The Howler Monkey Brain Dump from very, very high. Karen Rowan, 12.05.10….from the plane ride back to Denver.

The Howler Monkey Brain Dump from very, very high.

Karen Rowan, 12.05.10….from the plane ride back to Denver.

(Feel free to comment and add information or correct inaccuracies -- corrections already made to the "Lisa" section)

General information about Howler Monkeys

A troop is made of an alpha male, several females and their offspring.  

Female Congo Aullador, Howler Monkey

Former Alpha Male Congo

When a male child gets big and wants to be the alpha he challenges the alpha.   If the alpha remains the alpha, the challenger will go off to make his own troop.  If the younger male wins, the older male is retired and goes off on his own to die.  A congo cannot survive alone.  This is the natural process, as much as we might want to create a retirement home for old alpha males.  Infants ride on their mother’s backs until they are old enough to try climbing alone. 

Congos do not appear to have a mating season any more than humans do.  There are always babies.  There are always adolescents. The congo tail is like a hand or foot and has similar grabbing muscles and texture.  

If a congo is separated from the troop, it will generally wait for her, howling from the trees.  A congo that is hurt and separated from the troop by someone who is trying to help should be prepared for angry attacks.  When that same congo is reintroduced to the troop after medical treatment, females are more likely to be reaccepted.   Congos eat all manner of leaves and fruits and know what to eat to calm an upset stomach.   20% fruits and 80% leaves. Their choices are very specific.  Congos who are fed foods that their digestive systems are not used to need vitamins and medical care to reestablish their natural digestive processes.   The alpha male either leads or follows the troop.  He leads the way and then hangs back to make sure everyone stays together.  Congos howl to advertise to other congos that this is their eating and drinking territory.  They cover only a short distance each day, usually only about 400 meters.  They are diurnal and one of the most sedentary (in terms of daily forward geographical progress) animals.   Although I have been told anecdotally  that congos throw poop at people when they are angry, I’ve never seen in happen.  I have, however, seen congos pee from high branches.  On purpose and with pre-meditation as a warning to humans who are interfering in their space.   The females I have seen have a slight orange overcoat and the males tend to be a little darker.  The bright white balls of the male congo can be seen from great distances.   

Abnormal Congo behaviors

It is abnormal and entirely out of character for a congo to walk on the ground.  They can… but doing so is unnatural and puts them in danger from cars, humans and other animals.  Any contact with humans is also abnormal and ultimately dangerous to the congo troop.

Dangers to Congos

By far the most dangerous threat to Congos right now is the proliferation of electrical wires.  Congos travel by grabbing a branch with a hand and using the tail for balance or to hang.  Using this same strategy on an electrical cord and metal attachment or transformer, congos are easily and quickly electrocuted.   Sometimes congos lose their tails, and then are at a great disadvantage while traveling with the troop or are temporarily stunned.  Often, they are killed. 

Monkey Bridges

Originally designed by Vanessa at the Monkey Park on the way to Tamarindo and successfully used at the park, Monkey Bridges were created by the Playa Hermosa Association, among other groups, and placed throughout northwestern Costa Rica.  They can be seen from Playa Panama down to Tamarindo.  They are green because the Monkey Park discovered that monkeys were more likely to use green ones.  They are never black because hopefully congos will learn that black cords are dangerous and green ones are safe.   ICE hung the bridges provided by the Playa Hermosa Association first and later decided to make and hang them themselves.  The Playa Hermosa Association has stopped accepting donations for Monkey Bridges since ICE has started making them.  Donations for congos now go to emergency vet care for rescued Congos. 

Bridges can take up to a year to be found and used.  Some Congos have now been seen in Monte Paraiso in Playa Hermosa using the bridges.   I found pictures on the Playa Hermosa Association website.

The Monkey Park on the way to Tamarindo

Vanessa works at the barely supported Monkey Park, an animal rescue center.  They have big cats that the big cat rescue park was unable to take, injured birds, spider monkeys, white faced monkeys and congos.  They have a medical facility to care for seriously injured animals, but minor injuries are best treated at a local vet clinic so that the animal can be returned to the wild as quickly as possible.  When I asked what kind of donations they need she said bird seed.

The Monkey Park primarily focuses on rehabilitation.  I am not allowed to enter a three part, large enclosed area.  The first area houses what will hopefully become an alpha male.  The second houses a female adult.  The third houses two babies.  None of them are related to each other or from the same troop.  Alpha males will kill congos from other troops.  The goal of this rehabilitation is to convince these congos that they are in the same troop.  The female and the babies can see each other an communication through the mesh barrier that separates them.  The babies are allowed to enter the female’s area for brief periods, while under observation.  The alpha male and the female can also see each other through their own mesh barrier.  When the staff is confident that he will not kill her, they will be put in the same cage.  The alpha will not be put into the same enclosure with the babies until he has already bonded with the female.  This is the riskiest combination.  If it works, the family will be released as a troop back into the wild.  Congos cannot survive alone.  Each enclosure has monkey bridges hanging in it and the congos use them.

Another cage holds two spider monkeys that were kept in a small cage together as pets for so long that they went crazy.  They can still keep each other company and are now in a much larger cage than the box-sized one that had been held in previously, but they attack anyone else.

A small cage set far apart from everyone else holds two babies who were rescued separately.  They now cling to each other as though each is the other’s mama.  One is missing an eye and looks warily and fearfully from the other while clutching the baby who is smaller than she is.  They are both terrified.  The Monkey Park does not think that the one-eyed Congo will be able to survive in the wild, so they will not rehabilitate her.  Even so, they have found family in each other. 

Vanessa used to rescue monkeys on her own, but she found that the people who were keeping them as pets or befriending and domesticating wild monkeys were resentful when she took them and would retaliate.  They just didn’t understand, she said.  So now she calls the municipality to investigate and bring the monkeys to her.  They will not be taken anywhere else.  She is the only accredited Monkey rehab park in Costa Rica.  It receives almost no funding even though it is the official rehab location, and relies heavily on donations to feed the rescued animals.

Vanessa runs through the list of rules for living near Congos.  Do not name them.  Do not touch them.  Do not feed them.  Cover their eyes to reduce premature death caused by extreme stress if you do have to move them or treat them medically.   Turn them into pets and remove them from their troops and they will go crazy in the same way that we would go crazy without social contact.  They will become violent.  They will become abnormal.

Congo Stories

The baby girl lays on her side, tiny hands clutching small stones.  I touch her, willing her to just be shocked, not already dead, but she does not move, does not respond, does not breathe.  

Her family howls from a nearby tree, willing her to get up, too.  

They will not leave until they give up hope completely.  They will not give up hope yet.  The alpha congo moves agitatedly in the tree whenever someone approaches, hanging menacingly, protectively.  I take pictures from the ground where she lays under the transformer, electrical wires and metal connectors on the pole several meters above her.  

The trees here have been cut back.  Branches are gone to encourage the congos to go another way, but it does not work.  I step back and I see, in the tree immediately above this little girl, one lone congo, not howling with the rest of the troop a few trees away.  They are surely howling for the baby.  They are also howling for the mama to come along.  They will not leave them.   The mama will not move.  

She has been watching me taking pictures all along from her hidden perch high above.  She makes little noise.  While the daddy howls, she makes small noises that sound more like crying.  When I stand beneath her, she pees.  I back up.  I get the message.  When the young man who works nearby comes to bury her, I call him off.  Give her more time, I say.  He knows she can’t be left for very long or she will begin to attract animals and insects.  In the heat, she will begin to smell.  She fell in the early hours of the morning and it is still before 9.  Give her more time.  I point up.  He steps back and scans the trees for more, knowing he will not move her if he fears angering the congos.  But this mama is not angry.  She is just not quite yet resigned.  She watches and waits.   We stand quietly talking and he tells me there were 7 who shocked themselves all at the same time recently.  I take a picture of the number on the pole so that maybe a bridge can be placed here.

Lisa, the Congo with a name  (including corrections and additional information that was sent to me in response to the first version)

Yesterday someone had said to me that the congo Lisa has a better life than most of the dogs around here. (Not a Tico.) Congos are not dogs.  They are not pets.  As I watch this grieving mama, I see how much more like us they are than a pet.  I ache for her and for the protective alpha daddy hanging from the tree to warn me to back away. 

Life imitating art, which imitated life.  There is so much more to say and show than what came out in the book Isabela quiere un congo.  As I capture video of these howling, mourning brothers and sisters, I think of Lisa.   

“Lisa” is a Congo whose mother died on a “cable de alta tension”.   Lisa still has a scar from that fall.  When she arrived in Hermosa Heights, at first she was fed grapes, but after much reading and research by those who were caring for her, she came to be fed only small portions of papaya so that she would still have to go into the mountains to seek the rest of her diet.

Lisa, sitting on the ground

When I see her for the first time, I am startled, but am encouraged by someone who works there to reach out my hand.  In a flash she has grabbed my hand, climbed my arm like it’s a branch and is sitting on my shoulder picking imaginary bugs from my hair.   Is this creature still a candidate for rehabilitation?  I’m thinking the head sitting isn’t going to go over with the other congos in the troop.

Lisa, climbing and playing in a low bush

She walks on the ground, hangs from trees taunting people as they enter the restaurant, reaches for people to play with her, grabs their hands and playfully bites them.   She approaches people and tries to touch them and attracting the affection attention of groundskeepers and employees nearby.

