Hi,
Welcome to part 2 (the longer part) of Rob's adventures in Quebrada Arroyo. Hope you are enjoying the film so far. Popcorn and french toast will be available in the lobby if you are hungry. Actually, some people seem to eat popcorn for breakfast here. I wouldn't be surprised to find myself eating french toast and popcorn for breakfast someday.
Speaking of eating, I am getting a reputation here for eating a lot. I think I did in Guyana too, but it's hard to remember - although I do remember eating about 30+ bakes (Guyanese buns) one morning on project.
In Guyana, I gained about 25-30 pounds. Here so far, I have gained 9 kilograms or about 20 pounds. I will claim that it is mostly muscle, from working hard in the field, but my tightest pair of jeans no longer fits. It's a bit suspicious...
Well, back to the stories:
A typical day in our life in Quebrada Arroyo went something like this:
4am - Homebodies and the odd weirdo like myself would get up. I would start getting ready for work, occasionally remember to do my stretching, fill up my water bottle etc.
4:45am - Most people would get up and breakfast would be served. Usually oatmeal and sometimes some fruit. People would continue to get ready. I occasionally did laundry when the sun came up at 5ish. I tried to do laundry once at 4am, but the later on discovered that the clothes were still muddy, so I stopped.
5:30am - This was the supposed time that we would leave for work. Actually, this was the hour that most people started to rush to get ready. We usually left by 5:35, 5:40 - which was still plenty of time to get to work, a 15 minute walk away. Usually we would arrive 5-10 minutes early and chat with the community members or amongst ourselves. A nice way to start the day, although I have never been a morning person, so maybe I didn't always enjoy it as much as I could have.
6am - This was the official beginning time. In our group we had 2 people appointed as our "big cheeses" to coordinate our efforts on the worksite. Every morning they would talk to Miguel, the community leader to find out what was going on. Sometimes we all worked together, sometimes in small groups on various parts of the trail. Every day was different.
7am - Often we worked on the trails, digging, leveling, clearing the path. Sometimes we carried gravel to surface the trail, so it wouldn't get so muddy. Working with the community was lots of fun. Especially when the young people worked with us. There were lots of jokes, running around, stealing each others' hats, work gloves. Although it could get annoying the 15th time they stole your gloves, it was lots of fun and we really noticed a difference when the women (mostly the young women) stopped working in the last two weeks. (The project ran out of money to support them and so they worked at home instead) It was still fun, but not the same.
8am - Breakfast or Morning Tea. For the community, it really was their breakfast, but for us, it was a "snack". However, our snacks were often bigger than their breakfasts! (No wonder I gained 9 kilos) We usually had something sweet - cornbread, pancakes, rice pudding - sometimes tortillas or leftovers.
8:30am - back to work.
11am - This was lunchtime. Now, somedays we taught English to the community in the afternoon, so on those days, we went home to eat, so they and the teachers (3 of us, rotating) could shower and get ready for class. There was also English classes in the morning for the kids, that another 3 of us would teach, then they would join us around morning tea to work again.
If we were not teaching English, then we had lunch at the ranch/cabin down by the waterfall. One of the homebodies would bring the lunch down and we would ravenously devour it. Rarely was there leftovers. We worked hard and we very hungry all the time. We took a full hour for lunch each day, to digest and relax a bit. Most days, we could see an iguana that rarely seemed to move from his spot in a nearby tree.
Noon - Return to work and work until 2pm. In the first few weeks, it rained a lot in the afternoons, so we seemed to return home soaked every day. My boots were permanently wet for the first two weeks straight. That was not fun. It seemed to lessen in the last few weeks and I managed to keep my feet dry for most of the time. The waterproofing on my hiking boots wore out after Guayabo, so I suffered for those two weeks, but then I borrowed Mark's waterproofing kit and it seemed to help, in addition to the lessened rains.
2pm - Back home, or off to English class. English or not, everyday when we returned home, there was a line for the single toilet, single shower and the two laundry sinks. (Some people skipped the lineup altogether by going swimming in the swimming hole. Something I often wanted to do, but was usually too tired by the end of the day to contemplate it.) English teachers got priority. I usually tried to do laundry first. I had the male advantage of being able to take my workshirt off and wash it right away, without having to go in the house to change, so was often first to wash. (This annoyed some of the women, because of the way our social norms are set up such that they cannot do things like that.)
Around this time, we could have free time, but I always seemed to have something on the go, always seemed like there was some meeting to prepare for, evaluations to do, or something that had to be done. But, I always tried to take time to write a couple of pages in my journal, often in the afternoon, or else, in my hammock at night, with my little maglite...
5pm - Dinner - Dinner was usually between 4 and 6pm. By 5:30/6pm it got dark, so it was usually not quite that late. We found it a bit difficult to do dishes in the dark. We ate very well, we seemed to have 14 good cooks, and everyone put in a good effort.
6pm - At dark, we usually had a meeting. Sometimes it was simply talking about some plans we had for the next day, but about once a week we had a Roots and Routes discussion and also about once a week we had a Personal Development session.
