Food I Didn't Eat in Clive, IA

A while back I was on the phone (read: VOiP) with my parents and my dad was asking about what I had had for lunch that day. It's a question he asks fairly often when we talk and did so also when I was in China, because, it's something so normal, daily for me that I rarely think to bring it up, but can sometimes have a very interesting answer. Most of the time it's the same answer, rice, beans, a type of meat, and cabbage, tomato, onion salad-all chopped. Yet, the day I talked with him I happened to mention that we had heart of palm salad. He didn't know what heart of palm was or maybe had heard of it but didn't know what it looked like/tasted like. So, he thought it'd be a good idea for me to blog about foods I'd eaten that were new to me. My guess is they're probably new to most Americans, although I'm sure you can get about everything on this list in some exotic food store, or in California or Hawaii or Florida, or somewhere with growing conditions similar to a tropical climate. Sadly, I've had plenty of other odd foods, but didn't have the camera around or didn't think to take a picture of it. I've provided links for some of the fruits-in case you want to find out more. 

 Cilantro. The home grown kind. Cilantro the way we think of it is available in every supermarket, but this type of cilantro, which can be planted and grown super easily almost anywhere, is commonly grown by many Costa Ricans in their backyards. It's kind of creepy how it smells exactly like cilantro, yet looks like dandelion leaves. 

 Cashew. Or, perhaps, wild cashew. The nut is underneath the shell and a poisonous layer of skin-opening and roasting cashews is something only to be done with extreme care. But, the 'cashew apple' that hangs down below it can be eaten with no worries. These grow on big, wide trees. My host dad really likes them, I found it kind of sour and not particularly appealing. I had no idea this was how cashew grew. 

 Known as 'granadilla' in Spanish (which means 'little pomegranate') and apparently called sweet granadilla in English, this fruit is not passion fruit-but is quite similar. The little crunchy black seeds are surrounded by a fleshy, slippery, clear substance that is sweet at times and more often a tad sour. I was told to eat the seeds and the fleshy goo (seen in the right half below) and did so. It's not bad, a very interesting in mouth experience with the contrast of the slick flesh and the crunchy seeds. 

 Heart of palm, 'palmito' in Spanish (at least here). Palm trees (I believe any type-either coconut or peach palm or palm fruit) are chopped down when they are quite young and the outer bark is stripped away, leaving the inner part of the trunk, which is still soft. You can see it chopped in the bowl above, the few half moon shapes indicate the approximate diameter of the part of the trunk that is used for heart of palm. It's a very soft vegetable (?), and doesn't have too much taste. 

Arazá. I don't think there's an English name for this fruit. I visited the farm of an RPCV couple (former  Peace Corps volunteers) that lives near me and they introduced me to this fruit. My host parents didn't know what it was called, but luckily a neighbor kid confirmed the name given to me by the couple as I had half forgotten it. The fruit looks and smells delicious, but is super sour-so is usually cooked with rice to prepare a type of juice. 

Guanábana. Soursop in English, this fruit has been featured in my previous blog post about making ice cream. All the ones you see above came from the tree in the backyard when it was at maximum production, as in all that fruit came down in one or two days. The shell is hard and the spikes sharp when it's growing, but it becomes soft and the spikes soften when it's ripe. Thus, it's important to pull them down from the tree when ripe, because when they fall they'll probably explode. The fruit inside is white and very moist, almost creamy. As the name indicates, it's sour, and if not fully ripe is very sour. A hard stem goes down the middle of the fruit. 

Water apple-Chinese style. This is a variation of the water apple (manzana de agua) which is very popular here. The regular water apple is about the size of a pear, and is, as it's name indicates a very juicy fruit. The fruit seen above was introduced to me as 'manzana de agua china', which may or may not mean it has Asian roots. Either way, it's similar to the water apple, with a juicy, white flesh that is a bit sweet but hasn't much flavor. 

