Cacao

The cacao is looking kinda horrific, at least to my westernized sense of food hygiene (and I’m fairly lax about that). For cacao to taste like chocolate it has to ferment and then be roasted. The gooey white coating on the beans is a fermenting agent, all one does is take it out the husk and leave it somewhere, turning it occasionally, for 6 days or so and then dry and roast it. Traditionally they are left in a big pile on some banana leaves. I’m keeping mine in a partially covered Tupperware on the deck (I tried it before in a closed container and it just grew fungus). So I have a pile of fermenting fruit in an open container. Fruit flies, wasps and a big beetle have become part of the fermentation process. When I turn the beans clouds of fruit flies engulf me.

So basically chocolate is a fermented food which partially decomposes in its own compost pile in the first step of its process from bean to bar. News to me. I have another day for the first batch of 5 pods. They look almost ready, the white goop has gone and the beans are darker and smell fermented. The second batch is now 3 days old, today I’ll start another one.

tropical living 3

My clothes are a little moldy today. They’ve been in a clean laundry pile for a week or so and they smell foosty. Not too bad. They don’t have white fungus growing on them like in Monteverde, and they are without the algae-like green covering clothes develop in the rainy season in Guanacaste. Nevertheless they smell of mold. I’ll hang them in the sun again, no problema. Just a reminder I live in the tropics.

big trucks go fast

Of my conversations, two were with angry men. Ostensibly they were angry for different reasons, but the root was the same – bureaucracy / corruption / ineptitude in Costa Rica. It’s a common thing, especially with non tico males, and at some point everyone experiences it. At some point everyone hates Costa Rica. The conversations happened at different times, and in different locations in the café, but strangely enough both decided to pour all their frustration and despair with nameless, faceless others into a spitting fury at truck drivers. There are a lot of truck drivers here, a new road is being made somewhere east, and there are a lot of big mack trucks ploughing up and down. Not juggernauts but sizeable, dust producing monsters. Both men were furious at the speed of “these 19 year old drivers”, who had “no respect for people”. A lot of venting happened, to which I listened quietly with interest. Because for me the experience is different. I’ve never had a truck speed by me, rather the trucks move so slowly behind and past me that I’m sure I must know the drivers. They creep along, can it be the same trucks? Must be. And then it dawned on me. I’m female. In this macho society where it makes sense to speed by the white guy on the bicycle with your huge, powerful engine spitting dust and smoke in his face, it makes equal sense to drive by the white girl slowly enough that you can watch her body move to push on the pedals, slowly enough that when they pass, one can get a good look at the big brave hombre who can handle such an intensely masculine monster. There’s no blurring of gender roles here.

half in love with easeful life

Yeah, I know I’m misquoting, but so what, aren’t life and death just two sides of the same coin? Who was it anyway, Keats or Shelley? Sounds like Shelley, he was ever the melodramatic melancholic (sorry Jon). But I am, actually I’m more than half in love. It’s been a good weekend. I’ve been cloistering myself away, so determined to selfishly hoard my hours, doing my hermit thang, but this weekend I guess I got outed. Friends from Guanacaste turned up, I literally cycled by them in the street and it’s been wonderful to spend time with them. I taught the kids and it was so nice to have Miel riding on my back and tackling my legs with his scrawny 3 year old arms, his sister is as sweet as ever, and the two fight just as much as they did when I last saw them 2 months ago. Other friends from Guanacaste arrived this afternoon, turns out they’re renting a place on the same street as me, what are the chances? I spent a pleasant afternoon sitting in a café owned by other friends, thinking to do some reading, but it seems I actually know a lot of people. Gallons of coffee later I stumbled home having talked politics, permaculture, the pros and cons of living in a developing nation, how to make proper sushi, developmental needs of 6 year olds, how songs travel around the world, how best to get passports stamped and where one could get organic cabbage. I felt full. It’s never really occurred to me that I could spend the whole afternoon in a café doing nothing other than talking and drinking good organic coffee. What a life! And I don’t actually feel one pang of guilt, even more amazing! Sunday passed just as sweetly, breakfast with visiting friends, the afternoon at the bookstore talking nonsense and hanging signs, and to top it all we finally managed to remove the last tick from Hoss’ right nostril. What a glorious way to pass a weekend.

