Besides a somewhat regular update to the dirt road leading through town, everything mostly stays the same in Las Tumbas. Not to say that life is boring, but in this small town of about 100 people, life is stagnant. The same families work the same jobs, usually share the same names and even nicknames, have the same schedule... you can always count on seeing your neighbors on the Friday bus at 6 am, the only one that will venture down the steep hill to town. It’s a comfortable life. Even the sun, in tune with the steadiness of life here, rises around 5:00 every morning and sets at just about 6:00 every evening, throughout the whole year
After three months of my mom calling me every Sunday night at 7:00, it had become just another welcome routine in my Costa Rican life. So when she called one fateful evening an hour early due to Daylight Savings time, my family could not hide their curiosity, especially since she called right as we were sitting down to dinner, as we always did at six.
“Why did your mom call an hour early?” Ericka, my younger host sister asks me. Thinking hard about how to explain this, my mind never stumbles upon the easy way out, to lie and tell them that, perhaps my mom was going out to a restaurant with her husband that night or even that there was a television show on that she wanted to watch instead of talking to me, both rather foreign ideas in themselves to my Costa Rican family. Instead, I told the truth.
“Well... In the U.S....There’s this thing....Where you change your clocks,” I told them. Blank stares. I continued, telling them that there’s one day where you move your clocks ahead one hour “to make more daylight.” Luckily, my Spanish was advanced enough to convey the words, but have you ever tried to explain Daylight Savings Time to someone who doesn’t participate in it? Much less, in a different language?
“You can’t make more daylight,” they tell me, “Por supuesto.” Of course, they say, looking at me like I suddenly need to be put in an asylum. “Well...I know, but it’s a way of changing time so people can enjoy the sunlight more, or save daylight,” I say. Somehow, with the mention of enjoyment, something clicks in Ericka’s head.
“Oh, so it’s a joke? You change the clocks back tomorrow?” she asks, excitedly, proud that she is the first to understand this weird event. After a few more attempts at explanation, telling Ericka that the clocks won’t change back for six months and that everyone has to participate, I relax, thinking that I’ve explained sufficiently.
One last question occurs to Ericka, “What happens if you don’t change your clock?” “You’ll have the wrong time for six months,” I answer. As weird as this custom seems to them, it begins to seem just as strange to me. Many of the things I took for granted at home are rare or completely unavailable here, and probably won’t be for a while. And as my family debates whether my mom will start to call every Sunday at 6:00, instead of 7:00, and what affect this will have on our dinner schedule, I realize how happy and comfortable I’ve become in this ever non-changing life. I can’t rely on internet, hot water, a grocery store or my favorite restaurant around the corner, or understanding every word that is said to me in Spanish. But I can count on that tomorrow morning, when I wake up at 5 am, breakfast will be made, the radio will be on, the kids will be fighting, a rooster will be crowing outside of my window, and the sun will be rising.
Rice and Beans, by Radford Lathan
[First Place, WorldTeach Spring 2009 Journal Contest]
They told me that I was going to eat a lot of rice and beans when I got to Costa Rica. I just didn’t understand what that meant. It amazes me now that two such simple ingredients could be the center of life.
At 5am, when the first roosters started to crow outside of my bedroom, my host Mom was already up making the first pot of Gallopinto for the day. (A mixture of rice and beans essential to the Costa Rican diet.) As my host siblings and I rose, we would heat up the gallopinto accordingly and serve ourselves small portions coupled with lots of delicious coffee to jump-start our day.
I complained about the rice and beans constantly. Not to my Costa Rican family of course, but rather: to my friends back home. I moaned about how much I missed yogurt and how hard it was to have to eat the same thing 3 times a day, every day. I begged for my parents to send me peanut butter and protein bars. I bought snacks, fruits and vegetables as often as I could, just to alter my diet. As a self-proclaimed foodie, I could hardly believe that an entire country (and possibly even an entire region) could rely on just rice and beans.
Logistically, I understood, it was the cheapest way to make a whole protein, but what amazed me was that everyone seemed to enjoy rice and beans so much. My host mom was always quick to tell me that rice and beans were the best kind of food for you and that the reason Americans are so fat is because they have so much fast food and they need more rice and beans in order to be healthy.
