Monteverde Meeting Hall

So, the whole purpose of coming to Costa Rica for a couple months, besides the obvious (Get out of the Northeast in the winter!!!!) is to help out on a timberframe project for a community here in Monteverde. The community comes together around Quakerism, as it was founded, and continues to be grounded by, Alabama quakers who moved here in the 1950's in protest of the Korean war.

They were dairy farmers, and they left their homes together to travel to Costa Rica (which had recently abolished it's army) not knowing where, or if, they would find land they could pasture their cows on. They travelled by car and sometimes built the roads as they travelled. They lived in the capital for a year, sending out scouts to check on land up in the mountains that was for sale. They finally settled on Monteverde, for it's good pasture land and affordable price. They had to buy out both the land "owners", and the squatters who had legal rights to the land they'd been working for several years, as per Costa Rican law circa 1950.

They constructed homes, a school, and a building to house Quaker 'meetings', where people gather to sit together mostly in silence, until someone feels moved to speak. They had children, married with Costa Rican folks, had more children, made great cheese, and thus the story goes. 60 years later, the community has grown too large for the original meetinghouse, and is ready to build.....

Mexican Cyprus, invasive to Monteverde.

Before I came down here, I was pretty sure there was no way a 30' x 60' timberframe, made out of dern tough wood, would get cut with volunteer labor from the community, using hand tools, in 2 months. 6th graders and old folks, HANDSAWING the joints. But now I'm a believer, and am psyched to see this project through. 

 

Cedro- that's a smooth surface, with wild figure

A volunteer drills a hole

Cool Bug. Big Plane.

Gulf of Nicoya, from the reserve

 First week has come and gone, and I can't help feeling like I've been here for ages.Here's a few shots from the Monteverde Reserve. I went with my boss David, his wife Kathy and their son Benjamin. We climbed to the continental divide, where cloudy wind from the Carribean comes whipping through a little pass and flows out to the Pacific Ocean.

Add caption

David and Kathy brave the bridge

Day Two, in which I run into a girl I know in my driveway

Again many great volunteers arrived on the scene- and 80-year old luthier, a 7 year old boy, bubbling with enthusiasm and ready to help, a man with 14 BEAUTIFUL hardwood mallets made by his friend to donate to the project, and many more.

Coming out of my driveway after lunch today, I heard someone yell "Shannon?"

I scanned the jungle and about 30 feet away between you know, the usual mix of fig vine trees and bambooish looking stalks, banana leaves and birds, was the floating head of Jill!  A girl who'd volunteered on a Timberhomes project this fall, who I'd become quick buddies with.
"Jill?!?!?"
She and her two compatriots emerged from the forest (The floating state of her head being revealed as a mirage caused by her fig-tree colored shirt) and we stammered and hugged and just couldn't believe it. She's here only for a week, doing a study abroad program.

First Day

Yesterday was quite the day of travel- I left Laguardia at 6:45, arrived in San Jose at 12:30, collected my suitcases (including the one with all the timberframing tools in it, whose wheels mysteriously disappeared somewhere in flight and it therefore must now be 'hefted') and found the shuttle to Holiday Inn where my bus should pick me up by 1:30. Kind person #1 insists on loading all my suitcases for me, despite struggling to pick up the tool bag (it's 72 pounds). Upon arriving at Holiday Inn, I found out that my "reserved" bus was, in truth, completely full. No room for me and my tools. What to do? Kind folks #2 and #3 make some phone calls and find a public bus leaving in half an hour, and drive me there in the same shuttle. Kind person #3 breaks handle #1 off my wheel-less tool suitcase, while hefting it. I get on the bus, which is $45 LESS than the bus I'd been planning on taking (Sweet!) and it's comfortable and feels very safe. We drive 4 hours up a road that turns into dirt after the second hour. The terrain forces us to go approximately 13 mph most of the way. When we get pretty close to Monteverde, I realize that my 'reserved' bus was going to bring me to some Spanish-named place that was very close to my boss's house. I attempt to ask this bus driver if he can drop me there and while struggling thru the Spanish, kind person #4 answers (the answer is "no!"), because the bus driver cannot understand me at all but she, miraculously, can. When we get off in downtown at the public bus station, which is who knows how far from my boss' house, she tells me (in spanish) that actually her husband is a taxi driver and why doesn't he just bring me right to my bosses house? Why not! We arrive at the compound 10 minutes later and my new friend's hospitable husband, kind person #5, insists on carrying my tool bag and 40 pound backpack at the same time, and breaks off handles #2 and 3 from the tool suitcase. I arrive unscathed at 7:30, to tamales on the table and a lovely welcome from the Hooke's.
Mom, I'm sorry about the suitcase.

This morning, we headed to the site for 8:00am, and I spent the day laying out timbers on the wonkiest timbers ever- all tropical hard & softwood, mostly cyprus. SUCH beautiful wood, but it will be a challenge to frame it. Volunteers came out in groves, and stayed for any hours they could. This building will be the community center and meeting hall for the Quaker Friend's School here in Monteverde. Everyone is excited to see it go up, and ready to lend a hand.

This place is such a mix of the familiar and the unknown for me. I'm doing the exact same work I do in Vermont, with the same tools. There's a square dance next weekend, many anglophones, and the grocery store is called "Whole Foods"!!! However, I just ate a local papaya, there's plenty of need to learn Spanish, and my boss just helped me bring down a scorpion in my kitchen. Yup, it true. Scary, but true. Their bites are not deadly, just painful. Apparently.