Living by the beach

Well, I’ve got to say that this site is an incredible and I feel quite lucky in many ways. After a week, I’m beginning to adjust to my new home, the huge extended family and the scarcity of water. For every inconvenience, there are 10 things that are great. One of these is the beach, a long stretch of beach with fine sand, fishing boats offshore and lots birds. I hear the ocean all the time from the kitchen and bathroom of the house which have open barred windows. When I wake in the night, I hear the ocean.
Lest you think this is paradise, this is also a dirty beach where the single guys hand out to drink in the evening so after about 6PM, it’s off limits for this gringa. Saturday, I went to the beach with a youth group for a clean-up project and learned in the process that there are no garbage barrels, there isn’t much idea of the beach as a resource and the dry river bed leading to the ocean is where lots of people dump their garbage.
That said, the Pacific Ocean is magnificent and once beach area central to La Cruz was cleaned up by these kids, the boys headed out to swim and everyone joined in a game of beach soccer. I watched the guys as they dove under the incoming waves and decided to try it the next day. So today, Robyn came from her site which is about 20 minutes away and we spend the morning at the beach with about 6 of the children from my extended family. It’s going to take me a while to learn to swim in this water but I really had a blast. And I almost lost my water shorts in the process. Lesson learned, tie the waist tight and don’t let the little kids grab you by the shorts!
After a few hours, we returned to the house for lunch of chicken, rice and a potato salad with a pimento sauce and fresh papaya juice prepared by my host mom. Then Robyn headed home and I fell asleep in the hammock with kids playing, TV on and conversations all around me!
Tomorrow, I will be meeting a woman from an NGO called Cuidades Saludables that has interest in starting a garbage collection and recycling project in La Cruz. I’m looking forward to meeting with this group and will give all the support I can if they decide to bring a project to La Cruz.
I’ve been very fortunate to meet good people in my first week including the young man who is the youth group leader, completely on his own without resources. My job at the beach cleaning was to take photos and like teenagers everywhere, they preened and posed like crazy. Now their leader has the photos on his flashdrive. I have to laugh when I see pictures of me in the middle of this group, talk about being different! The kids were fascinated that I’m always white (blancita) and really thought it funny when I told them that in the sun I change from white to red. However, that’s not going to happen because I am very faithful with sun screen.