She seems bored and listless most of the time, but entertains herself playing with birds and passing groundskeepers.  Maybe this is what normal congos look like, too.

Rehabilitation is still possible if this does not work, but Vanessa sighs when she learns she was fed grapes.  Congos don’t eat grapes.  Do you see grapes here?, she asks.   She scrunches her face when I guess at her age.  It has been several months since she appeared in Hermosa.  At that point, having little information about Lisa’s story, I assumed the grape feeding was a daily occurrence.  

Fortunately for Lisa, the humans around her are doing their homework.  The municipality was called and has been involved for the last month.   What I saw was a named, touched, fed Congo that resulted in a creature that was so dissimilar from a Congo that she exhibited almost no natural Congo behaviors.  

But what the experts saw was different.  After seeing her playing in trees and eating flowers and knowing that she still disappears into the hills at night, they came to the conclusion that may still be able to reunite with a troop.  She is going into “heat” and may eventually go with a male.  They think there is a possibility that as she matures she can still get back into the troop.  There are now signs up saying not to touch or feed her, which must be excruciatingly painful… for her human friends who greet her on their way in and out of their offices.  She is impossible not to be attracted to.  

I am told of two other stories in which a congo who used to hang around eventually took off and went back into the wild all on his own.

We await a happy ending.

From my observer position, knowing that I didn’t know enough about either Congos or Lisa to do anything, I didn’t do anything.  I did nothing but take pictures for the same reason I don’t buy lottery tickets in Costa Rica.  People walk around selling them and after simply declining many times, I finally started answering my real answer.  “No, thank you.  I do not want to be the American who won the Costa Rican lottery.”  And I do not want to be the American who thought she knew enough about Lisa to know how to help her.  I do not.

She may very well be better off and better taken care of than any dog.  If we think of her, though, as an orphaned baby or if we think of her with the emotional capacity of the mama in the tree mourning her electrocuted baby, depriving that baby of a family is ultimately not compassionate.   She has access to veterinary care and she is doted on by the people around her, but she is lonely.  If she doesn’t leave, she will never mate.  She will never have her own baby.   She will not know what leaves to eat when her stomach is upset.   She will not learn to avoid danger by staying off of the ground.  She will not have a healthy fear of humans.   The only thing to do at this moment is to hold our collective breaths and watch for a young, good-looking male congo who goes crazy out of his mind for Lisa, loves that she’s a little different and wants her to sit on his head and no one else’s.

What happened to this baby that made the troop not stay and howl for her when she wandered away?  When her mother was electrocuted was she injured?  Did the troop stay with her or abandon her?  Did she abandon the troop since her mother wasn’t in it anymore?  Was she abandoned because she exhibited abnormal head climbing behavior from infancy?

We feel responsible for and compassionate toward so many animals, but the congos have a special place in our hearts, I think, because we feel culpable.  It is our use of electricity that has invaded their natural habitat with dangerous high tension wires.  We are more affected by stories of orphaned congos because we need that electricity to live here…. And so we rescue and we save and we rehabilitate and we donate and we build bridges because it is no longer an option to bury these cables in the ground and it is most definitely not an option to live here without electricity.

But we do.  Every once in a while there is a pop that sounds like a canon being fired and sparks fly from a transformer.  At that moment, we do not feel resentful that the lights and the modem and the air conditioning and the stove are dark.  In that stillness that means that a congo touched a wire and blue a fuse, we are quiet.   We look outside and walk to the transformer hoping to find nothing. Nothing means no one was hurt and the congos moved away. 

I have seen Alpha Congos reaching out to touch a wire before leading the troop over it.  It takes higher level thinking skills to essentially exhibit the same behaviors he would if there were a posted sign that said, “Dear Congo Troop, Please do not touch this wire.   Doing so may cause severe shock resulting in serious injury or even death.”

If they can mourn, if they can communicate their wishes clearly by peeing on our heads from high above,  if they can be aware of the danger of electric cables, then we are more responsible, more culpable, more inclined to pay back that debt by trying to build alternate highways from green rope.

The story here isn’t that Lisa is here, the story is that she is here because her mom touched a high tension cable and died.   The lottery ticket that needs to be bought here is the one that will keep Lisa and her future babies safe from a similar fate. 

Playa Huevo

The troop is gone.  This formerly alpha male sits in complete stillness in the low branches of a tree.  He regards us dispassionately as we take pictures.  A congo cannot survive alone.  There is no reasonable explanation for a male congo to be alone other than that he is the ostracized former alpha.  Congos are never alone.   They cannot survive alone.  He does not play.  He does not eat.  He does not move.  His head turns from right to left, but he seems disinterested in what he sees.   My friends express concern.  I express wonder that being here allows me the privilege of watching this part of the congo life cycle.  I am as in awe as I would be if I were watching a congo birth… an experience I hope to avoid.    There is no mourning for a natural death.  It is the unnatural, early deaths of young congos that stops the entire troop in its tracks.  The family refuses to accept that the baby is dead until there is no choice but to be resigned because sometimes shocked monkeys get back up and stumble back to the troop. 

From 12.14.09

THE SHOCKING STORY OF THE CONGO AULLADOR (HOWLER MONKEY) 

We are leaving for San Jose in 14 hours. We should be finishing packing and going to bed early. Instead Kassidy is hurrying with such drive her feet remind me of when she was little and we would spontaneously drop everything to seek whatever adventure her imagination was captured by that moment. We are walking to the guard station in the dark with a camera and a head lamp and a cell phone, to try to figure out what you do with an electrocuted monkey. The congo aullador fell from a branch and grabbed the live wire on his way down. Our friend Heather pulled up with her three small children and we all quietly marveled at him. He was moaning and trying to get up. He looked exactly as one might imagine a drunk monkey. Confused and disoriented and compelled to get in his car even though someone had taken his keys already. One of the three kittens that lives down there, too, was apparently curious and sat a meter away from him, staring calmly. The congo would get up and stagger and occasionally notice her, but no matter how close he came, the kitten wouldn’t move. He tried to climb the rake propped against the guard house, thinking it was a tree. The guard caught it on its way down. Hmm… that’s not a tree. Are you a tree? We called a neighbor who said she would call the monkey rescue place, but he was already responding to the deep howl that was calling him home. Since we had been there, we had been hearing the howler monkey in the tree. It’s the alpha who hollers so that everyone can stay together. Once they lost this one, they stopped and waiting and howled. He took several breaks on his way to the tree. He would stagger and then stumble and rest on his chin for a few seconds and then try again. He never appeared to be even peripherally aware of us watching. He climbed the tree and rested on the lowest branch. Hurt as he was, he would make his way back to that howl and the howler family would sit and wait and howl until he did. 

Stupid kids with a bee bee gun. 

When the young congo falls from the tree near Lily’s Soda, instead of handling it, the neighborhood kids run for Bridget, the veterinarian who spends her days at Aqua Sport.  She supervises the rescue.   He is hurt and needs medical care. In short order the congo’s eyes are covered with a towel to reduce stress.  Handlers only touch him with towels.  As he is moved the alpha male jumps down from a tree, swings to the ground and waves his arms menacingly.  He does not understand that they are trying to help.  They continue howling for the baby as he is driven away in the back of a truck to the vet’s office.  There he is treated with antibiotics and the wound is treated topically while he is gently held with only towels so that he will not hurt the vet. If the family moves on, it is harder to find the right troop and return the baby, so speed is essential.   It is possible that if he is not returned quickly enough that he will be rejected by the troop.  A solo monkey cannot survive.  He is returned within a few hours to the same tree where the family is still howling and has not moved.  They come down the tree to bring him up.  He is wounded, but will recover, thanks to a couple of kids who knew to go get help from someone who knew the monkey rules but no thanks to the couple of kids who thought shooting a baby monkey with a bee bee gun would be a bright idea.   After some serious threats to report them if they are ever caught doing anything so stupid again, they are reportedly contrite.

Some combination of the bee bee gun congo and the shocked congo inspired Isabela quiere un congo, the story of a girl who comes to Costa Rica and decides she wants a pet monkey who will sleep in her bed.   Her misguided attempt to attract one results in the monkey being shocked.   She learns that monkeys are not pets and helps to build monkey bridges.  The setting is the fictional town of Playa Perfecta and the unnamed restaurant bears an uncanny resemblance to Aqua Sport.   Isabela’s behavior is understandable from an over-zealous 9 ½ year old.  The rest of us should endeavor to tell the difference between a dog and a howler monkey and act accordingly.   Myself included.  I am grateful that I was encouraged to let Lisa approach me and that the result was that she climbed up me because following her story became an educational and fascinating journey into how to gently return a Congo to the wild, as these people are trying to do.    

With gratitude to the Playa Hermosa Association, from whom I heard a lovely story, too, about a shocked baby that was rescued and kept safe until it woke up and then was returned a short distance from its family so that they would not see that the baby had been with humans.  She said she soooo wanted to cuddle the baby, but didn’t touch it and just sat beside it.  It was a beautiful demonstration of the combination between compassion and education. Congos walking on green hanging bridges are a just reward for a spectacular effort. 

If we could just hang signs next to the electrical wires and teach them to read….

