It's the Simple Things: Watching the Moon

The other night I was in my house, feeling angry with myself for not doing enough work this holiday break. My head was flooded with ideas for projects, but instead of organizing them into a concrete plan I just continued to ruminate and obsess, which was obviously getting me nowhere. As I stared at the pile of manuals in my room, knowing that all of them could help me but not knowing where to begin, the electricity suddenly went out. The usual screams from the children in the neighborhood came and went rapidly and then there was nothing but silence and darkness. I started to reach for my flashlight when I noticed that outside of my window the street remained dimly lit. Intrigued, I forgot about the flashlight and my work and stepped outside. Directly in front of our house, nearly at eye level, stood the largest, brightest moon I have ever seen. I was struck by its beauty and size, and for a while could do nothing other than stand there, staring. I quickly felt the stress and anger and negativity I had been feeling melt away, leaving me in peace.

Just then, my host nephew came over and without saying anything gave me a big hug. We walked over to abuelo’s big rocking chair on the front lawn and sat together, memorized by the enormous globe in the sky, which was made all the more apparent by the fact that there were no other lights as far as the eye could see. Then, as if I wasn’t already happy enough, my host nephew says to me, “Morgan, did God turn off all the lights so we could see the pretty moon He made for us?”

At that point I had taken a complete 180-degree turn from frustration with myself to realization that I am not only here to work, but also to live, and be, and in that moment I felt more alive than I can ever remember. Pura vida.

First Lesson Learned in 2010

First lesson learned in 2010: Do not try to bike to the top of a mountain when you 1) have no cycling skills 2) have no brakes 3) are by yourself 4) have no cycling skills and 5) are using your PC issued bike made of lead.

It was not funny to me at the time, but anyone watching me the other morning would have had a real good time. I think I actually rode about 40% of the entire trip, and that would (sadly enough) include the descent. Only one of my brakes even remotely worked (and just barely), my bike chain was bone dry, and the bootleg road was composed of nothing but loose rocks which caused my wheels to slide anytime I so much an inched the handlebars to one side or the other.

I had never taken my bike on this route but when I hike this mountain the best part of the journey is to turn around and enjoy the beautiful view of my entire town. Not this day. My goal when I started was to actually cycle (using the pedals and stuff) to the top, however my butt hadn’t seen the seat since I reached the base of the mountain. On top of my disappointment in myself, I saw the cavernous rocky structure that lay ahead of me to make my decent on the other side. Taking these into account, instead of enjoying the view I said out loud (all by myself on a beautiful mountain top), "%^&* the view," and started the decent, which was much worse than the climb.

I forgot when I planned (or neglected to plan) this little outing that the other side of the mountain is not exactly bike-able (especially, again, with no cycling skills or brakes). The first part is purely made of deep craters and high grasses where, of course, all the poisonous snakes like to play. Due to the craters I had to carry the 4 million pound bike on my shoulders and, due to the possibility of snakes, ran (although you prolly can’t call it that) down the steep, uneven slope to reach the “road,” which was not close-by. I did this while making whimpering noises and nearly passing out from panic because if a nasty snake did bite me I was pretty sure that the only other animal besides me on this mountain, a big white bull, was not going to help me. Once I arrived at the at the road I destroyed my wrist trying to use the one brake that sort-of-but-not-really worked, which also made the most awful sound (if you listed closely almost sounded like, “you are duuuuuuuuuumbbbbb for doing this!!!!”).

I'm glad I didn't die that morning. I should prolly get a different bike, and stronger legs.

The Road to Water: First Step, Throw a Party

This post is slightly out of order, as it happened the week before Christmas, but I wanted to share how I spent the tail end of 2009. As I’ve previously explained, the people in the shantytown and I are working with the municipality in order to get running water for their community (nearly 300 people share just 2 tubes of water in the street). A couple of months ago I brought members of the municipality to the community and they set up a commission so that the needs of these people are actually brought to the attention of the local government (this community had been completely forgotten by the municipality and hardly anyone in my town knows it even exists, so this was HUGE). The process of attaining water is very long and complicated and anyone that would like more details is welcome to email me. The bottom line is that the community is going to need to raise a lot of money that they don’t have in order to have water. Fundraising here is a lot different than where I grew up. People back home have money at their disposal to give away. People here use their entire paycheck each month, and not to buy a tenth pair of shoes or to go out to a nice restaurant (or any restaurant for that matter). It is used to buy rice, beans, eggs, milk, and diapers (and the occasional fake plant or statue of the Virgin Mary) for their family. This means that local fundraising takes a lot of heart, soul, guts, energy, and most of all – motivation and teamwork. While I consider the acquisition of water in this community my highest priority, I knew that something a little off the topic needed to be done in order to build a foundation for success. That’s right – we needed to have a Christmas Party.

