Mayonaise, Bat Manicures and How Not to Get Rich

As this is the last day before school vacation, this is the last chance to write a blog entry that may be read to the class in school. I, Sandra, am writing for Ella this evening because she got sick this afternoon. It doesn't appear to be Dengue Fever, or a stomach problem and there no strangle marks from fig trees, so we think it will pass quickly. I suspect my blog entry will be the full on educational blog entry you've all been waiting for...(yeah?) Ella hasn't yet written about our visit to a coffee and chocolate "finca" which is a word that means "ranch" or "plantation". We got to see the entire process of producing coffee - from red fruit on the tree to the hot drink. (Chocolate, too. And yes, we got to sample all stages...) Coffee beans are actually the seeds of bright red coffee fruits. The leaves are a deep green. Kids here call them trees of Christmas or something like that, because the fruits ripen around Christmas, and the trees are red and green with fruit and leaves. Also, kids used to earn pocket money for Christmas gifts by picking fruits. (or "granas de cafe" en Spanish.) Here is a picture of Ella picking granas de cafe.

Here is a math problem: Each trabajador (worker) who picks granas gets about two dollars for filling a box (caja) with coffee fruits. Each box hold about 2 kilograms of fruits. It takes 30-60 minutes hour for a good picker to fill a box. Each box of fruits eventually produces about 200 cups of coffee. In the USA, a cup of coffee costs between $2 and $4. So....how much does a coffee picker earn in an 8 hour day? What is the actual value of a box of coffee fruits? What percentage does a picker get? How can we account for the cost of processing the fruits, drying the seeds, and shipping them around the world? Do you think a coffee picker should be able to buy a cup of Starbucks coffee? In the USA, many fruit pickers are from Mexico, because people from the US don't want to work so hard for so little pay. In Costa Rica, most coffee pickers are Nicaraguan, because Costa Ricans don't want to work so hard for so little pay. Mexico is a poorer country than the US, and Nicaragua is poorer than Costa Rica -- poorer in fact than every other country in the western hemisphere except Haiti, the poorest of all. On the subject of chocolate, all I can say is that it is excellent here! And it is a fermented product, which means that it goes through a nice, stinky stage where it is covered in a whitish goo that smells like beer.

Back to Christmas trees. Our host family (who is totally fabulous) has a Christmas tree that is just an evergreen branch stuck in a one gallon plastic jar that says "Hellman's Mayonaise" on it. Underneath is a nativity (birth of Jesus) scene entwined with Christmas lights. And I must say, it seems perfect. I don't know why I never thought of the mayo jar myself. It makes our traditional US Christmas seem like a bit too much. Our family has two girls, Alanis and Lisbeth, and Ella plays with them a lot. They kind of speak English because they go to a bilingual

school. I am always reminding the older girl to speak Spanish with Ella. We all played cards the other night. Paul tried to say "play a queen" and he ending up saying "juice, sand" (jugo arena instead of juegue una reina)

Monteverde would be a pretty good place to live if you had a way to make money. It has lots of protected forests and many scientists. It is a very international community. You can get traditional rice and beans and fried bananas, or you can choose to buy a truffle from the Argentine chocolate shop. (a good one is the coconut volcano). The whole set up is sort this ramshackle array of buildings spread out along a rocky, muddy road that serves as passage for cars, motorbikes, dumptrucks and lots of pedestrians. There are several very artsy, non-ramshackle and expensive hotels There are also a bunch of Quakers here who came to Costa Rica because it is a peaceful country with no army and in general Quakers like to avoid war. I'll bet you do, too. In the picture below, there is a mountain behind Ella. That is actually the continental divide. If you stood there on a day that was perfectly clear, you could see BOTH the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans. We went there, but saw only clouds...

Oh, and tomorrow night we are going to go give bat manicures. We met a researcher who catches bats in mist nets, paints their nails so he can identify them later, then releases them. He invited us to come along one night! The guy's name is Fabio and he is this Costa Rica (Tico) dude with dreadlocks, sloppy clothes and absolutely perfect, unimpeachable manners. The manners come from being Tico, and perhaps the dreads from being from the Carribean coast. Happy school vacation and take good care of the Keewoos. I'll tell you more about them when I return. Sandra