Greetings Everyone! We left Nicaragua some time ago and Costa Rica has been treating us quite well! I can hardly believe there is only three weeks left of our adventure. While we have been enjoying our time working with Asoprola, we owe you an update on our experiences during the weeks between leaving Nicaragua and arriving here in the town of Altamira.
Over a few days of bus rides and hostels we said goodbye to Nicaragua and swapped Cloud Forest
Our tree house.
for Caribbean Jungle. As we stepped off the bus onto the side of the highway, the mid-afternoon sun reminded us we were now closer to the equator. The bus pulled away and after a moment we shouldered our packs and started walking. I searched along the sides of the road ahead for a sign of our destination, scanning the advertisements for a few roadside lodges and restaurants. Merely two minutes later our group had stopped walking and gathered in the grass between the side of the road and the dense tree line. Why have we stopped already, I asked myself, we just started walking. Then I realized. The sign I was looking for didn’t have words and wasn’t painted flashy colors targeting tourists driving by, in fact there wasn’t any sign at all. What there was, was a square hole cut in the leafy side of the tree line, maybe wide enough for two people to walk through side by side, but hardly noticeable to any passerby moving faster than a sloth’s pace. Neal kindly informed us that we were about to start an ascent of a hill that had brought past students to tears, citing mud, bugs, darkness, and heavy packs as the expected culprits of terror. Welcome to the jungle, I thought, and after a moments rest we started onto the trail. There would be no tears or mud this year, just sore muscles and lots of sweat. This was our intro to Kekoldi, and the two weeks that followed were both challenging and magical, with the right proportions of each ingredient to make for a wonderful experience.
Kekoldi is an indigenous reserve held by the Bri Bri people in the southeast of Costa Rica, and is similar to the Native American reservations I have seen in the states. There is more nature than development, and the people we visited make a living through various activities done on a humble scale including eco-tourism, craft making, and the cultivation of Cacao and Bananas. Like the Native American tribes of the U.S., they have had their conflicts with the economic forces of progress and capitalism, but they remain strongly rooted in place, maintaining a reverence for all life and the great mother earth that is inherent in their culture. It is not that they have resisted all forms of modernism, but that they are actively creating a balance that puts gratitude for natural systems first.
Evan playing guitar.
Not long into our ascent of the hill we met Sebastian, the man with whom we were to stay while we were there. The intense trail we were climbing leads to a magnificent structure, a guest lodge of sorts, but better described as the biggest tree house any of us have ever seen. Although not literally in a tree, it is surrounded by thick jungle which allowed for close sightings of sloths, toucans, boa constrictors and more – for which our class sessions were often interrupted. Like other tree houses, this lodge was also built by hand, through the force and determination of Sebastian and various volunteer groups. All of the wood that was used to build it, and everything else it contained, was carried by hand about a mile up the steep, root-filled, muddy jungle trail before being assembled. For this the phrase “fuerza de Bri Bri” was coined, out of sheer respect and amazement at the hard work and muscle that went into this beautiful structure. The guest lodge serves as a compliment to another hand-built feat of human strength lying farther up the hill, a tower used for monitoring migrating birds of prey otherwise known as raptors. The data collected at Sebastian’s tower has since established Kekoldi as the world’s third best location to see the annual raptor migrations, in terms of number of individual birds.
Our service projects were split between trail work and improving the tower. We shoveled our way through the jungle clearing leaf litter, building steps, and leveling ground. At the tower we repaired and reinforced guard rails, built benches and cut lots of wood with handsaws. I enjoyed seeing the progress made each day. Sebastian and his family surely work hard, and they know how to eat to support it! Each day for breakfast we were treated to fresh fruits like mango and papaya and an endless supply of Nutella and fry bread that helped us reach our own level of fuerza de Bri Bri on the trail or at the tower. Although the delicious chocolate hazelnut spread is certainly a staple in the diet of his guests, Sebastian and the Bri Bris possess an amazing wealth of knowledge about their natural surroundings from which they can provide the sustenance they need to work hard and thrive. One day he led us on a long hike through the jungle and we were shown exactly how the Bri Bri’s provide their four basic necessities: Food, Water, Medicine, and Shelter. His only tools were a machete, his mind, and his own two hands. It was amazing to me to feel how out of my element I was in the jungle, with so many different species of plants and animals I had only ever seen on t.v. or in the zoo. But here these species are native, like Sebastian and the Bri Bris. They are keenly aware of exactly what they need to wake up each day and continue the primordial journey of life, understanding that the resources they have are unique to their bioregion and make them who they are. For this they live with a gratitude that extends to every drop of rain, ray of sun, leaf, stalk, and creature on Earth. While many people have become detached from our natural systems, the Bri Bri have retained their nativeness and they have retained a great deal of happiness as well. Although it is easy to forget those living on the fringes of modernity, there are some things for which they hold the greatest wisdom, and I predict their wisdom will become more valuable to people everywhere in the near future. Our time in Kekoldi was truly a gift, and as we go forth for the rest of this semester and beyond, we will strive to live with Fuerza de Bri Bri todos los dias, making sure to keep a jar of Nutella in the cupboard for those days of particularly hard work, and remembering to live as if we are native to place no matter where the day may find us. Thanks for reading, and we will be seeing you all real soon.
-Travis Patterson.