tpdteatro: theater and latin america

2 weeks

2008-08-09T21:17:00.000-07:00

So I finished my internship on Friday and we leave for Nicaragua for 9 days on Wednesday. We return to the US 2 weeks from tomorrow on August 24.

There will be pictures of Nicaragua eventually but I probably won't be posting a lot more stories or pictures besides that unless something drastic happens. Also, since I won't be bringing my computer to Nicaragua, it might take a while to get the pictures up.

Innermost Parts

2008-08-01T23:57:00.000-07:00

I am also now blogging at Innermost Parts. Innermost Parts is Brandeis' only progressive blog and it has quickly become an important presence on campus.

I will not be double posting items here that I have posted there and vice versa so if you want to read everything, you'll have to check both frequently.

La Carpio

2008-07-31T21:32:00.001-07:00

One of the most important parts of my internship is when we go once a week to work with a group of women in La Carpio, a squatter community (the residents don't actually own the land) of about 30,000 people outside of San Jose. The community has many Nicaraguan immigrants because that was the group of people who originally founded it in the early '90's.

La Carpio is viewed by most people in San Jose as somewhere you don't want to go because it's dangerous. It's not. I haven't spent a lot of time in the community, but in general it doesn't seem less safe than most areas of San Jose, just poorer.

Most Ticos will also tell you that La Carpio is made up of all Nicaraguans. (For many Ticos, Nicaraguans=Violence.) They are wrong. Many Ticos live there, it's just that the general population would rather live in denial of the fact that living conditions can actually be that bad for Ticos in Costa Rica.

Rather than continue describing the relationship between Costa Ricans and Nicaraguans I'll just say that it's very similar to the U.S.-Mexico relationship. Nicaraguans immigrate. Nicaraguans work in a lot of jobs that Ticos don't want (like coffee picking). Violence occurs. Ticos blame Nicas for violence. Ticos notice the presence of drugs in the city. Ticos blame Nicas for drugs and drug violence in urban areas. Ticos pay a lot for good health care and see people that they assume to be Nicaraguans in clinics. Ticos blame Nicas for stealing their high quality health care which isn't available in Nicaragua. Nicas continue to immigrate to Costa Rica because, even in shacks like you can see in the pictures from La Carpio below, Nicaraguans have better lives here than they ever had in Nicaragua.

I happened to be inside the clinic where we hold rehearsals when I took these pictures so some of them are from behind a fence.

As you can see in the background here, as if the lives of the residents of La Carpio weren't tough enough already, they are lucky enough to have high-voltage wires running through the middle of their community which is pretty dangerous. But of course, as long as the wires are there, the residents will take advantage of their presence by stealing electricity from them, which is Extremely dangerous since it involves splitting the wires that are in the air and running them into your own house.

La Carpio is also lucky enough to be a neighbor to multiple landfills (and a cement factory - health problems?) and as such they constantly have garbage trucks driving through the community. How pleasant. Of course, the passing garbage trucks don't do anything about the piles of garbage lying on the sides of the streets in La Carpio, they just drive on by, just like the majority of Ticos who continue to ignore the community.

Me with some of the women that we are working with in La Carpio.

Volcan Arenal and more...

2008-07-21T23:25:00.000-07:00

So, we went to Arenal Volcano last weekend. But the volcano wasn't the only exciting thing we saw.

The first interesting thing that happened was that we encountered one of those people who gets on the bus and tries to sell you something or does something in order to try to get you to give them money. This time it was a man about 70 years old, singing songs with sexual implications, one of them about celebrating Mother's Day (which is coming up on August 15). This probably doesn't sound that exciting, but watching this guy sing/shake his booty was hilarious.

Next, we went on a tour of the Trail of Silence near the volcano.

These mushrooms are poisonous.

It was pretty cloudy when we got to where we could see the volcano from. The volcano was really hard to take pictures of because it was getting dark at the time and the clouds in the sky make the picture look weird, but here it is. A couple times while we were looking at it some lava fell down the side in the form of rocks. That was exciting since it was the closest we would be able to get to seeing the lava coming out the top of the volcano, but it was impossible to take pictures of because the rocks disappeared after 1 to 2 seconds.

