First Week in San Cristóbal Norte

Now that I am in my site, it seems I will have a little more time to reflect on this crazy experience.

So what does a Peace Corps volunteer do during the first week at his or her site?...you might be wondering. In my experience, mostly just walk around down and be completely stupefied by the thought that this strange new place is going to be my home for the next two years. From what I’ve heard from past and current volunteers, this is pretty common.

Actually, after arriving late Sunday afternoon, I woke up Monday morning early for a run to brush off the cobwebs and try to get some of those first day jitters out of the way. Doña Albertina’s house (my home) is located about 1 kilometer outside of town, and that 1 km of road is what the Ticos like to call pura cuesta, or pure slope.

They don’t mess around here in Costa Rica when it comes to hills. I decided to give myself a break and turn right, heading down the hill as a warm up. Unfortunately, that strategy only worked for around a half a kilometer when I came upon the cemetery and realized I’d hit the town limits. So I did what any good volunteer would do, and turned my butt around to face this monster hill that is probably to become either my worst enemy or best friend during my time here.

That moment starting up the bottom of the hill, nay…mountain, was very apt considering I was feeling pretty small at that point in time anyway, it being Day 1 of my two year experience. Between the 40 degree grade and 1800 meters in altitude, I was sucking wind pretty quickly. Slowly but surely I made my way to the top of the ridge and into the town center. After some my explorations running around the town, I made my back to the house and proceeded to attack the day.

That run actually succeeded in getting some of my jitters out of the way and so has become just about a daily ritual. I slog my way up to the top, all the while yelling A Dios! to any passer-byers on the road, mostly moms walking their kids to school. (A Dios is actually a salutation here in Costa Rica. It took me some time and quite a lot of confusion before I figured that out too.) They usually give me a weird look, say A Dios back, and we both have a good laugh in passing. It’s working out pretty well as a community entry technique, to break out a nerdy PC technical term on you.

Interestingly, my living situation here in San Cristóbal Norte is actually better here than it was in Tarbaca, the training site. Here in SCN I have my own larger room, a bigger bed, and no kids living in the house. Doña Albertina is also a heck of a good cook. The house is more of a farm, with cows, chickens, and all that jazz. It’s pretty interesting having all these animals around, and that will no doubt have to be the subject of another blog. As usual...hot water continues to be elusive.

I say it is interesting that my living situation is better because everything we’ve been told up to this point has led us (volunteers) to believe our situation was to be much worse following training. Two-thirds of Ticos live in the Meseta Central, or central plateau, part of the country. These folks are generally better off and reap the benefits of better infrastructure. The remaining third outside of this central area are usually poorer, more removed, and the folks are left to fend for themselves. This is usually where you will find the Peace Corps volunteers operating. My town is on the edge, but still inside of the Meseta Central, and hence better off.

Costa Rica’s more developed characteristics actually had some of my fellow volunteers worried they would not be getting the FULL Peace Corps experience. To be honest, I did not share their concern.

This worry led one friend in my program to exclaim to our program coordinator “Give me the hardest shit you got!” during our 1-on-1 interviews prior to site assignment. How bout that.

He is now happily serving out his term…errr…service in Los Angeles de Páramo de San Isidro. Its about a 2 hour drive from the nearest small city, which is saying something in a country the size of West Virginia. They don’t have a phone at his site. If you want to get in touch with anyone there, you have to call the nearest town a few kilometers away. They will then get on a 4-wheeler and make their way down the road to let the person know someone is waiting on the line in the next town over.

I would feel sorry for him, but I know he is tickled pink and loves to recount this aspect of his living situation to his friends back in the states. You probably have to know the guy to fully appreciate this.

Despite the awkward communication situation, it is doubtful that even he is suffering any extreme discomforts. (Google the UN Development Index and you should see Costa Rica just scores well enough to be considered a “developed” country) No, Peace Corps life in Costa Rica is not going to be like a volunteers experience in Malawi or Chad. Either way, two years living and working alone in a foreign community is exactly that.

To be fair, I actually got a lot more accomplished this week than simply walking around in a daze. I started researching the history of town, being one of the components of my CAT (that is the 30 something page report mentioned previously), and this being one of the subjects I find interesting. Doña Albertina’s family was able to refer me to a few of the local history buffs. Several interviews later, I’ve got a couple pages of notes, a written manuscript, and a keepsake book written in honor of the 50th anniversary of the construction of the church.

There is a lot of good material among these things. The problem is not the amount of information. The problem is that everyone seems to have a different version of the history, and it somehow has to be parsed out in a way that is fully truthful and takes into account the points of these locals. I’m going to have to either get these three or four folks in a room together to duke it out, or just hold off and print the darn thing later and catch what flak comes…I’m definitely leaning towards the latter.

Actually, looking back, it was an extremely successful week. Besides the history research, I met with the Director of the local school, Don Esteban. We had a good talk. He was completely open to me undertaking projects in the school and was nice enough to give me a short introduction to the kids in each of the classrooms.

