Call of the Bell Bird

by Jennifer Kavanagh

  Coroico, nearly two thousand metres lower than La Paz but high enough to be above the mosquito line, sounded perfect. So we set off by bus – a literally breathtaking journey over mostly stony roads. A climb up to 4,800 metres, then a white knuckle hairpin ride down and down to 1,700 metres, from barren earth to semi-jungle. There were no barriers on the road, over the edge of which could be seen, some thousand metres below, several burnt-out wrecks of buses, to remind us of our possible fate. When a bus or car came the other way our bus drove on the wrong side of the road – to enable the driver to see the edge. It was that close. It was only afterwards that we discovered that the ride was known as the most dangerous bus journey in the world.

  Our bedroom: open to the Andes

  A mile or so outside the pretty town of Coroico we came across Sol y Luna and were captivated. Some six hectares, run by Sigrit, a German shiatsu exponent, as “a garden of the soul”, it contained a central building with a pool, and self-catering cabins dotted around, out of sound and sight of each other. It was a perfect place to give each other some space and, crucially, opportunities for contemplation. Our cabaña with bamboo outbuildings of lavatory and shower was up some ninety-five steps and long slopes from the main house. It was open to the outside world on one side, with magnificent views of the mountains, high up in a land of birdsong, butterflies, soaring condors, squabbling green parrots and a myriad plants; a profusion of colour, texture and beauty.

  The Friends school had closed for lack of funds. But we found the Friends, and met them for a service in a disused classroom with peeling walls. Though distant from our own silent worship, it was most touching. Seven people, mainly elderly and infirm, including one black woman who barely spoke Spanish, upholding their faith, singing in cracked voices, sometimes kneeling at the altar, sobbing out their prayers and confessions. They asked me (or rather, being a male-dominated culture, Stephen, who delegated to me) to read from the Bible. It was rather daunting, especially in Spanish, and I had no idea what was expected of me. Quakers of our “liberal” tradition revere the Spirit from which the Bible comes but do not treat it as the ultimate authority – only the direct experience of God is that. After a childhood of literal reading of the Bible, it is only recently that I have been able to return to it and appreciate its riches. On this occasion I played safe and read the 23rd Psalm.

  The Coroico Friends agreed that we could use two classrooms of the defunct school to teach English. So we put a note up in the town square, offering lessons to all comers.

  Life has begun to fall into place in a very pleasant simple practical way. Waking about 7 a.m. – the day starts late here with mist clearing from the mountains and valley very gradually though birds are busy long before. Woken in the night by a loud flapping that sounded in the room but was probably a bat trying to get through the zip-up sheet that Sigrit has erected to keep them out. Cup of tea in bed. Then breakfast – oats and apple, bread and honey, coffee; and domestic chores – washing, washing clothes – all in cold water, but with a good scrub board; sweeping up, emptying rubbish and burning some of it on the open fire we have outside. It is dusty here and damp – an odd combination. Then paperwork, reading, preparing for classes. Lunch – we take it turns to cook – a nap and a swim. Down to town about 5.30 p.m. for shopping for the next day, internet sometimes, though it is very expensive, and teaching from 7 to 8. (Journal June 1st, 2001)

  We had an average of about 20 pupils between us: Stephen ostensibly teaching the beginners (he has a TEFL qualification) and I the more advanced, but characteristically in a macho culture, the men all turned up for the advanced class; the women to the beginners. So Stephen had some bright young women in his class; I some completely uneducated old men, as well as young schoolboys and the local pharmacist, whose English was pretty good. They seemed hungry for knowledge but not eager to speak. One of the men had the name of Victor, another turned out to be Milton, and, not to be left out, the pharmacist said “and my name is William”, obviously with Shakespeare in mind.

