The Road to Monteverde
Song Books and Song Sheets at Quaker Meeting House
First of all, I was wrong. Wilfred Guindon goes by Wolf, not Wilf. For those of you who have forgotten, Wolf was one of the guys from Alabama who was jailed for refusing to serve in the military during the Korean War, partly or mostly for religious reasons (he was raised a Quaker). He was told by the judge that if he didn’t support the U.S., he should just leave the country and live somewhere else. So, when he was released from jail in 1950, he and his wife Lucky and a few other Friends (Quakers) who also had been jailed and one who had served as a Medic in the war, left Alabama and “drove” or slogged their way south for months until they settled here in Monteverde where they bought some dairy farmland and animals and made and sold cheese until they had the resources to do other things.
We saw Wolf, Lucky, and Benito yesterday at the Quaker Meeting, which they still attend every week. As it was the first Sunday of the month, there was a community potluck lunch after Meeting. Lucky and I did dishes together after lunch. We must have dried 45 plates plus an assortment of serving utensils and other accessories. Attendees are encouraged to bring their own plates and take them home to clean them, so we did not even clean every plate that was used. We then joined the sing along that takes place after Meeting every week. The choice of song rotates from one person to the next around a circle. There are several song books and some old, tattered compilations of song sheets from which to select songs. We usually pick at least one Beatles song, some Pete Seeger, a song about Monteverde, and some other favorites. Yesterday, someone chose “Those Were the Days,” a song I haven’t sung or heard in a decade or more. Overall, we managed to get through about 25 songs.
Kamila, Kaz, and my colleague Michael all really wanted to go to Meeting yesterday. I don’t know what the appeal is, as none of us is a Quaker. However, we all love attending Meeting. I have gone every Sunday since I got here. One fella got up at one point and told how his house had burned to the ground 22 years ago on a Sunday while he was at Meeting, how everyone had a different way of helping his family recover, and how the members of his family all had different ways of accepting their neighbors’ help.
There is something really decadent about spending an hour in quiet contemplation, punctuated only by interesting stories and comments from attendees. At the last Meeting we attended before our break, Kaz rose and shared that he had adopted a puppy who because she had lived with her “birth” family for the first seven months of her life was still adjusting to living with us and sometimes didn’t seem to know quite where to be, where to go next, or what to do. Then he said, “I feel that way, sometimes, too.” I realized at that moment, that I, too, felt that way. It takes awhile to figure out where you belong in a new environment and what you should do. That may seem obvious, but it is not something we have been thinking about much. We have just been living it and probably expecting that all the adjusting would be over by now.
It is freezing here today, very windy again, and raining hard. And this is what they call summer. You know, if the weather doesn’t scare people out of here, the lack of opportunities will. When I left Meeting yesterday, I ended up walking in the same direction as an attractive, friendly, and intelligent woman and her six year-old son. She was obviously from the States, but is (or was) married to a local man. She says she now lives here permanently, more or less. By “more or less,” she explained that she has to return to the States from time to time to earn money because she cannot make a living here. She told me she can’t remember a time in her life when she was as poor as she is right now. Yikes.
Quaker Meeting
First of all, I was wrong. Wilfred Guindon goes by Wolf, not Wilf. For those of you who have forgotten, Wolf was one of the guys from Alabama who was jailed for refusing to serve in the military during the Korean War, partly or mostly for religious reasons (he was raised a Quaker). He was told by the judge that if he didn’t support the U.S., he should just leave the country and live somewhere else. So, when he was released from jail in 1950, he and his wife Lucky and a few other Friends (Quakers) who also had been jailed and one who had served as a Medic in the war, left Alabama and “drove” or slogged their way south for months until they settled here in Monteverde where they bought some dairy farmland and animals and made and sold cheese until they had the resources to do other things.
Ultimately, Wolf was one of three partners who purchased and protected vast areas of the rain forest and established the Biological Reserve here in Monteverde. For this, he is a local and international hero. Everyone seems to know him, and his face beams from the cover of a book about him called “Walking with Wolf” that is displayed in a number of stores in the area.