Ice cream bean. 'Guaba' in Costa Rican Spanish. I believe I've blogged about this food before. It grows in huge, wide trees. This pod is cracked open and there are 15 or so dark black seeds surrounded by a soft, white flesh that is kind of like a mix between ice cream and cotton candy. They are delicious. The last time I had one my host mom bought a bag from a guy selling them on his bike. My host brother and I sat down and each ate three or four pods immediately. 

 Plantains are an incredibly common and important part of the Costa Rican diet. Yet these super fat and quite short plantains are not so common, I've only seen them two or three times in my time here. When I had them they tasted exactly the same as your regular plantain. 

This post ends with probably the least notable of the pictures. Above is an avocado, which is something I do eat in Clive, Iowa. But, every avocado I ever saw in the US was the Hass avocado, which makes up something like 80 or 90% of the avocados sold in the US. Not the case in Costa Rica, which grows lots of avocados. They are often much bigger than the Hass variety, and come in all shades of green, as well as the dark, dark green that Americans are accustomed to. 

Trash and Education

Without getting too deep into ideas and hypotheses I don't know enough about, one of the fundamentals of microeconomics is that incentives matter. As makes perfect sense, people tend to do things that give them the best payoff or the least pain. I know even less about psychology or sociology, but when it comes to how we act, I feel that incentives tend to matter as well: we tend to do what is easiest, best for us, hurts others the least, and hurts us the least as well. Obviously, what we're taught and told to do affects us, but a big part of my belief is that the incentives of profit and pain play a big part in what we choose to do. One curious example that I've noticed in my new high school has to do with trash. 

Being one of the biggest tourist destinations in the world and a developing country that is doing a pretty good job of developing, I'm sure that there are huge swathes of Costa Rica that don't have much litter. Unfortunately for me, I haven't spent much time in those places. Liverpool, Limón is most definitely not one of those places. The stretch of land I most often see-the road between my house and the school/pulpería-is lined with litter. And, just maybe, this has to do with what people learn when they are young. Sadly, what they learn and what they're taught is not the same thing. And this is because of the incentives that go along with the teaching.  

(the left side of the road is what the side of most of the roads in my town look like)

I will say, the elementary school teachers do a pretty good job of encouraging students to put trash in the trash cans-and they also have to pick up trash-thus realizing that even if they litter, they might end up having to pick it up in the end. The high school, though, is another story. From 7th-11th grade, students are given a much more mixed message. I haven't seen a teacher (except myself) reprimand a student for littering. I only observe the English teacher, and she has mentioned once or twice to students not to throw trash on the ground. What is most often done by the students is to put the trash in the desks-this avoids the oh so burdensome task of walking to the trash can but also avoids dropping it on the floor, which the teacher might see and might correct. These desks house different students every period, so plenty of trash builds up during the day. I don't think I've ever seen a student take out the trash at the end of a period. Lots of students do just throw it on the floor, because most of the time there's seldom a penalty for it. 

Now, in many places in the world leaving trash on the floor would build up into piles, and leaving it in the desk would cause an uproar from the student in the next period. Yet, at my high school, and at Puerto Viejo, and I imagine many other schools in Costa Rica, this doesn't happen. That's because (far too many in my opinion) janitors sweep up rooms after every few periods. Before they sweep though, they walk through the rows of desks and tip them all over-spilling all the trash stuffed into the desk during the previous periods. This constant sweeping of the classrooms, as well as the hallways-they even sweep up bits of trash around the campus. I could be wrong, but I think that this constant clean up has two detrimental effects. First, I think it makes it look like it's not a problem to throw things on the ground, because the students know that it will get cleaned up. Almost like the concept it to throw it on the floor and let the frequent cleaning clean it up. Secondly, it prevents the accumulation of trash all over the place so that no one sees the real effect of littering (it's crystal clear the minute you step off the high school grounds). It's clear to see the problem in the second effect, but not so much in the first. Some might say, why not just have the janitors constantly cleaning up. My problem with this system is it's super inefficient. Every student could just throw the trash in the trash cans, and they'd get cleaned out once a day or so. Obviously, stringent reprimanding (and punishment) of students for littering could solve this problem. Or fewer janitors/a change in the cleaning method. As labor laws are very tight in Costa Rica, I'll bet the former has a better chance of success-yet I'll still hope for a combination.