Roots and Routes was generally a discussion on global issues - anything from international development and its impacts to indigenous rights to Costa Rica's dependence on international capital, etc. We all really enjoyed the sessions/discussions.
Personal Development was a time reserved to share our personal thoughts on personal growth, stories, things we wanted to work on, etc. These sessions often involved several people in the group crying, it was so deep and personal that we were going. (The other group in the field, when they heard about that, thought we were a bit strange - but they don't know what they were missing :) People shared parts of their lives - rough times like deaths of friends and family or troubles with co-workers, the importance of their family in their lives, etc. It was amazing to watch and be a part of. One thing I have always tried to work on is to be able to share more of myself with others. So I was happy with my participation in this. No, I did not cry. :) But I was close many times. The stories of the group were so touching at times. People shared their deepest and darkest thoughts at time, laid their souls bare for us. It makes one so vulnerable, but can be so rewarding.
This was another activity that the other group thought we were crazy to enjoy, although admittedly, not many of us enjoyed it in the beginning. Once a week, we would sit as a group and share our highlights and lowlights, complaints and kudos, trying to get everything out in the open. It worked so well, I wonder if it can somehow be applied to "real" life.
At first, it felt a bit contrived to people, but eventually, as we grew to trust each other as a group, it became more real and I think we managed to avoid many conflicts that could have grown, as a result.
How to describe Mark, especially, since he will be reading this. Oh, he is wonderful, fantastic, etc. :)
Actually, he is. It was really good to work with him. I had been worried that our leadership styles were too similar and that we were both a bit too quiet, but everything worked out well. It was so great to have him and his experience at hand. Although he didn't have YCI experience, he did have a lot of group experience and that was very handy. We had meetings almost every week to check in and plan activities and between the two of us, we seemed to be able to solve all the problems we encountered, although sometimes we may have been a bit slow on the uptake at times... :)
One problem that did come up was that I had the better Spanish and while his was good, and he had a strong goal of improving it, the community always came to me first to discuss issues. This made him feel sort of left out at times, especially during the Assembly (see below). We tried to address this by having him be our main contact out to the community, but it may have been a bit late. Still, the situation improved by the end a little, although, never quite to our satisfaction.
In our second weekend in QA, the community had its annual general meeting to vote for the Board of Directors for the Community Association. It was a big party as well as the actual meeting. About 5-10 minutes before we were going to leave for the assembly, Miguel asked us to give a speech to the community on the theme of protecting the local environment, in light of all the tourists coming to view the natural state of the park. Wow, we were not ready at all for that, but I threw to the group and people got together and whipped up a quick speech. Nicky had taken notes so I asked her if she wanted to present it. (I was terrible that way, always trying to slough off my work :) - although I would claim that I was pushing them to improve themselves, for their sake) She agreed, after I agreed to translate for her. So, we went and presented our 5 minute speech. The community was a bit taken aback, they expected me (or Mark) to do it. Our lack of strict hierarchy was hard for them to take sometimes, I think. It went off well, and they seemed to enjoy it. They even asked for a copy to put in their minutes - so it is recorded now, forever...
In the meeting, they voted on the new Board. They asked me to help count the votes (everyone put a number on a piece of paper). It was a great honour but it wasn't until after I had counted the first few votes that I started to realise that they had left out Mark again. I felt bad, but there wasn't much I could do (or so I thought at the time).
Afterwards, we ate. This is always my favorite part. It would probably have been funny to watch us, sneaking purifying drops into our fresco/juice, hoping the community wouldn't notice and/or be offended. We also played soccer and swam in the swimming hole. It was a great day.
I think I already mentioned the shortage of eggs, but that was one we expected. Once though, we ran out of gas for our stove. Now that was a crisis. We half expected to not eat that day. Somehow though, our ingenious cooks managed to start a wood fire and Dino had a one burner stove with him (what a boy scout :) so we got a half decent lunch in the end. I can't remember now, but I think we managed to get gas in time for dinner, so all was well.
Another crisis was our food. With more than a week to go, we realised we were desperately short on oats and rice, two of our most basic staples. Even worse, two of the group were having stomach problems and one of the only foods they could eat comfortably was oats (or rice). So we saved the rest of the oats for them, the rest of us suffering with pancakes and rice pudding for breakfast. (Oh so sad :) - I hate oatmeal)
I remember I was so happy though about the food shortage. We actually weren't short of food as such, we had tonnes of popcorn and corn flour. We just had to be a bit more inventive in the kitchen. I thought it was great though, even though everyone else probably thought I was crazy - it was another challenge for us to overcome. (I always compared things to Guyana in my mind - although I know I shouldn't - and things were all so much more difficult there. But, it was the challenges and difficulties that brought us together, so I thought it would be good for us.)
In the end, we bought more rice. Darn.