  Stephen with Coroico Friends

  The only amigo (Quaker) in my class was a gentle young man of 22 who worked in the coffee fields between Coroico and La Paz, and steadily increased in confidence and articulateness as time went on. We had not realised that he was a Friend until he joined in our silent Meeting for Worship after class one day, together with the old hermanos (brothers) who didn’t come to the classes but wanted to join with us in our kind of worship, as we had in theirs.

  After class, Stephen and I went back to Sol y Luna either by a steep and scary walk past innumerable dogs in the dark (only torch or moon light); or by taxi, to a light supper, a roaring fire and bed.

  It was a good life that contained for us the right balance of meaningful work, self-sufficiency, the natural world and time for contemplation of it. The sight of the Andes dominated my awakening every morning, and penetrated my being. It was not prettiness but power. Not a dualistic admiration of something external but a call to something within me. I had felt it in the desert, and now it was as if a magnet had entered my soul.

  Chapter 3

  The Peacemakers

  All bloody principles and practices we do utterly deny, with all outward wars, and strife, and fightings with outward weapons, for any end, or under any pretence whatsoever, and this is our testimony to the whole world.

  Quaker declaration to Charles II, 1660

  Costa Rica came as quite a surprise. After the magnificence of the Andes in Peru and Bolivia, it seemed tame, undramatic. Wonderfully green, but subtler and very evidently more affluent. I had wanted to begin our journey in North America and work south, feeling that we should start in more familiar territory and gradually progress to less familiar. It simply hadn’t been possible in our juggling of timing, climate and mileage, but certainly my idea was borne out as the feeling of anticlimax grew.

  Without the strong influence of Indian culture Costa Rica seemed an ethnically less interesting country. It is, however, unique in its progressive attitudes to war and ecology, thanks first to a constituent assembly which abolished the army in 1949 and then to Oscar Arias Sanchez, its president from 1986 to 1990, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his work on the Central American peace plan, which contributed so much to the ending of the continent’s long-lasting civil wars.

  When we arrived in San Jose, I was for the first time ill. Running out of Bolivian currency the previous night, we had wandered into the streets near our hotel in La Paz and, untypically, had eaten from a stall that looked dodgy. We had always been careful to eat freshly cooked food even in the most basic of places, but I knew in my heart that this was not safe – it was not even identifiable. Stephen took one mouthful then looked for somewhere to dispose of it, but I carried on eating. The result was a fearsome attack of diarrhoea early the next morning.

  I sat at the airport feeling very unwell, and was approached several times by people asking if I wanted to see a doctor. In the end I agreed, then proceeded to vomit up the pill he had given me, resulting in an injection minutes before getting on the plane. Thankfully, I had three seats to myself and slept most of the way. When we arrived, the Bolivian prescription was hard to exchange in sophisticated San Jose.

  The Costa Rican capital was more like a Western city than anything we had seen further south. A smart shopping area; all the goods one could buy in Europe; a homogenous white society. After nearly a week in the city, I couldn’t wait to get out.

  In Monteverde, in the north-west uplands, there is a well-established Quaker community, started by a group of American farmers at the time of the Korean war. Seeking respite from warmongering, they found a land without an army, and have had a huge influence on the area. We were warmly welcomed into the community, and had our first unprogrammed Meeting for Worship for about two months, much needed. We visited the co-operative dairy and store, helped with the library and witnessed the expansion of the school and Meeting House. We also gave a talk on Quakerism at the Monteverde Institute,
an establishment run by a Friend and concentrating on sustainable development and natural resource programmes. Students attend from all over the world – often for a term of their degree in architecture or land planning.

  In general the town seemed expensive and disconcertingly unlike Latin America. Everyone, including the locals, spoke English and much had been provided for an American clientele. It is interesting how many people from developed countries seek their Shangri-la. In Brazil, our friends have bought a piece of paradise, having originally bought in South West France, then moved on as life there became too sophisticated, too similar to what they were escaping from. But their patch of Brazil too has become expensive and exclusive as the incomers demand more sophisticated goods in the shops, even in the midst of a traditional fishing community. Then, in Coroico, Bolivia, Sigrid has successfully created a way of life that contributes to the wellbeing of those passing through and hopes to build a community, but it too is a thing apart from the context in which it exists. And here the advent of ex-pats has resulted in a huge supermarket where you can find anything and a community that is quite separate from the rest of Costa Rica.

