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.

Volcanoes, Abortions, Mangos, and Refrigerators



May 10, 2009

About a week ago I went with my Tica friend, Margarita, to Volcán Irazú, the highest volcano in Costa Rica. The 20 mile bus ride took us high above the urban central valley, first through Cartago (the first capital of Costa Rica) and then past a seemingly endless number of small, agricultural towns. The landscape was beautiful, and Margarita could tell me literally everything that was growing on every single farm. She also pointed out various sites still showing damage from the last eruption, which occurred in 1963. We spent the day walking around the outside of the huge crater, which is technically still active, although it is not showing signs of erupting any time soon (don’t worry, Mom).


In other news, my host mom showed me her lesson plan for her next catechism class, which she teaches to adolescents every Saturday. The theme of the lesson was (wait for it) abortion, which is not exactly a favorite of the Catholic Church. She very thoughtfully offered to give me copies of her materials, such as a comic entitles, “Who killed Juanito?” Apparently, some people make comics that are not funny. I gingerly mentioned that as PC volunteers we are not permitted to teach the beliefs of any single religion, which was of course met by a look of confusion. As she flipped through horrifying photographs of aborted fetuses, and drawings of poor Juanito being sucked from his mother’s stomach via an evil vacuum cleaner, she argued that these books were clearly not teaching religion. They were just educating people about abortion.


A couple more random things that occurred to me today:

1. Obama was in La Nacion (our largest newspaper), but it was just a picture of him and Joe Biden eating hamburgers in Arlington. No article, just a caption that pretty much translates to, “Obama and Biden are eating hamburgers in Arlington.” Sooo…it was someone’s job to feature Obama in the Costa Rican news and, call me dense, but I don’t quite understand how it was decided that this was the best option. In any case, it had been a while since I’d seen his photo, and I found myself re-experiencing emotions from November and January, thinking, “Booyah! That’s my president!!!!”

2. Mangos are my new apple. Since apples here are gross and expensive, and mangos are cheap and delicious, they are my new go-to fruit. Here they eat lots of “mango verde con sal,” or slices of unripe mango with a little bit of salt sprinkled on top. If you like sour treats, I highly recommend it.

3. Ticos sometimes make refrigeration choices that I find questionable. For example, eggs are almost never refrigerated, and leftovers from lunch (meat and all) are often simply left out and reheated, however my host dad just put the rest of his chocolate bar in the fridge. Hmmm.

4. The house flies are back in full force. I´m trying to forget about the fact that they eat poop as they land all over my stuff.


I will be visiting my future site for the next week...should return with good stories. Hope this post finds you healthy and happy!!! Peace and Love!


Site Assignment!!!!!!


May 8, 2009

After spending the last year of life telling people that I don’t know exactly where I will be living for my 2 years of Peace Corps service, I finally have an answer!!!! From May 30, 2009 until May 30, 2011, Barrio Santa Cruz, Buenos Aires will be my home. I just went there for a site visit and fell in love with the place (see last blog entry), so I was elated to hear the news. It actually came as a complete shock to me, because my program manager definitely gave me the impression that there was no way I would be placed there. My experience was also different because, given that we only visit 2 or 3 sites in training, it is rare to be placed in a site that you already sort of know. It was exciting enough for everyone to just receive the name of a place and a little bit of geographical information, but I was lucky enough to have more points of reference. I immediately thought of all the people I’d met, who would soon be my neighbors and friends, and that the places I’d seen and enjoyed would soon be part of my own town. It was a pretty intense feeling, and it left me literally shaking with excitement for a couple of hours.

As if my site assignment wasn’t good enough, my friend Chamisa was placed in a new site that is just 30 minutes away! We will actually be working with the same PANI office, which is located in my site, and Chamisa will also have to travel to my site whenever she is in need of civilization (e.g. banks, large grocery stores, post office), so she will be forced to hang out with me. She is one of my dearest friends here, so I could not be more stoked about the fact that we will be so close!!!

I will be replacing Jenna, whose service ends in September. Although I didn’t really want to replace a current volunteer, I could not be happier with my site assignment. It will certainly be a challenge to have to live up to the standard set by Jenna, but having met the lovely people and seen the abundance of potential resources available in Buenos Aires, I am confident that it will be a good fit for me. Also, it will be extremely useful to have Jenna around for my first 3 months of service, and I’m really looking forward to getting to know her better before her big return to the land of the free and the home of the brave.