Toucans – ramphastos sulfuratos, ramphastos swainsonii

In Guanacaste I was blessed to live alongside a troupe of howler monkeys. Here I’m blessed to share space with a flock of toucans. They are such unbelievably beautiful birds: black black black with stunning lemon yellow chests and heads; splotches of red and white under wings and tails and the beaks. The beaks are bizarre. Hollow structures supported by struts, clearly too big to be of any real use. When they fly they spread out their tail feathers, and so look curiously balanced, sometimes it’s hard to tell the head from the tail at a distance, and I swear I saw one flying backwards last week. They eat, in this garden, palm fruits, but their beaks are too big for them to look at what’s directly ahead; they have this slow and very steady gradual tilt of the head – like some elderly dowager nodding sedately off to sleep. They turn their heads and with bright beady eye source their food. Then, just as delicately, they pick it with the very tip of their beak, flick back their head, open their beak and in it goes. Not a terribly satisfying or efficient way to eat I think. There are two distinct types here, different species according to the birdbooks. The keel-billed and the chestnut-mandibled, why would two species evolve in the same place? The chestnut mandibled is bigger with a beautiful truly chestnut colour to their lower beak. The keel-billed has an incredible turquoise blue streak to their otherwise green and yellow bill, inside in the crook of their mouth is a brilliant flash of red. The birdbooks say these species have slightly different habits, eating patterns, nesting spaces and calls. The chestnut lives in flocks of 10-15, the keel in smaller flocks of less than 6. However the flock which eats here is mixed, 2 chestnuts with 8 keel-billed. There’s also a pair of aracaris which seem to stay close to the toucans (the aracaris supposedly flock with 10-15 of their own kind). The calls are loud; crrrik (keel), keeureek kirick kirick (chestnut) and pseek, pisseek, pink (aracari) and penetrating, in their staccato, castanet

like sound. No-one has told these birds they are different and should live apart. It seems normal, and fitting for this part of the world to have this happy little mixed flock.

tarantula

I awoke this morning to find the kittens out of their new high sided crate – their little back legs get stronger by the hour! The crate sits in my closet, but 5 feet off the ground, so it would only be a matter of time before they explore right off the end of the shelf. In moving them I discovered a brown tarantula, about as large as my hand. While pondering the pros and cons of moving him – he’s obviously eating something and that something might be less desirable insects and spiders / I think the brown ones bite and I’d hate to see a playful kitten get hurt – I realized he was too big for all the containers I had. Tarantulas are slow moving so I thought I could maybe just brush him out with the broom. When I touched him he took on this warrior stance – strangely reminiscent of spiderman’s crouching pose. I was amazed at the strength of his body in the yoga like position. I touched the broom to him again and he suddenly became much bigger, spreading himself out flat on the ground. The broom idea obviously wasn’t working and instinctual feelings of danger and horror were beginning to replace my previous calm observation and gratitude at finding such a foreign (to me) creature in my bedroom. I got a pot and laid it over him, and then left the room. I think that might have been a mistake. About 5 minutes later I returned, put a piece of paper under the pot and then dragged it to the edge of the deck, pushing it off. When I put the paper in I didn’t feel any resistance, but figured that the spider could be anywhere inside the pot. When I pushed it off the edge of the deck I

didn’t see him either. Now I might have just missed him, or the paper may have landed on top of him. The other option, one I’m not really wanting to think about is that he could have lifted the pot and found another spot in my room. I don’t mind the thought that he’s in their, after all tarantulas are not terribly social creatures and like small dark places which I have no desire to explore. It’s the idea that he was strong enough to lift the pot that troubles me. Relatively his strength is much greater than mine, and for some reason this always freaks me out a little. Watching ants, really any insect or arachnid, as they go about their daily business with such speed and obvious strength always makes me feel just a little in awe and just a little uncomfortable.

Why do we have this instinctual fear / fascination with exoskeletal creatures? From the alien and extra terrestrial movies to the rows of bug spray and insecticides in the supermarket, to the squealing and hysterical killing I’ve seen on several occasions, what is it that makes them so much ‘the other’? I used to think it was because I couldn’t look such creatures in the eye and therefore could have no idea what they were thinking, whether they could think, there could be no connection, no recognition. This is still part of it, but I think it’s also that they are really just so much stronger than us. Perhaps it’s respect turned sideways. Respect without connection becomes a sort of distrust, a wariness?

kitten update

The kittens are now 24 days old. They are looking less like monkeys and more like cats; ears are sticking up, not quite pointed yet though. Their eyes are still blue but fading into yellow. Magellan, the middle born and the largest is the only one with fair control of his back legs, he can now climb out of the one time fridge drawer they call home. Orinoco, the youngest loves to play and is trying out all his new found limbs on his mum and siblings. Amelia still prefers to sleep, she’s the smallest. The names still change, especially Amelia’s, but I’m getting closer to discovering their true names. Molly the mum is now sleeping outside the drawer, but continues to be completely in love and very doting.

