Woke up this Christmas morning and head to breakfast. It was delicious. I had pineapple and watermelon which were extra juicy this morning. I also has scrambled eggs and toast (much like texas toast-and there also wheat!! Merry Christmas to me!) I also had rice and beans (beans are starting to grow on me—I don’t know if its because I am so hungry or if I am really starting to like beans), but having it for breakfast is still a bit odd. After breakfast, we were off to the Indigenous community of the Maleku tribe.
The Maleku land covered 9000 acres and held three individual community towns. This land is a reserve which is shared among the three villages. Each village has particular land that they live on, but the land is communally shared by all three---it is not owned by anyone but all the Maleku’s evenly. There is about 650-700 people who live on this land and about 150 in this particular village. We met a man named Jimmy who shared about his village and about the Maleku culture (he did not speak English at all, so Carlos translated everything he said for us to understand). We were informed that he was not educated in a school, but he was very very intelligent and shared great detail about his family and community. There is an elementary school within the reserve which all the kids go to and for high school the children go to a local one outside the land, but within the local town. The Maleku have many benefits---health care is provided through a clinic which they could go to at any time (however this was also provided for every Costa Rican-health insurance is provided by the government through paying Social Security from their wages and therefore can go to any health provider and its taken care of). They also have discounts on utilities, for instance they pay only $4/month for water. The Maleku tribe socialized with the outside community a lot and seemed to be much modernized---all the kids had nice clothing, cell phones, video camera, but also kept their culture alive through ceramics and native clothing which they wore when they performed traditional work I was shocked to see all the technology that the people had within the village. Seeing the Aborigines, I expected to see more primal individuals, but this village was very up-to-date and modernized. I saw many cell phones, video camera, and nice watches.
. The Maleku functioned liked everyone else in society, if they had a problem with another village or anyone else, the Maleku would call the police and solve the problem like anyone else in the country. The community also has a church as well—90% Protestant and 10% Catholic. No one can marry anyone in their same village because everyone is practically related somehow. When someone dies in the community, they are buried inside their house (to stay close to the other family members). They are buried with seeds, jewelry, food—anything they think they would need to be successful in the new place which they are going. The Maleku oeople believe in 15 gods, one for every river. The biggest problem they have is the loss of culture—they are finding much like the U.S. that children are watching too much tv now and not spending that time with family and investing in culture.
The village brought their children to us and we had bought small toys for them and gave them a part of United States culture by giving them presents! They were so happy and seeing the smiles on their faces I think made all of us feel so good and compassionate. Jimmy also shared that there main food is meat and they use the fire grill to smoke and dry so can keep meat can be kept for longer (much like beef jerky). The tribe also uses a spear for self-defense against animals and a bow and arrow for hunting
Then it was time for lunch---we had a traditional Maleku meal---a piece of tilapia wrapped in a local leaf---it gave it much flavor, but I just had to be careful of the bones. We also had and boiled yucca (potato) which I felt was undercooked. We also had this wonderful juice called tamarind. After lunch, the tribe put on a local traditional play for us. First Jimmy explained the story to us and then his family and he acted it out. He was dressed in traditional garments now which they make out of fiber threads of the trees. The threads were used to make clothing, blankets for babies, purses and bags. Jimmy and his brothers were wearing a sewn skirt and his mother and sisters were in tops and skirts. The fibers are rubbed on their legs to make into threads and then used to make clothing and bags. The story was about a husband not trusting his wife and putting a mark on her to test if she was seeing other men. If the mark was gone she would be punished. After her husband left the house, she accidentally wiped some of it off and had someone else try to recreate it, but when he came home, he noticed the difference and then beat her (like he said he would). It was a very intense play, but they did an excellent job acting and sharing the emotion of the play.
The Maleku tribe also sold lots of wooden art decorations so we got to look at all the ones they’ve made and buy a few we wanted to take with us! We also got to play with the bow and arrow and make a few shots. After we did so, it was time to head back to the hotel. We got to hang out at the hotel for a little bit and met back up for dinner. At dinner I had chicken/shrimp fajitas with grilled onions and peppers. This was delicious. We also watched the first half of the bears/packers game which they had on a tv close by. It was alaos Cecelia’s birthday and Carlos had got her a cake and had it waiting for after dinner. Dinner filled me up! It was off to the hotel then for some rest-tomorrow was a big day to come!
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