I got started thinking and realized that a blog post about Costa Rica would be super useful. I think a lot of times the bridge between pictures and the actual story isn’t made. I can send you pictures or upload albums to Facebook, but without words, you really don’t know what’s going on. So here I am.
First views of Costa Rica
Day One – March 6
Centro Manu
It’s hard to believe that not long ago I was in Chapel Hill writing papers and taking exams.
Day one was mainly the bus ride to D.C. and the flight. I slept a lot on the plane and woke up in El Salvador, only to have to board another plane to go to Costa Rica. I saw the Pacific Ocean for the first time out the window of the plane. I’ve only flown on one other trip, and I’m always the one who’s staring googly-eyed out the window to the world below.
Centro Manu
We finally got to Costa Rica and immediately got on a bus. Costa Rica reminded me a lot of Italy at first, but I think it’s because it’s what I see in my head as a generic “foreign” place so far as everything being in a different language and the poverty that is so evident everywhere. After a long, bumpy ride, we made it to Centro Manu, which seemed like a paradise. It’s a group of cabins with a central space in the middle of the rainforest. There are gorgeous flowers everywhere, and everything is so lush and green. We checked into our cabins and were fed lunch, which was amazing and way unexpected. We had chicken, rice, beans and a tortilla. I can’t even express how delicious this meal was. After that, all I wanted to do was sleep, but we did some team building exercises with Crystal. Crystal is basically out planner/leader/guide extraordinaire. She’s an American missionary from Nebraska. After that we had worship with Stephanie, who is another American missionary. She’s from Minnesota and has been here 4 years. Dinner was spaghetti, then came a shower, then finally much-needed sleep.
Day Two – March 7</p>
Centro Manu
I awoke this morning feeling well-rested but with an absurdly cloudy head andheadache. This inspired me to drink my first cup of coffee ever. According to others, it was really good coffee, but obviously I’m no judge. Breakfast was rice, beans, cheese and grilled plantains. Delicioso (I’m trying to pick up Spanish words here and there).
Building benches
We started building benches for a sanctuary today. I was going to write that it was an outdoor sanctuary, but I’m not sure what is outdoors and what is indoors anymore, since all of the buildings are open to the outside. Speaking of which, it’s apparently winter right now in Costa Rica, as well as the dry season–the low has been around 65 and the high of 80 something the entire time, and it was probably rained three times today. I love the weather here.
We finished the benches super quickly. It was while we were making the benches that I realized that my camera was broken, which put me in a little bit of a bad mood, but I must live in the “pura vida” Costa Rican way and just go with the flow. I love their life philosophy.
Success!
Guyermo, our foreman and later our friend, assigned us to clearing a brush pile and weeding the paths around Centro Manu to give us more work to do.
Today not knowing the language really started to frustrate me, but luckily Guyermo is super nice and is used to explaining things in sign language. He was really impressed by our work ethic, according to Crystal.
Lunch was even more delicioso than breakfast–breaded grilled tilapia, mixed vegetables in a delicious butter and garlic sauce, and mashed potatoes, my favorite.
We worked for another hour after lunch, then went on a rainforest walk. It was one of those times were I had to pinch myself–here I am walking through the rainforest through streams and mud and brush in big rubber boots in Costa Rica. Highlights included the general fauna, a bright blue and red frog, an army of ants, and a citronella plant.
San Martin
Doing crafts with the kids at San Martin
We headed to San Martin to have service and dinner with the kids. The poverty here is striking–20% of the population is poor. There are vast amounts of shacks and projects everywhere. The church we went to was a small but well-built structure with a main room and a bathroom. At first it was awkward because the kids were misbehaving during the service, and I was very much out of my element. After the service, we did an art project with the kids–we made butterflies out of colored coffee filters. Then most of them left, and we had dinner.
I didn’t really make any kind of connection with the kids–the language barrier was really hard. Apparently the ministry there is comprised of all of the kids from the community, which is mainly government projects. Pastor Stephanie told us a lot about the community and the congregation.
The church at San Martin
Nicaraguans are for the Costa Ricans like Mexicans are to us; They’re migrant workers who are mostly poor and just want to support their families. She also talked about how land ownership is hard to accomplish here–it takes 40 years sometimes to own a piece of land. So while people are waiting, squatters will come and build houses on the land. This happened at the church so now people have to sleep there at night to guard the land. Apparently land rights are how they were in the U.S. a long time ago, where if you improve the land, then you can have it, regardless of who it belongs to. It makes a lot more sense now why all of the houses have tall fences around them, in addition to protection from theft.
