bautizo

SATURDAY: The weekend began in the Garden. On Saturday morning, I walked out onto the gravel with my bare feet and picked up the plant tiles that were finished: guayaba, guanábana, heliconia, and reina de la noche. Gení saw them first and a look of approval spread across her face.

Julí and I talked over ideas: we´re thinking of getting lacquer (laca) to cover the tiles and some thin wood (madera) for the hanging signs (etiquetas). We´re reserving the tiles for the low-growing plants, as it is much easier to drill holes for hanging in wood rather than in ceramics. I have some concerns about using the lacquer; lacquer, to my experience, needs an absorptive surface. The tiles are very hard; I think the lacquer might just run and puddle inconsistently. Firing in a kiln would be better. But we´ll try it out.

At around 11AM, more family started coming over, and we had rather a nice lunch with stewed vegetables and otra comida típica. I spent most of the time painting tiles. Just after lunch, Amanda called and invited me to come to the river with the others. I declined and worked at home for a couple more hours; the night before, Noemy had invited me over. So at 2:30PM, more or less, I set out for their home. I had been walking for nearly half an hour before I became worried that I was lost. After all, I had only seen the road twice on Thursday, once coming and once going from their home. Just when I was considering turning back around, I looked up - and there on the slope stood Roberto, smiling.

We spent a very nice (albeit rainy!) afternoon together. Noemy and I looked over the family´s photo albums while Roberto worked outside. At some point, their georgeous young granddaughter Nazarit joined us. Noemy, and later Roberto, showed me photos of their families, of their reunions and childhoods, and of the places they had visited. Earlier, Roberto had told me that Guanacaste gets much drier during the dry season than Agua Buena; it still rains every 15 days or so here. The whole time we visited, we could hear the rain falling outside, driving and violent with relámpago (lightning) and trueno (thunder). They invited me to stay for dinner (which was wonderful!) and then Noemy and I went to visit her mother a little ways down the hill.

I was sitting on the couch, feeling nervous and clumsy with my Spanish, when Noemy smiled at me and said, ¨¿Y cómo va a seguir en casa? ¿Con automovil- con carro, o va a tomar un taxi?¨ Feeling bewildered, I replied, ¨Oh no, voy a caminar.¨ I was surprised to hear both Noemy and her mother chuckle. ¨¡Qué linda!¨ her mother crooned, and I immediately relaxed. She and Noemy began talking about how so many people in Santa Cruz knew Spanish, and when they come it is so much easier. I admitted how intimidated I was by it, that it made it harder to learn or practice spanish when everyone was so much better at it than I. They both assured me to keep practicing, and that it was probably hard learning when so many people talk so fast. ¨Sí, yo hablo muy rápido,¨ the mother chuckled, and before I could protest that I found that she talked very clearly and understandably, they moved on.

A little later, after I had spent some time marveling at all the art of birds in her small, pretty house, Noemy´s mother volunteered some of the kids (her grand-nieces and -nephew, perhaps?) to walk me partway home. ¨Por favor, caminan un poco con la gringa. Gringa va a casa.¨ The giggling teens agreed and walked me a ways. I got home feeling happy, ate some dinner, and promptly conked out shortly thereafter.

SUNDAY: I woke Sunday morning and, feeling a sense of both dread and muted excitement, pulled out my white dress. Today we were going to Church.

It was Dana´s baptism, one of the most important days in a person´s life. With great ceremony, the family rushed to assemble and took two cars to get to Church on time, at 8AM. When we arrived, I was astonished to realize that it set right next to the park, and that half the town was present. So, I thought, this is how everyone sees each other, once per week. This is the central place.

Indeed, there were so many people in the Church: the whole family, of course, was there; Noemy, by sheer chance, sat right in front of me - right next to Humberto; at one point, just after communion, Amanda´s host father Fainier walked past and, upon noticing me, thumped me on the shoulder; later on, his wife Aurora and I exchanged a hug; and from a distance, standing on the steps of the Church, I saw Roberto had rejoined with Noemy. The whole of Mass, Carolina, who had returned the night before, walked up and down the aisles and took pictures of Dana in her snow white dress (y también, en mal humor - la Chiquita Gritona). It turned out that a whole drove of babies were being baptized that same day, so the aisles were filled with family members of them all.

