Reuben

Last week a friend of mine lost her husband to leukemia. I just met him about a month ago, 8 days after he received his diagnosis, when my English students and I went to visit him. He was on bed rest and exhausted from chemo, but the state of his health did not shadow his glowing, positive attitude and caring, good-natured manner. I remember feeling so confused and sad and angry that this was happening to him, and could only think that he was going to get better – that there was no way he could leave us so soon. The other day I attended the Mass and funeral service held in his honor. Hundreds of people came to mourn and celebrate his life. Visiting Reuben in his house the one day I knew him, hearing the news of his death, attending his funeral and talking and being with his loved ones has filled me with more emotions than I am able to express in a normal blog post. I am not by any means a poet, and in fact this is the first time I have ever written a poem (if you can call it that) outside of school, but the night of his funeral I had an urgent need to write what I was thinking about, and it kind of manifested itself like this:

Never underestimate the power of first impressions.

I knew him for 30 minutes.

Smile so strong you’d never know he couldn’t lift himself from the bed.

He just received a death sentence but made me feel welcome and comfortable in his home (in his bedroom, actually). There was no reason for me to feel comfortable there. But I did.

Chances are the chemo won’t work, but there’s no way the cancer can survive while this father-of-five radiates positive energy so bright. Right?

Then I saw her. Just when I was sure he must be the strongest person in this world, I saw her. Ten weeks ago she gave birth to their baby boy. They thought blessings didn’t come any bigger than those four daughters, but now a son too? Things couldn’t get better. So they didn’t.

Anguish was behind her eyes, but hidden. Not because she felt like she had to hide it, but because it would not defeat her. She was too tough for that, and knew too well the needs of those kdis. She found refuge in her understanding that a Plan had already been made.

Chances are the chemo won’t work, but there’s no way the cancer can survive while this father-of-five radiates positive energy so bright. Right? Right???

One week later they moved him to San Juan de Dios.

I was saturated in doubt. Where’s the power of positive thinking? People’s heads hurt from all the positive thoughts sent to his family.

What happened to the power of prayer? The Buenos Aires air is thick in it, and my knees which never before knew a pew are bleeding after knowing this man. Why isn’t he getting better? I’m willing to forgive everyone and anyone for this horrible, metaphysical mistake, just fix it!

They told me he was in his final moments, but I was certain the good he exuded was too strong to die. When I arrived at Mass, I realized my ignorance. Of course it was too strong to die.

The church was saturated in his positive attitude, his love for his wife and children, the values he learned and passed on to others.

Her dark brown eyes were red from the pain, but they carried his light. Her tranquility was contagious, and put her children at ease. She controlled the room.
Her composure and calm allowed everyone to not only mourn but also celebrate life.

The illness may have taken his body but it was no match for his spirit, for it will remain forever in the hearts and minds of everyone who knew him. And I only knew him for 30 minutes.

That snake right by your foot can kill a cow…careful.

November 11, 2009

Big volcanoes, canopying over waterfalls, rappelling, mountain views, swimming in rivers, pineapple fields and poisonous snakes…these are among the adventures in store for you should you decide to visit me. We also have Dengue.

A couple of weeks ago I eagerly traveled to San Jose where I eagerly awaited the arrival of my friend Adam. I couldn’t believe it…my first true days of vacation in the 8 months that I’ve been here were about to begin! My brother came to visit in August, but bless his little heart I was working the entire time. This was going to be different. As soon as Adam arrived, we hopped on the first bus to Miramar, a small town in the mountains, northwest of San Jose near Puntarenas, with gorgeous views of the Nicoya Peninsula.

After a night as the only guests at the hotel/resort, our first day began with a 45 minute horseback ride through the mountains, to the start point of a canopy tour that involved 27 zip-lines over waterfalls.


The other people on the tour were really fun, and the guides were fantastic. We ended up getting a ride back to Puntarenas with one of them, which was amazing because I never get to travel in an actual rental car (I’m always stuck on a hot bus that smells like doo doo).


