Crafts and cacao

As much as I love my job taking care  of the kids at Llevando Luz, it wasn't actually my first choice for placement with CCS. I was drawn to the program in San Carlos when I saw that they had a women's empowerment program called Amureci, which centers around an art co-op that makes crafts out of recycled materials. Women are certainly part of the workforce in Costa Rica, but it is definitely still a male-dominated society, where machisimo is very much a part of everyday life. It's great to see an organization put together by women for the purpose of showing other women how empowering it can be to run an autonomous business, and give back to the environment at the same time.

We are allowed to visit other placements during the week, so on Thursday I went to Amureci to check it out and help them make the crafts. The studio where they work is in the back of the store where they sell their paper goods and some jewelry made by other local artists. The store is covered in murals, and everything that is for sale is beautiful--all hand-painted with butterflies and flowers.

In the back, all the recycled materials are sorted into bags (paper, glass, plastic), and there are big tubs and screen for making the paper. They use recycled paper scraps and fiber from banana leaves to make the paper, which they turn into stationary, journals and picture frames. They needed to make 40 small journals for a church group that was coming in, so that was my assigned project for the day. After another volunteer glued the books together, I painted a design on the front cover. Mostly flowers, although I churned out a few pineapples that didn't look too bad.

Getting crafty.

Some finished products.

 I loved getting to volunteer at Amureci, but in the end it just made me appreciate my placement at Llevando Luz even more. I think I would get bored painting butterflies and flowers every day, and there is certainly no chance of that with the chaos and spontaneity of all the kids at the daycare. More importantly, it seems that the women at Amureci could benefit from some extra help, but mostly they have their duties under control. At Llevando Luz, I feel like what I do every day makes a difference, and things actually do run much smoother when I'm there.

                                                                        ..........................

Later that day, we took a field trip to a chocolate farm. But what was supposed to be a one and a half hour drive turned into a seven hour round-trip journey. Luckily chocolate improves my mood exponentially.

We took a walk through the rainforest over the longest hanging bridge in Costa Rica, which was a little unnerving, but mostly amazing.

On the hanging bridge.

After that, we saw how chocolate is made, from bean to bar. And we got to sample it in every delicious stage (ok, so cacao beans are actually not so delicious-they taste like a cross between old fruit and slimy coffee beans).

Cacao pod

Time to make the chocolate!

The freshest chocolate there is- straight from the tree!