Silence

When we arrived at the top I heard no words. I heard air rushing into lungs. I heard "hhhhhhhhhhhh!!" and "ohhhhhhhhhhhhh" and then--

nothing.

Some stood for a time; others sat. Eventually, every one of us had settled into a place. And there we were silent for almost five minutes. Ten if you count the slow, individual ascents to the rock.

There is rarely silence among gathered people--especially in this raucous group.  We are not engineered to sit together and not speak. It felt like a miracle walking a tightrope. The slightest sway and *poof* into a cloud of dreams.

It started at the base of the climb through the forest: we could hear a congo or howler monkey up in the trees above us right about where the rock is. As we entered the woods and continued upward, it became clear to all that treading lightly might just keep him in range of sight once we got closer. As we neared the rock the howls grew in intensity until we were nearly directly under the ruckus. We quietly scaled the face that opens up to a massive view of San Ramón and the Central Valley. Once above, we seemed to have forgotten the congo and perhaps the beast itself recognized the delicateness of the moment.

We stood and sat gawking at the breadth of what lie before us. Five weeks of families, parties, Imperial, classes, friends, and what certainly had become our home was there down below in a living postcard. A melancholy, beauty, victory, saudade of place. It felt like a mini, unspoken goodbye. We were far enough removed to be able to look at it for what it was, a small place we had come to love and now must leave shortly, yet close enough to see it alive in the way we know it to be.

One of the students remarked: "The clouds move slowly up here." I would respond that they always move slowly if we're paying the right kind of attention. And that, in a whisper, is the deep truth of this place, of what coming here means, of what travel is and can show us, of what I really mean by "new air".

At home we don't often look closely at the clouds and we don't often breathe the air with intention. We live expecting that we will see only what we have always seen and nothing more. But, transported to a new environment we see the same world through new lenses. We don't merely see, we look. We don't only hear, we listen. We try to find what it is that makes this newness so palpable when it is, after all, just other faces with eyes-nose-mouth, other buildings of concrete, other smokey tail pipes. The clouds are moving the same speed they always do; it's us that have slowed down.

The reality behind it is that all the wonder of new air, new people, new ways of life is a fallacy. None of it is new in this place. Only we are. I like to think that some of this is what was dawning on us during those silent minutes.

Praise God for when words become unnecessary.

Two Lights

This is my journal for today. See how neatly I started on a little thought? You can tell by how messy it gets about halfway through that my pen was struggling to keep pace with my head.

This notebook is my all-purpose enabler of an obsessive compulsion for writing everything down. I write meetings, I write phone numbers, I write journal entries, prayers, poems, blog ideas, drawings, lesson plans, check lists. I bought it in late November 2010 and have amassed 2.5 years of everything I've done written in my frantic (but artful?) shorthand. If it lasts to the end of 2013 I will be pleased.

Today I had a thought, a very happy thought. I realized that I was able to do two things in the last week that revived my spirit in this far place: playing piano at the museum where we have afternoon class, and mincing several cloves of garlic during a student cooking session yesterday. Here is some of what I wrote as the thoughts poured in/out:

"These two things are very related because they are tangible things. They are creative things. They are things I miss badly. What is it about them that is so satisfying? I think it is the simple seeing of a thing (i.e. garlic cloves, piano keys) and then the changing of that thing to make something out of it through the transformative process of creation. Piano keys they are not anymore: they are music. Cloves, no longer: minced, flavor-giving garlic. I take them from where they are and together we arrive at their purpose. Potential to kinetic--I am Physics. I am a force of reason and spirit descending on them. Cooking is music, too. It is bringing disparate, sometimes dissonant elements into harmony by creative, intelligent incision. Taste is like music, too. A sorbet is Katy Perry's latest pop anthem. A fresh salad, a sprightly waltz. The orchestra is here--I conduct. I whip my arms into a fury drawing out the crescendo of spices. I fade down the blaring brass...or onion. I coax the life out of basil leaves, a flourish of strings."

When I sat down to the piano I played through Daniel Johnston's "Held the hand". One of the students was there with me, so I sang it for her. It's a devastating progression of chords (not to mention the words and melody) with the abrupt, whimsical mood shifts that are present even in his darkest songs. It wasn't the same as being in my apartment with my keyboard, but in the same abstract sense as above it was still a row of keys giving birth to song (with my help).

When I realized we would need garlic for the gallo pinto I volunteered loudly to cut it. A clove of garlic is a small thing already, and the activity of making that clove into tiny, tiny bits of itself is what I love. It's work with hands, it's simple concentration on a simple task, it's raise-and-cut, raise-and-cut. That there was a decent knife made it three minutes of long-needed therapy. I could have kept on cutting my whole way through the head, but six cloves was enough and so I had to hang up the knife for another couple of weeks.

I'll probably get minced garlic all over my keyboard and guitar the day I get home.

China and Costa Rica

Reading on the way to Puerto Viejo

Since 2007 China has given Costa Rica hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign aid, autos, medical equipment and this sparkling national stadium. I thought many would be interested in this burgeoning odd-couple relationship between the two nations, and so I'm translating an opinion piece from the paper La Nación from Friday, June 13 about a recent agreement to let China build an oil refinery on Costa Rica's Caribbean coast. China's recent interest in Costa Rica is no doubt based on its growing need for resources and allies in new regions of the world. The article highlights the fears many Ticos share about what ultimate cost Costa Rica will be asked to pay for all of this kindness from the Chinese. The coercion of the little guy by the big guy hasn't changed much since 1492--it's just become more diplomatic.

"China: money Costa Rica pays for"

In this refinery project we are not talking about donations, aid, or concessions from China to Costa Rica. None of the above are necessary for international agreements, of course, but it should be clear from the start when they are or aren't involved. What we're dealing with is two associates making a business deal in which, as in any such deal, each party, if it is marginally intelligent, will try to gain the most it can. This current deal is nearing $1.5 billion or 3.5% of the national GDP. As a result of the project, a foreign power controlled by a dictatorship with global imperial ambitions will be, via his national businesses, co-owner of assets whose operation is part of a monopoly that will oversee a strategic area of national development.

But the truly absurd part of the refinery deal between Recope [Refinados Costarricenses de Petróleo--Costa Rican Refined Petroleum] and the China National Petroleum Corporation is that everything--absolutely everything--has been decided, controlled and executed by the foreign power. Subsidiaries of the CNPC have conducted the feasibility studies as well as overseeing the design, the size and other characteristics of the project--all without soliciting bids or approval of government accounting offices and with massive conflicts of interest in which the CNPC is judge, jury and executioner. All of this, remember, is at market cost. No gifts to Costa Rica this time.

On the 30th of May La Nación reported that Recope informed that a subsidiary of the CNPC would be in charge of construction. Just like that! Another conflict of interest. No bidding process like there should be when dealing with state institutions. That subsidiary is the China Petroleum Engineering and Construction Corporation (CPECC), the very company that, by means of one of its own arms (CEI), participated in the review of the feasibility studies and recommended the project be carried out!