We ended up getting into San Jose too late to catch a bus to my site, so we stayed the night and traveled to my site first thing the next morning. Now I happen to love my jobs and my life here, but apparently following me around my site can be a little tiring. He bravely tried to communicate with my host family, helped me out in both English class with kindergarten and with my adult class, survived my exercise class, and waited patiently during several meetings. I set aside part of our last day to show him the swimming hole that my youth group took me to a few weeks ago. We had a great time and everything was very relaxing with the exception of a surprise visit from a very very long, fast snake. It jumped 3 feet in the air after we crossed it’s path, and then proceeded to slither into the river that we needed to cross in order to get home. The water was above knee height, and over very large, slippery rocks, so I was definitely uneasy trying to get across but we both made it alive and well. Later on we met up with a Tica friend of mine (who LOVES snakes) and when I described the snake to her she gasped and said, “Oooh, those are really really poisonous! They kill cows!” I may wait a while before heading back to that river.



Needless to say, after trying to get 5 days worth of work done in the 3 days that I would be home, Adam and I were both exhausted by the third day in my site, and ready for the more relaxing part of the vacation – La Fortuna, the town closest to Volcán Arenal. The largest volcano in Costa Rica, Arenal is definitely one of the biggest tourist spots in the country. It was my first time really being a tourist here, and I have to say I did not like it. In my town, I am accepted as a member of the community, and it is rare that people try to take advantage of me and my gringa-ness. In La Fortuna, however, they are used to gringos who have no idea what they are doing, and I hated the fact that I had to prove to everyone that I am familiar with the culture here in order to not be scammed or cheated. That being said, we had a great time visiting the volcano, visiting one of the largest waterfalls in CR, swimming in hot springs, going down waterslides that should be illegal, and walking around town to look at shops and try different restaurants (none of the food was a good as my Mama Tica’s).

I love having visitors but man it is hard when they leave! I get rather used to not having people from home around, but then when I get a little taste home I miss everything and everyone so much more when I am stripped of it once more. Don’t get me wrong, it is DEFINITELY worth the pain afterwards to have visitors, but bouncing back into my reality here is a little bit tricky.
Now I am back into the work scene full swing, trying to finish up projects before the end of the school year (December 22) and before my Aunts Mary and Margret, my Uncle Ed and my brother come to visit for their hottest Christmas ever (woot)!

So…like…what do you DO exactly???

I often write a lot about very little, instead of offering up how it is that I actually spend the majority of my time. So, here’s a little bit about a lot - a summary of the projects I have going on right now to give a slightly better answer to the popular question above.

Most of my days are spent walking (very fast, I’m told) from one place to another, doing work jobs that are often completely unrelated to each other. Here is a sample daily schedule, taken from Monday of this week:

5-5:30am: Wakeup, cook/eat a HUGE bowl of oatmeal with raisins and mango

5:30-6am: Cold shower, get dressed, gather materials for all projects for the day

6:20-6:30am: Walk to the elementary school

6:30-7am: Practice hip hop dance with my 5th graders who are not remotely ready for their 7am performance, but it will still be better than all the other performances (sorry, but it’s true)

7-8am: Perform with my kids because not enough students showed up, and watch the other performance for the acto civico (civics act)

8am-11:30am: Arrive 30 minutes late to the training at child protective services (which is okay because we don’t start until 30 minutes after I arrive), participate in the training, and apologize profusely that I cannot stay for juice and ham sandwiches with ALL the mayonnaise (I had planned on the training starting on time, which was just plain dumb of me)

11:30-11:50pm: Speed walk to the school (again), carrying an umbrella to protect me from the beaming, steaming, angry sun.