CR 02.19.10 First blog since December

CR 02.19.10


SYNOPISIS:  Inspired by Ticht Naht Hahn; seeing lava at the Arenal Volcano; the waterfall; being perfect; the moment I have held my breath for 5 months; teaching at Playa Panama elementary school.

“I am a writer. I write stories, essays, books and poems. There are times when I don’t write. But that doesn’t mean that writing isn’t continuing inside me. When I water the vegetables, I just practice watering the vegetables. I enjoy watering my vegetable garden. I don’t think about the poem or the short story, but I know that somewhere inside me the short story is being made. If I don’t grow lettuce, I can’t write poems.

So when you allow the grow lettuce, you have to grow it with one hundred percent of yourself and enjoy deeply the work of growing lettuce. Then, when you write a poem, the poem will be good. The moment you begin to write the words down is not exactly the moment you create the poem. While you practice mindful walking, breathing and planting lettuce, without thinking at all about the poem, the poem is being written. The poem, or any work of art, is conceived in the depth of your consciousness while you’re not thinking about it. The moment you write it down or express it is only the moment of completion, like when a mother gives birth to her baby. Much has happened before this to make this baby or the artwork possible. This is why there must be moments when you allow the child in you to grow.” TNH, The Art of Power

(Starting this way for the benefit of those who have asked why it’s been so long without a blog. I’ve travelled to Colorado and Washington 3 times since November and I have not figured out yet how to work that much and write at the same time. I also apparently leave my muse behind in Costa Rica when I travel.

In any case…)



LAVA, LAVA!

I am sitting near a bridge as the sun goes down, watching orange lava spew from under the clouds on Arenal. There are 50 other tourists gathered around and they and their tour guides shout, “Lava, lava!” and we all clumsily gather our cameras and do not get a picture before the lava stops descending or the clouds descend too much and our audience is no longer required by the great and powerful volcano. We read that we can hear the rumbling if we hike on her, but this is what we wanted…. The coveted opportunity to see Arenal on a non-cloudy night. We wait long enough to provide a feast for the mosquitoes before we decide she may not blow again, and head to a hotel.



We check into a quaint cabin with one King bed and a… a crib. Swans with a heart made of flowers are twisted on our bed from bathroom towels and we cock our heads at the curious scene – an apparent honeymoon suite… with a crib.



PRINCE CHARMING

We are in the Jacuzzi chatting with three French Canadian women shortly after our arrival. An odd animal sound – what must be a frog, we suppose, only because we can’t imagine another animal making a similar sound – interrupts our conversation frequently as we chat. We are telling the women a story in French to illustrate that Kassidy is tri-lingual, but they don’t really “get” us. “Le chat voulait mange au crossaint au chocolat.” She corrects our pronunciation, changes voulait to present tense and laughs about the random placement of an irrelevant and unexplained cat in our conversation. She clearly is not a language teacher, but her French is pretty good for a native French speaker, so we let her stay in the Jacuzzi.



The frog continues to make…. Truly un-spellable sounds and I imitate him. We joke about the potential English spelling of this particular sound. The frog sounds his… Rghaagg Ruuph again and I try again to re-create his pronunciation. He copies me. I copy him. He copies me. We are suddenly and unbelievably in an actual conversation that send us into peals of laughter. The more we imitate the frog, whose location is still unknown, the more he replies at appropriate and responsive intervals. We change our tone and intonation and he changes his. His responses answer our questions. We respond to his questions. We have absolutely no idea what we’re saying. Kassidy is now a polyglot rather than just tri-lingual. The French women lose patience with us as we become more and more enamored of our frog.



“I think this is incomprehensible input”, I say, to which my lovely and well-educated daughter appropriately laughs.



“Maybe he’s a Prince!”



“Hola, Principe,” she says. “Bonjour, Principe” she says. “Hello , Prince.” When she receives no response, she decides the frog doesn’t speak Spanish, French or English. She says again, “Rghaagg Ruuph.”



The frog replies, Rghaagg Ruuph.



We can’t breathe.



Maybe it isn’t a frog. We can’t see it. It could be anything. It’s probably a frog, though, right?



She sidles up to the edge of the Jacuzzi to converse with the frog on the other side of the fence. Anyone who has studied animals as much as I have (biology…9th grade) knows that this is a mating ritual. This frog is seeking a mate. Kassidy is interested in kissing a frog to make him turn into a Prince, so they are a compatible couple.



“That”, I say, “Is going in the book.”



This becomes our new line. From then on, anything remotely interesting or even decidedly uninteresting is “going in the book.”







LAS CATARATAS



We have to return to the waterfall the next morning because while exploring the evening before, I have left my Loyola sweatshirt. We arrive to look for it and they won’t let us in unless we pay and they guarantee us that there were no jackets found. A few minutes later, when we have steadfastly refused to leave, they are reviewing videos of the previous evening’s tapes to determine if a jacket was left and who might have retrieved it if it was.



It is at this moment that I remember what we were doing last night. We were entirely unaware that there were security cameras at the waterfall.



I mention to Kassidy that there are videotapes of last night and she says, “Oh, God.” We both silently mentally review the repeated and excessive camera poses as we both attempted to get passable pictures of each other in front of the waterfall. It’s a thing we do. Tilt your chin up. Snap. No, now turn sideways. Snap. That one isn’t good either. Change your smile. Snap. Too much teeth. Snap. Put your hair down. Snap. Take your sunglasses off. Snap. A little to the left. Snap. Now your chin’s too high. Snap. How about that one?



But we were alone. No one was watching us or we would never have publicized our vanity. They were smiling when they found my jacket. Maybe they were just really proud that they found it.



It suddenly stopped raining, so we went down to the waterfall --- a tremendous hike. Beautiful, steep, and full of stairs that are an unreasonable distance away from each other. The waterfall is surrounded by rocks. We climbed over them. As the falling water hits the lake it mists thickly so that dry clothes and towels are moist almost immediately. We carefully climbed over the slippery rocks and gingerly dipped our feet in the water. The rocks were mossy and the water was bitterly, shiveringly cold. We left our shoes and climbed in and shrieked at the temperature. An Englishman in the parking lot had insisted we try to go “right round” the waterfall on the right. Just “right round” he said. We tried. We swam really, really hard. We kicked. We pushed. We swam backward into the mossy rocks. I might’ve… might’ve…. Been able to make it. But the waves (seriously… waves) were constant and battering and created the illusion of being caught in a storm in the ocean or a 6 Flags wave pool. This would be a preposterously dumb way to die. A few minutes later a fellow swimmer, this one also a Canadian, mentioned that occasionally people have died here. No idea if it’s true, but it was the end of Kassidy in the waterfall. “MOM… we could DIE.” “We’re not going to die, Kassidy. We don’t take any risks.” She agreed with a too quick nod that did not make me feel manly or strong, but rather passive and safe.



I am in Central America under a waterfall that is so high I cannot see the top, standing on a dangerously mossy rock in 40 degree water aware that even when I do dangerous things, they aren’t dangerous. I am too afraid to complete the things I start, to weak to swim behind the waterfall, too afraid of dying and leaving Kassidy to figure out how to get home alone.



And I think… maybe that down payment I put down on SCUBA diving lessons 2 months ago that I haven’t yet completed is something I should think about again.







“To feel happy right where you are in the present moment is your practice. With this kind of understanding you accept yourself completely; you don’t feel the need to become someone because you already are someone.”



“I take my time. I want to be myself. I don’t deny myself in the here and now.. This is our practice – we call it aimlessness. We don’t put a goal in front of ourselves and run after it constantly. If we do, we’ll be running all of our life and never be happy. Happiness is possible only when you stop running and cherish the present moment and who you are. Who you are is already a wonder; you don’t need to be someone else. You are a wonder of life.” – TNH, The Art of Power





PERFECTION

What if there were a place in the world where you were the definition of perfect? What if there were a place where the shape of your body, the appearance of your face, the content of your character, the characteristics of your personality --- every single little thing --- what if that was the definition of ideal in some given place? Imagine a place where everyone wants to be just like you and wishes they could be more like you. Imagine a place in which there was no reason to feel self-conscious or insecure to experience self-loathing because there was no argument that in this place, the textbook definition of perfect – was you.



After reading and meditating on this TNH excerpt I thought how lovely this would be and how much differently I would treat myself. Then I wondered what would be different for Kassidy if she had a place in the world like that. Home. That’s what home should be. I wonder if that’s how Kassidy feels at home? I realized that it wasn’t, and resolved in that moment to change that.



That afternoon we were swimming in the ocean and I shared this thought with her. What began as a resolution has become part of our day every day. Yesterday she said to me, “Good thing you’re perfect or that would’ve really been a problem.”





YEAH, WHICH I’M ACTUALLY STARTING TO REGRET

My perfect daughter is talking to our friend Liam. “You’re only staying for half the year, right?” he says. Liam has a curious ability I’ve seen only in football watching men who attempt to have simultaneous conversations with their wives or dates. They watch the game over her shoulder. Liam is looking beyond Kassidy while he talks to her. He’s only 10. She says,

“Yeah, which I’m actually starting to regret.”



And then the conversation abruptly ends because he has flattened his belly against his boogey board and is catching the wave he had been watching behind her.



“Yeah, which I’m actually starting to regret” swims repetitively in my bobbing head while we play in the waves. The sun sets brilliantly and I swallow it whole with a several cups full of salt water and a chest full of happy.



