Ivanny's Garden
While I'm all in awe of the wonders of Ivanny's small garden, everyone else is like meh, yawn.
For instance, there is a starfruit tree (carambola). Yes, and it's full of fruit, such that we can't eat them all and they just lay on the ground rotting. (Interesting tidbit - Ivanny has never had a tree sprout from the fallen fruit.)
Also we have 6 coconut trees, which we pick green ones periodically and drink the juice.... maybe we'll scrape out some of the still soft fruit from inside and slurp it, but otherwise the husks are just waste. I have no idea where they go.
Life is good
Sunday was lightly overcast with some rare hints of sun showing. We had a lazy morning and then a huge lunch. Afterwards, we got ready for the beach.
Today we’re going to Moin. This is a long flat strip of black sand on the mainland behind the peninsula (man made?) where the port sits. People drive along the black sand and park and then unload their shit directly behind the car. We sit looking out at a big lake of salt water (no waves) with the ships not that far away… literally, we could walk to the ships.
It’s only 5 minutes past Playa Bonita, and I think there are two reasons we came here today. First, Pita is still recovering from knee surgery and has trouble walking distances. Next, Yvanni had surgery on her ear previously and can’t get salt water in it, so Moin is best for her because there are zero waves here.
It’s my least favorite beach experience so far. But hey, cold beer and warm ocean… Life is good!
It’s a wonderful life
After my Saturday morning class, Yvanni and I drove to UCR to pick up Arlethe from her Saturday morning classes. She was late in coming to the car and so we found a shady spot to wait. When she finally showed (after her mother saying “ay Arlethe!” no less than three times) she brought her boyfriend Dave and his roommate along, because, surprise!, can you take Dave to see a new apartment near the school?
Sure, why not! Everything here is lazy and calm, and spontaneity is a way of life. So three blocks from the university we turned onto a pocked dirt road behind a mechanic shop and headed up a hill until Yvanni decided we’d gone far enough on the fast degrading grade for her Toyota. We let the kids out to see the apartment while we found a shady parking spot to wait. It didn’t take long because the apartment, while sooo close to the university, had no other redeeming qualities. This I gathered from listening intently, picking up words that are similar to English, mashing these with words that are similar to Italian that I’ve quickly but by no means competently translated into English, and mixing in tone and facial expressions.
We headed home, had a quick lunch (delicious as always! God, I’m gonna get so fat living with these people!!!) and got ready for the beach.
Limon is a port city, and the touristy beaches I’ve hit so far have been 40+ kilometers south of the city. But we were getting a late start (made even later by Arlethe primping at the mirror) so today we headed to Playa Bonita.
This beach is north of the city center and probably actually still in the city proper. It’s a small crescent of deep white sand, surrounded with bars and restaurants. Yvanni says it’s poquito e linda, small and pretty, and it is - Arlethe says it’s her favorite beach - which is saying a lot from what I’ve seen.
Walking into the water l found two separate sandbars parallel to the shore where the water is less than knee deep, keeping the waves (olas) shallow and gentle. The sun was perfect. I strolled up to a bar for a beer - cold and perfect - which I drank under our umbrella. A terrific day at the beach!
We stayed until 5:15 and by the time we got our shit loaded back into the car it was dark outside… 15 minutes and we were home!
Typical day in Limon
Ivanny and Pita get up very early. Ivanny because she goes to the gym at 6:30am, and Pita... because that's what people in their 70s do. I feel like a slug because I lie abed to 7:30 (humph!).
The day's laundry is already on the outside line (on sunny days) by breakfast time. We have breakfast at the table together and then we do our work. Ivanny and Pita putter around the house and yard - maybe doing a little cleaning, maybe doing a little gardening, maybe doing some new Christmas decorating. Nothing too strenuous, definitely nothing fast. I sit in my room or in the living room or at one of the two outdoor tables doing school work, writing my blog, paying bills or studying Spanish. They play Vemo loud and sing along. Sometimes Ivanny has a nail client come by and they sit in the outside kitchen - a sweet office in sun or rain.