Esta no cancion d’amor, esta cancion de la revolution, part 2

I believe increasingly that this should be the task of education. Current education is nothing but a sentimental attempt at maintaining the status quo, churning out industrial product in the shape of consumers who know how to do, more or less, what they’ve been told, more or less. Education has become fragmented where children fill in the blanks in predrawn paper sheets, imagination chewed and offered up semi digested. In the States public schools follow Houghton Mifflin scripted lessons where the teachers read from books, “Good Morning Class” and the day continues in a prefabricated monologue with no room for autonomy let alone thought. The children sit staring, their systems full of high fructose corn syrup, food colouring, additives and chemicals, or all this plus drugs to keep them focused and docile.

Rather let education be revolution, a circle spiraling forward, revolving, evolving creating new generations of thinking, loving, unique individuals.

Why do we still teach to what was needed 2 centuries ago? I’ve been in the classroom for 12 years and I can see a difference in those now entering school from those children now graduating high school. People are evolving, the world is evolving at a heightened rate. The world in physical ways, the human in social, psychological, psychical ways, in consciousness. Education is not keeping up. The most important things I’ve ‘taught’ in my time have not been reading, writing, arithmetic (children learn these almost always by themselves), but rather social skills; communication; community and trust building; observation and respect for human and natural environments; care of each other, animals, nature; imagination; self expression and self trust, and love. The things that don’t appear much in teacher training establishments, let alone scripted lessons. As family recedes and

the importance of the individual continues, children have to learn how to be part of a community. What was taken for granted 2 centuries ago in social terms no longer exists and it must be taken up elsewhere.

Academics are important, yes of course, but they need to be seen in a larger context. The word education comes from the Greek root ‘educare’ meaning to raise up. This is what education must become again. We must serve the children a diet that will sustain them throughout their lives, not just through college entrance exams. We must feed their souls, their minds, their imagination, their creativity, their self expression, their love as much as their bodies. Not a sentimental love song conferring loss. A song of revolution.

Esta no cancion d’amor, esta cancion de la revolution

The fourth grade teacher, who’s Columbian, is singing a song with her class, a blend of Central and South Americans, Europeans and Africans. She tells them the song is local Caribe-African, she’s singing in English. I hear it from the other room and can’t help but wander to her class. It’s a Scottish song, an old traditional ballad, most definitely Scots. She disagrees, telling me that the immigrating Afro-Caribes brought it from Africa via Jamaica. It’s ‘My Bonny Lies Over The Ocean’, as Scots as haggis and proper whiskey. Later when I have the class I tell them the song really isn’t a love song, the real message is one of revolution. The Bonnie is not a sweetheart, but Bonnie Prince Charlie, the heir to the Scottish throne, raised in France and almost ready for the Jacobean uprising of the 1740s. The song was a way of spreading propaganda and support for the rebellion under the watchful eyes and ears of the bastard English. I look at the faces in front of me, the

incredible diversity in the classroom and I wonder what this can mean to them, how they might relate. In other parts of the world people still die under imperialism, sacrifice themselves in revolutions. But I teach the bilingual children of Romeo and Juliet in a country which abolished its army 60 years ago.

When I was a kid I was fiercely proud of my nationality, my culture, history, country. While I continue to appreciate its beauty and the characteristics and story of its people, I can no longer feel the pull of nationality. For me, the future has to lie in these blended children and their belief that the world is their home, the earth is their land, their blood the blood that flows through all peoples.

