Getting Ready for Nablus

I bought my 2-pack of moleskin notebooks today. It's the first preparation I make for every trip I make. I buy a pair of notebooks, the same color, one light and one dark. The light one is for field observations and notes and the second one is for thoughts and reflections about daily experiences. I have almost half a shelf of them at home now; the green ones are from Kenya, the purple ones for Costa Rica. And now I have a set of blank, red notebooks to fill with my observations and reflections from Nablus. Only now does the trip feel real.

Before this I was still recovering from three months living in rural Costa Rica. And although I'm still wrestling with re-entry and reverse culture shock, I'm getting ready to move on to an entirely new experience with SOW and Tomorrow's Youth Organization in the West Bank. I was going through the motions of getting ready: making lists, thanking donors, setting aside things to pack. But I didn't really feel like I was leaving until I left Barnes and Noble today with those notebooks in hand.

But now I'm ready. I'm ready to start observing and learning, playing and having fun, filmming and editing, experiencing and reflecting. This trip is just around the corner. And I can't wait.

Saying Goodbye to Costa Rica

Saying goodbye to Costa Rica was hard, but it's good to be home. It has been weird to have my phone and internet access 24/7 and I'm easing back into it, but it's hard, since I'm already looking towards my next trip: the West Bank.

I've still got a few loose ends with my semester in Costa Rica; I'll be posting a couple of last videos about the experience in the next couple days.

Block 3 - Chiquita Infiltration

For my Independent Project, I chose to go back to the banana workers union in Sixaola that we visited in week 2 of Block 2. I was very much drawn to all the social issues present in such an intense work environment with what seemed like very little benefits to those living there. According to the union's secretary general and head of the negotiating team (by the way, the union at this farm is the only banana workers' union in Costa Rica, which is a little scary), there is an intense and bitter rivalry between the union (the "syndicalists") and the company-sponsored solidarity association (the "solidaristas"), which is supposed to provide workers with the same protection and benefits as a union, but doesn't really do squat.

My host family was very welcoming and were very eager for me to experience every detail of their everyday lives. Twenty minutes after I got off the bus, they dragged me to the grocery store with them--in Panama.

My host sister and I standing on the bridge that connects Sixaola, Costa Rica with Guabito, Panama.

The next day we rode the "rola" (the cable system that runs through the banana plantation) to the river to swim.

I tried to conduct my interviews with the workers, but on the third day (after I'd made some really great progress: 11 interviews in 2 days), a Chiquita official walked into the fonda that my host mom owns and asked to meet with me. He told me that I was not allowed to interview Chiquita banana workers without Chiquita's permission. He gave me a lawyer's number and bid me adieu. I was shocked and angry that a corporation was trying to first of all limit the freedoms of these people to talk to me and second of all limit my freedom to talk to them! My initial backlash, naturally, turned into a video slam of Chiquita:



My first instinct was to continue interviewing workers despite Chiquita's demands (the lawyer sent me the paperwork which of course takes 5 weeks to process while I'm only on the plantation for 4 weeks, and even then no guarantees on permission), but I was worried that trying to get workers to talk to me anyway would put their jobs and livelihoods in danger. My host family assured me that they would find people and places safe to interview at and with. My sisters and their kids were great and I don't know what I would have done without them.

So I spent my month hanging out with my family, poking around the plantation (without permission, take that Chiquita!), and playing crazy eights with my best friend, a 42-year old solidarity association loyalist (not someone my sindicalista ass ever thought she'd be hanging out with).

My host family's house (the duplex right half). It has two bedrooms--I took one, 4 people slept in the other bedroom, 1 person slept on the couch, and 1 on the bed under the stairs.

For those of you who don't know, bananas do not grow on trees--they grow on plants. Why does that matter? Because plants are high maintenance and have to be replanted multiple times in a year as opposed to being part of a long-term infrastructure like, say, an apple tree that can live and produce apples for years and years. For this reason--along with the fact that bananas are produced year round not just in one season--banana plantations are very labor-intensive.

It was an incredible experience and I was so sad to leave. I really hope I can get the chance to come back.

One of my host sisters and my host mom and I.

Block 2 - Week 3

For the last week of field tripping across Costa Rica, we set out for the province of Guanacaste on the Pacific Coast. We arrived at the Costa de Pajaros, where we took a boat across the Bay of Nicoya to Isla de Chira.

Then we headed out with a group of women from a clamming association to climb through the mangroves and look for piangua clams. It was SO much fun! (No pictures of the actual clamming because it was super muddy.)

Then we headed out into the town to do interviews with fisherman and tour boat guides about tourism on the island.

We got to see a lot of island--despite it being the dry season (which is basically winter here) it was very beautiful.

This is a solar oven. Because of the sun's intensity here, people are able to actually cook meals in these "ovens."

We left Isla de Chira for Ortega, a small town in Guanacaste near Palo Verde National Park and the Tempisque River.

Ortega is very close to the El Viejo sugar cane plantations, so of course, being students of agriculture, the first thing we did was head over to look at the plantation. They had just replanted after the harvest in late February so the shoots look a lot different than sugar cane normally does, but it was still really cool.

What was really amazing was the amount of water being channeled from the Tempisque to water all this sugar cane.

The next day, we got up early in the morning to go on a boat tour. It was really really cool. We got to see all kinds of wildlife, but we also got to see some of the consequences of such heavy tourism: some of the monkeys and crocodiles got really close to the boat because they're so used to guides feeding them (so that they will always come up to the boats for the tourists).

. . . And then our professor gave us tattoos.

. . . temporary ones, anyway :)

The fourth week of Block 2 we spend in San José, working quickly to bring everything together for the Third and Final Block: our Independent Projects.