There is a level of happiness that is attainable alone and there is a separate and fuller level of happiness attainable when your happiness is not making someone else miserable.





TEACHING AT PLAYA PANAMA ELEMENTARY SCHOOL



Walk to the door. Walk to the window. Walk to Yancy. Walk to Alex. Walk to Jose. Walk slowly. Walk to the teacher. Walk slowly.



The 6th graders are cool. They clearly think I’m an idiot. I’ll have to give them some time to warm up to me. The 4th graders, though, hug me when I arrive, hug me during class and hug me when I leave. Several of the girls kiss my cheek when I arrive and when I leave.



I arrive to teach the first day and the classroom has not been used in 2 months. Several kids grab mops and broom and remove a thick layer of dust from the top of the desks and the floor. I consider briefly just teaching on top of the dirt, but it isn’t possible. It’s suffocating, old dirt. There are spider webs. I grab a mop. I should have asked if they had electricity in this room before I brought the LCD projector down with me. I have bought two white board markers. Before we start I have the kids move all the desks up against the wall on once side of the room so that we have chairs and open space on one side of the small classroom. There are holes in the ceiling. The windows are made of chicken wire. It is really, really hot. I can hear all the rest of the kids. They are at recess and they are peeking in our windows. My voice hurts from talking over the noises. The door opens and closes perhaps 30 times. Kids come in. Kids go out. Without saying anything. As though they have suddenly remembered they have to be somewhere. Other kids open the door, look inside, and then walk out. I don’t know if they are supposed to be in class or not.





Day 1: walks to, fast, slowly, the door.

Day 2: the window, looks at, don’t look, don’t walk

Day 3: I arrive at the school and one of the teachers is at a meeting. She has cancelled classes for the day for the half of the school that she teaches, so only half of the students are in attendance. She also took the keys to my classroom. I have no board with the previous days words on it, no labeled classroom parts, no props, no markers. I decide to suck it up. I teach in the empty Kindergarten classroom and change my lesson plan.



The wall. Yells. What is your name?



The next day, I teach the same lesson to the kids who weren’t there the day before.



I arrive on Day 4, which is now Day 3 the second time. Where is everybody? They went home already. Why did they go home? They left on the bus. Why would the bus have left at 10:30 before the rest of their classes? I don’t know. Okay, where are the 5th graders? At lunch. Why are they at lunch during English class? I get no answer to this. They just run off after them and try to get them to come to class.



I have only 4 students. Let’s get started, I say. They keep bouncing out of their chairs like they’re made of rubber. It’s like herding cats. I finally decide to just start. We don’t have very long. Let’s just start, I say. They sit.



Another kid from the 6th grade walks in. He isn’t in a uniform. He has gone home, changed clothes, and come back to school. The rest of the 6th grade went home early for no apparent reason. Dennis decides to stay.



The wall. Yells. What is your name?



Then I start to teach a story using all the words we’ve done so far. I don’t want to be the mouse. Can I be the cat? Sure. I want to be the cat, too. There are two cats. Okay – fine. Two cats. I’m going to be the Uncle. They Uncle? There’s no Unc… nevermind. Okay. You can be the Uncle.



After we tell the story a couple of times I ask them if anyone wants to re-tell it. One girl starts to re-tell it. The baby mouse looks at the cats. The baby mouse yells….



And then 4 of the 5 students are standing and looking out the window. The English teacher is here.



Okay. Whatever. Sit down.



The girl apparently has no memory of the fact that she was in the middle of telling a story. Someone else volunteers to tell it. I accept. The girl walks out. I don’t know where she’s going.



This is not a classroom management issue. They are sweet and kind and well-behaved. This is precisely what they do in all their other classes. It’s weird. But then… having the bus come in the middle of the day and take students home… scheduling lunch during English class… those things aren’t what I would consider normal, either, and all I can say



The real English teacher comes in to talk to me after class. We speak in Spanish. She will be coming on Mondays and Thursdays. We decide that I will come Tuesdays and Wednesdays. I ask her what her plan is, so that maybe I can support her in it. I show her the book I intend to teach – Isabela.



Los niños no pueden leer.



This is a 6 year English program. She tells me she will bring me the Costa Rican curriculum for English because these kids will never be able to read in English.



I have secret weapons at my disposal, but I do not share that. I will whip them out later in the form of literate students. ;-)



Kassidy is home and we are going to the beach. We have been every day this week. We have friends visiting and tomorrow will go out on the boat with Marcos. Catching up on writing… now I have to catch up on pictures.

CR121409, 6pm

SYNOPSIS: Rescuing kitties and puppies and monkeys and mermaids and children and in the process each of us finds ourselves.

Thou rememb'rest
Since once I sat upon a promontory
And heard a mermaid, on a dolphin's back,
Uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath
That the rude sea grew civil at her song,
And certain stars shot madly from their spheres
To hear the sea-maid's music.
- William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Dream (Oberon at II, i)

THE METEOR SHOWER

I am sitting on the roof of the house in Costa Rica, carefully and gently negotiating the roof tiles. Kassidy is in the crook of my arm and I hear her gasp quietly as she sees the first meteor fall from the sky.
I want to shake the package of her future to see what’s inside and to see how much of her is made of memories made at 2am while the earth spins past shattered fragments of heaven.


FINDING GOLD AT PLAYA PANAMA ELEMENTARY SCHOOL

This week a 3rd grader I had never met walked up to my waist without tilting her head to see who I was and wrapped her arms around me and stayed while I rubbed her back. This week I tried to be a quiet bystander on the outskirts of the elementary school here, but the desire to be who I am bubbled out of me like passion. I took the kids not directly involved with the arts and crafts Christmas project who were milling about aimlessly waiting for the bus and made them stand up and sit down about 75 consecutive times. Kassidy, familiar with this process, was writing the words I was teaching on the white board behind me. I am so remarkably, staggeringly out of my element teaching elementary age kids instead of high schoolers or adults, but it was still so much fun. The teachers were amenable to my returning and teaching English when the school year starts next February.

My Spanish teacher friends, I got gold. I asked the kids to talk about their school, their favorite classes, their friends, their families. They sat two at a time on a chair and spoke slowly and smiled. Then I asked them to show me their classroom. They were instinctively comprehensible. They walked around pointing and saying, “This is the chalkboard where the teacher writes. This is the other chalkboard where the teacher writes.” It was very cute and very perfect. My Christmas project is to figure out how to load them up so that they can be used.

PUPPIES AND KITTIES AND FLEAS, OH MY!

Kassidy volunteered at the CARE spay and neuter clinic on Saturday, while I made a terrible faux paux. She picked up a flea-ridden stray puppy and nuzzled it to her chest and pet it. I told her not to because the fleas were crawling all over it. The woman who runs the clinic regarded me with nothing short of disdain while telling me, basically, to get over it. They were all covered with fleas and she had been here all day already. No cure for it but a hot shower. There’s something in my daughter that I did not put there, and there is a tolerance in her that I lack. It’s really amazing to watch how generous and gentle she is with tick-ridden, fluid seeping animals. She captured two of the three kittens from the grounds that are cared for by the day guard and brought them in to be spayed and neutered. When we brought them home so drugged they appeared to be dead, she nursed them in a kennel overnight and returned them to the guard in the morning. Her eyes were puffy and red and swollen in spite of the Benadryl.

FINDING A MERMAID

So Saturday, as I was driving back

(Okay… seriously… it’s a REALLY good story but, and I’m not kidding… a congo aullador (howler monkey) just fell from an electric cable by the guard’s station. We have already returned the rental car so we’re going to walk down in the dark and see if there’s anything we can do. You just can’t make these things up.)

So Saturday, as I was driving back from Playa del Coco for the third time, feeling like a soccer mom whose kid’s sport is collecting stray cats, the traffic began to slow because there was a barely dressed woman crying on the side of the road. The truck in front of me stopped and the drivers got out. I pulled over and got out. She was not hurt, but she was sobbing and she was in a bikini. Deciphering Spanish through choking sobs is not a skill I’ve practiced and it was actually the drivers who interpreted what she said for me. What did not require much cross-cultural understanding is that you don’t put a naked woman in a truck with men. So, a minute later she was in my car. She and her boyfriend had had a fight and she was scared so she told him to let her out of the car. I told her I felt like I had found a mermaid on the side of the road. She spent the ride back to her hotel screaming into the phone at her boyfriend about being fed up with his drugs and hitting her in the face and saying mean things, but she later told me he never hit her, he just said mean things about how no one has ever loved her and he’s the only one who doesn’t abandon her. Their next conversation was her assuring him that the people at the hotel would not know what had happened and think badly of him. By the time I dropped her off at the Hilton by the airport in Liberia, I was sure she would have dinner with him and that she probably wouldn’t kick him out of her hotel room tonight. Mermaids have to want to swim away before they can really be free.