When a fellow volunteer got sick partway through the year, her host Mom assured her that it was because she wasn’t getting enough rice in her diet. We laughed at this and regularly asked our field directors when the rice and beans would go out of season, but of course, they never did. Week after week, bags of rice and bushels of beans appeared in our kitchen. My host mom went through them with due diligence and the entire family ate well enough to live.
Occasionally the rice and beans would be coupled with an egg or a slice of avocado, but those treats were usually saved for dinner. My first night with my host family, my Host Mom asked me whether or not I liked Tuna. I told her that I did and in that instant she opened a can of Tuna and heaped a spoonful onto my plate of, you guessed it, rice and beans. In that moment I was somewhat taken aback, but I came to look forward to the days that I got Tuna for dinner.
To be perfectly honest, dinner became my favorite part of the day. Two Thirds of my meal was always pre-determined, but then, there was the wild card. Would it be fried cauliflower or plantains? Sliced tomato or a scrambled egg? Maybe even green beans and carrots or a deep-fried hot dog.
I remember my delight when one day, I went into my classroom to discover that a chicken had laid an egg on my desk and then abandoned it, leaving me a delicious lunchtime treat. What Costa Rican food lacked in flavor, it certainly made up for in character.
Despite the fact that the fare was plain and just about everything was fried, I came to love Costa Rican food as if I had been raised on it. When I was hungry, I would find myself thinking “Well of course you’re hungry, you haven’t had your rice and beans today.”
I learned the distinctions between Gallopinto, arroz y frijoles and rice and beans. Sure they all had the same basic ingredients, but no one thinks of them as the same. These simple meals are just as essential in a Costa Rican life as the expression ‘Pura Vida.’ When students pray in school they say that they are thankful for the food that they have been provided with, they thank God for their Rice and Beans. I prayed for the day that I would never have to eat rice or beans again.
I considered myself a martyr for sacrificing my body to the impact of the rice and bean diet. When I got home, I overloaded on meat and potatoes. I ate at my favorite deli’s and Indian restaurants with friends. I ate fresh fruit and vegetables every day just because I could and I was thrilled to be able to eat what I wanted at my leisure. Even so, somehow, within 10 days of my return to the United States I had made a typical Costa Rican breakfast of gallopinto for my entire extended family.
It was only then that my two worlds merged. My life in Costa Rica, my students, all of the long days and cold showers and bug bites, somehow blended together with my family and my hometown. As much as I thought I wanted to leave it behind, Rice and Beans were some of the only things that I was able to bring back with me (or rather find at home) to try to explain my experiences over the past year. Gallopinto doesn’t explain my life during my year in Costa Rica, but if you don’t understand Gallopinto, you can’t even begin to understand Pura Vida or any of the beauty that comes with it. It’s not just another meal. It’s the food of life—or at least, the pure life.
Selected as First Place, WorldTeach Spring 2009 Journal Contest.
As I was walking down the Inter Americana highway last night, heading home after an exhausting adult English class, I discovered fireflies. Growing up, I was 99.9% sure that this magical creature was made up, a tactic developed to make me more comfortable around bugs, much like the many tricky tales I was told about how tasty green beans and onions were. A bug whose rear glows? I mean, what do they have in there, batteries or something? But sure enough, on a pitch-black night, where the only illumination was a star stricken sky, I saw the little suckers flittering to and fro, almost as if their golden bottoms contributed to a severe nervous twitch. My face lit up, much like the bugs’ bums, and in the distance, I spied my youngest host brother sprinting towards me. Delighted, he pinched a poor firefly between his two sticky fingers and waved it centimeters from my face. No doubt a very satisfying ending to my day.
