Un hasta luego

I am officially a "Returned Peace Corps Volunteer" and I thought it would be a good idea to make a final blog post to sum up a bit of what my Peace Corps service has meant to me.  First off I'm going to say sorry for any corniness but it's hard not go get sentimental after 2 years.

Saying goodbye to Costa Rica has been the hardest goodbye of my life and has left me emotionally and physically exhausted.  I wasn't expecting saying goodbye to be so difficult but it made me realize I am leaving people in Costa Rica who I truly love.  For most of my service I thought "yes I have made good friends but there are so many other countries I need to visit before returning", however, I realized I need to come back and visit much sooner because I am leaving so many important people in my life here.

Here are some of the beautiful people that have shaped my experience and made it so meaningful:

Alvaro the school music teacher adopted me as part of his family and was probably the counterpart I worked the closest with despite being in a teaching English project.

 Dona Socorro, my host grandmother who is super chispa and never puts up with anybody's BS and in many ways raised my host mom and her 8 siblings on her own. I loved spending sunday afternoons at her house listening to her and my host aunts tell stories and joke around.

Carlos and Selenia my host parents in Guardia who I lived with for 8 months. They are more people that I can say truly adopted me into their family. Selenia is probably the person in my site who I am closest with and love beyond words for her generosity and sense of humor.

My host aunt Adais who was one of my most faithful community english class members and who was always up for an adventure and a last minute trip to the beach with me.

The staff at the Elementary school, I never truly felt appreciated at the high school where I was originally placed, so it meant so much when the elementary school surprised me with a going away party. They're an exceptional team and are working to make Escuela de Guardia one of the best schools in the nation.

 Veronica, the high school English teacher I worked the most, I helped out in her classroom and she participated in monthly conversation clubs with other teachers from our region. She's a fantastic friends and I had a blast at her wedding this January.

 Mauren my Elementary school co-teacher and some of the kids from our month long English language summer camp this January. It was amazing to see youth and teachers from my community dedicate their summer vacation to learning English and having fun with me making art!

Mauren is also a fantastic friend and I had a lot of fun hanging out with her and her family, and watching her grow as a teacher.

At an "80's" birthday party with my good friend Geri and her family, it was awesome to find tica friends my own age to have fun with.

Annie and Taylor the two volunteers who lived the closest to me from my training group, I really don't know how I would have made it through Peace Corps with out the support of all the amazing volunteers I became friends with across the country. I will always look back on the fun times I had with my fellow volunteers traveling across beautiful central america.

It's hard to put into words how much Peace Corps has changed me, and honestly I think it will take me some time to really process exactly what service has meant for my life. All I can say is that Peace Corps has changed me for the better.  It has helped me to increase my confidence and know that whatever I put my heart into I will make work.  I'm sure a lot of volunteers would agree that after facing all the challenges that come with Peace Corps that we are well prepared to face whatever the world has to throw at us and will always be overly comfortable talking to people about poop.

 It has also helped me to grow as a professional and know how to be proactive and interact and work with a variety of individuals.  Growing up in Berkeley, and then moving to Santa Cruz and Barcelona, it was great for me to finally take a huge step out of my "liberal bubble" and see a different part of the word, it showed me that you can truly love someone even if your moral and political beliefs do not align. Costa Rica will always be a part of my identity and I hope to stay in touch with everyone that I have shared this experience with!

Adventuras formando una Banda Comunitaria aqui en Guardia

I was originally placed in the high school in my town but I knew from the beginning I really wanted to work in an elementary school.  Maybe a month into my service I went to go check out Guardia’s elementary school and see about opportunities to work there. One of the first people I met was Don Alvaro,  a.k.a. Alvarito, the school’s music teacher.  Alvaro is barely 5 feet tall, with pepper grey hair, and is always charming all the lady elementary school teachers with his sweet disposition. Right off the bat he asked me if I could help him get instruments for the school, and I was a bit hesitant at first as people often expect Peace Corps volunteers to bring money to the community as foreigners, whereas Peace Corps mission is based around grassroots sustainable community development and not dumping money into communities.

Several months later Alvaro was still working to get a community band off the ground with around a total of 10 functioning instruments.  Alvaro is an amazing individual and would come ever Sunday and volunteer his time to teach students to play percussion instruments.  An opportunity opened up for us to attend a Peace Corps training in February in the capital, the “Project Design and Management Workshop”, and Alvaro seemed like the ideal community member to take with me to hone our skills in project design and execution.  I came to the realization that a community band would be an excellent project to embark on because it was vision championed by community members and something I could help make possible.  Coming into Peace Corps I knew I wanted find community leaders and support their projects and visions and not impose what I thought the community needed.