THE SHOCKING STORY OF THE CONGO AULLADOR (HOWLER MONKEY)

We are leaving for San Jose in 14 hours. We should be finishing packing and going to bed early. Instead Kassidy is hurrying with such drive her feet remind me of when she was little and we would spontaneously drop everything to seek whatever adventure her imagination was captured by that moment. We are walking to the guard station in the dark with a camera and a head lamp and a cell phone, to try to figure out what you do with an electrocuted monkey. The congo aullador fell from a branch and grabbed the live wire on his way down. Our friend Heather pulled up with her three small children and we all quietly marveled at him. He was moaning and trying to get up. He looked exactly as one might imagine a drunk monkey. Confused and disoriented and compelled to get in his car even though someone had taken his keys already. One of the three kittens that lives down there, too, was apparently curious and sat a meter away from him, staring calmly. The congo would get up and stagger and occasionally notice her, but no matter how close he came, the kitten wouldn’t move. He tried to climb the rake propped against the guard house, thinking it was a tree. The guard caught it on its way down. Hmm… that’s not a tree. Are you a tree? We called a neighbor who said she would call the monkey rescue place, but he was already responding to the deep howl that was calling him home. Since we had been there, we had been hearing the howler monkey in the tree. It’s the alpha who hollers so that everyone can stay together. Once they lost this one, they stopped and waiting and howled. He took several breaks on his way to the tree. He would stagger and then stumble and rest on his chin for a few seconds and then try again. He never appeared to be even peripherally aware of us watching. He climbed the tree and rested on the lowest branch. Hurt as he was, he would make his way back to that howl and the howler family would sit and wait and howl until he did.

It’s funny that this week tidied itself up so nicely in a little theme. In the process of rescuing, each of us had been led to our passion. Me in an environment with fleas and ticks and mange – nyuh uh. But Kassidy seems entirely comfortable there and also driven to capture and care for them. Her compassion leaks from her face and reaches from her hands. I didn’t even know how much teaching was a part of me until I was in front of kids who were telling me that they knew their numbers up to 60 and they knew how to say all of the animals in English. She’s an artist and a writer and singer and an actress. But she was also the kid who dissected a dead garter snake in our backyard a couple of years ago. So… maybe she’ll be an artist / veterinarian.

We are on our way back to Colorado for Christmas. Thank you for keeping up the howling all this time.

CR 12.06.09

Only the present moment is real.




Every morning I wake up and look out the window first. If the ocean is still there, then I am still in this paradise and it is not a dream.



On the morning that I woke up and sat bolt upright in bed and looked out the small bedroom window in my mom’s guest room in Colorado, there was no ocean. There was no paradise. Sigh. Time to make lemonade.



It was still early, so I drove over to my sister’s house and knocked on the door at about 7:30am. My brother-in-law opened the door and my niece, Devyn, was at the end of the hallway staring. Her mouth hung open and then she ran toward me and gave me a squeezy hug.



Lemonade.



A few days later we all took Veteran’s Day off and went to the park. Devyn, Dylan, Kassidy and her cousin from the other side, Sarah. All we did was play. No cell phone. No computer. No other adults. We played on the swings and the slides and the monkey bars. 13 year-old Sarah was swinging next to me and said, “I feel like a little kid.”



Kassidy said, “I have an epiphany.” (Seriously.) She ran to the top of a hill in Bear Creek Park and rolled down it. Devyn followed her. Dylan watched. At 2… this was a new experience, and his little brain was absorbing. “Do you want to roll down the hill?” “Yes.” So Kassidy helped him. He rolled. Sideways. No up. No down. Just sideways, straight across the relatively flat hill, when viewed from that perspective. Kassidy began a hands on tutorial and Dylan was a willing student. Sarah decided to roll. And then I put down the camera and rolled. Soon after, the new game became covering each other with armloads of leaves. The weather was mild and autumny. We played volleyball and took pictures of each other. When we noticed Dylan tearing apart the contents of the diaper bag looking for animal crackers, we realized it must be time for lunch.



We spent the whole day making a memory for when we grow up. One day we will say, “Remember when we were little and rolled down the hill at the park and everyone’s pants fell down? Remember that day? That was a perfect day.”



We left to get lunch and then stopped at another park to eat it. That afternoon we went to a third park because we were having so much fun we could imagine nothing more perfect. If sliding and swinging and rolling down hills and chasing ducks (yeah… duck chasing…. It’s a Colorado past time invented by Kassidy when she was about Dylan’s age.) is your version of paradise then, after a short lunch break, all you want is more of the same.



After two weeks in Colorado teaching Fluency Fast Spanish classes and visiting my family and friends and a week in California at ACTFL with some of my favorite teacher people, a took a red-eye from LAX to Liberia. It wasn’t, though, until I saw the billboards on the highway leading to the airport as we were landing that I believed that this had not all been a dream.



The first morning I woke up and looked out the window and saw the familiar vista from my window I said, “yes!” and leaned back against my pillow, perfectly content.



Yesterday my dad, Shannon, Kassidy and I went to Borinquen. Kassidy went on the first zip line with a guide. They were clipped together and she didn’t have to do anything at all. She looked terrified, but she wanted to do it. (I love this kid!) Shannon and my dad went. I… went with a guide, too. Clipped in. Didn’t have to do anything. The guides call it going “en taxi.”



When I landed on the second platform Kassidy was beaming and saying, “I want to go by myself now.” And she did. At each platform she counted the remaining ones, “Only 8 more left.” By the last one she had watched the guides who were monkeying around and decided to go upside down like they did.



It took me three times “en taxi” to decide to go alone, and then I did the rest of them myself. The lines covered jungle, waterfalls, breathtaking views of the volcano and mountains.



I am not… the person I thought I was.





CR06-12-09.



Whatever we have done with our lives makes us what we are when we die. And everything, absolutely everything counts. – Sogyal Rinpoche



Ticht Naht Hahn is my morning replacement for my missing Sangha, and tells me today that I must look deeply into my desire and deeply at my intentions. The way I use money is important. It can be used to relieve suffering and feed the hungry. Am I motivated by compassionate ideals? Or am I motivated by greed or revenge?



The weight of that question falls between us and everything we do like armloads of books clumsily thunking the floor.



Whereas the poverty in Mexico reveals itself nakedly on street corners in the form of the limbless elderly and shoeless children selling gum, it is hidden in Costa Rica. It is possible to be here, to swim in the ocean, to walk on the beach, to shop like a tourist and never be awakened from the dream that this is paradise. The main roads are lined with houses and Pulperías (very small neighborhood convenience stores) and the occasional shack. These main roads have unpaved off-shoots. As most of the people who live down those side roads don’t have cars, sometimes they are just trails. The trails lead into the belly of Costa Rica. Here there are many shacks. Here there is very little rice.



And here is where Kassidy and I will naturally divide between what guides our individual souls. On Saturday we have been invited to join the Secret Santa committee we’ve been working with to deliver food to one of these communities. We accepted. And then last night we learned that, because of the holidays, the vet clinic has been changed to this Saturday. Last week Kassidy de-ticked a dog at a restaurant while we were waiting for our food. This is something she is good at. She feels compassion for them. She is bold enough that she will tackle random dogs to remove the suffering caused by the ticks. This is a girl whose lap was created to exactly accommodate a lap dog. They crawl into her arms and make themselves comfortable and she pets and snuggles and scratches them. Once they get there, there isn’t anything that will motivate them to leave.



There is a ghost on her lap now, and she wears those memories on the outside as they march wispily in front of her eyes. Our butt of a dog Kuzco, who we learned in the 6 months before we moved that we were immensely fonder of than we had realized, was hit by a car while participating in the traditional butt-like activities that had earned him the nickname to begin with.



She was torn, but ultimately, she is not the person she thought she was, either. These little dogs climb into the vacated space and absorb her sadness and hear the spaces between her recollections of Kuzco fetching badminton birdies in the back yard and her lap stretches and grows to make room for both a tick-covered dog and the ghost of a dancing butt-like dog.



My dad and Shannon were here last week and went to the rain forest and the National Park. The guide told stories that I am now repeating in my informal guided driving tours of the roads between the airport and home. Sugar cane planting here is staggered. Crops right next to each other will be in various stages of growth. It is ready to be harvested when it has gone to seed and the wind has replanted for the following year. Since each crop is ready at a different time, all of the farmers can help each other harvest one at a time. I said this with much authority, too. Because “look who knows so much.”



The underlying resentment and anger that has been palpable around us since we arrived ambled clunkily away while they were here. It is hard to hold one’s ground in the face of more than one person telling you you are dead wrong. Kassidy experienced daily jumps in the pool and my dad taught her to body surf. She listens to the waves from the balcony now and says, “Do you think they’re big today?”



Kassidy and I have enjoyed the only 3 days we will spend at home alone together between now and February. Really. We started going to the gym together every night. It’s been so much fun to have a work-out partner. We miss Dad and Shannon, though. They email to ask what the sunsets look like. They have not yet noticed that each of them left one pair of unmentionables in the dryer. We think we’ll put them in the guest room in case anyone needs “extras.”



Friday night I arrived at the airport to greet a very late plane. I stood with the shouting taxi drivers and felt the glee and giddiness that the taxi drivers could not have been feeling. Diana Noonan, her son Tony and Tony’s girlfriend Meghan were winding their way through customs. Kassidy and Tony dove for coins thrown in the pool and the winner was the one with the greatest value of piled change, not the greatest number of coins. Diana went to the fundraiser with me and met people from East high school in Denver. Tony and Meghan had dinner in Playa del Coco and I forgot to tell them that the tip was included in the charge, so they triple tipped. (We also did this our first night here.) They were serenaded by a small band and when Tony tipped them, he handed them all the change that remained in his pocket – 300 colones. The musician looked at the change in his hand and said, “Muy poquito.” As they re-told the story that evening and we told them that 300 colones was about 50 cents. Whoops.



