The Best Beer in the World?~

Yesterday on our daily walk we noticed an odd and quite modern looking palapa on the beach. A plastic version of a bamboo hut complete with shoji screen doors and a plastic thatched roof.

What the hell is that thing doing here, we wondered?

We also saw men busy raking up the beach and hauling the refuse into the bush, dumping it on another man's property. There were also two goal posts for soccer-- futbol they call it here. Ah, we figured, it must be some wedding party or company picnic. We walked on, our dogs poking at various scents and generally enjoying the outing.

About two hours later, back home, the noise started.

A UH-1 helicopter, or Huey to those of you who spent time in Vietnam, flew repeatedly over our house,buzzing us. And when I say buzzed our house I mean about 100 feet over our head. It shook walls and rattled the pots and pans on the stove. We are used to the DEA or the Costa Rican Coast Guard cruising by on an occasional ineffective drug raid, so for the first hour we didn't pay them any mind. Then the repeated pass-overs began to get irritating. By three yesterday afternoon I was contemplating using our nine millimeter to send a clear message to the pilot.

By four in the afternoon we were trying to get our daily fix of news-- the American election progression and banking sector meltdown, don't you know-- and the the whoop-whoop-whoop was so loud we couldn't even hear Wolfe Blitzer. Not that that is an altogether bad thing, but I prefer to use the mute button. It might be a contol issue, I'm not sure.

Alan said it reminded him of being in Tuy Hóa with Hueys overhead, and I felt like I was working the ER again with too many traumas coming in. We were both a bit testy by that time and had a snappy little exchange about the television remote.

I went outside with the binoculars to see what the writing on the helicopter said: Carlsberg.The beer.

Finally, just before dusk, they stopped.

This morning we were stopped at the beach by red police ribbon and a cheerful young man who told us we could not walk on the beach because there was a "Promotion" going on.

"That is a public beach. You can't block it off," says Alan.

Cheery Young Man: "Yes we know it is public, but for today and tomorrow you can't walk here." We are making a beer promotion and this is supposed to look like a deserted island."

Alan: "That's bullshit."

Me: "Well please tell your jeffe that my husband is a survivor from the Vietnam era and he is thinking of shooting the helicopter out of the sky if it comes over our house again."

Cheery Young Man: "Oh, don't worry the helicopter is not working anymore today or tomorrow."

We walked home and could hear the helicopter whoop-whoop-whooping its way toward us. By the time we got home it was directly over the house again.

We drove to Puerto Viejo to get some supplies for Alan's latest project, a water feature, figuring being away from home was better than being under siege. At the hardware store we ran into Bob, the local Lotto salesman. We said we were fleeing the military war zone we normally call home and that we couldn't even walk the beach. He had just been at Roly's house. Roly being the president of the Muncipalidad.

Bob: "Roly just told me they came to him yesterday to ask if they could film. He told them it was fine with him but they could not block the beach."

On our way home a truck load of Puerto Police were talking to the helicopter pilot.

It hasn't been back since. I am enjoying the silence, as, I'm sure, are the monkeys.

Their ad promo might be: "Carlsberg. Probably the best beer in the world," but their neighborly manners are probably the worst in the world.

I'll be glad when they are gone. I doubt many of our neighbors will reach for a

when they think Beer.

Independent Thoughts~

It's Independence Day in Costa Rica and around the rest of Central America tomorrow.

September 15th marks the date when, in 1821, the five provinces under Spanish control since the 16th Century threw the buggers out and set off on their own.

Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua were all administered by an iron-fisted independently appointed Captain General, headquartered in Antigua Guatemala. Under the control of the Capitania, the provinces grew increasingly restless.

You would too.

I guess when a distant power controls all the commerce, collects excessive taxes, and burns people at the stake for crimes against the Church, people become unhappy. Those that weren't incinerated by the Inquisition were required to tithe 10% to the Catholic Church, in cahoots with the monarchy of Spain. It was an untenable situation and bound to explode sooner or later.

By the fall of 1821 angry crowds gathered in the streets of towns all over Central America, graffiti covered the walls, and leaflets blew through the streets. Fear bubbled up among the nobility of a mass uprising.