Through the training we were able to put into words Alvaro’s vision and goals for Guardia. We returned to site and set to work writing an extensive grant to CRUSA, a branch of USAID. It was an intensive process, and was a big challenge for me translating everything from Spanish to English. In May the grant was finally ready for submission, and two weeks later after some revisions we were approved $5,000 dollars to purchase instruments for the drum line segment of the band. We were able to purchase 45 high quality instruments which will hopefully last for many years to come including: bombos (base drums), cajas panamenas, liras (xylophones), tenores, one trumpet, and one bataria de calle.  It’s funny because honestly the world of drums exists for me in Spanish and I don’t know what these drums are called in English for the most part…. 

After some debates on where we were going to buy the instruments we finally purchased the instruments in Liberia (a bigger city half an hour away) in July. A month ago the instruments arrived and we started signing kids up from the elementary and high school for the band, and the kids quickly swelled in ranks from the original 10 to 25.  Because of other projects I’m involved in I wasn’t able to attend practice for several weeks and yesterday when I went to practice I was blown away when there were 80 kids at the practice! 

Biking up the street to practice all the kids were lined up in the street practicing marching for Costa Rican independence day and I had to hold back tears I was so moved by what my community had achieved.  There in the street were my students from the high school and elementary school, kids as young as 5 rocking drums alongside the older carajillos from the colegio. There was Ana Luz the only girl on drums holding it down with the boys on her big base drum, there was a teenager from my community who is in a wheel chair on a tenor drum, and several kindergarteners who couldn’t tell their right foot from the left making music. 

Yes, I helped Alvaro write the grant but what has come after I can claim no responsibility for.  Several weeks ago Alvaro and the school principal held the first parents meeting to organize the band, and I was blown away when 40 parents showed up.  As volunteers in Costa Rica one of the biggest challenges we face in the schools is a lack of parental involvement and this meeting proved to me that Guardia is a special place where many parents really do want the best for their children. They want opportunities, they want extracurricular activities, and they want their kids to be musicians. The parents have come together and planned a raffle and are going to sell food in order to pay for a trip to Liberia to play in the big Costa Rican Independence day parade on September 15^th. Everything that has happened since the arrival of the instruments has shown to me that this project is going to last long after I board a plane next April and finish my service. (More pictures to come soon of the complete band!) 

Guanacaste

 Guanacaste

one year mark in Guardia

My town Guardia snakes along the sluggish Tempisque river for many kilometers intersected only once by the freeway, caratera 21. As I ride my bike down the main road it disintegrates into a hodgepodge of holes that I avoid like frogger on my neon pink bike from the 80s. One Kilometer in, getting close to my host family’s house, the asphalt gives out entirely and it’s just a dusty dirt and rock road.  You find yourself in the neighborhood “el fosforo” or “the match”, which is one of the neighborhoods with the most poverty in Guardia. I keep peddling on past my host families house another kilometer to one of my best friends, Dona Irma’s, house.  She lives in wooden house with an open kitchen for her “lena” wood stove.  Her parrot sits perched in the wall where a missing slate used to reside, preening himself, and baby ducks wander the yard. 

 Irma immigrated to Costa Rica 40 years ago from Nicaragua with her husband, who later died of alcohol abuse when many of her children were quite young.  I first met Irma when I had just arrived in site and was going around interviewing community members like the random gringa that I am.   Being the kind soul that she is she immediately welcomed me, the random gringa, with open arms and we’ve been friends ever since.   We will walk out into puro campo to her small farm.  It’s quite beautiful at sunset with diffused light illuminating the vast undulating fields broken up by massive Guanacaste trees and grazing cows, setting off the pastoral scene.  At her farm I’ve learned how to shuck beans by beating them with a giant stick and the names of many varieties of vegetables that are tough enough to be grown in the insatiable Guanacaste heat(elote, pipiyan, pepinos, frijoles, yucca….).  Reflecting on it now I realize how much I appreciate escaping to Irma’s house and farm.  It’s a reminder of what Guanacaste and much of Costa Rica must have looked like before skyscraper resorts began to populate the beaches and ‘pura vida’ lifestyle became a product to be sold to tourists on corny t-shirts.  What Irma has is something I think many people from California are beginning to crave with the “eat locally” movement, most of the food she eats she grows herself.   People are craving a purer form of life where you food doesn’t travel thousands of miles doused in pesticides.  People want a connection and immediacy with the natural world and Irma has just that. 

Many of my closest friends in site, like Irma, are immigrants from Nicaragua, which is approximately 2 hours from Guardia.   From my experience they are usually the people in my community who have the least and yet share the most.  I really appreciate their generosity and will go to visit and my students ‘ and friends’ homes and come home with my stomach full of delicious things like bunuelos (a Nicaraguan equivalent to donut holes)and a Tupperware full of beans, or a bag full of freshly picked elote(corn).  A week ago on May 12^th I celebrated one year of living in Guardia and am already starting to dread the end of my 2 year service in less than a year…. I’ve found many people in my community I consider true friends and I’m not quite sure how I’ll be able to say goodbye.