Today we celebrated cultures day, each family was invited to share a song, game, play, dance or story from their culture: we had offerings from Nicaragua, Columbia, Argentina, Norway, Germany, Switzerland, Jamaica, Italy, Spain, the US, Japan, Costa Rica, Brazil, South Africa and Scotland. Later we shared a cultural feast of traditional dishes. It was rich, heartfelt, beautiful. If we could share our cultural souls, our folk souls without the attachment and fear which bring racism and imperialism, if we could maintain the ‘same but different’ understanding then maybe we would have time to devote to the real issues.

plastic

Amid the books and coffee cups at Shaun’s place, there’s a scattering, a smattering of magazines – special interest magazines. Always well thumbed and losing a bit of their glossy sheen (do you know that magazine gloss comes from corn? Read ‘The Omnivores Dilemma’, Michael Pollan), they lie tantalizingly behind Mother Jones and Adbusters: the People magazines. The women who lounge at Echo Books are nomads, pioneers, escapists, all of us from different places who now find ourselves between the jungle and the ocean. Our skin is soft from the humidity but thick from outdoor exposure, our sinews stand up in the heat, our hair is stiff with dust, we wonder daily at the new bites, scratches and bumps we collect in the night: “yeah, just put noni juice on it”. And we all love People magazine, from cover to cover. Of course it can’t be called reading, it’s basically a picture book, and watching myself and others we do tend to lose interest about half way through as page after page shows similar looking people in similar looking clothing doing similar looking things. People we don’t know, depending on how long we’ve been ‘out’. It’s a bit like fast food: the cover is what grabs you, the first sensory experience - in this case sight, in food’s case smell. We reach for it, all other thoughts subside, but once that initial sensory zing has gone it’s all a bit unsatisfying. Until the next time .

The one lying on the coffee table this month (no, we don’t buy them, tourists leave them), has Anna Nicol on the cover. It seems she’s been having trouble with her plastic surgeon,

“I’ll never be perfect again”

the coverline reads.

“Oh poor thing, she’ll never be perfect again”

Leah sighs in a sympathetic, motherly tone. We look at each other and smile, confusion flutters across faces, “poor thing”.

duh

One of the things I teach in school is gardening. I just realized I’m the gardening teacher. This may seem very obvious to anyone reading this, but it’s taken me a month to see the significance. I’ve been working clearing the small and tropically overgrown garden at school and re-doing the compost area with the 3^rd and 4^th graders. And I’ve been moaning about the new area of gravel by my new class-space (not what you would call a room). I just realized I’m the one person at school who is in the position to change the gravel and put in more gardens. I can also begin gardening with the other classes I teach, I’m with all of the children every day, and can easily put gardening into our schedule.

There’s a wonderful botanical garden in Puerto Viejo and a great medicinal garden too, oh and a butterfly garden. We have so much room at school. I can meet with the directors of these gardens and get ideas and I’m sure some plants. We could also become carbon neutral by planting some more native trees. Oh my god, where have I been all this time?

death in (of) the family

My beautiful, eccentric, wonderful, damaged, real, grandmother died last month. I miss her. She’s a soulmate and I’m glad to have spent all of my life thus far knowing her, just a call away from her. I’m sure our time together is not complete and we shall meet again. I hope so. She had been abused as a child by an alcoholic father, had not known her mother, run away, put in care, and left to fend for herself. She married my grandfather at 17 and on her wedding night cried when she realized she had to stay with her husband and not return to her sister’s house. She didn’t know how to be a mother. She knew how to lie, how to take, how to survive.

But for me she was a wonderful grandmother: full of stories, laughter, encouragement and bad advise. She didn’t knit, didn’t keep a tidy house, she cursed horribly, cackled like a fishwife and filled me with love and enthusiasm and a genuine interest in what the world is. I love her.

But compassion is in scarce supply in my family which seems wrecked by old grudges and misunderstandings. I learned yesterday that my father does not yet know his mother is dead. When told she was ill he became angry and said he didn’t want to know anymore. And so he walks around in his guilt and his shame and this must be a terrible weight for him to carry. No closure, no release. My father won’t talk to me, he won’t talk to any of us, how can I help him? I know this is his choice, I know this is his path, but it rips me to see him damage himself so thoroughly, so chronically. It seems my family is dead, we are merely ghosts.

big old bubble, toil and trouble

Last week I had a discussion with a friend about bubbles. Actually the discussion wasn’t about bubbles, bubbles came in as an analogy for something else. Yet the bubble is what stuck with me. He said that the inside of a bubble was a vacuum. I disagreed saying that the inside and outside forces pushed equally on each other. I don’t know what’s right. But as an analogy I can’t stop thinking about it.

