We visited the Finca Educativa chocolate factory in the BriBri territory. ACOMUITA is this organization for indigenous women, and they run the chocolate factory and much of the farm. Women are very empowered in the BriBri community, and they do a lot of the management and organization. It's even a matrilineal society - the people are grouped in clans, and the clan depends on the mother's heritage.
The chocolate was absolutely delicious. Here I am grinding the beans into a chocolately paste to which we later added brown sugar to form a divine creation. It apparently has more caffeine than coffee, but it gives you a steady supply of energy so you don't crash.
On a related note, I haven't had coffee for a week (only a steady supply of any kind of chocolate) - how did that happen? To my horror, waking up at 6 am is now second nature.
The next day we visited Cachabri, where we learned a lot about the spirituality of the BriBri. They're very in touch with their traditional religion, and the Catholic influence hasn't permeated their culture the way it has in Boruca. We entered this conical house, which has a very spiritual meaning for them. It's where the Adwa (traditional healer) communicates with Sibú, their creator god, to diagnose and treat a patient. The whole structure is heavy with spirituality - each ring symbolizes a level in which the spirits live. In the conical house they performed a dance and a drum routine for us.
This indigenous group was really the most in touch with their traditional religion out of all the groups we've visited, and it was fascinating to see how their spirituality was intertwined with their medicine. We took a walk around the medicinal garden to see a bunch of treatments that they used.
After a delicious lunch served to us in a banana leaf, we headed on the bus to La Selva, where we met up with our stuff that we'd sent over the week before.
La Selva is a muggy, buggy pocket of rainforest. HOWEVER, there are some great animals here. Most of them are thusfar unseen, because studying for midterms isn't very conducive to exploring the rainforest, but I have heard some howler monkeys and LOTS of birds, and seen toucans and LOTS of peccaries every day on my way to the classroom.
There are also a lot of elderly birdwatchers, which are a species of their own.
All in all, studying for midterms isn't quite so bad when it's summertime weather and the rainforest creaters are chattering all around you. It's no President's lawn, but it'll do.
Spring break is just around the corner (the day after tomorrow! Unfortunately counting down to it also means counting down to midterms). Ryan is coming to visit, which is really going to help put this trip in perspective.
By that I mean, without personal contact from the part of the world I left behind and without SEASONS (ok, the seasons here are dry/rainy, but the variation in sunsets is about 15 minutes throughout the whole year), it feels very surreal to think how much time has passed.
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