Friday, May 22, 2009

My New Home

I just got back from visiting the town where I’ll be living for the next two years. It’s in the northern part of Costa Rica, pretty close to the border with Nicaragua and a wildlife preserve called Caño Negro. It’s soooo hot there- sometimes you can’t do anything but sit on the porch and feel sticky- but it’s also really beautiful, with lots of palm trees, flowers, and fields full of cows. There are about 300 people living there and most work with cattle or grow rice, beans and yucca. The town’s on a dirt road and it takes a bumpy hour and a half bus ride to get to internet, grocery stores, the hospital, etc. I will definitely be giving lots of English classes at the elementary school and to adults who want to take advantage of tourism near Caño Negro. I’m not sure what else I’ll be getting involved in yet, but it could be anything from construction projects to aerobics classes with spandex and 80s hits, haha!

I live with a couple in their thirties and their three children. The Dad is a police officer in a town a few hours away, so he’s only home a couple days out of the week. The mom used to teach at the elementary school, but now she stays home to take care of the kids, occasionally goes around town selling clothing and other items, and also helps her parents, who live right down the street from us, with their cattle. I have two brothers, ages 11 and 7, and a 9 year old sister. They are really cute kids and love spending time with me- whether we’re playing a game, swapping Spanish words for English, they’re firing questions at me about the US, or even just staring at me while I call home on the local payphone. When I got to my house for the first time, they were standing on the porch waiting for me and brimming with excitement. They’d hung up balloons, construction paper flowers, and a sign that said “Bienvenidos a esta casa” (welcome to this house) with each S written backwards and a couple of misspelling- aaaaw!

Overall, my living situation is really great- the house is comfortable, there’s a phone, my brothers and sister are awesome, and I don’t live to far from the town center. However, I am going to have to wage a fierce war against the ants that bite my feet every time I go outside- my toes were swollen and I got these crazy welts on my feet that totally freaked out my host family- they gave me all sorts of things to put on them and would not stop worrying about it. Worse than the ants, I noticed that there were little brown blobs on the top of my walls that looked suspiciously like some kind of animal droppings. One morning when my host mom wasn’t around, I asked my little host sister what lived in my room and she cheerfully told me there were “Vampirios”- bats! Greeeeat. After bat poop landed on the back of my neck I decided that was enough! I talked to my host mom and she said they’ve been driving her crazy since they moved in and she can’t get rid of them. But I’m gonna do whatever it takes! There’s got to be some kind of machine that makes a high pitched noise only they can hear, and I’m going to find it somehowand get them out of my room for good! Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!!!! If any of you have experience with or suggestions for bat removal, I’m allll ears!

Right next to our house is a cow pasture, so when I look out the window I’m usually face to face with a cow or sometimes the grandparent’s horse, which they bring over to eat the grass- he’s a very effective lawn mower. He is also my main source of transportation besides the buses because my family only has motorcycles (which they keep parked in the living room at night) and Peace Corps doesn’t let volunteers in Costa Rica ride or drive them. The first time I went into town (my house is a little ways outside) my host mom plopped me on the horse and sent me off with my little brothers and sisters on their bicycles and the grandparents’ two German Shepherds herding me in the right direction. People were definitely staring at this procession and I couldn’t stop laughing at how ridiculous this must look and at how lucky I was that I’d actually ridden a horse before.

That day, I’d ridden into town to meet with the Development Association, the leaders of the town, but when I arrived the president explained that because of the Turno, nobody could make it. A Turno is a big festival with dancing, food, and bull riding that goes on all weekend. Instead of having the meeting, I helped my host mom clean up and organize the little outdoor bar and we ended up working there most of the day, getting people beers or sodas. It was definitely an interesting way to meet people in the town! The men are the only ones who drink alcohol really- the whole day I only saw one woman having a beer, and she was a grandma who I suspect believes that after all these years she’s earned the right to throw social norms out the window. The way the men got me to take their orders was by hissing at me (which annoying as it is in other situations where it’s used as a cat call, was actually very effective at cutting over the music and talking) or by calling out, “Macha, macha!” Macha or Macho is the word they use to refer to light skinned people with blue or green “cat eyes.” Even though I’ve never bartended before, it was pretty easy because most people just asked for beers. I practically had to crawl into the big coolers to grab them by the end of the night though. I did have one embarrassing moment when a man asked me for a “bombilla” and I brought him a light bulb, the literal translation of the word. He just stared at me for a second and then was like, “No, no, no my love, I want a shot of Johnny Walker!” I also had a minor freak out when this HUGE bug crawled up my leg and I started screaming and jumping around and trying to kick it off- luckily I didn’t crash into any of the stacked crates of beers but everyone was cracking up.