11:50-12pm: Quickly Coordinate with school counselor and 6th grade teachers regarding 5 antiviolence workshops that use art to promote peace

12-12:30pm: Help my group of high school girls with their costumes and makeup for a performance about values at the elementary school

12:30-1pm: Watch and assist with the performance

1-1:30: Walk/run home, put a boiled egg in my mouth and grab an apple (which was probably imported from the US and so it’s already soft and disappointing), change my clothes because I’ve been sweating too much already, grab materials for the rest of the day.

2-3pm: Hustle over to the place where I make copies (i.e. spend all my money), spend 30 minutes revising my diagnostic of the community (a 40 page document we write, in Spanish, to give to community members with whom we work), quickly plan English class, pick up my copies, and make my way over to the other elementary school, which is much smaller and has very few resources (see photo above).

3-5pm: Facilitate a meeting of Chicas Poderosas (Powerful Girls) with the 5th and 6th grade girls. Today is the first meeting, for which I spent most of the weekend planning and preparing materials. The project will last until the end of December, and each week includes activities about a different theme (e.g. leadership, communication skills, sexuality, gender, exercise and nutrition, boyfriends, working in a group, etc.).

5-5:30: Walk/run back to the first elementary school

5:30-7:30: Teach English to a group of adults/high school students

8:00pm: Arrive home and immediately grab jump rope and resistance bands

8-9pm: Workout in front of my host sister’s house because it is nice and hidden and people stop and watch me everywhere else. I’m sad because she is moving in 2 weeks!

9-9:30: Cold shower (feels sooooo good), eat a big bowl of beans, an egg cooked with cauliflower or green beans, and salad, and talk to host parents.

9:30-10:30: Go to my room and plan/prepare materials for tomorrow’s adventures

10:30-11: Read about 5 pages of whatever book I am currently reading (The Red Tent by Anita Diamant right now) before pass out with the fan on full blast.

Here are some of the projects I’m working on right now:

In the colegio (high school) I am still trying to finish up the mentor program. I am trying to start a women’s soccer team for next school year (which starts in February), so we’ll see how that goes. I also still have my 10th grade girl’s dance group. I’m teaching them hip hop right now, which would sound ridiculous to anyone in the States who has ever seen me dance hip hop, but here most kids have hardly even seen hip hop dance, so they don’t know that I’m terrible at it (and I’d like to keep it that way). The Patronato Nacional de la Infacia (PANI), or our equivalent to Child Protective Services, just asked me to choreograph a piece so my girls can perform at a huge recreation and cultural diversity event they are hosting.

In one of my elementary schools I just started a group called Chicas Poderosas, which originally created by another PC volunteer several years ago, and is now used throughout Peace Corps Costa Rica to empower 5th and 6th grade girls as they engage in a 12 weeks series of activities related to self-esteem, communication skills, sexuality, nutrition and exercise, working in groups, leadership, service, etc. The group I have is definitely more challenging than they are innocent and easy-going, but I like it that way, and think that if I can keep them engaged then they will benefit more from the program than would an easier group. The conditions in this school are completely unsatisfactory, which has also been a challenge. Yesterday I was left without a key (long story, but not my fault), so we had to get creative in order to find a meeting space. One of the walls of the cafeteria is much shorter than the others and is no longer enclosed with wire, so we had to throw one girl over the wall. She then found a small desk inside and climbed one of the tables to pass the desk over to us on the outside. We then used this desk to help get all of the other girls over the wall more easily, leaving me at the end to get the desk back over and haul myself over the wall. We then held a pretty successful meeting in the very wet, rainy, and muddy cafeteria, and then went outside to the muddy plaza where they taught me a bunch of games I had never played before, and ended with about 30 minutes of straight up foot races (bare foot races, of course, which involved removal of some pretty big thorns). And now I’m back to saying a lot about really little….

At the other elementary school I am working on a series of workshops called Art for Peace, which combine nonviolence teachings with art projects, and will end in a big regional event that is being organized by some volunteers who live about an hour away from me. I just finished teaching dance to a group of 5th graders for a school-wide civics performance, and I’m still of course teaching English to kindergarten every week. I taught them how to play “I Spy” today, which was a big hit. In one of my classes is a girl who is a girl who is quite high on the autism spectrum, and the understanding, patience, and sensitivity displayed by these 6 year olds in response to her needs is truly something to be admired.