And do you know, Costa Ricans, who may supervise the construction of the refinery? Personnel from another subsidiary of the CNPC. Amazingly, the CNPC will "supervise" itself as it builds! This in spite of the fact that dozens and dozens of world class businesses without links to the CNPC are available for the same services.

Also, we know that that the CPECC will need $1.3 billion to build the refinery. Experts believe that a refinery capable of processing 65,000 barrels is only profitable if its cost is less than $900 million. The fact that the CNPC itself will build it all explains the high price: the CNPC doesn't care about the excessive cost because one of its own subsidiaries will get the contract. What it overpays on one end it overcharges for on the other. For Recope, and by extension, all Costa Ricans, the equation is different: what we overpay for on one end is gone forever.

But here's the cherry on top: upon announcing that the subsidiary CPECC of the CNPC will charge $1.3 billion to build the refinery, the CEO of Recope, Jorge Villalobos, declared that "CPECC's offer is what we expected..." Essentially, the one man who ought to defend national interests declares that the price is fine for a project equaling 3.5% of the national GDP where no bidding process has occurred.

It is hard to find a worse business "strategy". With that statement any bargaining opportunity was lost. If this is how Villalobos manages his private enterprises--pay what they charge!--he is welcome to anger his descendants and inheritors, but Villalobos administers resources that are not his own but those of the whole country, and he should defend them with his life. Beyond that, this attitude underlines what we already know: in this unfortunate deal, China has decided everything, absolutely everything, and the Costa Rican government (just like during the Banana Republic days) obeys and pays what is charged them.

The fact that the president hasn't fired Villalobos still shows that there are reasons that this administration, just like the previous, has bent over backwards to accomodate all that China asks. In my mind, if China intends for Costa Rica to pay and repay the stadium and other donations with the refinery project, it is best that they share this intention with us. Then we will understand--even if we don't agree--the reasons that they so thoroughly trample our national interests. So don't expect that this project will continue on as planned with our silence.

The way this has played out is intriguing, educational and ironic. Who would have imagined that Communism could come up with such a classic Capitalist sleight of hand business deal! Who would have thought that the CNPC of Communist China, that studious observer of the United Fruit Company of Capitalist USA, would revive so perfectly the same practices that we hoped to see dead and buried.

The way in which China has surrounded and pulled in so many Recope executives, organizers, even the ambassadors and presidents of Costa Rica, is highly worrisome, but it also leads to a complete lack of faith in the project. What guarantees us that, one or two years after construction has started, the CNPC (with the approval of Recope) won't ask for more money than originally planned to complete the refinery, driving it closer to the $2 billion that some have speculated?

Distinguished analysts like Dr. Leiner Vargas and Dr. Manrique Jiménez Meza have found technical, financial and legal anomalies in the project. It is clear to me that this all began when our authorities allowed China to make all the decisions and to charge as they please.

What we must do is stop this project before more signatures further compromise the country. The warnings have been clear. The financial offices have been informed. Let no one claim that they didn't realize that this baby was born ill.

No Camera

I didn't bring my camera this year on purpose. The only one that I have is a grainy thing on my Nokia slowphone, and I only use it if I'm the only one in the group who can capture whatever it is that is happening.

One of the students said it a couple days ago: "I always wonder if I should even take pictures because I don't want to miss what's happening just to get a picture of it." She was standing in an aviary with birds careening around, over, under foliage and our heads. Many gringos could be seen trying to follow the erratic movements with cameras. Why?

A couple days before the aviary, another student arrived to the bottom of a long hike where a waterfall violently reached the pool below. The spray was huge, the whole pool constantly churning, the roar required raised voices. After walking out to a rock to pose with the group and back up, she exclaimed, "Wow, I haven't even really seen it yet!" while raising her camera to her eye. Her "really seen" meant "taken a picture of" and so she summarized my fear of what having a camera at all times can mean.

I think the fact that most of my traveling experiences haven't been for tourism--but school-related--has contributed to my aversion to cameras, but this is the first time I have actively deprived myself of the object. I do my best to wear Tico-appropriate clothing and to bronze as quickly as I can while down here to reduce light pollution on whichever block I find myself. As often as I can I try to leave my backpack at home. All of these things make me feel more like I'm a Ramonense and not a gringo.

I fear the assumption that goes with all gringos bearing cameras: another tourist. I can't control the assumptions, but if I want to be treated like a local (and I do!), it makes sense to actively reduce the potential tourist red flags--the camera being the mother of them all.

So, sorry, but I'm not posting many pictures this year. I've got them all in my head--don't worry.

Here's one from today, though:

Chilero sauce, by Tío Pelón. That means Bald Uncle. What.

Bocaditos

That empty stool is where I sat tonight.

Bocaditos is a bar that, if this is to be said of any business establishment in San Ramón, is my home. On our first year of the program I spent many an evening with the group at Bocaditos having a drink or two and reflecting on the day of mind-altering interactions. It sort of became a haven that year: the bartenders knew us, the guys at the bar knew me, and it wasn't like it was some kind of Gringo bar. We just made it our place among the Ticos.

And so it has been. I went there tonight for the first time this year to watch the Jamaica/Mexico World Cup Qualifier. I was happy to find my old friend Arturo sitting in his usual place at the bar and drinking his usual scotch with water. Arturo's a man I like because he doesn't say much, and what he says he doesn't say well. He's terribly hard to understand. He's also terribly nice. I tapped him on the back, "¿Cómo le va amigo?" And I watched it slowly dawn across his face: "I know this Gringo? Oh! I know this Gringo!" "Hola, amigo", he said.

When I came back last summer, he stood up and gave me a big, happy hug. But now, it was like I had always been there. When you meet someone and have a good connection and tell them that you'll be back next year, you know that first meeting "next year" will be special because who believes promises a year in advance? Last year was a special surprise when I saw Arturo for the first time. We hugged like lost buddies, and I craned my ears to understand what he was trying to say. This time? Just "Hola, amigo" and a pat on the back. It's nice to have a place where people know you and feel your coming and going as simply a part of the rhythm of the place.

I didn't know the man in the stool next to me and was trying to figure out how to talk to him for the first 20 minuts of the match. Clearly, he'd come to watch it because he was peering up at the TV with a twisted neck. I enjoy the challenge of trying to find a reason to pull someone into conversation with me, especially since it's my second language. This guy happened to be drinking a Corona. There it was!

"So, are you rooting for Mexico tonight, or what? I think you've got the wrong beer." (I've yet to meet a Tico that supports Mexico)

"Oh no... I just like Corona I guess. We need them to lose tonight to stay third."

And then we were off on a discussion of the qualification table and who we wanted to go through to the World Cup. Of course, there was plenty to talk about after my trip to Denver in March for the WorldCupQualifier in which the USA defeated Costa Rica much to the Tico's anger. Costa Rica appealed to FIFA that the ref didn't call off the match after SO MUCH SNOW had fallen by half time. It was wild and a definite highlight of my year. Knowing football is always among the most useful knowledge sets when trying to talk to Latin Americans. It's as seamless and ubiquitous as the weather conversation we all have.

