Monday, April 30, 2012

a city and seaport in northwestern England, on the eastern side of the mouth of the Mersey River

I believe I've mentioned it before, but this post will explain it: in mid-February I moved to a new site. At least in Peace Corps Costa Rica, and my general understanding is everywhere, volunteers are supposed to stay in one site for the two years of service. But, if a volunteer is having trouble finding project partners, or has relationship or cultural problems that prevent him working, he can ask to change sites. My site change came about for three main reasons. My new site, as I've said, is Liverpool, a small highway town in the Río Blanco district of Limón. 
The first is that I had been living with a wonderful host family since December of 2010 in Puerto Viejo de Sarapiquí. I got along really well with the mom and two kids and fairly well with the father, and not better because I didn't see him much as he worked a lot and also because he wasn't super talkative, or rather, we didn't have many things to talk about. Well, in May, the host mom explained to me that she and her husband might be getting divorced, and that she thus wouldn't be around a lot from then on, and might be looking for work. Thus, she wouldn't be able to provide meals for me anymore or at least not regularly. She also explained it would be better for the family to work through this tough time without me in the house, so I wasn't to enter the house anymore. So, as I had a separate entrance, I just stopped going into the house to chat, watch tv, eat, etc, started eating at the high school and the night school, and preparing my own food on weekends and the days I didn't go to the night school. I finished out the school year in this manner, but as it ended, in December, I contacted the office about any information they had about possible host families in my town, as well as exploring living options with a few of the people I knew in town. 
As a result of this communication with the office, as well as some other reports and communication I'd sent to my boss, we sat down and talked about my situation. My other boss (boss's assistant) had just come back from visiting me and the people at my school and was concerned about their commitment to work with me (a few had said they were too busy, others had said they weren't interested). I more or less corroborated all this with my boss and explained to him the challenges I had been having working with the teachers at both schools (I'll explain more on this later). He was very understanding and a good listener, and in the end said that he was open to the idea of me changing sites, in order to look for a better working relationship. 
The third reason for the change, and part of my boss's openness to the change is that a new group of volunteers are currently in training (have been since early March) and a group of them will be heading to Limón, so my boss was thinking it'd be helpful to have a volunteer get started in the region and be here to help guide the new volunteers as they get started with their work and life in the region. 
So, with these three reasons, I moved to Liverpool. I've asked around, but have yet to find out why the town is named as such. I'll post more about the town and my host family later. My host family is great though, and includes two canine members, whose pictures are placed throughout this post to make it more fun! Roby, is the golden retriever, and super hard to take a good picture of, because if you get near him he always jumps on your chest. Nico, is a miniature pinscher, and is my pal and sits on my lap when we watch TV.   

Saturday, April 28, 2012

Like a Kid in A Cough Drop Store


This past Thursday I was in San José with a number of other volunteers at the immigration office getting our visas renewed and getting ID cards just like the ones that all Costa Ricans have, making us appear much more legit. I had spent the previous night sleeping in a hostel, and the three nights before that on the floor of the principal's office at a school (more on that later), but, that, with plenty of bus travel had me in contact with all sorts of people, and I had a cold. For the sore throat, I had purchased some cough drops. When I pulled them out in the immigration line, Kyle G., a third year extender that works in the office as a volunteer leader, asked if I had a cough or if I was just really integrated. "Integration" is one of the big goals of the Peace Corps, and can involve (in my opinion) any variety of adaptations to the Costa Rica lifestyle. 


He asked me this because one of the more curious traits of Costa Rican culture is that they treat Halls Cough Drops as candy. No qualifiers, no additions, they simply treat cough drops as candy. They buy them as impulse purchases at restaurants, grocery stores, or corner stores. They will ask you if you'd like one the way we might offer some Skittles or M&Ms to someone when we buy a bag. No cough necessary, not even a bit scratchy throat-I made the mistake of asking that the first few times. The one great thing about this, if you happen to have a cough on the bus-you can be guaranteed that someone around you might offer you a cough drop-so, yes, they do understand that they help when one has a cough, but that doesn't prevent them from buying them all the time. Even the smallest little corner store will probably have five or six flavors. And those little rolling merchants selling newspapers, cigarettes, and gum in the big cities, you bet they've got the full line of cough drops, both regular and creamy. Halls even makes cough drop-esque lollipops which come in stylish black packaging and are called "Halls Nite" and are advertised as something to be sucked on when out dancing at the night clubs. Cough drops just got exciting and sexy. If you don't believe me, check out the website. I've always liked cough drops, so I'm not sure that I won't start buying them now and then, boosting my integration level a little bit. 