I have lived in bubbles for almost all my adult life. The education and communities I’m involved with are bubbles outside the mainstream UK and US systems. I’ve lived in beautiful locations, surrounded by nature, close to farms and health food stores or farmers markets, I had CSAs for most of the time I was in the States, I’ve had my own chickens and goats. I haven’t been registered and able to vote for 20 years, I’ve been thankfully healthy and haven’t needed mainstream medical anything for over 20 years. My friends share my beliefs and my lifestyle. Almost everyone I know lives consciously. I’ve been happily living in bubbleville.

Increasingly I’m understanding that I have to leave the bubble. Why? Because the forces aren’t equal. As borders have to fall, bubbles have to burst and we have to make conscious living mainstream. There has to be change and change has to come from the inside, it can’t be brought about from something that exists as parallel or outside. When the bubble bursts and that captured air mingles with its surroundings – that’s power, that’s the way it works, and that’s what must happen.

footprints

I have made certain choices, most consciously, to simplify my life, reduce my footprint. I live in Costa Rica, but am not a citizen: I have no say in the politics, I am outside the system. All my electricity comes from hydro power stations. I have no car - I have a bicycle. If I travel long distance it’s by bus. I prepare my food from the basic ingredients, trying to buy locally as much as possible: but my grains, pulses and coffee don’t grow in my region, and my beloved tahini comes from Israel. The only processed food I buy is cat food, (the dogs have their own diet), but I’d like to change this. I recycle. I have no debts, no savings and little earnings. Most of what I own is clothing and bedding, 98% of which is cotton, silk, linen or hemp. I also own my wonderful laptop, a slow cooker, a kettle, a camera, a blender and speakers for my ipod. Everything I own will fit in 3 bags. I am currently responsible for 2 dogs and 4 cats.

And that’s it. Yet when I check my footprints online – for carbon, fossil fuels, green living, I’m shocked by how big they are. But I’m also grateful they’re not any bigger. I was a teenager in the 80s, I’m of the x-generation, and I guess we were all a little smug at our post yuppie thinking. We’re older and fatter now and have too much stuff. It’s time to wake up and let it go.

living in truth

Am I living in truth? So many layers to this question. I’m sitting under banana trees technically ‘stealing’ wireless from the realtors next door. But I don’t regard this as untruthful – on 2 counts;

- anywhere that my body picks up wireless I feel entitled to use it

- the realtor is not a fair trader, not living in truth, therefore it isn’t stealing

wow, wait a minute, the logic of the second one is perverse. Does that mean that if say someone were to burn fossil fuels to produce electricity – which god knows isn’t true to the planet, and I were to use it, it would be okay because someone else did it first? Okay, scrap that second reason, it sucks.

Yet how many times a day is this kind of logic the default? All those unconscious moments when I do something because that’s the way I’m conditioned, or because it’s the norm or because it’s easier?

How do I ask myself the question: am I living in truth? Through what I eat, what I wear, what I choose to do for a living, where I choose to live, how I choose to vote, what I do for transport, social action, social outlets . . . the list is long, yet the word choose is prevalent. My life is made up of a series of choices, I can choose at any moment to make a difference. I can choose to live in truth.

And what is truth? True to what? To a moral code left over from imperialism and protestant ‘virtues’? True to myself, to the planet, to my friends, to my vocation? Who’s truth? Perhaps which truth is less important than the concept, the effort to live consciously, to question oneself at any and every moment, wait, am I living in truth, and then to make a choice a decision based the answer.

Lady J gets done

I’d never been anywhere with just Lady J before. But she did well, taking Hoss’ place in front of the bike trotting along, tail up, past all the usual canine nuisances that leap from decks or snarl behind fences. She was as happy as a sandboy when we got into town, happy and tired. The clinic had been set up behind a hotel, in a covered over piece of the parking lot immediately beside the caretaker’s place, actually it almost was the caretaker’s place, a low slung half wall separating us from his bed, rice cooker, blender, refrigerator, table, chairs, stove and sink. An old framed picture of two white kittens hung above a poster of the national soccer team, the door to what I presume was his bathroom was plastered with pictures of Marley, women and soccer players. His reggae was the soundtrack for the morning.

