A rare bad experience, and a learning experience...

Laugh as necessary, oh teachers of the past, and those with teaching experience who are familiar with this type of thing but the fact remains: I just had the single worst experience I’ve ever had in a classroom. Several boys in the 2^nd grade class were behaving in a fashion that made me so angry I actually raised my fist as if to punch one of their adorable little faces. One kid is 10 years old and in 2^nd grade, he thinks he can do whatever he wants, and in fact he can do whatever he wants (probably in his house too). What am I going to do…punch him? Making matters worse they can’t be obliged to write things down because they aren’t proficient at writing yet.

Am I receiving this as punishment for how I chose to behave as a kid?

Fact is, a few years back I used to do this meditation wherein you close your eyes and picture a loved one, an enemy, and someone you’re indifferent to at the same time, superimposing the images. Then you try to cultivate the same level of compassion for all three people. Back then and until recently I could never find a real “enemy” to picture, even Hitler didn’t work because he never did anything directly harmful to me, too far removed I suppose. But now, with the entrance of these diabolic students on the scene, I think my anger toward them may be the closest I’ve ever been, in my adult life, to having an enemy.

Right now I’m not sure if I can ever return to teaching that specific class of 2^nd graders. But to have the whole class suffer for the disgraceful (read: lacking grace) comportment of a few seems unjust. But had you, my reader, seen the (now risible) defiance and maddening behavior that I saw, you might have counseled me to recognize a lost cause when I saw one.

I know I’m not suppose to write too much about the negatives in my blog and, believe me, I’m not looking for pity, but the act of writing this entry and sharing it with the compassionate world beyond these isolated mountainsides has calmed me greatly.

Love,

Mason

p.s. This happened two weeks ago and was just now transcribed. I have taught them again and they weren't so bad. Certainly haven't been taught (as I was by my father) that first impressions are f#*&ing critical!!

Palmito

As some of you may know, when you add the suffixes –ito or –ita to the end of a Spanish word, the noun adopts a smaller and cuter meaning. Example: puppy: cachorro→ cachorrito, girl: chica→chiquita, dude: mahe→mahecito, etc. So, when my host Dad, Gerardo, told me that we needed to “sacar palmito” to cook up for a tourist group I thought it would be a reasonably easy task. Just cut down a little palm tree and take out the soft, juicy, protein-filled center.

So off we went, up the road about a kilometer and half, opened up the barbed-wire fence and cut down into the mountainside.

“Whose lot is this?” I asked.

“Un Señor whose name is Blah Blah Blah Arias Garcia Blah,” he told me.

In and around Zapatón we cut into people’s lots all the time for any variety of tasks, rotating cows into new pastures, gathering herbs from the mountain, cutting down trees for cooking wood. There are existing agreements and intra-familiar relationships that I don’t hope to understand, but if I keep asking every time we enter a new lot maybe someday I’ll get the names straight. Sometimes the people live in and around Zapatón and I can identify the lot with a particular character’s face, but more often than not the plot of land belongs to someone who lives in San José.

It occurred to me the first few times that we plunged into someone’s mountainside to ask if he had permission but then I realized that my host Dad doesn’t think like that. He knows with certainty that the mountain belongs to everyone, so why ask permission when you know you’re making use of it responsibly.

We start walking down a path, well trodden by cows and horses, but rather steep, muddy, and narrow. Agile cows, I think. Depending on my mood any given day, I’ll point at trees rarely or frequently and ask what they’re called, also a process which I catalyzed without hopes for success in learning all the names. Then we passed by a good looking horse, not large, but healthy as a… well you know. Gerardo stopped in front of me, pointing with his machete across a huge gully (which the path we were on obviously didn’t cross) and said “there’s one.”

“¿Un qué?” I asked.

“Una palma.” He said, a palm tree.

