This is what most people think about when somebody talks about Quakers.
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Now, that is perfectly understandable, of course. Before I arrived Here the only thing I knew (or thought I knew) about Quakers was that they
1. Are the oldest hippies
2. Eat lots of oatmeal
3. Have white hair and funny hats
But fortunately my marked lack of knowledge about these admirable people was cut short just in time. I hope that if you, dear reader, have these notions about Quakers and Quakerism as well, they may be curtailed by the end of this post.
Monteverde was founded by Quakers in the 50's-60's. The U.S.A. was (not surprisingly) fighting some horrible war in Korea. The Quakers, who are kind and gentle pacifists, obviously refused to send their children to kill other people or help other people kill other people in a war (I'll make a post some other time about why I find people killing other people for purely political purposes barbaric). So they were reading the newspaper one day, and found that there was a tiny country somewhere in Central America that had recently abolished its army and was trying to make people come over and help develop the country.
So the Quakers were like "Yay! Eureka! Peace!" and after they finished (some of them) spending weeks in jail for refusing to kill people or help kill people, they made their way to Costa Rica.
In Costa Rica the Quakers went all the way up the heavily forested mountain, cleared up some land, put some cows there (back from where they came from they were mostly dairy farmers), and made a nice little living. Since they appear to have some sort of superior reasoning and foresight abilities, they decided to not destroy the entire land of Monteverde for agriculture, but instead set several thousand hectares of cloud forest away simply to conserve it for future generations.
So ya. Now we have this pretty little town (not entirely Quaker, of course) that tells the world that living in harmony with nature is possible.
And this where I, Cristina, Costa Rican by birth and culture, am living now.
In order to explain to my readers why a Tico from San José suddenly found herself in a biological paradise, I must begin at Silver Spring, Maryland, United States.
I had been living in Silver Spring for two years, and frankly I liked the middle school I was going to on my second year. I liked the people, the teachers, the curriculum...you know. I felt very happy. I felt like I fit in.
One afternoon, Dad gathers us at the dinner table of our second-story White Oak apartment, and tell us that it is possible we will not return to Silver Spring after summer.
At the moment, I was torn. Even when my parents told us of living in Monteverde, of going to a nice Quaker school, of living in a rural area (I've always hated the city), of that we might return in January, I refused to believe it. I wanted to return to my school normally, with my friends, and my teachers, and my curriculum. The next day I felt a little better, tried to talk myself into reason, but I still disliked the idea. I wanted to stay in Silver Spring, in the Humanities Magnet Program. But it was out of mine and my parent's hands. We packed our things, we returned to Costa Rica, we packed up our things again, and the mother, father, little brother, middle sister (me), older sister, and beloved dog drove to Monteverde...
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There is a big downpour right now. I missed the sound of the rain on roofs. In the U.S., every house is heavily insulated against the cold of winter, so sometimes you don't even notice it when it's raining.
We had to open the windows when it was pouring, just to listen to the rain.
Here, there's pretty much no insulation. If it's raining really hard, you can't hear people right next to you speak. If it's a raining softly (lloviznando) you are guaranteed to fall asleep wherever you are.
A plain wren sings his quick, chirping song from a a low tree somewhere outside. In the rain.
Chinchiri-GÜI!...Chinchiri-GÜI!
The rain slows, it gets tired for a moment, but then it speeds up and it's raining jaguars and tapirs once again.
Thunder is heard in the distance.
And when the rain dies away, or slows down, you go outside and watch the darkened bark of the trees and the seemingly more contrasting colors of the leaves and the grass. And the smell. The smell of the forest after the rain leaves you drunk and soothed.
Somewhere, a yellow-throated euphonia calls a comrade with a soft whistle. Somewhere, a kingbird chatters away in high pitched notes.
Somewhere, a yellow-throated euphonia calls a comrade with a soft whistle. Somewhere, a kingbird chatters away in high pitched notes.
(More on Monteverde soon)