  In all these places the new residents try to exploit their gifts – artistic for the most part, but also cooking and catering. Such communities employ local people and no doubt fit in well in some ways, but they do feel artificial implants that negate the reason for being there in the first place. In the end they permanently change the original environment – a concern that I know is held by some of the founding Quakers here.

  Monteverde is primarily known for its cloud forest reserve, an area of high jungle rescued by the Quakers, who are still much involved in the administration of what has become a major attraction of ecotourism. At 6 a.m. one day we were able to walk for four hours in the 10,500 hectare reserve, among the giant trees. We were soon out of sight and sound of other people, and revelling in the misty lush foliage dripping with the low cloud, and the sound, and occasionally sight, of bell birds and howling monkeys.

  Whenever you are confronted with an opponent, conquer him with love (Gandhi)

  Spiritually our time in Costa Rica was dominated by encounters with two men in San Jose – one Costa Rican, one American; both Quakers who live their faith. The Peace testimony is central to Quaker beliefs, so it is not surprising that they, like Arias, live lives directed towards peace.

  Arriving by bus in the downtown area of Desamparados in San Jose, Costa Rica, we were astonished to find the small unpretentious houses barricaded with bars. As we walked down the road, we passed people sitting in their front yard or porch behind bars, like animals in a zoo. We had come across rich homes in Lima, Peru similarly fortified, but in this modest area the fear of crime was unexpected and shocking.

  Napoleon and Clothilde Escobar live in a small self-built house with a corrugated roof, together with their son and girlfriend. Both Servas members and Quakers, they were a natural choice for us as hosts, and indeed our couple of days with them was a source of richness. Napoleon has trained in the Alternatives to Violence Project (AVP): a scheme set up by Quakers in American prisons in the 1970s that attempts to build self-esteem and inculcate skills in dealing with anger and preventing conflict. With no financial support and little evidence of any income at all, Napoleon and Clothilde run peace workshops, based on AVP, mainly for drug addicts, with considerable success. With pride they showed us their scrapbooks, and copies of the certificates they give to those who have participated.

  Another Servas member was in situ at the Escobars’ house. Martin, a young German forester, who had been due to leave some days before, had had to stay on for treatment for a painful abscess at the local hospital. Since there are only two bedrooms in the house – one for Napoleon and Clothilde, the other for their son and girlfriend (“They stay up late studying”) – and Martin was established on the sitting room sofa, we asked tentatively where we should put our rucksacks.

  “Oh, in here” – pointing to the master bedroom.

  ”Oh, no, we couldn’t possibly”, but

  “Oh, we’ll be in there too” – and they moved the mattress off the bed.

  We slept on the mattress, Napoleon and Clothilde on the base, and the dog and cat at our feet, a perfect warm, loving and cosy arrangement. It was one of many lessons about different attitudes to privacy.

  And such generosity. We had home made bread every morning. The first night their son cooked pasta for us all. The second I cooked a fish pie (finding prawns was impossible – no one in the local shops knew even the Spanish word for prawn so I had to give up on them). I also sang for my hosts – an increasingly common way for me to “pay” for my keep. I have sung all my life, mainly opera and lieder, but I was limited on the trip by what I knew by heart, and by what seemed appropriate to my audience. In general I sang traditional folk songs which do not suffer from being unaccompanied and are generally accessible, although I occasionally allowed myself the expansive pleasure of the operatic repertoire.