Around 11 Pita heads into the kitchen to make lunch - the largest meal of the day. She has her routines and knows exactly the right timings and doesn't have to move too fast to get everything done at exactly 12 on the dot. I've asked to help with the prep but doing so seems to throw a wrench in the works, so now I'm limiting myself to doing dishes.
We have lunch and clean up together and then I go back to work. They don't have any work left, so Ivanny does creative things like making giant Christmas decorations she found on Pinterest and Pita watches a little TV. Around two-ish they're both found snoozing on the sofas.
At three we stop what we're doing (as if!) and have a little snack - something to cool us down (like fruit) or a sweet (like cake, if we have it). We sit at an outdoor table in the east facing backyard. We need something to cool us for the next two hours because this is the time the sun is starting to slid to the west and sadly it bakes right into the front rooms of the house (including my bedroom). So I take my cold shower (no hot water!), put on my makeup which slides right off my face, and look over my lesson for the evening.
When I'm catching my taxi to head to my lesson, Ivanny is heading back to the gym (yep, twice a day!).
My classes are so pleasant in the evening, because the air is cool and there are often breezes. I get home just as everyone is winding down. Usually everyone is in bed by 10:30 - except Arlethe who sometimes stays up until 4 studying.
Wash rinse and repeat.
Life in the heat
Life with Ivanny and Clothilde puts me in mind of lazy summer days spent with my grandmother.
In the hot and humid south before every building was refrigerated, people and animals moved slowly lest the exertion of too much energy add to the overall stickiness of everyone in sight. Houses were shaded with trees and porches, the deeper the better. Lights were off, the houses dark to suggest cool, and windows raised to capture any breeze foolish enough to happen by. A floor fan was not an accessory of attractiveness but of necessity, moved and angled and tilted until it covered the most possible area -- and if the sheers blew like Marilyn's dress then the kids were even happier with the results.
The coolest time of the day, mornings, were for required activity - us kids shooed outside to play while Ma-ma languidly went about her housework humming a tune with no name. The straw broom was slowly pushed across the floor, motes hanging in the heavy air cut with swaths of yellow sun. The warm wet laundry hung to dry on parallel lines stretched between oaks, also anchor of a rope swing extraordinaire.
While we romped and galloped and screamed with the neighbor grandkids, Ma-ma would tie on her apron, bring out the flour and heat up the oil, and soon we'd be called home by the smells of biscuits (the real deal, not a la Bojangles), fried chicken, fresh peas and corn bought direct from Ma-ma's dealer who lived north of town just south of the state line down a dirt road in the sweetest little house you've ever seen. My brothers would be sent more than once to wash their hands as I'd hear my mama arrive in the driveway on her lunch break. We ate this, the largest meal of the day, at the dining table on the big screened porch on the east side of the house, but at this hour there was no sense hiding from the sun and so we ate and sweated and hoped for breeze.
After lunch Mama would go back to work and Ma-ma would wash the dishes (always in hot water, how else would they get clean??) filling the house with Lemon Joy. And then came the most dreaded time of the day. The Nap. During the hottest time Ma-ma liked to take a nap and wanted to safeguard my brothers from heat stroke, so she would lie on her bed and put each of us on a separate doubled quilt on the wood floor with instructions to sleep. I'd turn onto my side and read my book (being the oldest had its benefits) while she read (usually the same freakin’) stories to my brothers, hoping to bore them into sweaty unconsciousness. It never worked but she tried everyday, and thinking back I remember that it really was cool and peaceful lying on the floor in her bedroom after the sun had started its swing to the west.
Finally giving up the idea of the nap, for us or herself, Ma-ma would release us from our patchwork cells and we would all haul into the living room, where we'd lounge in the various chairs and sofas enthralled by the 19 inch black and white and the goings on of Rachel, Erica (that witch!), Ada, and other residents of Pine Valley, Bay City, et al... "As sands through the hourglass..."
While I swiveled through the adventure of my latest library find, a daily joke of my brothers would be to squeege a thin steamy leg across the leather of the sofa - aaah, that farty sound and the ultimate convulsive giggling never got old.