Day Three – March 8</p>
Centro Manu
I woke up in a super mood today, despite the fact that it was raining like crazy. We worked under the shelter and made ten more benches. Time passed quickly, and soon it was time for lunch, which was a Costa Rican version of chicken soup with chick peas, chicken and other veggies with a side of rice. We also had mango juice. I should make a list of all of the fruit juices we’ve had because we’ve had a new one at basically every meal. So far my favorite is cas, a fruit we don’t have in the U.S.
After lunch I helped brainstorm ideas for an art project that we’re doing with the kids tonight. We’re painting bulletin board-sized pieces of cloth–one with butterflies, one with leaves, and one with water. After some intense brainstorming, we went for a swim in a natural spring nearby.
San Martin
Some of the boys in San Martin
We had the funnest time with the kids in San Martin. I was with the leaf group, and we got to help them paint leaves then press them onto the cloth to leave a pattern. When I went to wash my hands, a couple of the kids grabbed my hands and tried to scrub them for me, which was adorable. We then ate dinner, which was fried tortillas with beans and cabbage on top. I realized today that all of the salad/lettuce we’ve had so far wasn’t actually lettuce, but was cabbage instead. It was conveniently Sunday today (I gave up sweets for Lent) because Stephanie then filled up a gutter with loads of ice cream covered in strawberry and chocolate syrup, stick cookies and nuts. All of the kids joined us in attacking it. We then worshiped with them and played a Costa Rican game similar to London Bridge.
After that we all separated off for our home stays. It was fascinating–their house was entirely concrete, except for the wooden doors. All of the floors and everything was unfinished concrete. There were three bedrooms, a bathroom, a kitchen and a living room. There were two parents and around six-ish kids. When we first walked in, everyone was in the living room, which opens to the street, watching “Ants” in Spanish on tv.
Slowly we started learning more about the family. Some of us knew Spanish and helped translate for those (like me) that didn’t know any. We learned that the mom is Costa Rican and the dad is Nicaraguan. He does construction work and built their house. The mom has like 20 siblings and goes to night school. They normally go to bed at 8 p.m. and wake up at 5 a.m., so we let them get to sleep at 10 p.m. We slept on foam pads in our sleeping bags in their living room. It was a little awkward because we told them we were going to bed, but they stayed in hte room until we had all changed into our pajamas and gotten into our sleeping bags.
Day Four – March 9 </p>
The waterfall
Pozo Azul
We returned to Centro Manu and had breakfast, then left for Pozo Azul, where we went ziplining in the canopy of the rainforest. We had gotten all harnessed up and were being given directions when it started pouring raining, which made me nervous. But it ended up being ridiculously fun. There were a series of platforms attached to trees in the canopy, and we ziplined from platform to platform. The last one was 300 meters across a river.
We got lunch, explored the butterfly garden for a little while, then drove down the road to a secluded path. We parked on the side of the road and trudged through some ridiculous mud that your shoes sunk down into. We hiked maybe 15 minutes down a slippery, muddy path to a waterfall, which emptied into a quickly flowing river. A bunch of people battled the currents and swam across the river to a calm spot.
We hiked back to the vans and headed back to Centro Manu, where we had fettucini for dinner. We had our evening worship service then headed off to bed.
Day Five – March 10</p>
Centro Manu
This morning was our last breakfast in Centro Manu. We had some chill time for awhile, during which I sunbathed. Then we separated off into three groups for lectures–one on climate change and poverty, one on liberation theology, and one on diversities and HIV/AIDS, which is the one that I went to. The first man who spoke was named Magnus. It was weird because he is Swedish, and his Spanish was better than his English but he talked to us in English. He talked a lot about identify and us all being one as God’s children. It was super deep and enlightening. The second man talked about being HIV positive and about how the Costa Rican government has a good system set up, but it’s not implemented the way it’s set up on paper. He also talked a lot about how the isolation that people with HIV face by their families and friends, some of whom disown them.
Quitirissi
The view from Quitirissi
After one last worship service in the outdoor sanctuary, we split up into our separate buses. Our bus dropped people off at three different communities: La Carpio, Quitirissi (my community), and one other community. The first people we dropped off were the people going to La Carpio. Before we entered the city, the bus driver made us shut our windows. All of the buildings in the city were rundown shacks crammed together. There were tons of people and dogs in the road. The bus driver told the people who got off to move quickly because it was dangerous for us to sit there. It was overally very sketchy, which made me worry about my own community.
The bus headed into the mountains. It wound its way up and got stuck on a low-hanging power line. The driver fixed it and we continued on until we were let off at the church.