We took these pictures at the entrance to the hot springs where we went after seeing the volcano. We had a very relaxing time there but unfortunately couldn't take any pictures without risking getting our cameras wet, so you'll just have to go for yourself.

Before getting on the bus back to San Jose the last thing we had to do was track down an elderly woman named Elsie who ran the hostel next door to ours in the town where we stayed near the volcano. At our hostel in San Jose we met another woman named Ligia (pronounced Lee-he-ah) who suggested that we stay at Elsie's hostel. Unfortunately, Elsie's phone wasn't working when we called to make the reservations which was why we had to track her down ourselves for Ligia. When we found Elsie we discovered that she was very nice and invited us inside to chat and have refreshments (unfortunately we had already eaten breakfast).

We told her all about who we were and all the details of our trip to Costa Rica and Elsie was very pleased to hear everything about us and to tell us about her life. She also told us about her worldview, how natural disasters are occurring in many places because of "contamination" caused by certain people in the world. Unfortunately, I'm almost positive she wasn't talking about pollution or global warming. Before we left her house Elsie insisted that we not only stand with her while she recited a prayer, but that we repeat every line after she said it. Meeting people like Elsie isn't all that uncommon here, I've met others previously, but it's certainly an interesting experience. They're all very polite and accommodating, but the encounters are always an adventure.

When we got back to San Jose Ligia was no longer staying in the hostel so we have no way of getting her Elsie's phone number. Oh well.

Simon Bolivar Zoo

2008-07-21T19:58:00.001-07:00

I went to the small zoo in San Jose a while ago with someone from the hostel. It wasn't like a zoo in the U.S.

For some reason it's just not the same seeing crocodiles where there's a bunch of them lying around.

The monkeys were okay but they weren't swinging around on trees.

A lot of the animals were clearly underfed but I don't actually think it's the fault of the zoo - I think they would have fed them enough if they had the money.

Also, the side of the river that ran through the zoo was strewn with trash.

Technical Difficulties

2008-07-14T22:44:00.000-07:00

You might have noticed that the post Road Rules ends with "you will also need to:" For some reason blogspot refuses to display the rest of the post. I'll get it up as soon as possible.
TPD

Update: The whole post Road Rules is now readable. I'm still working on fixing the expandable post function.

2 million?

2008-07-14T12:49:00.000-07:00

Translated from a news report I saw on tv recently:

"Only 22 days from (August 2) the procession to Cartago, ecclesiastical authorities and aid organizations are preparing themselves for the 2 million parishoners that will come to see the altar of the Virgin of Los Angeles this year." (The report was only about a minute long and it doesn't have that much else that is interesting to say so I won't translate the rest of it, but you can read it in Spanish here.)

2 million. That's more than twice as large as any group of people that I've ever been in, and I thought those were pretty big. Since she is the patron saint of Costa Rica, the Virgin of Los Angeles, commonly called La Negrita (the little black girl), is really important to Ticos. Additionally, people travel from all over Central America to see her because she also supposedly heals people of all kinds of illnesses and injuries.

I previously posted some pictures of the church where the Virgin lives here.

If you want to learn how she became so highly revered, read on.

Around 1635, there was a segregated community in Cartago where only Mestizos lived. On the morning of August 2, a poor and simple woman from the woods nearby this community went out to collect firewood from the forest where she lived and she found on a rock a small figure that looked like the Virgin Mary holding the baby Jesus in her arms. The woman carved the figure out of the stone, took it home, and stowed it in a small wooden box.

As midday arrived, the woman went back into the forest to fetch more wood, and saw the same figure once again on the same rock. The woman believed that it was a different figure and so she again took it home to her house. When she opened the wooden box to put the second figure inside with the first, she was astounded to find that the first one was gone. Her astonishment grew to the extent that she was almost horrified when, for the third time, returning to the forest, she found the same figure on top of the rock. Without hesitation she took it home with her to see if it really did escape from the box again, and she found the box empty.

The good and humble woman was very alarmed and ran to the house of the priest in town where she recounted to him the strange series of events that she had just experienced. The priest, who is said to have been Father Alonso Sandoval, took the small figure and put it in a chest for further examination. When the priest decided to examine the figure the following day, he realized that it was no longer in the place where he had put it. When the poor woman who had previously discovered the figure returned to the forest to get her firewood the next morning, she discovered the figure once again on top of the same rock where she had found it each of the previous times.

