News from the Jungle

Having a hard-working truck is a blessing for us. It is also a blessing for the neighborhood that there's a vehicle within 'asking' distance. I guess we have to consider it our community service opportunity, but the requests can often come at inopportune times. Living in the 'campo' really means living in a neighborhood of VERY simple people, most of who are not land owners. Generally they are the caretakers of property owned by others, mostly absentee gringos. We were once those absentee owners too. Now we have a truck! So, whenever an emergency arises, we are called upon. And for the most part we are happy to oblige.

There was one evening recently when we were walking out the door, anticipating a waiting dinner at Donna & Lenny's. (And Donna's a fabulous cook). It seemed that Marijelos, the mother of the clan across the street, had come into contact with the soccer ball while on the sidelines of a family football game. (They have a big enough family that they can field an entire game of players). The ball evidently won the encounter as she was in a great deal of pain and it appeared she had broken a bone in her hand.

Marijelos was bent on heading to her mother-in-law's home instead of a clinic. I learned from various family members, all trying to speak Spanish slow & simply enough so I could understand that her 'suegra' was a highly-respected local healer. It seemed that everyone in the family, as well as Henry, our caretaker, had a story or two to tell about how she had cured their ills. So off we went to the neighboring 'pueblito' of Bahia Chal with the patient and a truck bed full of family members.

The Local Medicine Woman
The little house we stopped at was tucked back off the road, hidden in the jungle brush. It consisted of a maze of wooden walls on a dirt floor. I'm not sure how many people actually lived there. The suegra/doctura was a small old barefoot woman, dressed in a plain frock that just hung on her small frame. It appeared we had interrupted her in the middle of cooking, but she stopped everything and attend to her new patient. She was a very gentle soul, with the beautifully wrinkled face and eyes of a person who had seen and absorbed much in her life. She looked 100 but I understand she's actually 72 years old. To say she was the local 'witchdoctor' is too trite. Maybe a medicine woman would be more correct. I got the feeling that she possesses the knowledge of 1,000 mothers and the wisdom to apply it.

The suegra (I never learned her name) worked on Marijelos' hand for about an hour, applying deep and thorough massage. While being treated, Marijelos and I kidded each other about who was going to do the cooking at her house for a while (there's 10 or more people living there at any given moment). She jokingly suggested I could fill in for her. But I pointed out that I was cooking for 5 workers each day and she had all those other family members to help. She rolled her eyes and I knew that no one else was expected to do Marijelos' cooking. Then the medicine woman applied a poultice of a leaf from her backyard and sent the patient home. The hand still looked broken to me and I was pretty sure she hadn't done anything to rectify that situation.

Unfortunately, or fortunately, a trip to the clinic was scheduled for the next morning and Marijelos is sporting a cast on her wrist that she wears proudly. I was the first (and only I think) to sign it. Probably not a custom here to autograph casts.

A Cooking Lesson
The cast hasn't slowed Marijelos down one bit from what I can tell. She is a marvelous cook and I expressed on more than one occasion that I wanted to learn some Tico recipes from her. I did go over to her house one afternoon, post-cast, and help her make what's called Tamale Dulce, a sweet, dense corn bread that's made in a pot on the stove then baked. The pot held about 5 gallons of ingredients, including various by-products of their milk cows, corn flour, cinnamon, butter, sugar, etc. all mixed with the fingers of Marijelos' one good hand. It needed to be stirred continuously so we took turns for the almost 45 minutes it took to come to a boil. After that it needed to be baked until hardened. Now, that's where the most amazing transformation occurred. You see, we were cooking on an old wood cooking stove and she doesn't own an oven. So she made an oven on top of her stove. She put a thin metal sheet on top of the huge pot and piled hot coals form the stove on top of it. She fussed and checked and I'm sure got it just to her liking, and then finally let it 'bake' for about an hour. I made a feeble attempt to write down the recipe -HA! And I even pretended that I might actually try to make it one day. Any idea how to downsize a 5 gallon recipe? I think I'll leave the tamale dulce up to Marijelos, maybe as payback for the trip to her suegra that night.