Between 3 and 4 the sun was finally west enough that Ma-ma would let the boys back out to terrorize the neighborhood. I would stretch out on the sofa to read while Ma-ma crocheted until Mama came home at 5:30. After a dinner of cold leftovers - mmm mmm congealed chicken gravy! - we would sit in gliders on the patio at the north of the house, well shaded from the setting sun, and fan ourselves with that staple of every local church - a hymnal-sized square of card stock glued onto a big popsicle stick, sponsored by a local funeral home and emblazoned with a beautiful little blonde girl in her special church outfit (of Easter or Christmas or whenever we'd happened lift the handy hand fan) complete with bonnet - until the mosquitoes drove us inside.
Wash rinse and repeat.
And so it feels here in this house... like the 1960s... where summer never ends.
A la playa
The plan was we'd leave at 8, and by god Pita and I were in the car at 8, as was all our shit including bags and hats and towels and chairs and cooler and phones and books and a big butcher knife wrapped in aluminum foil. And we were ready to go. But Yvanny and Floria kept running back into the house for this or that, who knows what, and so it was 8:20 before Yvanny took the wheel of Floria's fine Nissan and we hit the road.
As we crossed a bridge I recognized the rio that we'd been on for the wedding the previous night. I'm starting to understand the lay of the land.
Just a few kilometres outside of Limon we pulled onto the right to a fruit stand where Pita rolled down her window and gave her order to the shopkeeper. "No, not those bananas, do you have some fresher ones," etc. We got mangos and the shopkeeper sliced open a watermelon and gave Pita a taste test before we bought it. And with fruit to keep us cool on the beach, we were on our way again.
I started recognizing landmarks from my previous trip to Lilan and Cahuita with Senor Paul. As always (as it was in India as well) I'm amazed when I can see the ocean and the land in front hasn't been developed with neverending rows of houses and hotels. I guess it's my capitalistic American mind wondering how can I exploit these incredibly valuable resources. But I guess Euros since Columbus have been tackling these same issues and, really, who am I...?
And then we were upon Cahuita and past it, and the environs started to appear very developed. There were large QT-style gas stations and new, small houses grouped in planned neighborhoods. And then there they were... tourists on bikes, surfers in dreads, yoga studios and pizza joints. We whipped into what I discovered was a big (by CR standards) US style grocery store with wide aisles and US products, and at that moment I decided ahhhhh, I could live in Puerto Viejo. We grabbed some cookies and gatorade for the beach and headed a little farther south to Cocles.
Now, Cocles is my ideal of tropical beauty a la Gilligan's Island. We parked in the shade on the side of the road where there was a nice wide sandy path through the trees onto the beach. We set up our chairs on a bedsheet in the shade while Ivanny went out into the full sun.
Floria and I took a long walk along the water while we tried to communicate in Spanglish. We crossed a rivulet flowing from the mountains into the ocean, maybe 10 feel across and 2 feet deep. It was so delicious to feel the layers of cold, fresh rainwater and warm, salty ocean water slipping together as we stumbled across.
After walking back to our camp we floated and splashed in the warm ocean waves amongst uber-white German surfers for an hour and then hit our chairs to eat some fruit and watch other Germans playing paddle ball.
Behind us in the shade a group of young men were sitting on a bench drinking beer while two bicycle police were handing out tickets. Floria and I decided that since drinking beer on the beach is legal, they must have been smoking ganja. Oh well, live and learn.
About 1 we packed up the beach, went to a "slow food" pizza joint with an ocean view, and an hombre sleeping off the night before in a hammock, for a delish pizza. And then headed home so I could get ready for my first night of class in Limon.
We pulled over to a tiny booth on the side of the road to buy hand crafted coconut oil. And in a small crossroads Pita called for Ivanny to pull over to the right because some guys were selling freshwater fish on the side of the road. After interrogating the men to insure freshness and negotiate a price, they brought a scale to Pita's window to seal the deal.
What a perfect way to start my first week teaching in Limon.