When the woman ran to tell the priest, he and other people from the town came to the woods, and in a solemn procession carried the figure to the church, putting it in the tabernacle. The following day, when someone asked to examine the figure, it was no longer there and everyone ran to the same rock in the woods, and there it was once again. It was the fifth time that the figure had manifest itself as the Virgin Mary. Understanding that she wanted to live on that same spot, the people immediately built a hermitage there where she could live while they built an honorable temple to her, the heavenly Virgin of Los Angeles.

If you're interested, I translated the legend from this version.

Rules of the Road

2008-07-13T21:57:00.000-07:00

Driving is crazy in Costa Rica. Just to give you an idea, I've written up a list of the 5 basic rules that I've noticed it's imperative to be aware of when driving here, especially in San Jose.

1. Stop signs and red lights are optional - you only need to stop at them if a car is approaching from the opposite direction.

2. As you will remember from physics class, "an object in motion will remain in motion until stopped by an opposing force." This law of science is obeyed in various instances.

Since this is true, a car approaching an intersection with a red light has the right of way to go through that intersection, rather than a car stopped at the intersection with a green light. This will work out better for everyone involved than if the car waiting at the intersection had attempted to act as the "opposing force" that stops the vehicle approaching the red light.

3. Never fail to follow Rule #1 by not going through stop signs and red lights, or you will become the enemy of everyone behind you. Similarly, assuming that you have the right of way just because you have a green light or have been waiting at a stop sign, and therefore disregarding Rule #2, can have disastrous consequences for your health.

4. As a pedestrian it is even more important that you try to avoid becoming the "opposing force" in Rule #2.

5. Although Rule #4 is true, you will never succeed in crossing a street unless you run (or walk, once you're experienced enough) in front of oncoming traffic that's not slowing down.

In order to arrive at the beach at some time during the same day you left, you will also need to: scare cows off the road by honking at them or lurching at them with your car, use the left side of the road to pass someone while you're going around a curve, and not drive off the side of the mountain on the way there.

On the other hand, maybe you shouldn't take suggestions from me on how to drive here because I've never been crazy enough to try it.

People

2008-07-06T23:17:00.000-07:00

Living in a hostel is amazing because we meet so many amazing new people every week and day. For example, so far we have had a lot of fun hanging out with:

Molly and Jenny - two girls I went to high school with
Jennifer - organizes volunteers to work with a small Tico community
Shannon - writing her dissertation on violence against women here
Paulina - an Indigenous (Bri-Bri) woman from Costa Rica
Adrianna, Vlad and Meghan - vet students, with Vets Without Borders
Maria - getting dental work because it's cheaper than in the U.S.
Katherine - a Tica who has lived in the US and recently returned

This is by no means everybody we have met, just the ones who have made an impression on me. Also, these are only the people we've met who are also staying in the hostel. This doesn't even include the people I meet through my work, from the peace center next door to the hostel, the people who work at the hostel, through the Quaker meeting or through our travels.

Mercado Central

2008-07-06T22:30:00.000-07:00

Mercado Central is where Ticos in San Jose typically shop for their food. It is a pretty standard Latin American market as far as I am concerned. They sell anything and everything. There are restaurants, ice cream, vegetables, manufactured goods (duffel bags, backpacks), t-shirts, souvenirs, meat, fish, poultry, flowers, spices, hair products, toiletries, rice/beans, tortillas, macaroni, spaghetti, cheese, etc...

40 years of making you feel pops.

Training at Colegio Mexico

2008-07-03T23:01:00.000-07:00

Okay well, I just discovered that I think I can only show one slideshow at a time, so I'm going to post some other pictures for you here. In the meantime, look at that slideshow real good before I do something else exciting and I decide to take it away.

I posted previously about training teachers in using non-violence to solve problems. In the past two weeks I have attended two trainings at another school in San Jose called Colegio Mexico. With about 900 students, I've heard that Colegio Mexico is a medium sized K-12 school for the capital city.

A few interesting things happened during the two workshops that I attended. (The full training included four workshops, one each week.) The first thing was that during snack break in the middle of the the first workshop I went to they celebrated Father's Day. At first, this idea didn't phase me.

