el lodo y el polvo

Tamarindo held a triathlon here this weekend and the sponsors paid to have the roads graded for the race. Mark was disappointed that we hadn’t learned about the race sooner (we’d spent a day on line looking for races in Costa Rica and didn’t find any). I learned that it is not a good thing to have a triathlete in the house when there is a race going by.

This weekend I also learned what happens to mud when it dries. It turns into dust that flies around when cars speed down the road. Our walks are less bumpy and pothole filled, but no less dirty.

While our brief respite from the rain brought different problems, I personally prefer dust with sun, to slipping in the mud and rain. The dust was annoying and especially difficult on my contact lenses. But I learned to close my eyes when the big trucks drove by. We were fortunate that there wasn't much wind off the beach. My teacher said that wind added to dry dirt equaled dust everywhere, all the time.

I have had the same teacher for the past two weeks and I have found her delightful. She is kind and usually smiling. This week, we practiced our interrogatives (Donde? Como? Que? Cual? And Por que?), and I used my new found skills to learn more about her. My first question was: if there's a wet and muddy season, and a dry and dusty season, when is the good season in Guanacaste province?

The answer was given with a laugh: November! :>


My teacher, Senora F, always finds the upside of things. She is 37 and the youngest of six children. She has a degree from the University of Santa Cruz in pre-school education. She is married and has been with her husband for 20 years. She began teaching at WAYRA two years ago, when the economy tanked and the preschool she ran closed.

There were looks of horror on a few of my classmates faces when she told us (proudly) that her husband was a sanitation worker. Sra. F considers herself lucky; she and her husband both have jobs in these tough times. Costa Rica has experienced a decline in tourism and a many of the new houses and condos that were being built for those tourists, now stand empty.

Sra. F's husband has a government job which, in Costa Rica, means job security.
Even though the school is somewhat dependent on the tourism industry, she and the other teachers at WAYRA have managed to keep working.

There are seven language intructors at the school. Because things are so expensive in Tamarindo, few of the teachers can afford to live here. Sra. F takes a fifty-minute bus ride from her home Santa Cruz to work in Tamarindo five days a week. She leaves her home around 6:30 am and she leaves the school around 6 pm. She has lived in Santa Cruz her whole life and much of her family lives there. In the evening, her children wait at her mother’s house until she arrives to take them home.

Sra. F has two children. Her oldest child (a boy) was born with a cleft lip and palate. She spent several months in San Jose while he underwent surgeries to repair the problem. He is 14 now and Sra. F is saving up for the final surgery that will put the cosmetic touches on the repair.

Her daughter is 8 and was born with an intact palate, but at 32 weeks gestation. Sra. F spent another extended time period at the hospital in San Jose. Both her children are currently healthy and Sra. F swears by the remedies her herbalist prepares.

Sra. F's house is large (3 bedrooms) and comfortable. She doesn’t have air conditioning (she doesn’t like it); she doesn’t have hot water (who needs hot water in Costa Rica?). She does have running water (and a back-up cistern), a nice kitchen, ceiling fans in every room and a large bathroom (just one) with a separate toilet.

Whenever Sra. F talks about her life, she speaks of the abundance of it. She is terminally cheerful and encouraging. Most importantly, she has a lot of patience with me and my bad Spanish.

While Sra. F is an excellent grammar teacher, I know that the best learning I had was from the particles of her life story that she shared with me. The bits and pieces of a life full of hardship, but overflowing with blessing have been a gift. I consider myself lucky to have met Sra. F. She has reminded me that even dust can be meaningful.