Written by guest blogger Bethany Bowen
Day 2 started at 7 a.m. and I felt surprisingly well rested; in fact I slept really well the whole trip. After eating breakfast we started driving to the community. It took us about six hours to get there, but the length didn’t matter because it was absolutely the most beautiful landscape I had ever seen. Seriously, pictures don’t do this place justice. There was greenery everywhere, mountains, and random waterfalls.
At the start of our 5th hour of driving we saw a sloth, yes a three-towed sloth, crossing the road. Our driver almost hit it and then we stopped to turn around and go find it. Our drivers called him (we decided he was a boy for some reason) “gato perezoso”, which literally translates to “lazy cat”.
We finally arrived at Rio de Este around two in the afternoon, and tried to get settled in. We were staying in the school; a concrete building with open holes for windows and doors. The people in the village, the Ngobes, were very shy. When I would try to say “hola” they would look at me like I was out of my mind. At this point, I got really nervous about the success of our brigade. We took a tour of the community; most homes were made of wood and had thatched roofs, there were three stores, a volleyball court, and a community building. The children were very curious about the “mirri ginnis”, this is the Ngobe term for Americans, and they started following us everywhere. My friend Scott showed them his camera and seeing themselves on the screen fascinated them. I loved this moment because young kids in America are the exact same way.
Next, we had a group meeting with the community to introduce ourselves and talk about why we are here and what they hope to gain from us. There were a few people in our group that spoke Spanish fluently, but all in all, the language barrier was very difficult. After the meeting we had a Ngobe lesson. A Ngobe man was trying to teach all of us Ngobe, but he was speaking in Spanish. It was so confusing I almost couldn’t concentrate. We did learn basic phrases like "hello", "neontore", and "how are you," "moutouno", and the next day the community seemed to be happy that we were trying.
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