Fireflies weren’t the only surprise I got this past week. Here in El Empalme we had our annual fiestas, which consisted of karaoke on Friday, an evening dance on Saturday, and Bingo and a local “band” on Sunday. On Friday morning at 8 o’clock, I gleefully arrived at the salon, after having spent the night before having dreaming of a grand metamorphosis from kitchen novice to master chef. I was immediately put to work cutting and washing large hojas, leaves, and preparing other components needed for tamale perfection. While I was playing apprentice, my director came into the kitchen with a kind of relaxed scuttle, a most distinguishable characteristic that only he can pull off, and adamantly began to insist that I buy a raffle ticket. In the interest of saving time (his ramblings tend to last for hours), I handed him 500 colones and haphazardly shoved the ticket in my pocket. I hadn’t given the situation a second thought; I soon launched into a show-stopping performance of the theme from Titanic, which I was forced to sing and was the only song available in English, but then the raffle began. I looked everywhere for my ticket but couldn’t find it. When they called out the number and nobody claimed it, I cursed myself for losing a potentially fantastic award. The kinder teacher called for the prize and a cowboy paraded in, hand raised high in the air, holding a pig’s head. It was at that very moment that I began to really appreciate my absent-mindedness.
Saturday my host mom handed me a soup dish and without thinking, I began to eat it. A strange consistency invaded my mouth, so I decided to further investigate the contents of my meal.
“Well,” the cook said, “there are garbanzos, meat and slalkdjhok.”
“Huh?” I said.
“Bskwojssh”, she replied.
“Hm, okay, can you explain to me what it is?” I asked.
“Sure”, she said. “It’s not the pig meat, and it’s not quite the pig’s skin. Precisely, it’s the fat that’s in between the two, although some of the pieces include a bit of the skin.”
“Be careful not to eat too much,” my host mom added, “It’s kind of fattening.”
Later on in the afternoon was the Cinta de Carrera, where cowboys from surrounding pueblos come riding into the region to gallop back and forth, for four hours, trying to put a small stick through a small hoop that was hanging from a small clothesline. Though quite entertaining, I chose instead to help prepare for the baile later on that night, which proved to be a success, especially in terms of shocking several Latinos who previously believed that gringos could not dance. Oh, but I forgot to mention that I was dancing with my host dad, who recently fell off a horse and broke his arm. So, there you have it. The gimp and the gringa, tearing up the dance floor. I’m sure many were confused.
Sunday featured a thrilling game of Bingo, followed by some good old local music. It was awesome, dancing to the traditional cumbia and salsa beats of the pueblo. I even grooved to a dance called “the Paso Robles” (my hometown in California). All in all, the weekend festivities were a hit. I made new friends and got to play the ‘what family goes with what child’ game, the school and the church made loads of money, and, most importantly, for me at least, I got to dance.
I have gotten into the habit of eating lunch when I get home from school in the afternoons. Miriam, my host mother, is excellent in the kitchen, and her cooking always helps me to relax after a tough day at school. A thousand tiny voices screaming "teacher!" "teacher!" seem to dissipate rapidly into a soothing bowl of garbanzo bean soup.
On this particular day in April, I rushed home from school, starving. Imagine my surprise when I walked in the door to find Miriam slowly rocking back and forth in a rocking chair, her hands and arms covered up to the elbows in flour and dough. She had a peaceful smile on her face and was clearly enjoying the cool breeze as it swept through the kitchen. The last thing on her mind was preparing my lunch.
"Im sorry Jennifer," she said, stopping to choose her words carefully, "but some friends came to visit and ate all the food. I hope you ate lunch at school today."
I tried to take a deep breath and make some general inquiries into the situation without becoming hysterical. Who exactly were these friends, and why didn’t Miriam save any lunch for me? I couldn’t believe she was so inconsiderate. I felt genuinely helpless. What was I supposed to do?
Miriam only laughed, and pointed into the kitchen. "Be careful," she warned, "Our friends bite." I peeked into the kitchen to find a half kneeded tray of dough, and red ants swarming in every direction.
Despite their size, the ants marched with remarkable coordination and ferocity, like a tiny platoon. I could almost hear the microscopic drums being played as they came up the back stairs two by two and into the house. For the rest of the afternoon, Miriam and I were trapped like prisoners in our own home. We sat, her in her rocking chair and I with my feet up on the couch, and watched as the ants advanced steadily through the kitchen and living room.
Finally, when the sun began to set over the mountains, the ants decided to go home. They formed rows of two and marched out of the front door as neatly as they had arrived. We sighed in relief, the house was ours again.