At one point when I excused myself to the bathroom I had a quintessential "where are you?" moment: 

I was peeing in the urinal.

I looked up from the urinal.

I saw a gecko one foot from my face on the wall.

I instantly thought: "plastic."

I remembered where I was.

I saw it lick its eye. 

I finished and returned to the bar.

It's a shame that this was my first visit to Bocaditos having been here now for 10 days, but it's good to be reminded that there I have some sort of a home.

Reflections on Immigration

Nicas waiting in line to return to Costa Rica for work after spending December back home

"Have you tried this sweet bread?"

"No."

"It's not very good. [pause] It's from Nicaragua."

About ten minutes after overhearing this conversation come from my host kitchen I was having an in depth discussion about the role of immigrants and other cultures in Costa Rica. The boyfriend of one of my host sisters and I covered many topics ranging from international economics and politics to the subtle shifts in ownership of San Ramón's corner stores over the last decade (they have largely been bought by Chinese immigrants as an outcome of the lengthening diplomatic relationship between China and Costa Rica and the resulting immigration policy that has been established).

Last year I met a woman at tourist mecca Manuel Antonio National Park who carried trinkets and earthen vases with painted toucans and monkeys to sell to white folk. We spoke for a while as she discussed with our group the various items that she had for sale. In between showings and price negotiations I came to find that she is a Nica--or Nicaraguan--and comes to Manuel Antonio for several months out of the year to sell these items in order to send money back to Nicaragua where her children live with her parents (her husband also works in Costa Rica). She is given a provisional work visa to be in the country but then must return home for several days for it to be renewed before she is allowed to enter and work again. In general, Nicas are poorer, darker skinned, and make up a large part of Costa Rican's migrant worker class. This particular woman lived in a small dorm with many other Nicas who worked around the park.

As you might imagine, Costa Ricans have a tendency to look down on Nicaraguans. I remember two years ago how the boys on the street would rile up one of the Nica boys by calling him and his little brother homeless and saying, "Your country didn't want you and neither do we!" The only thing I could think to do was to cross the circle of boys in order to very clearly and intentionally stand by them and talk with them in front of the group as a show of solidarity.

It seems like a lot of the people that discuss immigration issues will only talk about the United States's immigration realities. It makes sense because I live in the US and interact mostly there, but the story above of a migrant worker class of the dark skinned could switch out "Nica" for "Mexican" and "Manuel Antonio National Park" for "Tyson Foods, Lexington, NE" without missing a beat. In Europe, thousands of Africans attempt to sail across to Spain's mainland or to the Canary Islands in the hopes of finding work and a better life. Mexico is a corridor for many Central Americans trying to reach the United States, and when they inevitably fail as many of them will they remain in Mexico. Brazil is looking into building a 10,000 mile fence to keep out illegal immigrants and drugs from Bolivia and Paraguay.

Immigration is not a USA-centric phenomenon. It is a world phenomenon wherever the haves and the have-nots sit abreast. As I was listening to the conversation happen in the kitchen outside of my room, it made me think of Imagined Communities, a book I read on this trip last year about the ways we conceive of our nation, the ways be construct our identity around land and culture, and the ways that we remind ourselves of our nation's innateness. Wasn't the implication in the conversation that the sweet bread wasn't good--not due to a less skilled baker or an inferior recipe--simply because it wasn't Costa Rican?

I think the temptation when discussing immigration is to [not so] discretely boast about our nation's attractiveness or superiority in the mirror of the other's need for us. "Wow, look at all these immigrants! We are so attractive! Our country is so great!" We say this in more indirect ways, of course, like when we bring up the American Dream as if it were a concept that is ours to control and assign to others. It's vanity, and it ignores the real reason anyone would travel hundreds, thousands miles from home, family, and community: poverty. The dream of wealth and comfort may drive some to venture to the United States, but more often than not it is poverty that moves immigration--especially for the low-wage migrant worker. Otherwise, the Africans would be crossing the Atlantic and the Paraguayans a dozen countries.

I believe that today's immigrants (the tired, the poor, the huddled masses) are looking for food and not ideology. At one time there were many yearning to breathe free, and indeed still today refugees and asylum seekers need that woman and that beacon in NY harbor, but what about the impoverished? Do they need freedom or just an odd job doing construction so that they can send money back to the Mrs and kids? The point is that immigrants trying to escape poverty will go wherever the closest place is that may relieve that poverty. The Costa Ricas, Spains and United States' of the world will continue to be attractive not on the basis of ideology or inherent goodness but on the basis of the potential for the basic needs of life to be satisfied.

If we make it out to be more than that, we're just not going to enjoy the sweet bread for what it is.

My Books

I've taken quite a few books to keep me company down here for the long, rainy nights and bright early mornings. There's a good mix of fiction and non, but at this point in life I'm inclining more to the non side of the room. Some I've read and some are brand new. Some bought for the trip and some are borrowed from friends.

Listed alphabetically, these are my papered companions:

Bible

Is this a novel? Haven't read it before.

Etymologicon by Mark Forsyth

I like words, and this book is an engrossing, labyrinthine history of them. So much fun. Words, you guys! I wish I could eat them. I have to stop myself from not reading this whole book in whatever sitting I am sitting down to read it for.

Godric by Frederick Buechner

A great, short novel of historical fiction about a 12th century hermit-saint who once went on a journey that changed his life. I haven't read this one in several years.

Harper's magazine two most recent issues. The newest does not have a Nebraska cover story, so make that only two of the last four.

Harvest of Empire by Juan Gonzalez

A history of Latinos in the United States as a result of the history of the United States in Latin America. A documentary of the same name will be screening this fall in Lincoln.

Listening to Your Life by Frederick Buechner

A daily reader with reflections on life, faith, and the mysteries of their union.

Memoria del fuego, 1. Los nacimientos by Eduardo Galeano

From the introduction (translated): "Latin America hasn't only suffered the plundering of gold and silver, saltpeter and rubber, copper and oil: it has also suffered the seizure of its memory. From early on it has been condemned to amnesia at the hands of those who have repressed its existence."

My Ántonia by Willa Cather

In keeping a promise to my dear friend Megan, who purchased this book for me on this very day two summers ago, I return to Willa. I hope it will keep me in touch with the prairie. (see bookmark above)

A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn

I've seen some of Zinn's videos but never picked up his classic. The first chapter about the arrival of the English to the "New World" had me floored. The idea is to recount History from the perspective of the losers, and it is fascinating.

The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd

Loaned to me by a neighbor, I've heard a lot of this book and hope it will alleviate the eventual headaches that some of the other academic books will give.