Also, ginger ale is strangely popular here. Granted, Coke and Fanta are by far the leaders in the soda/pop/coke market, but ginger ale is almost as popular. While it's not as intriguing to me as the cough drop as candy phenomenon, I can positively state that I've never gone out to eat with five or six friends in the U.S. and had half order ginger ale. It happens almost every time I'm out with other volunteers here…then again, if a restaurant is going to have three kinds of pop, it'll be Coke, Fanta, and Canada Dry. I haven't read their most recent tax filings, but I'm pretty sure that Canada Dry is paying all their stock dividends on profits from Costa Rica. I mean, you just can't keep a company afloat based solely on people making party punch. So, now, don't say you don't know anything about Costa Rica: it's the country where they treat cough drops as candy.

Thursday, April 19, 2012

Sittin' on a Bench by the Classroom


I had an interesting conversation yesterday with a student at the high school that I think is pretty emblematic of a lot of the problems I see at the high school (and similar problems I saw in Puerto Viejo). You'll be able to judge for yourself, but I'd say it's not exactly a money problem (although that's part of it) but more an organization and management problem. 


I was sitting on a bench outside of a classroom, where I was supposed to be teaching an additional English support class, but none of the students showed up, even though the English teacher had told them to just two hours before. So, a student I kind of know came and sat down next to me. He hangs out with a group of girls I know, as I've observed their English class a few times and seen them around town. As I do to most students not in class, I asked him if he had class (as they don't have complete schedules here, a valid question) he said that the teacher let him leave. "Really" I asked with incredulity, as the session had just started. "Yeah," he responded, "I was the only one that showed up, so she cancelled class." "How many kids are in your class?" I probed. "Fifteen or so," he answered. 


I went on to point out that the teacher could have taught him, thus leaving the rest of the kids behind and teaching them a lesson. He explained there wasn't much to teach, as it was computer class, and there wasn't a computer lab. I was confused, as I had been shown the door to the computer lab on my initial tour of the school. He explained that whenever the computers break down or have problems, it takes months to get them repaired-now this sounded totally reasonable. And, he informed me, the computers had problems at the end of last year and still hadn't been repaired. So, it's super boring to learn things but not be able to apply them or practice, so none of the kids show up, so class gets cancelled. Pretty good deal for the teacher, I thought, she gets paid for teaching, but can just chill and get paperwork or (more likely) homework for her college classes done. Computer class is just for 10th and 11th graders (there's no 12th grade), and each class gets split between computer or conversational English, in somewhat of a specialization program. About half the section takes one and half takes the other, and as it's a specialization, they take it for one entire afternoon once a week, and half an afternoon another day. What I'm trying to say is that these cancelled computer classes due to poorly organized/poorly performed/non-existent maintenance are a big chunk of these students' schedules. 


There are many solutions to this problem, as I'm guessing there isn't a line item for "computer maintenance" in the school's budget, and that explains the problems in getting the computer lab serviced. My guess would be this was not included in the original computer lab budget/plan. Hindsight is 20/20, right? The issue, from what I've been able to garner during my time here, is that keeping the computers maintained would involve someone doing something that wasn't explicitly their job-whether it be the computer teacher putting in time after school, the principal taking money from some other department to pay for repairs, a student or parents group responsible for the lab's upkeep, or perhaps other options. But, I don't really see any of that happening any time soon-so this student will probably continue sitting next to me, waiting for his girlfriend, as I look around to see if any of the kids I'm supposed to be helping will show up... 