I scream, you scream

I think I've hinted once or twice in my blogs at the challenges I've had working with teachers at the school. This leaves me with a fair amount of free time. Luckily the EuroCup has filled many of my afternoons for the last three weeks. One of the ways I stayed cool in the hot afternoon was to eat ice cream that my host mom makes from the guanábanas (soursops) that fall from the tree in our backyard. (I've never heard anyone ever say the word soursop-maybe I don't go to enough exotic fruit stores-so I'm going to use the Spanish word in this post.) The tree was producing a bunch of guanábanas just after I arrived, and it has been producing a bunch in the last few weeks. My host mom makes juice, bread, and ice cream with the guanábanas, as well as gives a bunch of them away and freezes a fair amount of the flesh (after taking out the seeds). Well, I can't really remember if it was me, my host brother, or my host mom, but someone suggested making ice cream and selling it. Well, I was totally game as was my host brother. 

(two big guanábanas)

Making ice cream with guanábanas is quite easy. Well, rather, making ice cream the sell it out of your house in bags Costa Rican style is quite easy. That's right, ice cream in a bag. I was first introduced to pop in a bag in Laos, and the bag was open with a straw. I was fairly skeptical of this situation-it was mostly so that vendors wouldn't lose the glass bottle deposit. But, here in Costa Rica, I'm a huge fan of the drink in a bag method. Small, long plastic bags are filled with pop, juice, ice cream, or slushee mix, and then tied. Thus, one just has to bite the corner and suck the liquid through the hole. It's super convenient. It works even better for ice cream than for pop, as the ice cream is somewhat solid-so no risk of it squirting out. What's more, the bag of ice cream can serve just like a bag of ice-something smooth and cool to rub on the back of one's neck or across the forehead. Back to the easy process. We use guanábanas-because the tree provides them for free. Peeling and de-seeding the guanábana takes by far the longest period of time, after that, add a bit of water, plenty of sugar, and a good bit of milk-and you've got your ice cream mix. No, I don't know the exact amounts, we play it by taste-blend it a bit, taste it, make adjustments-repeat if necessary. After that, using the cut off top of a Coke bottle as a funnel, the mixture is poured into the bag, tied, and put in the freezer. About twelve hours later we've got ice cream ready to sell. 

(a big guanábana opened and deseeded)

I made a little sign and put it on our gate, but the sales were pretty weak the first few days. I believe we sold none the first day and just two the second day (to a neighbor kid). But, like any other business endeavor, it takes time to build up clientele. Since then we've made lots of ice cream and sold plenty of it. There are currently 25 or so bags of ice cream in the freezer, and we've sold at least one hundred, maybe lots more in the two or three weeks this venture has been going on. Our best clients are a group of teenagers that hang out around the corner and smoke marijuana-often our busiest hour is 8-9 pm-and it's these guys fueling it. Making and selling the ice cream has been great for me, providing a nice afternoon/evening activity-as well as having me climb up on the roof fairly often to check for any ripe fruit. Moreover, plenty more people in my town recognize me. César, my host brother, has benefitted a lot from it too-as he hasn't any job and I think I'll give him all the money-it's a good way for him to earn a bit of pocket change.

