Saturday we traveled to Coopesilencio in Quepos. This particular community works the land together – their main crop (rather large covering hundreds of hectáreas/acres) is the African palm plant. They sell the fruit from the plants for oil that is used in cosmetic crèmes. They also conduct ecological tours – hikes, rafting, etc. for visitors. The community does all the work; each person has a job and all the money goes back to their own community and their families. All decisions are made democratically. Our tour guide kept using the phrase, “We use our democracy.” I found this an interesting way of putting it. Though, I’m sure it’s an issue of translation, the phrase reminds me that sometimes in a democracy like the United States, we don’t always “use our democracy" effectively. I mentioned this and he reminded me that they are successful because they are a much smaller community, to which I uttered, “Think locally.” I couldn’t help but think about politics and admittedly, I wish I could have shut that part of my brain off and just appreciate the land and environment. Because we are humans though, I feel like we are all trying to understand (and some are trying to control) the environment with which we live. Going back to Tuan’s “Topophilia” I am again reminded that each person has a different perception of the world around them and with each interpretation, there’s bound to be differing power dynamics.
Regrettably I did not take pictures at Coopesilencio. A few other students were responsible for that documentation and I really wanted the opportunity to be free from holding a camera. I’m glad I gave myself permission because a lot of things swam through my head during that visit. For starters, I want to volunteer there for a week. I left wanting to really experience the actual work, the physicality required to simply live there. The following “timed writing” reflects my time in Coopesilencio:
Heat, beads of sweat running down my white freckled face. Fresh air – enjoy the breeze occasionally sweeping through the covered patio as we eat lunch. Fruit drink, cas, is now my favorite. Our tour guide is the first tico to prounounce the ‘sh’ in my name. He did not say ‘rashana,’ but he did say ‘shana.’ I was elated. Our guide walked us through trails and pointed out the ants carrying leaves back, spiders weaving webs – spiders are our friends, citronella plants, butterflies that camouflage themselves – this one looked like the bark of a tree. The trails are in great condition. Coopesilencio cares about their fellow creatures. The animals they have in pens are there to protect them; they were all domesticated animals whose owners could no longer take care of them - these animals can no longer exist in the wild. This is not to say that there aren’t monkeys in the wild at Coopesilencio. We saw much wildlife. The white-faced monkeys, monkeys, monkeys, monkeys – how they communicate! Barking, smiling, swinging, hugging.
My favorite thing about the tour was something our guide said that I’m not sure everyone heard, but was almost straight out of our readings of Tuan’s “Topophilia” and also Simone Forti’s “Animate Dancing.” He said, “Our eyes are not just for looking; they are for seeing. Our ears are not just for hearing; they are for listening.”
I will write more about how the Forti’s reading played out during the day, but I also want to include this excerpt from David Abram’s “Spell of the Sensuous.”
In the very earliest time
when both people and animals lived on earth,
a person could become an animal if he wanted to
and an animal could become a human being.
Sometimes they were people
and sometimes animals
and there was no difference.
All spoke the same language.
That was the time when words were like magic.
The human mind had mysterious powers.
A word spoken by chance
might have strange consequences.
It would suddenly come alive
and what people wanted to happen could happen-
all you had to do was say it.
Nobody could explain this:
That’s the way it was.
Here Abram was quoting ethnologist Knud Rasmussen to augment his discussion of Merleau-Ponty’s investigation of the “living experience of language – the way the expressive medium discloses itself to us when we do not pretend to stand outside it, but rather accept our inhererence within it, as speaking animals.” Watching those monkeys, not quite twelve of them as in our own party, I saw them as a community quite like the twelve of us students from OSU – each monkey having a personality and a role. While I could not pretend to know the full senses of monkeys as Tuan points out in his work, I felt like I got a general idea of their community. While I want to say that our group is not a group of monkeys hanging out, I’m not sure that it’s a bad thing altogether to admit.
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