blue ribbon

was the name of the color we painted the school today. it was the blue you'd expect, with a name like that, the blue of plastic detergent buckets, old station wagons, superman's bodysuit. ironically, we were painting over a mural left by a group of high school students from san francisco, who came with heart but no plan, apparently. the result was a mess of sloppily painted names circling a picture of the golden gate bridge. i sound heartless, but even this tiny school in the poorest outskirts of granada wanted it gone. so we painted over it, one blue ribbon brush stroke at a time.

i painted with oliver, adrian and blake. adrian and blake are students at the casa xalteva, a language school where a friend of mine named jose luis is director and spanish instructor. oliver was a student and is now, a year later, kind of a volunteer/employee/hanger-on. it's a non-profit and they do trips around granada and run programs for the gaggle of kids that hang out there all day. i'm looking over at oliver right now, simply covered in children pulling on him, begging for a game of catch, a piggy back ride, a pillow fight.

this place makes its money on spanish classes for travelers. people come for a week at a time and can opt to take trips and dance classes in addition to the spanish. there are eight instructors, young and energetic. "thank goodness you're here!" they laughed. "you can tell us what everyone is saying about us in english!"

i borrowed a bike today, a 75-pound green schwinn that would be the envy of any san francisco hipster, and rode it out to the school, over a rutted little camino that stretched into a neighborhood of tin covered shacks, hogs and goats and skin-and-bones horses sharing space with trickles of sewage and barefoot kids. we painted the school with four little boys looking over our shoulders, ringing the school bell through the broken window.

i looked inside the school and found bare, clean classrooms. thirty desks and a white board, a few handwritten posters.

VALORES A PRACTICAR: Amor Respeto Paciencia Responsabilidad.

i'd like the challenge of that classroom. clean slate. how to teach with nothing but creativity and words. it must be so hard, for the kids and the teachers.


oliver is now reading "in cold blood" to the pile of kids. they're listening raptly.

casa xalteva

"adivina que..."

means "guess what?" in spanish and, guess what, little kids use it all the time here too. on the liberia bus while i sat in the aisle, little blas sang me a song. he´s five and wants to be a singer. i asked him what kind of music he would sing: "all kinds,¨" he answered breezily.

soon he had parked himself in the aisle ext to me and was asking me questions. "adivina una cosa. adivina adonde vamos nosotros." "i want you to guess, to guess where we´re going."

he heard me speak english and obligingly spoke all of the english he knew: "ello" "vai-vai" and the numbers up to twelve.

"adivina que está en el mar más profundo de los estados unidos." "guess what´s in the deepest ocean in the united states."
"fish."
"tiburones! hay que nadar en la orilla solamente." "sharks! you have to swim just on the edge."

"adivina que es mi animal favorito." "guess what my favorite animal is."
"snake."
"no! murciélago!" "no! bat!"
"why?"
"porque no nos ataca a nosotros! comen semillas, y frutas, e insectos." "because they don´t attack us! they eat seeds, and fruit, and bugs."

"adivina que es mi animal favorito en toda la historia del mundo." "guess what is my favorite animal in all the history of the world."
"dog."
"no! está rayado de blanco." "no! it´s striped all white."
"tiger."
"tiburón tigre." "tiger shark."

"adivina que es mi animal favorito de aqui hasta el sol." "guess what is my favorite animal from here to the sun."
"spider."
"no. es la más grande en el mundo. la ballena azul! es la más grande, sabe usted?" "no. it´s the biggest in the world. the blue whale! it´s the biggest, did you know, maám?"

i taught him to play twenty questions. it seemed right up his alley.




p.s.
another sound byte, from the internet cafe:

"hold on dude. i totally fell in love with this girl in guatemala and i gotta write her back. how do you spell `permanent´?"
"p-e-r-m-e-n-e-n-t."
"sweet."

if i can keep one skill

for the rest of my life, let me hang on to the ability to fall asleep on a dime, wherever and whenever...

today i took a half-hour bus from montezuma to paquera, then an hour ferry from paquera to puntarenas, a 40 minute bus from puntarenas to la cruce de barranca, then waited two hours for a bus to liberia, then stood for three hours on that bus, waited two more hours in the rain for the bus to peñas blancas, two hours standing on that bus, got off, walked through the border crossing, caught a 40 minute school bus to rivas, walked a mile or so to the highway, caught a little pickup truck going to nandaime, rode in the back for an hour until my hair became one giant blond dreadlock, got off, hired a taxi to granada. it was, obviously, not the most straightforward way to get to granada. but i really didn´t want to go all the way back to san josé to catch the direct bus. would have added 5 hours to the trip anyway.

