Thursday, July 8, 2010

Casa del Cafe

June 22, 2010

After a hearty post-arrival dinner of squeeze peanut butter and Magic Crackers—which was thankfully augmented by Teodoro with a candlelit fried egg sandwich—I said my goodnights and headed to my room, hand carefully shading the flame of a small white candle stuck to an empty sardine can that Teodoro had handed me as I exited the kitchen. Closing the door behind me, I raised the candle high above my head to check out my new diggs in the flickering light. Not bad; the far wall was almost completely windows (With screens! ...That only had a few large gaping holes in them...!), a set of bunk beds lined the right-hand wall, on the left sat a single bed with a pillow and two neatly folded thick wool blankets, and a small aisle separated the beds in between. A wooden night stand flanked the end of each bed, and a white plastic chair sat next to the door. Perhaps most importantly, no fist-sized spiders were anywhere to be seen. I set to work unpacking my backpack. Despite the fact that I had seen Teodoro diligently shake out the pillow and the two blankets that were folded at the foot of my bed, I was not game for waking up with large, hairy arachnoid bedmates and opted for my sleeping bag and “travel pillow” (read: my softshell jacket and wool sweater stuffed inside a reversible nylon stuff sack with a marginally fuzzy lining). I fumbled in the semi-darkness to put together my mini-tent of mosquito netting, hung my headlamp from the headboard of my bed so I could find it in the dark if I needed to, and blew out the candle at 7:45 pm.

Sleep was a restless series of strange, vivid dreams induced by the anti-malaria medicine (a common side-effect), paranoid half-awake struggles to position and re-position the mosquito netting appropriately, and a substantial amount of tossing and turning on the thick, soft foam mattress that left my body lying quite comfortably in a deep V as my hips sunk towards the floor. Though the sun would not rise for another three and a half hours, morning started at 3:30 AM as the neighbor's roosters began to exchange territorial cackles with those of a neighboring roost. Perfect. I laid in bed and used every ounce of extra-sensory perception my weary brain thought it could muster to will them to shut the hell up. Fail.

At 4:30 a beautifully foreign chorus of chirps and twitters slowly began to join the show, gradually replacing the waning hum of the cicadas and other nighttime singers as they took their time finding cozy cracks and crevices to nestle into before the first glow of daylight.

By 5:30 the grand show had risen to an unbelievable crescendo as if, in cumulative presentiment, the jungle sensed the speed at which their world spun towards the warming rays that would soon set the day aflame. I listened in awe to deep, haunting calls of some absolutely magnificent creature; the sound of which is entirely impossible to describe or imitate (a video clip of the morning chorus is on it's way, I promise).

At 6:00 the sun finally made its debut and Teodoro's battery-powered radio clicked on in the next room as the screams of a hungry infant and the playful yells of kids echoed across the yard. At that point I officially recognized the futility in my attempts to hang on to the last threads of sleep and grabbed my Spanish grammar book, eager to get in a bit of studying before whatever the day had in store for me.

At 9:30 Teodoro handed me a hoe, swung a pickax over his left shoulder and stooped to pick up a worn machete with his right hand. He pointed to the steep slope that ran up to the road at a 60 degree angle behind the Casa del Café and explained that we would be weeding around the coffee plants growing there. For several seconds I looked up and down the slope, aiming to identify the coffee plants we were caring for, until I realized I hadn't the foggiest idea of what a coffee plant actually looked like. Whoops. I suppose that detail had gotten lost in the shuffle of travel clinic appointments, blood tests, vaccinations, embassy registrations, and goodbye bar-b-ques. No worries, Teodoro was an excellent teacher. Small landslides of earth tumbled down the slope with every step as I followed him up the mountain and struggled to keep myself from sliding down with them.

