CELL Group Travels to Costa Rica

Our bus journey to Puerto Viejo from Selva Negra took us through Granada, Nicaragua, a tourist community founded in 1529 by the Spaniards and located on Lake Nicaragua next to the extinct volcano Mombacho.  We toured the volcano’s peak reaching it by land cruiser and then hiking for several hours around the summit viewing the beautiful vistas of the valley communities and lake blow. 

Granada offered a nice respite in a simple but pleasant hotel, a good restaurant and Internet connections.  The next morning we departed on a 7 am bus with a muffin and juice in hand for an 8 hour bus ride across the Nicaraguan-Costa Rican border and up through the mountains to the capital city of Costa Rica, San Jose.  The difference between Nicaragua and Costa Rica’s development was evident in the first miles of our ride, noticing almost no litter along the roadways, the houses and farms more tidy and as we entered towns and cities the obvious more modern buildings, cars and businesses.  We stayed at a very nice hostel and stuffed ourselves at dinner, before leaving early the next morning for the bus station. 

The three-hour trip to our roadside drop off was uneventful except for a 20-minute bathroom-snack stop at a local restaurant in Limon.  In that short time, I met an old Costa Rican friend from Peace Corps days, Juan Coward, who worked as an Associate Peace Corps Director in Costa Rica for many years.  Juan greeted me, with bags of bananas and Mamon chino, a spiky, hard-covered fruit outside with a delicious, sweet core, both from his farm.  There was hardly any time to talk before the bus driver began to honk his horn for departure.  Given that we would be in the area for 2 weeks Juan might be able to visit me another time.

Pablo Camacho Varela, a young and leading ornithologist accompanied us on our bus trip to Puerto Viejo and he will be one of our tour guides and technical experts during our two-week stay.  When we got off the bus on the roadside, Pablo pointed us to a path into the jungle and said our destination was only 400 meters away.  We arrived 45 minutes later, tired, having walked a half mile uphill, rising in elevation about 1500 feet through muddy, slippery, paths. 

Once here, we’ve seen the wisdom often expressed in a football practice, “no pain, no gain” because we were delighted to find our accommodations in a huge tree house constructed by its owner, Sebastian, and his family who are members of the Bri Bri indigenous population. The lovely designed building was made all from local wood sawed with only a chain saw and carried by hand over the same terrain described above.  It took one year to accumulate the materials and eight months to build. 

Our first morning we hiked to the top of the hill and to the top of a viewing tower, also constructed by the locals.  They claim this location is the second best place in the world to view migration of North American Raptors, second only to the River of Raptors in Veracruz, Mexico.  This narrow flyway between the Serro Del Congo Mountains of Southeast Costa Rica and the Southern Caribbean provides the perfect thermals for raptors to rise high and then glide to the next thermals.  Yesterday from the tower we waited to no avail to see this phenomenon but today as we walked through the rain forest to go play at the beach for the afternoon, we were amazed at the hundreds, if not the thousands, of birds spiraling upwards in graceful circles and drifting onward.

We have had lectures about Costa Rica's people and economy and a talk about the Bri Bri indigenous people and how important and challenging this ecotourism project is to their livelihood. Our hosts are extremely bright, creative, industrious and generous.

Over the next four days we will take a leave from the tree house and visit a Sea Turtle Conservation Project and return on Friday for four more days here. Stay tuned for more CELL adventures...

As the days turn into weeks

The new places become the old

Strangers become family for me

Sabana Grande a home

From the solar cookers

To the plastic bottles

We made a difference

If not to many

At least to one

Picking up leaves

Or in my case

Putting manure in a latrine

Every day was a new adventure

A time to learn and grow

So thank you Sabana Grande

For making me feel at home.

Katie Schober

Herbal Alternatives of Sabana Grande

Along with sustainable practices in food and energy, this community is looking to the world of plants in healing as well. In attempt to bring back the knowledge of natural healing, women of Todogalpa are relearning herbal remedies. Not only does this bring them closer to their medicine and the natural world around them, but also limits their dependency on expensive health care. It brings the resources within the community to its members, creating a self-sustaining system instead of spending it on outside health.

Many rural communities depend on local herbs and “Naturalistas” for healing due to lack of access to doctors and modern medicine. “Muchos mujeres no pueden pagar por la medinina moderna y usan las hierbas por todo” as explained to me in Spanish. This information is passed from generation to generation but has been lost recently to bursts of “medical assistance” where communities are given massive supplies of antibiotics. Natural remedies are then discredited due to lack of research (thanks to pharmaceutical companies) and antibiotics become the “all-healing” drug.

                                    CELL student Willow Beier with Dona Alejandra

But communities are finding the value of plants as doctors turn away “fatal” conditions and people resort to older remedies. Many of these include common “weeds” such as plantain leaf and culinary herbs like rosemary and oregano. A large variety of fruit is also used, including lemon and papaya, which are incorporated into daily diets. Many of these can be taken in large doses over a long period of time, whereas some, like Mugwort (Artemesia) are powerful in small doses. Some are common knowledge passed down but it can take years of practice and study to become a professional.

Small groups of women here are beginning to join and uncover the vast world of plant healing. With small steps like these, they are walking towards a healthier, more sustainable community.

Willow Beier

 Five-Gallon Bucket

There are women who live in a small pueblo off a slice of highway just outside of Ocotal, Nicaragua.  They awake with the sun and the roosters.  Durable five-gallon buckets are filled at a hand cranked well and carried away, one after another, on the swiveled t-shirt-topped heads of the women who awake with the sun and the roosters in a pueblo just outside of Ocotal, Nicaragua.