(the finished product in the freezer door-some chocolate and strawberry mixed in)

Sabanillas de Acosta

A while back Nicole B., a volunteer from my training group invited me to go back to visit our training community as her host family was hosting a party for their daughter, who had recently turned 15. It was not a full out fiesta de quinceñera that are common throughout Latin America when a girl turns 15. The family, and Margaret, their daughter are pretty low key, and didn't want a party like that. The party was lots of fun aka lots of whisky and lots of grilling! Nicole has visited our training community a lot (she's geographically closer and was closer with her old host family). For me, it was great to see El Rosario again. I stayed with her host family, where I had spent lots of time during training, but had a chance to go visit my old family, have lunch, and catch up with a few of the sons. 

A more interesting aspect of the trip was staying at Nicole's for a night before we went to El Rosario. I thoroughly enjoy visiting other volunteer's sites. It's interesting to see the differences between their sites and mine, as well as to get a bit of a glimpse into different regions of Costa Rica-small towns tend to be very representative of the region. As I learn more about Costa Rica, I've learned which institutions are controlled locally and which are controlled nationally-using this knowledge, a fair amount can be gleaned about a town's organization level based on a few institutions. 

Nicole lives in Sabanillas de Acosta, a very small town nestled in the coffee hills southwest of San José. As the crow flies, it looks like it's super close to San José, but as the bus goes, it takes almost as long to get to her site as mine, despite mine being five times the distance. The second leg of the journey to her site is fairly adventurous/incredibly uncomfortable and dangerous-depending on one's perspective. Up and down bumpy mountain dirt roads, crossing one lane bridges as one crosses one's fingers that this bus won't be the one that breaks it, and having to back up for 200 meters so an oncoming truck can make the turn (oh, yes, all the turns are effectively one lane). But, by far the oddest thing about the journey was that the bus driver seemed to know everyone on the bus, but me of course. He checked to make sure I knew where I was going when I paid for my ticket-apparently not a lot of people visit Nicole's site that don't belong there. The chatty, friendly bus driver was the exact opposite of the drivers that I encounter on my bus route: they're just trying to move things along as fast as possible. And, with 13 different buses a day, it's not like I'm going to be getting to know the drivers anytime soon.

(me in front of Nicole's house)

Her town is one of the smallest I've been to in Costa Rica. I think she said 250 people, or something like that. The incredible mountain views were quite different than the views around my town: semi truck parking lots. Additionally, I was in jeans and long sleeves in the evening-and under plenty of blankets at night. We might be in the tropics, but her site, like much of the Central Valley, gets quite cool at night-being up in the mountains. A nice respite from Liverpool, where I occasionally sweat at night: no blankets, just boxers. It was obviously due to the tiny population of her town, but it felt almost ghost town like to me, there were so few people walking on the streets. I went to the pulpería just down from her house to buy some Tang, and there was no one there. As in, no clients and the lady running it was across the street, apparently making coffee, because she popped over after a minute or two with a hot cup. This was very different from Liverpool, where I've never been at the pulpería without at least one other customer. One more thing about the bus, in case you're wondering where the school bus you rode in as a kid is, it's transporting people from San Ignacio de Acosta to Sabanillas, among other stops. 

Fence, fence, fence, fence

I don't often write about perhaps the aspect of my life which is most different here in Costa Rica than back home. Language. There may be some other aspects that could be more different, now that I think about it, but using a different language probably the winner. Of course, all my time spent with my Kindle or laptop is mostly done in English, so I'm certainly not in any sort of full immersion environment. I think the only way to do that in this day and age would be to throw away one's phone, laptop, and any books in one's native tongue. Yet, by living with a host family, a huge amount of my daily experience is in Spanish. This, of course, is one of the big parts of the Peace Corps. Unlike (I assume) volunteers serving in countries like Cameroon or Cambodia, I came to Costa Rica having studied Spanish for four years in high school and four years in college and having lived in Spain for a semester. Thus, my experience has been two fold: 1) learning all the Costa Rican twists on Spanish and 2) learning very specific vocabulary. Both of these learning experiences have been greatly enhanced by my new host family. 