I thought for a second and then realized that he was taking me to cut down a tree known as a Palma Royal, the Royal Palm. I don’t need to give you a sense of the size of this tree, but I will. It was freaking huge, nearly ten meters high. We then bushwhacked our way across the gully, the loose, wet ground sliding down the hill under the weight of our rice and bean-ful bodies. Gerardo went first chopping as few branches as possible, as is his way, while I trailed behind in sheer terror, waiting for a snake to snap at me from head level or a huge spider to leap into my face. I’m just glad he didn’t see my face, like a little kid on the tea cup/saucer ride for the first time, entering into the unknown, trying to love it but not exactly succeeding.

Then we made it to the aforespotted Royal Palm. I gazed up at the beast and saw that it was covered in ants when Gerardo started chopping ferociously. Every upward-reaching leaf, some twenty-five feet long, started at ground level and went straight up and then out over our heads (thank you, gravity, for providing one more spot for creatures unknown to descend upon me). To this day the leaves of the Royal Palm, which take about three years to reach full height, are used as the roofs of rustic ranchos (your welcome S. Starr), and in the past were the only roof material for the indigenous populations.

So we chopped and chopped and chopped, one leaf after another groping groundward gracefully. I relieved him of the machete work and peeled a few leaves down myself but before I knew it my hand was bleeding. But blisters come and go out here…very moist, so I continued. This prompted a lesson on machete use which consisted of the idea that you mustn’t allow the machete to wiggle (bailar) in your hand when it strikes the object. This helped a lot.

Gerardo’s turn again. We were getting near the center; the leaves were no longer dark and hard-shelled. The smooth and soft white core was starting to be seen.

Now imagine a bloomin’ onion™ about ten feet high, leave it in the jungle for two years. What happens? I’ll tell you what happens. The whole thing fills up with ants, hornets, and very, very large spiders.

That’s when a huge spider about the size of my palm came out of the tree and descended upon Gerardo. Landing on the ground after Gerardo did what I’ll call the “spider dance”, the spider froze. I admired the spider’s brilliance and his recent domestic misfortune and Gerardo said, “Ese si pica duro.” That one bites hard for sure. I studied it more to be ready to identify it on my own. “It’s called a pica-caballo (horse biter).” I did some research later – turns out in English they’re called TURANTULAS….

So thirty minutes of chopping and we finally arrived at the center, kind of like that movie where they go to the core of the earth. We cut out a few pieces and ate them to see how “tierno” it was and we decided we need to cut a foot or so lower to get to the real goodness.

Twenty minutes later, we arrived to the deeper core of the earth, digo…palm tree. We tasted the rich deliciousness and decided that it was just what we were looking for. The final product of all our work was ten kilos of the freshest organic heart of palm I had ever masticated. Sure as hell beats eating it out of a can, although I never have. Now, those who know me will understand that I enjoyed the hike out of the valley with 25lbs. of heart of palm on my shoulder almost as much as the chopping process. I slipped many times, planting my hand in the wonderful mud, getting my jeans dirty and shaking the drops of sweat out of my eyes.

I followed this process through to the end, meaning I spent five hours in the kitchen (which contains a wood-burning stove without proper ventilation. I waited for my grandma to boil the heart of palm, then participated in the relentless chopping of the palmito, finer and finer with a broken machete blade (more blisters). Then the garlic, cumin, cilantro, and various other herbs. And finally the second cooking on a large curved skillet.

The tourists were 9^th graders from the Seattle area, chaperoned by three adults. They ate the food without ever asking themselves where it came from but I saw their eyes – they enjoyed it thoroughly. Gerardo gave the chat on indigenous culture and tradition and they were on their way. I shared the story of the palmito with one of the chaperones, hoping he would tell it later around a campfire or something, and showed him my blistered and stained hands from the effort. He was surprised and appreciative when I pointed out a Royal Palm nearby and he got a feel for where it came from. I was probably a little too proud of myself, but hey…it was a lot of work – and it cost a spider his home.