Monday, April 16, 2012

An Ode to Study Hall

During 9th and 10th grade at my high school, study hall was generally a dreaded space on one’s schedule. By 11th grade (although I think this has since changed) students were allowed to leave campus, so study hall meant you could go home and watch TV, go to a friend’s house and play water basketball in his pool (thanks Zach), or make-out with your girlfriend in your car, or a whole manner of other things. A first period study hall was money-getting to sleep in, and, if you didn’t play sports, an 8th hour study hall meant you got to go home early (or to work, not as exciting). But, in 9th and 10th grade, it meant going to the cafeteria or the study hall room and sitting in silence for an hour doing your homework or if you didn’t have homework or were a bad student-sleep. In ninth grade I had a full schedule, and in 10th grade I had an almost full schedule, but was taking radio class, so got a pass to go to the radio lab. If that didn’t work, I was in an extended learning program (ELP), so I could get a pass and go hang out in the ELP classroom. Luckily, I seldom experienced study hall. But, from what taste I got, it wasn’t all that bad, just a good time to get homework done.

In observing the general scheme of things at Líverpool High School, I’ve come to realize what wonderful thing study hall is. The high school I worked at in Puerto Viejo (my old site) was a ‘technical’ high school, and part of that meant that all students had full schedules (unless their teacher hadn’t been hired yet-a sadly common occurrence). At the night school in Puerto Viejo, the students didn’t have full schedules, because it wasn’t a technical school, but also because many students were only taking a few courses they had failed the year before--kind of the nature of a night school. Luckily, though, most of the students spent their free time at the snack shop or in the woods smoking marijuana. Either way, they weren’t causing too many problems. As Costa Rican classrooms are open air, occasionally the chatter at the snack shop would get a bit loud, but nothing more.

This is not the case at the high school here in Líverpool. All students have free periods in their schedules (the nature of ‘academic’ high school) and they tend to one of two things with their free periods. If they live close by, they just go home. Yet, if they ride the bus, or don’t live too close, they stick around the high school. There are some benches and tables where they sit, but there’s no study hall room. There’s no assigned classroom or area where they are all supposed to congregate. So, naturally, as adolescents are wont to do, they try to hang out with their friends. That the friends are in class doesn’t seem to be a problem. They’ll peek through the window, send text messages, come to the door and ask the teacher ‘can you give me Pablo for a minute’, or in what I find the most entertaining, simply barge in with a loud ‘EXCUSE ME’ and go to their friend’s desk and start whispering.

Additionally, kids constantly see their friends peek through the window or get a text-and then ask to go to the bathroom or drink some water, and then are gone for twenty minutes. The English classroom is maybe 15 feet (4.6 meters) from the bathroom and just a few steps from a sink-so usually I give the kids a time limit for their trips if I happen to be temporarily in charge of the class. Nonetheless, kids think nothing of walking straight the other way just after asking to go to the bathroom. As I mentioned, at least in the high school’s I’ve seen, classrooms here are open air-meaning either holes in the wall pattern, or a significant wire mesh pattern for the top three or four feet of the wall. So, even if the kids walking around aren’t directly interrupting class, their yells and hollers are. Of course, at West Des Moines Valley High School, all the classrooms have thick sound resistant walls-where it doesn’t matter-as the halls are silent-everyone’s in study hall. 

I can say one thing, I can’t really blame these kids-if I was supposed to be learning about the different forms of conjugating verbs in the past tense and my girlfriend was sitting outside the class asking me to come hang out-my mind would be anywhere but on some verb worksheet. Learning is definitely affected by major factors like quality teachers, adequate infrastructure, student attendance, appropriate materials, etc. but, when many of those needs are met, it’s the little things that seem (at least to me) to make a big difference. Part of the solution is of course more engaging classroom activities and better classroom management; yet, another part of the solution should be to eliminate the distractions and excuses. Thus, I find myself pining for study hall.

I certainly understand that it would mean having a free classroom and paying a staff member to make the study hall possible, and whether this is feasible within the Education Ministry's budget and regulations is beyond my ken, but that doesn't mean I can't wish :)

Thursday, April 12, 2012

Hoop Dreams

The Perez Zeledon basketball camp is a bit of a Peace Corps Costa Rica tradition. It’s been going on for some eight or nine years, and, as such, has become part of the summer for many of the youth in Perez Zeledon, a good sized regional city in southwestern Costa Rica. The camp actually fits into a lot of the things the Peace Corps tries to do. It encourages youth to be active, which is one of the goals of the 'Youth and Families' program. Additionally, it causes lots of Costa Rican-American interaction and shares basketball, part of American culture with Costa Rica-which has some basketball awareness, but is pretty much a soccer, soccer, and soccer country. 