This holds your drink steady in the sand
After the wedding
After the wedding we went to Ansee's parent's house for a couple of drinks (and some Laker's basketball). The house is lovely with a fabulous outdoor area and a big Golden Retriever (can't remember his name - I think it was German!) who we were told not to pet because Nathan had whipped it out and peed on the dog earlier in the day. He was beautiful and friendly, but definitely stinky.
Luis has some Spectrum basketball package and so was clicking through all the games, looking for the Hornets for me.
We finished up early because Ivanny, Pita, Floria and I were heading to the beach on Monday morning!
More from the wedding
Ivanny and the groom David
Whirlwind weekend
My first evening we went to a concert in the plaza in front of the large Catholic Church in the center of Limon. It was a locally known band with members from 25 to 70, singing and playing Latin music with lots of horns (mambo?). Older people were dancing on the pavement and the men who could dance proved very popular with the ladies. We were there until the rain forced a quick exit.
On Saturday Ivanny, a fledgling nail artiste, unpacked a big case of supplies onto the table in the outdoor kitchen and spent the entire day prepping the fingers and toes of Arlethe, Pita, newly arrived Floria - a family friend and lawyer from San Jose who came to perform the wedding ceremony of Pita's granddaughter Ansee. Oh, and of course she did a special job on the bride's digits. The entire family was stopping by all the day - Ansee's mother Jansee (obviously I'm mispelling these names), her father Luis, her fiance David, one of her sisters Susi. Florian cooked fabulous fish and we ate. Whirlwind day all around, while I was sitting very calmly in the vortex making sure that the dog (Jathe ???) loves me.
The wedding was held on Sunday afternoon. Ansee came over at 10-ish, had breakfast, had lunch and had her hair and makeup artist over for the beautification and dressing. Ivanny and Arlethe were out all morning decorating the wedding hall - sending photos of their beautiful flower arranging. Ansee told me not to eat much lunch, because there would be lots of food at her reception.
We left at 3-ish for a 4pm wedding, winding our way up and down hills and around the curves of backroads in Limon. Eventually we made a left onto an unpaved road and bumpetied past a dozen houses in a 180 degree range of states of repair and furbishment until we went through a sheet metal gate into the parking lot of a fantastic wedding / party venue.
Straight ahead was a large building, the left half enclosed with walls, the right half covered but open air. To the right was a large pool and stage. We were only using the open air section, and it had been decorated beautifully with table cloths and flowers and photos of Ansee and David. A large screen TV rolled through a slide show of photos of the couple who've lived together for years. The posts supporting the roof were wrapped in electric lights.
What I didn't see immediately was a big deck on a river / rio that leads to the ocean, with houses lining the banks and boats whizzing by. It was definitely a fantastic place to have a wedding and reception.
The bride's transportation arrived at 3:55 but a swing through the parking lot and a quick conversation with her dad indicated that many of the guests hadn't shown up yet (IST?), so they pulled into a parking spot outside of the sheet metal gate where they could watch the comings and goings and strategically plan the entrance. It must have been hot in the car, and Ansee was in a floor length dress and a veil that trailed beyond the dress. Finally at about 4:20 they drove up to hall and pseudo-covertly made their way to the rio-side deck where a tall sheet metal gate was pulled across to hide the bride until the ceremony started.
All the women were dressed to the nines - hair, nails, dresses, jewelry, shoes - while the men were little birds with blah plumage of jeans and button shirts. Except the boys under 18 with their bow ties.
There were 'tween girls dressed in ballet skirts who were the flower girls and a toddler girl who couldn't decide if she was up to the task so her petals kept being added to the older girls baskets then removed back into her own. There was a toddler boy, Pita's great-grandson Nathan, who would walk in the processional with a sign staying (I've assumed) "Don't worry Chickas, I'm still available", and another boy with a sign saying "To David. This is your last chance to run."
While my family is Catholic, I got the feeling that David's family is Protestant and perhaps even Evangelical based on the under-the-table handling of just a tiny bit of alcohol and the arm lifting during the prayers. And I was surprised I recognized when the ceremony started with the same verses I've heard in English in so many weddings "Love is patient, love is kind..."
Oh! And Arlethe caught the bouquet, which I'm sure terrified her new boyfriend Dave.
