Becoming a Story Teller
By now I must have interviewed fifty farmers in the Brunca region of Costa Rica. On the surface each of these interviews begins quite the same. A neighbors responds to an inquiry, “Where can I find so and so?”, with a finger pointed in the direction of a few rustling branches on a far off hillside. Deep in the thicket of a coffee bush, or rigid corn stalks, or behind heavy leaves of a banana tree I find a man armed with a machete, a v shaped sliver of brown chest exposed through a shirt tucked into high muddy pants, and nervous eyes. They have no idea why this gringo, naive in his rolled up white long sleeves and poorly inadequate leather shoes, is in their field. Introduced by the loan officer of the bank with whom they have a shaky business relationship as representative of Kiva - what the hell is Kiva? - I begin to ask them uncomfortable questions. “How do you feel this year as compared to last year?”, “Do your children go to school? Why not?”, and so on. Their awkward stance betrays my own insecurities. At once my mind swims and toungue trips with the same mental curse that prevents me, even after all these years of practice, from speaking a fluid spanish. Yet I am improving. The smiles and honest answers are coming in under the 10 minute mark now, a metric that I slowly widdle down with practice. By the end of most interviews I am able to make a personal connection that cracks the shell off of, “Yes… I’m fine.. va mejorando… no le gusta la escuela a él, prefiere trabajar conmigo…” and reveals the practiced wisdoms of an agricultural people who have plenty of space and time to reflect on life’s intricacies. I think I like it here. I think I could do this for a long while. But the itch, this vagabond’s curse, to move on again, to see what’s around the next corner sits on my shoulders like so many devils. November is coming and with it the inevitability of a return to New York. 28 days left in the jungle.
A great majority of my time as Kiva Fellow is not spent trekking through muddy fields, avoiding humongous spider webs, the constant rain, and red ant nests the size of death, but sitting in an office hunched over a desk, filling entries in an excel spreadsheet. For the interested, my typical work day looks like this:
7am wake to the sound of my cell phone’s alarm clock. Hit snooze a couple times.
7:45am march 15 minutes to the office, through San Isidro’s city streets. Buy a newspaper on the way. 200 colones.8am check group emails from other Kiva Fellows around the world.
8:30am eat breakfast with the office in the conference room. Breakfast is usually a cup of poorly prepared drip coffee. Black, thank you, no sugar. The others ussually stick heaping spoonfuls of sugar in their’s until it reaches the consistency of a coffee flavored syrup. One wonders how the ticos aren’t all diabetics yet. Accompanying the coffee is either: 1. an airy baguette dipped into natilla, a fresh soupy cream. 2. the same bread smothered in avocado and black bean paste, my favorite, but increasingly rare since avocados are out of season. or 3. gallo pinto. I interject occasionally into the rapid coloquial conversation.
9am to 1pm I am often filling in a spreadsheet with data collected from a social performance survey painfully extracted from the director. Or, I’m writing the stories I’ve collected from field visits like the ones above. When I have nothing to do, which is far too frequent, I research graduate schools.
1pm I leave the office to get lunch around the corner at a place called, “Comido Tipica Costariquense” (Typical Costa Rican Food). Not very imaginative of them, but hey, at least they’re honest. Every single restaurant here sells the exact same rice, beans, ensalada de platano verde, and carne en salsa. I choose this one because it has a nice patio and the creole girl at the counter has pretty eyes. Of all tangible things, I may miss the fresh fruit juice of Costa Rica the most.
2pm to 4pm Lately I’ve been using this time slot to write graduate school essays. They are coming, slowly.
4pm every one has a coffee break, largely a repeat of breakfast.
4:30pm the office closes. I linger as long as possible, reluctant to go back to my apartment. I hate living alone.
At night I sneak over to my friend’s house around the corner, the Dutch and Belgian couple I met on couchsurfing. Their green energy company is coming along nicely. Every day they seem to get more busy. Solar panels, man, solar panels. If you want to make a tidy business come to Costa Rica and start selling solar panels to the gringo expats. I bring a bottle of wine, Pierre and Arine and their baby Tristane the conversation. I am going to miss them dearly. So rarely can one find such genuine people. Such good friends.
A couple weeks ago I went to Nicaragua for a reunion with all the other Kiva Fellows in Central America. Over seven days we went clubbing in sketchy Managua, swimming in the virgin crater lake of Laguna de Apoyo, witnessed the most beautiful combination of rainstorms at sunset of all time while crossing lake Managua by boat, climbed and conquered the sulfer fumed face of volcano Concepción on Isla Ometepe, danced to tribal drums during Nicaragua’s (and really, all of South America’s) bi-centenial independence, surfed the waves of San Juan del Sur during the day and doused our liquid courage with Flor de Caña rum at night. The details, if you care, are in the pictures.
Here are the photos: http://picasaweb.google.com/gabefrancis/NicaraguaWithKivaFellows?authkey=Gv1sRgCLG35_mqycPxOA#
Here is a video: http://vimeo.com/15336389
This weekend I had ambitions of reaching Isla Caño off of Drake’s Bay on the Oso Peninsula, but late last night I got a call from my friend Ernesto. I’m invited back to his father’s ranch up in the hills of Quebradas. The Costa Rican Boy Scouts are having a bar-b-que.
If you were me, what would you do with your last few weeks in Costa Rica?
