A day with a Bribri family in Costa Rica

by Sonja Kamenov (New Zealand)

Making a local connection Costa Rica

While we were in Cahuita, a small village on the Caribbean Coast of Costa Rica, we decided to meet the indigenous Bribri community. We bought a day tour in Willie's tours agency for about $60. Luis, the head of one of the Bribri families, came to pick us up one morning. Luis is married to Ana, a granddaughter of Bribri tribal chief Don Silverio, who died a few years ago at the age of 110. Luis took us to the Bribri Village, which looked like an outlet full of shops with cheap Hispanic clothes. There were a few supermarkets in the village, as well as their “casinos.” The “casino” is a room the size of a garage filled with game machines and a cash desk next to the entrance. While we were sightseeing in the village, Luis had a cigarette break with his friends (it seems that he’s pretty popular in Bribri Village). When he finished, he simply said “Mishke,” which in Bribri means: “Let’s go.” We sat in his car with a half-naked woman on the sun visor and continued toward the Bribri reservation popularly called Rancho Grande. With Luis’s help, we crossed a small river and found ourselves in their backyard. They had many cocoa trees, a few plantain trees, and a walking palm tree. Why “a walking palm”? This kind of palm tree has roots outside the ground, and it follows the sun. As the sun moves during the day, the palm moves with it. The house of Luis’s family was a simple wooden plateau, elevated to protect them from poisonous animals (snakes, scorpions, etc.). It had a roof made of palm leaves. They used a space underneath the house as a hen house with numerous hens, gooses, and two roosters. Ana was preparing lunch in old metal pots on the coal stove in their traditional kitchen. Their daughter relaxed in a hammock with her son, while their older grandsons were playing around the house. The pictures of Don Silverio and traditional artifacts were hanging from wooden walls. On the table, they had barks from different types of trees and giant seashells that they use to announce danger in the reservation. Luis and Ana made us an introduction to alternative medicine. They explained to us the use of various tree barks inside their community. For example, sarsaparilla tree is used for sexual potency, as a cure for rheumatism, and, along with a strict diet, it can cure leukemia. They drink it in the form of a tee, and this kind of alternative medicine is carried from generation to generation inside the Bribri community. The Bribri are the largest Costa Rican tribe. Its number extends from 10 000 to 35 000 people. Before Columbus’s arrival to Costa Rica, Bribri and other indigenous tribes lived from the cocoa tree and the production of chocolate. It’s traditionally believed that the cocoa tree is a woman turned into a tree by god Sibu. It's considered sacred and only women are allowed to process the cocoa. Luis’s family still makes chocolate in an old-fashioned way. Luis’s grandson Jefferson picked up a cocoa fruit, which we tasted first. The cocoa fruit is sweet as candy, and we loved it. Luis brought us fried cocoa beans, which we peeled with him. After that, Ana took us to a wooden house in their backyard, where she crushed cocoa beans with a giant rock until she got chocolate. All this chocolate story made us hungry. It was time for a traditional Bribri lunch – chicken (maybe one of the hens from the hen house) with Costa Rican fruit and vegetables (yucca, plantain, etc.). Instead of a plate, they served us lunch in plantain leaves. We also drank fruit juice from a coconut shell and got homemade hot chocolate as a dessert. After lunch, we said goodbye to our host family: “Ye miatche, westela!” (“Thank you, goodbye!”). Luis’s family responded: “Ekeke!” (“Goodbye!”). The last stop of our tour was a small waterfall, under which we swam surrounded by nature, peace, and quiet. There was a small bar at the entrance to the waterfall, whose owner offered us a “coco loco” drink, coconut water mixed with rum. Yummy!