Roasting Cashews - Costa Rican Style

Did you know that cashews actually grows on a fruit, one nut (it is actually a seed in the botanical sense) per fruit?  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cashew

During our training we had the opportunity to visit other volunteers in Guanacaste and we were invited by a neighbor of theirs to harvest the cashew nuts (or marañon in Spanish) and then roast them over a fire to eat.  Roasting the nut helps to burn off the otherwise irritating toxin found on the shell (or "cascara") as well as give them a really excellent flavor after breaking the shell to extract the nut.

Harvesting the nuts took a reasonable amount of time since there is only one nut (seed) per fruit.  Cashews are just as expensive here as in the States and for good reason.  It gave me a real appreciation for what it takes for a jar of cashews to arrive in a jar in the grocery store in the States.

Anyway, here's a few pictures of us roasting and sharing some cashews with our fellow Peace Corps volunteer hosts and some of our new friends (their neighbors).

The toxins on the shell are flamable and it is necessary to roast the cashews for a long time before they are ready to eat.

One of our hosts helping us move the cashews around so they don't burn and to help stoke the fire so that the cashews roast more quickly.

Happily posing for a picture after we've eaten the fruits of our labor.  The cashews were harvested from the orchard of the gentleman seated in the middle. 

Some Photos from Our First Month of Service in Costa Rica

The following are a few pictures we've taken during our first few weeks in Costa Rica with some captions to explain the context.

This is a picture of a cricket that almost scared us to death our first week.  It was sitting right outside the entrance to our room.  We tended toward fear when encountering new "bichos" during our first few weeks here.  We're becoming a little more accustomed, but have found a little fear is probably a good thing.

I helped save this sloth with a co-worker as it was trying to cross a busy street which you can imagine is not a smart thing to do if you are not very fast.  Here's a picture of him happily climbing a tree from the ground after we took him there far away from the crowded road. 

We took a group of children to Cahuita National Park on a school trip and this boy wanted his picture taken.

This is definitely one of the most beautiful snakes I've seen - it's called an Oropel - which I wrote about in my first post which is poisonous, but is very docile unless provoked.  This one was located at Cahuita National Park.

This is a picture of some kids playing soccer on the beach during a sunset about 4 km from our site.

A Day in the Life – Our first month at our site

It’s 6:18 pm and it is 85 degrees and practically 100 percent humidity here.  We’ve gotten used to the tiny ants inside our room, but the ones outside in the lawn bite hard, which defies their minuteness.  We bought a fan, but we use it sparingly as we’re sensitive to the electricity use which our host “mother” has to pay.  We go to sleep with a mosquito net and usually take a shower before we go to bed to make it easier to withstand the heat.
 
The sound of rain outside is soothing, they call it “pelo de gato” or cat’s hair, as the rain is soft and fine.  At times, it can rain really heavily, but so far we’ve had little rain since arriving although we’re located in a tropical rainforest  and it historically rains the entire month of May and the beginning of June.   The rain usually drops the temperature a degree or two, which can really make a difference when you’re trying to get to sleep at night.

Our morning routine usually includes a walk and some exercises using a combination of resistance bands and a yoga mat along with a 30-40 minute walk.  Afterward, we eat breakfast with our host mother which usually combines rice, beans and eggs and sometimes meat although this morning we had tamales with chicken and a sausage in a bun.  A lot of the food we eat here comes from our host families or a neighbor’s farm, the majority of which is grown organically.  It has given me a new definition of “eating local” since a lot of the produce and/or meat only travels a kilometer or less to get from farm to table.

One of my favorite pastimes here is to sit on the front porch and read a book.  Although it is still, if you pay attention there is always movement, a bird flying by and just about grazing the ground, a butterfly fluttering in the wind, the sounds of the barking of the neighbors’ dogs as they talk to each other over the distances and the sounds of bicycle tires passing on the dirt road as a child rides by to go to school.

