Not all who are lost, wonder.



Monday, June 26, 2006

Costa Rica Chronicles, Part 3

hey ev´rybody,

well, here we go into the final stretch of the program, less than a week to go!  everyone is pretty burned out by this point, and really just want to relax and not think about the spanish final and the program final that we have to do this week.  but!  here goes nothin´ the last haul before a relaxing two and half weeks of travelling! 

we got back from nicaragua yesterday.  the eight hour bus ride that is actually only about six hours of sitting on the bus and two hours of getting everyone through customs at the border.  made me think a lot about how spoiled we get with customs at international airports that they take care of a majority of the paperwork through computers and the flight plan.  i had to remind myself that the impatience of the others in the group with this lethargic process by bus had a lot to do with the fact that it was their first experience with it.  jeez that was an awkward sentence.  anyway, the whole group was kind of on edge, getting tired of one another going into the trip, so i´m not sure a straight week of unadulterated "us" time was what we needed...  the week was really good though, and no one ended up killing each other (although we did get in a bit of trouble for partying a little too hardy in the hotel, cuz the hotel was small enough that our group took up every room, so we figured we´d be alright... oops).  we visited a Precario (literally "precarious") kind of a shanty town, with houses made out of metal sheets and whatever plywood they could find, that was originally a squator community.  in costa rica, the same situation of a neighborhood eventually got the help of the government to install electricity, water services and waste disposal, but in nicaragua the people had to depend entirely on nonprofit organizations for the little help that they got.  everyone worked, even the children, and these were the people who had decided to stay in nicaragua, and not take their entire family across the border illegally to work in the banana and pineapple plantations in costa rica  that we got to visit the week before (they wouldnt let us take any cameras in)(all US owned and operated companies).  in the rainy season, lake nicaragua would flood the surrounding area and the Precario that we were in, forcing everyone to live in two feet of water.  an NGO that we visited was helping them build housing that was above the floodline for 250 american dollars, and providing some of the labor.  for comparison´s sake: working on a banana plantation, the average man works 12-16 hours a day and is paid on a piece rate system in teams of three, who must split about 17 colones per bunch of bananas.  they earn approximately 6000 colones per day which is about 12 american dollars, in the humid hot hot heat perfect for growing bananas.  most of the work is tough manual labor because it is cheaper for these companies to NOT mechanize the process because when profits drop they can simply fire people.  against costa rican law, these people have no benefits whatsoever.  this is considered a good wage compared to many of the jobs in nicaragua.  and yeah things are cheaper here, but not even close to the difference in wages.  i was talking to some of the others on our program about coming back to nicaragua next summer to volunteer and help build houses (by the by, each house has five rooms, including a bathroom, kitchen, living room and two bedrooms.  many times for a family of six or seven since more children means more people working for the benefit of the family. 
walking around the Precario i was hit by an epiphanal moment: nearly all of the uneasy energy between our group of americans walking around in our flipflops and digital cameras, and the people who´s neighborhood we were overtaking, all of this awkwardness could be dispelled simply by saying hello, by approaching them as one human being to another.  it really drove home for me the power of presentation.  people were more than willing to talk with us and show us all the hard work that they had done on these houses, once it was initiated.  something as simple as "buenos dias."  recognizing the dignity in another. 

we spent saturday on the shore of a beautiful lake just to the north of Granada (where we were staying, kind of a preserved, colonial, tourist town), at an amazing hostel (only 20 bucks a night).  i´m not sure if they think that because we go to an expensive private school that we need to be babied and will accept nothing less than the lap of luxury, but we keep staying in these places that cost a whole bunch on trips.  i´m not saying i dont appreciate it, but i would be fine staying in the hostel in Granada for 7 dollars a night where there are a whole bunch of other international travelling our age living out of backpacks, as opposed to taking over an entire hotel for 50 dollars a night.  we all keep saying that we wish we could see a breakdown of where the thousands of dollars we spent to go on this trip is actually going.  sorry for that rant: the lake was gorgeous and we just lounged around all day.  there was another group there, or maybe seven people, from israel.  the place owned two kayaks, and out in one, i got burned... again.  don´t worry though this time its not second degree.  i was out for over an hour trying to find Soni, who had been gone for like two hours by that time in the other kayak. (how do you lose someone on a lake?  i guess it was big enough, though it didnt look it, it was 6 km across).  burning and hungry, i came back to find that she had come back from the other side that i wasnt looking on so much. 