What a difference a week makes
A domino effect within the Skills4Life organization set off a series of events that found me removed from my smalltown home/school in Siquirres and plonked into the port city of Limon and teaching (at least in the classroom of) an acclaimed international school to two groups of professional adult students. The classes are held at night so it's much cooler, and our class cat has been replaced with a class dog who wanders in periodically for love.
But let's rewind to Friday, when I packed all my belongings, hugged Yami, Mami, and Amanda goodbye, and lugged my bags from a taxi to a sweltering bus for the hourlong trip to Limon. A Skills4Life rep picked me up at the bus station and took me to my new home with Ivanny, Clothilde and Arlethe - another house of grandmother, mother and daughter.
I knew immediately this was gonna be a different kind of situation because the large shelf of ceramic Madonnas had been replaced with a shelf of rum, and instead of being relegated to the yard, the little dog was spinning circles in the living room. My kinda place! We had lunch immediately, and it was a fabulous salad (dressing in this house is lime juce and salt - very yummy) and chicken-and-rice. A big pitcher of orange infused iced tea. I immediately felt right at home!
Clothilde, the matriarch, is a beautiful woman with a bubbly personality, surrounded by two daughters (another lives nearby) and a slew of equally beautiful grandchildren and even great grandchildren. I'd put her age at 70. Ivanny is 50 but looks much younger and is that person who changes a room simply by walking in it. She's a retired (what!?) teacher. They speak less English than I speak Spanish. But, they sometimes make snarky remarks (like me!) and those bad boys translate into every language simply by tone... I can always tell exactly what funny, irreverant remark they made and they know what I'm saying as well.... Sympatico! Arlethe is 17 and in her first year of university. She's studying medicine and has really good English.
Less than half the size of Yami's house (which had that area upstairs just for family) Ivanny's house is set very high in the hills rising from the water and feels very European, with white leather sofa, sunroom (as if anyone sits in the sun here! maybe they call that room something else) and a covered outdoor kitchen in the back corner of the riotously blooming yard. There's a tiny above ground pool because Pita (Clotilde) has to do physical therapy following knee surgery. The house is always filled with pop music, either from a channel on TV or a stereo in the sunroom, and Ivanny and Pita sing along. Elegant Christmas decorations are about.
The washing machine
In Cahuita
Sports bar near our house in Lilian
Good will always provide
One of the dogs at our house in Lilian
Cahuita City Guide
Catching up!
Oh jeesh! My flirting with heat prostration made me miss an entire week of updating my adventures. Suffice it to say that I settled into life with my family in my little town... I got to know my students... I learned how to use the washing machine, which has separate agitation and spinning compartments... and I went to the beach for the night with another teacher.
Bridge over rainwater
Free range
City park
My class
it's the heat!
On Monday, my very first day teaching, the sun is shining bright and the fans are blowing hard and I drink about a gallon of water... and my upper lip and behind my knees are pooling with sweat... and then about 3pm I get a pounding headache and get a little dizzy/pukey. I manage to stay until school ends at 4 and walk the 20 minutes home where I fall onto my bed and call my manager.
Apparently I'm suffering from heat, even though I drank that gallon of cold water. The theory is that in CR they don't use a lot of salt in the food, the gringos sweat too much, and then we have to replenish using Gatorade or potato chips. I couldn't drag out of bed to go to a bodega, so I just went to sleep.
I've been drinking Gatorade every day since, and feeling much better!! Plus the weather has been cooperating by raining most days…….
The students
I'm responsible for two groups of students that each come to class twice a week for approximately 6 hours of instruction each day - lunch, 2 breaks, the straggling from breaks and lunch cutting into the learning time. My M-W class is more advanced than my T-Th class -- and as a whole has more personality and drive. They are my favorite!! Truth hurts.
It also hits me again for the millionth time that faces are repeated all the world over. I have students in CR who look so much like my friend Atit, my friend Davide, Lupe who works in my building in Charlotte, and others I'm searching my mind to figure out "who does she look like..."