Somewhere around the time when they got out the pinata I realized, this would never happen in the US. Sure people celebrate father's day but they're mostly young kids and families. I've never heard of an American workplace celebrating anything besides a holiday party. Maybe this is all just a coincidence and the Costa Ricans are just looking for an occasion to break out the pinata (who doesn't?) but I'd like to believe that maybe they're onto something that we haven't picked up on in the US yet. Not only did they break open a pinata, but the gave a gift bag (coffee mug, coffee and chocolates) to each of the teachers in the room who was a father. So, if Ticos have picked up on a good habit that Americans have neglected to adopt, where did we go wrong?

As is clear from this picture, the fun of the pinata doesn't just come from watching a blindfolded person swing wildly at an object full of candy, but from deceiving them into thinking that they actually have a chance in hell of hitting it.

The other odd thing that happened in the training occurred during the second workshop that I went to, when small groups were presenting their dramatizations of conflicts that they have resolved nonviolently. One group, pictured above, presented a skit about two boys who were about to fight before they were stopped by the woman in the center. (The skit was a portrayal of a conflict that the woman in the center actually witnessed. She is playing her mother and the boys were her brothers.) Just when the boys were about to start fighting, the woman jumped in and said that they couldn't fight unless they went all out and actually killed each other. She handed them each a broomstick handle and said, ok go, I want to see two dead bodies on the floor. Fight. The boys dropped the broomsticks and didn't hurt eachother.

The first disturbing thing about this story is that the groups were presenting examples of conflicts that were resolved non-violently. Apparently, handing two boys broomsticks and telling them to kill each other is someone's version of nonviolent. I think it's a creative idea, but the majority of the 40-50 teachers seemed to agree that, if this approach was followed in their school today, the story might not have ended the same way. Also, during the skit when the fight was escalating, and during another similar skit, all of the teachers were hooting and hollering, cheering for a real bruiser. During a workshop on alternatives to violence. And these are the people who are supposed to be able to keep the violence from happening. I guess there's a lot of work to be done.

On the other hand, at the end of the first workshop a man said that during the training he resolved a conflict with a coworker that he had been at odds with for the past 12 years.

Pictures

2008-07-03T22:39:00.000-07:00

As you can see, I have decided to add a slideshow feature to the blog. It makes it possible for me to post a hell of a lot more pictures which is cool, although I don't like that it's so small and I can't really add comments for the photos.

In this first slideshow are the pictures from our trip to Doka Estate Coffee Plantation, Volcan Poas, La Paz waterfall gardens (and the animals there), and the Sarapiqui River.

I think I'll still post some pictures like I have been so that I can force you to look at them. Like this one:

This type of oxcart and the design are traditionally Costa Rican and was used in the olden days. It is still used some by farmers, like this one, in the countryside.

Either we plant trees, or we're fucked. I'm contacting these people to get this bumper sticker for myself. If I succeed I'll tell you so that you can get one too.

Whales and Dolphins...or the lack of...

2008-07-01T21:56:00.000-07:00

We went on a whale and dolphin watch. If you look really closely at the pictures maybe you'll be able to see dolphins. If so, you should get a new pair of glasses because there actually are no whales OR dolphins in any of the pictures. At the end of the tour the guide told us that they see dolphins only a minority of the time. Well, it was a nice boat ride anyway.

These birds eat tuna. Where there is tuna, there are dolphins. See the dolphins? Me neither.

Took this from a sandbar. Or whateveryoucallit. It disappears during high tide you can walk across when it's low tide.

The little red dots are crabs. Apparently they don't like having their picture taken and so they ran away from me really fast.

Las tres hermanas (The three sisters).

Beach

2008-06-27T21:47:00.000-07:00

Pictures of the Dominical beach on the Pacific coast. Yay.

And some pictures from the small hotel where we were staying. The resident iguanas.

Good Roads and Fast Buses

2008-06-26T16:18:00.000-07:00

So our trip to Monteverde was the first long bus ride we took and on the way back the bus broke down. In my book that means we're 1 for 2 on bus rides. 50%. Not great.

But of course, we couldn't have luck that bad for the entire trip. Surely we wouldn't have any more unfortunate and unlucky bus experiences during the rest of our trip.

