Livin in the Piña: Visit to my future site

May 20, 2009

Today I returned from a week-long visit to my future site, Barrio Santa Cruz, Buenos Aires, Puntarenas, Costa Rica. It is real hot there. Everything about the trip was fantastic, the only bad part being that I had to return to San Jose. We have 9 days left of training, and while it has been an excellent experience, we are all quite ready for it to end. I’m not sure if I’ve ever mentioned this, but San Jose is by far the worst city I have ever been to. Also, although I am very close to my host family, things have been hard for them recently. Our already dirty house and unhealthy food have now reached hazardous levels, so it’s going to be much easier than I thought it would be to leave. Maggots make it very easy to leave a place. Also important: if you are an ant, do not walk by a hungry maggot unless you want to die a horrible, horrible death. Trust me, it is not cute.

So anyway…my site visit. In each site where a volunteer is to be sent, Peace Corps staff selects a local “counterpart,” with whom the volunteer will be able to work and get started on projects and networking in the community. Before visiting our sites, we met up with our official counterparts in San Jose, and travelled with them to a training center in the mountains. There we spent 2 days attending various training sessions that involved getting to know each other and learning about our respective roles. My counterpart’s name is Eyohanid (even Ticos have a hard time pronouncing it), and she might be one of the coolest people I’ve ever met. In addition to being a high school counselor (which is an enormously important, but thankless, job in this country) she’s an athlete, dancer, arts aficionado, and karaoke singer extraordinaire. Oh, she’s also hilarious and strikingly beautiful (kind of to the point that it makes you sick). I have no doubt that she will be an excellent professional and social resource, and she appears to be just as enthusiastic about working with me. Another perk is that she’s in the English class that I will be teaching after the current volunteer, Jenna, leaves at the end of August.

Jenna, who just has 3 months left of service, is a prime example of why I did not want to be placed in a site that currently has a volunteer. Basically, she has a hand in everything, the entire community is in love with her (for good reason), no one wants to see her leave, and I’m the one who has to follow her act. While I am confident that, with time, I will be able to fully integrate and successfully complete projects, people are going to have some pretty big expectations. I’m going to be compared to Jenna constantly, and it won’t be a comparison to Jenna when she first arrived - they will be comparing me to the Jenna who now has 2 years of experience working and living in their community. She currently has a number of projects going that I am very interested in continuing, including teaching English to both adults and kindergarteners, instructing exercise classes, development of a community recreational facility, organizing a mentorship program between the elementary and high schools, facilitating a parenting class, and working on a number of projects with the Patronato Nacional de la Infancia.

While it is great to have so many projects immediately at my disposal, one of my greatest challenges will be forming my own identity in the community, and reaching populations that have not been able to benefit from Jenna’s work. This will be a challenge because it requires that I either find local resources that can sustain her projects without me, or that I leave some of her projects behind. Although following a current volunteer presents certain difficulties, this trip made me realize that the advantages of having Jenna around during my first 3 months of service far outweigh the challenges presented by having to replace her.

My week was largely spent following Jenna around and getting to know the people with whom she works, however I also moved in with my new host family. Doña Christina and Don Hugo are a slightly older couple who live in a quaint but very well-kept house in Santa Cruz. They are extremely caring and friendly people, and I think that I’m going to be quite happy there. Christina seem to genuinely enjoy cooking and cleaning all day, and I admit the spotless house is quite enjoyable after my living situation in San Jose. The food is still quite heavy, and although it is easier for me to eat now that when I first arrived, I’ve accepted that it just isn’t going to get better until I live by myself. Knowing that many of my fellow trainees are living with families that eat very healthy foods makes it a little bit harder, but I am very grateful for every meal that I receive, and sometimes we just have to roll with the punches. Pura vida.

My host father, Hugo, works in the shipping department of Pin-Deco(sp?), the huge pineapple company that appears to be the employer of most of the men in my town. People here seem to think it is a good company that takes care of its employees. Christina’s father is also living in the house. He’s quite elderly, nearly blind, cannot hear very well, and sleeps on the living room floor, which makes me feel quite guilty about having my own room. When I first met him, neither one of us could understand the other, but luckily this lack of communication was short-lived. From day one I made it my mission for us to understand each other, and by day two we were chillin, talking for 3 hours our on the porch during the thunderstorm and downpour which occurs every afternoon now that the rainy season has begun. The man has got stories, and although his family treats him with all the love and respect in the world, I think it’s been a while since he’s has someone trying to learn more about him, hanging on to his every word. I won’t lie, I come in handy sometimes.

I have endless stories about my time spent with the family. Although I definitely had fun busting out karaoke (the Ticos go crazy when Americans sing Celine Dion’s “My Heart Will Go On,” they cannot get enough), and teaching my little nephews how to play cards, my favorite family experience involved a walk to the pineapple fields with my host dad and brother-in-law. On my third day there, I was trying to put up my mosquito net, and my host mom told me to wait until Hugo could help me. Moments later, Hugo and Greivi (my host sister’s husband) were standing at my door, with machetes in hand. They wanted to go into the pineapple fields and cut a piece of bamboo from which to hang the net. I, of course, loved the idea, and they were both surprised and pleased when I asked if I could go with them. Along with my nephew and another little boy from the neighborhood, we searched long and hard for the perfect piece of bamboo, which is now hanging in my room. The pineapple fields are gorgeous, and since both Hugo and Greivi work for Pin-Deco, there were plenty of opportunities to teach me more about their work as we walked. For example, they pointed out that community members often burn their trash in the fields, damaging many of the plants, in spite of the fact that Santa Cruz has a fully-functioning sanitation system. It was at least promising that there are people like Hugo and Greivi who can identify that this is a problem, and who knows, maybe I can help facilitate the process of finding a solution.

For those of you who have made it this far in the post, I will reward you with one of my favorite stories of the visit. My very first morning in site, I accompanied Jenna to what she thought was going to be a little meeting with some elderly people in the community. The president of the group knew that Jenna taught exercise, so they wanted her to lead everyone in some simple movements and stretches before their meeting. Upon our arrival, it became quite clear that this was no “little meeting.” Buses, yes buses, of elderly persons from six different towns were being dropped off in front of a huge amphitheatre. Not only were there hundreds of them, they were all wearing pretty nice clothes, and there was definitely a lot of diversity in terms of physical mobility. Taking all of these new factors into account, we quickly formulated a very loose plan of action, as we (yes, at this point is was “we”) were supposed to kick-off the event. Once the music was bumpin we realized there was nothing to worry about, because these Ticos were bumpin!!! Ticos love crazy gringas, especially machitas (blond girls), so it didn’t matter how ridiculous our different exercises and stretches were, they were totally into it. We then turned the whole thing into a big dance party, bringing older ladies and caballeros into the circle with us to freestyle, with everyone on the outside mimicking their dance. It was just like my hip hop class in D.C….

Now that I’m back in San Jose, I’m trying to do my best to spend lots of time with my friends and family here. Tomorrow we have our “Family Party,” which the trainees throw for all of the host families. We’re going to make typical foods from the U.S., have a D.J., put together a huge slide show of photos from training, play soccer, basketball, and frisbee, and do a little presentation with roses for our host mothers and certificates for all of the parents. Should be fun, as long as we manage to feed everyone!!!

We just bought a lot of vegetables, and I’m hoping some of them are about to come my way very vegetable-free week in my household, so I would pretty much be the happiest person alive if that is about to change. Ima go check…Peace.