Many people who live in the shantytown are ready and willing to work, and that is great, but people willing to work do not always successfully work together. In order for them to raise enough money to get water in their community, they are going to need to work together as they never have before. I decided that a Christmas Party would be a good practice project for testing out our teamwork skills. Everyone would need to pitch in to raise money for food, games, decorations and then to cook, find materials for and facilitate activities, set everything up, take everything down, etc. When I presented the idea to the community they were definitely all on board. One idea that got thrown in was to try to find presents for all of the children. I knew this would be an incredible amount of work, but if they wanted to work together to find presents for the poorest children in my town, I wasn’t about to turn down the idea.

In Peace Corps, we are not allowed to privately solicit gifts/donations, so my role became the motivator/cheerleader to get people moving and organized (which is in fact slower, more difficult, and quite frankly more frustrating than asking for donations myself, but it builds character and stuff). Peace Corps does this in part to ensure that all the development is coming from within the community. For the same reason, we have very heavy limitations on soliciting funds from the United States (we are to train and motivate local people to fund their own projects, not to write letters home to grandma and grandpa asking for handouts).

Keeping these regulations in mind, I got together with my partner-in-begging-for things, Guiselle, and we came up with a list of every business in the area. We also made a list of people we personally knew in the community who could help us out. Guiselle also works for a development associasion, and (because I am not allowed to) they wrote letters asking for funds from local businesses. We then held a meeting with the people in the shantytown in order to divide up responsibility of going to the local businesses on the list to ask for their support.

I got my adolescent group involved, and helped them to ask local people for support. They were very much a part of the party, which is great for their own experience in service to their community and also is a way for other people in the shantytown to see that their young people are doing positive things (they didn’t always have such a positive reputation among their neighbors).

Sparing you the painful details of the nearly month-long preparations, we were able to assure that every child received a present on Christmas. The best part is that we did not solicit the gifts from “Rich Uncle Bob” in the States, or from any single big corporation or foundation (not that there is anything wrong with that). All of the help and support came purely from local people, most of whom did not even know that the shantytown existed in their own community. In addition, we acquired enough food so that EVERYONE in the community was able to eat rice with chicken and pork (the most traditional of Tico party dishes), tortillas, cake, and refreshments.

The kids got their faces painted, played pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey and pin-the-nose-on-the-clown, received goodie bags, had sack races and foot races, and enjoyed ice cream cones donated by the municipality. My group of adolescents served as DJs and helped run the activities. My favorite part of the whole day was in the morning when I arrived to help set up and found about 10 women in one family’s kitchen, cooking more food than any of us had ever seen all at one time. Seeing the smiles on their faces and the beautiful colors of the tomatoes, green beans, rice, beans, cilantro, onions, garlic, carrots, and spices was by far one of the most special moments for me as a volunteer. Many of them also appeared very anxious, but even that made me happy because it showed how much they wanted this event to be a success. I spent the morning making signs for all of the activities with the younger children, decorating and setting up the sound system with the teenagers, and making sure that the women cooking and other people helping to decorate had everything they needed.

This community was working together, and all of these materials and food were here because of that teamwork and the generosity of other people in our town. We partied all afternoon, and then I stayed around to clean up and enjoy the company of the people and bask in the success of our hard work. The whole day was long and exhausting, and planning this event was filled with lots of stress, running around like a crazy person, and things falling through, but it will forever remain as one of my best memories during my time here. They may not have been thinking about how this would help us gain water in the community, but it was very much on my mind throughout the process. I am now even more confident that we will be able to work as one unit in order to achieve this bigger, more complicated goal, as the experience of planning and executing the Christmas party gave us good practice and a chance to make mistakes on a smaller scale. Now it’s time to learn from the mistakes made and find success as we fry this much bigger fish – running water for 300 people. BUISINESS TIME!!!

How to get "muffed up" in Costa Rica

Happy holidays everyone, I hope that you were all able to spend time with loved ones and reflect upon the past year with fond memories and ideas about how to make the next one even more “pura vida.”  I was lucky enough to have four of the most special people in my life come to visit me last week.  My aunties Margaret and Mary, my uncle Ed, and my brother were all here to help me celebrate.  Before arriving in Costa Rica, they had read about the history and culture of Costa Rica, and also about the many dangers that this environment can present to visitors (or, as Mary put it, “The many ways you can die in Costa Rica”).  This post is inspired by (and plagiarizes) an email written by one of my aunts upon her return to the States:

They read about all of the ways one can encounter death in Costa Rica, but when my aunts, uncle and brother came to visit me for Christmas last week, they never anticipated that the biggest threat to anyone's life would be posed by something rather different than coral snakes, earthquakes, heatstroke, flooding, landslides, freshwater sharks, normal sharks, driving on narrow, mountainous roads with hairpin turns inches away from enormously high cliffs, crocodiles (we went to one river that has 125 crocs for every 1 kilometer of water), jaguars, or the deadly fruit and bark of, and air surrounding the manzanillo tree.  Although we nearly died of laughter when my aunt Margaret would tell people, “No te quiero” (I don’t love you) or “No te quieres” (You don’t love yourself) when she meant to say “No quiero” (I don’t want any), this was still no match for the greatest threat to most dangerous occurance of the trip, which involved none other than a fold-up couch in our luxurious beach condominium.  Travel book authors take note, because this oversight on the part of my aunt’s travel books nearly cost us her life. 