When it gets too hot and we’re not working, we usually take a trip to the beach or take a dip in one of the creeks (or criques in Spanglish) or small rivers here.  If we can’t find water to escape the heat, I’ll take the shade and a nice cool wind.  ¡Qué rico! (How wonderful!)  We pass the time chatting with neighbors, playing fútbol with our host mother’s nephews or visiting one of the neighboring towns to get a better understanding of the geography and diversity of the region.

In our first three months we have been tasked with writing a community diagnostic, which underscores both the strengths and the challenges of the community which we will eventually present to various community organizations.  Given these challenges and strengths and the skills which we possess as volunteers we will prioritize projects and collaborate with our community to tackle some of the pressing issues.  Much of our time thus far has been spent in interviewing people of all ages, gender and background, making community maps and seasonal calendars to better know the community resources and times of local holidays, harvests and times when people are either busy or available and getting to know our counterpart agencies and personnel.

So far, we’re slowly getting accustomed to our life here, although a call home or an email from a friend makes us a little homesick.  But we’ve been here in Costa Rica for now over 3 months and we’re starting to feel like we’re actually really doing this – finally realizing the dream which began more than a year and a half ago (in November 2009) when we first decided to apply to be Peace Corps volunteers.

Afraid of the Dark

The first visit we made to a volunteer’s site during training, I swear I regressed back to childhood and became afraid of the dark again.  We arrived to the site in the dark so had no bearings and what types of animals or “bichos” (generic for any insect or unknown animal) would be lurking in the shadows.  After tales of bats – one of which got disoriented by a fan and beat its wing into the face of our host, scorpions – some of which are the size of your hand and a story about how a spider which died our host’s ear (who was told by the PC doctor to leave it there and it would disintegrate and exit naturally), we were not prepared to go to sleep.  Not only was it hot, but we were thinking and dreading the worst and did not have a flashlight with us for when we needed to get up and go to the bathroom or get water.

In the middle of the night, my wife and I were startled awake by something which crawled across our legs.  My heart palpitated rapidly and I became over-sensitized to every slight sound or movement around me.  My wife’s concurrence regarding the unknown animal which scurried over us only underscored the validity of my worst fears.  We sat and clutched each other for what must have been an hour and placed a small sheet over us should the same thing happen, despite the fact that we were already both overly hot and having a hard time getting to sleep.
When we needed to get up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom, we waited until we couldn’t wait any longer.  Not only did we not know where the light was, but we also had no idea where we had placed our flip-flops and who knows what we might step on as we fumble blindly through the room searching for a way to illuminate our way through the lurking shadows.
My wife managed to find her way to turn on the light while I clutched her hand only to find that the room was empty (except us of course) and we were able to do our business and eventually fell asleep again, light as it would be.  Welcome to Peace Corps, Costa Rica!  However, this first visit turned out to be very useful in preparing us for our new site in terms of the heat, the bugs and some “basic training.”
Rule #1: Always know where you put your slippers should you have to get up in the middle of the night and you don’t have light. 
Rule #2: Always keep a source of light close to you (flashlight or know where to find the wall switch).

Now that we’ve been in our site for almost a month, we’re not fazed by large flying cockroaches (well, at least we know they are not going to kill us), huge toads which like to hang outside our door when it rains, and large grasshoppers, beetles, cicadas or crickets of varying sizes and Martian quality.  We do have a great deal of respect for snakes, which we’ve been told are plenty, although we’ve only seen one that is venomous so far, knock on wood.  We make sure to keep our “foco,”or flashlight, with us handy at all times, scan it in front of us when walking at night, make sure to keep an eye at our feet when walking through the thick underbrush or “mata” and always wear boots and long pants when walking in the “campo” or countryside.  But, that’s not to say that the next time I run into something unknown I’m not going to run wildly and scream at the top of my lungs like a girl.   

Welcome to the Jungle!

