I'm going to try and really make sure that I get everything down from yesterday and hope that the bugs in my house don't get in the way. If too many of them land on me, I usually take it as a sign that it's time to tuck myself in for the night.
Yesterday I went all around town handing out invitations to the general assembly that the development association of my town is hosting this Saturday. When I say “all around” I mean, like, places that I did not know previously existed in my town. That's difficult for me to admit, considering that there's a population of 250 people and I've been here for two months already. Makes me wonder what I've been doing with my time, which is exactly what I told people when I handed them the invites. There were people who were clearly like, “Who are you?” though Ticos are too respectful of the rules of social etiquette to actually ask out loud. So the process went 1) hand out an invitation 2) read the basics out loud in case the person does not read and 3) apologize for not having come by sooner to introduce myself. And promise to come back soon.
I had to cross the same river three different times to get to some of the more backwoods houses. The water was well up past my knees, which is not what I was imagining when the person accompanying me on this task said, “You don't mind getting your feet wet, do you?” I had wondered once or twice why people complained that my town was so far behind its neighboring towns in terms of development, but I no longer doubt that this is the case. I had thought of my town, “Okay: Soccer field, church, town hall, school. We're doing okay!” But that's just the center of town, I realized. I walked through a field/bog where clay is taken for the local artisans' ceramics trade. I walked in between some corn fields down a cow path. I got attacked by a dog. I lost my shoe in a road that should probably be leveled before it rains again (like, in an hour or so) or people will be living in forced isolation. Then I found my shoe and kept walking, eventually arriving at the house of a family that will be hard to forget.
I know the boy from the family, he plays soccer on our town's team and he seems like a good kid. If I have thought before that the main square of my community is the middle of nowhere (even if it is at the center of my heart), I would have no idea how to describe the remote-ness of this house. It's very inside the woods. I don't know how to express it any differently, haha. I handed the dad an invitation and he kind of started to go off about the development association's failings to my friend. The mom motioned for me to sit next to her daughter on a bench, but soon thereafter invited me into their home. Or rather, I suppose it was more of like an open-air addition that connected to the house, but the structure is not so important – just what was in it.
The local ceramics trade is really big a few towns over, and I mean “big” in the way that it's well-known in the country and even internationally depending what nerd-circle you run in (be it historical, artistic, anthropological, etc.). Previous to seeing the contents of this outdoor workshop, I had no idea that people in my community made the same ceramics. But sure enough there were mountains of decorative comales and tinajas – tortilla cooking plates and urns painted in the typical indigenous Chorotega designs. Before I had time to verbalize my admiration for the pieces, the señora told me to pick one out so her daughter could seal the paint and I could take it with me. Obviously I was like, “No, no, I couldn't...” but it turns out I so can. I'm super psyched about the vessel I have, it really is a beautiful keepsake.
Anyway, the gifting of the ceramics sparked a conversation about how they are made, the paints used, the process of mixing the clay with sand, everything that had to do with making a finished piece. She gave me a little vase to polish, and I learned that in ancient times there was a stone that the indigenous peoples used to rub the surface of the pottery in order to make it smooth to paint. Nowadays, due to the scarcity of this stone, shampoo bottles are cut to pieces and used much like sandpaper to smooth the pottery and give it luster. And when her husband was done talking to my friend, the señora called him over to give me a demonstration of how he uses his pottery wheel to make the ceramics. Nothing grand, it looks like a spool of thread, only about the size of a water bottle. And he turns it with his hand while he shapes the clay with his other hand. Jeez, but it was incredible.
There's a lot of stuff said about the artisans' ceramics in my area. That one town hogs all the tourists, that another is stingy with the resources within their town limits, that the ceramics trade is dropping off, that my town has been excluded in the ceramics boom. All that chatter and what it comes down to is someone sitting on a plastic stool, using a tool made of a corn cob to bring order and beauty to some particularly stiff mud.
I got to try it myself and it's no surprise I couldn't do it. Just a fact I'm getting used to lately – especially in Costa Rica – there are some things I can't just pick up and do as well as I'd like. The best part of trying it was going inside the house to wash my hands. To top everything I'd already seen, there was an ANCIENT mother-in-law perched on the arm of a wooden chair like some tiny paranoid bird, feet off the ground and in the seat of the chair itself. She kind of looked at me and I think she processed my presence. I think, but it was dark inside so maybe not. Just another thing to add to my list of, “If only my brain could take pictures” moments, a creepy and quiet grandma in a hidden house in a part of the world that probably less than 100 people have visited.
How many people had your parking space at the grocery store today? Probably 100 and a different 100 tomorrow. So my mind is like, completely blown.
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