It all happened in the “snore room,” which was reserved for our sleepers with special habits.   My aunt Mary was sound asleep on the pull-out couch when her efforts to roll over were interrupted by a malfunction in the foldable bed.  There was nothing she could do as her legs were forced into the air towards her chest, and she found herself trapped in a death grip between the back of the couch, the spiky bed springs and the mattress, which flew up into the air as she struggled to position herself near the top of the bed.  The airborne mattress then left room for her legs to become ensnared in the bedsprings that once lay underneath it, making it impossible for her to pull herself up.  Next came the relentless Charlie-horse leg cramps and she began to yell for Margaret (the resident nurse) to come to her aid.  Confused and blinded in the still-dark room, Margaret fumbled her way to the disaster site and seeing the gravity of the situation called for backup from Ed.  The two of them worked to pry the bed back open and help Mary (who was without the use of her legs due to the cramping) out of the pit of death.  When I asked my aunts how is the world they were able to do that without laughing they said they knew that neither one would survive if they allowed laughter to take over and that Mary would never be removed from the situation.  Once Mary was free and everyone went back to bed (exhausted from the rescue efforts), the brief silence was broken by Ed when he said, “That was actually pretty funny.”  At that point all bets were off and the three of them broke out into uncontrollable laughter, which nearly resulted in a different type of emergency as they struggled to breathe and gain control of themselves. 

It was very special for me to have my aunties, uncle and lil bro here to meet my new family and my community, which is the reason for which I am here.  Every day I think about how grateful I am for my friends and family, and for the opportunities that I have either found or been presented with in this life.  Again, happy holidays, and may you have many moments that bring you so much laughter that you feel sick to your stomach and lots of pain in your face muscles.  Pura vida.

This post has no central theme and therefore no title, sorry.

I just completed 6 months in my site (9 months in the country), which means that one quarter of my service is already over. That is weird because although I feel like I’ve been away from family and friends for a long time, my work here is only just beginning. These first 6 months in site have been like running really fast on a treadmill at a steep incline. I’m working very hard at a very constant pace, very sweaty, and burning calories like crazy, but I haven’t really gone anywhere. One notable difference is that replacing those burnt calories with greasy rice and beans is difficult while running on a treadmill, but very easy in Costa Rica, so I’m not as buff or heart-healthy as I would be if all this running around was on a treadmill.

Peace Corps service lasts at least 2 years for good reason: the first year is about figuring out what the *$&% you are doing, forming relationships, and making mistakes, so that in your second year you are more comfortable about what you’re doing, utilizing the relationships formed, and learning from the mistakes previously made in order to facilitate community-based development that is (most importantly) sustainable. Teaching kids hip hop moves or giving a group of teens activities during the weekend are all fine and good, but let’s face it, the majority of my work right now is not sustainable when I leave. It is time to change gears.

In Peace Corps Costa Rica, our various projects are typically categorized on one of three levels: work with individuals, work with service providers, or work with community groups/organizations. Most of my work has been done on the individual level thus far, and while that type of work is lovely and most enjoyable for me, I can reach more people by training service providers and collaborating with community organizations. The past few weeks have been a whirlwind of getting more involved on the community group level.

I recently started working with a community development association, the members of which are introducing me to people in the municipality and other community leaders who have more pull (and access to funding) than the average Jose. I will be helping them to turn the community’s new basketball/soccer court (built with the help of the PC volunteer I replaced) into a multi-use space with a roof, electricity, water, etc. Not only will kids be able to keep playing during the rainy season, but we will be able to hold community dances, meetings, exercise classes, and a host of other activities with the new additions. They also want to construct a small computer lab with internet access and a playground so I will be supporting those projects as well in the new year.