On September 15, 1821 the then governor of the Capitania, one Gavino Gainza, held a meeting in Antigua with military leaders, the Church, and members of the aristocracy to decide what to do.

Outside an angry crowd grew steadily more uncontrollable, rattling windows and banging on doors. Then came the unexpected. Apparently fireworks were set off outside by the mob. The delegates, thinking the crowd had finally erupted with blood on their minds, hastily drew up a document of independence.

And so it happened.

I knew most of this. What I did not know was that it was the intension of a group of liberal thinkers in those five countries-- then provinces-- to form a federal republic modeled after the United States, The United Provinces of Central America.

They had high hopes for the republic, which they believed would evolve into a modern, democratic nation, enriched by trade crossing through it between the Atlantic and the Pacific oceans. But their dreams were crushed and the Union dissolved in a civil war between 1838 and 1840. Its disintegration began when Honduras separated from the federation on November 5, 1838.

Various attempts were made to reunite the federation during the 19th Century but no one was successful for long. Those who tried were assassinated or died trying. Perhaps this would have been our fate in the United States had we not had a relatively stable Union before the Southern States decided to secede. One wonders what would have happened if we had had our Independence for a mere ten years before the Civil War threatened to tear our country apart?

Central America remains a ragtag bunch of countries unsuccessfully trying to go it alone. Only since the late 20th Century have they begun to work with each other to gain strength in numbers in the global economy. But there are still squabbles among them.

I wonder what it would have been like had they succeeded in forming The United Provinces of Central America? With all the riches and natural resources of these countries, had they banded together to form a united republic, would much of their troubled past been a figment of someone's imagination? Would the United Fruit Company have been able to dominate the financial future of the countries for so many years?

I think about this today, this day of independence, this day celebrated all over Central America… but done so separately.

We will have parades and road races here in Costa Rica. The Tico Times says: "Watch for road closures as torch runs and parades fill the streets. Be prepared to drop everything at 6 p.m. Sunday to sing the Tico national anthem. And on Monday, plan on government offices, as well as banks and most small businesses, to be closed."

    Photo by Ronald Reyes, Tico Times

But it could have celebrated so much more.

Tanigumi- Japan Stories

This post was supposed to appear August 31, 2008. It is part of the Japan series from my latest visit. I got sidetracked by politics, fleas and the immigration office, but here it is now.




Tanigumi is my favorite temple.

I've been looking forward to a return visit for two years now. and I know, no matter what else I do on my visits to Japan, I will always return to Tanigumi. My mother told me recently, when I explained my immediate attachment to this place, she once visited a cathedral in Europe that had the same affect on her. When she entered the doors, before she even walked down the aisle, she said, she burst into tears.

This is how I feel about Tanigumi. Something speaks directly to my spiritual being here. I have written about it before but this time was more intense. Perhaps it is the remembering and the yearning to return that draws us to a more potent experience. I am not a person who attends church, in fact I haven't been in one in years (other than a funeral or a wedding), but I can see the attachment people might have with a ritual of worship every week. I myself tend to find my spiritual comfort in nature, a kind of walking meditation if you will, and that is how the temple at Tanigumi was founded.

Unlike other temples in Japan that are renewed every seven years, Tanigumi still looks old and resonates the ancient history of the place. And that history goes back-- over 1200 hundred years back.

According to material I have been able to find, Honen established it in 798, although this doesn't make sense because Honen (1133–1212) lived during The Kamakura Period (A.D. 1192–1333). Perhaps it was changed into a temple as we know it today during that time. I have no history books that refer to it, the Obas didn't know, and the research I've found on the Internet is marginal.

I do know that Honen believed in a different kind of Buddhist worship, one akin to the way I find spiritual solace. According to The Japanese Buddhist Federation: "[Before Honen] Buddhism was confined to the privileged classes of court nobles, monks, scholars, and artisans who had enough time to master the complicated philosophy and rituals of Buddhism. It was in The Kamakura Period that a drastic change took place in the field of religion; Buddhism became, for the first time, the religion of the masses."