                                           Sabana Grande woman carrying morning water

Passing one of these women along a barb-wired dirt road warrants a soft smile and an “ey hombre,” but not if the five-gallon bucket, filled to the brim with hand-cranked well water is on her head.  Not then.  She is focused.   You understand. 

Her husband may be tending to herds, milling wood or at harvest; so also may her sons and daughters.  Or they may be at school harvesting literacy and other fruits of knowledge.  Seeds for replanting.

                                          Sabana Grande man carrying crops from the field

She takes in and feeds and cares for the needs of foreign - American foreign - chicos and chicas and permits they witness that steadfast commitment to her way of life and her way of community.  Her expectations are not warped nor out of proportion to her lifestyle, so long as she and her place and her people remain healthy, who she works hard for and who works hard for her. 

Emptied.  Replenished.  She cranks the well and the water comes out.     

Tomas Newman 

The Solar Life in Sabana Grande

Fresh drinking water, electricity, cooked food and more all through the power of the sun, potentially our greatest and most overlooked source of energy. For thousands of years the ancients glorified this object for its life giving qualities, for they knew that with out the sun there would be no plants or animals and our earth would not sustain life.  Hence they personified the sun into major religious figures and gods to promote its significance.  Finally our admiration of it is coming back around in the form of solar pumps, water distillers, dryers, ovens, cookers and electricity producing panels.  Education and construction of these uncomplicated technologies have the potential to make major impacts on impoverished communities, primarily due to their inexpensive and easy construction methods.

                                         Building a solar cooker with women of the cooperative

Compared to various other impoverished communities that lack the utilization of solar technologies, the community here in Sabana Grande seems to have an optimistic atmosphere about it.  The people seem more welcoming and happier than many than previous communities we visited.  My guess is that it’s because they have a hopeful future for their community due in part to the their growing use of solar technologies and the empowerment this has brought to the women who are building them.

                                                              Solar cooker in action

                           

Although they are living in the second poorest country of the western hemisphere, their lives are enriched by the appropriate technologies provided by a united effort between Groupo Fenix, Mujeres Solares. Groupo Fenix offers technical assistance and teaches members of the local women’s cooperative, Mujeres Solares, and Suni Solar supplies local resources to construct the solar technologies that change the lives of residents of Sabana Grande.  It is an empowering process to learn to construct something that was once thought of as dauntingly complex and overwhelmingly expensive. The residents here have also empowered themselves economically, for they are finding ways to produce new or improved products and services available almost exclusively through such methods.

Once I go home I hope to use the wealth of knowledge provided here, to try and build my own solar panels in order to give off grid electricity to my place of living.

Remy Decoster

Some poetry from our time in Brisas del Mar, Aramecina and La Tigra National Park:

Brand new places
Unknown smiling faces
Planting pineapple on hillsides
Between bumpy truck rides.
Counting all the coffee yields
After working in corn fields.
Three days of trying to dry wet clothes
And waking up with ice cold toes.
Hikes to waterfalls
Kicking butt with soccerballs
Camp fire flames
Salad bowl games
Helping to clean dirty dishes
While trying to fulfill hopes and wishes
It's funny how time flies
And we're left with teary eyes
And sad goodbyes

                    Katie Schober

     A wrinkle in time
Our squinting eyes match
the sunburned cheeks
as we
traveled from dried up streams
to cloud covered peaks.

The bumpy road takes its toll
on the tire popped by a deep pothole.

As the adventure continues
the stares never cease
but it doesn't mater
these gringos come in peace

A hike for the soul
and a disappointing Superbowl
remind us of home
and the driving we actually condone.

Ants in our pants
and sewage streams
we all got closer
crammed like sardines.

A lesson we've learned
as we've traveled along
speaking spanglish
our conjugations are wrong.

Plants living on plants
and trees covered by moss
shows us something
in the U.S. we have lost.

Being happy with less
and loving more
is just the beginning
we have much to explore!

          Leeann Reid

The following is letter that our guide, Aaron, sent us after we had finished our time in Brisas del Mar:


La Pandilla CELL,

That little coffee bean. Seems to have taken on a radically new meaning in my life. I am pretty confident that there are thirteen others that would feel the same way. While a simple expresso or latte would have drawn perhaps a sliver of my attention in the past, now it seems to have instigated a flood of images, memories and recuerdos.

I am certain, like many of you, that I will first think of Chico’s smiling face. That’s probably unavoidable. Then there will be a glimpse of Obed leaning on my shoulder on the car ride down the mountain and perhaps Evelyn letting me hold her for a very satisfying 60 seconds. While these mental pictures will undoubtedly push a smile on my face, I hope they also prompt me to remember the invaluable lessons of our Honduran teachers: extraordinary generosity, admirable humility and appreciation for the great opportunities that each and every one of us receive.

At the same time, it is inevitable that other images will not also appear in my head. Farm plots on unimaginably sharp slippery hillsides, 100 pound sack after one hundred pound sack carried on the backs of los corteros, and a voice of struggle and constant exertion that seems inherent in the story of just about every small scale coffee farmer. These particular images will have  another purpose. They are a reminder of our commitment and obligation, as was stated over and over again, to “take the community members with us.” Live differently, carry the message home and make a difference. I think we owe that much to our cloud forest amigos of Brisas del Mar.

As I said before, buen trabajo amigos! Your terrific attitude, willingness to absorb everything around you, and tremendous effort to get to know a rural Honduran family on such an extraordinarily personal level is nothing short of maravilloso. I wish you all the very best on the rest of your journey of learning and hope all that is taken in and learned will be converted into teaching, sharing and action in all that you do.

Hasta otro dia,

Aaron