I often wonder why I keep books around at all. Once I'm finished with them, shouldn't they find other hands and eyes to give to? I've heard it said that old books are like old friends, and I suppose if I could shrink my friends and keep them in jars by my couch I would say that it would probably be enjoyable having that around as a piece of furniture.

For about two years I checked out books from the library, but I tired of it because I missed them when they were gone. I forgot about them more quickly than those I kept and could see over and over even though the years between us were many. I've forgotten mostly everything about Lolita and A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, for example. Those were two from that time period.

I really like to make my books mine, though, and not being able to underline or write notes in the margins about my associations and reactions made reading library books a handcuffing experience by their very nature. I couldn't possess them or have any say about what they were saying.

Some people think that marking in books is some kind of betrayal, but if you ever borrow a book from me please-please-please mark in it all the livelong day. I want to see what parts you found interesting or inspiring and reread them for the interest and inspiration that I may have missed the first time. I love a book with several different pen(cil) colors with notes, circles, and underlines. In fact, when I look for an old used book, I look specifically on Amazon for the "acceptable" category of book (behind "very good" and "good") precisely because most of those books are marked up by someone else.

I guess when I mark a book I don't mean to make it my own: I mean to make it feel read. "There, there, book," I say, "I'm reading you! [underlines something] See?!"

New Air

My house has a patio that I read on most days. In the rain it is my place to watch the rain not make me very wet. I look at the rain making everything else very wet, and I say "not me today, rain! I am not very wet! Keep trying!" in my head so loudly that the rain would get really mad if it had a brain and if telepathy worked.

I'm in San Ramón now--day one is over. We arrived last night in darkness and drove through a dark that hinted at the deep greens that lie behind it. The students could tell in spite of the few lights along the highway that what lurked in darkness was quietly verdant. In other years we've arrived at sunrise when the greenscapes are as open to the world as our eyes.

I told one of the students to pay attention to the air when we landed, to that first whiff of Costa Rica. It's a moment that, even if you're expecting it, can really strike you by how unexpectedly new it smells. There is no smell, though. That word deceives in this case. Maybe "how unexpectedly new it breathes" is better. Yes, let's go with that. It doesn't smell new, maybe different, but it breathes new simply because you are breathing it and you are new in this place.

It's not just the air, of course. It's the palms, the Spanish flung skyward by so many around, the unfamiliar pattern in the cement, the dense rain-heavy night. It all accumulates and is breathed in during those first few breaths.

"You're right--it does smell different," she said.

"What I mean is: think of it like a lung might, not just a nose."

"Oh, yeah! I see what you mean--it's all so new!"

Yes, it's all so new even down to this most basic thing of breathing air.

I remember stepping out in Spain on my first day several years ago. I was with a group of six other students making our dazed, half-lost way through the airport to the ground transportation area when we turned a corner and unexpectedly were thrust into Madrid. A road teemed with taxis, smokers, palms, and rushing people. I wasn't expecting it, but I remember clearly how with a boom the sun hit me. I stopped in my tracks to take a breath, to breathe in the smokers, the honking horns, even the summer heat through my nostrils and into myself. I looked with my eyes, smelled with my nose, felt with my skin, but those senses were informing a deeper part still: my lungs.

Hwwwoooooooaaaaashhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

It was a new country, a new continent, a new climate, a new language, and a new way of life. Beneath all of that, though, it was a new air.

We're taking it in today.

On Losing and Finding

I am leaving home for seven weeks four days from now.

Before any large trip that I've ever undertaken there is always a moment, sometimes in a hallway, other times in the car or munching on a donut, maybe a familiar song comes on that launches a familiar dream only this time the dream I see is myself leaving the place that I am. Wherever day dreams catch me away to on the other days is a far different place than the one I felt swept away to today as I stood in the offices of my temporary job saying goodbye to co-workers.

"I am leaving home for seven weeks four days from now." Earlier this morning, had I written that sentence, it wouldn't have contained nearly the weight that it does as I stare at it now. Its reality has dawned on my week. The rest will be lived in its shine.

When I went on my first real roller coaster, I remember the moment I felt the harness snap into place just after which the attendants ran up and down along side the cars to make sure they had in fact snapped in. Against my fears and worries, I did not call out for them to get me out of there. I simply accepted that there were decisions, moments, dozens of them that had lead me to this, and if I were going to back out at any point it had better not be right before the thing I'd been saying I wanted to do was to happen. Stringing along events and dumping them, like people, would be a terrible thing to do to oneself (and others).

I'm ready for Costa Rica again. If I weren't, the time to say so was December, not May.

What I felt in the office as I said goodbye was something like the sinking feeling of immediacy. Anticipation dies away and some sort of focused spirit saying "It is time" is born. I hadn't let myself feel it until then--there was much work to be done leading up to it. Anticipation makes big events like this feel like they will always be far off, always "next month" or "next summer," but one day you find yourself saying "next week" and your guts get kicked in by your own words.

Buechner talks of leaving home and the scrap of our heart that is left behind there. This scrap we know as homesickness when we are away from dear ones, familiar places, etc. This is why we say "I miss you" or "I miss that". It is literally missing. It is a missing piece of the person we are when we are with that person or in that place. There is also the scrap of our heart that is sent ahead waiting for us to arrive where we will soon be present. That is the scrap that I felt leave me today in the office as I said, "It will be a lot of fun." Future tense, but now much more immediately present. A piece of me left and now sits on the bench at the home of Doña Yolanda in San Ramón, Costa Rica. You can hope for the coming reunion if you prefer it to praying.

When people talk about finding themselves on journeys or travels, I am sure that they do not often mean it literally. I believe they literally do it, though, mostly without knowing.

If you see me before I go, you will only be seeing most of me. Whole me will be back in July. : )

Neighborings pt. 2

"WHERE THE HELL ARE YOU KIDS? HEY GET OVER HERE NOW!"

He's got a shaved head, a muscular build and a tribal tattoo. I've got a bike helmet.

Instantly, I flashed back to my encounter with the Latino boys' mother from Kids in the Alley. How do I look in this moment? Guilty? Have I done something wrong by talking to these kids? Should I keep my distance like "good neighbors" do? Why do I somehow feel defensive like I've been caught red handed?

Maybe I should have slinked away to my apartment, but I don't believe in that. Instead I saw a chance to know another parent in spite of the again imperfect circumstances that prompted this meeting. I walked over to his yard with the kids as they were reprimanded for taking one step out of sight. As an explanation I offered, "They were just asking me about a bike that's behind my garage. I don't know whose it is, though."

He looked at me with plates of food in his hands, maybe not hearing, so I continued, "Do these kids have bikes? I could try to find some kid bikes at the Bike Kitchen if they need some."

Still not responding directly to me he seemed to soften and said, "Tommy, you need a bike don't you?"

I reexplained that they were asking me about a bike that's hanging out behind my garage and has apparently been there for a while. As he set down the food, still sort of evasive of my presence and his acknowledgement of it, I stepped forward and said, "I'm Aaron. I live up there on the second floor."