Since the very beginning I have said that being here would be more fun if we had someone to share it with. Now we do. I was right.



Information on how to donate to the Secret Santa group was posted just before this note / blog. I’ll have more pictures after Saturday, too. I’m looking for classes / schools that would like to use this as a class project. The schools don’t have internet access, so we can’t do anything live, but I can do audio and video recording, post it and then have classes audio and video record themselves and then go back and play it back for them. Internet access in schools is still a few years away. Let me know if it sounds possible.



My apologies, also, for the anemic availability of blogs. I was in Colorado for two weeks, at ACTFL in San Diego for a week and then back here with my parents. While I was in California, I told my Aunt Judy that it was hard to get enough writing done. “Don’t forget that’s why you’re there,” she said.



I finished Carl and sent it to the publisher and when my dad was here, we talked through the story of José. I was stuck on a plot point that was paralyzing me. This story happened in 2005, and I’ve always been stuck about how to write it. I’m still editing, but the book is done. Actually, two books are done. One is about Isabela, the girl from the first book. The other one is from the perspective of her mother and contains a little bit of unexpected romance. We will use it for our adults classes. Adults can handle a steamy novel, right? I’ll be looking for proofreaders and anyone who wants to pilot the kids book shortly.



¡Pura vida!

HOW TO DONATE TO KIDS IN COSTA RICA

Today I was driving home from the gym and passed hitchhikers. I shouldn’t have stopped. I knew I shouldn’t have stopped. But I did anyway. It was a Nicaraguan woman with two children coming across the border. She said her husband had died 22 days before in an accident and the “patron” had asked them to leave afterward. She had two older children in León, so they were travelling on foot and by hitchhiking. They had left Nicaragua 8 days ago. The little boy, Nicolás, asked me if I had any food. They hadn’t eaten, they said, in two days. I had almost an entire energy bar and the kids split it. On the way, I stopped to drop off the recycling, and while mom and daughter got out to help me unload it from the trunk, the little boy stayed in the car. I should have known better. When I got back in the car and realized that I had left him alone I surreptitiously checked to be sure my belongings were still on the front seat. My gym bag contained some credit cards, the camera, my Ipod and some cash. I dropped them off with a little bus money. They stole nothing. I felt guilty I even checked. I felt guilty that I even had an Ipod. I felt bad that I didn’t have more food in the car that day.


The depth of the poverty here is unbearable. When we asked the school to make a wish list, toilet paper was at the top. There is a community nearby where the poverty is so severe their cupboards are literally bare of even rice. A fellow volunteer said that she had been there once and couldn’t go back. There were people who can stomach seeing starvation and people who can’t, and she knows she’s in the group that can’t.



Below is the priority list from one of the four schools that the Secret Santa group here supports. Ultimately, though, once I visit this rice-less community on the 12th, I don’t think it will surprise me to learn that most of the donated money this year will go there. I’m already fantasizing about filling the car with food and driving there.



Here’s the information on how to donate to Secret Santa. The fundraiser is THIS Saturday. I’d love to get donations in time for that.



USD WIRE TRANSFERS INSTRUCTION

The customer must instruct his/ her bank to transfer funds as follows:

The Bank of New York

New York, New York, U.S.A.



ABA: 021000018

SWIFT: IRVTUS3N



For credit to account number:

803-338-3577

Scotiabank CR

San José, Costa Rica

SWIFT: NOSCCRSJ



For final credit to account number: #_$13000054505____________________

No Problema Property Management Secret Santa

San José, Costa Rica



In all cases No Problema must be notified of the transfer along with the dollar amount, transfer number and the date of the transfer to ensure that you are credited for the transfer. noproblemapm@yahoo.com Also please ensure your bank includes your name on the transfer.









This was the priority list from the school:



Material que se ocupa

Papel higénico (toilet paper)

Desinfectante

Palo de pisos (mop)

Escobas (broom)

Machas (mop head)

Machetes

Rastrillo (metal rake)

Palas (shovels)

Macanas (6 ft crow bar)

Arañas (rake)

Hojas blancas (blank white paper)

Utensilios de cocina (cooking utensils)

Basureros (trash cans)

Pilot (White board markers)

Material didáctico (colored paper, erasers, glue, scissors)

Libros de cuento (story books)

CDs de música infantil (music for the pre-schoolers)

Paños para secarse manos (hand towels)



A corto plazo

Abanicos (fans)

Aceras (cement / concrete apron)

Piletas (sink for mopping)

Lavamanos (sink for handwashing)

Cerrar espacio kinder (fence for the pre-school / Kinder play area)

Chapiadoras (Lawn mower / gas)

Escritorios (teacher’s desk)

Cerámicas (tile)

Armarios (closets or bookshelves with locks)

Grabadoras (CD Players)

Telefax – fax machine





Proyecciones a Futuro

Salón de Actos – covered roof

Aula de Informática – computer classroom

Aula para Profesor de I y II ciclo – classroom for one more teacher (would create the opportunity for all day school)

Aula para Biblioteca - library



Requirements to have a computer in a school:

Seguridad de las aulas (Secure classroom / bars on window)

Mobilario para los equipos (Computer desk)

Extintor (Fire extinguisher)

Un ventilador de pie por cada dos computadoras (One fan for every two Computers)

October 31, 2009 5:56am ¡Pura Vida!

¡Pura Vida!

October 31, 2009 5:56am
SYNOPSIS: Pedro’s wedding last weekend; the Playa Panama elementary school tamale fundraiser; scuba diving certification progress; how Kassidy is doing; I get Pura Vida.

I hear monkeys.



One Congo Aullador, actually, who has decided to be my alarm clock. One of our first purchases when we arrived here was a wind up alarm clock. We set it on school days in case the electricity goes off in the middle of the night. This morning the digital alarm clock was blinking 12:55, but the Congo Aullador was singing to me.



I am sitting on the balcony outside my room. I do not want to come back to the states. Every morning I wake up and open my eyes and immediately look at the ocean. Even after two months I’m incredulous. So I check. To make sure it’s still there. I suppose that’s how someone in love feels, looking over in the morning to watch someone breathe and being incredulous that they’re that lucky. Tomorrow morning I will wake up and it will be dark. I will arrive at the airport as the sun comes up. So this morning, is my goodbye. I am feeling present and appreciative. I’m also feeling like my feet want to be in that water.





La Boda

Last weekend we went to Pedro’s wedding. We followed Mike and Carla up to Santa Cruz, a couple of hours away. Kassidy took some pictures from the window as we passed through a cattle drive. I just never stop thinking that’s funny.



We arrived at a bar in a little town… Nimbu?… Nubu?…Namby? We turned right at the painting of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs painted on a pre-school. You know where I’m talking about, right? We paid their buddy the bar owner 5000 colones to watch the cars overnight and then Scott Hansen, the builder of the house we’re living in, drove down the mountain to pick us up because our little rental car couldn’t make it up. It was a 40 minute drive up Pikes Peak… if Pikes Peak weren’t paved, and if they hadn’t yet cut that winding road wrapping around it. The rains had created ditches and gullies, rather than potholes.



We arrived for the 11:00 wedding with the lawyer / reverend who would marry the couple at 11:10, and so began our experiential education into the Tico time schedule. The wedding started around 1:30. It was a small group of family and a handful of neighbors. For most of the day we were the only people there who weren’t related by blood or marriage. In addition to the standard unsurprising ceremony, which was traditional and archaic in its language, there was a tradition in which the reverend asks for coins from the gathered family and friends. She put 13 coins in her hand and blessed them and then gave them to Pedro. Pedro then gave them to Teresa. It was a promise that Pedro would be a good provider and that Teresa would be a good steward of their household money. She was placed in charge of all things domestic. The wedding ended with a kiss and then a champagne toast. The reverend asked everyone to raise a glass to the couple and individually make a wish for them ---love, patience, humor, that they would always have food, for many children. Witnesses were randomly selected. They both signed their names. Afterward, there was no procession, as there had been no procession in. Immediately prior to the wedding the bride had been sitting on the groom’s lap drinking a beer. After some cajoling, Mike managed to get everyone into one family picture. The family dispersed to get food ready. (They had literally slaughtered a pig for the occasion.) Everyone else moved to a bench on the outskirts of the veranda and hung out. This activity persisted for the rest of the day. People moved from the bench to under the covered veranda when it started to rain. The food was set out on the table outside and people filled their plates and sat down. The bride went to take a nap. Someone drove the reverend / lawyer down the mountain and, while they were gone, thought it might be a good idea to stop by the grocery store and pick up a white cake. They cake was set on the counter. Someone cut it and passed pieces around. Dancing and hanging out at the wedding site continued until well after we went to bed and then it moved into the living room where it continued until the wee hours. When we were ready for bed, there were several available floor spaces for our air mattress. We were shown to the floor beside the bed of the bride and groom. I stared at him absolutely incredulous. No… thanks. We took one of the kid’s bedrooms.



I had a great conversation that night with one of the drunk cousins. He was commenting that Kassidy was a little too young to propose marriage to. He was 22. He had consumed almost an entire bottle of rum. I think he was inspired by the woman from Atlanta marrying his cousin Pedro and thought maybe he’d see what other American women were available at the wedding. We were, as I mentioned, the only people there not related to him. Kassidy was too young and apparently I was too old. Kassidy found him to be creepy. I found him to be amusing. You know… like the town fool. There are three mixed race marriages in this family. Two of them are between older American men and young Tica women in the family that originally owned all of the property in Playa Hermosa. I heard there were a couple more, too, but they don’t live here anymore and I haven’t met them.



