We´re In It!

Well, we´re here and clearly, we´re in it! I know it´s only been a few days, but already, it feels like we´ve done and been through so much. There´s really a lot to tell and I don´t know if I´ll get to it all in one day, but I´ll do my best.

I knew before we left that we were sure to run into challenges, but I didn´t expect them to come so quickly, nor in the manner in which they came. On night one, we settled into our home stay quite nicely, meeting and chatting with the mother, Mariellos and her three lovely children until we basically couldn´t keep our eyes open anymore. Off to bed we went into our quaint but comfortable little room, where we passed out within minutes (after, of course, I killed about a dozen small insects on the ceiling). At about midnight, we were awakened by the LOUDEST damn chicken in all of mankind. ¨Weird,¨we thought. So we poked our head out the window and noticed that our bedroom backed up to a huge chicken coop, while other chickens roamed free about the property. One of them MUST have been right outside our window, because he sounded like he was cock-a-doodle-dooing from the pillow next to me. Now neither of us grew up on a farm, but it was our impression that chickens woke up at day break and made a racket, but apparently Costa Rican chickens do things differently. About every 10 minutes, starting at midnight and continuing right through till about 8am, one would call out and then the rest would chime in for about a minute. It would calm down, then pick right back up.


Needless to say, by the time daybreak came, we hadn´t slept much and knew we had to do something about it. So off we went with Mariellos to our volunteer coordinator for our initiation and tour around town. On the way, I had to explain to her how awful it was that we hadn´t slept and how unlikely it was that a guy who could be kept up by the sound of butterfly farts could stand living there for a month. She was obviously disappointed, I´m guessing at least in part because of how much money she would be missing out on. I said as nicely as possible ¨Please understand that we really adore you and your family, but I don´t think we´re going to be able to stay with you.¨ To which she replied ¨Dios mio.¨ (translation: My god) Yeah. That was an awkward 10 minute walk.

Anyway, we were fortunate that they had another family ready and willing to take us in for the month and in retrospect, we´re really glad we made the move. We´re in a great part of town (close to the town center but not too close) and everyone there is really friendly. They speak no English, which is good in a way because it´s forcing us to use our Spanish, but they never make us feel bad about our Spanish (which has a ways to come). The house we´re staying at is really like more of a compound, in that they have 4 houses on the property with a shared courtyard, and each of the children has their own little house (kinda´like Big Love minus the polygamy). We stay with the abuela, Anna (we´re guessing she´s about 70), and one of her sons, Guilo, who is a locksmith. There´s also another son Jugo (and his 2 kids) in another house, Damaris and her 3 sons in another, and Fanny and her 2 kids in the last. It´s really great that they have their family so close but also have a bit of privacy in their own houses. The pictures below might give a better sense of the ¨compound¨feel of the place. Not sure if they´ll do the place any justice, but here are a few...


After settling in for about an hour, it was off to work at the orphanage in La Garita, about a half hour bus ride east. We met a fellow volunteer, a guy named Chris from Colorado, who´s been there for about 2 months. On the ride over, he let us know what to expect, which essentially amounted to scaring the crap out of us. He let us know that there´s a lot of pent up anger and frustration and that the boys need constant attention. I was exhausted just listening to him. Anyway, it didn´t take much time there to realize that he was pretty dead on. There are currently 15 boys there, ranging in age from 13 to 17 (when they´re 18, they´re adults and can leave) and almost all of them wanted as much attention from us as they could get. For teenage boys, that amounts to showing off how athletic they are, how fast they can ride their bikes, how well they climb the tree, etc. We spent the day doing the aforementioned, and also playing soccer with them, taking tours around the place, and generally just keeping them occupied. Almost all of them say life there is too boring and so they´re constantly looking for diversions. I think having two new American volunteers there made for a good diversion yesterday, and it couldn´t have hurt that one of them is very cute and friendly (and Kandi´s not bad either).

I could definitely sense the anger and resentment that they have to be there. I´ll see what I can do about posting pictures another time (taking photography there is tricky because they need to keep the boys´identities secret) but they´re confined there by walls and even barbed wire in a few spots. They´ve been removed from their homes due to no fault of their own (most of their parents abused or neglected them) and now they´re stuck essentially in a juvenile detention center. They´re not very well behaved and not all that respectful (most of them, a few are sweethearts), but it would impossible to blame them.

All in all, it was a very full and exhausting day, and needless to say, we slept VERY well last night. Oh, and this morning, we had tamales with corn, rice, and chicken inside and I gotta´tell ya´, that chicken tasted ESPECIALLY good.