  Napoleon, a member of the local Quaker Meeting, was estranged from it, ironically in an argument over AVP. Peacemaking seems to throw up these tensions: there was a similar conflict among Servas members in Peru. We were touched when he and Clothilde, who had never joined Quakers, asked if they could come to Meeting with us on Sunday. Martin too came, for his first Quaker Meeting, and the usually small group was further amplified by the presence of two other visitors to the town. It was held, as usual, in the San Jose Quaker Peace Centre, and was a profoundly moving occasion. The talk that Stephen and I gave, on social action and mysticism, seemed to go down well and was interpreted for Clothilde, who speaks no English.

  In the evening, Clothilde asked about applying for membership of the Religious Society of Friends, and Stephen sat down and explained the simple process, giving her an informal interview in the process. If our presence acted as a catalyst, we will be content.

  The Clerk of the Meeting was Diego Low, a small bearded intense American. He was also the recently appointed Director of the peace centre, so active as a base for reconciliation during the war years of the 1980s but now seeking new directions. Before coming to Costa Rica Diego had spent many years in the States doing human rights work with undocumented workers, mainly Mexicans. His paid job when we met him was in an organisation seeking justice for workers in Costa Rica, particularly women, in the new free trade zones, which in general repress union activity and have worse working conditions than elsewhere.

  We had arrived in San Jose with no plans, just a wish to be useful. We did not have the skills to slot into any particular project, but, in discussion with Diego, we all felt that perhaps we could simply bear witness, visit projects, inform ourselves and report back. Diego, so well connected in the field of human rights, took us in hand.

  Diego Low

  It was by now the rainy season; the weather stiflingly hot and humid as we drove down to the Carribbean coast. We stayed right on the shore, near the village of Puerto Uva, in a house belonging to the boss of Diego’s companera, Ileana. A large wooden house with magnificent verandas in the midst of tropical jungle, it had possibly the greatest range of animal life of our whole journey. On June 27th, I wrote in my journal:

  The richness of the wildlife is overwhelming – some less welcome than others, like the numerous biting insects and ants that sting you as you lean up against a door post, the large spider that eases itself into the kitchen, even the “esperanza”, the huge leaf-like grasshopper that hurtled across the kitchen on to a plastic bag this morning. The bats hanging from the bathroom eaves, red crabs and some pale blue ones crawling out from under the hedges and into holes all round the garden, lizards darting out into the sun, staying just ahead of us on the path to the beach, the roar of howling monkeys from nearby trees. A blue morpho butterfly yesterday and a lovely blue and yellow one today. Most of all the birds, both in tantalising song and, also visually: “pechos amarillos” [yellow breasts] of many varieties; the fleeting glimpse of a woodpecker, the stilln
ess of perched vultures, the startling red of the back of a black bird sitting close to the house in front of flowers of exactly the same hue, humming birds and many other tiny birds, perching, singing, darting from tree to tree. And the foliage of every imaginable shape, size and shade of green. Humid, rainy, itchy, but nature in all its splendour.

  From here Diego took us to visit some projects to which he was offering support.

  Foro Emaus is a group of churches, non-governmental organisations (NGOs), trade unions and academics set up ‘for Human Rights and the Environment’ mainly in the banana industry, trying to get the corporations to accept minimum standards of employment. International markets, especially the USA, demand standard products, in this case, long straight bananas, and there is a terrible wastage of any that do not conform.

  Abuses of human rights and the land are well documented, especially in the use of pesticides. These not only desolate the land, making it impossible for further use after cropping but have also affected the fertility of a high proportion of men who had worked in the local banana industry. In discussions at the local banana packing factory, managers assured us of improved conditions and said that some of the worst pesticides were no longer used. The union leaders did not dispute these statements, though they also spoke of victimisation of women and some of their own officials. The workers are mostly immigrants and indigenous Indians, who live with their families in barrack-like living quarters near the factory. The lively co-operative of small independent farmers producing organic bananas was a contrast. An organisation of equals, it strives to make a living from its produce, most of which is made into a famous brand of baby food.