Ord for dagen I

Frå Broadwaymusicalen Wicked

Life's more painless
. for the brainless

Heimlengsla:

......... Å sitja på ein buss bygd for underernærte dvergar med ein fyr med dårleg balanse hengjande over seg i midtgangen og ei blålilla smerte i knea som på grunn av ein nådelaus (og kanskje suicidal) bussjåfør kombinert med livsfarlege fjellstiar (som det kanskje er like greit ein ikkje kan sjå i stupmørket utanfor vindauga) har vorte mosa inn ein hard plastseterygg i ein lang time og plutseleg få skrekkeleg lyst på kneippbrødskive med leverpostei.

Gratulera me 5769-års dagen!

45. søndag i advent

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Snart jul !
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Progress

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I had promised myself before I came here to start early with my work so that I would be sure to have enough time to finish it, and hopefully some weeks at the end of my stay to travel around a bit. Obviously, that's not what happened. I am the World Champion at putting-things-off (tomorrow is always the best day for anything!). But after almost two months, a lot of reading, sleeping and general relaxing I actually got started. This is what I've done so far:

Went with Marcos around la Laguna handing out questionnaires to some of the Nicaraguans he knows here. Discovered:

• Many Nicaraguans can't read.
• Some Nicaraguans get uneasy if you show up with a Costa Rican.
• Marcos and basically all other Costa Ricans I know will not let me go alone to talk to the Nicaraguans because they don't trust them and think it would be dangerous.

Wrote to my supervisor and was told:

• If they can't read the questionnaire you have to read it for them and if you have to read it for them you cannot do so in front of other people.
• Children born in Costa Rica or who have spent most of their life here cannot be included in this study.

Went back into "the field". Discovered:

• The children in the Nicaraguan families I have visited are mostly born in Costa Rica or have come here as infants.
• Interviewing Nicaraguans who can't read without being observed by Costa Ricans can be complicated when you are not allowed to go near Nicaraguans alone.
• Interviewing Nicaraguans who can't read without being observed by Costa Ricans can be complicated when you find people at work in groups, and perhaps even more so when you find them at home in their one-room house.
• It is apparently easy to skip a question, mark the wrong line, leave out some personal information or otherwise not complete the questionnaire, leading to the questionnaire being useless.
• There are very few Nicaraguans in Costa Rica who are more than 50 years old.

Redefined the age categories and finished almost all of the questionnaires I need. Wrote to my supervisor with some questions. Was told:

• New age-categories: OK
• People who have been in Costa Rica for ten years or more cannot be included in this study.

Discarded about half of the valid questionnaires because the person had been in Costa Rica more than ten years. Realized there is no way to get all the answers I need in Zarcero due to this being a purely agricultural district and therefore the Nicaraguans who come here to work are mainly men between 15 and 30.

Talked to Marcos, to Diego at the Red Cross and to Karina in la Fortuna. Planning to go to Zarcero tomorrow to talk to two young girls Diego knows, to Naranjo on Saturday to see if I can find people in the park, to San José on Sunday to another park and back to la Fortuna on Monday.

Have read a very interesting book about the role of Nicaraguans as "others" in the construction of Costa Rican national identity.

Have written an email to author of this book, the Director of the Institute of Social Sciences at the University of Costa Rica, telling him I have read his book and would be very interested in speaking to him. Very grateful that I have a friend like Karina who basically wrote the email for me, because it was really scary (she suggested I call him... my telephonophobia may have got a bit better over the last few years, but not quite there yet). Have absolutely no idea what I would say to him if he has the time to see me...

Have read a book about social psychology. Have realized it might not be exactly what I was looking for. Sociology next.

Have read the linguistics thesis of the girl whose questionnaire mine is based on. Did understand some parts. Have realized I may have to learn some statistics. Not too happy about the idea.

