Watch Out for the Gringo Holes!

VWP: con permiso (phrase)--with your permission

Let me break down my average day in Costa Rica at the Institute of Central American Development Studies (aka ICADS).  This studying portion of my three-month stay will last for 5 weeks before I adventure out into a different city to intern in a Costa Rican school.  After a night of intermittent car honking and the occasional animal noise outside, my iPhone joins in on the noise at 6 am buzzing with "Uplift," my current alarm song.  I refuse to use a song that I actually like as my alarm because I realize that I will grow to hate the tune after associating it with frequent sleep deprivation, so for the meantime a meaningless mix of electronic noises will do.  This next fact may sound pathetic, but the most exciting part of the morning is trying to predict what my Tica host mom will make for breakfast--she continues to surprise me with quite a diverse array of traditional food and more modern chow.  Sometimes I get more Costa Rican flavours, like gallo pinto, a mix of rice and beans; however, sometimes I get a little taste of home with pancakes (here, "panqueques") with Aunt Jemima syrup!  One piece of the breakfast puzzle is always a definite: fresh fruit.  In a tropical island, you can always count on the most scrumptious fruit for breakfast, even if you have no clue what to call the fruit in Spanish.  I can remember a song from fifth grade chorus (it's engrained in my memory because of how awful our young, shrill voices sounded) called "Shake The Papaya Down."  This past week I actually had my first papaya! It's a rich pink color, tinged with a bit of orange, sweet as a refreshing popsicle, and healthy as grass juice (don't quote me on that one).  Other common fruits for breakfast include bananas, mango, watermelon, carambola (literally star shaped), guanabana (said to have cancer healing powers), and

Carambola fruit

callemito (purple and impossible to get out of clothes)--who needs strawberries and blueberries when I've got those?  Then with a little peck on the cheek from my mom, an energetic head pat for our dog Bella, and an adjustment of my big North Face "Hot Shot" backpack, I'm ready for the walk to school.

Costa Rica, and Latin American countries in general, don't treat women with the same respect that we receive in the U.S.; cat calling and under-the-breath "que guapa" ("how pretty") often just need to be repelled by death stares.  Literally, if an old woman was covered from head to toe, wore a hideous mask, and smelled like rotten peppers, she would still have to deal with this outdated disrespect.  So my Tica Mama prefers that I walk with Robert, a peer of mine who lives nearby and attends Pitzer College in California back home.  At 7:15 Robert and I meet up at the corner store, characterized by a large red sign that at first pretends to be a Coca-Cola advertisement but then throws off its disguise as we walk closer and the "Pilsner" beer logo comes into focus.  At 7:16 we pick up Lily, another one of our peers who will attend Smith College next year, and then make the ten minute walk to El Banco Nacional (the National Bank).  I often wonder if the security cameras outside the bank ever question why seven or eight gringos meet on the building's steps at exactly 7:35 am every morning.  Until they start interrogating us, I think we'll keep it as our meet up spot.  Lauren, Sarah, Samantha, Will, Zoe, and a few other of my classmates meet us at the bank at our designated time, and we set out on the second half of the trip: a walk up a very busy main road that at times has no sidewalks and at other times is spotted with dangerous looking "gringo holes," which are very useful in trapping oblivious American tourists who forget to always look at where they're walking.  There are no real street addresses in San Jose, so most people just use landmarks to give directions.  For example, my house is past the park and up the street from the stadium.  Very specific, I know.  Similarly, our landmark for school is the Pop Eyes fast food restaurant (how appropriate for a bunch of Americans), and the we make a right onto a tranquil street speckled with many private businesses.  Most of the time none of us gringos actually fall into the gringo holes and we make it to ICADS by 7:55 with five minutes to spare before our 4-hour Spanish class begins.