For three hours I slowly ascended the slope, hoeing down and tearing out every weed in sight around the foot-tall, year-old coffee plants that speckled the hill with regularity every four feet or so. Rivers of dusty earth buried my boots and continued down the slope that I was constantly on the brink of sliding down; I tried not to think of all I had learned this past semester in Tim's class about the erosion-mitigating benefits of ground cover and root structure as I tore two-, three-, and four-foot-tall weeds from the ground with my bare hands, their roots ceding their hold on the dust with a series of satisfying pops. Smaller weeds were altogether worse, as Teodoro had instructed me to rake them from the ground with the hoe, sending what surely amounted to bagfuls of earth rolling down the mountain as I neatly piled the freshly fallen autotrophs in long horizontal rows between the coffee trees (my half-hearted attempt to slow the erosion I was enabling while I carried out my weed-destroying mission). I will admit that I relished in the destruction of larger weeds, which I hacked down with murderous intensity, repeatedly driving the blade of my hoe with force against stems that were sometimes two inches or more in diameter until the carcass lay defeated on the dust in front of me, ready to add to the pile. The weeds usually had the last laugh, though, as I often looked down to find my clothes covered in hundreds of fuzzy green burrs the size of BB pellets, frequently found tangles of dandelion-like feathery seeds in my ponytail, and too often found myself picking thorns of all sizes out of newly torn skin as blood dripped from my fingers to stain the dust at my feet.

Despite the slope, the neighbor's chickens quickly found their way to our work space and maintained a comforting proximity as they cooed and hummed and scratched for newly revealed bichos in the freshly turned earth. The motion they added to the surrounding environment had a soothing effect that left me unconcerned by strange noises and movements my senses detected around me while I worked.

Though I tried my best to appear enthusiastic and ready to keep going indefinitely, after three hours of battle in our war against the weeds, breakfast now six hours behind me, I was all but out of steam. My back and my legs ached from constantly bending over, my ankles, having spent the last two hours bent to a 45 degree angle, were ready for flat ground, and my already bloody hands had now begun to blister. As if sensing the impending demise of my American body that was unaccustomed to such extended feats of physical labor, Teodoro appeared with his pickax and machete. Descansaremos he said with a nod and continued down the mountain (“let's rest”). I willingly followed as he explained we would go harvest yucca (a tree he had pointed out to me earlier in the day whose root tubers are a staple food in the region) for lunch.

I followed him to a narrow strip of cultivated land on the far side of the property, where, after spending the morning in the shady pseudoforest I was surprised by the intensity of the mid-day heat. Teodoro approached a yucca tree and then did a funny two-step as he turned in place, looking for something in the surrounding banana trees. He approached the nearest palm (below, left) and almost without warning axed off a dying four-foot long leaf, which he then folded in three and placed in a shady spot on the ground. Sientate, he said calmly with a nod and a smile, pointing to the leaf. The fatigue in my legs trumped my ego; I gratefully sat, feeling slightly pampered in the shade as I watched all four feet, five inches of Teodoro deftly swing his machete with amazing precision, chopping down each pale, spiny branch of the 9 foot tall yucca tree he had selected with minimal effort and pile them neatly to the side. Branches out of the way, he now set to loosening the roots with his pickax so he could tear the entire root system from the ground in one piece. I sat sweating in the heat despite my seat in the shade, and was slightly terrified when I looked down at my bare arms and found no less than a dozen crimson pools growing before my eyes on their surface. As I wiped the red away to determine the source I watched a tiny fly I had previously taken to be a fruit fly land on my arm and leave yet another carmine pool in his place as he flew away. Definitely not a fruit fly. I untied the long-sleeved shirt I still had tied around my waist from earlier that morning and pulled it over my head as the bites began to swell and the intense itching set in. I pursed my lips to an irritated smile as I remembered in my moment of need that I had forgotten to purchase cortisone cream before leaving the States. Boo. I cursed my oversight as the burning on my arms became nearly unbearable and for a split second I felt the urgency of panic set in. Two hour drive from relief I told myself. Thankfully the sheer absurdity of driving two hours down the mountain to purchase something that would make me only marginally more comfortable provided a strong grounding, forcing me to reassess the meaning of need. I decided a good distraction would probably be more effective than cortisone anyway and got up from my privileged place in the shade to help Teodoro dig up our lunch.
Success.