The next morning the cooking for that many people was constant. They had spent a day earlier in the week making tamales and now they were being boiled. I had the opportunity to take pictures of the entire process of tamale making at the school yesterday. Banana leaf and then masa (cornmeal rolled into a ball), and then peppers and onions and some kind of salsa thingy and then meat and manteca (that means lard – just a little piece of lard, because lard makes everything taste better) and then roll it up in the banana leaf and wrap twine around it and boil it. There was absolutely no schedule. People woke up, ate something, and then sat and watched TV. Jurassic Park and then Water World and then Pirates of the Caribbean. I wanted to go for a hike and, eventually, a couple of the boys said they would go with us. So Kassidy tucked the puppy under her arm and off we went. As we walked from the house to the trailhead, we picked up about 5 of the guys. The women all hung back and waved. I should have known better. Marcos brought a machete. This was not hiking. It was trailbreaking.



When we got back I made CDs of wedding pictures for Teresa before she went back to Atlanta and a second copy for one of the aunts who had a computer. Sometime that morning Teresa had been cleaning up and found her bouquet. She walked into the house, called for Ceci and threw it over her head directly at her. Ceci caught it. Woo hoo! Except Ceci is married to Marcos. This Tico ceremony would have driven a wedding planner up a wall. I thought it was cool. One of the advantages of being this laid back is that the anxiety about being late disappears. There’s no such thing as late. Things just happen whenever they happen.



Although we were still on no kind of a schedule, I didn’t want to drive back in the dark, so we finally got a ride back down the mountain about 3:30 and got back to Playa Hermosa just as it was getting dark.



Ohhh… just while I’m sitting here writing I can hear the waves crashing on the shore. Sigh.



La Escuela / Secret Santa

There is a fundraiser coming up in December put on by the 4 communities, Playa Hermosa, Playa del Coco, Playa Panama and Sardinal. The money that is raised from the event and auction goes to support the schools in these towns. I have been going down to the school in Playa Panama this week with John. I translate for the teachers while they tell him what they need. They are building a new bathroom right now, but don’t have the money to pay for the US $200 in labor, so they made tamales for 2 days and sold them for 500 colones (a little less than a dollar) apiece. I took pictures of the process. They have a travelling English teacher who comes in Mondays and Tuesdays. They have been told that they might be able to get a second teacher next year which would mean that instead of teaching 1st through 3rd grade in one room in the mornings and 4th through 6th grade in the same room in the afternoons, that they would be able to offer full day school. To do that, they need one more classroom. If they build that classroom with specific specifications (fans, bars on the windows etc.) the government will give them a couple of computers. This same type of fundraising built the first bathroom and the Kindergarten / pres-school classroom. This school serves 15 K and Pre-K kids and 54 1st through 6th graders. School is free, but students have to purchase their textbooks and buy uniforms and school supplies. The teachers also let the parents know when they have run out of toilet paper.



I’ll post pictures, but what I’d like to do when I’m home is see if we can tackle any of these projects. They have bathrooms now, but no sinks where they can wash their hands. (I know… eww.) They have textbooks, but no reading books. They have a pathetic play area for the littler kids, but it isn’t fenced in. I took pictures of the swing set. It is not something any of us would let our kids play on without an up to date tetanus shot.



There is a kitchen where the kids are fed lunch. A small amount of money is provided by the government for this school lunch program.



These conditions are livable, but I’m motivated to make them educational rather than just livable. John tells me that this is not the worst school. When I get back he will take me to others that this fundraiser supports. They have been in shacks with absolutely no food at all.



The underbelly of Costa Rica exposes that the myth that this is not an impoverished country is just that. It is beautiful. It is amazing. I am so very enchanted by this place. It’s just simply not true that everyone is literate. I think they only surveyed all of the people who could read. It’s also not true that everyone is fed.



SCUBA diving certification

I cannot breathe under water. I panicked. I couldn’t clear my mask. I couldn’t equalize. I felt like I was on an airplane my ears were so pressurized. Multiple attempts to clear my mask failed. I could not relax. I was with my friend Heather who had far less trouble than I did and can’t wait to go again. She was graceful. I was graceless. What else is new?



Did I mention that I panicked in 8 feet of water in a swimming pool?



I am practicing clearing my mask in the pool before I go back and am also buying a mask with a release valve in Colorado. I need every possible advantage.





Kassidy

I volunteered to read The Phantom Tollbooth to Kassidy’s class and while I was there stopped in to see the principal. How are things going? So, I told her the truth and also told her that we weren’t sure we were going to stay at Ciudad Blanca next year. She was aware of the problems, but didn’t know how bad they were. After some discussion, they have decided to move her to 8th grade next year. The school year begins in the middle of February.



I like her. We have had some difficult times together, but now when I pick her up at the bottom of the hill we take a minute to be excited that it’s the end of the day and we get to be together again. It’s a moment we hadn’t been appreciating. One day I was late and it was horrible for her. We both realized how much she looks forward to seeing me parked next to the bus and decided to relish that. She’s very excited to come home. When we come back she’ll be travelling with my parents by herself. We’re totally excited about that, too.



Pura Vida



I understand Pura Vida now. It was an abstract, silly concept when I got here. Now it’s a pace. It’s a feeling of going along with the waves and not fighting the tide. It’s a feeling of using the time for meditation and insight and presence. It’s what we would be… on vacation. It’s not just doing things slowly, it’s doing things more spontaneously. I lose track of whatever schedule I had intended to follow when something comes up.



It’s taking advantage of the moments in the day when the sun comes out to be outside. It’s taking advantage of passing someone on the street and stopping to chat. It’s dropping everything to watch the sun set. It’s spending an afternoon basking alternately in desire, pleasure and satisfaction. It’s beating the rain to the pool and floating happily but it’s also standing in the rain and feeling it instantly cool the surrounding air. It’s taking time to take pictures.



It’s having nowhere else to be but exactly where I am in this moment.



And it’s experiencing and appreciating the sensation of joy at being present in this very moment.

Costa Rica 10.11.09

We are haunted by an ideal life, and it is because we have within us the beginning of the possibility of it. - Phillips Brooks

SYNOPSIS: You, in Costa Rica; Volunteering at the Vet Clinic, walking through the real Costa Rica, Juxtaposition --- the Happiest Place with extreme poverty on Earth; White Water Rafting, Poverty, Prisons, drought; S.C.U.B.A, snorkeling, rumors. Things are better. Kassidy is adjusting. We’re trying new things. We’re started volunteering. The creamy filling inside of the real Costa Rica seems to be both happiness and also severe poverty.

YOU, IN COSTA RICA

When you come to Costa Rica I will wake you up in the morning and we will walk 9 minutes down the hill to wait for the school bus. We will walk away as it approaches to avoid embarrassing Kassidy as she boards. We will walk 10 more minutes to the beach and we will walk on the beach and look at the footprints in the sand while we walk. Some with sneaker patterns, some with toes, some with paws. We will walk and watch the wave patterns in the sand.

We will joke about Match.com descriptions of ourselves enjoying “long walks on the beach.” We will hop away from the waves if they lap too closely. We will come to the realization that if a person can’t be happy here, it might not be within his or her grasp anywhere. We will walk from one far end of the small beach to the other and back again and then we will climb on the rocks and then we will strip down to our bathing suits, set our towels on the furthest possible ledge and we will jump in and swim to the beach that is inaccessible on foot.

We will swim in the still, clear ocean water and we will wish we knew how to order room service to the hidden cove so that we could have a cup of coffee on the beach.

We will swim out of the cove and wrap up in our towels so that we don’t get our clothes wet and we will walk back down the beach to Diving Safari’s where we’ll pick up our S.C.U.B.A. gear and go to the boat. We will sail out around Monkey Rock and head to Catalina Island where we will dive. We’ll get back in time to meet the bus and we will watch the sun set over the ocean while we drink cocktails by the pool and do 6th grade math homework.

We will put on our Costa Rican perfume and we will eat ceviche and arroz con pollo for dinner.



We will go to Tamarindo and take surfing lessons.
We will go to the Playa Panama and body surf. We will take the kayaks around the peninsula and watch the sun set. We will learn to snorkel. We will go to the National Park and see monkeys and birds and snakes and take pictures. You will make fun of me for ogling the pool boy, not because he is so young, but because we are so, so old. We will play pool. We will go hiking. We will see a volcano spurt fire and ash. We will fish from a boat in the middle of the ocean and joke about the suicidal flying fish that are jumping near the boat and seem like they want to jump in. We will watch for dolphins and whales. We will play in a waterfall and wonder at how any one place can be so utterly perfect and not be heaven. We will decide maybe it is. We will decide Heaven needs calorie-free cheese cake.



And we will be gluttonous, not content to enjoy just these moments alone, but will instead fantasize about moving here and being beach bums and never going home.

And when you ask me what I do when I walk the beach alone, I will tell you that I think about how fun it will be when you’re here and I plan imaginary days in which I get to show you the things I think you’ll like. And you’ll laugh and say, “Yeah, right.”

