Wednesday, June 10, 2009

From Caribe de Cariari

Greetings to everyone! I moved to my permanent site on Saturday May 30th the day after we had our swearing-in ceremony at the US embassy in San José. I had to give a short speech for Swearing-in (Juramentación) in Spanish to all the members of the host families during training and the embassy people. It was supposed to only be about three or four minutes and be full of thank yous and the like but I got into talking about cutting tongues out of calf heads and discovering snakes in beds at night and it kinda ended up twice as long. Anyway, we were given a couple of free days after Juramentación to spend enjoying San José before we moved to our permanent sites, but the nearest town to my site was having a rodeo so I decided to move early and go enjoy that. Supposedly you can pay to ride bulls in the ring and they have games where the person to stay in the ring the longest with an angry bull running around wins, but I didn’t make it past the merengue and salsa dancing so I didn’t get a chance to test my luck with the bulls (and break I don’t know how many Peace Corps rules).

My site is called Caribe de Cariari, about a twenty minute bus ride/15 minute bike ride/hour walk/20 minute run, depending on which way you go, west of the town Cariari, pop. about 10,000. It is in the northeast part of the country in the province of Limón on the way to Tortuguero National Park, which is frequented by tourists who want to go see turtles. I can’t give you my exact address because that is against PC rules. Caribe is classified as a rural pueblo and it certainly feels that way, as it is surrounded by banana plantations called fincas. Semis hauling bananas rumble through town at all times of the day. Dole and Del Monte own most of the fincas and the bananas are shipped from the port city of Limón mainly to Europe but I think a fair amount end up in the US as well.

I live with two grandparents, Don Edwin and Doña Alicia, whose daughter and her husband plus two granddaughters live next door. I eat my breakfast and lunch with them, but they don’t eat dinner, which if you know my eating tendencies is problematic. I worked out an agreement to heat up extra food from lunch for dinner if I eat at home, or eat dinner somewhere else. I’m replacing a volunteer and have gotten to know her host family very well, so I’ve eaten over at her host family’s house a few times to supplement my meals at home (she is on vacation to the States for three weeks so I’m the only gringo in the barrio until she gets back on the 19th).

My first three months in site are supposed to be dedicated to writing a community diagnostic and developing an action plan for the next year based on interviews and meetings with community members. So far I’ve been spending my time getting to know people in the community, teachers and the director of the school, workers at the local health clinic and such, along with improving my Spanish and forgetting my English. For every new Spanish word I learn it seems that I forget an English one. Adjusting to the climate is going to take some time. The weather doesn’t joke around down here. Man is it hot and humid. The only break from the heat and humidity is when it rains. And when it rains it comes down as a torrential downpour. Rarely does it drizzle. The streets, which are dirt with a few rocks thrown in here and there, quickly become rivers. But in turn everything dries really quickly, so the next day you aren’t walking in mud or playing soccer on a soaked field.

That’s another thing I’ve been doing to keep busy: playing a lot of soccer, which is more or less the only sport played in Caribe. And for you fans of US soccer, you don’t know how much trash talking I’ve had to put up with after the US team got their socks, cleats and shorts knocked off by Costa Rica on June 3rd in San José in a World Cup qualifier. The pastor of a local church is trying to start up a gym and has a few weights, benches and other workout equipment so I’ve been helping him organize them and train youth from the community, and also lift weights with him three times a week. We are restricted to doing basic lifts, but they work enough to get me sore the next day. I also run in the plaza, so I’ve been getting plenty of exercise.

That’s pretty much been my first week and a half in site. I plan on (and hope to) add an entry to this blog every other week. So far I’ve had decent internet access, but things can change quickly here regarding that so who knows how it will be in the future. Hope everything has been well with everybody. If you want to communicate with me directly, I still use my college email address: adurland08@cmc.edu. I also have a Costa Rican cell phone and I get incoming calls for free. However, the coverage is suspect here and service cuts in and out. Also, foreigners aren’t technically allowed to buy cell phone lines, so I had to purchase an old one in a Costa Rican’s name. This means, however, that the previous owner’s voice mail box is still set up and I don’t have his security password. So until I can take the phone in and get them to erase his mailbox, which I hope to do within the next two weeks, I can’t check voice messages. However, I’d love to talk to anyone that feels moved to call me: 8355-0339. Take care,

Andy