this community some 85 years ago (her name was Tomasa), eaten homemade cheese (and liked it), spent the night in the house of a family I was interviewing who live way up the mountain (they kept me out past dark and I could not walk home because it was too dark and too steep) and conducted several interviews. I am probably leaving something out, but I will let it go at that. Anyway, despite the fact that the rain is worse than ever, I am back in action and the flu is a mere memory.

Tomasa's home was tucked back in beautiful hills I had never visited before. A majestic tree grew atop her rock home. Its roots had inched into a crevice in the rock, cracking open the ceiling of Tomasa's home. The root system covered an entire side of the gigantic rock, cascading down to the earthen floor in search of more nutrients.

I imagined that perhaps that tree began growing about the same time Tomasa's residence was coming to an end - A new presence to keep the rock company. It was a nice thought at least.

My guides for this morning were my hosts from the night before, a mother and her young daughter. We milked a cow and then wandered around the countryside. My guide pointed out where Tomasa cooked (you could see the burn marks on the wall of the rock cave), where she slept (in the corner of the rock house), and even where she liked to entertain company (down by the stream). Tomasa lived with five dogs, who, I am told, protected her and hunted for her. Tomasa lived alone and never married nor had children. When she grew ill as an old woman, people from the nearby community carried her out of the rock in a hand-made stretcher. They took her to Acosta for medical treatment and she never returned.

I don't know what parts of Tomasa's story are true and what parts are false, but I do believe she lived in that rock.

We also saw lots of cool wildlife- mushrooms, a gigantic anthill complex, and teeny tiny frogs.
They sent me on my way with a bottle of fresh cow's milk. Later on today I was gifted a large amount of homemade cheese by a woman who makes cheese everyday to sell and to eat. I was a little afraid at first, as some of the cheese here is downright putrid, but hers was fresh and smooth. I ate some with fresh, warm tortillas and a cup of hot, black coffee.

Not a day for the lactose intolerant but all in all, a great day.

Negotiating the mud in the dark

Negotiating the mud in the dark
Originally uploaded by ancho and lefty.

This is my second to last weekend here, as I will be moving to Acosta (the municipal center) on Oct. 25, the day after my 30th birthday. I had hoped to have more energy to run around and visit with people, but with the continual rain and ever-present crud in my respiratory system, I found the prospect of venturing out rather ho-hum.

This morning the sun did assert itself, if ever so briefly. It was long enough for me to slosh around in the back yard doing my laundry in shorts and my black rubber boots. The spot in front of my washer is nothing but slishy-sloshy mud. Occasionally, in an effort to act cute, a piece of my laundry likes to slip out of the washer and into the mud (this is usually after I have actually washed it.) Underwear and socks are the usual suspects. They are always trying to go against the flow. Fortunately, such shenanigans were not on the menu this morning.

I got so excited by the brief sun that I finished up my laundry and prepared to take a short walk to a neighboring community. I was trying to be realistic- I would take a leisurely stroll to the store two or three kilometers away and buy something that I can’t buy at our pulperia. It would be my first trip out of this community in about 2 weeks. I knew I had no business going out for one of my major hauls, as I have been sick, but I also am about crazy from the level of inactivity in my life the past week. I set out the door with high spirits. The sun was bright, I had packed a little water and my camera, and I was looking forward to a little forward locomotion. I passed my neighbor’s house and she yelled out, “where’s your umbrella?”

I replied naively, “You think it’s going to rain?”

I stupidly kept on walking. I headed out of the community, trudging up a good-sized hill. My calf muscles were awakening! The sun was revving up my vitamin D levels! There I was, on the road--- walking! I passed a beautiful horned creature and snapped his photo.

I topped the hill and headed back down to the river bottom. As I approached the river bottom, I noticed dark clouds. Then a faint raindrop. Then I turned around and headed back to my house---- foiled in my attempt to get back into movement.

It rained for the rest of the day.

At 4:30 I walked up the hill for dinner with a family that I will certainly miss when I leave here. I had not eaten much all week and was delighted by the victual bliss that greeted my arrival. Afterwards, I looked at about a million photos of first communions, confirmations, weddings, fishing trips, and elementary and high school graduations. Later we snapped photos.

Around 7:30 when I was preparing to leave my friends made me put on shoes belonging to the oldest daughter in order to negotiate the mud. Apparently, they were not satisfied with the clogs I wore up to their house. Two of the older kids walked me out to the road, from where I would precariously hobble steeply downhill back to my house. I was wearing a pair of leather boots--- with three-inch hills. I don’t know how well you know me, but if you are reading this blog, you probably know me well enough to know that I don’t wear heeled shoes very often. I was a site --- and got a few giggles as I ambled past the pulperia carrying a plastic bag containing two pairs of shoes (my inadequate clogs and a pair of flip flops for inside). Yet another indication to the young men who hang out at the pulperia at night playing an irritating gambling pinball game that I am a bit off my rocker.

Dinner invite

Dinner invite
Originally uploaded by ancho and lefty.

He requires a large animal doctor

He requires a large animal doctor
Originally uploaded by ancho and lefty.

