Rural Stay Pt. 2

I’m already finishing up my second week in San Luis de Grecia. Sometimes it feels like I’ve been here for months, but looking back it’s gone by really quickly. On Saturday we ended up going to Sarchi. It’s a very big tourist attraction, but we didn’t see very much of the town. We did, however, stop at the famous market where I was able to make a big dent in my shopping list for Christmas. We got caught in a big rainstorm, but as we were running for cover I think I caught a glimpse of one of Sarchi’s claims to fame: The world’s biggest oxcart. The oxcart is one of Costa Rica’s national symbols. It sounds sort of lame, but the ones here are really pretty – either bright blue or red with colorful designs on ever side. I think we were close to the oxcart, but it was raining so hard I’m not sure if I really saw it, and we didn’t really have it in us to go out of our way to see it. Instead we went to my host dad’s parents’ house (I think). His sister died almost 10 years ago, but Saturday was her birthday. The whole family came to the house to celebrate. The family hung a portrait of her surrounded by candles and flowers. The family read the Stations of the Cross and prayed the Rosary together. It was a pretty somber afternoon, but was followed by a lot of food and conversation. In just two weeks I have met so many family members I’ve just decided to stop trying to learn names. It’s amazing how huge the families are here, and how involved the whole family is with everyone else in the family.

On Sunday, I was re-introduced to Doña Faynier’s side of the family. It was her niece’s seventh birthday, and the entire family showed up yet again (of course). Parties here are not just an hour or two or three. They’re a whole day. Doña Faynier and I went to her mom’s house after mass, so we probably got there around 11 or 12. By then there were already at least 15 people at the house. People came and went all day, and we didn’t end up leaving until almost 9 that night. Not much happened while we were there either. There was the usual piñata, cake, and presents, but the rest of the time was just spent talking to whoever happened to be around. It was interesting too that most of the people at a 7 year old’s birthday party were over the age of 50.

We didn’t do much on Monday. After a busy weekend, Doña Faynier decided it would be best to rest up, especially because Tuesday and Wednesday would be extremely busy. I honestly can’t remember what we did that day, which makes me think I probably just spent the whole day helping around the house and playing with Lucia. Every day we get better and better at communicating. I’ve finally figured out that if I really can’t figure out what she’s talking about, it’s most likely because she’s just making stuff up out of thin air. Last night, for example, she started talking about how great it was that I was eating my coffee tortilla (in case anyone else is as confused as I was, coffee tortillas definitely don’t exist – I had to ask Lucia’s mom Jenny about that one to be sure).

On Tuesday we began our marathon of tamales. The mystery of the pig from the week before finally started coming together for me. We spent all day on Tuesday cleaning the giant plantain leaves that would be used to pack the tamales. It was simple work, but I couldn’t believe how tired I was at the end of it. For each leaf (and these leaves are GIANT) we had to use a rag to wash all of the dirt off of both sides, then cut out the spine down the middle, and then cut them all into the right size for tamales. It was pretty boring, so I started doing some math with the leaves while we worked. I’m pretty sure I alone washed and cut over 500 leaves. Again, remember that these leaves are giant – maybe 3 feet long on average. While we were working on the leaves, a few other women worked with the pig in the kitchen. I thought they were cooking it, but I might have been wrong, because the smell didn’t kick in until Wednesday…

On Wednesday, everything finally kicked into full gear. We spent the first three hours or so in the kitchen with a dozen other people cutting and cooking the meat, cooking the vegetables and rice, and mixing together the masa (cornmeal dough) for the tamales. I figured even if I didn’t work directly with the pig, I could help with the veggies and dough, but I was so wrong. Literally everything in the kitchen was coated in a thick layer of pig juice, and everything was prepared with more parts of the pig than I could have ever imagined. I’ve cooked with masa before to make tortillas. All you do is add water and stir – very simple. I figured we were just going to do the same thing, but make a giant supply of it. Instead of water, they used – actually, I have no idea what it even was. Pig juice really is the best way to describe it - liquid pig juice and solid pig fat, both poured in by the bucketful, and that was followed by about a thousand chicken bouillon cubes. The veggies were a similar story. Instead of simply steaming them with water, more pig juice was used. The worst part of all of this was the smell. It was amazing to me how much it smelled like 9^th grade fetal pig dissections. We all thought that the 3^rd floor science hallway was uninhabitable for 2 whole weeks because of the strong smell of the chemicals, but it turns out that dead pig has an extremely distinct smell. While we were cooking the meat I kept trying to figure out what the smell reminded me of. Once I made the connection to 9^th grade Biology, it was all I could think about. Finally, we were mostly done cooking, and we moved everything out into a bigger room to put the tamales together. It’s a fairly simple process. Two plantain leaves are laid on top of each other at different angles. The masa is spooned into the center, followed by rice, meat, bell pepper, carrots, and cilantro. Then the leaves are rolled up into a little package, and tied together with some sort of string-like plant. Each package is cooked for about half an hour in boiling water so that the masa solidifies around the rest of the food. Again, this should have been fairly easy work, until you consider that we made 548 tamales, and that’s not counting all of the ones that broke somewhere in the process and had to be remade. It was nice work because I was able to get to know a lot of the other people there, but I truly hope that I never ever have to make tamales ever again. Or at the very least, I’ll leave out all of the pig juice. We started working at 7:30 on Wednesday and didn’t get home until at least 4 that afternoon. It took two showers to get the smell of pig off of me…