He told me his name and vice-gripped my hand. I mentally buckled my chin strap. That was the last we said as I left them to their dinner.

Two days later I found him alone outside and he called to me, "YO!" (again with the yelling!) "I hope it's OK but the kids took that bike yesterday since no one was using it." It was OK. I have no clue whose it is or why it was in my yard to begin with; it certainly doesn't belong to anyone in my house.

We talked for several minutes and I came to learn quite a bit about him. He was a railroad worker before his back gave out. He has an online business now and has mostly reinvented himself. Last year he took in a friend and accompanying children who were left homeless after domestic trouble elsewhere. He paid way too much money a week to rent a extended-stay room for them when his apartment got too cramped. He is back now but even moved himself out to give them enough space to live in his apartment when the extended-stay room became too costly. He said a hurried goodbye, feeling he might have bored me.

I guess what I needed to know, and probably part of the reason I wanted to meet this man, is because I knew deep down that he wasn't just a man that yelled at kids. He had to be more complex than that, but The Man Who Yells was all he was going to be in my eyes unless I took the initiative to meet him.

The world is full of people that are not black and white, I believe. We are grey people. We exist, as my pastor likes to say, "in the already and not quite yet." We are grey because we include darkness and lightness. We are not fully realized. Our histories are blurred with a swirl of dark and light times. They are not often in proportion either. My history is relatively light compared to many, so maybe I'm privileged to be able to feel this way about people. I'm not certain, but since I have the perspective I do I think it best to be proactive with it.

It's planting season. See you out there in the dirt.

Neighborings pt. 1

This is my house. Well, this is the house I live in. You see, I rent an apartment on the second floor just inside that door and up the stairs. It's a pretty great apartment even if it doesn't get many hours of sunlight.

Renting is limbo. It's a big plant in a too shallow pot. You put down some roots, but mostly you hover, you squat legally, you lick a finger for the changing winds.

This is my first apartment living solo. It felt like the right time, and the right place fell into my lap next to the apartment of a friend and renting from another. The houses I've lived in have been great, and the people I've lived with have made them so like good roommates should. One thing that's been lacking from those experiences may seem obvious, but now that I'm doing this solo renting thing I see its value: ownership. Maybe it's because I chose this place out of my sole volition and free of other opinions to consider. I imagine homeowners have a greater sense of this, but in my place I feel for the first time that this is my house and my neighborhood.

This all stirs up a most basic desire of mine: to know and be known to fellow humans. As I wrote back in October, I'm reaching out for the first time into the lives I see around me. This is my street now. That is my alley and those kids are still there. They skate, they shoot imagined guns, they run over and ask/say: "Hey! That's your bike!?" "Yes, it still is!" I say only the first part. A recent interaction with them occasioned a meeting of more adults.

"Do you have any boards to skate over?" said Sergio.

"You mean to ollie up onto?"

"No, we need to build a ramp!"

I didn't think I had anything sturdy enough for anything like that. Plus, these kids don't wear helmets, and so at the risk of being seen as too adult I chose to not have any boards that would work for them instead of tell them again that they need helmets.

"Is this your bike?" said a different kid, motioning to the alley.

I walked there and found a bike wedged between my garage and the fence behind it. It was about the right size for a kid of ten years, which I estimated this boy to be. As I was explaining that I didn't know where it came from I heard a familiar sound: a man hollering.

He yells a lot, this man. I hear it through my open windows that look out over his backyard. I heard it in winter sometimes through his closed windows as I walked to the garage.

(imagine growling at high volume)

"WHERE THE HELL ARE YOU KIDS? HEY GET OVER HERE NOW!"

2012 Top Ten List

I usually write a lot about these, but there wasn't time this year.

10. Menomena - "Moms" (emotionally battering)

9. Dum Dum Girls - "End of Daze EP" (great variety of songs in this succinct, cohesive statement)

8. Daniel Rossen - "Silent Hour / Golden Mile EP" (still the best part of Grizzly Bear)

7. Hot Chip - "In Our Heads" (bring your heart to the dance floor)

6. Beach House - "Bloom" (moody goodness)

5. Japandroids - "Celebration Rock" (keep pressing the gas into your 30s)

4. Ana Tijoux - "La Bala" (stunning, powerful, great wordsmith)

3. Spiritualized - "Sweet Heart Sweet Light" (tuneful, soulful)

2. Frank Ocean - "Channel ORANGE" (hard to stop listening to)

1. Fiona Apple - "The Idler Wheel..." (Fiona Apple-y)

On to 2013!

Mark DeMarco - "Ode to Viceroy"

Among my favorite songs this year that won't make my top 10 albums was this slinky float trip of a tune. DeMarco ambles through a pleasantly simple (and simply pleasing!) verse-chorus at the pace of a Malkmus classic with drunken surf guitars and an anxious bassline. It makes me go all loose banana: limbs deboned, spine dangling forward, head faintly bobbing. I shake down to a puddle of goo at that guitar solo coda. What a world, what a world.

Kids in the Alley

There are some kids in my alley that play all the time.

It's great. I park my bike back there in the garage, so I see them several times a week. They are, I estimate, between 9 and 12 years old, unselfconscious and whimsical. I've ridden by them several times on my way out of the alley, but a couple days ago I was out working in the garage and got my first chance to talk to them. They were skate boarding and throwing a football around (sometimes both at once) when one of them spotted a board in the garage that he thought would be a perfect skate ramp. Upon further examination, it turned out to not be a board but a piece of drywall--bad ramp. Seizing the opportunity, I made some little friends.

Sergio seemed to be calling the shots for the boys, so I asked him first. "Sergio!" "And I'm Fernando!" said the one who's eaten the most in his life. "I'M ALEX!!" said one running from a couple garages down. The other I hadn't seen peeked around the tree line: "That's Juanito." "Nooo, it's JUAN!" he said in that "geeeez guys, cmooonnnn" whine that the runt of every group of boys has perfected.

I've seen them a few times since, and though I get the names mixed up a bit, I always talk to them for a few minutes before I go inside. They all speak perfect English with no accent whatsoever, so I've been intrigued about their home situation. Do they have bilingual parents? Do they have monolingual parents and have learned English so well through the school system? Today I found out...sorta. As I got home to put my bike away I heard Fernando running up behind me shouting a very obvious thing. "Hey, I know you!" He had a friend, an even runtier one named Frankie. They had just come from the store with Frankie's mom, and they were waiting while she loaded the groceries from the car into the house.

I saw my opportunity to meet some parents. I started talking with them as we walked down the alley to their parking area when a little girl (3 years?) danced forth in a pink Dora coat. It was Frankie's little sister. His older brother was helping carry groceries with the aid of his mother. She was an Anglo and carried a cellphone in one hand with a 12pk of CocaCola in the other. She hung up the phone as we approached, and motioned toward Frankie and me: "¿Qué haces hablando con gente que no conoces?" ("What are you thinking talking to people you don't know?").

