Thursday, December 30, 2010

The quite gift exchange

Its really interesting here because between the meals that I get and the general lack of entertainment in the village I have no reason to spend any money outside of my bi-monthly payments to my host family.

Another awesome piece of news is that I have also located a suitable home for when my 6 month host stay is up.  finally I will have my freedom, privacy, and dominion over MY OWN KITCHEN!!!!  The plus side is that it is right on the main road, so I will actually have more access to the people that i need to get in touch with the most.  Where as now I am good romp through puddles and coffee plants to get to where I am.
I guess if now I am in the rhythm of spilling the beens, yesterday I went to my counterpart's house to what I thought was going to be a small gift exchange that they do every year.  A couple of hours passed with no one showing up but then all of a sudden a caravan of cars and pickups came to deliver toys and clothing to the children and villagers.  It was organized through a church in San Jose that comes every year (how they didn't know where to go is beyond me).  Anyway, I clearly stuck out among the masses of indigenous people in the village that come to receive clothing and the few ticos that were organizing the operation.  So bit by bit I start to introduce myself to them.  A few could vaguely recall the name Peace Corps, so over the course of the couple hours that it took to figure out the logistics of organizing the distribution of stuff I have ample time to explain the organization and what I would be doing here.  More then once I was asked the same question of "so how long are you going to be here" (probably expecting something on the order of a regular tourist).  "Two years".  That pricked their ears up!  Once we have decided that this whole operation would be most better suited to be go on in the local school, I had sufficiently informed a number of people enough that the words John Foss, Peace Corps, Economic Development Facilitator, and 2 years in Grano de Oro began to snowball around the church group.  They had graciously come prepared with lots of food to feed the crowds, but it still needed to be prepared.  Being someone who is now very good at feeding large crowds of people in pinch and under pressure, I instinctively offered to help.  I jumped right in cutting what looked like an eight foot coil of sausage meat (salchichon).  The whole gender role thing is so funny some times, because it totally caught the middle aged lady who was preparing cups of soda by surprise that a man (to her a giant gringo no less) would make such an offer to help with the food.  After everything was cut and hot food started to come in from the grill (which was actually a tire rim with rebar pipes
wielded onto the sides with a metal grate hinged to the top... I thought it was a rather clever recycling idea), we started serving plates to people.  They don't smile that often, but indigenous children have to be one of the most adorable human beings on the planet when you gift them something.  Every tooth in their mouth has a good 2 millimeters of clearance between the next, their hair is this shimmering jet black, and their eyes look like one giant pupil.  I can't exactly say the same about the adults who seem to be well accustomed to receiving hand-outs.  In fact, I get the sense that they might be passed the point of gratitude and more or less expect things to given to them for free.  This is a topic to explore later. At one point the grill needed a relight, which caused a real cramp in our supply chain.  I wish that I had my voyageur hat at the time because I shooed away the 5 people that were ineffectively adding more and more charcoal and wondering why it didn't just burst into flame, redistributed the coals so their was some air holes, and gave a couple strong blows into the ambers at the bottom to rekindle of the flames. 20 seconds later and the grill was roaring again with the help of fat drips from the salchichon.  I went back to helping serve food, but caught out of the corner of my eye the silent nods of approval from the previous fire tenders.
Everything ended rather abruptly as the last few Grano de Oro residents got some food and a last spokes person made a last prayer of thanks.  I made a couple contacts among them from people who were excited to share their stories of when they traveled to the states. Its interesting because those who had that opportunity are among the better off socio-economically in the group.  I am not sure what good will come out of knowing them, but a growing friend base in country is inevitably valuable, and through them I sure to meet some influential people.
When I got home, i learned that I had missed a visitor that had come looking for me.  Apparently their is a college students in town that learned that I was here and wants a diagnostic on her English.  I have
yet to meet her, but am sure that I can give her a few pointers.  This could turn into another interesting contact because I learned that she is going back to Turrialba to start classes again in 3 months and I
dearly want to make connection with the University of Costa Rica.  If they have a business school on the Turrialba campus that would be even better!

December 30, 2010

My first great breakthrough!

I just had a great conversation with one of the local fuerza publicas.  By pure chance I walked in looking for your number in the event that PC office needed to call me en case of an emergency.  Two hours later, I finally have a local point man that really really understands the importance of getting the community organized.  From him i learned more in 2 hours then this whole past week and site visit.  Costa rican institutions wont even blink an eye at your if you don't represent a larger good or group of people.  Unfortunately, and logically, because he is a police officer he is forbidden from becoming an official member of any local organizations, but he is free to give me some advise from time to time when I am in a rut (tredding lightly of course).

