Chocolate making in Yorkin

                                       Boat ride to Yorkin, Costa Rica, site of an ecolodge 

                                     run by indigenous Bribri people and of chocolate making         

                                        

Chocolate

Me: Let me tell you about the wonderful and mysterious process of making chocolate. This amazing plant starts out in an unexpected form, which few fellow chocoholics even know. A pod. Unlike money, it really does grow on trees!

Pablo: But wait, didn’t the ancient Mayans actually use Cacao seeds as money?

Me: Uh… yea, but that’s a whole other story. Anyways, chocolate, or cacao, is a pod which grows on a tree. In each pod are rows of seeds covered in a slimy membrane.

Pablo: Ewww!

Me: No, it is really tasty actually, but the seeds are what are  sought after.  People harvest the seeds, and go through a process of fermenting and drying in the sun giving a deep flavor which is emphasized by a final roasting.

Pablo: And then it’s chocolate?

Me: No. Then you have to remove the husk of each seed, which resembles a peanut skin.

Pablo: Sounds boring.

Me: Yes but here they use an old technique of laying the dry seeds in a wooden platter and use a huge round rock to grind them up.

                                                       Neal grinding the cacao beans

Pablo: A rock?

Me: Yup.

Pablo: You’re kidding.

Me: Nope. That removes the husk and then they toss them up in a swift motion allowing the lighter husks to blow away, leaving behind crushed cacao nibs.

Pablo: Sounds magical alright.

Me: Then they use a hand-crank mill to grind the nibs even further into a dark creamy paste.

Pablo: Chocolate!

Me: Well… Sort of, 100% chocolate! Then you mix in other tasty things like sugar and banana. I like it with cayenne, coffee beans, ginger, or shredded coconut, but there are lots of things that go really well.

Pablo: Wow. So…. Where can I get some?

Willow Beier

What makes something spectacular?  A “You don’t know what you’re missing” kind of event?  Does it need to be flashy: fireworks on New Year’s Eve?  Should it be well advertised and highly anticipated: the Super Bowl?  Could it be in the middle of the night when we’d all rather be in bed?

In Gandoca, Costa Rica our traveling community spent two sleepless nights with the rangers and researchers of a sea turtle conservation crew.  Countless kilometers of Caribbean shoreline have been preserved by the government so that wildlife projects such as this can protect the livelihood of inhabitants much too soft spoken to protect themselves.  And so, with those inhabitants in mind and at heart, we found ourselves aroused from snooze with the news that a Leatherback Sea Turtle had surfed her way on shore from the depths and had begun her seasonal egg laying ritual. 

                                  CELL students walking Gandoca beach during daytime

In two parallel lines we walked behind our guides with all of our flashlights flicked off and only the cloud-filtered grey light of the moon to make out the silhouettes of the beach wood and each other.  Down the way one could see the brief illumination of a red light, as if cautioning on comers to slow down for what was ahead.  Coming still closer, doing our best to twinkle-toe away from the playful impact of the torrent’s rolling white foam at our sandy but still dry shoes, the only silhouette worth noticing now was surreal. 

A few paces away, sprawled on the shore, head facing the coconut trees that were bowing towards the ocean further up the bank, was something spectacular.  There were no new year’s fireworks, but in the slurry of those coconut trees hovered thousands of fireflies like free-floating ornaments celebrating the arrival of new pearl-colored spherical hatchlings.  Or they could have been insect-sized photographers flashing in the peripheral of the tropic stadium that was erected as we all surrounded this leather-hided creature swaying its hind fins back and forth, left and right, over and over again like two pendulum line backers digging away at a salty chamber beneath the sand; yet another of nature’s many incubators.  She went on like this for, I was told, an hour, but what amount of time can measure a prehistoric event such as this?  And it really was pre-historic.  A happening that precedes history.  It was like watching an aquatic dinosaur coming back to the same stretch of beach that she emerged from as a palm sized Tortuga millions of years ago… 

And I wish you could have been there.  You don’t know what you’re missing.  It’s so hard to miss something when you don’t know what you’re missing.  This thought was given to me, which is to say, it was not my own, while we witnessed the leatherback swirl back around and in no rush whatsoever (it is a turtle, remember) pull her way back towards the unbounded pool that binds us all.  Head flat on the volcanic sands, front fins forward.  Slap, slide and pull.  Waves crashing.  Slap, slide and pull.  Crash.  Slap.  Slide.  Pull.

Foam.    

Tomas Newman         

After parting ways with our host families in Sabana Grande, we travelled to Selva Negra, literally “Black Forest,” a scenic, self-sustained ecolodge and organic coffee, veggie, flower, and livestock farm in the Nicaraguan cloud forest. During our one and a half week stay, we received a tour of the grounds, including explanations of the coffee production process, an encounter with some excited baby goats, and a view of their on-site vermicomposting operation, which is part of a system that produces seven million pounds of compost annually. We talked about barriers to communication, spent time being one with nature by doing a solo in the woods, and shared our feelings about each other in the gifting circle. Mausi, one of the owners of Selva Negra, gave us a history of the place, complete with explanations of how they once fled to the United States after being chased by the Nicaraguan government, and of how she came about her expansive comic book collection. We discussed how to make a living, what constitutes a healthy appetite, how to form and improve communities, and the Universe Story; and we also got schooled by Willow and Tommy about belly dancing and the history of hip-hop, respectively.

                                    Selva Negra children helping prepare the vegetable garden

 Most notably, though, we spent roughly half of our time designing and building a school playground and organic veggie and herb garden for the children of the coffee pickers employed by Selva Negra. After the tour of the grounds on day one, we got to have a look at the site, and then Karen, one of Mausi’s daughters, and her husband Don debriefed us. We set to work the next day sharing ideas and mapping the possibilities for a layout. The following morning, we presented our plan to Karen and Don. We worked hard Tuesday through Friday, and Saturday morning we finished the project by painting our tire creations with the kids. The final product included a lochness monster (which we named Larkspur, after Neal’s mysterious wife), a music center, an underground telephone, the gardens, and a tire island in the center of it all.

                                                Kids and Leeann testing the new tire fort

 For me personally, building the playground was the most rewarding project we’ve worked on thus far. I think the difference was that we had a hand in the decision-making. The creative process of designing the playground was enjoyable in and of itself, but it would have been less so if we didn’t know that we had the authority to bring our ideas to fruition. We really were going to build this playground, at a site we had seen and felt, for kids we would soon meet. We talked about the importance of giving workers an understanding of the complete operations of a company, accompanied by some degree of executive clout, during our discussion on making a living. I saw that sentiment come to life in myself and in our community. It was so very gratifying on Friday, when the kids ran out of the classrooms and went wild on their nearly complete new playground, to see what started as a problem converted into laughter and exhilaration. For our group, it became a realization of what we can accomplish together, and we did it without spending any money or consuming any new material. I love it. It was a powerful demonstration that there’s hope. We didn’t save the planet by building a playground and a few raised beds, but we certainly made a step in the right direction, and that’s created a ripple effect that will continue quite possibly forever.

                                                     The completed playground project

Sammy Meador

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