Sunday

It’s unseasonably brisk, mostly because ‘season’ loses meaning in Limón. By 9 a.m. the sun was already relentless, but a miraculous cloud cover has blotted it out for this brief moment. Not the low, gray stuff that hangs and threatens. Just a thin sheet, enough to break the intense monotony of the Limón sun. It’s pegado, sticky. I’m in my usual location on the front porch, an old emerald sofa that sits in profile to the house’s façade. Actual comfort spots are limited, but I can usually wiggle my way between a bulging spring and the wood crossbar, settling in where the fabric already sags from hundreds of butts having danced the same dance. It’s the only place in the house where air finds a way to shrug off the afternoon languor. Everyone else is tucked into the idea that Sunday and movement are not to be mixed. Especially today, when much of the country woke up at sunrise to watch Slovenia and Algeria face off for the day’s first World Cup action.  I’m wrong about the clouds. The rain begins tiptoeing on the roof just after lunch. Doña Ivonne leans forward in her seat. “Oooh, que riiiiiiiiiico,” she smiles. “You know what that sound means?” Slapping her hands together, she pauses a moment, then cocks her head to one side and nestles them underneath, feigning sleep. Pushing herself up from the lame office chair in the corner of the porch, she shuffles inside. The seat’s color is no longer recognizable. Its back boasts a radial pattern of stitched yarn, alternating mostly between black, red, and pink. The faded pattern is stretched beyond repair at the top, with most of the material drooping below. Doña Ivonne uses this hobby to add a homey touch to otherwise colorless corners of the house; yet most of her finished stitchings sit in a box tucked away somewhere, waiting for Christmas.

The porch looks out onto the first cross street of Limón 2000, followed by a bright pink health clinic that Don Carlos had a hand in constructing. From just beyond come the moans of air braking semis on Route 32. Unlike the barrio, this road never seems to get a break. Even on Sunday hundreds of payloads bounce between the port of Moin and San José. Outbound are undoubtedly trucks full of some sort of agricultural product. Bananas don’t have to travel far. Just fifteen minutes down the highway the view in all directions is nothing but a low, broad-leafed canopy, broken only by the mountains in the distance. Blue plastic bags hang underneath like cocoons of concentrated pesticides and fertilizer.

I’m slouched over an old newspaper. La Nación doesn’t come to my neighborhood, so when I do get my hands on one I read it cover-to-cover. Unlike La Teja, which is delivered to the house, its World News section of La Nación actually contains more info than “Chinese Baby Addicted to Cigarettes!” and topless girls painted with country flags to celebrate the World Cup Team of the Day. There are six or so daily newspapers in Costa Rica, and over half are painfully tabloid. Non-flying-saucerish articles are likely devoted to yesterday’s murders, car accidents, and soccer action. La Teja is the worst. Nonetheless, any of them at this point make for good Spanish education. Lying next to the paper are usually a dictionary and Spanish notebook to take down any words I’ve yet to learn. All of this is spread out on a mesita that Don Carlos threw together one of the first mornings after my arrival. He and Doña Ivonne noticed the paper, the dictionary and pen, strewn all across the couch and my lap. Before I realized the purpose behind the pounding, Don Carlos was walking up to me, small table in hand. Out of enjoyment for seeing me grab it en route to a study session, Doña Ivonne will comment, “Wearing your new belt buckle again, eh?”

The only space remaining on the mesita fits a wide green mug perfectly. Coffee normally comes at breakfast and dinner, so my normal mid-afternoon craving means that I’ll be heading inside to chorrear a mug of my own. And to chorrear, one requires a chorreador, which loosely translates into “strainer”. Really, the whole setup is composed of a tightly wound fabric bag, a thin formed wire holding one end forever open like a fish’s mouth. The bag is suspended over a container by fitting into the top of a wood stand. In go the grounds and then the boiling water from a steady, pouring hand. The whole of the actions require little more attention than flipping the switch of a coffeemaker. Still, the pace of the process brings a new appreciation for what fills that last empty space on the mesita, and eventually, my waning stores of concentration.

First Week

I’m sick of emo entries and want to share a little of my current life, especially since tomorrow marks the fall of a long-standing record. One week and a day: the longest I’ll have ever spent at my site. The previous guy in Bodié (my Guinea site in the Fouta) had beaten me by two weeks, and he was actively trying to leave. Not sure how or if I’ll celebrate yet. I had originally been considering taking the half hour bus ride into town and buy a nice lunch, but I’ve been getting fed so much recently that I’d rather stroll the market stalls in search of a second-hand Ab-Roller.

