Walking off the cake

Walking off the cake
Originally uploaded by ancho and lefty.

After a whirlwind weekend in my research site, I am back in Acosta. I ate so much food on Sunday at a lunch celebrating one of my neighbor’s first communions, that I got up and walked at least nine miles this morning- seriously. I walked up the “escalara,” that comes after San Luis, then down to Occoca, then over to Los Altos los Calderones, then down again to Agua Blanca, then up, up and up to Acosta. A big old haul.
My neighbor’s first communion gave me a great opportunity to say goodbye to many people at Mass, but I still made rounds to several houses to wish people well and to say thanks for all the hospitality, helpfulness, and openness. In the process, I amassed two coffee cups, various candies, a rosary, and a dishtowel as recuerdos of my time there. Some tears were shed, but I made it through without any major fits of crying. Nevertheless, my eyes were red and sore by the time I got back to Acosta.
I headed out to my research site Friday night. I made plans to spend the night at the home of my friend Andreina. Andreina is 16 years old. She lives with her parents and two brothers. Her family raises cattle. In fact, Andreina has several cattle of her own, and a mare. Her family lives down by the river in a rustic wooden home. In addition to raising cattle, they raise beans, maize, yucca, bananas, plantains, sugarcane, and coffee. I can say that I have never known of a day when I did not see her family working. Their landholdings are spread out, so that they have coffee at the top of the mountain in another community, some cattle in pasture in another community, and their stabled cattle right by their house. When visiting their house, you feel like you are certainly down on the farm. Hens, chickens, oxen, a mule, horses, bulls, and steers pass the day in close proximity to the house. Andreina and her mom cook on a woodstove and because they work all day, they eat a lot of stick to your ribs kind of food- beans, chorizo, rice, tortillas (made from dried corn ground at their house), and agua dulce. Need the bathroom? Walk to the outhouse.
So now that I’ve conjured this image up of a hard-working agricultural family, let me also add that they like to watch telenovelas at night, and that Andreina’s brothers listen to raging hard-rock and rap. The night I passed at their house on Friday, Marixa, Andreina’s mother, kept running back and forth from the kitchen where she was frying up chicken on the woodstove, to see the outcome of the ever-popular telenovela Rebelde. She wanted to know if one of the school directors was going to get fired or not for his bad behavior. Anyway, just another reminder, that our ideas of rural/agricultural life are sometimes not quite on- campesinos like TV just like suburbanites in Cincinnati.
Anyhow, Andreina and I woke up Saturday to an empty house. One brother was hauling loads of oranges up a steep and muddy mountain road with his oxen and oxcart. Andreina’s Dad and other brother were working with beans. Andreina’s Mom left at 5 in the morning to go pick coffee on someone else’s cafetal.
When I woke up, I noticed unidentified, funky material on my comforter. I asked Andreina what it was, and she explained that it was from the bats, who often drop bits of food while they are flying around in their nightly feeding frenzy. Maybe I should have studied bats. I certainly seem to attract them.
Bat goo aside, it was a very beautiful morning- the first summer-like morning in a long time. I drank my coffee and prepared a grilled cheese sandwich on the woodstove for my breakfast while Andreina did chores. After coffee-fied I helped with chores. Then we set off for another community to see where he brother was working. I wanted to see the farm because 6 families jointly own it, which is a bit unusual here. They are also cultivating rice, which I wanted to see as well. So we set out and had a good, long walk in the hot November sun. Walking out to this farm also gave me the opportunity to check in with a couple that I wanted to interview that afternoon who lived nearby.
Andreina and I planned to return for the interview on horseback. She has helped me before, offering horses when I have an interview a ways away. And I’d like to think she just wanted to hang out with me. While living in Costa Rica, she has been like a sister to me. Always helpful, always happy, and always patient.
We waited for her Dad and brother to return with the horses, but when they never materialized, we sat out again for the afternoon interview on foot. We met her Dad and brother a few kilometers down the road. They had two other horses with them, so we took two and they took two and off we went. The interview with the couple went really well, save for the fact that it started raining and got dark. So, I had a hair-raising experience riding a horse in the rainy darkness, while holding an umbrella and negotiating steep, muddy roads. For Andreina, a person who has never feared horseback riding, it was hard to comprehend why I was too scared to carry on a conversation on the way back to her house.
I made plans to spend my second night with other friends, so we rode up to their house in the dark and I wished Andreina farewell. My other friends, a married couple with two kids, lived in the center of the community. It was an exciting weekend at their house, because their daughter’s first communion was on Sunday. So, there was a lot of cooking, frantic cleaning, and showering, and rushing up the hill to church for Mass, which was at 9:00 a.m. on Sunday. After the Mass, tons of folks came to the house for a lunch of shredded chicken, beans, rice, slaw, tuna pasta salad, and potato chips. We drank a rich, creamy drink that was sort of like a watered down eggnog, without the booze. As usual with this family, there was also a giant cake of which I was awarded a very large piece in praise of my dishwashing skills during the fiesta. (There were a lot of dishes.) Never ones to under sweeten- the cake was served with Neapolitan ice cream and cherry Jell-O.
After lunch, I visited several houses to say farewell, and then hopped into a taxi with a load several young men who were on their way to San Jose to work all week. Two have full-time jobs and the other three are currently doing their practica, part of the requirement for completing high school. When we got to my house in Acosta, they offered to pay for my taxi fare (about a buck), and I gladly accepted their farewell gift. I can’t help but wonder about their futures--- they obviously aren’t going to be farmers. But where will they wind up in the end? And how much will they help their parents make ends meet over the years?
The weekend was pretty tranquil- I was the most upset saying farewell to Flor, a woman who was like a mother to me, and her parents, who were like my grandparents. My landlady’s 12 year old son, Andres, was also a tough one to leave. We cried a couple of times- he really liked me. However, because I feel certain that I will return to this community, saying good-bye was not as painful as it might have been. The only thing I won’t miss about my research community are the biting ants, mosquitoes, and the mud.
So this week, I am off to Turrialba for library research and perhaps a bit of sightseeing. I have not visited Turrialba before, so expect a full report next weekend.