So, yesterday, I finally got my new computer, after a month without one. I’ve had people ask me if it felt liberating to not be connected all the time, and I have to say that I felt more stressed out about it than anything. Not having a computer didn’t especially affect my schoolwork; we’ve had mostly reading assignments so far, and I actually handwrote our first essay of the school year that was due last Thursday. Last week we also had a project proposal due for our biology class, and I couldn’t do any online research, which was frustrating, but I was able to look up past projects about my area of interests in the Institute library (which also actually has computers, but the librarian isn’t always there to sign me in, and they shut down the computer during thunderstorms which are frequent, and I can’t save articles I could use onto the computer because it’s not my personal computer). I think the most frustrating thing about not have a computer was not being able to connect with my friends and family as often as I wanted to. A few friends in my program let me use their computers to Skype, but that was limited because they of course want to use their computers. I couldn’t upload photos to share, because I didn’t have a place to put my photos directly from my camera. I had to constantly ask others to plug in my iTouch to their computers to charge, since the only cord I have to charge it is one that plugs into a computer. I wasn’t able to update my blog. Needless to say, I am so happy to have a computer again. I think I shocked my host mom yesterday when I told her my parents got and sent me another computer. Sometimes I feel a little ridiculous with all my electronics and cords and plugs that I have.
A week ago, on the Friday before last, we had a tour of the cheese factory located directly next to the Institute. The factory was started the Monteverde economy when the Quakers moved here in the 1950s. The factory gets 45,000 liters of milk a day from 250 different farms. There is one local farm that still brings its milk to the factory in an ox cart (we’ve seen him a few times while walking to Institute). All the farmers that bring milk have to own stock in the company, and you can’t own more than 5% of the shares. The company seems really good about keeping the money local (you can’t own shares if you’re not in the community). About 90% of their factory production is cheese, but they also produce ice cream and yogurt and other things. I didn’t know much about the cheese making process before, but one by-product of cheese making is whey, which the factory used to dump into the river (noooo bueno!). Whey, unfortunately, creates a lot of contamination and destruction of the environment (like changing the temperature of the water and creating algae blooms), so they needed to stop doing that real quick. They created a waste-management facility a little ways down, and we also went and had a tour there (which they don’t offer to everyone anymore... only for “specialized” groups now). I have to say that that tour was one of the most unsettling experiences I’ve ever had. It so happens that hogs can digest whey, so they created a hog farm to dispose of the whey they produce in cheese production. The pigs are kept in a space so small they can only stand up and sit down, and move 2 feet forwards or backwards. Our tour lady “justified” this with the fact that pigs get too tired and overheated if they are allowed to run about, so this confined space it actually good for them. She also said that because of their body structure, they break legs really easily if they’re overworked (apparently they tried having open ranges for the pigs before, and they caused a lot of destruction in the forests). So, we happened to go to this first barn have around lunchtime for the pigs. It was mostly quiet when we were first looking at them… and then one started to make noise. It was amazing how quickly it went from quiet to terrifying. Once one started making noise, others caught on, and soon enough, all the pigs had stood up and were squealing. It was incredible how loud they got. They sounded so unnatural, like nails on a chalkboard. Have you ever heard one pig squeal? Try imagining hundreds of pigs making that sound. We could barely hear the tour lady, and the whole thing was just really unsettling and unreal. I quickly got really uncomfortable. We went to the second barn, which had all the piglets. The mothers give birth in that barn and stay with their litter for a few weeks. The piglets stay in that barn until they’re about 6-8 weeks old, and then transferred to another barn (there are 3 pig barns total). I asked our tour lady what they do with the waste from the pigs. Well apparently, in addition to whey, they feed the pigs corn too. They “clean” out the manure from the pigs, and feed the undigested corn to cows that are kept in another barn. I hated seeing the cows. I forget how many cows there have, but in each compartment, there are about 6-8 cows, in an extremely small space, they are never allowed out to graze, and they sit in their own shit all day. I asked one of my compañeros if she was feeling the same way I was feeling about seeing all of this. She answered, “Well, I’ve kind of accepted that animals are treated like shit. But this hog farm is an example of commercial farming at its best, they are way worse in the US.” I suppose I knew that commercial farms are terrible, but I think it hits you more when you actually visit one. I’m not sure that I can support low quality, commercially farm beef again, which is where most if not all of meat served in fast food chains comes from. I’ve never been a big fan of red meat anyway.