It took a team of about 5 people to place all of the ingredients on each tamale

Wrapping the tamales

This is just a small glimpse of the finished product - multiply by about a thousand and you'll get the right idea

On Thursday we went to Atenas for some sort of meeting with a bunch of agricultural groups and the vice minister of agriculture. It took a while to get there, especially since everyone in the car thought they knew where it was (everyone thought it was somewhere different), and it turns out everyone was wrong. We ended up driving down 4 different “roads” until we ended up at a dead end in the middle of someone’s farm or the jungle in general. The dead ends came when the plants and rocks got too big to keep driving. Of course, there was nowhere to turn around, so we had to back out of all of these dead ends, a couple of which went on for a few miles. Eventually we got there, there being a famous coffee plantation. The meeting was in a conference room, but I was able to watch all of the work outside through the windows. I tried to pay attention to the meeting, but it was so hot I had to put all of my energy into sitting perfectly still so I wouldn’t make myself hotter. Everyone there looked sort of miserable after the first hour, and the meeting ended up going on for another 3. The speakers were getting so hot and tired that they stumbled on their words and talked really slowly, which made it feel it really wouldn’t ever end. As painful as the meeting was, it was pretty interesting that the vice minister of agriculture takes the time to meet with all of these teeny tiny groups to talk about any problems their having and find solutions that work for everyone. The vice minister actually knew everyone there by name, even though most of the groups are as small if not smaller than Doña Faynier’s – 6 or 8 women making soap and shampoo a few days a week in a tiny house at the top of a mountain. At the end of the meeting, each person was given a free bag of coffee from the plantation. I’m not sure if I was supposed to take it, since I wasn’t actually supposed to be at the meeting, but Doña Faynier didn’t stop me. The drive home was just as eventful as the drive there, with everyone getting each other confused about which way to turn since it was all backwards.

Friday was another day spent mostly in the house. Since there wasn’t much to do at the house, I took the bus up to the top of the mountain so that I could walk back to the house and take photos along the way. I think my family thought I was crazy (the walk took about an hour for me, but my host mom said it takes her almost two), but it was really nice. On the way back, I stopped at Cristian’s market to use the computer. I was just going to spend a few minutes there, but deleting all of the trash in my email took almost half an hour alone. Then I had to respond to a few emails that were actually somewhat urgent (different applications for jobs and committees at CC, which are starting to become a mess since I can’t actually go to meetings or interviews until January). I spent the afternoon at the house with Lucia, and in the evening we went to Grecia to buy fruits and vegetables at the Feria (basically a farmer’s market). I went to the Feria once in San Jose and couldn’t believe how much food there was that I had never seen before, but this last time I was able to identify mostly everything there. On top of fresh produce, we also bought some tortillas and bread. All of that fresh food has made for a few especially delicious meals in the last couple of days.

The main road through the middle of San Luis

Mountains in the clouds!

One of the many many many farms nearby

Farther down the road

Lucia and Nani

 On Saturday, we didn’t have much work to do, and Doña Faynier was caught up with all of the housework, so we decided to take a day trip to Zarcero to see a famous park. I had no idea how complicated the trip would end up being. Jeffery drove us partway down the mountain on his way to work, but then we had to catch a taxi to keep going. We ended up sharing the taxi with a few other people, which meant that the taxi couldn’t actually take us where we needed to go. We got out and walked a ways to the right bus stop, where we waited for almost half an hour to take the bus to Naranjo. In Naranjo we searched around for a while for the next bus stop, and ended up waiting on the sidewalk for almost and hour for the bus to Zarcero (which was already full, so we sat on the stairs for the 60 minute bus ride). When we got to Zarcero, I couldn’t believe it was worth the trek to get there. The park was the size of a small city block in front of the local church. The park was interesting, with each tree trimmed into the shape of a different animal. Unfortunately I couldn’t identify anything other than a bird and a dinosaur. The park took about 10 minutes to walk through (slowly), and then we hopped back on the bus to head home. Cristian had to pick something up in Sarchi, so we ended up getting off the bus there to look at the giant oxcart ride home in Cristian’s car. I’m glad we went, especially since there wasn’t any work to do at the house, but I really can’t believe how long we spent getting there and back just to walk around for 10 minutes.

Tree arches in Zarcero

Weird faces of something resembling monkey in Zarcero

It's a dinosaur!! I think.

Church at Zarcero

Inside of the church

The Biggest Oxcart in the World!!!

There are kids in this photo to see the relative size

Grecia Feria (farmer's market)

Today is the First Communion for Doña Faynier’s nephew, the grandson of one of the women from the Association, and two of the kids that have been coming for English classes at the house. So far I’ve been to mass at two different churches, and today we will go to yet another church. After the mass I think we are going to lunch at Doña Faynier’s sister’s house, which apparently has a really great view of the countryside. Depending on what time we finish, Jeffery might be able to drive us to see the Poas Volcano. It’s pretty close, but the roads aren’t direct at all. He said it takes an hour or two to get there, even though it’s just on the other side of our mountain. I really hope we get to go. I doubt I’ll make it out this way again after I go back to San Jose, so this is probably my only chance to see it.

The tentative plan for the rest of the week is:

Monday – Visit the natural products store of one of the women who works at the Association

Tuesday – Work at the Association

Wednesday – Work at the Association

Thursday – Work at the Association

Friday – Hang out at the house

Saturday – Return the San Jose

And somewhere in there I’ll be teaching a few more English classes to the neighborhood kids.

Another photo of my students