today, i slept standing up on a bus, supporting my eye socket with the heel of my hand and bracing my elbow on the back of the seat next to me with the other hand.

i slept sitting crosslegged in a foot-wide bus aisle, elbows on my knees, head in both hands like mourning.

i slept facing the side of the bus, hanging from the luggage rack above with both hands, head supported in the crook of one arm.

i slept with my cheek on the tailgate of a little white nissan, hands providing a little shock absorption.

i went in and out of sleep in the back of a taxi as flo rida, shakira, rihanna scratched in and out of the radio and my headlamp blinked slowly in my pack.

my dreams today were all bumpy and muddled.

bom-cu-PRA cu-PRA ta-bom-TAK-ta-ti-ki-TAK-TAK.

bom-cu-PRA cu-PRA ta-bom-TAK-ta-ti-ki-TAK-TAK.

bom-cu-PRA cu-PRA ta-bom-TAK-ta-ti-ki-TAK-TAK.

bom-cu-PRA cu-PRA ta-bom-TAK-ta-ti-ki-TAK-TAK.

así van las clases. that's the guaguancó.

i don't want to forget these rhythms.  i've always considered myself kind of devoid of rhythm.  i love making music, but it's usually of the sappy-girl-song ilk, the kind without a defined beat.  i can't dance because i think too hard about the rhythm, get tense, and don't have fun.  thanks but no thanks to the person who gave me THAT complex, you know who you are. grin.

but this, this is a different thing. 

i get up early, swim in the ocean for an hour or so. it's usually nice in the morning, after raining itself out at night.  the weather here is split in fairly even thirds-- about one third sunny, one third cloudy, one third rainy.  except for standing in full sun, they all feel pretty much the same--warm and wet. the rain is coming down with a vengeance right now...  it's funny to think i was so sweaty for the first few days, now i love it, my skin loves it.  the ocean is warmer than the rain, and warmer than the river that feeds it. it feels great to stand in the ocean while it's raining, the lightning as bright and constant as a fall of welding sparks.  

after i swim i sneak into the yoga studio. it's an open air shelter with a wood floor, and only occupied during the daily 6pm class. they leave the mats out. no one has kicked me out yet. the howler monkeys sound like demons and disrupt my practice. 

i open up the window at 8, make coffee, make gallo pinto, mixed beans and rice. breakfast is always gallo pinto, sometimes with eggs, sometimes with thick sour cream, sometimes with a wedge of salty, fresh cheese. i make a big vat of it to sell later. the beans are always cooking, simmering in huge pots with onion, garlic, and meat, usually smoked pig skin.  this morning it was some kind of tentacled thing, probably squid. the finished meal tasted like the ocean. 

i read while the coffee brews. i have read one book a day since i came here, and have unfortunately picked several oprah-type books in a row.  so here i am in a tropical paradise, reading about incest in turn-of-the-century ireland or illegitimate pregnancy in WWII jamaica or  dramatic racial discrimination in mid-century atlanta.  i get it, oprah. it's tough to be a woman.

i spend the afternoons on my own, accompanied by all three hostel dogs, who race ahead, hopefully clearing out all the ticks and snakes. sometimes i hang out with other travelers, climbing waterfalls and hillsides, surfing (it's fun), catching the brilliant purple-and-red-crabs called tajalines from their holes in the woods, trying to climb coconut trees (it's not fun), trying to find the capuchins with the babies that come by occasionally. they lick their lips and point to their stomachs, asking for mangoes and almonds. 

in the evenings i hit miguel up for drum lessons. if he's not off his nut, he'll teach me. he is a really patient teacher. josué and i dance salsa barefoot in the dirt. i tried to dance with the dominican guy but he chewed his gum too loud and kept yelling at me to relax. i got tense and didn't have fun.  i play cards with folks who are staying at the hotel, mostly nederlanders and americans, lots of english girls, the occasional italian.

bom-cu-PRA cu-PRA ta-bom-TAK-ta-ti-ki-TAK-TAK.

ta-cu-PRA cu-PRA.

ta-cu-PRA cu-PRA.
ta-cu-PRA cu-PRA.
ta-cu-PRA cu-PRA.