Thoughts on the rainy season, cleanliness, and motherliness

Nearly everyone in the community seems to be going a little crazy because of the incessant rain. The orange growers are worried about their fruit. The coffee growers are worried about their coffee. The beans that got planted about a month back are probably ruined. Children have bronchitis. Most of us have the flu. Clothes do not have time to dry on the line. The electricity goes out everyday- today’s outage was from about 8 a.m. until 12:30 p.m. I had to go next door to boil two eggs on a gas stove for lunch.

The elementary students just finished their exams and in order to celebrate their achievement, Mother Nature awarded them an afternoon deluge. The deluge continues.

I got an invitation to dinner tomorrow night at a household up the hill. The little girl who came to invite me advised, “Make sure you wear boots- the mud around our house is terrible.” It’s gotten to the point where I must wear one pair of shoes to walk outside and carry another pair (usually flip-flops) to wear in houses when I am visiting.

I lived in Portland, Oregon for a year and thought I knew about rain.

I knew nothing about a rainy season.

Robert Chambers, a fantastic anthropologist, has written a bulk of literature dedicated to examining why many international “development” projects fail. One of the most practical reasons that development specialists fail, according to Chambers, is that they often know very little about the places that they seek to “develop.” They may visit a country once or twice and stay only in the capital, avoiding the rural areas they are supposed to be serving. Most importantly, they don’t understand seasonality, because they try to travel only when the roads are good (the dry times). I have always agreed with Chambers’ critiques of the development apparatus, but now having the opportunity to live through a rainy season in a rural area, I have a new appreciation for his point.

When I lived in Portland, my unhealthy way of coping with the winter rain was to drink Black Butte Porter, a fine Northwestern Microbrew, and throw darts. Sadly, there are no dartboards here and there is definitely no micro-brewed beer. I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing- for now, it simply is.

I have not left this little community since Oct. 3, when I ran into Acosta to run some errands. Most of the time since, I have been ill. I am hoping tomorrow is my breakthrough day where I feel 100 percent better. Today, I feel about 85 percent better. I had enough energy to clean my house, which I felt surely needed a good disinfecting since I picked up a virus somewhere.

Having the house clean is enough to make you feel a little better. My Mom, who is generally always right about everything, has always been adamant about the necessity of cleanliness in the face of illness. When I was really sick and bedridden at my parents’ house several years ago with the lung infection the Health Department called Tuberculosis, my Mom and I had a little routine. I was way too sick to care about cleanliness, so each morning she would help me into the shower and while I was taking a shower she would re-make my bed so that it was nice and neat. Then she would clean all around my bed, where I had usually amassed a glass or two, stray tissues, a million different books, and countless bottles of medicine. (The treatment for tuberculosis involves and ungodly number of different antibiotics that you must take each day). Anyway, it always did help me quite a lot to emerge from the shower, which at the beginning stages of my recovery bathing was quite a challenge in itself, and find that my recuperation room was in order. She even put out a fresh glass of water.

Moms rock.

When I was old enough to make my own sandwiches for lunch I used to ask my Mom to make me the sandwich anyway, stating the proven fact that sandwiches made by Mom always taste better than when you make them yourself. When I ate my egg salad sandwich for lunch today, it just wasn’t the same as Mom’s.

I will be home soon Mom, and expecting a good sandwich upon my return. Might I even be so bold as to request some homemade beer cheese?

Gripe

Sadly, I have the flu, or in Spanish, gripe. El gripe came for a visit this Sunday and he is hopefully preparing for departure tomorrow. Because of my past history with small flu symptoms turning into knock-down drag out phlegm wars in bronchial passageways and the like, I decided to heed my body's warning and stay inside. It is really wet and rainy here and since most of my work is on foot, I always run the risk of getting caught out in a rainstorm. In fact, this helped propel mi gripe into active status on Sunday, when I found myself lugging several bags of "gifts" a couple of miles back to my house in the middle of the rain.

Monday and Tuesday I was feeling very icky- fever and dry cough. Yesterday a bit of improvement. Today, I am beginning to feel like a human being again- still the dry cough but I think the fever is under control.

The scariest thing is my lack of reading material. I read a pretty cheesy book Ancho and I bought at Goodwill about a guy who decided to walk across the USA in the 70's. I read the 1st book of the Lord of the Rings Trilogy, even though I listened to it on tape on the way down here and read parts 2 and 3 since my time here. Now, I am reading a very strange piece of nonfiction called The Devil in the White City, which merges the story of the planning and implementation of the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago with the emergence of a nasty and terrifying serial killer in the same city concurrent with the planning and implementation of the fair. This was a present from my Mom and I am still trying to understand what propelled her to chose this book over other possibilities. Overall, it's a depressing tale, but the research done on the architects and engineers of the fair is interesting enough to keep me reading, even through the nasty and disturbing parts about the serial killer.

The climate is not helping me feel saucy about the prospect of venturing out of my house. It has been strangely dreary here this week. I feel like I am in Portland in November- it's just a little warmer. In addition to the nasty climate, the electricity has gone out the past two nights and stayed out until around 8 a.m. (well after I am awake and ready for coffee). Add to this the element of water line repair this week, which the fellas start around 8 a.m. (so you lose your water just in time for the electricity to come back on) and one can imagine that I have had ample opportunity to sit around and feel sorry for myself.