In the shantytown my youth group is going strong. We went to the river the other day, and besides nearly giving me a heart attack every time one of them did a back flip off of a cliff, it was a wonderful time. They took me on about an hour-long walk deep into a valley and across a wirey bridge that has a sign warning that no more than 2 people cross at the same time, to a beautiful swimming hole where the water was deliciously cold. It is the first time I can remember being cold here. I took great pleasure in spending the day walking, swimming, laughing and eating cookies, with a group of kids who are smart, witty, fun, and full of energy. It is such a shame that most of them have dropped out of school, but I’m hoping that being a part of this group, which usually includes participation in nonformal educational activities, will inspire them to go back in February. Several of them have already told me that that’s their plan, so we’ll see what happens. My community meetings with the adults are less frequent these days but when they happen they are productive. Some ideas we are playing with right now: community fruit and vegetable garden, dance marathon at the colegio to raise funds they need for paperwork to apply for government housing, community bike ride to the river.

My adult English class has now started in full-swing. I teach twice a week, and even though I don’t typically like teaching English, this is the first group of people I met in my town, when I came to visit the volunteer I replaced, even before I knew I would eventually live here. They are incredibly motivated and wonderful company, so I love teaching them simply because it allows me to be in their company.

I’m still teaching exercise classes twice a week in the community center (or shack). I love all of my jobs, but this one might be my favorite because it relieves me of my stress while the others (wonderful as they are) often bring me a great deal of stress. I usually have about 20 people come to class, which I’m happy with because people here do not typically like to do exercise on purpose.

I’m trying to plan either a recreation camp (tennis, swimming, dance, basketball) or a triathlon camp for the end of January with one of the high-ups from the pineapple company here. Hopefully it will happen. I’m also starting to talk to the Community Development Association of a neighboring town, trying to see if I can get a playground built next to the basketball/soccer court that was initiated by the volunteer I replaced. More to come on both of those…..

Other smaller projects are always going on, but those are the biggies at the moment. Each day presents new little challenges, mistakes, and successes, and all of them build on each other in order to make this one gigantic learning experience. Okay, it is WAY past my 9pm bedtime, so this needs to end. If you made it this far in this blog entry I would like to congratulate you. Tuanis!

Hot Rica

As is typically the case in my town, it was real hot today. As I sit here sweating in my bed, unable to concentrate on work, I thought I’d write to you all about it.

You know you live in a hot place when…
…you sleep with an ice pack.

…you have to change your clothes at least 2 or 3 times a day from sweating so much.

…people who have lived there all their lives STILL complain about the heat constantly.

…it is 78 F and people are bundling up and talking about how cold it is.

…you don’t EVER miss (or even want to think about) having hot water.

…you are served hot soup or beans, and you have to put them in the refrigerator to cool them because they stay too hot at room temperature.

…freezers hardly ever fully freeze anything.

…you take a shower and the water that is freezing cold when it hits your head is warm by the time it gets to your legs and feet.

…you start sweating again even before stepping out of a cold shower.

…you have to wake up at 5am to exercise in remotely moderate temperatures because the sun is kickin’ by 6am.

…clothes hung out to dry are ready well before noon.

…not having a fan on you is like not having oxygen in the air.

…when comparing medical problems of PC volunteers in your country versus those in the rest of Latin America our medical officer says (and I quote): “As you can see we are winning in the ‘gina-cological’ conditions. That's probably because it's very hot and humid here."

Honesty is a virtue…right???