In addition to all this (actually does seem a lot more than it really is when listed like this...) I have come to realize a thing or two about education. I have tried hard to make the questionnaire I am using simple, easy to understand and fill out. Still, many of the people I have talked to have problems understanding how to use it and generally what I want from them, even if it is in their mother tongue. I didn't really think about it before, but I have come to understand better how education not only fills our heads with more or less useful facts, but actually teaches us to think in a different way. And also how handicapped many of these people are for not having learnt that.

Perhaps not the most interesting post ever this one, but at least it was useful for me to get an overview and nobody forced you to read it anyway.

No such number, no such zone...

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When my supervisor gave me the directions for the house I am staying in here in la Laguna I did consider them just that: directions for how to get there. Which is why I have been saying (for two month now) every time someone asks me for the address of the house I’m staying in that I don’t have it. I did have some experience with Costa Rican addresses from last time I was here, but I honestly believed that those were special cases (one was, after all, a family living basically in the middle of nowhere up in the mountains in a coffee-growing distirct). Turns out that unless you live in the capital (or perhaps one of the bigger cities) all Costa Rican addresses go something like this:
The blue house, 200 m. from of the dairy which used to be called X, right before the turn opposite the big acacia tree, 4 km west from the town square of Y.
I must admit I am a littlebit sceptical, but I try to compare it to home and the fact that even if my parents’ house now has a streetname and number and postal code, it would probably be enough to simply write my name and Gaupne. Seeing as everybody knows everybody and the postman knows everyone, it would eventually end up in the right mailbox. So any mail to me here should be addressed to the neighbour, Marcos, who has lived here for a long time and seems to know and be known by a lot of people. He apparently gets his mail even with an address which to me sounds more or less improvised (he actually gave me several options for an address, but I am going to go with the one that more or less coincides with the directions I was given before coming here).
So here it goes, if anyone should feel like sending me anything, this is my current address:

co/ Marcos Enrique Zuñiga Araya
150 m. al norte de la fábrica Agrisol (antigua Dole)
Casa color vino
Laguna (Zarcero)
Alfaro Ruiz
Alajuela
Costa Rica

PS: Quite a few people should let me know their addresses, just in case I actually get around to sending any of the about 50 postcards I’ve bought so far…

Notes from a hammock

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So I finally went to Nicaragua and spent just over a week visiting Rakel who is doing her field work for the MA in Leon. The trip was prolonged a bit beacuse of the inconvenience of travelling long distances on a bus (particularly a Nicaraguan bus) when one is on antibiotics and generally feeling like crap. The antibiotics and the heat did not ruin a very nice trip however. After a few days in Leon, a charming university town close to the coast in the northern half of Nicaragua we went on to Granada, liberal Leons conservative rival further south. Did some sightseeing in the small and sleepy towns in the hills and took a boat trip on the shallow waters of the Lago de Nicaragua to see some of the human and animal life on its 360 small islands, las isletas.

Partly because of the heat and the antibiotics (and partly because of the atmosphere and the hammocks) we spent quite a lot of time at the hostel. The place that houses the Bearded Monkey is one of those typical colonial structures with rooms arranged around an internal patio, trees and flowers and sometimes birds or a cat (the hostel is home to one of the fattest and most relaxed cats I have ever seen), surrounded by hammocks to lounge in with a book and a lemonade through the warmest hours of the day. I completely fell in love with their hammocks, and seeing as it had been my plan since before I came to Latin America to buy one this time, I decided to do so while I was there (Nicaragua is also known to be cheaper than Costa Rica, a good excuse to do soem shopping). At the market in Masaya I finally found a hammock that I am hoping I somehow will find a place to put up sometime i the future. It won't be the same without the courtyard and the heat, but hopefully I can find some use for it. I have considered whether it would be possible to replace my bed with the hammock, but I am not so sure my back would be to happy with that as a long-term soution. Could be good for a guest bed though... I am still considering whether I also have to buy a hanging chair (don't know what else to call it), which is not quite as comfortable as the hammock, but has the advantage of taking up less space, as well as needing only one hook in the ceiling in stead of two in the walls. But then there is the issue of how much I can manage to bring with me on the plane home or how much it would cost to send something in the mail, and wether it is actually practically possible to bring something like a hanging chair. Oh, the lifealtering decisions one has to make...