I suddenly felt two-fold defensive: for me and for Frankie, who innocently had just made a new friend--not that his mom could have known that. I launched into: "Pero si nos conocemos de aquí detrás de las casas. Yo tengo mi bici ahí atrás y nos vemos muchos días, ellos jugando yo yéndome. Sí que nos conocemos" (But we do know each other from here in the alley. I keep my bicycle over there and we see each other a lot, them playing, me coming and going. We know each other).

It was a weird moment. She was confused (and white, remember). Fernando and Frankie were stunned. I had also just learned in that moment that Spanish was a part of their lives. It seemed like more than the five seconds that it probably was, but Fernando looked up at me, awed and corpulent. The words dripped out of his mouth like a leaky faucet: "You... you speak ...Spanish? You... speak Spanish.  ...?" "Yeah, I teach Spanish at the university. That's my job," I said loud enough for bilingual mom to hear. Fernando, still reeling, was doing the best he could. "Ok, so... what's 'FOUR' in Spanish!" I laughed. He sorta laughed, too, realizing the silliness of his question in the face of the anterior.

I decided I should probably not push it, and mom was ushering them away, so I turned to her and offered an introductions olive branch. Her name was Shannon. She didn't really change her attitude toward me, but it was probably a complex swirl of pride (at having been clearly understood in Spanish by me when she meant to communicate exclusively with her child) and utter confusion (at the prospect of meeting another white Spanish speaker right there in the alley talking with her kid). Her posture was distrustful, but her face was plain puzzled. She wasn't being a bad mom by any means--maybe a bit presumptive--but we'll get our chance to run into each other again. We'll see how it goes that time.

Until then, those kids can expect me to take even more interest in them now. See you in the alley!

No Land's Man

This article about Sudanese runner Guor Marial has been a small seed of thought planted in my mind for several days. It feels like it's germinating now, so I'm going to try to unearth it roots-n-all to get a look at just what I think it means. This most philosophical swing of the bat hinges on a small part in a book I recently picked up by Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek entitled Living in the End Times, in which Žižek postulates that capitalism and the global order it maintains are nearing an endgame. From there he draws on the five stages of grief as a framework to analyze our world systems, social realities, and ideologies. It's been an engrossing read so far despite the excessive verbiage, but it is philosophy after all, I suppose.

The headline of the article above contains the story: "IOC allows runner without country to compete in London under Olympic flag". Well, the whole story is that this runner belongs to the infant nation of South Sudan, whose recent secession from Sudan is much too new to have established the proper Olympic body from which to authorize and send athletes. So, the IOC has determined that Guor Marial may participate in the Olympics without representing a country; he will instead run under the Olympic flag.

Because the IOC could have created South Sudan as a country recognized by the organization if it had wanted to, we can ask what reasons they may have for not doing so. I see a couple possible ways of reading this elision of South Sudan in favor of their own flag:

1.) Since Marial refused to where the flag of a Sudan that has seen dozens of his family members killed under its colors, the IOC could have denied his right to participate. They found a solution that maintained their established order (a country must have an Olympic body in order to participate) while allowing Marial to participate. This is one you might read in the news.

2.) "We at the IOC have resolved that the Olympics shall be your country, and the Olympic Village, your hometown. Your food, McDonald's and your flag, ours. You are the embodiment of a bodiless, faceless organization that has waited decades for such an opportunity to both humanize and commercialize the WeAreTheWorld-ness of the Olympic Games."


3.) It offers a sentimental story for the IOC to tout in the wake of their strange reticence regarding the 40 year anniversary of the 1972 Münich Games and its accompanying tragedy. The IOC has refused to acknowledge the tragedy in the opening ceremonies because they  fear backlash from extremists feel the need to "maintain political neutrality." Marial's story gift-wraps a sympathetic angle that will likely be covered in excess--certainly much more than the Münich massacre. Do you smell roses? That's the IOC.

As I see it Marial embodies a non-entity at the Games. Bearing the Olympic flag contains the statement that he is at once from everywhere and nowhere. He runs representing sport for all men and women, but he is also a neutral, neutered participant in the world's games--shackled and destined to represent only a void. Here, Žižek might cite the Lacanian moment when the "signifier falls into the signified," or, when the word becomes indistinguishable from the thing it names or even gains supremacy over the object. If these circumstances have never happened before, is it possible that Marial is the first person in history of whom the words "Olympic athlete" are true in their fullest sense?

Warning: Slow Everything

This is TicaBus. TicaBus is not a company I have ever used, but TicaBus would like you to think that they go super fast. Look at that deer leaping up mountains and into valleys. This is all an illusion, you see, because in Central America nothing is done quickly, and more often than not things are done with almost deliberate slowness.

Monday I began my journey home. I travelled from Bocas del Toro, Panamá to San José, Costa Rica in boat, taxi, and bus. I travelled from Bocas del Toro to Almirante by water taxi. Once there, I travelled a total of 296km  in 11.5 hours. That rounds out to an average speed of 26kph (16mph). For comparison, I just returned to Nebraska by plane over some thousands of kilometers in 9 hours.

Let's recap: eleven and a half hours at sixteen miles per hour.

I'd like this post to have a Adventure Excitement Against Time! tone as opposed to a #FWP Gringo Angst! tone, but the truth is I was one angsty gringo on Monday having rousted myself at 7:30am to finally arrive at the airport at 7pm. In those 11.5 hours of my life I changed in profound ways, by which I mean I devolved into a bitchy, angry, panicky American Tourist.

Interesting things were going on in Almirante, the gateway to Bocas del Toro. As soon as we docked, the tourist taxis began to usher us around saying they couldn't take us to Changuinola (the departure city to San José) because of a strike. All I remember hearing was the word huelga (strike) over and over and something about the streets being blockaded. We arrived at the blockade to Changuinola at about 8:30am to find dozens of school children standing in the street among fallen trees they had dragged across the road. It was a downpour. They were chanting, singing, and dancing in the streets.

Students chant as others watch from under the bus shelter

Our taxi driver took the time to explain the situation: the local school didn't have running water or electricity that day, and being this not an isolated occurrence, the children (ages 14-18, I would guess) decided to make their dire conditions everyone's problem by blockading the only major road through Almirante and practically bringing the tourist mecca of Bocas del Toro to a standstill for the morning. Busses were backed up behind the intersection for blocks in either direction. Our taxi driver got us through the blockade by his deft having of two taxis--one he drove up to the one side and the other he had driven to the water taxi dock. We sprinted through the blockade and downpour in order to arrive on time for our bus to San José.

Once aboard the bus, the next big hurdle was customs at the border. Going through the border upon entering Panamá was not unlike the early computer game Myst. The world is unknown to you, and you must rely on your insight along with tiny clues to find your way through a dream-labyrinth. No exaggeration. Panamá customs had four doors, two windows, and three buildings. You needed to go to one building, one window, and then one other door. You would think signage (or simply 1, 2, 3 ordering of buildings/doors/windows) would aid this process, but you would be lost, wrong, and probably crying. The only help we received was from our future taxi driver, who'd seen enough troubled gringos flounder up and down, flailing their passports at every open window and door. Somewhere, I thought, there must be a table with a bottle marked "DRINK ME" so that I would be able to shrink down small enough to fit through the real customs door at the foot of one of these windows. Then, the cake afterwards, saying "EAT ME". Normal size, giddyup!