However, the definition of "unfortunate and unlucky" in terms of bus rides in Costa Rica is very different from what you might imagine it being in the U.S.

Jump to last Friday. This time we decided to go to Dominical on the Pacific coast for a leisurely weekend on the beach. As it turned out the bus was somewhat leisurely as well. In a way.

We were taking a 9:30 bus and had to make a connection at 1:30 which we thought shouldn't have been hard since it was supposed to be a three hour ride according to our guide book. Except that when we bought the tickets, the guy at the bus station told us that it was actually a 4 hour trip. Oh shit. The next connection wasn't until 4pm. We didn't really want to wait in the connecting city for 2 and a half hours so we were just hoping a lot that it wouldn't take quite four hours and that we would make the next bus easily.

It was going fine until we slowed to a stop about an hour and a half into what should have been a four hour bus ride. After a few minutes the bus driver got up and told us that there was a crash ahead of us on the road and that it would be quite a while until we got going again. So he opened up the doors and everybody who wanted to got out to walk along the side of the road. And we sat. And waited. After half an hour we hadn't moved. After an hour nothing had happened. We heard a rumor that half the road fell off and there was no way we could get through. Great. So now what were we supposed to do? After an hour and a half cars started going by us steadily in the opposite direction. The bus driver turned the bus back on. We got excited. Everybody got back in the bus and we got ready to go.

Then he turned it off again. We waited some more. Cars and trucks drove by us going in the same direction. Why weren't we moving? Finally the bus driver turned the bus back on again. This time we really did start moving, but it was probably at least half a mile until we got to the site of the accident. When we did get there the bus stopped again and we were all told to get out while the bus drove across the narrow strip of road between the crashed tractor trailer and the part of the road that fell off. Here are some pictures.

Did I mention the road broke? Probably caused by all the rain that has come recently. It is the rainy season.

The yellow rope was running parallel to the double yellow line in the middle of the road. The bus went on the right side of the green post, but without crashing into the crashed truck that was still in the middle of the road. Actually, the bus driver messed up a little bit the first time and had to back up a bit so that he didn't scratch the side of the bus on one of the big cement cylinders. He got it right the second time. After that the ride was pretty normal. What should have been a four hour ride turned out to be about six hours. When we got to the bus terminal, it was about 3:45 and we needed to make the 4pm bus to Dominical. We searched frantically for our next bus but as it turned out, it was a bunch of blocks down the street, although our guide book implied that it would be right in front of us when we got off the first bus. We walked fast and eventually found a taxi which got us there with just a few minutes to spare. Phew.

Pictures of the beach to come later.

Training Teachers

2008-06-25T20:01:00.000-07:00

Through my internship organization, Dramatic Problem Solving, I have gotten involved with Centro de los Estudios Para la Paz, or CEPPA (the Center for Peace Studies). CEPPA does workshops with teachers, students and parents from the 50 most at-risk schools in the San Jose area. The trainings are similar to trainings run by the Alternatives to Violence Project. Last week I did my first training with CEPPA, and I will do another one on Friday, where I hope to act as a facilitator of the workshop. I thought you would appreciate seeing some pictures.

The workshop was held at a Boy Scout camp which was kind of weird because: 1). I'm disturbed that they have Boy Scouts in countries besides the US, and 2). All of the signs used the name "Guides" instead of "Girl Scouts".

But it was a beautiful place to be.

About 90 teachers from one school were attending this training. We did the training in three groups of 30. During one exercise we split our group into four small groups to brainstorm about "What is violence" and "What is nonviolence". Here are the pictures of the groups.

For some reason many people don't smile when you take their photo here. It makes them look pretty serious, but you can really tell that they have a lot of personality.

Dos Pinos...?

2008-06-16T21:11:00.000-07:00

Why is the bus stopping to let more people off? When are we ever going to get back to San Jose?......Is that the sound of the bus not starting? Why is the bus not starting?

So, on the way back from Monteverde, the bus broke down. On a highway outside of San Jose. At 8:30pm, in the pitch black of night. Impossible to get a taxi. We don't have a cell phone. Next to a...Dos Pinos factory? Great.