Diálogo de Rakel y Silje viendo llover en León

Morgon i León. Rakel har stått opp, dusja og ete frukost. Silje har vakna.
På rommet til Rakel:

Rakel: Å nei, det har begynt å regne.
Silje: Uff, igjen?
(kikkar ut vindauga)
Men så lenge det ikkje regnar meir enn dette...
(på få sekund tek regnet seg kraftig opp)
Rakel: Kanskje me skal venta litt med å gå ut.
Silje: Ja, det stilnar nok litt. Det kan jo ikkje regna slik heile dagen.


Mange timar seinare: Rakel og Silje, i kvar sin stol, stirar ut i regnet.

Rakel: Ein blir heilt apatisk av slikt ver. Blir berre sitjande å stira.
Silje: Eg veit...
...
Rakel: Hugsar du den novella frå spansken? Av García Marquez...
Silje: mhm...
...

(regnet tek seg opp)

Dirge without music
Edna St. Vincent Millay

I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground.
So it is, and so it will be, for so it has been, time out of mind:
Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely. Crowned
With lilies and with laurel they go; but I am not resigned.

Lovers and thinkers, into the earth with you.
Be one with the dull, the indiscriminate dust.
A fragment of what you felt, of what you knew,
A formula, a phrase remains,--but the best is lost.

The answers quick and keen, the honest look, the laughter, the love, --
They are gone. They are gone to feed the roses. Elegant and curled
Is the blossom. Fragrant is the blossom. I know. But I do not approve.
More precious was the light in your eyes than all the roses in the world.

Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave,
Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind;
Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.
I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.

Mexicophotos III - Central Mexico

Last round of photos...

The Pacific Ocean at Puerto Escondido.

Artisanry, live rock music and cocktails at $50 per litre in Oaxaca.

View from the bus.

Taxco

Most taxis in Taxco are Beatles, into which we were, amazingly,
able to stuff all ourselves and all our bags at the same time.
The car was not really big enough however to get a photo that shows well
how little space there actually was...

Shopping in Taxco.

Teotihuacan.
The Pyramid of the Sun seen from the Pyramid of the Moon.


And with that, this photo-tour of Mexico is officially over :)

Tormenta tropical

The neighbour, Marcos, has been warning me about ”tormentas tropicales” ever since I got here, and today I think he finally got what he was waiting for. After a quiet and half-sunny morning, in which Marcos complained about weird weather and cold (I didn’t notice, but I suppose he is better tuned in to the weather conditions of Zarcero than I am), it felt like all hell broke loose in the afternoon. The rain started falling in buckets at around midday and it is still falling in buckets now, close to midnight. The wind is scary, and I'm rather happy the house has no more than two floors and feels well built…

At 16:00 the electricity disappeared, while I was cooking dinner. Luckily the noodle-soup had been heated enough to get cooked after about ten minutes in the pot even if it never boiled (my first impulse was to cook it in the microwave – yes, I feel stupid). So I took my dinner upstairs to eat it whre I could see it, then wrapped myself in a blanket and tried to read a bit in the light from the window, hoping the electricity would come back before it got dark and planning what I’d do if it didn’t. I found one single candle in a drawer and was very pleased with myself for having had the good sense of buying a mini-torchlight a few days ago.

Thinking it would be a good idea to light a fire in the living room (heat, light and possibilities for cooking – all in one) I decided to brave the weather and walk the two metres from the backdoor to the garage for firewood before it got completely dark (the firewood is full of cockroaches and other bichos I find rather disagreeable, so I prefer seeing what I’m touching…). As I was rolling up my jeans and putting on my shoes however, the light came back. Since this didn’t really help with the cold I decided to make a fire anyway, which turned out to be much more complicated than I had imagined. I already don’t like open fireplaces - they may look nice, but they are horribly impractical and very difficult to actually light a fire in. Especially if the firewood isn’t dry, which, of course, mine isn’t, seeing as it has only been in the dry garage for about three days, that is, since Marcos discovered that stacked against the outside wall it was absolutely not protected from the elements... I did, after a lot of work, manage to more or less get the fire going, and the rest of the night I've spent in relative warmth, but coughing and crying in the amazing amounts of smoke that fill the whole house and kept me cleaning my glasses over and over until I realized it really wasn’t going to make a difference.