I was charged with coaching Team Orange, one of the two 12-14 year old groups. They were supposedly ‘advanced’ but when we split the teams up nearly all the kids wanted to be in the ‘beginner’ group, so we pulled some kids from that group to mine. Which was still unfortunate for Andrew W., a buddy of mine that was in charge of Team Green, the other group of 12-14 year olds, which was about twice the size of my group, and seemed to have all the kids with bad attitudes. My group of 10-12 kids was awesome, and Davey, another volunteer, helped me out for some of the week, and he was as awesome as the kids. 12-14 year olds can be a tough group to work with: more concerned with being rebels or impressing some girl or guy than they are with learning how to dribble well or shoot a lay-up, but my kids were great. Interestingly, I had a few girls in my group that were on an organized team, so three of the best four kids in the group were girls. 
(Davey and I with Team Orange)
I had an awesome time at the camp. Although I looked quite a fool most days of the camp, as the smallest orange shirt I could find at my local ‘Ropa Americana’ store was a men’s XL (who’s buying XXL orange t-shirts in Puerto Viejo de Sarapiquí…I don’t know), the kids on my team treated me with respect and tolerated my bad jokes and generally responded well to my demands. Of course, I was the only coach to provide each kid with an orange wristband (made from the cutoff sleeves) and with candy (they got candy if they remembered to wear their wristbands…I was all about Team Orange). After morning stretches led by me and my buddy Elliot, we went through different stations (lead by other volunteers) and then ended each day with a scrimmage. The camp was all morning, and then the afternoon was filled with either pick up games amongst us volunteers, ultimate games, or strolls through Perez Zeledon. I usually ended my strolls at the McDonald’s.

(lay-up station)
We all slept and ate at the gym, which had rooms and bathrooms, as well as a small kitchen (the gym is part of the city sports complex). It was great to see a bunch of my coworkers for an extended period of time, and we had lots of fun playing basketball and ultimate. A number of staff members came by one day, and Steve, our country director (the top boss) proved quite adept at ultimate. I’ve always loved playing basketball, and have also really enjoyed my experiences as a coach, so for me, basketball camp was one heck of a good time. Too bad it’s just once a year.

Sunday, April 8, 2012

What Peace Corps Costa Rica work meetings look like


As part of the Peace Corps Costa Rica structure there are various committees made up of volunteers and staff advisors. The committees concern various things: diversity, gender issues, volunteer peer support, and environmental issues. The committee I'm on is called the Volunteer Advisory Council, or VAC, and is essentially Peace Corps student council. The country is divided into regions, and four times a year, the regions meet to discuss ideas and issues concerning volunteer life, and then each regional leader (I've been my region's leader for last year and am again this year) meets with the other leaders and then staff, to try to figure out successful solutions. These issues range from requests for training to carry out a project, suggestions for clearer information about vaccines for regional travel, or appeals to be reimbursed for work related travel, etc. These meetings are also a great chance to get together and catch up with the other volunteers in the region. Lots of the conversations at such meetings end up being about whatever projects volunteers are working on, and perhaps even lead to coordination of projects or shared solutions.  

Also, because we can have the meeting wherever we want in the region, it also means a trip to the beach or a hike through the rainforest to jump off a waterfall. As in, these pictures you're seeing are from our meeting in January in beautiful Punta Uva, Limón. That's right, no stuffy office room with a boring PowerPoint, more like palm trees and aqua blue water. I was quite impressed by Punta Uva, it is a gorgeous and very expansive beach, with lots of trees right by the beach providing shade for reading or a picnic. I went for a jog along the beach when we were there and was delighted at how calm and clear the light blue water was as my feet splashed through it-remember this was a work meeting. In the middle of January.


(not a bad looking regional office, eh?)

Wednesday, April 4, 2012

Pots and Pans

Fear not, there's still lots of me meticulously detailing mildly interesting things I've done in the last two months to come, but for now, I'll comment on a curious Costa Rican occurrence. At least in the suburbs of Des Moines, door to door sales are almost exclusively limited to the Boy Scouts (wreaths, popcorn) or the Girl Scouts (cookies). That's not the case in rural/semi-rural Costa Rica. Both in Sarapiquí and in Líverpool (my new site) there are two main items that are sold door to door. 