Eventually we did get a cab which we managed to share with some other people. Then we realized that we were near the airport. Our first cab from the airport cost $23. We only have a little less than $20. Cabbies aren't really nice about this kinda thing. (Last week a cabbie tried to get us to believe that a $4 ride cost a ridiculous $14 because there was traffic. We, luckily, didn't have enough money and so only gave him $4, but he threatened to call the police. Not that he would have since they would know we were right, but I'm just saying, Tico cabbies get grumpy when you don't pay them enough. Bad News Bears.)

So now we don't have enough money for the cab ride home and we have no other way to get home, and no way to contact anyone. What did we do? We got dropped off at the airport and used the ATM there, and then got another cab home.

Crisis averted. And we survived. Yeah.

Butterflies

2008-06-16T20:15:00.000-07:00

We went to a butterfly farm at Monteverde. There were butterflies all around, but they're pretty hard to take pictures of. Here are some.

These are cocoons. I think the grey/black one and clear one are empty, but the two below them might still be full. The orange butterfly has just come out. It has to hang onto the cocoon in order to strengthen it's wings with more blood so that it can fly. If it doesn't hang on until the wings are strong enough, it will die.

This one definitely still has a butterfly in it.

They say that this butterfly might actually be where we get the name for the animal in English (in Spanish it's completely different - mariposa), because the lighter part of the wings look like butter. Butter-fly.

Mating butterflies. This is the only way butterflies can mate and also the only way they can poop. Wow, of all the things to have to do while in the same position.

While male butterflies are polygamous, female butterflies are usually monogamous. The exception occurs when the male butterfly isn't strong enough to fill the female butterfly with his sperm. In this case, another male butterfly will take his place.

Cartago and Orosi

2008-06-10T16:01:00.000-07:00

We decided to go to Cartago today. It was the capital of Costa Rica a long time ago, before they switched to San Jose.

First, we decided to go to Orosi, a small town past Cartago. We got off the bus at a lookout and were disappointed to find out about all the things we couldn't do at this mountain-top park: roller blade, bicycle, and make "love scenes".

Orosi, from above

Now, in Orosi:

A town with garbage is a town without culture.

We should leave our children a cleaner future.

This church dates back a few hundred years.

Thanks to Jennifer for that sweet shot.

This cathedral, rebuilt in the early 1900's after an earthquake, is in Cartago. Thousands of Costa Ricans migrate here every August 2 to pray to La Negrita, the patron saint of Costa Rica.

Jennifer likes to bond with sacred statues.

More Cows

2008-06-10T15:28:00.000-07:00

Vaca loca. I think it's supposed to be a transvestite. Now you know what Costa Ricans think of transvestites.

air contamination is produced by the emission of toxic substances. Thank god - At least some countries in the world understand what's going on.

San Jose

2008-06-05T20:29:00.000-07:00

San Jose is a big city and Emmajoy and I live exactly in the middle. Oh great. We're doomed.

No, we'll be fine. But seriously, we've been here just over 48 hours and have been lost twice, once in the pouring rain.

One thing that makes San Jose (like most Latin American cities) confusing, is that street names/numbers exist only on maps and a couple signs. If you ask most people on the street, they won't necessarily know what street they are on, even if they've lived in San Jose for their entire life.

Wow, it didn't rain today. That's rare. Anyway, here are some pictures for your enjoyment.

Our hostel on a nice little side street.

The cow exhibit is in San Jose right now. Apparently it travels to cities around the world. Has anyone seen it anywhere else? These cows were made by Costa Rican artists.

Milkshake?

I'm not sure what this cow is doing, but it's hot.

El taxi-cow.

It's a cow on a zipline. Ha.

Ah, Latin American art... can you say "magical realism"?

High-tech bus fare machine.

Who wants to play "Name That Bust"?

If you guessed Andrew Carnegie, you were right!

That's right, Carnegie was a benefactor of San Jose, and for that he gets a small statue in the middle of the park where so many Costa Rican prostitutes spend much of their time. Interestingly, prostitution is legal in Costa Rica.

Apparently this guy, Jose de San Martin, helped Simon Bolivar liberate South America. Sounds like a decent guy. Anybody know anything else about him?

A blog

2008-06-05T19:48:00.000-07:00

This is my blog. I will post pictures and write some things. You can comment and I will respond. We'll see what happens.

Unlike some blogs, the purpose of this blog is (for now) very simple: Theater and latinoamerica.