I've now spent some time trying to connect to the internet, but after about an hour in which all I have managed to do is open my hotmail and find that I have no new emails, I have given up and so I'm writing the draft for this post instead. Hopefully tomorrow I will either have a somewhat stable internet connection for more than ten minutes or, alternatively, the energy to drag the computer in to Zarcero and hook up to a slightly faster connection there. If the weather tomorrow is anything like today however, I will definitely not risk bringing the laptop outside, and would probably not bring myself either if it wasn't for the fact that I am running out of toilet paper and other, less essential but still rather useful household items like milk and kitchen soap. Having already learnt from experience (no, the weather has not been this bad before, but it has rained a lot...) I know to postpone my shower until I’ve been outside (at the moment I smell like a campfire, so I'm thinking a shower will be absolutely necessary - just hoping I won't have to clean all my clothes as well), and I have been considering whether it is advisable to walk barefoot around here, since that would be the footwear-option that makes most sense in this weather.

According to Marcos, and I am now rather inclined to listen to him, September and October will be worse, weather-wise. Does anyone know of a good way to make waterproof questionnaires?

Mexicophotos II - Southern Mexico

Little by little... But it's taking me hours to upload these photos! Litterally.
You'd better appreciate the effort!

In the jungle... Palenque

Misol Ha

Rio Agua Clara (though this time of year it's not that "clear", really...)

Aguazul Waterfalls

Beautiful San Cristóbal

Shopping at the San Cristóbal market



Still more to come. Perhaps. I just have to practice being more patient...

Mexicophotos I - Yucatan

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Yes, I know. I should have done this a long time ago. I can offer a long list of excuses (most of them related to my difficulties of finding an internet connection that actually allows me to open my blog), but I won't bore you with it. The blog is not being too cooperative, for some reason it only wants to uplode five photos at a time, so this has been more complicated then I thought, but finally I have overcome all problems and offer you the first photos from Mexico (more to come, hopefully, though no one knows when...). This is Yucatan:

Two very excited girls in one very posh hotel.
Casa Magna Mariott Resort, Cancun,

Cancun again. Drinks by the pool. Oh, what a hard life...

Caribbean Ocean at Tulum Archaeological area.

Mayan ruins at Tulum.

More Mayan rocks. This is the famous, beautiful and stiflingly hot Chichen Itza.

Inland Yucatan. Forest, forest and, you guessed it, more forest.
Mexico has nice skies, though. And nice forests, especially when seen from inside an airconditioned car.

It's the Mexican Gulf!!
(I know it looks like any other ocean, but still!)

Beautiful Campeche on the Gulf, with it's colourful houses and relaxed atmosphere.
Church and central square,


Coming up: Southern Mexico, Chiapas and the Pacific Coast.

Mexico baby!

It's marvellous, magnificent and unbelievably cheap!
It's Mexico!!!

Can you believe I'm here?:





http://www.marriott.com/hotels/travel/cunmx-casamagna-marriott-cancun-resort/

Ansjos-oliven og latte

...vel... kanskje ikkje den mest vellukka blandinga...

NonStop og cortado

...og vips så vart det leveleg på lesesalen att!

Til inspirasjon

Nydeleg eksempel på kreativ ordbruk. Frå Ragnar Hovland si omsetjing av Raymond Queneau sine Stiløvingar (anbefalast...):

Eg platt-buss-formerte meg folkesamanpressa på ein parisio-middagsk tidstad og nabofiserte med ein ekkel snorrundthattisk langhals. Som sa til ein eller annonym: "De seruttilåskubbarmeg." Etter denne utløysinga ledigplasserte han seg grådig. Ved ein seinare romtemporalitet såg eg han att der han var Saint-Lazare-stasjonert saman med ein X som sa til han: du burde knappesupplementere frakken din. Og så kviforklarte han saka.