A couple facts about my site:

- semi-urban town of about 2,000 people (that's just Sanat Cruz...Buenos Aires has much more)

-largest rate of teenage pregnancy in the country

-at the center of the large, southern pineapple industry, and a Del Monte processing plant

-sweet mountains all around

-surrounded by a number of indigenous populations, includinjg the Boruca, Cabecer, Terraba, and Cabagra

-one of the top 3 poorest counties in the country

-third highest illiteracy rate

-drugs and child sexual exploitation are among most striking social problems

-lots of work to be done in the high school


I will be doing lots of work in the areas of sports/recreational programming, leadership groups for young girls and teenage mothers, mentoring programs in the high school, sexual education workshops, prevention of child sexual exploitation, among other jobs...I could go on forever. There's a lot to be done there.


A lot went on this past week, so I’ll try to reflect a bit and share that with you soon. Tomorrow about 40 of us are going Jacó (a very touristy beach area with a lots drugs and prostitution) to celebrate our new site assignments and use our second (and last) night out of site for the remainder of training. It is supposed to be beautiful, and I’m hoping to have some good, family-friendly stories to share.

I just consumed more saturated fat in my dinner than I consumed in the entire 10 years of my life before arriving in this country. My body is in shock, it’s making unwelcomed sounds, and it is taking every ounce of strength in my body to keep it all down. If you would like more detailed information on this matter, please email or call me.

If you don't like to read...don't read this...it's long


May 2, 2009

Brace yourselves, this is going to be long. I’m just sayin’….

I just got back from a week of technical training (i.e., training specific to the Children, Youth and Families Project) in the southern part of Puntarenas (relatively close to the Panama border). The 16 of us were divided into 2 separate trips. My group visited one volunteer in Térraba, a rural town with a relatively large indigenous population, and a second volunteer in Santa Cruz, an urban town that sits just blocks away from the center of Buenos Aires. Jammed packed with placed to go and people to see, the volunteerism-on-speed excursion was by far among the most enjoyable of my training experiences thus far.

The 5-hour bus ride from San Jose to Buenos Aires was gorgeous. We drove through crisp, autumn-like mountainous regions before arriving in the steamy, sweltering, inferno that would be our home for the next 6 days. Ashley, the first volunteer we visited, met us in Buenos Aires and wasted no time demonstrating her tricks-of-the-volunteer trade when the rickety, noisy, antique school bus arrived to take us to her site. Before any of us could even get to the line of people waiting to board the front of the bus, Ashley marched straight to the back, opened the emergency exit hatch, and instructed us to get in as though it was completely normal. She calmly explained, “This way you have space for your backpacks, and it would have been REALLY full by the time we got on the other way.” After screaming over the loud, struggling bus engine for 30 minutes, we finally arrived in Térraba and met our host families. I was the last person to meet my family, so I watched the soccer game that was going on at the cancha (field), and made friends with a woman who I wish had been my host mom there. She was hiding behind a tree so that her son couldn’t see her watching him play. In typical Tico fashion, after knowing her for less than 10 minutes, I was invited to stop by her house anytime for cafecito. I was also asked to tell her brother in New York hello for her is I happen to run into him. I hope I remember….

My host family experience in Térraba was the complete opposite of my experience in Fatima. First of all, the woman who was cooking for me hardly spoke at all, and when she did it was often hard for me to understand her. She is an older woman who lives with and takes care of her older sister. Both were very nice to me, but they would really only talk if I asked them something and even then all I got was a very brief reply. I also wasn’t even staying in the same house as them, so I would literally walk over there to eat, miserably fail at trying to strike up conversation, painfully eat while they watched me in a silence so thick that I could hear myself swallow every bite, and then leave because they would just stare at me instead of invite me to stay longer. I would then return to the barn-like house where I stayed, which was full of bats who liked to fly around my head all night while eating mosquitoes. While I appreciated their insect-repelling habits, the room was huge with lots of holes in the walls, so the mosquitoes had plenty of opportunities to attack me anyway. Also, it was one million degrees up there, and all I had was a heavy blanket, so my options were to either be able to breathe (a little) and get eaten my mosquitoes and punched in the face by bats, or to die of heat exhaustion under the blanket, which would at least protect my body from my winged roommates.

Although I got very little sleep in Térraba, I thoroughly enjoyed every day we spent there. Our first day we played against the town’s women’s soccer team, which eventually turned into a completely co-ed game as more people joined. I played in the field until my hip felt like it was going to break off, and then played goalie, which left me with some sweet battle wounds. I’m a firm believer that if you’re not bleeding when you come off the soccer pitch, you probably didn’t play hard enough. The next day we had an entire morning of activities with kids from the elementary school. Each one of us had a team of about 8 kids, and we were all racing to complete a series of 15 different tasks that involved critical thinking, working as a group, physical exercise, etc. Although my group finished in last place, I would argue that the quality of their work was the best, and that they were much more philosophical and thoughtful than the other groups, which made everything take longer. Yeah, so boo-yah.

