Mi Vida en Costa Rica: Indigenous Immersion: the Bribri and Cabecar

For the past few days, we were visiting the Bribri and Cabecar indigenous territories! These are two separate but overlapping indigenous groups. Their territories overlap, but they have distinctive languages and interact often. Their languages have the same root, and are basically understandable to each other (think Portuguese/Spanish level of similarity). They both believe in the same religion, which contains the idea that the universe is conically shaped, and construct some of their buildings to mimic this.

Cone-shaped building! There is consistently a small smoky fire going on, which helps seal the roof!

First, we got dropped off at what appeared to be an arbitrary place along side of the road, where our Cabecer guide met us. With our backpacks strapped on (which were filled with a few days of jungle clothes), we started making our way up to where we'd stay for the night. First though, we stopped at an iguana farm! Upon hearing the phrase iguana farm, I was initially confused if iguanas were being harvested and eaten...but, contrary to my concerned conceptions, they merely breed iguanas so that their population stays steady as other people hunt them down in the wild. Happily hiking more, we reached our lodging destination within an hour. We stayed in this large wooden house, and I slept in my very first mosquito net ever!

Had to document the mosquito net! #publichealth

While Costa Rica clocks in just a handful of Malaria cases yearly (and only in the Limón province), other delightful insect-borne diseases like Dengue and Leishmania strut their stuff in higher numbers. And more so in regions like Limón, but present in the area we stayed as well...thus the precautionary nets (and bug spray! Love me some 40% DEET). It was neat to experience these nets first hand after hearing about them in so many public health classes. Some mosquito net do's and don'ts (you know, for the next time you're prancing around the tropics):

DO tuck the edges of the net such that you form a little prism of protection in your general sleeping space. Take that mosquitos and other insects that want to bite me--can't get me now!
DON'T sleep actually touching the net. If you do this, bugs bite you through it, delivering a sting both to your skin and the effectiveness of the intervention.
DON'T get feisty and roll around and kick off the net in your sleep. No bueno.
DO point your head lamp at different spots above you on the net as you fall asleep.
DON'T freak out after performing aforementioned action when you spot beetles and grasshopper fellas crawling around. It's alright...the net is like that super power you always wished you had, making you untouchable! And it's kinda cool to watch the insects from below.

The "hallway" of the house

The next day, we went on a medicinal plant walk! Our guide referred to the forest as the Bribri's grocery store, pharmacy and hardware store. Basically, if ya need something, the forest has got your back. It's like CVS, Safeway/Schnucks, and Home Depot packed into one. Vines are a particularly hot commodity, with their utility in construction (vines are the new nails) and some species are like a water storage system that you can just slit with your machete and sip out of! We nibbled on one particularly bitter plant that's used to treat malaria and prevent bug bites too.

View from a wooden tower along the plant walk

The next day, we visited with a Bribri women's association that is in the chocolate business! We went to their cacao farms, and learned about the the chocolate making process. In their culture cacao is sacred and, because of religious traditions, the handling of it is a woman's job. You can eat (as we did) the slim meaty part around the cacao seeds in the raw fruit, but the seeds themselves are super bitter--you'll want to spit those out. But, in the chocolate making process, these seeds are collected, shelled, dried, mashed and ground into a paste. And then you can add a metric ton of sugar to get it to the level of bitterness in dark chocolate that we're accustomed to!

We later traveled via boat and bus to yet another part of the territory where we learned about religious rituals and where we also dined. The elders of the group spoke with us, but they only speak in their native language. So a younger Bribri man translated from Bribri to Spanish, and a professor translated from Spanish to English. The younger Bribri man most likely knew the answers to our questions, but out of respect and tradition, would translate and ask the elders for the answers to share with us.