I like this story for what it taught me about Costa Rica. Whenever I miss my bus, the friend I need to see isn’t home, or I have the most ingenious lesson planned for a day when class is cancelled, I am reminded of the day the ants came. This year, I am learning how to accept the many situations we face that are out of our control. Sometimes in life theonly thing you can do is take a deep breath, put your feet up on the couch, and wait for the ants to go home.
Because You Drink Your Coffee Black, by Rachel Feller
[WorldTeach 2006]
Another breakfast at Escuela Rincón de Morales Garbanzo. Not even a month had passed in the school, making each breakfast with the three teachers and my host mother the equivalent of an exam in an advanced Spanish conversation class. My gaze bounced back and forth between the speakers as if I were watching the final round of a tennis tournament and I struggled to catch the new topic. Suddenly, I noticed all stares on me and heard the word “ticher” thrown around in conversation. Thanks to my host mother’s acting skills and her attempts to slow her rapid speech, I picked up on the fact that they were discussing the chronic ear infection that had plagued me since my arrival in Costa Rica. Why my host mother always thought it her business to discuss my health with other people is still beyond my realm of comprehension. But on that particular day, I sat back and listened to her explanation of my ailments.
According to her it was quite simple. I had hot liquid dripping down the inside of my throat from my ears why? - because I drink my coffee black. First, I tried to withhold any conspicuous reaction, then, I thought of how to use my limited Spanish skills to give a more medical explanation. Who knows what I actually said, but it was irrelevant. After a brief discussion, the teachers dismissed my vegetarianism as a possible cause and reached a clear consensus: my coffee drinking habits directly caused my ear infection. The issue was no longer up for debate, and we returned to more important topics of conversation, such as rice-cooking techniques, the unusually cold weather, and the benefits of wearing acrylic nails.
As the daughter of a physician, I had always been taught to dismiss common rumors in favor of logical medical explanations. Little did I know that by moving to la Violeta, I had exchanged a scientific and medical world for one of old wives tales and small town logic. And in a community of 250, where neighbors witness one another’s every move with a critical eye and a gossiping mouth, medical issues - and possible forms of treatment - serve as a discussion topic of primary importance. Thus, through the chain of conversation, the town develops its “scientific” reasoning regarding treatments for common, and not-so-common, illnesses.
Shortly after my ear infection went away, Carolina and I both began to suffer from digestive problems. One evening, without being entirely sure of the destination, I hopped into Gilbert’s pickup with Carolina and Seidy, and went unknowingly towards my first - and hopefully last - rural, medical massage. About half-way through the town, we turned off of the main road, drove up a dirt path, and parked in front of a house. As we walked in and completed the obligatory greet-‘n-kiss, I saw that three of my students lived there. They mocked me, laughing and saying that it was going to hurt and that they couldn’t wait to see my face. I smiled and nodded, still completely unaware of my upcoming treatment.
In walked a very short woman with a long, black braid hanging down to the bottom of her back. She organized the dining room chairs into a row and asked that Carolina, the first patient of the night, come lie down on them. Gilbert laid the two-year-old across the cushions and allowed the healer to begin her therapeutic massage. First, she covered Carolina with lotion. Next, she squeezed her elbows and knees. The resulting screams created immeasurable din that echoed through the house. In order to calm the hysterical toddler, Gilbert sat her on his lap. Throughout the next twenty minutes, I watched and listened as the healer pressed and prodded every part of Carolina’s tiny body, provoking screams with every touch. Her diagnosis: an imbalance in bacteria of the stomach. Now finished with the first patient, all eyes turned towards me.
Since Carolina was only two-years-old, I did not believe that this massage could truly be that painful. So, hesitantly and in order to appease my host mother’s worries, I lied across the chairs. My students sat down for front row seats of the upcoming spectacle. First the lotion and then - OW! No wonder the kid screamed her guts out! Who knew that elbows could be so sensitive!?! The cringe of my face prompted a roar of laughter from the elementary school audience. For the following quarter hour, I gripped the chair with all of my force in order to avoid mimicking Carolina’s screams. My diagnosis: an inflamed stomach. Thanks for the informative massage, but I think that I could have come to the same conclusion myself.
