Where in the World are the Kittels?!: howler monkeys

Fifteen months ago (a lifetime for some) we met Alice. That's her there on the left. Although you can't tell in the photo, Alice has no tail and was raised at Capitan Suizo, a hotel on the beach in Tamarindo. At the time we were renting a house two doors south of the hotel and now we are living in a tree house two doors north where the local gang of howlers wake us up at 530 every morning--who needs an alarm clock? Some nights they sleep in the tree over the house and have their coffee klatch directly overhead, flinging their noisy news and bits of breakfast onto the roof and pooping, well, you get the picture. When the gang moves through the 'hood, one male consistently stops to peek at us over the edge of the roof or to otherwise come closer for a chat. We finally noticed that he had no tail but was clearly a male, the dangling white cojones not leaving much room for speculation.

Last week Bella and I stopped by the hotel to check on the progress of a lora (olive ridley sea turtle) they were rehabilitating and on Friday at sunset we stood on the playa and waved goodbye to her. (I am certain she was Maude or Mildred, but that is another story blogged about earlier.) Talking to Hector, the hotel wildlife guy, I asked about the overtly friendly howler hanging around the 'hood and he informed me that our tailless socialite is none other than Alice, herself! Turns out young howlers are rather amorphous in their private parts and that Alice was a bit of a misnomer. The good news is that the local gang has accepted her-m because it also turns out that a tail is a critical component of howler attraction and so, alas, poor Alice is not considered much of a threat in the mating department. The bad news is that Alice's lack of a tail will probably preclude him from getting any. So, Alice must be content to hang around as best he can, socializing with distant relatives, and generally making a life for himself.

Pura Vida.

A friend of mine was lamenting the Target selection on her blog the other day and it got me thinking about yet one more of the 99 reasons we moved to Costa Rica - Simple Living. Can you simply live right at home in the land of the free and the brave? Sure. Is it more difficult? Definitely. Here in the tropics we do not shop. See that period? We have not bought anything besides food, gas, car and quad parts, and other household goods for 6 months now. Yes, a family of 6 sometimes outgrows items like soccer cleats and new sneakers for school and we have imposed on our friends coming to visit to bring a few things like that from the land of plenty. But we have not shopped for unnecessary clothing or little household decorations or holiday decor or a toy or a game or anything like that since we arrived last August. The kids all have school uniforms, so that helps. But there is no Target. Or TJ Maxx. Or Marshalls. Or Christmas Tree Shop. Or any of your other favorite stores beckoning with colorful flyers and promises of great new Spring selections just in time for Easter!

I think of all the times my car pulled automatically into the Marshalls parking lot where I, Starbucks mocha in hand, thought I would just take a look in the half hour of "free" time I had and found myself squeezing back out the exit clutching plastic bags stuffed with hundreds of dollars of items I did not actually need or plan on buying! Here there is no bombardment of holiday candy for Easter or special dresses with matching hats and purses or cute little decorations or anything like that at all. Period. None of that constant tempatation that marketing brings. This is not a consumer oriented society; people here do not consider shopping a pasttime. Does this mean that sometimes I don't have throw rug envy? No. I do wish I could find some cheap but colorful rugs to cover my hard tile floors and sink my perpetually bare toes into but there aren't any, so I don't, and that's one less thing I have to move before I shopvac and mop my house! The only decent shopping, I am told, is in San Jose and that is a good 5 hour drive from here. So, it's not happening. We are simply living with less.

The other day during our beach walk Christiana was commenting that she thinks it might be weird to go home. Amen. I know from my Peace Corps experience that as hard as it was to leave my family, friends, and all things familiar behind and immerse myself in a foreign culture, it was much, much, muchly, much more difficult to return home to all the wastefulness of our throw away society and rampant consumerism. The technical term is "readjustment" and after buying the same exact items at the grocery store for 2 years I could not enter a grocery or drug store for many months without forcing down an overwhelming feeling of being, well, overwhelmed! All those choices! All that information overload! You have no idea the magnitude of data you process and internalize on a daily basis at Stop and Shop until you have not done it for a year or two. Too many choices, too many price comparisons, too much time spent poring over highly marketed products and forget about the rest of your day if you are actually going to compare ingredients or the relative sugar content of breakfast cereals! It is happening to you every day and you don't even realize you are on the merry-go-round until you get off and try to get back on again. So, yes, Christiana, it will indeed be weird. And this lovely realization from my daughter whose idea of entertainment used to be a trip to the mall! Now she is the one running around our casa turning off all unnecessary lighting and fighting with Micah over running the a/c in their bedroom at night. You go girl!

Besides the lack of a shopping scene, other ways we are simply living include washing dishes by hand, and yes, there are a lot of us. We wash the clothes in cold water only but it comes out warm because of the ambient temperature and we hang the clothes to dry, which I do at home too but now I can forego the down jacket and gloves and am less inclined to settle for the ease of the dryer during a blizzard. We only drive to school and the grocery store, usually combining trips. The rest of the time we read, write, walk the beach, and wait for our "busy" American friends to take a minute from their overscheduled day to send us an email or two. There is an occasional birthday party or sporting event or other social outings of course and I am not meaning to preach, but just think of the time you spend in your car or shopping for Spring clothing and imagine yourself curled up in your favorite chair with a good book instead. Christiana is doing a vegetarian experiment with her Environmental Science class but even without that added incentive, we eat much more healthfully and simply. Real food only, the closest Burger King is an hour away, thankfully! What junk food there is has been imported and is expensive so we don't eat it much. School lunches are proper meals sliced, diced, and cooked from whole foods by living, breathing lunch ladies who work too hard for swinging triceps. No microwaved airplane fake food mass produced in Pennsylvania. And nobody has been sick since we arrived other than an ear infection for Bella and Andy.

We are blessed with time. And that is why I posted this great photo of a howler monkey. (Thanks Robin!) Howlers have to hang around to survive. They are folivorous, meaning they eat only leaves with an occasional piece of fruit or tasty flower thrown in for variety. But this diet provides low nutrition and is difficult to digest so they have to chill, resting about 3/4 of the day and all night to ferment and digest their leafy meals in order to get any energy from them. Even though our diets are higher in energy, we could still take a lesson from these fellow primates. So, even if only for one day, try foregoing shopping, drive only if necessary, and learn to be more comfortable with the time you might discover. Time to stop, time to think, time to be alone, time to open a great book and read or bake something from scratch. Saturday is Earth Hour. For one hour, 830 to 930 pm, all around the Earth folks are encouraged to turn off all the lights and nonessential electricity. So, unless you are on life support or emergency oxygen, this means you could probably hit the breaker and play cards with your family by candlelight and tell Abe Lincoln stories. Last year Isaiah and I were home alone and that is exactly what we did. He keeps asking me when we are going to do it again, so here it is! He is excited! And he lives in a country where losing power for an hour is practically a daily event!

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