At the school
Universidad Florencio del Castillo is a local university or maybe a university extension, not really sure. We're housed in a long concrete building perpendicular to the street with classrooms opening onto a wide concrete walkway. The large window and door are covered with metal fencing but no glass or wood. Fans are bolted to the walls, and we drag tall standing fans in from a storage room. On a typical day we have about 10 fans blowing on us.
One classroom is actually totally outdoors, only a high tin roof covering it and no walls.
There's a skinny tom cat living onsite who enjoys hanging out in our classroom... it's ok, he's quiet, but I worry because he's got a big gash on his neck from a fight... I guess the scar will prove his street cred, but I'd like to get some antiseptic on it in the meantime... The students are ok with the cat wandering in and out during lessons, but they aren't the least interested in his name or who actually owns him... first world notions..... Sometimes they feed him their leftovers. It's become pretty obvious he doesn't like rice and beans.
There're also some equally skinny chickens roaming the yard. (Rosita at my house is fat and fluffy, so I guess we must be rich.)
(Photos coming soon.)
Crime....
It's evident that theft is a major problem in CR because every house is surrounded by a strong fence and every fence is topped with razor wire or barbed wire -- or has a big dog in the yard. Every house has a buzzer to pop the fence door open for guests. It is a rare shop that doesn't use those metal roll down gates over the doors and the windows.
(Photos coming soon.)
My little town in CR
I'm teaching in the building of Universidad Florencio del Castillo, which is about a 20 minute walk from my house in Siquirres. Twenty minutes only because the heat and humidity make it a slog! In Charlotte it would take 10 minutes tops (except July / August). The school would be on my actual street and a straight shot if the streets cut straight through... but there are big abandoned buildings and overgrown lots, and there seems to be only 1 paved road that crosses the railroad tracks... so I have to make a kind of PacMan maze to get from here to there.
If I'm being totally honest, taking into account the cultural differences of language and local architecture, Siquirres wouldn't look much different, to an outsider, than my own little hometown in 1960's South Carolina.
Paved streets are patched and potholed. Tiny homes with the scatterings of their families visible from the sidewalk. Some well kept, some....meh. Dogs (friendly? not friendly? boh...), cats, chickens (not sure if these would be called free range but they are definitely free running). The shops are compact and the doors are open to the street -- no air conditioning but the sound of floor fans from every portal. Kids playing on the school playground during the day, and in the side streets at night - running and jumping and screaming. People sitting on a veranda talking with family or friends.
There seems to be no zoning (as I noticed in Poland last year and) as I remember from my tiny hometown. A restaurant sharing a wall with a copy shop, who shares a wall with a mechanics shop, that adjoins an overgrown lot across from a dentist office whose home sits behind the office. So many people walking to do their business -- as Americans used to do before everyone got so fat and addicted to air conditioning.
The government seems to have spent a lot of time and money on the rainwater removal gutters lining the streets - deep, wide, and lined with concrete -- much needed during the rainy season. There are little bridges for walkers over the ditches.
There are pizza shops (it's taking over the world!), and fried chicken shops, and cafeterias with traditional foods, and bakeries.
Just a normal small town, anywhere in the world.
(Photos coming soon.)
Yami's Commune
I'm staying with Yami (the grandmother, approx my age), Catherine (the mother), and Amanda (the 6 year old). We have an outdoor dog Alana, and a chicken Rosita. Next door is Yami's mother (Mami) and sister, Rosario. In fact, the entire street is a Yami-commune where her two other children and 4 grandchildren live.
The house is pretty big. There is a metal gate over the garage opening with a door in it. The Toyota is very well cared for and seems to belong to the entire commune. The floor of the garage is the same as throughout the house, 15 x 15 tiles, and there are two doors from the garage into the main living area which seem to remain open all the time for air circulation. I'm assuming if we face a hurricane the doors will close against the wind and rain. On the open plan ground floor we have a living room, dining room, eat-in kitchen, office area, bathroom, my room and the back porch. There's also a big covered side porch where clothes are hung to dry.
The family sleeps upstairs and I haven't been invited up.
My bed is comfy and I have plenty of room to unpack all my stuff. But I'm dreading my first unheated shower..... gotta do it before tomorrow morning..........
Amanda