When it comes to commenting on one’s physical appearance, Americans tend to let their positive feelings be known, and to keep their critical opinions to themselves, or wait to talk about the person behind his/her back. Ticos, on the other hand, will not hesitate to comment on your physical appearance right to your face. I find it funny that in our Peace Corps training we learn that Tico culture is indirect, because I personally could not find them to be more direct. Obviously I am writing this because I have an example to share, and the story is actually very, very short. It goes like this: A friend of mine stopped by my house the other day after we hadn’t seen each other in about 2 weeks. Here’s how our conversation went:

Ana: Hi, how are you? What have you been doing lately?
Me: I’m good, just been working a lot. I’ve been sitting in front of the computer writing a huge report for the last couple of days.
Ana: Oh yea, I can tell you haven’t been exercising, cuz your face got all fat and stuff.
Me: Ummm…ok.

I mean, what can you say when someone says something is wrong with you face? Nothing, absolutely nothing. The thing is, I know she didn’t mean it to be offensive at all, but it just so happens they don’t tend to be offended when someone says they’re fatter, they just accept it, whereas we, well, do get offended. Here, telling someone they are fat is like us telling them they are wearing a green shirt – it’s not bad or good, it just is. Part of me wants to fully embrace the straight-up, brutally honest approach to body image, while the other part of me finds it to be a little unnecessary. Everyone is entitled to express their thoughts and feelings…I guess.

Mis Pollitos!

I love my job. This started out as a bunch of high school girls in my exercise class asking me to teach them the “Thriller” dance for their music class. Then they mixed Michael’s tune with contemporary music, and we worked together to make it fit the theme of “values” so as to enter their performance in a competition for “Arte por la Paz,” (Art for Peace), in which students of all ages from all over the country participate in arts-related projects that promote peace.

In this performance, one of the girls is having a nightmare that zombies (which represent violence in modern-day culture) are taking away her values and replacing them with anti-values, but I pretty much just had the memory card space for the Thriller part…you can just picture it all being very deep and stuff. Enjoy.

Those Magic Changes...

As I sit in my living room, watching two lizards run up and down the pale green wall next to me, and listening to another one make a screeching sound as it hides behind the map of the Americas above my head, I do not flinch. When I first encountered the little creatures, which find their way into each and every dwelling in my town and most others in Costa Rica, I was fascinated by them, and startled by their quick little steps and far-from-discrete nighttime noises. My newfound apathy for them is just one of many examples as to how my thoughts and behaviors have been altered by constant exposure to Tico life. So, I figured I’d just make a list off the top of my head of different ways in which my life or I have changed during these first 6 months in Costa Rica:

1. I eat just about every meal/food with a spoon instead of a fork and knife
2. I say “mamita” and “mi amor” on a regular basis
3. I brush my teeth about 4-5 times a day. I have always been a big fan of oral
hygiene, but here the norm is to bring toothbrush and toothpaste to work and
school, so that you can always brush after lunch and cafecito
4. Every day I speak more Spanish than I do English
5. I sweat ALL the time
6. People call me “machita” (“little blonde girl”)everywhere I go.
7. I eat a huge bowl of beans at EVERY lunch and dinner
8. All of my dirty clothes get washed and ironed every single day (I finally
convinced my host mom and sister that my workout clothes and underwear do not
need
to be ironed)
9. My clothes get ironed…period
10.Instead of running every day I jump rope every day (like Rocky)
11.I teach exercise and English classes
12.I live with little kids
13.People stare at me all the time (being a gringa here is kind of like being a
pretty circus freak)
14.God is referenced in nearly every conversation/social interaction I have
15.A group of high school girls asked me to teach them a choreographed dance (for
those who don’t know me, I would be an absolutely absurd candidate for such a job
in the States)
16.I wear business-casual clothing on a regular basis (who knew that my impressive
24 years of avoiding work clothes would come to an end during my Peace Corps
service)?
17.I am considered tall.
18.People offer me food all the time
19.I never pay for pineapple…cuz it’s everywhere.
20.I am an auntie

Ok, I could easily spend days adding to this list, there are just soooo many.