RoJo in Costa Rica: More Photos of Finca Fortuna and Nimari Täwä

Sunday, July 11, 2010

More Photos of Finca Fortuna and Nimari Täwä

Muddy boots. You can't walk anywhere here and not get muddy. Our host mother started washing them every time they got dirty. Finally communication is clear between us that our hiking boots don't need to be washed. A cultural difference.

A view of Nimari Täwä on our walk to the community. The orange spot is the dirt soccer field on top of the mountain. The new school they want to build will be right behind it.

Our friend Minor and his two horses. His 10 year old daughter is on the one hidden by the tree. Nimari Täwä is the community where his family is. Generally all the mountain communities in the Indigenous reservation our based on families. Land is inherited and passed down through the female line. If a baby is of mixed decent they are considered Cabécar only if there mother was. They are also entitled to land. The government keeps buying up land and expanding the reservation. This is leading to quite a bit of tension as the "white" as they call it, communities are being surrounded and swallowed up by the reservation.

A young girl hanging out the window of her home. This house was a free home. One that has been built by the government. There is a huge building project here in the mixed community of Grano de Oro and in the indigenous reservation. 80 homes were just built and supposedly another 80 project will be approved soon. Were there are roads the homes are of cement, but where there are no roads they are wooden like this one. This is also another source of jobs for the surrounding communities. However it isn't permanent.

A boy carrying bananas out. It is a 1 1/2 hour walk to the road. For this bunch of bananas he will get 3000 colones which is about $6.00. Then he has 1 1/2 hour walk back in.

Check out the mud. This was on the way in. Sometimes your boot sticks and you really have to work to get it pulled out. Frequently in the mud puddles here you will see where people just leave the shoes behind.

This is the group of kids from the elementary school in Nimari Täwä. We taught them baseball. They were a really fun and participatory group to work with. The elementary schools here go until 6th grade. However, education was not available in many of these areas before the last 10 years. They still don't have a school here. It is a borrowed old church building. It has a solar panel for electricity. Many of the older girls here are in their 20's but want to graduate from elementary school. Now that there is a teacher here, they have the chance.

The older boy in the blue stocking cap in the photo above goes to high school. He walks 1 1/2 hours in the morning to get there. He's gotta get back somehow, so that's another 1 1/2 hour walk. We are going to start going on Fridays to this community. This is the group of kids we will be teaching English and life skills to.

In the photo above, one of the salaried workers sharpens his machete before the day of work.

THINGS THAT MAKE US LAUGH......NOW:-))

They keep washing our tennis shoes and hiking boots. We've never had white tennis before. Only the day after we walked out of the store.
We have grass growing up between the floorboards in our room. It adds to the natural environment we live in. We are from Montana and thought we were pretty hard core, but this is really with nature.
Robyn's counterpart, the doctor in charge of the health clinics for the territory calls his horse salchicha....because it is old and will soon become bologne. We are just hoping it will not become the deep fried bologne that we are frequently served.
There was a 4 x 4 inch spider on our bedroom door. That still isn't quite so funny. What is funny is that our the father in our household herded it out of our room with a stick and to the cracks between the floorboards. It also eats cockroaches. The cockroaches have found their match between that spider and the kitty cat Manchas.
There was a mama bird flying in the gap between the ceiling and wall in our bedroom. The bird had a nest in above our bed. During the night we wondered what the hacking sound was....we later figured out it was the mama bird puking up food for her babies. They have gotten big and flown the coop. We thank them for it.
I had a bot fly, and a video to prove a larvae was growing inside me. Joe put the video to Star Trek music. He does want to name our child Tiberius.
Never have we inspected our bathroom trips so thoroughly. Lots of people in our area get worms. It won't be on the list of things that make us laugh if we find something.
When we first came our little brother told us it was raton poop. Mouse poop. Later we found out it was cockroach poop. Who knew cockroaches pooped.
The kitties eat the cockroaches. Sometimes we have to maim them a little bit with our flips flops but then Manchas and Gary move in for the kill.

WE AREN'T LAUGHING.... YET

The kitties are once again....bolsas de pulgas....flea bags. We have treated them twice and hopefully they will be clean for a while.
Some nights we find 10 cockroaches all over our clothes. They especially like our tooth brushes and toothpaste.
We still find cockroach poop all over our clothes.
The roosters love to sleep in the tree outside our window. They like to start between 2-4 a.m. Then they move to just sitting under our window.
The kitties are still pooping under the floorboards under our bed. It stinks.

VALUABLE THINGS WE HAVE LEARNED

Rinse all glasses before pouring a beverage in. The slugs that look like miniature snakes have no nutritional value.
This is another don't look too closely but it must be mentioned. Don't look too closely at the drawers on the shower floor. Sometimes they contain turds. Now we just push them to the side without looking.
There is a reason Costa Rica is so green. It rains all the time.
One can never know how fast humans can actually move and get their clothes on until you've felt an earthquake.
Intense thunder and lightening storms in Costa Rica can make one believe that a Volcano is erupting. Joe didn't think so, but I had to check and see if Volcan Turrialba was still there the next morning.
Sometimes it's better not to look too closely. Nuff said. It applies to everything. Looking in your underwear bag, looking at the food, looking in the cracks in the floorboard at the cat poop, looking at your poop. Somethings are better left unkown.
Masking tape all bites that last more than 1 week. It might be a Bot Fly.
Keep headlamp on bedpost just an arms length away at night. It helps to avoid the toads in the kitchen on the night trip to the toilet. It also gives light to see what the noise near the bed is. Usually it is just frogs that hop in the hole in the floor. We herd them out with a stick.
Clear all winged flying insects and cockroaches out of the bathroom before going at night. Especially out of the toilet bowl.
Always shake your clothes out before putting them on. You never know what is going to come flying out. Supposedly it might shake off Bot Fly eggs also.