I’ve taken a bit of a hiatus since the last upload, and much has changed. I’ve moved from San Jose to the mountainous coastal town called Dominical. I’m living with a housekeeping and incredible cook named Lela, her wild-eyed farmer husband Tista, and their notoriously antisocial son Pablo. Instead of trying to explain who these family members are, here are three short events that took place since I arrived a week and some ago.
3/11/14
“Pull over to the side of the road…Here, here” I heard Isabelle, the director of the Costa Rican program tell our driver in a noticeably hushed tone compared to what she said next. “Here we are! Robert, your new home!” Compared to the last home we’d come from, I had some snap judgments about this house on the side of this windy mountain road. Lauren was just dropped off at the top of the mountain, where her parents greeted her out front of their cafeteria / house. Across the street, a vibrant block party couldn’t help but infect a sense of excitement, only topped by what I assumed to be a small bullfighting arena. Five minutes later, I here I was on the side of what seemed like a lonely mountain highway unloading my bags while my family was absent. As I approached the house, the woman I’d call mother for the next three weeks exited the open door to greet me. Her husband, then got up from the bench on the side of house to greet me as well – he seemed to blend in with the house. Maybe I was preoccupied, maybe the two were somewhat reserved compared to the warm welcome Lauren received, but before I stepped into the house, I was already feeling flustered and negative. Adely, my new mother, ushered me into the compact living room, and told me to enter my room. Three rooms sat next to each other forming the corner of the house, and I peeked into each one. “El Verde,” she pointed to the room in the center, glowing a teal green. I quietly moved my bags into the sparsely furnished space, noting not only the sharp creaking the floor made, but the degree to which the floorboards moved. As I leaned my bags against the wall, the open window to the left caught my eye. Outside, I could see a car with the windows down, and beyond the tarpaulin “garage,” was a deep, green valley. I moved to the other open window facing the valley, and two thoughts crossed my mind. First, the window itself: More like a cannon porthole on a ship, the window was just a piece of the planked wall carved out and attached with hinges – no glass, no bug screen, and in the night, just another part of my wall. More importantly was the view. A descending ridgeline in the background, a thick, lush forest between the mountains and the foreground, and, “Look there,” my host mother had appeared behind me, “That between those two mountains, that’s the ocean.” Her lips curled into a smile before she left, and I’d like to think she understood the wave of emotion and realization that she’d seen on the faces of the 18 students before her. Much like my contentment with simplicity, my fascination and charm derived from the movements and places where I can appreciate life’s comforts without feeling clean and pampered that keeps me returning to Ghana, I understood that this new life was going to be just fine, and maybe more. I returned to the windowsill, mounted myself straddling one leg outside the edge of the house, and watched the forest.
“Could you grab the straps,” Tista asked, as he hoisted the cooler up onto the roof of his rugged and beaten 4x4. I looked to the left, to the right, did a 360, and finally understood that he wanted the bike tubes next to the Fresca. Today, my first full day in Dominical, we were to head down to the beach and have a picnic. The three generations of women in the family – Lela, my mother, her daughter Anya, and her little daughter Kayla, were cramped into the back seat clearly designed for two people, with Kayla occupying a side seat to make matters more difficult. I sat in front, and after the bike tires were sufficiently bound to the rusting rooftop bars, we headed down to the beach.
After meeting Sarah’s family on the side of the road, (her family was packed into the car in an almost identical fashion), both of our families continued down the windy forest road to the beach. The conversation in my family is sporadic – someone has a thought, there is a brief bout of conversation between the adults, then absolute silence for a few minutes. My Spanish still has a far way to go before I could consider myself proficient, but I enjoyed shocking the family by interjecting with my two cents when they spoke quickly without complete enunciation between each other.
We arrived at what I now understand is the Dominical area’s largest supermarket, and both Tista and my host father headed inside to buy some supplies. “He’s going to buy some meat,” Lela told me. Sarah and I exchanged glances, and having been deprived of English speaking for almost 24 hours, burst into hurried conversation about our host families. A few minutes passed by before I spotted Tista again. Maybe it was the fact that his boots had the laces tied at their ends to make clear that they’ve never been pulled tight like normal boots, or maybe it was the way he seemed to look anywhere but where his feet were headed and simply let his eyes wander, but there’s never been someone I know that I can so confidently say “has a screw loose.” He tromped down the inclined pathway, somehow carrying three beers in his right hand, leaving his left hand free to tap a drum beat on the railing. He approached Sarah’s car, and – mind you, this is there first interaction – politely asked if she would drink a beer. After a comical moment of hesitation, brought on not by the question, but surely because of the spectacle of a human that is my new host father, Sarah replied with a “Si, gracias” and took the beer. Tista handed another to Sarah’s host mother, and promptly handed me one as well. Realizing he hadn’t bought enough for he himself to drink, Tista headed back inside to purchase another, tapping the railing with his free hand.
He returned quickly this time, and with a glance side to side, cracked the can open and began to take deep gulps. He hopped into the driver’s seat, and started the engine. “Tista, you shouldn’t be drinking, what if they see you?” Lela muttered, clearly having gone through the scenario before and conscious that I must have been looking on wide-eyed. Tranquila, Tista replied, handing her the can. “I’ll just hand it to you when I’m not taking sips. They’ll think you’re drinking anyways.” He looked at me with what Sarah simply dubbed “crazy eyes” and laughed.
We’d been finished eating fore a good 45 minutes when Lela left to retrieve something from her bedroom. “And she had her mind with her when she went,” Tista continued, almost sighing. “One hundred and one years old. Here, look.” Lele had returned with a framed picture and handed it to me. I was looking at Tista’s mother, who was weferred to as Abuela, “Grandmother,” by everyone including her own children. “She looks younger than 101,” I contributed. Tista half-smiled. “She acted like a younger women too. Every day, even at over 100 years old, she would cook her own tortillas. She’d wash her own clothes, and NEVER let me or anyone wash her clothes for her,” Lela continued. “All the students from Pitzer always went to her house to ask her about her life, everyone adored her and marveled at how someone could be so old, yet have a strong mind.” I took the framed picture back in my hands after Lela blew the dust off. “She died because she was sad that her ‘favorite’ son died, but I don’t think she really realized who her favorite son was,” Tista looked up from his old hands and said. “She lived in the house out back for almost her whole life, but would always call my brother who lived in San Jose for anything. One time, he made the three hour drive to change a light bulb for her, a light bulb! And I was right here!” he exclaimed, holding his hands as if he was screwing in the bulb. “But I knew that she was my favorite. She lived with me for almost 60 years, which for most people would be much more than half their lives. And I lived with her for all of my life.” He brought his hands down and began to wring them once again. “We threw her birthdays at 97 because we thought she might not make it to 98, and of course at 100,” interjected Lela. “But not for her one hundred and first,” replied Tista, with tears lining his bottom eyelid. We passed the picture to him. “Of course, this will happen to all of us,” he smiled, almost retracting his tears. “But, that’s life.” “And what a life, and what a mind she had,” concluded Lela. And for a moment almost tangible, as she affectionately stroked the picture frame, the three of us sat in silence.