I have digressed. We were returning through the same three-door circus we met on our way in, only this time with 30 needing to pass before we were allowed to move on. At the passport checking line things were moving extraordinary slowly. When I finally approached the window, I could see that the passport checker was being handed bundles of passports to stamp from drivers of private transportation. They pay a little money, they get ahead of the line. Ours were only checked once there was a break in the flow of these private drivers. This came after waiting in the line for 15 minutes only to find out we were in the line for the wrong window of the wrong buliding and we actually needed to be going in the door in the last building first. Imagine my joy when the men in this third building began to laugh at us for not knowing where to begin our process.

Back to window number one we went with the pay-as-you-go passport stamper. After getting stamped, one must walk across a bridge between Panamá and Costa Rica. This is that bridge:

It was a slippery 1/2km walk over the river. Finally, at the Costa Rican customs window (which seems to have about 33% more understanding of how to accommodate unfamiliar sheeple) we waited for the final stamp that would release us from the white rat race. There I found a defining moment of Central American life speed: with more than 30 people waiting in line behind me, the agent took my passport and declaration, scanned the passport, looked over the declaration, checked the boxes, stamped and signed my passport. He then handed me my pa--he then realized he was getting a text message on his iPhone, so of course he held my documents in one hand while typing with his thumb a two-paragraph reply. Misspellings? Just backspace and try again. Autocorrect error? Shuffle through the possibilities til you find it. After 30 seconds I offered, "Con las dos manos más rápido, no?" ("It'd be faster with both hands, right?"). He smiled and kept going. I was finally reunited with my documents a short time later.

The horn, the horn, the horn is so forlorn.

The trip moved swiftly through Caribbean towns Sixaola, Puerto Viejo, Limón, and then inland through Siquirres and Guápiles before our next major obstacle. A trucker pulled off to the side of the road yelled ¡Ehtá cerrao! ("It's closed!") as we approached the ascent of one of the most notoriously dangerous sections of Costa Rican highway that passes through the mountains of Braulio Carrillo National Park north of San José. Due to heavy rains and low visibility on tight corners, this heavily trafficked pass is often a pileup waiting to happen. So it was this afternoon, yet we ventured forth anyway rising about half way up before we joined the creep-n-stop rhythm of the rest of the semis, cars, and buses. Over the course of the next two hours some dozen ambulances went up and down the mountain. We had heard there was an overturned semi but never found evidence of this if there was one. My panic reached an all time high when I realized that without cellphone reception in the mountains I was handcuffed regarding the plans I had made to reunite with my luggage at the airport. The initial plan made early in the morning was that my generous maleta hosts would would meet me at 7:30pm at the airport for the handoff. I was two hours deep into a traffic jam that could potentially delay my arrival for much, much later. My travelling company, Sofi, made it easier to not fly into cursing rants about the former passengers of cars that began to populate the highway while they waited. She did well to stonewall my outrage at the growing claustrophobia of time.

All told, I arrived at the airport at 7:15pm. The descent to San José went much more quickly than I expected, and life returned to a manageable level of anxiety when my maleta bearers also brought gallo pinto and a thermos of coffee to send me off with one final, full Costa Rican meal. There were more hurdles on the way, like a 60 minute window in Denver to get to my next flight while also rechecking my bag and passing through customs and security again (they took my peanut butter! not a liquid!), but I now find myself among the comforts of home and no worse for the wear. Slowness has its advantages, but experiencing such a heavy dose of that reality in the 24 hours before I had to fly home made me miss the pace of life here (or at least the multiple lanes on highways).

I had a wonderful evening last night with my favorite friends in Omaha, Kim and Jeremy. I rode my bike to lunch with others today. High summer in Lincoln is upon me.

La Colonia de Sarapiquí (La vuelta)

"How dangerous is the acquirement of knowledge and how much happier that man is who believes his native town to be the world"

- Mary Shelley, Frankenstein (current read)

Johancer (left) and family (not pictured: Macho)

Two years ago I was introduced via written word to a rural adolescent. He won the penpal lottery and got paired with the professor of a class he knew nothing about except that we were from the USA. To the son of a banana farm foreman this must have been quite a departure from normal activities in BananaLand, which included soccer on the floor with two distant countries' flags pushing a marble back and forth, playing bola in the plaza, and helping mom with the chickens.

Last year we met for the first time chest to chest. All in all, the six days I spent in La Colonia de Sarapiquí during a short service project have come to furnish a more complete world outlook. It moved me from B/W to Technicolor--still far from HD awareness. I still must suppress the powerful inclination to romanticize life in La Colonia (Chris and Tarah can rein me in here), but these are a couple things that stand out to me:

(1) Nebraska:USA::La Colonia:Costa Rica? In several ways I found myself comparing Nebraska's place in the USA to La Colonia's in Costa Rica. For one, the agrarian layout of most of the land is a constant reminder of what keeps food on the table. Take also the family-oriented HQ life and low cost of living. These people feel a connection to the land and to each other. Especially when I think about the question that I was asked by anyone who heard I was going to La Colonia (why?), I recall the great why-ness of Nebraska to most costal people in the USA.

(2) How many advertisements do you think we see in one day? I have no idea, but I do know that for one week of my life I saw exactly zero advertisements. No billboards, no popups, no TV--no one telling me what I needed in order to make my life better. Turns out if you aren't constantly being told how to upgrade your life, maybe you don't have those impulses. Maybe all the aural and visual violence of advertising I filter everyday conforms my life to a standard I am unfit to pursue.  I say the maybes because who knows, but I feel the maybes lean more toward yesbes. In La Colonia this pursuit appears to occupy very few.

(3) Success. This one hit our group the hardest last year. When a 10 year-old cannot pick their country out on a world map is this a failure of their education system? In a community where most are going to school because it keeps them busy before they are old enough to join the ranks of the banana farmers, how do you measure achievement or success? I come from a culture that values good, hard work but also disdains brute laborers as unsuccessful at best (undetermined at worst). The question is whether or not success exists on a sliding scale, whether education's quality also does, and how to EQ success with the various dials on the Soundboard of Life (family, education, community, work, etc.). Which is more indicative of success: a bank account or a happy family? Neither and both. Dials are tweaked very differently in La Colonia.