It was Honen, dissatisfied with the way things had been, who searched the Chinese scriptures for something more accessible. He found it in this passage by the Chinese monk, Shandao, “Only call the name of Amida Buddha with one’s whole heart —whether walking or standing still, whether sitting or lying—this is the practice which brings salvation without fail, for it is in accordance with the original vow of the Buddha.”

Tanigumi is one of 33 temples dedicated to Kannon, the Japanese name for the Bodhisattva of Compassion, one of whose 33 manifestations (and the only female one) corresponds to our Goddess of Mercy. This is her temple. There is a regular pilgrimage to this and the other temples of Kannon. Tanigumi is the last stop. Normally, pilgrims, who have been doing this since the 11th Century, visit the temples in order. It is certainly easier than in the days of old as they can take day-trips from Kyoto and cover about two temples a day.

Perhaps it is because of Honen and his belief in the "walking practice" that draws me to this place. The way it is arranged encourages an intimate kind of interaction with the goddess at Tanigumi. The entrance is a long and steep flight of steps flanked on either side with billowy prayer flags mounted on tall bamboo poles. As they turn in the breeze, there is a lovely low guttural sound of bamboo groaning against bamboo. Light dapples the steps, filtered through the tall and ancient cedars and vine maples that grace the place.

On either side of these stairs, that seem to ascend to eternity, are small nooks and crannies where people can find solace at altars along the way. Two foxes, each with a scroll in its mouth, guard the steps. The monks who live in residence have clothed them in delicately pleated bibs. The ones I saw had new crisp white ones over all the others. Everywhere nature intrudes on the human design and the place has an organic feel to it.

There are altars to terminal illness, money worries, strife, small children, aches and pains and to Kannon herself. A couple of them were unknown to my daughter-in-law or her family. People laid flowers and tossed coins around many of them, and at others a gong was available. Striking it three times gains the attention of the ostensibly loafing deities.

At the top of the stairs is the main altar. The monks stamp pilgrimage cards and sell others to people beginning their trek. As we circled the main altar, which is huge, there were smaller ones where people were paying homage. I gave money to several, and one in particular that I missed last year. It was a plaque on a pillar of the temple with a bronze or copper carp cast in intricate detail. I asked about it and was told it is the Japanese symbol of struggle, because the carp is always swimming against the currents in its life.

I tucked a coin under its fin, between the wood and the fish. There were many other coins there before mine.


KANNON BOSATSU, KANNON BODHISATTVA
LORD OF COMPASSION, GODDESS OF MERCY
Represented as both Male and Female
Assists People in Distress in the Earthly Realm
Sanskrit = Avalokitesvara, Avalokiteshvara, Lokeshvara
Japanese = Kannon, Kanjizai, Kanzeon, Kwannon
Chinese = Kuan Yin, Guanyin, Guanshiyin
Tibetan = Spyan-ras-gzigs



Kannon's Various English Translations
Bodhisattva of Compassion
Goddess of Mercy or God of Compassion
One Who Hears the Prayers of the World
One Who Observes the Sounds of the World
One Who is Sensitive to the Sufferings of the World
Hearer of the World's Sounds (or World's Cries)
Lord Who Looks Down with Pity on All Living Beings
Lord Who Regards All (Sentient Beings)

Migracion- The Fast Track~

Chaos


Costa Rica's Immigration Department has a logo suited to its mission. The logo is represented by the earth's globe, but the country of Costa Rica has been mysteriously plucked from the isthmus of Central America and placed aside. There is a band, sort of like an arrow, that girdles the globe begining at the country in limbo. There are little people standing on the band. In fact, they appear to huddle there as though their lives depended on it. The arrow circumnavigates the globe-- a bit like the bands of Saturn-- only to end where the country has been plucked from the map. What one sees when they look at it is a continuous circle with people stuck on it like a perpetual chipmunk wheel.

You can probably tell, It's time to renew our residency visas. They are due every two years. Actually, it was time to do that a year ago, but migracion told us expats that "due to the high number of residency requests, they were unable to process them all," and "there would be a year's grace period." Translated, this means that the office was totally disorganized and had lost complete control over the process. They needed a year to see if the could rein in the chaos.