A couple months ago, Marijelos came over and started asking us for something quite anxiously. Her Spanish can only be politely described as idiomatic I guess and I can hardly understand anything she says. Others might say she talks a Tico version of hillbilly. She can't slow down (some Ticos are like that) and her words are like a different dialect. Henry says he even has a hard time understanding her - so I don't feel so inadequate.

But, it seemed her son-in-law, Roberto, was in serious stomach pain and needed to go to the hospital, 1 1/2 hour away. As you might guess, we were headed that Sunday evening to Donna & Lenny's again. This time dinner wasn't just postponed for us, we missed it altogether! But, being the good neighbors, we loaded Roberto and his wife Jeanette in the truck and headed for Ciudad Neilly and the hospital. Once there, things progressed rather quickly and he was whisked behind hospital doors and disappeared. Costa Rica has social medicine, so everyone is admitted anywhere. It's just that the level of care is different the further away from San Jose you get. Gary and I left Jeanette there waiting for her husband, and we stayed in a motel that night. When we checked the next morning at the hospital, they were gone and were on their way home via the bus. Turns out that Roberto has a history of bad ulcers, with two surgeries behind him, and he was having more problems. Hmm, I wonder if it could be Marijelos' cooking?

Voting Day
In early February on a Sunday afternoon I drove five of the family members to the local voting spot, the school house about 5 miles away. They vote on Sundays here and it was a big presidential election year. Marijelos, 2 sons, 1 daughter, and 1 daughter-in-law were planning to vote and had dressed in their Sunday best.

(Photo-Marijelos sporting her cast on voting day). Since we have a bus stop right in front of our property, they were all gathered waiting for someone to be kind enough to pick them up. We'd seen voter-filled trucks and vehicles go by all morning with candidate Oscar Arias flags waving. But our neighbors were obviously NOT supporting the favorite candidate (and eventual winner). So, they waited, and waited - I think hoping another candidates' voting taxi would pass. After about 45 minutes, I gladly offered my vehicle's services in the interest of civic fairness. I figured if they were going to exercise their democratic right to vote, I could certainly support that commitment. Besides, it didn't seem fair that supporters of some of the candidates (there were 14) got rides simply because they were voting for them and people with no transportation were left to fend for themselves.

The voting process was very much like the US process of old. A school house location, sign in on your registration line, vote on a secret ballot, and drop in the box. Didn't see any of those little "I Voted" stickers though. Another neighbor, Carlos, was standing around the gathering of locals and asked Marijelos who she voted for. Oh boy, did he get an earful. I didn't have to understand her hillbilly Spanish to know she had voted on a secret ballot and she wasn't about to say who she voted for. Carlos kind of slinked away, back to the Arias supporters camped out nearby. I know to never, never make Marijelos upset with me.

The Wedding Chariot
Most recently we'd been called upon to carry wedding guests to a wedding at the nearby lodge. We're friends of the bride's family (Ticos) and they had about 20 family members arriving by bus in the morning. So, we washed and vacuumed our 4 door, 4 WD utilitarian truck as best we could, and played limo drivers. They were thrilled and we got an invitation to the wedding for our services. (Photo-bride and groom under the palapa or thatched roof).  I was pretty excited about being able to experience a local Tica wedding, but in actuality, the ceremony was almost identical to an American ceremony, just with the 'for better and for worse', and 'I do's' all in Spanish. Nevertheless, it was a richly memorable day. And all because we have a vehicle.

Last week, Gary and our visiting friend, Doug, made an evening trip to the hospital with the very pregnant sister of our caretaker and her family. I'm sure that Gary and Doug were envisioning the possibility that the baby might choose that time to make its entrance, but Virginia was having other complications and really did need to get to the hospital. How she survived the drive itself on our hideous excuse for a road is beyond me. Virginia is still a few weeks off though and will do what all expectant mothers seem to do that live out here in the campo; stay with family somewhere nearer the hospital. That'll make Gary a little more comfortable.

Everyday is an adventure. Something learned, an unexpected experience, a memory etched in our soul. I never thought of our simple gray truck as a vehicle of some of life's little surprises, but I'm pretty sure we're getting as much out of the 'taxi rides' as the riders.