AHHHAA! Finally a good breakthrough in this place!!! It took a fucking week to find it, but now the snowball will start to role!

Some of our discussion points included that following:
1)Many of the organizations appear to be ineffective or inactive. They haven't achieved very much at the community scale. The cooperative is the success so far and is probably the closest to achieving official national recognition. It could be an organization that State institutions will deal with, where as the Associacion de Desarrollo integral has been inactive for 6 months now.
2)Apparently it is really taxing to organize people. And inbetween the organizations that due exist, there is no communication between them.
3)The Students in the town are very discouraged because there is very little to do here and as such they turn to drinking and drugs.
4)Those that don't take up work in the village (timber, coffee, or a local deal) have to leave the town to find work. Dissatisfaction as to the options that exist here.
5)The internet is a great tool, but probably only for finding information. MIS is not an essential tool among the businesses here and none of them currently use computers. The costs make a computer as sizable investment for something that doesn't have much practical use yet.
6)The coming aula de computacion would be of great interest to locals.
7)After age 14/15 kids are legally able to work (and many do given the pressures within the family). The number of students that go on to University is pitiful. It would be even more interesting to asses what is the population that commutes into Turrialba each day for school and for what.
8)There is the interesting theme of introducing more tourism into Grano de Oro. The Hotel Moravia is well out of the way and appears not to want anything to do with the rest of the town. Unfortunately it is up to Grano de Oro to provide a pull for these tourists that come in private bus loads.
9)There are a couple of good ideas on the table that HGDO should consider regarding tourism:
1.Lodging (bed and breakfasts/hostel/cabinas/motel/rural tourism homestays),
2.internet cafe
3.Souvenir shops,
4.wood work artisan shops,
5.eco-farm,
6.indigenous heritage museum,
7.historical museum,
8.alternative public transport to the one 6am bus.
December 28, 2010

Excerpt from a Christmas Letter Home

"Thank you very much for your message it really really makes the day and I am thinking of you too in this... well... much less than "winter wonderlandy" environment.  I had a great long talk with mom and dad and alex this morning mostly about opportunities for things to come.  All us volunteers walked into this experience knowing that we are starting our service essentially on Xmas weekend and that is was going to be really hard.  So far I have dodged the mental breakdowns and am making progress getting to know my family and I think we are integrating well.  I had one great breakthrough today with one of the locals, Luis the father of my host mother, who with perfect punctuation described the true value of having a volunteer in the site.  That my presence is not just an integration of myself but as a bridge between the host country and the united states.  And that this interaction exposes them to new ways of thinking that they might never have come up with on there own. They used the phrase, “nadie es profeta de su propio tierra.” If I understand this correctly, it highlights the importance of someone coming in from the outside. Although few and far between, these small revelations and breakthroughs remind me why I am here (despite the fact that this time of year is almost universally reserved to be with your own family).  I do dearly miss all the Christmas things from the north country; walks up old route 3 with heavily snow laden fir trees, a stiff eggnog with Bourbon, lounging around the fireplace at the humble Foss farm after a good trudge outside, and great discussion about the goings on of friends and family." -December 25, 2010

Swearing in Ceremony

The following is an excerpt from a letter home:
"Just shooting a quick message out there that I have finally arrived at my official site in jungle (Grano de Oro) and I am here to stay for the next 2 years.  Also I thought people would appreciate a photo update which I have attached.  It is taken at our swearing in ceremony at the US ambassador's residents in San Jose.  It was a great ceremony, although I wasn't expecting that part of the oath would be "to defend the constitution of the United States"... but I guess that was a nice touch, and it was fun to hear the kind of words and enthusiasm from our directors.

Now is going to start an interesting Christmas session in a new house with a new family and a totally different scene then what I have gotten used to around the capital.  I am still trying to find my place in this house and there is a short list of people in the village (actually only maybe 2) that I can really lean on for some direction.  For those of you who don't know, my site is an indigenous village of about 1500.  Unfortunately the Christmas season in this country brings everything to a screeching halt, so I really hope that some organization comes up that I can simply jump into and try get my name passed around. 

Fun things that could only happen here: on my bus ride up Grano de Oro yesturday part of the way we had to get pulled by a tractor (the road was falling part...its cool.. no biggy), got woken up this morning by the sound of the "chicken truck" where a man come through selling chickens too old to lay eggs for a dollar a head (presumably to kill for food), in order to open a new mailbox we had to make 4 trips back and forth through Turrialba... along the way we found a source of dutch cookies!"