Alan and I have seen the interior of migracion before and if you have any neatness fetishes it's a frightening sight. If you are anal-retentive, don't go in there at all.

In 2003 our residency cards were stolen, along with my purse, our passports, and a few other essentials. It was hell getting everything back, but we managed. The lesson was so blistering that ever since then I have refused to carry original documents at all. I only carry photocopies despite occasional objections from the police.

One of the many visits we paid to migracion during that ordeal was an eye-popping view into how the place operated, or slouched along. The day we were there we were ushered into the maw of the beast and seated on a couple of worn out dining chairs along a wall and told to wait. Espera, por favor. The person who seated us then went off in search of our file.

From our vantage point, and with nothing else to do, we got an inside look into the guts of the place. They were remodeling, but that couldn't begin to explain all of it.

Alan always likes to watch workmen where ever we are, so he was busy watching the remodel, which involved putting up some prefab walling right through the center of the office. He kept jabbing me in the ribs as one of the men attempted to straighten an unwieldy section by himself, or another man pushed in one direction while his partner pulled in another in an attempt to get a section up.

They had moved "the files," manilla folders stacked helter-skelter, that now cascaded out of some sagging tin shelving that might be purchased at any WalMart and are ubiquitous in lower income family basements in the States. In fact, the more I looked the more files I saw. They were everywhere. Because of the remodel, or perhaps in spite of it, there were computers piled up on chairs in the middle of the room, wires haphazardly wound around their middles. On top of those were more files, some of them open. A worker hustled by and I watched as a single paper off the top of one file was sucked up in her wake, fluttered briefly, and then parachuted to the floor.

"I bet that's someone's police report, or a income validation form," I told Alan. "They will probably be refused residency because their file is 'incomplete.'" The worker stepped on it on her return through the department.

So, they've had a year to work on it, and get things in order. I was told I could begin applying for our renewal carnet, card, when our previous ones expired. That was last month.

Yesterday I called the new 900 number (that costs 50 cents a minute) and fully expected to be put on hold. But no, I was greeted promptly by a intake worker who asked what I needed. This seemed auspicious.

"We need to renew our residency cards," I said. I told her when they expired and our names and our number.

"But you don't appear in our system. Are you sure you are a resident?"

"Yes. I have the previous card here in my hand."

"Well. I am very sorry Mrs. Sarah, but you will have to call migracion directly for an appointment."

I called migracion and was put on hold. I listened to Musak for about two minutes and then was disconnected. I tried again with the same result. It's the Dilbert Thing, nothing unique to Costa Rica. How many times up North have I been run through a scheme of a corporate menus only to discover that my question is not in the allotted push button options. With no way to retrace my steps, and punching zero only results in the message "I'm sorry but we don't recognize that option," the only option is to hang up and start again. Costa Rica hasn't gotten that sophisticated yet, they just hang up on you.

I gave myself an afternoon away from the frustration, had a glass of wine last night and watched the Republican convention (which got my blood boiling again). This morning, fresh from a good sleep, I went after migracion again. Sometimes calling back and getting another operator has better results. That's a lesson I learned over the years; always call at least three times to make sure the verdict is the same. Then act accordingly. The same is true up North too, by the way.

This morning I called the 900 number again and got Sara. Maybe having the same name bonded us in some bureaucratic way, I don't know, but she was kind and helpful. But the story was the same; we are not in their system. She did assure me that we were not lost altogether, just unavailable to her and her computer. I would need to call directly for an appointment.

"But when I call migracion they put me on hold, and then cut me off."

"Oh...," she said in a knowing voice. "What number are you calling?" We went through all of that and agreed that was the correct number and she couldn't-- or wouldn't-- give me a number to the back room.

"Perhaps I need to have my lawyer call them. She would probably know someone to call and be able to set up an appointment," I said.

Sara was delighted at my insight into how things work here. "Yes, that's exactly what you should do."

So, It will cost us an extra $100 to get the services of the gavilan or facilitator to do the business, but that's how work gets done here.