The first makes all sort of sense: fruit and vegetables. It's not so much door to door, but rather a truck will drive down the road, incredibly slow, and either yell out the window or will have a speaker with a microphone set up, broadcasting the products and their prices. To me, this seems like a very logical item to sell door to door: it's something that people need almost every day and that is important to sell quickly. Additionally, it's likely that people might run out of fruit or vegetables mid-week, and getting a few more bananas or mangoes for breakfast isn't vital, nor is getting a pineapple to make juice-as families here always have extra juice packets lying around. Furthermore, some items here grow seasonally or grow on shade trees that aren't the main product, and thus the farmers don't have much of a reason to invest in formal distribution networks. Some of these fruits are the mamon chino, jocote, nance, guaba, and pejibaye (Spanish names)-click the links to see what new foods I've been eating. In short, I totally understand and support the door to door sales of fruit and vegetables.


The second main item is one that has baffled me since I first saw it. Pots and pans. They usually don't look to fancy, and somewhat like you'd expect to see in a camp kitchen. Usually a young to middle aged man will be carrying a net bag filled with pots and pans, walking door to door yelling 'pots, pots, pots'. It's a fairly common sight, enough so that during one of my two times in Perez Zeledon a good sized town of more than 40,000. In Puerto Viejo de Sarapiquí, a town of 15,000, there were three national domestic appliance chains, and two or three other stores selling pots and pans. So, it certainly isn't as if you can't find them at the stores. In addition, a pot or pan seems to me like one of the last things that when a man came to my door offering one, I'd go, "oh yeah, I hadn't realized that I needed a new one, thanks." I remember when I lived in China there was a guy that would come by the apartments every once in a while yelling out something I didn't understand. I once asked my girlfriend, and she explained that he sharpened knives. This seemed quite appropriate to me. I probably wouldn't go into town and search out someone to sharpen my knives, but would have totally paid him to do so (had I cooked and ever used knives). Pots and pans seem the opposite to me, if my pot is worn down, it'll still work for a few days, I'll add it to my shopping list, and go buy it. I've probably thought it over more than any reasonable person should, but, every time I see them, I stretch my brain to figure it out, and just can't do it. 

Sunday, April 1, 2012

Bike trip Day 5

(on the international bridge)
Much like the previous day, our last day of the bike trip was quite short. We were up early, and for fairly good reason, as some of the group was planning on heading back home the same day-so long bus rides ahead. It was a pleasant ride, with only a few tough hills as we headed away from the beach towards Bri-Bri. The hills were tough but the views were gorgeous, looking across fields of banana trees towards the lush, dark green hills beyond (rising up towards the Talamanca Range). We also passed through a few beautiful river valleys. And just like that, after a few bumpy sections of unpaved road, we arrived at Sixaola, a dusty, worn down border town. A brief explanation to the authorities, and we were allowed to cross over the bridge, set foot in Panama, and we took some pictures in front of the immigration office. The policemen didn't look thrilled, but said nothing.
(Day 5 route)
(the whole group, border bridge in background)
Everyone arrived, and we took some very quick photos, as some of the staff was hoping to get back to the office that afternoon. A few of the people were staying another night at the beach, but, knowing that I'd be coming back in just two weeks, I decided to head back to site. So, we grabbed some food, changed in the bathrooms and hopped on the bus. After arriving back at the highway intersection, I helped Katherine and Beth load their bikes onto the bus, and decided, as I'd been riding for more than a week, why not ride the final 33 kilometers home. Once again with my backpack on, I took it pretty slow, and had a huge feeling of relief to get back home, shower in my own shower, and take a well deserved nap. With the trip up and back, I covered 559 kilometers over 8 days, which amounts to a sliver yes than 70 kilometers a day (or 43 miles-but that doesn't sound nearly as difficult). It was a great trip, I'm really glad I did it, it was probably good to use some muscles that I hadn't used in a long time and more than anything, was able to see much more of Costa Rica, which, in case I don't mention it very often, really is a beautiful country-and more than that-has all its beauty packed into quite a small area. The map below shows the complete route (albeit that Guápiles-Limón was done by bus).
(the complete route)