Having learned my lesson for complaining of an ailment, I chose to conceal all following illnesses as best as I could. I no longer wanted my health in the hands of town logic or spread as town gossip. Yet I quickly realized that I could not avoid the subject of alternative healing. The students got sick, my host siblings got sick, the teachers got sick, and the neighbors got sick. With each passing ailment came a new theory and a new solution. Even things that one would ordinarily think would not require extensive medical explanation or treatment often had both.
One problem I could not hide was my worsening acne. In school my students asked me if my zits hurt, and at home Carolina simply asked me what they were. Consequently, the word espinilla, or zit, quickly became part of my working vocabulary. From the beginning, Seidy told me that butter and chocolate caused acne, and that if I stopped eating them, my condition would disappear. I informed her that I did not eat either of those foods, and that, in fact, my condition was genetic and I had struggled with acne since my early teens. Judging by the look on her face, I assumed that she did not believe me, but chose not to pursue the conversation any further.
Soon, Seidy began to do a “weekly cleansing” of the faces of Laura and Roy, who maybe had five zits total between the two of them. I frequently saw them lying on their parents’ bed, Seidy hovering over them, popping their zits with care and precision. She always offered to pop mine as well, but I politely refused, telling her that the doctors urged me not to pop my zits for fear of infection and scarring. Again, the nod of disbelief reminded me that my logic was not worth explaining. One Sunday evening, after spending the weekend away, I walked into the kitchen and saw Laura and Roy sitting on stools, their eyes closed and their faces covered in a sort of shiny gel. Curious, I asked Seidy what they were doing. The answer? Treating their acne with honey. Not just any honey, the honey that I had purchased for my tea! As always, I politely refused treatment, but this time chuckled openly. If I didn’t laugh, I was surely going to cry, and this situation was definitely filled with humor.
After that encounter, local suggestions regarding how to cure my acne began to appear everywhere. One weekend, while waiting with some friends in a bus stop, an old man sat down next to me. Immediately, he pulled a container out of his backpack and announced that if I used his product for ten days, my acne would disappear forever. Great, total strangers offering me mystery creams for my face.
Months later, my mother visited la Violeta and witnessed, through translation, the infamous medical logic. Prior to her arrival, the chicken pox spread throughout the school, and ultimately to Carolina. When we walked into the house, Carolina informed us that, contrary to what her parents said, she did not have the chicken pox. Rather, she stated matter-of-factly, she had zits like I did! Later that afternoon, we sat down in the salon to chat with my host mother, and Carolina ran around with her usual endless energy and unintelligible speech. Seidy informed us that Carolina was born premature and spent three weeks in the hospital. My mom, showing the appropriate level of sympathy, replied that she fortunately appeared to be a healthy and happy child now. I nodded in agreement as I translated. This is important, Seidy continued unexpectedly, because premature babies are more hyperactive, talk more without stopping, and have a greater tendency to touch and break things. Somehow, I managed to translate into English with a straight face, and my mom nodded and exerted much effort in order to maintain her composure.
Upon returning to the privacy of my room, we joked about the “premature baby equals hyperactive toddler” theory and wondered if we would learn more pieces of profound wisdom before going to the city the next morning. Our answer came during dinner, when Laura and Gilbert returned from the Clinic in Frailes. They entered the kitchen with a bag of antibiotics and a lot of answers. Apparently, while we had been at school, Laura’s face had swelled up and she had developed a temperature - a problem which always merits a doctor’s visit. Laura caught a virus that “anda en el aire” - literally that “walks or goes in the air” and Doctor Katia prescribed three days of bed rest. Obviously, antibiotics work wonders in fighting a mysterious, airborne virus.
Throughout the course of the year, my father, the American-trained doctor, laughed heartily at most of the “dos and don’ts” of staying healthy in a small town. Some of the additional, commonly-accepted rules include: don’t open the refrigerator after ironing (or you may develop a rash), don’t shower after eating (or you may not digest your food), don’t put Band-Aids on cuts, only on popped blisters (I’m actually not sure of the consequence of breaking that rule), and don’t eat red beans after undergoing surgery (or your blood may not clot properly). But who can really determine if American medical logic always holds or if Costa Rican health rules are always crazy? What I can say is that my skeptical father now claims that he wouldn’t risk eating red beans after surgery. And who knows - maybe in the future I should think twice before drinking my coffee black.