The ICADS backyard

ICADS Patio and Classrooms

  Throughout these initial 5 weeks, we will have two different Spanish instructors.  My first instructor was Ligia, a large, boisterous, rosy-cheeked Tica whose dramatic facial expressions and energetic demeanor made it possible for us to pay attention for two hours straight until coffee break.  ICADS purposely makes classes extremely small to allow for personal attention, and at five people my class is most definitely the largest.  We rarely talk in English during my class, instead we discuss everyday topics completely in Spanish; during one class our conversation often evolves from what we had for breakfast to our views about San Jose's crazy drivers and then international gender double standards.  It's odd, but in my high school spanish classes I learned words for very heavy topics, like environmental sustainability and human rights and government procedures, but I never learned everyday words like "awkward" (torpe) or "greasy" (grasosa) or "eggnog" (rompope).  We're spared 15 or 20 minutes for a quick coffee break in the patio--a lovely open space with two big tables, plenty of chairs, and a massive white umbrella.  The patio is half surrounded by small but open-air classrooms and the other half is adjacent to a grassy area which houses fruit trees and little bugs.  It truly is paradise.  After the next two hours, we're all very excited for lunch and conversations in English. There's no cafeteria at ICADS, so instead we all either buy our lunch daily or stuff the refrigerator with food to make lunch throughout the week at school.  If you don't run out of food and need to hustle to Plaza del Sol's grocery store just a few blocks away (in the scorching afternoon heat), then the hour and fifteen minutes for lunch is very relaxing.

A political rally during a field
trip to San Jose

The second half of our day until 5 pm can vary quite a bit, but the constant is that it's always in English.  Most days we're in the same room, a brown classroom with a traditional desks-in-a-row set up with a white board, lined with large wooden doors that are adorned with patterned glass windows. Some days we have experts (some local Costa Ricans or from America) present information to us, sometimes ranging from health care systems to education in Costa Rica and Costa Rica's natural resources.  There is one fatal problem here: the fan in the lecture room.  There are two fans in the room to provide some air circulation during the blazing Costa Rican afternoons, and one fan does its job very well besides the fact that it looks as though it could swivel off its fixture and behead whoever is unlucky enough to sit below it.  But the other one creates this nerve-fraying rhythm, a kind of click-click-click.  Needless to say, sometimes the lecturers can't handle the fan's noise either so we just put up with a little bit of natural perspiration.  Other days we have process groups; these small five-person clusters provide a forum for discussion about what we learned over the past week, questions we have, or our general sentiments towards our time in Costa Rica.   Or sometimes we take a field trip--some of our field trip destinations have included the U.S. embassy, famous sites in San Jose, and this week we are headed for a coffee plantation.

On the way to the gym

Even though it only costs about $0.30 to ride the bus, most of us walk home together in a kind of animal pack formation at the end of the day.  Slowly people peel off as they come to their houses, and Robert, Lily, and I continue to our houses, which are the farthest away from school.  After school I go home and change into workout clothes and just a block away from my house is the local gym, embedded in the middle of a yellow and blue soccer stadium.  Most of the material in the gym looks like it's from the 1990s, but honestly a bike is a bike and I just try to avoid the treadmill that has the sign "este maquina no funciona bien" (this machine doesn't work well).  There's no air conditioning in the gym, just the pure and clean Costa Rican breeze, and there's usually a Jackie Chan movie playing on the TV with spanish subtitles.  However, my workouts always must end promptly by 6:45 so I can be showered and ready for dinner at 7:10 pm.  In our introduction packet, ICADS warned us that Costa Ricans tend to be pretty sensitive to body odor and that students would be expected to shower every day, so you can bet that I wouldn't dare show up to the dinner table all disgusting after a trip to the gym. During dinner my Tica family and I always watch these overly dramatic telenovelas; I'm not sure of the past seasons' plot lines, but this one seems to be exploring the love triangle theme, the I-found-my-dad theme, the you-can't-marry-her theme, and blackmail.  If I'm going to leave the table to go work on homework or go to bed or meet up with friends, it's expected that I say "con permiso" (with your permission) in order to avoid rude behavior.

So, let's try it out:

Con permiso.                              

A Change of Scenery

VWP: gallo pinto (n.)--a traditional Nicaraguan and Costa Rican dish consisting of rice and beans (in large portions).  Tip: always be ready to eat more rice and beans.

Town of San Ramon

Before setting off for a twelve hour journey back to Costa Rica, I sat down in a wooden rocking chair on the garden-surrounded patio of our hotel (called La Posada del Doctor--The Inn of the Doctor) for yet another breakfast of gallo pinto. This traditional dish of rice and beans historically has helped Nicaraguan and Costa Rican farmers get the quick energy they needed to labor for many hours in the fields.  However, this cushy patio breakfast, surrounded by a neatly kept garden and modern statues,
was not typical of our week-long visit to Nicaragua; for half of the visit we lived with Nicaraguan families from either Matagalpa, one of the big cities, or San Ramon, a small and humble town heavily populated with horses and mostly absent of cars.  Waking up at 6:30 am for most of the trip, we accomplished and learned many things, so I'll make a list of the top 10 events, take aways, and instances from the trip that were memorable for either their significance, beauty, or startling effect:

1. My Nicaraguan host family certainly added a whole new layer of enjoyment to my trip, consisting of an elderly, strong grandmother who is caring for her four-year-old granddaughter, Debbra, a Disney-princess obsessed bundle of energy and joy.  Directly adjacent (I mean, I could hear their dinner conversations), lived Debbra's 19-year-old cousin Wayner (not pronounced the American way, but instead like "whiner"), Wayner's mother, and Wayner's older brother.  Daily Debbra and I played at the children's park in San Ramon, pretending she was Ariel trying to find her beloved Prince Eric, then we would return back to our small government-produced and donated house for dinner.  Her grandmother was handy with oil; Most of the time my dinner consisted of fried cheese, french fries, fried tortilla with refried beans, and rice.  A green plate? I totally agree.  Nevertheless, Debbra and I were always viciously hungry for any kind of food after our playground run-around--I knew Debbra started to warm up to me when during dinner she asked to be moved to the chair next to me instead of being one whole chair away.  Her grandmother would often join us, keeping Debbra focused on eating her food instead of playing with an extensively used Barbie doll, while informing me about much more serious subjects, such as the old Samosa dictatorship in Nicaragua and education reform.  Then once Debbra was put to bed (she dutifully complied) and Grandma began to cue the snoring, Wayner and I would begin our cultural exchange--since he didn't know much English besides "good morning" and "hello," it was up to me to really focus on my Spanish.  We talked about everything, including music, gay marriage, abortion, politics, gender roles, education, drivers' licenses, last names (most people in Nicaragua have both their parents' last names), fashion (he didn't have much to say on that subject), and his wishes for Debbra as she grows up in this slowly reforming Nicaraguan society.

Sledding down the volcano

2. So I've hiked a few mountains in North Carolina, right?  Well on Friday we hiked an active volcano (I promise it wasn't due to spew any magma while we were there, mom)! The volcano is called Cerro Negro ("black hill") and usually gives off some ash, steam, and magma every seven to eight years! The entire thing is a massive, black, sulfurous mound that at some parts is made up of pumas-textured clumps of congealed ash, and otherwise is a kind of sandy black ash. My eyes may have widened a tad when I saw the constant flow of steam drifting away from the center of the crater as we hiked around the very tall edge of the volcano.  The hike up took about 45 minutes, very do-able for a volcano, but the way down only took about 5 minutes.  How curious, right?  You don't walk down the volcano--you can either do a kind of ski running as the malleable ash mound slides around with each step you take, or you can rent a sled to slide down the side.  With one step, I moved 6 feet further down the steep side of the volcano, and my poor understanding of physics didn't comfort me as I felt susceptible to simply falling straight off the volcano if I were to lean too far forward.  Almost like a spider or snake, it appeared that the volcano

When Cerro Negro gets fiesty

 could tell when I was timid about taking a step, so I learned to just do a small little jog down the mountain and keep my mouth closed (nobody wants ingested ash, am I right?).  2,388 feet down a volcano may seem like a long way to go, and it certainly resulted in a few tumbles (some nice ash scrapes to commemorate the event) and some very dirty ICADS students, most of us with a decent layer of ash all over our bodies.        




3. La Base Organization spoke to our small group on Saturday morning to explain what their growing micro-finance organization is doing for local Nicaraguan cooperatives to help them receive loans, succeed in their projects, and get rid of the debt from the loan.  La Base initially grew out of the economic crisis in Argentina during the late 1990s and early 2000s, as factory workers wanted to get back to work, but lacked the capital needed to jumpstart the factories again and wished to work as a cooperative, without the boss-employee relationship.  La Base continues to support these kind of democratic cooperatives today on an international level just as it did in Argentina in 2002 by giving these cooperatives initial loans (at maximum $10,000) at a small interest rate (usually 10%), instead of the bank interest rates which tend to be around 30%.  Furthermore, La Base never asks for a guarantee from these cooperatives, like a car or house; therefore, La Base has even more incentive to make sure the investment in the cooperative and project succeeds.  These cooperatives range in the kinds of services they offer: from pig farms to family-owned cereal companies and an all-natural medicine shop.  What is similar, though, among these La Base-assisted cooperatives is their commitment to a truly democratic and cooperative mentality: the profits don't all go to one person, the power or presidency of a company is rotated and shared, and everyone involved in the group has a say.  Many of those cooperatives benefitting from La Base's investment in their projects would be unable to either get a loan from a bank in the first place, or be unable to pay back the loan from a bank because of the extreme interest rate.  La Base has seen many success stories and maintains a long-term relationship with those they have sponsored, often giving numerous loans to the same cooperative once the previous loans have been paid off.  