Johancer has a quick mind and a tender heart. He said, when responding to his mother's inquiries about why he is always telling girls how pretty they are but never dating any of them, "I just like to help their self-esteem." His heart is more than tender, though. It is weak. He has an as yet undiagnosed condition that leads to fainting spells and chest pains after the slightest physical exertion. Last year after throwing the frisbee for about 10 minutes he stumbled to me hand on heart. Chris guided us to the local clinic where we waited a short time to be seen by the physician. As he sat on the table in the room getting blood drawn, he looked up and asked nakedly ¿Viviré? (Will I live?). Words failed miserably to clothe such a question. The report this year is that he has not had any such spells for quite some time and will undergo tests this September to determine what can be done.

Johancer will leave La Colonia in a couple of years after school. He is one of the few who will overcome (read: "overcome") his educational environment; he says he wants to study science at the nearest university. This worries his parents, who are hoping to build a slightly bigger house next to their current, incredibly small house. "He's going to have to get some good scholarships," says dad ("Macho"). He will, I believe. There he will use the Internet for the first time--an incredible thing to say about a 16 year-old--and make use of the email addresses he has accumulated from the likes of Chris, Tarah, and myself. The Internet is our world now, though some still live in blissful ignorance.

I visited Johancer and his family last week for a day; I still carry three moments with me:

(1) There is a padded chair with armrests in the household. It is worn and in the corner of the 8x8 living room (which, by the way, is separated by a curtain from the 8x8 kitchen--no running water). The other seating is facilitated by a bench and two wooden stumps. As dinner was being served, I was made to sit in the large chair. Then, as my dinner was given to me (pork-skin and bean soup), the bench was set in front of me with a tablecloth (towel) laid across it. Two of four family members sat on the floor deaf to my protests. Their soup also contained no pork skins. All for me! he said, and chewed slimily.

From the kids' room (bunk bed behind me), you see the living room with said chair. Behind it, the blue curtain separates the kitchen. The house is four equal spaces (all roughly 8x8): living, kids' room, parents' room, kitchen.

(2) I bought Johancer a chess board. It was time, I thought, and it was also right in front of my head at the store. He seemed ready for chess and the stimulus it entails. The two brothers (Brainer is 9, I think) played and learned quickly following dinner. Later, with their enthusiasm still very much rising we were forced to play by candlelight since Macho gets up at 4am to go to the banana fields. Always catching me in the "one more" trap, we melted candles for several more hours. As I was leaving the next morning, Brainer was teaching the youngest, [name], what the diference between an alfil (bishop) and torre (rook) is. And on, surely on.

Playing chess on a team of two is near-impossible, we found

(3) Bedtime brought with it a surprise: bug nets. Houses are not sealed from the elements in this area (except from rain, duh). I remembered fondly last year's severe lack of bug nets as well as the raccoon we would hear rummaging in the kitchen at night (there was nothing to find but smells). Johancer carefully shrouded me in mine (before doubling up on the top bunk with Brainer), and then with the gentleness of the Virgin Mary proceeded to tuck a blanket around my body. He mummified me with maternal care--the bedding equivalent to the chair-and-table treatment I was given at dinner. The moment felt to be approaching holiness.

Duhv-course, there was also bike riding and coconut water drinking.

Brainer on the top tube

Guzzling agua de pipa

     















I returned to La Colonia a year later and left in 24 hours. It remains the most striking area of Costa Rica ahead of volcanoes, beaches, and cloud forests.

Waters

"His answer trickled through my head like water through a sieve." - Lewis Carroll, Haddocks' Eyes

This is a photo someone took in Chile. Doesn't that look fun? I think so. Look at all that lake and sky water coming together in wetted bliss!

Last year in Costa Rica I returned home with lots of thoughts. Most of them were the serious type that leads to questioning everything you've come to know in your society, the hemisphere you live in, and its familiarity (or lack-thereof) to you. This year, there are still plenty of Big Questions driving bumper cars around upstairs, but one tiny thought has kept me buzzing almost all four weeks. I suppose I owe it to having near-full reserves of knowledge about Costa Rican life that allow me to steer thoughts elsewhere, but the element that I've pulled into focus here is just that: elemental. It's water. It's omnipresence has been bewildering, and my headspace has played host to the idea of agua much like a sloth's meticulous, steady appraisal of its current home branch.

Firstly, not all water is created equal. Home-water comes in waves of storms; here-water marches to time. Home-water bowls through; here-water comes to roost. Home-water goes pitter-patter, saying "hell-o, a little rain?"; here-water goes rrraaaaaaAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH on the tin roof. Home-trees bow and clap their hands; here-trees stare straight up at it. Home-water is a phenomenon of forecasts and radar; here-water is an all-orienting fact of life, like gravity. Is it raining? I will stay in today. Is it not raining? I will go out today. 

Here are some ways that Costa Ricans in San Ramón live with water:

Every corner needs a drain or four. There is always a downhill in San Ramón, and the water knows where to go: to the other water. In fact, the great conclusion that I think I've reached regarding water is very obvious but also very new to me. It is that water is always looking for the rest of the water. Where does it go from this gutter? To the pipes below, to the stream, to the river, to the ocean. It's terminus is always the rest of the water unless something intervenes in that flow. The entire city is built around being its usher, its butler.

Were you planning to build a university here? I'm sorry, but you'd better get your water canopy figured out. Also, you'll need megadeep drains along the side to escort the water from the premises.

You'll also need a giant channel once it finds its way out of the campus area. This will ensure that the water finds the other water outside of campus, so that together they can find the creek.

Is that a staircase? Ok. Just make sure to have running shoots for water along the side of it. This water needs shepherding in its quest.

At the top of a volcano? Yes, even here. This is where the journey begins. A journey of 9300 meters to sea-level where the rest of its family waits saltily.

Got babies in a stroller or a wheel chair? You must choose your route appropriately as only about 10% of the intersections offer a bridge like this. Just look at how much room they've left for water there! When I came to San Ramón last year, I thought that street repair meant simply putting asphalt on top of asphalt since their streets were at curb level and about 8 inches thick. This year I realized its all part of the water-steering process.

For your car to reach the garage you'd better design a way to get it over the waterway. We can't have lakes appearing where our houses were supposed to be--get the water out of here!

This is life in rainy season: 80% clear in the AM; 80% rain in the PM starting promptly at 1. Rain varies from light to crippling and back again over a dozen hours. This year we've had less rain than last.

I'm sorry, but there's just not going to be room for shoulders on the highways because we must, must plan for the daily water migration. You will have to find a driveway for your broken car.

Be extra careful parking on the street or you could find your car in a hellish gutter 12" or more below street level.

Sometimes it's terribly dangerous to not watch your feet. Here are three local words for rain, written in order of magnitude: temporal, aguacero, and baldazo.

The world is disfigured by water's perpetual search for itself. San Ramón's infrastructure for dealing with The Wetness has given pause to many innocuous walks home, and for this small thought I am grateful.

Tomorrow we leave San Ramón for five days in the Caribbean. Water is sure to make an appearance. I will attend to my friendships in Puerto Viejo de Sarapiquí where our service project took place last year and then catch up with the rest of the crew in the other Puerto Viejo (en Limón) before my adventures turn further south to Panamá.