The main reason is that my host mom and host brother are very willing to answer any and all of my questions. Additionally, my host brother speaks knows a lot of English, and spends a lot of time online-where he often encounters words and phrases he asks me about. So, we often have exchanges about language where, in the act of teaching, I tend to learn things about Spanish as well. Lastly, I've told them and my host dad to feel free to correct me any time I make a mistake--which is one of the most important things about learning a language. Sadly, I have recently noticed that I've adopted the second of the two characteristics of Costa Rican Spanish I detest most. The first trait, using Usted instead of tú as the second person singular pronoun, I had to adopt the first week to be polite. The second, adding a diminutive suffix for no real reason at all, I'm ashamed to say I've noticed myself doing a lot recently. But this is the inevitable consequence of spending so much time chatting with native speakers and watching Costa Rican television. 

(the source of my error)

On to the title of the post, which indicates an interesting discussion/learning experience I had the other day. An important maxim in language learning is that you can't translate everything. I hold fast by this statement-and think all language learners should. This discussion the other day was about me being a bit cavalier with my used of the word 'fence.' Like a fence around a yard, not the sport. Fences, gates, bars on windows-these are a big part of Costa Rican (and Central American) culture, a fancy sport with swords-not so much. Having learned the word 'cerca' for fence, I, until recently, had used that for all fences. But, my host brother had corrected me once or twice, as I referred to the fence in front of our property as a 'cerca' that it was actually a 'tapia' because it has a cement wall as a base (it has wrought iron fencing on top of it). I casually ignored his instruction, thinking, a fence is a fence, no big deal. So, I once again committed the error, and he decided I needed to learn. He brought up some images on Google Images, and taught me. So, I've learned: 'cerca' is used for fences made of wood-like your traditional picket fence, 'tapia' for fences made of concrete or cinder blocks (some of them we might call walls in English-which can be done in Spanish too 'muro'), 'malla' is used for chain link fences, and 'verja' is used for wrought iron fences (as well as bars on windows). So, how do you say 'fence' in Costa Rica: refer to the previous sentence. It's quite a specific example, but, it's things like this-that in Spanish instead of adding a word to 'fence' to describe it, they have different words-that I find fascinating about languages and learning languages. And, it's this type of thing that doesn't get covered in Spanish classes; literary analysis: check, being able to point to a fence in Costa Rica and not look stupid: fail. Remember: cerca: fence, malla: fence, tapia: fence, verja: fence. 

Los servicios

There are very few things that everyone does every day. A short list would include eat, sleep, and go the bathroom. Certainly there are days when people don't sleep, and sadly, there far too many people around the world that have days when they don't eat. But this blog is about the third item mentioned: going to the bathroom. Well, rather it's about the facilities themselves. After dealing with two years of squat toilets, bring your own toilet paper, and a lack of stall doors in China, I figured that restrooms in Costa Rica would be a paradise. And, yes, they are considerably better. Costa Rica isn't a rich country by any means, but it's considerably richer-on average-than China, and, with the 66th highest GDP/per capita in the world, it's right on the edge of the richest 1/3 of the countries in the world. Most importantly, tourism is a huge part of its economy, and swathes of Americans, Canadians, and Europeans visit the country every day to take in its beaches, rainforests, volcanoes, and wildlife. Yet, I find that public restrooms continually fall short of achieving the triple play that I hope for in every bathroom.  