4. People in Nicaragua have a much different relationship with animals than most Americans or Europeans.  Almost every single family in Nicaragua has a gallo, or rooster, which means no need to buy an alarm clock since it makes a racket every single morning at 5 am without fail!  Most movies have led the American public to believe that roosters make pleasant and clear calls in the morning, almost like nature's best tune is thankful for the opportunity every day to be the first sound to kiss humans' ears.  However, that is a lie.  My first morning in Nicaragua, I awoke in a startled shock to what I thought was my elderly host grandmother yelping.  It's not a very good start to the morning when you spend a good fifteen minutes awake under the gauzy film of the mosquito net attempting to figure out whether you should call for help (if indeed that is your host grandmother who is screaming), or just plug your ears with your fingers and try to sleep again because it may be a rooster.  After much internal debate, plus the fact that I began to hear other odd screaming from the neighbor's house (unless their grandmother was screaming as well), I purposely did the opposite of what one is supposed to do when they hear a rooster and gladly went back to sleep.    

Sandino, began the revolution against
the Samoza family

5. Nicaragua's political history is mostly to blame for Nicaragua's place as the "second poorest country in the Western hemisphere."  From the 1930s to the 1970s, the Somoza family ruled Nicaragua as its playground--as Nicos attempted to find jobs, food, and education, the Somoza family instead used money to build a family palace and maintain a powerful national guard to keep opposition forces submerged.  In 1979, a Sandinista Revolution force fought back, and succeeded in more than just one
way.  They introduced a literacy campaign and Nicaragua's illiteracy rate shrunk from over 50% to less than 12%, women earned a place in society as fighters of the revolution (one of the symbols of the revolution was a mother with one arm carrying her baby, and the other arm holding a rifle--you go, girl!), and land reform was promised for all.  Even with these reforms from decades ago, Nicaragua still struggles to expand outside of its agricultural sector, enforce obligatory education, and minimize the size of its informal economy.

6.  The instant we crossed the border into Nicaragua, there's a change in the air.  Suddenly everything smells like wood and ash--and no, it's not because of the volcano Cerro Negro! Most Nicos continue to cook with wood, unlike their Costa Rican neighbors who cook with electricity or gas, simply because they cannot afford anything more advanced or safe.  Not only is the air affected by this cheap but easily accessible form of cooking material, but many Nicaraguans end up with permanent eye infections and diseases after years of cooking above the wood.  Furthermore, the Nicaraguan government and environment groups are attempting to convince rural Nicos to stop chopping down wood and using other natural resources (birds and iguanas are often captured and sold on the side of the road) in an unsustainable manner, by promising the economic rewards of ecotourism that can only be reaped by maintaining the luscious natural resources of Nicaragua.  

7.  Turns out, the most loved sport of Nicaragua is...(drum roll, please)...BASEBALL. I know, what a let down.  Unlike most other Latin American countries, who adore futbol/soccer, Nicaragua likes to be a  non-conformist and prefers a sport with hands instead of feet.  Even in Costa Rica, it isn't uncommon to see Nicaraguan immigrants gather for weekend baseball games in the park--and they're pretty good, too!

8. One of the biggest problems afflicting Nicaragua today is the emigration of many Nicos to Costa Rica in order to find work.  This is the case of the mother of Debbra, my adorable four-year-old host sister, who has left her daughter in the care of relatives so she can search for a decent living in Nicaragua's rich neighboring country.  This also creates animosity between citizens of both countries, which could be comparable in many ways to how some people view the relationship between Mexico and the United States in terms of immigration.

9.  Wayner, Debbra's 19-year-old cousin, told me that his grandma and mom taught him that "women are just as strong as men, and that's how it always should be."  This attitude can be very scarce among Nicaraguans (men and women), but also is very scarce among Latin America as a whole.  The term is "machismo," which can be described as the sense of being manly or macho (like not crying or showing sympathy), a pride in a supposedly higher value or status than a woman because he is a man, and believing in a man's role as the provider, protector, and ruler of his family.  But Machismo extends much farther than a man saying "I should be the breadwinner of this family!" In many cases, Machismo entitles men to be careless with women, often leaving women alone to care for the baby, either by running away or refusing to pay for child support.  There is a law that allows women to demand child support from the child's father, but that can only be used if the father has a permanent job, and with Nicaragua's shaky formal economy and growing informal economy, that's almost impossible to prove if you're the single mother.