When we left the bar, we walked over to the bull ring and watched men get bucked around- some of them were actually very good and others were too drunk to stay on more than a few seconds. One thing I learned is that, like in Spain, Costa Ricans whistle during bull rides to show disapproval or criticize a bad ride. At first I was confused because I tend to associate whistles with praise, and I couldn’t understand why they were cheering on the bad riders. After the rider fell or jumped off, all the young men standing around the edge of the ring would run in to chase the bull back into the pen or, more often, try to get it to chase them. At one point they set up crates and had two teams that had to try to get the bull to run after them through their “goal posts” to score points. My mommy instincts went crazy whenever someone got too close and had to leap up onto the ring to avoid getting mauled. I also felt pretty bad for the bulls being forced to go through all of that. There was a very entertaining clown- a man dressed in drag with balloons for boobs and a butt who went around doing these ridiculous dances, shaking his knees around like a chicken and chasing after the men- looking for a new boyfriend. At one point the Association president came out to dance with her and everyone was dying with laughter. After a while we went over to the Salon Communal, community hall, and danced for a while. Ticos loooooove them some Cumbia, which I’m still getting the hang of, but I did what I could and the DJ kept announcing my name in the middle of the songs telling everybody to welcome me to the town.

I had several other cattle related adventures during my site visit. First, I’m terrible at milking cows. It’s a lot tougher than it looks and you have to pull sooooo hard on their utters!! My host grandma totally schooled me after I’d bee tugging at this poor cow for like five minutes with no results and then she came over and like a machine filled the entire bucket full of milk in seconds. Later, I went with my host mom to her father’s finca, or pasture, to count the herd. I rode the horse and she took her motorcycle. After we’d counted them, she announced that we had to move them to another pasture and that she would ride on the road and meet me there, and that I should just follow the cows and make sure they got there alright- they knew where to go. I was left alone with the two German Shepherds and no clue where we were supposed to be going or how to make them get there. The dogs started running after them and snapping at their heels to get them moving, and I just sort of trotted along after them repeating what I’d heard my host mom shout “Ho, ho, ho, par’ aca, par’ aca!” I was half trying to keep the cows from moseying off and half trying to keep them from charging me. It was a bit terrifying and I’m sure I looked ridiculous. Eventually we got to the right pasture but half of them went into the pin- which at first I thought was someone’s back yard and I freaked out- and the other half were jerks and went to the wrong field and my host mom had to round them up again. The next day, we repeated this process and I was a lot more bold about chasing them in the right direction, cutting them off when they tried to run away, and I got them all in the pen! I was so proud- I felt like Nicole Kidman in Australia, haha! Probably the most absurd cow related thing though was when my host family took me to see the bull that died a few weeks ago. I thought they just wanted to show it to me, but before I knew it, there was a rope tied to my horse and the skull and they were standing on the skeleton telling me to pull. They basically had me and the horse rip the head of this bull off so they could mount it on their wall. I was riding through the fields dragging this skull behind me- torn between being totally grossed out and laughing at how crazy this all was.

On my last day in town, I went to visit the elementary school. I watched the second and third grade combined class- there were 11 students total and they were so adorable. During their breaks they would run up to me and ask me dozens of questions, hand me drawings they made for me, or get me to play different Costa Rican hand games. I taught them “down by the banks” and they looooved it! I think I will be teaching them English and doing other workshops at the school, which I’m pretty excited about. When I left town the next day I felt really good because I saw all the kids I’d met the day before, my host uncle, the teacher, and several other people I’d met. It was nice to see that I knew quite a few people in the town after less than a week. Now I’m back in San Jose to finish up the last week of training. Next Friday, I will swear in and become an official Peace Corps Volunteer- YAY!!

5 comments:

  1. Awesome post! LOL! We need a picture of your bull head trophy...

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  2. HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

    and i am sooo excited that you get to ride a horse since Jon could not fulfill that part of my (our) peace corps fantasy.

    HAHAHAHAHHAHA!!!

    your blog is going to be my favorite thing EVER. I'm glad Peace Corps is finally putting you to work! ;o)

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  3. oh and can I ride this horse when I come and visit. k thanks! what's it's name? when do we get pictures?

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  4. HAHAHA!! Only you Ashley...only you... I have to agree with Marisa in that your blog will definitely be my favorite read. You sound like you're having a wonderful time! So when I visi, you'll have to teach me a thing or too about dealing with cattle...given my camping experience I feel like I could learn a few things :)

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  5. Hey,

    I'm battling the heat here too...your life sounds very exciting and adventurous!!!

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