Pura Guanacasteca

This is a list I'm starting to make of very Costa Rican Spanish

Dichos Ticos

Tico=costa rican

Un bicho= any bug/animal/monster/creeper ugly dude

Guila= girl/kid

La hoopa= sounds more like Yiddish but ticos are referring to their heads

Hijo’e puchis/puchica= how tico moms, and subsequently I, say son of a bitch and don’t offend the pastor

Mae=dude

N’ombre (no hombre)= no way

Pura vida/tuanis= costa rican t-shirt fillers for tourists, and a way to say life is good

Tranquis= tranquilo but cooler, chill

Sip=si por favor, yes please

Un Carajillo= Young kid up to no good

Un Vago= vagabond, yes it’s cool in costa rica to call someone a vagabond

Que Vacilon=how fun

Porfis= por favor, please

Hijo’e= daaammmnn

Chino/a= due to a lack of racial diversity in many parts of costa rica many tico take it upon themselves to invent “diversity’ in their community by calling people that have slanty eyes “chino” or Chinese, and people legitimately take chino/a on as a nickname and will respond to it without a second thought

Macha/o=blonde;but used to refer to any person with lighter skin/hair...hence what creepy dudes call me here as I peddle quickly past on my bike

Gato/a= person with blue/green/light colored eyes

Yuca= white person

Ahora=in high school Spanish class we’re taught ahora means “now”, not the case in costa rica, if a tico tells you they’ll do something ahora it means they plan on doing it in a while, tomorrow, or quite possibly never

Un Polo=  uneducated person, douche bag http://h3dicho.ticoblogger.com/2009/06/ser-polo-no-es-tuanis.html

Juega de vida= full of yourself, arrogant

Carapicha=dick-face

Despiche= literally translate to de-penis, but it means a crazy time/out of control party/etc

Picado=tipsy

Que dicha=what good luck 

Puro Guanacasteco> Spanish from my region, Guanacaste

Chinchorro= a dive-bar, there should at least be a few pictures of naked ladies on the wall, and your bar tender should be missing a tooth or two

Estoy quesudo= literally traslates to “i’m so cheesed” but also means i’m bored

Un melon= 1 million colones (not quite as ballin as it sounds, more like 2,000 dollars)

Chompipe=pavo, turkey

La lancha= a boat

Sabanero=cowboy from Guanacaste

Soque=hurry up, usually used to yell at your child

Chambón= (adj) person with little ability

Corn Island, Nicaragua

colored pencil drawing I did of a photo I took on Big Corn Island, Nicaragua; I really wish i had a better camera to take a higher quality photo...

 

one year in costa rica

So much about my life now strikes me as bizarre and completely random.  The seating arrangement in my new house goes as such: one, the corner piece of a couch set that has two gaping holes in the upholstery that I’m pretty sure I found a rat bone in, two, the dilapidated reject chair from a local high school which was on its way out, and three, a fold-up beach lounger from ‘Mundo Magico’, shit you not, there is a store named magic world. The way I managed to scrounge up the seating for my new house probably pretty accurately depicts how I have met some of the most awesome people in my life over the past year, a series of random happenings that leads to something unexpected but worthwhile.  Peace Corps points a random finger on the globe and off you go. Then more finger pointing at maps and boom you’re living in the hottest region in Costa Rica that looks more like the African savannah than the rain forests touted on post cards. Then last but not least Peace Corps gifts you a host family and you’re in it for better or for worse.

 If Peace Corps has taught me anything it’s to be open to meeting friends in odd places; be it at 4 a.m. in a hostel when you’re scrounging around for ibuprofen for a splitting headache or when you are supposed to be some place in less than an hour and it’s more than a two hour hike and some kind soul offers you a ride.  Yes, perhaps these situations have potential for you to be abducted but instead your instincts tell you this stranger is a-okay, so why not?  Similar to my hodgepodge seating I have accumulated a range of worthwhile friendships in my first year here in Costa Rica.  Some of these friends were gifted to me, such as the awesome group of volunteers from training, but most were happenstances from a random gringa being plopped down in the middle of the campo in the part of Costa Rica most tourists zip past in their air conditioned cars.  So yes my life is “random” but I’ve come to really enjoy it and am thankful that living abroad has helped me break out of certain monotonies and encounter people from all walks of life. 

Guardia

I live where the road turns to dirt,

and my bike wheels bump over dusty stones.

My home has a zinc roof

that turns into a mirage at the hottest part of the day.

We sit in the yard 

during the omnipresent mid-day heat.

Everything slows, and swings on hammocks.

High school students dance the mambo

and their clothes sticks heavy to skin.

I live on a street where everyone

is brother, sister, cousin, or mother.