10. I've never met such hospitable, kind, and loving people in all my life.  This is last but certainly not least in this list of 10.  Even with all these national and personal obstacles, Nicos welcome strangers into their homes, feed them plentifully, and love them like they were family.  I judged this country based on its economic situation, direly important environmental problems, and unfortunate political history.  That was so unjust of me.  You don't know a place until you know the people.  And these people, Debbra and her grandma and Wayner, they live with hope.  So I too have hope for Nicaragua.

     

Car Horns: The #1 Import of Costa Rica

Vocab word of the post: el bocinazo (n.) -- honk.

Today Costa Rica elected their next president (well, maybe).  In reality, with 14 political candidates on the ballot, it's unlikely that any one of them will have the majority vote--so we may have to wait until April for Round 2.  Even knowing this, Costa Ricans don't take their elections lightly; as one of the only Latin American democracies with a fairly clean track record, Costa Ricans recognize their government as "una bendicion," or a blessing. This kind of speaking makes sense as the official religion of Costa Rica is Catholicism and no presidential candidate would ever risk being thought of as a not religious man or woman. Why yes, I did say woman--the current president of Costa Rica is a woman! While she may currently have a 22% approval rating, that's not because of Laura Chinchilla's gender, it's because of the struggling economy (and maybe because her last name is also the name of the squirrel's chunky cousin).  The political candidates range from the very far left, a Communist hippie-looking man with a gnarly green hat, to the far right where neoliberalism is heavy and straight-laced tie-wearing politicians never break a smile. Among the parties, my family is a fan of PAC, el partido de accion ciudadano (or the party of citizen action), which was formed in 2000 after members of the two main political parties were jaded by the stagnant parties.

I awoke this morning to find my host mom and dad, whom I call mama y papa, dressed from head to toe in yellow and red, their party colors, and ready to hit the streets to make some noise! While Costa Ricans could buy bumper stickers, or put up bar signs (there are no front lawns here, everything is enclosed in taut metal bars), they instead chose a different method of political participation: CAR HONKING.  It should also be noted that Ticos, an affectionate nickname for Costa Ricans, are known for being horrible, terribly aggressive drivers. So today at 4 pm my family and I loaded into two cars, both with red and yellow flags hanging out the windows, and rode around town honking our car horn as many times as possible (and as annoyingly as possible).  By the end of the election day, half of Costa Ricans have hearing problems and the other half need new car horns.

The relationship among people of the same political party is astounding to a foreigner: they wave to each other, honk at each other, give thumbs up to each other, scream at each other, even dance at each other in a kind of political salsa dance.  It's not just 40-year-olds who take part in this experience, even my 4-year-old host-nephew was dressed in PAC colors and was in charge of waving our car's flag. In big stadiums there are kids elections, where Costa Rican children go through a mini voting experience, and then local television stations interview the young "voters."  But I haven't yet explained how voters of opposite parties interact.  So there are hundreds of cars clogging up the streets, honking and showing of their flags, but there are also hundreds of pedestrians gathered around to cheer on the cars--or to harass them.  Next to me on the sidewalk was a group of youngins and their parents for Otto Guevara, a George Clooney-looking right winger (all the Costa Rican women fawn over his salt and peppered hair).  Whenever a car for the PLN party, one of the two main parties that has green and white as its colors, would have to stop by them because of the awful traffic, the Otto Guevara crowd would gather around the car, almost right up to the windows, and chant "AWAY WITH YOU! AWAY WITH YOU!"

Otto Guevara

Here's a funny story about Otto Guevara:

Every single election that he's run (which is coming up on four), Otto Guevara has a different girlfriend--no one can resist the flow, apparently.  His last girlfriend and he attended a publicized Catholic mass the morning of the election to pray for a win.  When his girlfriend received the holy wafer, instead of eating like everyone else, she BROKE IT INTO PIECES and then put the broken pieces into Otto's suit jacket.  Costa Ricans were FURIOUS.  Later, she allegedly put it in his suit jacket pocket "so it could be closer to his heart," but Costa Ricans weren't taking any of that toroshit.  Needless to say, Otto lost the election and he got a new girlfriend.

The city has calmed a little now, the honking noises have subsided for the most part. Right now mama and papa are relaxing in front of the TV after a long day of advocating for their candidate, Luis Guillermo, and I can see it in their eyes that they don't take their democracy for granted.