This may not sound like a big deal, but its common PC knowledge that when you are in a community, if the kids know you – EVERYONE knows you. Kids do a lot of talking. They just have to run home a say “Mom, Dad, there is a new gringo in town. I can’t pronounce his name and he’s really tall.” Then everyone will know who you are. Kids are a major gateway to the community.

Another first week highlight was the Sunday mass. This week they had a special celebration for Corpus Christi. Their tradition here is to put flowers, colored sand, sawdust from different trees, and Cypress branches to form shapes on the sidewalks using molds. They had flowers throughout the downtown…really very beautiful.

I got up early to pitch in with that and the next thing I know they had roped me into being part of a representacíon. A representation is like a small scene. The Catholic tradition is to lead a procession through the town and stop at these different themed representations to say a few words about the particular topic.

The them of our representation was Diversity. They sat me down at this table with a dozen other folks – young, old, single, married, handicapped, etc. I was to represent the Non-Costa Rican peoples. That’s right, yours truly was tapped to represent the some 6 billion other people on this planet.

The procession came around (i.e. half the town), we stood up at the table, the padre did his thing, blessed us, and the gaggle moved on down the street. It was a stoic performance by all the participants. We congratulated ourselves on a job well done and joined the masses.

However the fun was not over for me. At the end of the service, during the community announcements, one of Doña Albertina’s sons, Olman, got up to the pulpit and introduced me to the congregation. He said a few words and had me stand up so everyone could get a good gander. The padre even through in a few words of encouragement. I was very grateful to them both for their words. It was a packed house! Several hundred people, or about half the town, was probably there that day. They saved me days of awkwardness with this brief introduction to the community.

Between jogging through the town screaming at the locals, the introductions at the school and the church – this has been a pretty productive week in the PR arena. Regardless, it is week 1 of the two year experience and there is plenty of pura cuesta ahead.

Here is a link to some of our swearing in pictures. Hope this works for you all:

http://picasaweb.google.com/mesa802/PCSwearingCeremony?authkey=uYsTTOjbMcE

Released into the Wild

Man…when I created this thing I thought it would be something I could stay on top of and keep updated, but it just hasn’t happened so far. Oh well, I hope it suffices as a short update to say that I am now done with training and am living in my work site – San Cristóbal Norte – a small town about 1 hour south of San Jose just off the Interamericana Sur Highway. The will be my home for the next two years.

Last week we had our Swearing-In at the Ambassador’s residence, which was pretty cool. We are in between Ambassadors right now but the folks at the embassy were nice enough to let us use the house. It was a lot of fun, we were all presented with certificates by our country director and a representative from the embassy. It’s nice to not be a trainee anymore!

After a night of partying in San Jose, we (the volunteers) all parted ways with each other as well as our training host families, and headed to our sites. From here, life is slowing down a lot.

San Cristóbal Norte is a small agricultural community of about 900 people located roughly 1800 meters up in the mountains of the Cordillera Central south of Cartago. Coffee country. It’s absolutely beautiful. I’ll try to get some picks up soon so you all can get an idea once I can find a better connection.

For the next 3-6 months my life will basically consist of living like a Tico, and talking to the locals and associations in my town. All of this is in order to develop a 30-something page report called a Community Analysis Tool (CAT).

Each volunteer has a counterpart organization within the community that is supposed to serve as their sponsor and home base within the community. My counterpart is the San Cristóbal Norte communal micro-lending bank, or ECC SACRIN for short. The bank began about 12 years ago with about $200 dollars in capital and 20 associates. Over time and through steady invest by community members, today the bank has roughly $120,000 in lending capital and 60 associates. All of this done with capital raised from within the community. I’m not sure how it all works yet, but it seems to be running pretty smoothly for them.

So where do I fit into all of this? The idea is the bank will serve as my base from within the community, and from there I can reach out to provide assistance as necessary to the various micro-entrepeneurs connected with the bank.

As with most things Peace Corps, the situation is very loosy-goosy, and will most likely depend on what I and the bank make of it. Either way, it seems like a pretty cool way to start off, and I will get to learn more about the micro-lending environment from one of the leading organizations in the country.

Other projects I will probably be getting into, aside from micro-enterprise collaboration, are things like teaching English, rural tourism, teaching Junior Achievement, and IT courses.


As for the living situation, my new home is in the house of Doña Albertina. She is a 70 year lady whose husband died a couple of years ago. Although she lives alone, the entire extended family lives in 4 of the neighboring houses in what makes up a little family compound. She is very nice, has a good sense of humor, and is a good cook (that’s important). I think we are going to get along just fine.

That is about all I can think to say right now. I hope that gives you some insight into my world. I really want to get some pictures posted soon so you all can get a better idea of what the town looks like.

This blog entry goes out to my friends and co-workers at the VA. Some of them, but not all, are pictured here. And no, this is not a police line up. I really appreciated there support when I decided to commit to Peace Corps, so this one goes out to them.

(If anyone shown here has a problem with there pictures being slapped on a website for the whole world to see, please let know and I will remove this from the site…maybe. No seriously, just let me know)