That afternoon we went to the posa, or creek, which had 3 different pools and all kinds of rocks and cliffs and rocks to jump from. We decided to go to the farthest pool because it was the biggest, and in order to get there we basically had to climb and scale some rock walls, which was way fun. The water was freezing, which felt amazing because it was soooooo incredibly hot outside. That evening we spent 4 more hours on the cancha, playing soccer and frisbee with local kids and teenagers who just happened to stop by.

The next day we did a trash clean-up with the kids at the elementary school. We picked up trash for about an hour, and then they did presentations about the importance of protecting the environment. We spend the rest of the morning just hanging out and spending time with the kids, who did not appear to actually be going to classes at any point. In the afternoon our program manager and language teachers arrived. We visited the high school for a while and then tried to stay awake for Spanish classes after a long couple of days.

After saying goodbye to our host families in Térraba the following morning, Ashley escorted us back to Buenos Aires, where Jenna, the volunteer in Santa Cruz, awaited our arrival. I immediately fell in love with the town and with my host family. Sandra, her husband José, and their 3 kids, Crystal (8), Eduardo “Edu” (6), and Esteban (4) made me feel like part of the family from the moment I walked in the door. Sandra not only had a large-as-life personality, but she also cooked the best food I have had since arriving, which was priceless. I think I ate more nutrients in those 3 days than I have the rest of the 2 months I have been here. What’s more is that she is a fabulous mother, and her kids are completely adorable. I was thrilled to have kids in the house, especially because I don’t have host brothers or sisters in Fatima. My friend Jon and I were staying in houses next door to each other, and our host mothers were sisters-in-law. Both of them are in Jenna’s English class, and on our first night there we went to class with them. They were hilarious together, and we had a great time meeting the other people in the class and participating in their activities during class. At the end of the class they all decided to plan a party at the house of one of the students for our last night in town.

The next morning we helped kids at the elementary school paint huge recycling bins, which had been part of a larger recycling project initiated by Jenna. These particular kids had won a drawing contest, and as a prize they were given the opportunity to paint their designs on the bins. They were so focused and energized about the project, and the pride they took in having their own designs on display was just about the sweetest site on Earth. I LOVE that my job for the next 2 years is going to consist of developing programs that make kids feel that way …I am SOOOO lucky to be here!!!!

Later on that day, Jon and I co-facilitated our non-formal education activity, which was quite the prototypical Peace Corps experience. We had spent hours planning an entire workshop on the importance of exercise for a group of 11-14-year-olds, including very thought provoking questions, beautifully illustrated materials, and perfectly planned activities. When we arrived at the school to meet with our group, however, none of the students were there. After running around the neighborhood recruiting whatever young people we could find, we ended up with a group of people ranging in age from about 8- to 30-years-old, and they were pretty much only there to play basketball, not to hear a talk or discuss the importance of exercise. Given that our bosses and Spanish teachers were there to observe and evaluate us, we still had execute a lesson, but with this new group we had to throw everything we planned out the window. We ended up winging an informal discussion and them successfully teaching them how to play knock-out, which they loved. The PC staff observing gave us really positive feedback, and afterwards my adrenaline was running so high I felt like I could do just about anything. Here we would say, “Diay, mae! Vieras que toa me sentí después!” That evening we went to Jenna’s exercise class, and then chilled at her apartment tranquilo-style for the first time the whole trip.

Our last day was exhausting, but completely enjoyable. Ashley came back to spend the whole day and night with us, which was really nice. After meeting the staff at the local PANI office, talking to the director about the most significant issues facing youth and families in Buenos Aires, we had Spanish classes and then our staff returned to San José. Jenna and Ashley then took us on a 2 hour hike to an abandoned rancho that sat on top of a nearby mountain. The scenery was beautiful, and included the greenest landscapes that I had seen up until that point. We are just now getting ready to start the rainy season, so everything it has been pretty brown and dry where we live in the central valley. We played Frisbee at the peak of the mountain for a while, and then took a longer hike on the return in order to see more of the landscape. Right after we got back to our houses it was time to go to the party organized by Jenna’s Spanish class. The hostess happened to have a mini soccer firld in her back yard, so the party started off with a pick-up game.

For me, the best part of the party was watching my host mom, Sandra, who is basically muy pura vida and super tuanis (i.e. she rules). As soon as we arrived, she immediately asked to borrow a tshirt and shorts, and was slamming people to the ground, covered in sweat and dirt, in a matter of minutes. Immediately after the game she was back to looking perfect in her party clothes, and wasted no time grabbing the karaoke mic, blowing everyone away with her singing and star-like ability to perform. Where does this woman come from??? We sang Spanish songs and Celine Dion, danced meringue and salsa, ate arroz con pollo and arroz con leche, and laughed a lot, making it the perfect end to a long, tiring, and absolutely fabulous trip.

This week we have our final interviews with our site directors, who will then make their final decisions on our site assignments!!! Next time I write I will know where I am going to live for the next two years!!!!