The yucca was absolutely delicious! Its white flesh had a hearty flavor reminiscent of potatoes but the long, soft fibers that ran lengthwise down the tuber gave it a much creamier texture. I contributed a can of tuna to the meal (a comparatively expensive addition here in this impoverished region, believe it or not) and made several clumsy attempts at conversation with the quiet, enigmatic man I was to spend the next two weeks with. They didn't go very far. 

After lunch I resumed my grammar studies in the shade that remained on the tiled porch as Teodoro sat on the edge of the tile, chupando (literal translation: “sucking”) his way through a five gallon bucket full of oranges as we waited for the heat of mid-day to pass. I watched as the four-year old neighbor boy made his way across the field that separated his family's homestead from the Casa del Cafe. His navy blue sweatpants with a blown out seam in the bum cuffed at his ankles, revealing tiny, dirty feet in tiny, dirty white 
flip flops, an odd contrast to the clean pale yellow polo shirt he wore. Shyly he approached the porch and stopped a good distance away, a toy truck dangling from a once white, now brown rope that he absent-mindedly twirled around his fingers as he stared at the strangely pale newcomer. I said hello and invited him to join us, but he stood his ground and did not speak back as he began to tangle the rope around his hands and elbows, drawing the plastic truck in and away from the unfamiliarity that was me. I turned back to my book for a couple minutes before looking up again to meet his curious gaze; I smiled and began making funny faces. His head rolled to one side as his lips spread into a grin, revealing adorable dimples in his brown cheeks. His arms began to lower in front of him and the weight of the truck slowly unwound the rope from his elbows. I stuck my tongue out at him and his grin widened, head still cocked to the side, eyes never leaving my face; he laughed as the truck landed with a soft thud on the grass in front of him. Encouraged, I tried again: ¿Cómo te llamas? The truck raised as the rope found its way around his elbows again, his smile faded and eyes remained fixed on me. I looked at Teodoro to judge his reaction; the pile of orange peels and the flattened white remains of the fruit post-chupa had grown considerably as he watched the exchange in front of him with curiosity. I turned again to the boy and smiled, resuming my silliness; again the truck dropped as the boy doubled over in fits of giggles. Finally Teodoro spoke, and the boy joined the chupa on the edge of the porch while I snapped photos of the event from my corner in the shade. Teorodo's dog Beethoven emerged from his makeshift doghouse inside an old piece of machinery that sat beside the porch to join the fun shortly thereafter. 

At 3:30, feeling fairly refreshed after our descanso we set back to work on the hillside. The constant coos and scratches of chickens followed us at ground level while the buzzing of large pollinators and deep hum of tiny shimmering humming birds swarmed around my head. The perpetual chorus of birds overhead completed the symphony which moved in a flowing rhythm, accompanying the scrape scrape scrape of the hoe and the calm pish....pish... of the pickax. I had by now identified the magnificent creature whose pre-dawn songs had so captivated me that morning: a large black bird who traveled in groups, their long, brilliant yellow tails setting ablaze the tallest tree in the forest we worked in as they built their long, drooping nests that hung from almost every branch. I frequently stopped to watch from below as their calls echoed across the clearing; perched high above, I watched one bird dip forward as he began his song, continuing the bow until he was almost upside down on the branch he clung to. He then quickly snapped back upright with a small hop as he completed the call with a hollow shriek. Unbelievable.

At 5:30 Teodoro again anounced descansaremos, this time adding nos ducharemos (“time to shower”). Sweaty, filthy, bleeding, blistered, and exhausted, the idea of a cold shower didn't sound too bad as the sun started its descent towards the mountains on the horizon.


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