Wolf and Lucky had eight children in the 1950's and 60's, six sons and two daughters. They built the Quaker Meeting House and accompanying Monteverde Friends School, referred to locally as the Escuela de los Amigos. Some of their sons ultimately moved to the U.S. to make their (relative) fortunes there. Wolf told me three of their sons sent money that was used to establish the Reserve. A couple of other sons still operate the local family farm and one son, Benito, makes the most amazing goat cheeses and sells them for a mere $1 a kilo, at least to people he knows. We ate a bunch of it last night. My colleague Michael is a good friend of Benito's and he had spent the afternoon at the farm and at Wolf and Lucky's new house, which he says has a spectacular view of the gulf of Nicoya and the ocean beyond that.
Wolf and Lucky had eight children in the 1950's and 60's, six sons and two daughters. They built the Quaker Meeting House and accompanying Monteverde Friends School, referred to locally as the Escuela de los Amigos. Some of their sons ultimately moved to the U.S. to make their (relative) fortunes there. Wolf told me three of their sons sent money that was used to establish the Reserve. A couple of other sons still operate the local family farm and one son, Benito, makes the most amazing goat cheeses and sells them for a mere $1 a kilo, at least to people he knows. We ate a bunch of it last night. My colleague Michael is a good friend of Benito's and he had spent the afternoon at the farm and at Wolf and Lucky's new house, which he says has a spectacular view of the gulf of Nicoya and the ocean beyond that.
We saw Wolf, Lucky, and Benito yesterday at the Quaker Meeting, which they still attend every week. As it was the first Sunday of the month, there was a community potluck lunch after Meeting. Lucky and I did dishes together after lunch. We must have dried 45 plates plus an assortment of serving utensils and other accessories. Attendees are encouraged to bring their own plates and take them home to clean them, so we did not even clean every plate that was used. We then joined the sing along that takes place after Meeting every week. The choice of song rotates from one person to the next around a circle. There are several song books and some old, tattered compilations of song sheets from which to select songs. We usually pick at least one Beatles song, some Pete Seeger, a song about Monteverde, and some other favorites. Yesterday, someone chose “Those Were the Days,” a song I haven’t sung or heard in a decade or more. Overall, we managed to get through about 25 songs.
Kamila, Kaz, and my colleague Michael all really wanted to go to Meeting yesterday. I don’t know what the appeal is, as none of us is a Quaker. However, we all love attending Meeting. I have gone every Sunday since I got here. One fella got up at one point and told how his house had burned to the ground 22 years ago on a Sunday while he was at Meeting, how everyone had a different way of helping his family recover, and how the members of his family all had different ways of accepting their neighbors’ help.
There is something really decadent about spending an hour in quiet contemplation, punctuated only by interesting stories and comments from attendees. At the last Meeting we attended before our break, Kaz rose and shared that he had adopted a puppy who because she had lived with her “birth” family for the first seven months of her life was still adjusting to living with us and sometimes didn’t seem to know quite where to be, where to go next, or what to do. Then he said, “I feel that way, sometimes, too.” I realized at that moment, that I, too, felt that way. It takes awhile to figure out where you belong in a new environment and what you should do. That may seem obvious, but it is not something we have been thinking about much. We have just been living it and probably expecting that all the adjusting would be over by now.
It is freezing here today, very windy again, and raining hard. And this is what they call summer. You know, if the weather doesn’t scare people out of here, the lack of opportunities will. When I left Meeting yesterday, I ended up walking in the same direction as an attractive, friendly, and intelligent woman and her six year-old son. She was obviously from the States, but is (or was) married to a local man. She says she now lives here permanently, more or less. By “more or less,” she explained that she has to return to the States from time to time to earn money because she cannot make a living here. She told me she can’t remember a time in her life when she was as poor as she is right now. Yikes.
I promise to post pictures from Nicaragua as soon as I can.
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