It has been 1 month and about 15 days and my new site and so far I am enjoying it. It started off a little rocky, since I had to change host families 1 week after I arrived in Matina, but I will get back to that. First I would like to describe my town, Matina. As I mentioned before Matina is located in the province of Limon, which has a very distinct culture that differs from the rest of Costa Rica. I will briefly give a history lesson about Limon and Matina in general.
Spanish settlement of Costa Rica came from the Pacific side of the country and given the mountainous barrier, dense forests and high rainfall between the Central Valley and the Caribbean colonists were faced with a real challenge. Due to this along with the resistance of the natives, establishing permanent settlements in the Caribbean region inevitably met with failure. Matina was one of the very few exceptions due to the cacao farms which many merchants invested in. Therefore a railroad was built in Matina and workers were purchased from Jamaica and other regions of the country. This is all to explain the high population of blacks within the Limon region as well as the presence of Afro-Caribbean culture, which can be found in the food as well as the patawa accent of English spoken by many Limonesas.
This was very surprising to me since I was unaware of the history of Costa Rica and Limon in general. Since I have family in the Caribbean and growing up in Flatbush, Brooklyn this is a culture I am very familiar with and in a strange way I feel quite at home. Speaking of home, I currently live with a new host family, unfortunately I had to leave my first host family Peace Corps chose for me and look for a new one after being in town for only a week. That turned out to frustrating and nerve wrecking; imagine someone new moving into your town introducing themselves and asking to live with you in the same sentence. Luckily I was able to find a new home and I am much more comfortable and happy. I live with an older couple, no kids in the home and they are super sweet and treat me like family which I appreciate. And my host mom cooks rice & beans, not Spanish style arroz com frijoles but Caribbean style peas and beans with fresh coconut milk and chili peppers. Delicious!
I don’t want to make this entry too long so I will just quickly sum up what I am doing now. Normally for your first 3 months volunteers do a diagnostic on your community, which involves doing interviews, gathering official data about the population, health, security and general attitudes of your community. This information is then summarized and analyzed in order to plan future projects and programs for the community. It also helps you get to know more people within in your community. So far I have done a couple interviews but I have mainly been working in the elementary/junior high school, doing different sessions on recreational activities. Most of the recreation in Matina is playing soccer so I have made it my goal to teach different sports and hopefully start like a basketball or tennis team. A lot of people also want to learn English so I decided to start English classes for my community available to everyone 12 and older. I wasn’t expecting over 100 people to sign up! So I have got my hands full putting together lesson plans and worksheets for my new classes which will start today! I am obviously not a teacher but Peace Corps offers many resources for volunteers interested in teaching English including official licensed classes. Wish me luck though, this will be the first class I ever taught!
I will end with an unforgettable moment I have already experienced in my community which always gives me a smile and motivates me. I was walking to the supermarket from my old host home, and I was feeling a down, and a little depressed like I wanted to give up and just go back home to the US. This day happened to be when my old host mom told me she was going away in a week and I needed to find someplace else to live because I could not stay in her home. Then all of a sudden I saw a group of kids coming from the school and they began to greet me by calling out “maestra maestra (teacher, teacher).” They were on the way to an activity in the center of town but stopped and spoke to me with interest and awe, ask me when I was coming back to the school. At that moment I thought despite my sadness I couldn’t leave, these kids are happy about me being here and there is soooo much that could be done and I want to do it. So this is what motivates me in my town of Matina, despite my homesickness and bad days, I appreciate this amazing opportunity and the gratification that I get knowing that I am here helping people.
Till next time, feel free to email me and if you want to send anything my address is in my last blog. Thanks for all the support and I will write again to tell you how my classes are going.
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