Life As I Know It
bits and pieces of beauty. college updates. this is life as i know it.
I haven’t been updating this lately, heck I am even slacking on my journal..like 3 weeks behind. Anyways, I was in Talamanca the last two weeks living with an indigenous family. There were 5 siblings that I lived with and 2 parents. Edgar was 20, Geanina 19, Mel 17, Eddy 15, and Noel 12. They were the most genuine people I have ever met in my life. The lived off of life’s basic necessities and were completely happy with everything they had and things they did not have as well. The sisters were very cute, they made the meals all the time and we had many good talks about boyfriends with them-they were just so cute. Our brothers were like our protectors also, and Eddy was deaf, but probably talked the most out of everyone with sounds, and body language. He was especially funny when we played card games and he was about to win or won. They had a radio in their house and there was a tv in the food lodge that wasn’t used very often at all. They did everything to please us and didn’t understand why we were so afraid of bugs and using their toilet. We asked them about technology and things we are accustomed to. Their response was that they had all been to a big city and still told Holly and I (roomies there) that they would chose their life over anything else. The city was dirty to them, well in comparison to what I saw that was half true…haha
We were there for 10 days, 5 of the ten days-it downpoured, which meant there was mud everywhere, and not just a little-the kind where you need to wear rubber boots all the time (and not the cute ones). 3 days were overcast and 2 actually were sunny. Work wise: We made a medicinal garden with jungle plants the first day. We had to carry 15 rocks in 25 piles to a place close to the school for the foundation of a new building, we used gunny sacks and could humanly manage only about 8 rocks a trip. The rocks were comparable to being a little bigger than a softball, and we walked probably 400-500 meters one way to the school with the rocks. We learned how to make a thatched roof out of leaves and bamboo. I was part of the group that seperated the leaves pequenos and grandes. I also learned and took part in making home-made brooms out of leaves and branches. I dug holes with some people and that was the foundation of a new building for tourists. I also taught English twice and when the teens got bored I taught them palabras malas (bad words-that got their attention). We helped clean the lodges, especially when it was a rainy day. Some people learned how to wash clothes in the river with rocks, I helped hang the clothes and take them off of the lines (the only days we could-but even with overcast it was so humid that the clothes stayed wet). I made concrete with 9 shovel-full scoops of dirt, 4 shovel scoops of cement mix, and water for a foundation for a sink. Which leads me to yes they had clean water when it was not pouring rain out, the pouring rain water mixed up the river water and when the piping brought it to the main eating lodge it was filled with sand. Clean river water was best to drink, you could tell when it was clean…it wasn’t brown.
Speaking of the river, that is where I took 3 of my showers, the others were once at my house (while I wore my boots), and twice at this tourist lodge that had real showers and toilets that flushed. On the weekend we got to experience a tourist idea of the village (living in that lodge sugar-coated a lot of how they really live). I did get to have a mosquito net, which believe me makes a person feel a whole lot better falling asleep, even though I did wear pants that were tight at the ankles, a long sleeve tucked in, and a sweatshirt on top with the strings pulled. I lived in a wooden house that was one room with a picnic table built in it. The house was up on stilts, which was good mud-wise and animal wise.
My house had all kinds of animals. Ducks, chickens, baby chicks, roosters, dogs, a cat, and a pig. I have learned from this trip that I hate roosters, they are so loud and annoying especially at 4 in the morning under my floor. When the food we got was sketch-which was a lot, we threw the food out the window, but the animals would always swarm. After the first day we learned to put the food aside in a container until night so the family didn’t see. The first day we woke to find a loaf of bread that Holly brought having pecked holes in it from a chicken. We also had peanut butter and each day we hit it on the table to shake out the fricken hormigas pequenas that got in (tiny ants), and we have no idea how they managed to do that. In our room we also had a chicken nest with eggs in it, the first day I saw that mom chicken in our room, the siblings were with us and I shooed it away and they gave me this look like what are you doing? That is when I realized there were eggs in a newspaper nest..I was like oops.
I had some other oops as well, one night we had soup and a sketch drink and so my sister Mel was sitting there with us and I had already finished my soup so I tried pouring my drink in my bowl when she looked away. I was caught red-handed and all I could say is I am not that thirsty tonight. I decided to no use the toilet at my house and hold it until the morning…another oops woke up with a terrible stomach ache and had to run and barf out of the open window closest to me. Two things I hate annoying roosters/chickens and barfing…within seconds of my barf hitting the ground the chickens had eaten my puke. I also had a few other occurances of that…not too fun. I would say 10 out of the 14 Eau Claire students had problems with puking or the other end. It was not due to the water, it was due to the food cooked in oil all the time. We had deep-fried bread all the time, beans, rice, platanos, soups, chicken, and fresh bananas. The platanos were cooked a billion different ways…dried, fried, in soup, mashed, in a mix of veggies, chopped up by themselves, maduro, inmaduro…..the list is endlist. It was a treat when we got bananas and pineapple from Beth and Michon’s daily snack. Everything that was heated tasted like campfire because that is how they could cook.
I along with Holly lived on top of a mountain that we went down and climbed up everyday. Some days had more mud than others, and the kind of mud where your boot gets stuck and your foot comes out… Our family members were masters at climbing and going down the mountain. We would only have light for about a half an hour to an hour each night, which came from energy from solar panels, then we had candels. Each night we played Phase 10 or rummy. Many times we screamed for our brothers to kill spiders, one night there was a huge cockroach that looked like a curled up bat on the floor….that was a disgusting night…The largest spider I saw was the size of my hand (I do have smaller hands though) and luckily it wasn’t near my house where I saw it. It was by the river.
Culturally, Holly and I learned how to make adjustable bracelets with our mom, and later in the week with our group. We saw the process of taking cocoa beans and making it into a pudding like texture and adding dulce de leche (sweetened condensed milk) and sugar to taste better. Then we took a part of that and made brownies (nothing near the kind in the US). We learned basket weaving, and carving on a certain fruit that could be dried out and end up looking really cool. We shot a home-made bow and arrow and tasted the inside of a cocoa fruit. The little boys there had balsam wood that floated and they would ride it down the river rapids for enjoyment. They also played barefoot soccer a lot, in the mud, let me add.
It was such an interesting experience, the rain days sucked because we went crazy playing rummy, scenarios, mafia, bs, crazy 8’s and doing crossword puzzles. Our nerves got tested sometimes, but overall it made our group grow closer and has made me realize how much I take for granted and how many things I am used to and that I “need” to maintain my happiness. I’ve learned that I need to simplify my life, but it is hard when there is so much out there for us to experience in our fast-paced world.