this is one rhythm of the itótele, the medium sized drum of the batá, a set of three drums sacred to the orishas. the itótele is the father drum; there are also iyá, the mother drum, the biggest, and okónkolo, the baby.

the batá are played together. it´s hard for me to keep a rhythm with the other two.

tum-ta-TAK-ta-TAK-ta-BOM-BOM.

tum-ta-TAK-ta-TAK-ta-BOM-BOM.
tum-ta-TAK-ta-TAK-ta-BOM-BOM.
tum-ta-TAK-ta-TAK-ta-BOM-BOM.

i'm learning the tumbao. it's the basic salsa rhythm. i play it on my knees and on the wall and on the table and on the congas. then you add:

TAK-TAK-TAK ta-TAK.
TAK-TAK-TAK ta-TAK.

or you can add:

TAK-TAK ta-ta-ta.
TAK-TAK ta-ta-ta.

miguel likes to tell me that if i want to "play the cuban" i have to open my legs more around the drum. one quirk of spanish is that the same verb, tocar, means both to touch and to play (an instrument). so he's also telling me that i need to open my legs more if i want to learn to touch a cuban. there's no end to the dirty jokes. i try to catch him early in the day, before the hangover's worn off and he's still in a thoughtful mood. he's really an excellent musician-- it's weird to watch his hands, which are always so slack and uncoordinated looking, kick ass on a conga or the bongos.

"think in 6, play in 4," he says. or was it "think in 4, play in 6?"

okay.

last night miguel and oki

got into it again. miguel weighs about 90 pounds because he subsists on air and alcohol and spends all day in the hammock watching italian sitcoms. he gets excited at around 9 or so every night as he reaches the crossroads of a waning hangover and a good drunk. oki is a large man, always shirtless, huge black beard and dirty dreads lending him the appearance of a filthy pirate. he writes "epic science fiction," a copy of which is supposedly in existence. i can't imagine. he usually crashes in one of the little lanchas on the beach, although there was a memorable moment when he was found passed out in a chair, bottle of unidentified hooch between his legs, a whole sandwich, minus a bite, held gently in his limp hand, and the single bite falling from his lips. the picture was complete when a little dog came over and started eating the sandwich. he was in san jose to see the doctor recently and was told that he basically has no liver left.

i'm really not sure how two men can be so drunk so continuously, but whatever. last night oki stumbled through and they started hollering at each other about who had the first revolution, cuba or costa rica. they both slur so badly when this gets started that i only pick out words, but it's mostly just a string of name calling. it got good and het up until they were both yelling at the top of their lungs and more italian was coming out of miguel's mouth than anything else.

people gather there most nights to play music. there are a lot of really nice drums and a guitar and other things, and there was a pretty big crowd there to witness all of it. to their credit, everyone just kind of kept playing music while this tornado was spinning around them (thanks blake, for keeping the beat throughout while we all died laughing).

anyway, miguel was yelling about how oki was a descendant of fulgencio bautista when one of the americans cracked open a beer. he went over and saw that it was one of the two local beers, a cerveza imperial. that started him off and he started tearing into the americans about being "imperialists," telling oki to get himself an imperial beer, and pointing out his fridge full of (the other local) pilsen beer. it was wild. at one point i heard him say to a group of gringos, "you've done nothing for the world. at least the terrorists have done something!" andy was sitting off to the side, laughing quietly to himself. "i laugh when i hear something new," he confessed. "i hear all this shit so continuously."

it can get mean, turn on other people. i guess he's been known to freak out and throw everyone out of the hotel. "giving oki a bath" is a common theme-- i've seen miguel spray him with windex and douse him with water. one thing they like to do is a three-act play-- "oki wrote the screenplay!" says miguel-- which is called "guantanamo tres" and involves miguel dressing up first as a peasant, with a big straw hat, and then as a terrorist, draped in a turban with a giant toy bazooka. it always goes wrong in the second act-- "oki, you hijo de puta, you said the wrong thing again, imperialist de mierda. vaffanculo"-- and they never make it to the third act. "oki still has to write the third act."

they're best friends, i guess.

"es un abuso, es," said the old ethiopian rasta hanging out one afternoon as he saw me laughing at their antics. "you're looking at a couple of hombres enfermos."

"seria un abuso si no fueran tan hijos de puta cuando les da la gana," i said.