AH! i can´t wait until this week is done and over.  i feel like its the end of last semester all over again...

i hope that you´re all doing fabulously, and that i get to hear from you soon, i love getting email, it makes me happy and feel like someone is actually reading these extra-ordinarily long emails. toodles 

smiles
Ben

Friday, June 9, 2006

Costa Rica Chronicles, Part 2

hola chicos,

lucky you, its time for another update.

two weekends ago we went to Manuel Antonio, a very touristy spot on the pacific coast.  the three of us boys spent three hours in the ocean with nothing more than SPF 4 on... my skin is still peeling off my back today from the 2nd degree burn i got.  don´t worry i learned my lesson, and the blisters were really tiny.  in the evenings the whole group went dancing (in this wall-less place with mirrors everywhere, and a bunch of creepy guys watching the tourists dance), skinny dipping, and probably some other things.  it was so humid and hot (partially because of the burn) that i was shirtless pretty much the whole time. 

and then this last weekend we went to a cloud forrest, San Gerardo de Dota.  it was SOOO beautiful, the food was amazing, they even cooked the fish that Soni and David caught in the stocked river.  we hiked to two waterfalls through actual, primary rainforest, one was about 20 ft high and had a cave carved out right next to it that you could climb into to watch the waterfall.  the second was about 60-70 ft high, absolutely amazing.  the trails were so allovertherplace that there were ropes everywhere we had to use to get there.  we also went birdwatching for quetzals with a guide who taught us tons about the biology surrounding us (i was in heaven!), horseback riding, and played soccer with the guys that worked there one morning. 

my internship has been really good, i´ve learned a ton at the Clinic, not to mention that my spanish is getting worked.  they let me give shots in the injections clinic, i watched a gunshot wound get cleaned, got to hold a baby of a mother while she got a pap smear, and go twice a week into the community both for domilicary visits and for primary medicine (education, blood pressure and sugar checks, both of which i was taught to do), its so hard to follow the accents and fast spanish of the people in the community, especially when they get going on their opinions of the health care system.  med school is only six years of college here, instead of two different schools, four apiece, like in the States, so the doctors are only a couple of years older than I am.  the one i directly report to has good conversational english skills, but doesnt know medicinal english, and my spanish is pretty much the same, so we teach each other the medicinal language in our native tongue.  it also never ceases to amaze me how much power the white coak of a doctor has, people treat me differently in the clinic when i´m wearing mine and when i´m not. 

my host family is still great, understanding when i come home after a long day of internship and spanish classes and stumble over every word cuz my brain is sapped.  i find my english is getting worse as my spanish gets better so that now i can´t communicate period.  a group of us went to twoforone movie night on wednesday (every movie theatre in the city, which works out to be $1.6 a person), and i invited my host sister.  we saw X3, which i loved (even though the writing kinda sucked), and would love to discuss the finer points of it with any of you who are willing (Jacob, you especially). 

we´re going to see an active volcano this weekend, Arenal, which is especially active right now, so unfortunately we can´t climb it, but i´m looking forward to watching the lava glow from afar, sitting in the hot springs with the swim up bar. we were going to go to a banana plantation today, and then on to the Carribean coast to Puerto Viejo, which is another kind of touristy place.  but we decided to do all that next weekend because no one will be at the banana plantation today because ------> 

the first game of the world cup of soccer is going on right now, and i just heard everyone yelling and screaming, meaning the game at least won´t be a shutout.  costa rica vs germany, we dont stand a chance cuz we´ve got three injured players and the game is in germany.  but heres hoping.  the whole country is going nuts, and all public employees (like half the country) have the day off, as well as many other people who will simply not work today.  the whole country stopped. 

i hope that all of you are having a great summer, and that i hear from y´all soon.
peace and elbow grease.


smiles
Ben