I was number 12. I recognized two of the women ahead of me, gringas. I had seen them around town and at shaun’s but had never really had a conversation with them. There were another two gringas and 3 men, all ticos. A young, surly veterinary nurse was calling names and giving shots. Some of the dogs were screaming, behaving even worse than Hoss when confronted with a needle (I thought of his first and last acupuncture treatment). I had never taken Lady J to a vet before but wondered how she would do, she is such a beautiful dog she didn’t mind the needle at all.

The clinic consisted of two folding tables, a fan and an electric shaver. There was another table littered with syringes, latex gloves and gauze. The vet was obese, a huge man with a beard and a rasta hat. This was definitely a Caribbean experience. On top of each table was a pink wooden trough, v-shaped at about an angle of 60 degrees. Into this the female cats and dogs were laid belly up. Their legs were tied to the table legs, they were shaved and wiped with iodine and then, trussed, legs akimbo, tongues lolling with only a local anesthetic waited for the vet. I had been there at Hoss’ neutering. Amazed that I was allowed not only to see the operation, but had to help. Back in the States it was such a delicate affair. Forms were signed in case the inconceivable happened during surgery, owners bid farewell to their pets, the waiting room was hushed and staff whispered assurances,

“She’ll be fine, she’s in good hands you know, come back tomorrow, yes we’ll phone if we need to.”

The anxious night, oh but she’ll wake up alone, and the joyful and careful reunion in the morning when one was always slightly surprised at the continued grogginess of the loved one.

“keep her quiet for 5 days, no outside play, spray her with this every 12 hours, if there’s any questions call us.”

‘Quiet for 5 days’, how was this achieved? But that was then, this is now. The vet sat to operate his massive form lurching over the tiny body below him. His tools were laid out on a bloodstained green cloth over a stainless steel tray. The first one I watched from 10 feet away, not sure if it was okay to look. But by the second I was by the table and chatting to the vet.

“This is the uterus, it’s longer in dogs, you can tell she’s had a litter already, there’s more fat. Here’re the ovaries.”

It was a small incision and then he pulled out the whole apparatus with a blunt hook, clamped it, cut and tied it and pushed it back in. He made the first lengthways stitch – abdominal wall, subcutaneous tissue, skin – and back again and then moved to the next patient. His nurse finished the stitching and moved the client to an area of the floor which had been covered in opened cardboard boxed. It took about 5 minutes maximum. The males were lain on the table and operated on from behind, the incision being made just in front of their sacs, the gonads pulled out, clamped, cut and tied, the stumps pushed back in and everything sewn. The vet said he could do about 60 operations a day. The team of three – the vet’s wife was there to collect money, had come from Limon and were part of a nationwide program to sterilize pets and strays. There are so many street dogs here and some municipalities deal with the issue by putting out poison a couple of days a year. Too bad if you miss that note in the newspaper. I was fascinated by the whole procedure and enamored by the experience. While Lady J was being done the caretaker was frying chicken just over the wall, about 3 feet from us. With only a local anasthetic LJ’s nose was twitching at the smell. I looked at her uterus, it didn’t look so different from a piece of chicken. I caught myself wondering what it would taste like. I asked if mine looked the same,

“No, see all this? you don’t have it, the ovaries look similar but all this uterus is necessary because she has multiple offspring, yours is much smaller than this.”

Lady J had had a litter of 4 pups in the spring, that was before she came to live with me. I knew her pups though, lovely dogs, and her mother, a beautiful even tempered husky. She had felt what it was like to be a mother, had given birth, nursed, weaned and left her pups. She had come into season since I had her and she was a randy thing always sneaking off to get laid. I wondered if she would notice that things were different. To remove the uterus, the ovaries, everything. She would produce no more hormones. How would her temperament change, how would other dogs change their reactions towards her? I knew I was doing the right thing, she couldn’t have more puppies and roaming male dogs are a threat to Hoss and the cats. But it had been part of her. Hoss had been younger, he was inexperienced (though I was surprised to find out that he mated with LJ and Sasha when they were in heat), it didn’t really change anything, just redirected his wiring perhaps. But she had experienced the whole cycle and now I was stopping the it completely. I can’t help draw parallels to my own life: I am still in the cycle, producing the hormones (craving the chocolate), but have had no, nor will have no, motherhood experience. It felt a bit like betrayal.

A taxi came for us 10 minutes after the surgery, we loaded her and the bike onboard and then back home. Now she’s lying on the deck, groggy but awake.