I’ve been sent to Limón, along the Caribbean coast of Costa Rica. My site is the closest to Puerto Limón, which houses two of the three major ports in the country and probably the most important when taking Costa Rican history into consideration. The neighborhood I’ll call home for two years is named Limón 2000. How baller is that? Many of the Tico 20 sites carry pretty interesting names, like 'Field 2 1/2' and 'The Fight', but I think Limón 2000 takes the cake. Fellow volunteer suggestions for future projects have been audaciously optimistic. I’ve settled on either creating a superhero headquarters there or forming a rap group.

A few of us were lucky enough to get a ride from headquarters on Monday. Dan, our outgoing (as in on his way out) boss had to get Donna down to Bribrí near the Panamanian border by nightfall, so we were lucky to beat the rains and take the main road from San José to Limón. This road—well constructed but poorly placed—experiences landslides so frequently that it often closes at night strictly as a precaution; so a closed road would've meant an extra 1.5 to 2 hours. I was the first stop of the afternoon, and Doña Ivonne was at her usual spot on the front porch waiting. My new host mom was happy to see me, unlocking the front porch´s steel gate before running to the kitchen to prep some coffee. Coffee. I couldn´t have asked for a better welcome. The rest of the afternoon was spent putting up my mosquito net and setting off what will likely be a two year food binge.

Don Carlos and Doña Ivonne are an older couple, both in their sixties. First impressions remind me of Marilyn and Bubs, albeit at higher volumes. The television’s usually blasting telenovelas or a daytime game show. If the phone rings, it switches to speaker phone, at which point it becomes a shouting match between Doña Ivonne and whatever soap characters are hogging the screen; Don Carlos joins in if he’s home from work. The two are filled with humor and dichos (proverbs and whatnot), so I’m doing my best to stay on my toes. Yesterday at a grandson’s birthday party Doña Ivonne had her cell phone out while Chino was blowing out the candles: “Damnit, I was trying to take a video on the phone! You know I can’t work this damn thing, now you’ll have to light the candles again. Go on, light ‘em!”

They’ve lived all over the country, as Don Carlos migrated often working farm labor. He later entered into construction work, and the couple settled down in Limón 2000 before the government housing projects began. I imagine it’s grueling work. He’s out the door by six and home no earlier than six. Evening ritual includes walking through the door grinning through his long-lost incisors, tearing off his shirt, and plopping onto the couch next to his ashtray.
Most of my time out of the house has thus far been split between the escuela and the cancha. My local counterpart (with whom I'll initially be working most closely) is the school's 'social planner'. Ada had already taken me room to room on my three day site visit in early May, so the kids were eagerly awaiting my re-arrival. So in addition to being completely overwhelmed with the steady current of students coming to visit in Ada's office,I have more soccer invitations than I have 10-year-olds to school me (and that number is already in the dozens).

I've recently moved things around on this site to better organize info. Telephone information and address information are now current. I expect to open up a P.O. Box in Puerto Limón sometime soon. That address will be for smaller packages and envelopes.

Thanks to all for the well-wishes and congratulations. It feels good to be a volunteer.

Love, Kevin

I Swear

We lowered our right hands after taking the oath from the U.S. Ambassador. Mine readjusted a silk blue tie before dropping heavily into the right pocket of my pleated pants. Eight months ago there were no pockets, at least readily accessible ones. Perhaps one of the seventeen of us was ingenious enough to have requested a hidden pocket tailored somewhere into our boubous or compléts. It wouldn’t have mattered. We were busy embracing, marveling in the standing embassy representative’s perfect French. One of the most heartfelt speeches we had ever heard had just been directed at us.

Today’s speech could have been plucked from a manual. The Peace Corps country director perched next to the podium translating each of the ambassador’s automatic phrases while we shuffled in our foldout chairs. toying with our ties and our dresses, ready to step down one of landings of the Ambassador’s lawn and into some imaginary wedding rehearsal. The most memorable line in those five minutes came from behind me, a fellow CYF volunteer pointing to the back of his newly-issued Peace Corps ID, “There’s a 2-for-1 bloomin’ onions coupon for TGIFridays on the back.” The speech ended. We filed one-by-one to the front for a handshake and a quick photo in front of the Peace Corp emblem. How did most take the manufactured pomp? Probably as another step in this novel process of becoming a volunteer, maybe even an exciting punctuation. For them, after all, there’s really nothing to compare.

I kept my seat as the audience slid into disorder. Three years of patient frustration were over; and all I could do was sit there trying to shake the sudden melancholy. After a few minutes the new volunteers were summoned for group photos. I sprang up and began walking toward the lawn, happy for a reason to step back out of the past.