Actually, this is how we did it before the modernization overhaul at migracion.

Dog Days~

There is a saying, adapted from the Beatitudes from the Sermon on the Mount, the meek shall inherit the earth.

Of this I am sure, people: this passage is not referring to the pious or mild-mannered followers of the Christian faith. As a full-fledged Darwinian I believe it means that things like ants, cockroaches, and, yes, fleas will be the last remaining inhabitants of this planet.

La Zona Tropical is a bad place to get a flea infestation, and this summer-- especially hot and humid-- has been a particularly bad one. We are still battling them.

Before I left for Japan we had a major outbreak and had to battle back with everything known to the toxic and environmentally friendly world of Pest Control. We bathed dogs every third day with flea shampoos. We have three dogs and one is so big it's a bit like washing the side of a boxcar, but we lathered on. When they were dry, we powdered them, sprayed them, and, excuse the new verbs here, Advantaged® or Frontlined® them, depending on which product we could find and buy.

Alan crawled under the house, where the dogs den, every three days and sprayed with a combination of poisons and boric acid. Boric acid? Yes, boric acid. According to some literature I have read on the subject it is a miracle of sorts in the fight against insect infestations. My daughter-in-law, Yuka, says she remembers her parents making balls with "some white powder" and foodstuff to kill cockroaches in Japan. I'm almost certain that it was boric acid, but I'm unable to ask them as they speak only Japanese. But according to all I've read, boric acid kills cockroaches on contact and "apparently" will do the same to fleas. We were trying anything.

It's been an uphill battle.

I've learned a lot about fleas in the past month or two. They, like other insects, pass through four stages in their life cycle- egg, larva, pupa and adult. An adult female begins laying eggs within two days after her first blood meal. Sounds vampirish, doesn't it? How about this-- within 9 days she will produce up to 30 eggs a day and consumes 15 times her body weight in blood every day. Multiply this by an infestation of twenty or more (lots more, actually) and it's no wonder our poor dogs were scratching. That very scratching only spreads the eggs further afield, I might add, the game plan of the pesky flea. But there's more. Once the eggs are scattered around nicely and develop into larvae, they live off the feces of the parents, manifested as partially desiccated blood.

The whole thing sounds really creepy and not so meek to me. It also makes me want to CLEAN MY HOUSE. Which, it turns out, is exactly what needs to be done.

According to the Texas A&M site I visited, and Texas should know about fleas, regular vacuuming is the key to controlling fleas indoors. They tend to nest in dog bedding, carpets, under furniture, and in cushions of couches. We keep our house very clean and free of any food products out on counters because we live in the tropics, but now it's time to double up on the effort. I am now vacuuming every other day.


Here is an interesting fact and more ammunition for my postulation about the inheritance of the earth theory. When fleas, laid as eggs and fed on feces as a larva, enter the pupa stage of the transition to adulthood, they spin their own cocoon and reside inside until the time is ripe to enter the world. Normally, they will emerge within a couple of weeks but if the environment doesn't suit them, the adult flea may remain in the cocoon for up to five months. When stimulated by a passing animal the adult can emerge within seconds. Old houses or apartments can still be infested and can "come alive" when new tenants move in. Yikes!

So, I am back from my trip to Asia and the fleas are still here. Not as fiercely as before, but still present.

There is a wonderful book called The War of the Flea, by Robert Taber. It is not about fleas, but about guerrilla warfare. Clearly Taber knows what it's like to battle the flea and he uses the analogy well in his book. One passage reads: “The guerrilla fights the war of the flea, and his military enemy suffers the dog’s disadvantages: too much to defend; too small, ubiquitous, and agile an enemy to come to grips with.” He also points out The West's inability to truly understand how to wage war against these non-conventional forces.

It's a bit the same battling the lowly flea here in Punta Uva. It requires time, patience, and an understanding of the enemy.

I washed both our dogs today and hope that our hired man, José, will do the same with his. Alan was under the house again spraying and hopefully...hopefully we will put a dent in the flea population.

I know I'll never be able to eradicate them, but perhaps I can keep them in check until I totter off this world, or... more likely, it gets colder.