Manuel Antonio is a really beautiful beach near Quepos, our nearest town. Julian and Asdrubal, from MAG, really wanted to take us to the beach, they organised transport for us, got us into the national park for free, went to a lot of trouble for us. Unfortunately, when we asked the office about the possibility of going to the park, they basically said no. We needed to make an evacuation plan, and figure out all the logistics before we could have permission, but the person calling (one day Mark and another group member another time) felt that the office was very negative on the idea. (I guess it is fair, from their point of view, it is yet another thing to worry about)
Our group felt very annoyed about this and we had several meetings about it. Finally, I said I would phone and see what I could do. (Actually, I was fully planning to force it on them, if necessary) Mark and I finished off the evac plan, figured out all the logistics and then I made the long trip (45-60 minutes, across the trolley over the river) to the phone. I got the office on the line, presented all the information and got a positive response, but not quite a yes. They wanted to get back to us in a few days, but I said no, I needed a response right away. So, they discussed it, called me back and we were on! (with a few more details that we worked out later). We thought they were being such stick in the muds, worrywarts - so it felt good to get through that. It was a huge morale boost, most of us had resigned ourselves to the fate of not going.
So we went. It took to jeep loads to get us all to a nearby town where a minibus met us (the minibus couldn't go on the road to QA, it was too rough) and then we went straight there. People stayed up late the night before cooking some good food (at least we thought it was good until we compared it to the food that Julian and Asdrubal's families brought). It was a lot of fun. And, we went to the beach for a swim - how dangerous could that be?
Oops. After all those thoughts of, what a bunch of worrywarts they are in the office, within 5 minutes of being at the beach, we had an injury. Dann ran into the water, dived in and promptly smacked her head on a submerged log there. We were lucky that it was nothing serious (as we found out in the xray the next day).
In any case, that aside, we had a fantastic day. It fulfilled the goal of one woman, Beth, who finally saw a sloth, which she was so excited about! We saw monkeys, agoutis, a raccoon, many iguanas... It was a good day, maybe too short though.
Leaving was painful for all for us, although more so for the others, I think. For me at least, I have a far better chance of being able to return, visit and see people again. For others, it will be more difficult, for many, it really will be the last time they saw the community. (It was for me in Guyana...)
Most of community came out that morning to see us off. We had had very little sleep - I think I slept about 3 hours. (actually, that whole week was terrible for sleep, while I had been a very regular sleeper in the first 6-7 weeks, in the last week, I stayed up all the time, chatting to people in the middle of the night, talking them to sleep, writing in my journal - so much was happening, no one wanted to miss, especially since we all knew that soon enough it would all be over and then that would be it, no more group - I probably averaged 4-5 hours a night that week) There was so much packing, cleaning and organising to do. We never did finish all the cleaning in the house, so the community finished it for us.
When Julian came with the jeep to take the first load of people, the community gathered and gave us a each a gift - a brand new Quebrada Arroyo tourism project t-shirt. It was so touching, and it sparked off a new round of crying - some people had been crying off and on for a couple of days at the thought of leaving.
Finally, the first load got off, and then we waited. Laura and I did a skit for Miguel in which I imitated him (everyone called him chanco negro (black pig)) and his son then imitated me. It was a bit nervewracking and daring - it could have been really insulting, but it went great. In the short time we had been there, we built a trust and sense of fun that seemed to have transformed the community, according to Julian. It was very gratifying, how everyone enjoyed themselves and their lives so much.
Eventually, the second load went, and I stayed behind, theoretically to go with the truck that was coming, "really soon", with our equipment.
So I was the last. We left the equipment with Marvin's kids to watch, and we went for a tea and a final chat with Marvin and his wife. It amazed me that we could have made such an impact on them that in just 6 weeks, they were ready to treat me like a son (although Marvin is only 5 years older than me).
Finally, the truck never showed, so Julian came back again, got me and the bags and we left the YCI equipment for the truck, which we met 15 minutes out of town.
Next, we went back to the scout camp to meet up with the other group. They seemed very negative about their experience and we were a bit taken aback by it. They did not share our enthusiasm for compost and flowers and personal development meetings. Just reminds me again, that every experience is unique, even in the same country at the same time in the same program...
There was a lot of cleaning up to do, reports to write, meetings to hold, and we did all that. Mark and I recreated our notes for the feedback forms that were stolen, and we had some good times. One day in San Jose (had a hot shower, ate good food, some good conversations with the other leaders) and one day at a swimming pool. I missed most of the pool day, as I took two participants (same two that had stomach problems earlier) to the clinic to get checked up. Then, I took another two to the clinic on the way back to the scout camp. (What a day!)
Eventually, we got tired of all these "youth" and we kicked them back to their own countries. :) Originally, only 2 of the 4 leaders were supposed to go to the airport, but none of us liked that idea, so Mark and I rounded up our group (and the other group too) to stay up late (again!) and do all the scout camp cleaning and organising so that we could all go. It was fun.
So, we all went to the airport, a little overtired, and sad to see everyone go. They left in several pockets. Lots more crying and this time I did too. I realised that I would not likely see a lot of those people ever again, especially the Australians. (Probably I'll see the Canadians, unless they avoid me when I visit home. :) So, the leaders, we went home and crashed...
Still, I feel like there is lots to say, but again, this is too long and I must rest before work tomorrow. I also wanted to write more about what is going on now, with work and my new home with a family, but that will have to wait until later...
Hope you are all well, and don't mind the impersonal group emails. If you want a personal email, all you have to do is send me one, I always reply. (99% anyway)
Take care, abrazos,
Rob