I know that this blog is LONG overdue.  My apologies, but before signing up for the Peace Corps I really had no idea how busy I would be.  The first three months of training averaged between 12-14 hour days including practicing our Spanish with our training host families and any time we had which was free, which was usually one day or so every two weeks, was used as a mental health day.

I’ll go back in a further entry and reflect a little on our application process and training experience, but the current news is that my wife and I are finally Peace Corps volunteers as we had our swearing in ceremony on Friday, May 13^th at the house of the U.S. Ambassador to Costa Rica (see link for recording of swearing in ceremony http://www.livestream.com/usembassy/video?clipId=flv_b9ff1d1d-676b-4098-97a7-06a19ca0fecb=).  Even after the lengthy application process and receiving our invitations to Costa Rica, we were still only “aspirants” until we met all the training pre-requisites in relation to language, security, technical, health and cultural integration.  

Very few Costa Rica Peace Corps volunteers from our group are actually located close to the beach.  Not only did we win the lottery when we were chosen to serve our time in Costa Rica, but then they place us in one of the most beautiful places in the whole country just a stone’s throw away from more than a handful of stunning beaches and ocean scenery as well as lush tropical jungle and mountainous region inland.

In our first week here we met a young gentleman in the community who is a wood-working artisan as well as a farmer and fisherman, among other things.  He offered to take us on a hike on his farm which has an overlook of our site where you can see all the way to the coast.  As he used his machete to chop a path through the thick “mata”, he told us in English, “Welcome to the Jungle”.  Turns out he’s a fan of Guns & Roses and rock music in general, but his utterance could not have been more appropriate.  We encountered “hormigas valas” – huge ants more than an inch in length which can make you ill with fever if you’re bitten, a snake (luckily non-venomous), “cara blanca” monkeys, huge blue “chicharas” (cicadas) making all kinds of “bulla” or noise.  We could also hear the distinct call of the howler monkeys in the distance.

On our return trip our guide chopped down a bunch of bananas from a tree and shook the group to make sure that all the ants and any other rodents had dispersed before carrying it with him telling us that one time his friend didn’t use the same precaution and was bitten by a venomous snake (same family as the rattle snake, but silent) and he had to carry his friend down the hill over his shoulder.  If his friend used his own power to descend the hill, the venom in his blood would flow more quickly through his body and he’d have less of a chance to live.  Turns out they made it to the street below and another friend was able to take the injured friend to the hospital on his bike.  After a two day stay in the hospital with a dose of anti-venom and antibiotics he was fine.

We're living in an area with plenty of cultural diversity: indigenous, Afro-Caribbean, Ticos (what they call Costa Ricans here), Nicaraguans, Panamanians, Europeans, and North Americans.  In addition, the county we live in is among the poorest in Costa Rica although unfortunately there are not many volunteers.  We feel very fortunate to be serving here as coming from the Bay Area we really were accustomed to diversity and certainly like the idea of being placed in a region that needs our assistance.  Also, it fit perfectly with our Peace Corps preference for region which was the following regions in this order: Latin America, Africa and the Caribbean.

Some highlights from our first week include saving a sloth "perezoso or more colloquially cúcula in Spanish" http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bradypus_tridactylus from the street with one of my co-workers as it was trying to cross a busy street.  I grabbed a big log and he used his gloves to help it onto the log and then we moved it off the road and to a tree where it could safely climb to its safety.  We've seen howler monkeys (or "congos") http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alouatta_palliata and white-faced capuchin monkeys ("cara blancas") http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cebus_capucinus.

We've also seen both the Strawberry Poison Dart Frog http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strawberry_Poison-dart_Frog and the Green and Black Poison Dart Frog as well http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_and_Black_Poison_Dart_Frog.  We've also seen an Oropel which is a venemous snake in a National Park nearby (luckily off the trail) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WecCixv3W6g.

There's so much more to tell and I'd like to post some pictures soon, but I'd like to publish this today, so forgive me if this is short.  Thanks for your patience and I will try to update this blog weekly so you can keep track of what we are doing.