I was up early, drinking noni juice first thing, making tea, and then enjoying a breakfast of two fried eggs from our chickens, on top of bread Susannah baked with homemade butter in between. On top of that, a delicious green salsa Jess made with blended basil, avocado, cilantro, lime, and oil. After breakfast we began to prepare- we were expecting Simón, our neighbor from Nicaragua, to come by at eight-thirty with his son Kenneth and his friend Marvin. Well around nine after trying to call his phone, I walked down the road two hundred yards to find him. It turned out that Simón couldn’t find las mascaras, the snorkeling masks we needed to go spear fishing in the river. After another half an hour of searching through Garden Village, we decided to go to the river without any masks and use fishing lines instead.
As we were walking down to the river, we passed a big plant with broad leaves and Simón asked “conoce este planta?” (do you know this plant?). I told him I didn’t and he said it was called Mano de Tigre, and that the sap inside can be used as a topical solution for fungal growths on the skin. I thought back to after I had just arrived at Garden Village in November and how Clay (and later I) had developed skin rashes on the inside of the upper thighs that was indicative of a skin fungus. I stored this newly acquired knowledge, that Simon shares so frequently, and promised to remember it in case it served later.
We went down to el Rio Pearla and began walking upstream, stepping from river rock to river rock. When we came to a little pool, Simón got out his spool of fishing line with a hook and attached a piece of cooked pehivia fruit for bait. Within two minutes he gave a sharp tug on the line and out flew a little river fish. With the fish still on the line, Simon swung the fish against a rock and it stopped moving. We began moving up stream, with Simón and Marvin casting their lines, and occasionally pulling in a catch, and Kenneth and I following and swimming at times.
At one point Simón motioned me over to a tree on the river bank and pointed up, “mira el mono.” I heard the deep “ruh ruh ruh” of the howeler monkey and looked up to see one in the tree above us making quite a fuss. El mono es muy kamote I say laughing- exercising a word I learned from Simón two days ago when we drove together down to Puerto Vieho to deliver various dairy products for Lecheria Las Lappas. On that journey time had flown by as Simon and I drove for three hours to Puerto talking almost the whole way in Spanish and English. I would ask him como se dice…? (how do you say…?) and resort to finding the word in my dictionary only if it couldn’t be found through conversation in a round-about way. My Spanish was more fluid then it had ever been before, and Simón and I freely conversed about differences and similarities between our cultures, the places we come from, as well as past stories and future hopes.
After going a little further upstream, we decided to start heading back. Simón showed me the pod of a tree seed that was round and pokey, and he said that the monkeys used these pods to comb themselves. Walking back from the river I reflected on how much I have learned from Simon. Most notably, I will always remember the time that he taught Cal, Clay, and I how to make a very rustic yet very effective trap for moles that were eating the maracuya in the garden.
I am very grateful to have met so many wonderful people on my travels in Costa Rica and Panama. I am already looking forward to when I can return and improve my Spanish more with Simón, and when we might travel to his home of el Castillo in Nicaragua some day. I realize that connecting with the people of these lands is what the journey is about, and there is a certain live energy in the air when I adventure with Simón that feels like anything is possible and we are both liberated from any any preconceived notions of ourselves that are held by us and those from our different cultures. I see Garden Village as one center that is helping to facilitate the union of North and South America as a seed for a new paradigm of life and relationships. I beyond bliss to be a young sprout in this new garden.
-Cache Stone Hunter