Peace Body

I got back from our Tech Visit last Friday. We visited Kayla in San Mateo – awesome site and amazing volunteer. It was a whirlwind of a week, chalk full of activities so I’ll just give the highlights.

This area is known as the fruit region so it wasn’t surprising that one of our first visits was to a family who does just about everything you can with mariñones, which I had never heard of before I got to Costa Rica. So first we tried the fruit itself, experiencing its full bitterness. Then we all tried our hand at the mariñon-crushing machine they invented to process 10 times the number of cases as they had by hand (love the ingenuity). The juice that came out was immediately poured into glasses for us – talk about fresh. Then they showed us where they process the crushed mariñones to dry them and we got to try those as well, which were sooo delicious. And to finish it off, we got to sample the product that I actually already knew and loved but never knew the source – cashews! Cashews are the seeds of mariñones, which grow outside the fruit (I believe the only such seed). It was amazing to see how many delicious products come from the same fruit and are all processed by this small family.

The next day we toured an old mine, complete with bats flying in our faces, which I felt so well prepared for with my handy dandy head light. Then we spent the rest of the morning splashing around in the best natural water park ever. There was

a rock water slide that was too perfect to be naturally formed, rocks to jump off of, and a swing to jump into the water. It’s so funny how we instantly search for things to jump off of.

We also visited the Fabrica de Semillas de Mariñon (cashews) where they crack and peel organic cashews by hand. So delicious. The visit with the Artesanas de San Mateo was also awesome and made me want to do sculpture. They were such a talented group of women.

We attempted to teach English at the Telesecundaria in a neighboring community with mixed success. First of all, a Telesecundaria is a rural community’s version of a colegio (high school) when they don’t quite have the resources for a colegio. It is generally low on teachers and resources. And like many Telesecundarias, this one was in the Salon Comunal, with four different classes all in the same room. Combining the noise of the other

classes, the melting heat, the often fatalistic attitude of the students, the fact that a relatively high percentage of the students are already parents, and the lack of resources doesn’t make the teachers’ (or students’) job an easy one. But nonetheless, Leah and I taught a bit about how to describe someone. They all had to describe another student in the class. And though we gave them about 20 words, everyone ended up being ugly, fat, and stupid. It’s refreshing to know that 12-14 year olds are the same everywhere.

But then we also visited the colegio técnico in the town center, which was a world away. They have a computer lab, specializations to study (tourism, cooking, accounting, etc), and lots of projects (mariposera, compost, sell food, etc). It was much better off than my high school in the US. The tourism students even took us on a hike to the river. We saw monkeys along the way and ended up at another nice river, where we found some more tall stuff to jump off of.

A visit to the Ancianos place was an entertaining endeavor with singing, dancing, and even some magic. It was also the best Welcome sign yet (direct translation of Cuerpo de Paz).

We also got to teach an ICT class to some local business people. We taught Publisher to the librarian who made a library schedule and posted it immediately. How’s that for immediate results?

The last night we had a rockin’ party with all the host families and the rest of the community. There was salsa, cumbia, reggaeton, hip-hop, and more. It was a great way to end the week.

The next day we ‘debriefed’ our experiences from the week at the beach in Jaco. Such a nice and much-needed vacation…I mean debriefing. Though Jaco is over touristy and a little sucio, it was a relaxing day with some swimming, sun bathing, reading, and nice food (I had been missing fish tacos dearly). The whole day just wet my palate for this weekend, when our whole training group will be taking our one vacation night together there.