. . . referendum

so CAFTA passed by a slight majority, funny echo that? I'll find out more . . .

hmmm

so a beautiful week. with a lot to digest. and a new mission which is as old, probably, as my soul. visualization, think submersible, nah, better still swimming naked in dark waters with an orb of light to shine into recesses bringing strength, love and brightness. yep. welcome . . .

kittens

Molly had her babies last Tuesday, 2nd of October between 5:20 and 6:20 pm. She has three, all healthy. She is a happy and very attentive mother. At 4 days they can lift their heads and gather their feet under them instead of scrabbling spread-eagled. They can’t yet hiss but they can look like they’re hissing.
The darkest one was the first born, I think also the smallest. I watched her crown, the contractions pulsed through Molly like a wave, like she was caught in a swell. The second was the dark with white, he took a long time coming, I got worried, and the third was out in a moment. I watched him literally splutter into life as she licked the fluids out of his nose and mouth.

referendum

Today is the TLC referendum. TLC is the CAFTA for Costa Rica: Central American Free Trade Agreement. Yesterday a protest against the TLC was held in San Jose, they say 10,000 people marched. All this week Oscar Arias has been speaking in favour of adopting the agreement. Costa Rica is the only Central American country who has put it to referendum. However in a country where few people take interest in politics, and the majority are simple folk who’s major focus is their immediate family and their own community, there have been some advantages taken: people have been encouraged to vote yes by being given gifts and bus rides to voting stations. Folk wearing brand new ‘my heart says yes’ t-shirts have been interviewed but have very little idea what TLC means, rather some town official said yes was the best way to vote, and took them on a bus ride for the day with lunch and a t-shirt thrown in.
In September a memo was leaked which discussed how to lay on free transport and organize the yes vote amongst campesinos (the rural poor). The US embassy have stepped over diplomatic boundaries and have been involved with helping the government to orchestrate the yes vote. People in positions of local responsibility have been encouraged to spread the yes word through promises of increased funding or other perks.
Oscar Arias and his government want the agreement. Oscar Arias has oil interests. It is thought there is oil in the Caribbean, currently it is illegal to even explore for oil or minerals in national parks and protected areas; 27% of the country is protected parkland, almost 50% of the Caribbean coast is protected. The TLC agreement will provide loopholes.
Feelings amongst the no-voters are mixed. Most want TLC, but they want fair free trade and believe many points in the current agreement need changing. Currently, for example, there is a tariff on US corn entering Costa Rica, (so the coke manufactured here is made from cane sugar, not corn syrup as in Mexico and the States). With TLC cheap corn will be available, effecting cane farmers, cheap rice will be available as will cheaper pulses. Rice and beans are the staple foods for almost every tico (many believe that without daily rice and beans one becomes sick – there’s some kernel in there, together rice and beans provide complete protein). In theory this is better for the consumer but worse for the farmer, and therefore the economy. Cheap imports from the US will flood the markets, further americanising life here and damaging the more expensive Central American products. On the other hand labour is very cheap here (the normal pay is 800 colones an hour, about $1.80), which means that US companies will be able to move manufacturing here, more employment for Costa Rica, less in the States. Currently agriculture is the largest employer in the country, then tourism, then manufacturing. With TLC manufacturing could replace agriculture which in the long term would effect the country’s ability to provide its own food and to maintain it’s own self dependence. It seems that all Free Trade agreements are good for business owners and government, not for the people or the environment, certainly not in the long term.
I think the vote will go through, while everyone I know will vote no, and there are by far more no voters in the Limon region than yes, there are too many people who think as this fisherman:
“I’m voting yes, why not? it doesn’t affect me and change is good.”
(interview in Tico Times, September 24th)
The doesn’t affect me attitude of ticos cannot be underestimated, and with the promise of t-shirts and days out, I think it will be enough to swing the referendum.
And if not, well it’ll probably be swung anyway. In the general election Oscar Arias ‘won’ by less than 4000 votes. Certain parts of the country simply didn’t return or count their votes, mysteriously lost. Investigations were started which lasted for months tied up in incredible amounts of bureaucracy and finally petered into nothing, even the investigation results were somehow lost. This seems typical; lack of funds and ultimately lack of interest and the notion that well, we have this now, it’s already done, after all it doesn’t affect me. Not really.
For information on TLC, CAFTA and US-Central American relationships see the WOLA website:

www.wola.org