Quitirissi is an indiginous community, which means that they are native to here, but not running around in loin clothes or anything like the Discovery Channel.There are three women that are around most of the time. They said that most people work in offices or doing construction in San Jose and commute, but some own their own businesses. The altitude here is 1,300 meters. The activities at the church center around the women, who do natural medicine and make jewelry.
We ate dinner, then went for a walk and saw the beautiful nighttime skyline. The lights in the distance looked like stars.
Day Six – March 11 </p>
A mountain top experience
Quitirissi
Today we participated in a breathing and meditation class run by a woman named Pam who is from Chicago and works with some kind of group in connection with the UN and another group called the Art of Living. She taught us a couple of breathing techniques that are supposed to relieve stress and give you energy.
We had a snack, took a siesta, then had lunch, then took another siesta. Then we took a hike up to the very top of the mountain. There was an earthquake on the way up that only one person felt. I ate some kind of sour green fruits that grew on a tree that some boys picked for us and saw my first coffee plant on a plantation.
We then took another little siesta, then went to painting class a German girl named Johanna. She speaks English, German, French and Spanish and is here on her gap year. Some of the Costa Rican women had never painted before. It blows my mind to think that these women didn’t know what colors looked like mixed together.
After that we went out to take pictures and came back to play games, eat dinner, and go to sleep.
Day Seven – March 12</p>
San Jose
Dinner at Cafe Mundo
We left Quitirissi after breakfast and reunited with our whole group at the ILCO office in San Jose. We had lunch there and did a bunch of workshops with a man named Horatio.
We went to our hostel, named Casa Ridgeway. It was a neat hostel with random Quaker influences. After getting clean and dolled up, we went to dinner at a fancy restaurant called Cafe Mundo. Each of us had a limit of 7,500 Colones. I ordered a beer and quatro quesos pizza.
We went back to the hostel and went to sleep. I didn’t sleep that great because I had to keep going to bathroom. I was afraid it was the water, but on retrospect, it was probably the greasy, rich pizza on top of all of the rice and beans in my stomach that upset things.
Day Eight – March 13</p>
Chilling with pigeons in San Jose
San Jose
We played tourist today in San Jose. We got dropped off at an artesan’s market in downtown San Jose. We had to haggle with the vendors, which was stressful since I don’t know Spanish but overall fun. I bought a brightly colored necklace and some earrings for myself, cigars for my dad, coffee for my mom, and a wooden cross for my grandparents.
We had lunch at a fancy-looking restaurant in downtown, where I got a mushroom and swiss burger, french fries, and a Coca light, my first American food in awhile, and it was amazing. After lunch, we wandered around the city more. I bought a bottle of rum for Clint and me. Then we all sat in a plaza that reminded me of the piazzas in Italy. There were fountains and benches and tons of and tons of pigeons that people were feeding. A little boy grabbed a pigeon and caught it, and it became our new mission to catch pigeons.
La Carpio
Learning traditional dances from the girls
We headed to La Carpio for dinner and a sleepover with the kids there. At this point, I was super tired and not thrilled about going to the slums, but when we arrived, I instantly fell in love with the kids there. They were older than the kids in San Martin so we could play more complicated games with them. The girls taught us how to do traditional Nicaraguan dances in long, flowing skirts. They also taught us how to belly dance and do other dances like the meringue.
While we were dancing, people kept beating on the windows, which were barred, and the doors. We learned that La Carpio is a squatter community that is about 50% Nicaraguan immigrants. Poverty is rampant, and drugs are a huge problem.
After playing another game called Wolf, we all went to bed.
Day Nine – March 14</p>
La Carpio
Our new friends
After eating breakfast, some of us went to play soccer with the kids, while the other part of the group, including myself, stayed at the church to do crafts with the kids. We made glasses out of cardboard egg crates and pipe cleaners, which were supposed to look like locusts from the Bible. It was slow starting, but with my small Spanish vocabulary and lots of sign language, I became friends with some of the girls, who followed me around during the rest of the activity, saying “Kreeeeesten this” and “Kreeeeeesten that.”
Then we went on a short walk around town. The poverty is literally everywhere, but in the poorest town I’ve been to, where I was even afraid to go at first, I found the most real, loving connections with hte kids, who were so open and inviting. We ate lunch then had to leave.
We went to ILCO to get our bags. I almost cried as I took my last steps on Costa Rican soil. I’m so ready to go home, but Costa Rica will always have a place in my heart. I keep thinking about a random man that we met on the mountain in Quitirissi who said, “Remember Costa Rica. Pura vida.”
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