That afternoon, we watched Fight Club for Ernesto’s class, which I had never seen before. It kind of blew my mind, and was especially interesting because of the themes in the movie that parallel Marxist thought on work, which we had just read extensively for Ernesto’s class. So it was interesting to watch the movie with that framework in my mind. I want to watch it again with subtitles, this time knowing the ending.
Also for Ernesto’s class, we’ve started reading a book called Sweetness and Power, a book about the history of sugar and its relevance to our lives, capitalism, and the relationship between the consumer and a commodity. I’m kind of intrigued by the fact that sugar is only a phenomenon of the last millennium, yet we as human beings seem to have innate ability to taste it, despite our evolution without the cultivation of sugar. There have been other things that are sweet, like fruits, and honey, but otherwise, most sweet things today are sweet because of sugarcane production and refining. I’m not sure that I could manage it here in Costa Rica, but I kind of want to try eliminating sugar from my diet. It would be difficult, but sugar is something that you crave more the more you eat it. So if you don’t eat it for a few days, your body will adjust and you won’t crave it anymore. I want to try it when I get back to the US. I think I could manage more easily when I’m more in control of my food. I think I could make do with honey as a sweetener; the hardest adjustments would be no desserts, and sugarless coffee. I’m still considering it though! I have an insane sweet tooth, and I don’t know if have the willpower to give it up.
This past week we went in the field twice for Ernesto’s community service learning class. On Tuesday, we worked with a farmer, Chepe, and helped him clear out tree debris. During rainy season, the coffee plants don’t get much sun, so they need as much as they can get. He had a bunch of really tall citrus trees that were blocking the sun from the coffee, so he chain sawed all of them and we help clear all the branches to the side of his property. The trees had random spikes all over, so we had to be careful. I got poked a few times and it stung like a bug bite. Thursday was one of the best days I’ve had here so far. We met near the school in San Luis at 7 am, and went up to Christine’s (a girl in my program) host-abuela’s property, which is where the San Luis waterfall (la catarata) is. Christine’s host dad (Giovanny) works the land there, so we worked with him for the morning. First, we helped milk his three cows, a first for me. It was amazing how well an experienced person can milk a cow. Some of us were pretty good, because a few actually milk cows on their respective farms each morning, but it was difficult for me. Then we went to patch of cleared land in the middle of a sugar cane field. There, we turned up the soil, which was harder this time because there was a lot of grass and plants growing, with their roots holding the soil together. Then we had to go through all the soil and smooth out the clumps and clear out plant debris by hand, which I like for some reason. It’s taken me 4 days to get my nails clean again, but the soil felt so smooth and awesome because it was completely organic material; Giovanny uses no pesticides or herbicides or fungicides on his land. It took us probably 3 hours to finish it, even with 11 of us (8 students, Ernesto, Giovanny, and Stuart’s host-brother, who for some reason doesn’t go to school?), imagine if Giovanny had to do it all by himself! He picked oranges from his trees to give to us, I ate 3 and they were the best oranges I’ve had. I don’t know if it was the variety or what, but they were better than the oranges grown at my house. Giovanny also cut and peeled sugarcane for us to chew on, which is absolutely delicious. I had bought a small piece from someone a few days before, so I was really excited! It’s almost like celery, except you can’t chew swallow the fiber. You chew all the sugary water out of it, and then spit out the leftover fiber. We loved it! Terminamos trabajar a las once y media, y la abuela de Christine tuvó tortillas y queso y fresca naranja para nosotros. (We finished our work around 11:30, and Christine’s grandmother had tortillas and cheese and orange juice for all of us!) It was the perfect snack after a morning of working, and everything was homemade. I already mentioned how good the oranges were, so can you imagine the orange juice? Take that Tropicana! Best orange juice I’ve ever had. Since we were there and it was still sunny and beautiful out, we all hiked up to the waterfall. It was so beautiful! We all went for a swim, and it was freezing but refreshing. It was the prettest to just look up and see all the mist, and feel the wind created by the sheer force of the waterfall. It was a perfect moment, and it put me in a really good mood. On the walk back, I passed by some guava trees, and there were like 6 blue morpho butterflies feeding on the rotting fruit. I found one butterfly that was dead, so I brought it back with me, I might try to make earrings out of it cause Morphos are seriously the prettiest butterflies I’ve seen.
I know this is really long, so I won’t make it any longer; in the future I will update more frequently with shorter posts so I don’t bore anybody! At least I can supplement this one with pictures now. If you got through this, thank you for reading!
Kendall
PS – this is a part of a series of videos I had to watch before I came to Costa Rica… I didn’t realize til a few days ago that this video is my host dad, Milton!
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