Om affiks og nynorsk

Myce rart ein kan komma til å tenca på når ein eigentleg burde skriva innlevering om sterke og svake sider ved den komparative metoden i historisk lingvistikk. Affiks, for eksempel. Eigentleg er eg ein stor tilhengar av affiks. Og xølv om me har ganske mange fine på norsk, føler eg av og til at det hadde vore fint med enda fleire. Saknar litt å kunna gjera noko lite eller koseleg eller nusseleg med å smetta på ein -ito eller ein -ino eller ein -etto eller ein -illo (litt sånn alt etter humør og grad). Og å kunna uttrykka at noko er stygt og fælt med ein -ejo eller ein -accio, eller stoooooort ved å henga på -one eller -ote. Men kanxe det viktigaste er å utnytta betre dei me faktisk har, om det så er nynorsk eller bokmål. Og innanfor prefiks-kategorien finst det uante uutnytta mogelegheiter trur eg. Dessutan er det ingenting som hindrar oss i å kombinera både den eine og den andre (og den tredje, dersom me innfører nokre infiks - trur nemleg icce dei finst på norsk, men det skal eg icce sverga på) typen.
Samtidig er eg veldig fornøgd med norske ordsamanseccingsmogeleg- heiter, som gjer f.eks. februarettermiddagslesesalstrøyttleiksblogging til eit mogeleg, om enn kanxe bittelitt tungt, ord.
Grunnen til at eg i det heile teke kom til å tenca på dette er at eg under ei februarettermiddagslesesalstrøyttleiksinternettsørfingsøkt var innom Elin sine blogg-kommentarar og forelska meg i ordet "befjongelse". Men dette er jo eit nei-nei-ord på nynorsk, pga. dei frykteleg bokmålske affiksa. Så no lurar eg på korleis det ville seiast på nynorsk. Fjonging? Forfjonging? Påfjonging? Oppfjonging? Åtfjonging? Er open for gode forslag. Alltid nyttig å utvida ordforrådet sitt.

Og dersom det er nokon som lurar så testar eg for tida ut i tydinga [ç] og i tydinga [ʃ], for å xå om den norske rettskrivinga blir litt meir logisk slik og om det kan gi ein funkxon til desse stakkars unyttige bokstavane. Litt uvant, så det er mogeleg eg sleivar litt med konsekvensen her og der.

Happy Fastelavn!

Already February, and I still have not sent any Christmas cards or NewYearsEmails or basically anything at all to wish people Happy Holidays and a Wonderful New Year. A bit late now, so this year I thought I'd take the opportunity to wish people Happy Fastelavn instead! Technically, I think Fastelavn has something to do with Lent, but I like our tradition of ignoring the not-so-entertaining aspects of holidays and keeping only the nice parts (and usually also forgetting what the holiday is actually about). People stopped caring about Lent a long time ago, but kept Fastelavnssøndag because it's an excuse to eat fastelavnsbollar, and why get rid of an excuse to eat something that includes bolle, whipped cream and jam? Must admit though, that comparing Fastelavn to Carnival, I'm a bit sad that I live in a traditionally protestant country ...

This year, for the first time since primary school, Haldis and I actually also made a fastelavnsris (photo). We have not, however, followed the pagan tradition of hitting stuff and people with it to make them more fertile. As much fun as that sounds, such treatment would probably ruin it, and we are very proud of our creation (the people who work at the Cultural History Museum where we made it were very impressed by our artistic skills - this might however have something to do with the fact that we were the only people there who were more than ten years old...).

I think this probably means we now have to throw out the Christmas tree...

PS: Have discovered today that Fastelavn in Icelandish is Bolludagur. Felt this information needed to be shared...