I understood parts of the Mass, and the singing was beautiful. Up at the front a Priest stood with green robes and a microphone pinned to the front. A trio also sat in the front and to one side, playing their musical instruments and singing into stationary microphones. The whole congregation would sing, too, and it gave a greater sense of community to the whole thing. The line for communion was quite long; there is a date in November – the 25th, I believe – where many youth will be taking their First Communion.

The experience of Church was interesting for me; I don´t have a religion, but I practice Aikido in a deeply spiritual sense. I guess I attended the Church as a sign of respect: as an enterer into my family´s culture, I feel it is important to follow their rituals and their lifestyles, in order to be able to resonate more with them. Also, I do not inherently have anything against the spiritual side of Church or any other religious house. That is peoples´faiths; that is their spiritual connection to and resonance for life (and their own business). Therefore, I feel I can respectfully enter a Church, for I come with a respect for that Faith; though not necessarily announcing myself to value any faith above others.

I will go again next week, most certainly.

Amanda told her parents I was an Aikidoist after the Mass, when Sara and I came over to visit. I was the only intern who went to Church, and I think that Amanda´s host parents were surprised to find out that I considered Aikido my spiritual practice. She and Sara came by and picked me up during the afterparty at the house, and when we got home Amanda told her host mother that I wasn´t Catholic (I had given her permission to; I had foreseen that Amanda´s parents would mention that I went to Church and ask why Amanda didn´t follow my example). When Fainier came home, the lot of us went walking outside in the family´s garden, and shortly thereafter I had a very memorable conversation with Fainier. He asked me: ¨¿Usted es Católica?¨ and I answered him, ¨No, tengo otra religión se llama Aikido.¨
¨¿Qué es?¨ he asked me.
¨Es un tipo de arte marcial.¨
¨¡Es un deporte!¨
¨Pues ...sí, es muy físico, pero tiene un elemento muy espiritual, un aspeto meditativo...¨
He seemed to resonate with this: ¨Ah, sí, a mi me gusta sentarme solo a veces y meditar.¨

We nodded with that, and he told Aurora a few minutes later, when she came out to compliment me on the white dress I´d worn to Church that day. I translated for them: ¨´Aikido´ significa ´el sendero de paz y armonía´.¨ Both seemed satisfied with that.

We met up again later in the day, this time to meet with two Peace Corps volunteers who live nearby. The four of us (Jack, Amanda, Sara, and myself) sat for nearly three hours, exchanging ideas and hearing about the histories and observations the two had managed to uncover. They had authored a paper in spanish about the history of the Agua Buena / Coto Brus area that Didier had given us to read; it gave us a very rich background indeed. It turns out that the area of Agua Buena was settled relatively recently, within the last half-century. The biggest influx of people came in the ´70s. This matched, I realized; just the other night, Roberto had been telling me that he and Noemy moved here from Guanacaste just 30 years ago. Both had been raised in Guanacaste (Roberto came from near Nicoya) and had left (they had told us, many months ago) because the lands in Guanacaste were despoiled by cattle-ranching and deforestation. The Peace Corps members´ paper went in-depth about some of the local statistics, and meeting with them in person we spent a lot of time talking about the projects that other groups and individuals had attempted during their time here. It was, to say the least, a very enriching experience to listen to them.

MONDAY: Today, Amanda, Sara, and I went to San Vito. The busride there was quite beautiful and surprisingly short. We went mostly to shop for supplies; I found ceramic paints, small paintbrushes, some good paper, a notebook made out of banana paper ...I could not find lacquer for my tiles or wood, but I plan on searching again in Materiales Agua Buena. At around Noon, we stopped for lunch in a nice pizzeria. It felt nice to relax together for a while. All for now...