In case you're wondering, the triple play is as follows: soap, toilet paper, and a towel/paper towels/air dryer. To be clear, I'm talking about public restrooms here, although more than a few bathrooms in houses I've been to lack the towel. Bus stations, schools, restaurants, bars, and stores-these are the types of bathrooms I'm addressing. There aren't any squat toilets here :), and almost every bathroom has a sink. Yet, to me, a sink doesn't serve much purpose if there isn't soap. Rubbing cold water around might get rid of some dirt, but isn't doing much action on the bacteria. If there is soap, it can in no way be assumed that there will be towels or a hand dryer. So, yes, essentially every person leaving a bathroom is shaking their hands like crazy and wiping them on their pants. Another symptom of the no towel situation is the wet handshake, which is something that I still am creeped out by. I'm happy this guy washed his hands, but I'm quite unhappy that my hand is now moist from the handshake…now I've got to look for an opportunity to stealthily dry my hand off on my pants. And, probably the most frustrating of all is entering a bathroom and their being no toilet paper. I always carry back up with me when I'm traveling, so it's no big deal. Surprisingly, the place where I most often encounter bathrooms with no toilet paper (and no soap or towels either) are at schools. I'm surprised by this because Costa Rica is a fairly health conscious country, and especially so for it's wealth/education levels. Additionally, Central Americans-Costa Ricans included-are fairly fastidious about maintaining a neat appearance. The fact that most of the school bathrooms I've used lack soap and toilet paper is shocking to me. But, maybe that's something they say at some student meeting I've yet to attend-always carry toilet paper and hand sanitizer with you. It's also hard to keep anything discreet when you have to walk to the office, grab the staff communal toilet paper roll and carry it with you to the bathroom.


To be fair, I'm sure there are few bathrooms not making a triple play in the tourist resorts and public services in super touristy towns. Of course, the Peace Corps doesn't often place volunteers on tourist resorts.  

Coming off the bench

Being involved in the Costa Rican education system has made me considerably prouder of my mom. Not that I wasn't proud before, both my parents are amazing parents-and I'd write that even if I knew they weren't reading this blog. But, being involved in an education system that doesn't have substitute teachers (or enough, or use them enough) has made me much, much more aware of how valuable my mom is. That's because, if it's not obvious, my mom is a substitute teacher.

Initially, looking back on one's days with substitute teachers, one might think: what's the big deal, all we did was watch movies or do busy work. Granted. But, that's a big deal, because, the students are doing something. The problem with a system that doesn't have substitute teachers, is, that, the students are doing nothing. Well, that's wrong, they're doing many a thing, but nothing very positive for the school in general. For the record, I'm mostly writing about high schools here. Most of the time, like when the teacher is to be gone for the whole day, elementary schools have substitutes. Sometimes the teacher leaves an hour or two early, and then he'll just let the group go. This generally means the kids will play on the playground and the janitors will keep control of them until it's time to go. But, in the high school, from what I can understand, unless the teacher will be gone for eight days (yes, eight) there will be no substitute teacher. Almost all absences except a surgery and recovery or a pregnancy are for less than eight days, so, essentially, there aren't substitutes in the high schools. 


So, as I was saying earlier, the lack of a substitute means that the kids are NOT sitting in a room doing a review worksheet or silently doing tomorrow's homework (as if there was daily homework, chuckle, chuckle). Instead, the kids are wandering around the high school, as they probably have another class in 45 minutes or an hour and a half and there's no bus to take them home. So, what does this mean? Well, a few things: students interrupting other classes and asking if they can talk to their best friend/boyfriend/girlfriend etc., students playing music on their phones just outside a classroom so everyone inside can hear it, students texting their best friend/boyfriend/girlfriend, urging them to cut class and head to the forest/town center to make out/smoke weed/play videogames, students playing soccer and blasting classroom walls with errant shots, students chasing each other up and down the walkways-making all sorts of noise. In general, when there aren't substitutes, all the kids from that class inhibit learning in the other classes. And, if it isn't obvious, every day without a substitute is a day the students aren't learning new material, or even importantly, reviewing what they've learned. I say that because there is quite a paucity of review activities.


This certainly is not the number one reason that students aren't reading English, and it is something that I can't effect at all. Yet, it is no doubt one of the many problems that is preventing students at the high schools I've worked with from learning what they could be, based on the time and resources at their disposal. And it's a great reason to appreciate substitute teachers everywhere, like my mom :)