But it will be true.


Volunteering at the Vet Clinic, walking through the real Costa Rica, Juxtaposition --- the Happiest Place with extreme poverty on Earth

We are over the hump. We have been here for 5 weeks and will be in Denver to work in 3. Kassidy is happy about that, but she’s also happy here. I’m not allowed to go into detail. But there is a boy. And he talked to her. Living here feels mostly normal now and I am relieved of the stress of being told every morning and every evening that she wants to go home. For that, the boy is on my daily gratitude list.



Yesterday, Kassidy volunteered at the spay and neuter clinic that comes into Playa del Coco once a month. I walked to the gym from there. Gross stuff is really not my thing. They put all the dogs under on the floor of the school at the same time and while the vet goes around neutering and spaying them, the volunteers follow cleaning their ears, removing ticks, spraying flea and tick treatment on them, spraying and cleaning their wounds and comforting them as they come out from anesthetic. Kassidy said she felt like a real vet. Most of the volunteers speak English, but most of the people who bring their dogs to the clinic speak only Spanish, so Kassidy became the translator. Seriously. Adult volunteers would bring her over to use her limited Spanish to explain how long the wait would be and what they would need to do to take care of the dogs when they took them home. She called me at the gym asking to take one of the puppies home.

Someone found one on the beach this morning and brought it in. It’s something crossed with a Chihuahua, so it’s very small. She can fit it in her carry on. She can take it home. It can live with her dad!

We returned the rental car and are now on foot. The gym is approximately 20 kilometers from here. Not walk-able. Not bike-able. But, I have found a couple of work-out buddies and car pool in with them until I solve the problem. I am quickly learning that while it is possible to live without a car in Playa del Coco, it is not possible when you live in Hermosa. There is a 7-11 size market, but no grocery store. There is a gym, but it has 3 machines and 2 of them don’t work. Right now, I’m not terribly concerned because I can walk to the beach from here. 9 minutes down the driveway. 10 more minutes to the beach. Once I get there, finding milk doesn’t seem too terribly urgent. Janet is checking on some rental car companies that she says won’t rip us off. She will call “ahorita.” Mmhmm.



Friday night we had some neighbors over for dinner. Faith and John. I can feel myself being drawn in, like water rises to its own level. There is a school in Playa Panama that they help support. They want to send 25 additional children to school next year, so they need to raise $5000.00 to build an additional room onto the school house and then they need to raise money for uniforms, shoes and textbooks for each of those children.



I just can’t… I can’t clean ear wax out of a stray dog’s ear. I can’t remove ticks and soak them in alcohol. I so admire Kassidy for having so much compassion for animals that she wants to take them home and that working on them makes her “feel like a vet.” But I have an over-active gag reflex. =) But I can do schools.



Schools are free here, but uniforms, shoes and texts are required. Many of the kids here don’t go to school because that stands in the way every year. I’m going down this week. I’ll take pictures.

Being on foot has given me the opportunity to SEE more than I did before. There are monkeys in the trees on our driveway. There are more houses and businesses on each street than I noticed before. There are people walking on the street who wave and say, “¿Como amaneció?”

I translate this in my head every time because it seems so funny and I have no idea what the response SHOULD be. How did you wake up? The answer is “bien” – (well). I think it might be something along the lines of “How did you sleep?” but if you think about it, “How did you wake up?” is more important. As opposed to, say, not waking up.



I generally stammer through my answer to this question because it always catches me off guard and I get distracted by trying to remember exactly how I did wake up this morning.



Anyway… back to the point. While walking from the elementary school (escuela) in Playa del Coco (a very, very hot connection of outdoor classrooms made of brick with holes in it to keep it cooler, but not real walls) to the gym about 15 minutes away, I passed fruit stands and a panaderia (bakery) and a rooster just hanging out at the side of the road.

An old man in the panaderia said I was pretty and that I had a good body and asked everyone else in the store to agree. I’m fairly certain that he began thinking he was talking behind my back and that everyone would get a good laugh out of him talking about the gringa. When I responded in Spanish, he said, “¿Hablo bien o hable mal?” which means literally, “Do I speak well or do I speak poorly” but means, “Am I right or am I wrong?” I told him he was right and thanked him. =) One of those lovely situations without a good answer. But I was on my way to the gym, so it was cool to walk to the gym in a “good body.”

I walked past the gym to the beach, about 10 minutes further because… I don’t know if you knew this… but there’s a beach here. And I like it. Walked a little on the beach before going to the gym and tried to go to the massage place to make an appointment. $29 massages if you buy 10. I had spoken with the owner only last week. The office is closed. The phone number is disconnected. I called the second number on the door. A woman answers and says the business has been closed down by the police. Nice. Moments away from giving away $290 to a business that immigration shut down. Let this be a lesson to you, Americans. You can not run a business in Costa Rica on a passport.

The word that came to mind on this walk was “juxtaposition.” There is a sign for resort condominiums next to, literally, a one room shack made of scrap wood and corrugated metal. There are beautiful houses with swimming pools – empty swimming pools and abandoned houses. My experience in other countries has been of segregation. The poor and the rich live in separate neighborhoods. Here, there are nice houses and even resort condominiums in gated communities next door to dilapidated houses. Many of the houses have bars over the windows and the doors and even enclosing their patios.

On our way home we see a man carrying two Dorado (Mahi Mahi). He holds them in large plastic bags by the tails, holding them aloft so they don’t hit the ground. They stretch from his shoulder to the ground, easily. I can buy one for probably 5000 colones (double it to make $10 and then reduce by 15%, so about $8.50), and I would… if I knew how to clean a fish.



This level of poverty has a normality to it, too. There is an article in a local magazine that says that there was a survey done all over the world assessing where the “Happiest Place on Earth” is, and it’s Costa Rica. They are mostly on bikes. If I lived in Coco, I would definitely use one for all transportation. But in Hermosa, we are in an enormous valley and I only see the mountain bikers in spandex riding them. Anyone else on a bike walks the bike up the hills. The pace of this place is slow and happy. There is music coming from some of the houses. There are roosters crowing from multiple houses. I feel out of place, but still, no one really seems to notice me or care that I am walking through their neighborhood. There is no obvious need for help as there is in Mexico. No one is begging. No one looks miserable or hungry (except the stray dogs). No one appears to need anything. This is where I want to shop. There is a fish market around the corner, a bakery, a farmer’s market. I buy a banana for 30 colones and receive change from my 100 colones that is no longer valid in Costa Rica. The government is asking that all of the small silver coins be returned to the banks. I imagine this will happen with pennies someday, too.



Funny thing, too. We went to the beach at Ocotal a couple of weeks ago and even took pictures and posted them. Turns out… that wasn’t Ocotal. We turned right instead of left and came back to the far end of Playa del Coco. We went to Ocotal yesterday. Nice beach. We’ll go back and re-publicize for it when we have a car again.



I LIKE it here. I try to have a daily rhythm and build habits, but each day is different and unpredictable because no one does what they say they will do when they say they will do it, so we are beholden to some external rhythm instead.



White Water Rafting, Poverty, Prisons, drought

Since I last wrote, I went White Water Rafting. I’m going to let the Facebook photo album and narration tell that story.



What I learned on the way, though, is that we were between two volcanoes and that each was in a separate biosphere. We were on the edge of a rain forest. As we drove from Liberia toward San Jose, we passed taxis that were waiting for the arrival of busses from San Jose. It was a Sunday and Sunday is visiting day at the prison in Liberia. There are 600 prisoners there.



On this Sunday (last Sunday) there is an article in the paper about starvation in Guatemala. We talk about the difference between Guatemala and Costa Rica. There is poverty here, but not misery. The government feeds the poor people. I learn later that this is a myth and there are plenty of homes here with absolutely no food in them. Guanacaste is the poorest region in Costa Rica, but also usually has the most tourists. Tourism is THE industry in Costa Rica. The paper this week also said that tourism is down 40% from this time last year. The lack of rain in this rainy season is killing the crops. This will be a very bad year for Costa Rica. I cannot spend this year oblivious on my veranda over-looking the ocean, and I know that. I will find a balance between using this opportunity to overcome my fears and live a life I never thought was possible when I was a little girl and also finding out if there is any knowledge or skill I have accumulated so far in my life that can be helpful here.



S.C.U.B.A, snorkeling, rumors

I also walked across the street to Diving Safaris and got in the pool with all of the scuba diving equipment on. I have the certification materials and after 3 more hours in the pool, taking a number of tests and doing 4 ocean dives, I will be certified and will be ready to go again. If you’ve done this or snorkeling before, you know that the biggest obstacle to overcome is the feeling that you are not supposed to be able to breathe underwater and will breathe in water and die. If it weren’t for the people who said they were coming and want to go scuba diving, I don’t think I’d be doing this… but…. I’ll be ready for you.

We are going down to Diving Safaris today to rent snorkeling equipment. I may need to add an underwater camera to my list of things to bring back from the U.S.

The woman who has given us a couple of rides into Playa del Coco to go to the gym and volunteer at the clinic told us yesterday that it’s a very small community here and everyone knows everyone else’s business. The only way to really get bad rumors started about you, though, is if you start hanging out with the Ticos. I am horrified. Seriously? Why? Why? Why would you COME here and then only hang out with other ex-pats????? To work on your English?

Let the rumor mill start grinding.