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 12th
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.