The government just installed lights and a fence around the court which is to be locked every night to keep the area safe from up-to-no-gooders. This upset a group of young people who like to use the court at night. One group of young people started to vandalize part of the court in response to the new regulations, which is quite unfortunate, but the Association’s response was priceless. Instead of upping security and trying to catch the valdals and get them into trouble, they decided to invite all of the adolescents that hang out there at night to have a dinner on the court and talk to the Association members in order to come up with a peaceful solution and compromise. The (adult) members of the Association spend all afternoon cooking chicken and rice, and sure enough the teens showed up for the free food offer. The Association took advantage of their captive (and hungry) audience by laying out the problem and asking the young people for their input and support in coming to a peaceful resolution. The two groups came to an agreement on the hours during which the court would be open, and even made priority hours for littler and bigger kids. In the end everyone enjoyed dinner together and there haven’t been any more problems (knock on wood) since the meeting about 3 weeks ago. I loved the idea and the way it turned out.

My biggest project right now is organizing a Christmas Party for the children and families in the shantytown community near my house. The biggest challenge is obviously getting donations, because the community itself has zero funds. The municipality is going to give me a sound system and ice cream for the nearly 100 children. My youth group (which consists of adolescents who live in the shantytown) helped me deliver over 60 letters to different businesses in the area, so I’m hoping that at least 10 will actually come through and donate something. I am also trying to work with the company that is working on a HUGE hydroelectric project here in the south of Costa Rica to see if they will donate a toy to each child (they have a LOT of money for social projects because they are destroying so many communities and killing so much wildlife in the process of creating enough hydroelectricity to fuel the country’s rapidly growing need (it baffles me that we aren’t powering the country with solar power instead, but that is a whole other topic).

I have 2 weeks left of working as hard as I can before I take my first official vacation days to relax in the mountains with my 2 aunts, 1 uncle, 1 (and only) brother, and a partridge in a pear tree for Christmas. At the end of this week I will work with 4 other volunteers in the south to bring about 30 kids together for an activity called Arte por la Paz. Another volunteer and I will talk about the history of hip hop and how it started as a nonviolence movement of a young generation, and then teach the kids some choreography. Other volunteers will work with the kids on making/playing instruments and painting a peace mural. We have all been working with these groups in our own communities on different workshops related to themes of peace, and this event will be the culmination of their hard work. It should be (as we say in Costa Rica) “tuanis.”

Over vacation I will try to post about more specific projects that I have going on (a community service camp and the construction of 2 small walking bridges are 2 of the new ones), but for now my head hurts because they just fumigated the school to kill all the mosquitoes and stop the rapid spread of dengue which is taking over my town (as a mosquito flies right in front of my face). I can feel my brain getting smaller by the second as a result of the chemicals…que rico.

Peace, love, and pura vida!

Tico Time: Kevin (aka "Kevie")

I’ve decided to start including person profiles on this blog, so that in addition to my own personal stories, you also get a quick glimpse of different people in my community, straight from the horse’s mouth. For my first interview I was very lazy, and didn’t leave the house. Here’s what my 5 year old host nephew, Kevin, had to say to a host of random questions:

Do you like living in Costa Rica?
- Mmhmm

Why do you like living here?
- Because I like to live.

If you could be any animal what would it be?
- A tiger (he says with ZERO hesitation).

Why?
- Because tigers don’t bite.

Umm, tigers don’t bite, ever?
- No (like “you big dummy”), they just walk around up there, and when they hear something they put their heads up and listen, like this (he demonstrates).

What is your favorite food?
- Egg with rice

Do you like any fruits or vegetables?
- I like the apples you always have and when you give them to me. I do not eat broccoli or salad. And I like ice cream but mom says I can't have it now because I am sick and it will do damage to me. I can only eat hot ice cream.

Do you like having a gringa auntie?
- Do we have any hot ice cream?

No. Do you like having a gringa auntie?
- Yes, because I am happy all the time when you are here (as he buries his head in my pillow with embarrassment).

If an American child came to visit you here in Costa Rica, where would you take him?
- To Costa Rica, or to the United States

I then clarified the question…
- I would take him to pre-K, a forest, my house is nice, your house is nice, all of the houses are nice. To Mass at the church.

Have you ever been to Mass?
- No.

What is your favorite sport?
- Costa Rica (I’m sure he said this because the only sport he knows of is soccer, and this is obviously his favorite team).

What do kids here do for fun?
- Ride bikes, live in their houses, sleep at night, eat bananas, cereal…what else? Memeitos (these are like little corn chips), ice cream, popsicles, food, rice, rice pudding, beans, rice and beans, plantains, that one and the other one.

If you were a hot dog, and you were starving your you eat youself?
- Ummm, excuse me?

If you were a hot dog, and you were starving would you eat yourself?
- Ay Morgan (which sounds more like “Moah-ghan”), you really do say the dumbest things. Next question.

If you could take a trip anywhere, where would you go?
- To the mountain or the river (Yes, we live in a small, small world here, and I have never seen geography taught in any way, shape or form).

Well, you heard it here first, everything you could ever want to know about Costa Ricans. Now you know everything…you’re welcome.

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.