Thankfully, the funk is lifting, and I am hoping most feverishly for a sunny day tomorrow. Or at least enough sun so that my clothes will actually dry on the line. Hey, maybe I will even feel good enough to get back to work on my research!

Grad night 2005

Today several students are graduating from colegio (high school). They and their parents will be going to Desamparados (a big city) to a dinner and dance that will last until midnight. My next-door neighbors’ son is among the graduates.

This morning his mother woke up at 4 a.m. and walked to a neighboring farm to pick coffee until noon. Then she went to a neighbor’s house to have her nails done, then to her sister-in-law’s house to have her hair done. She is wearing a light blue dress sewn by the local seamstress in our community. At work today in the coffee she stepped on some old barbed wire and it went through her shoe, so in addition to being nervous about her night out on the town (she told me she had never been to such a formal party before), and more importantly, watching her oldest child achieve something she and her husband never did (they both quit at primary school), she has an aching foot.

My neighbors built their house with help from the government. They own no land. He works as a farm laborer and caretaker and she works in coffee (which is seasonal) and cleans houses. Some months they live on about one hundred dollars. In addition to their three kids, all of whom are attending high school, they also are guardians of a niece, who is also attending high school. They are masters at making ends meet.

When Ancho first left in May, the mother sent her daughter to ask me if I needed one of them to sleep in the house with me. They are a caring and hard-working bunch.

I felt honored to have the opportunity to watch them nervously running around getting ready for their big evening. I snapped photos of them before they took off in the taxi that came to take them into San Ignacio.

Their son borrowed my camera for the night. He was so worried about running out of batteries that he took my battery charger too. I can’t wait to see the photos. It is so rejuvenating to see the excitement of rites of passage and an unknown future. Tomorrow, their son will go into San Jose to find the business where he will complete his “practica,” a sort of a co-op working situation where high school graduates go to gain work experience. He will work there for a few months and then ... who knows? During his practica he will live in San Jose and will only come home on the weekends to visit with his parents, like many young adults here. He is stepping into a new social and familial role, to be sure. And I got to sit right here and watch it all go down! This is why anthropologists do fieldwork. There’s just so much more context.

Happy fish marketers

Happy fish marketeers
Originally uploaded by ancho and lefty.

I am not sure why these fellows were in such a good mood when I snapped their photo, but they definitely wanted my attention when they noticed that I had my camera out. They are part of a colorful crowd that makes up the outdoor market in Hatillo, San Jose, Costa Rica. While most vendors are selling fruits and vegetables, a few, like these folks, sell fish or meat. You can also find value-added food products and clothing, lots of opportunities to participate in black market lotteries and frequent calls to buy ice cream too. I went yesterday with my friend Roxanna, whose husband sells at two markets every weekend- one in Guadalupe and the other here in Hatillo. We rode back home in his big produce truck, stopped by his mom and dad's for an early afternoon dinner of chicharrones and yucca, and then I eventually collapsed in my house, happy to be home in the quiet after a day at the hectic, lively, and loud marketplace.

One thing that was really great about the market is that I actually had connections to vendors there- my friend Roxanna would take me to a stall and say, this is Dania's Dad, or this is Eduardo's brother- he lives in Guapiles now. So it was neat that I distantly knew many of the vendors participating in the market. Spending time in a marketplace in Costa Rica also helps highlight the connections that these vendors have woven throughout the country. By working at a market you can meet people from all over the country (small as it is) and also forge potentially beneficial business relationships- for example, learning where someone has produce they want to unload from their land, but that they don't want to harvest themselves or even just hearing about land for sale or equipment, or anything else that might help an agriculturalist make ends meet, and perhaps if lucky, prosper.

Unlike the subdued yuppie farmers' markets to which I am accustomed, this market's vendors are aggressive- they yell out their prices, trying to entice you to at least just come and look at their stall. It leads to personal consumer confusion where you find yourself buying a huge bunch of bananas, even though you live alone and in a zone that produces enough bananas to keep you banana happy.

A view from behind the stalls

A view from behind the stalls
Originally uploaded by ancho and lefty.

These vendors are all probably tired. Many of them sold at another market the day before (Saturday), and arrived at the other market late Friday night or early Saturday morning, passing the night in their produce trucks. They come from all over the country, bringing the products that their particular zone has in season (pineapples from Gaupiles, oranges from San Carlos, strawberries from someplace else) That means that by this time Sunday, they have passed two nights in the cabs of old produce trucks or in the back of the trucks, had few bathing opportunities, and done a heck of a lot of work.

Live action market shot

La Feria de Hatillo 007
Originally uploaded by ancho and lefty.

Lots of folks pull little carts around the market, like the one pictured here. You can spot restaurant buyers with big shopping carts full of produce as well. This is a popular market because it is on Sunday--- the produce is not sparkling fresh as on Saturday morning, so it's cheaper, but it's still quite good. By around 1 p.m. when the market starts closing down, the prices start a downward turn as well. Everyone wants to sell off what they brought.