Community ProjectsCompostDemonstration SitesEco-VillagesPeople SystemsSocietyVillage DevelopmentWaste Systems & Recycling

Letters from Costa Rica, Part II – Parenting in the Jungle

by Juliana Birnbaum Fox, fellow collaborator with Craig Mackintosh on the Sustainable (R)evolution Book Project.

Editor’s Note: This is part two of a series. Read Part I here.


Yoga on the deck which will become
our temporary bedroom

We’ve been here a month now, and I’m actually writing from a hammock with my laptop powered by the sun, underneath a pair of orange trees. This is our new “living room” in this experiment in outdoor living, outfitted with a log bench, a couple of rocking chairs woven with cord in the local style, outdoor kitchen and shower and a repurposed buoy that serves as a swing. A few steps away are kitchen and shower, cross a little bridge to the bathtub/dipping pool, and another few meters is our newly finished wooden platform where soon we’ll be sleeping. For now it makes a great yoga deck and has a sweet view across the Machuca River valley to a steep hillside dotted with grazing white cows.

A lot of folks have called us “brave” to move out here with our two little daughters, Serenne (5 months) and Lîla (3 years). From my perspective, parenting here allows me to do basically the same things I’ve been doing at home in Berkeley, but with more of a sense of purpose and alignment with my values. Whereas in the U.S. I find myself feeling like a somewhat unwilling, slightly apologetic housewife, driving my little ones around, grocery shopping and turning up the heat to stay warm, here I can take care of my family’s needs with a much smaller ecological footprint. That is, minus the impact of the plane flight here, which is considerable — a subject I’d like to return to in a future post.

Being in the jungle with a pre-crawling baby is easier than it will be when she’s on the move, as I spend much of my time with her in a carrier. My approach to parenting is strongly inspired by Jean Liedloff’s book The Continuum Concept, which is linked to “attachment parenting” and the resurgence of baby wearing in the U.S. Liedloff based her book on experiences living with indigenous people in the Amazon and observing their relationships with their babies and children. She believes that allowing babies to spend the majority of their first year worn close to mama’s body and snuggled close to her at night helps develop an essential sense of security and trust that stays with the child into adulthood. This concept of “kangaroo care,” and the idea of skin to skin contact as important, especially for newborns, has started to gain credence even in U.S. hospitals.

While the indigenous families observed often saw mama carrying her baby, she would usually have him or her in a sling or wrap so that hands could be free for work, even while nursing. Yet when mama tired of carrying baby, the extended family and community were often available and interested in spending time with the little one. This way of raising children feels right and sensible to me, in contrast to the way I feel when I’m home alone with my baby all day, isolated and trying to stay sane, and driving my toddler to and from preschool.

So far, even though the number of us living at Tacotal is small, my reality has been much closer to that of the indigenous mama, and I love that. There are lots of hands to hold baby and tell stories or show plants and animals to Lîla. The one major issue is that little Serenne’s thermostat is set to North America, so she has been really hot since being here. In the heat of the day when it seems too hot to wear her, I put her in her play gym in the kitchen and give her lots of little baths. She is just as cheerful as she’s always been most of the time, and I’ve been giving her little tastes of our bananas (we’ve harvested a big bunch from one of our trees since arriving) in anticipation of starting her on solid foods in a few weeks. She doesn’t seem to know what to do with the banana yet but is very interested in the new taste. I’m anticipating that when she starts crawling in a few months, it will be trickier as there are currently no baby-friendly floors here. An upcoming project will likely be to finish the kitchen floor, which is now dirt, and make a polished earthen/adobe floor. This will also cut down the frequency of laundry that’s needed and hopefully reduce the layer of red dust that big sister Lîla usually wears around.

I wrote earlier that we’re able to meet our needs with a smaller ecological footprint, and want to discuss a few of the systems that make that true. One major difference from life at home is being off the power grid and away from municipal garbage and sewage lines . I can honestly say I enjoy my daily visit to our composting toilet here, which is up on a breezy hillside and built of bamboo, wood, and recycled materials. It has a small area in front for pee that separates it from the poop, which allows the “humanure” to dry out and prevents bad odor. Instead of flushing, we put a few cups of sawdust in to complete our mission and close the loop (food to poop back to soil where we grow more food).

With no garbage pickup here, we are very aware of the waste we create, and in fact I’m looking right now at the border of our “living room,” marked with green glass wine bottles. Since we don’t have a fridge, we buy more dry bulk items with less packaging. We separate out organic waste for the worm compost, leftovers that feed the chickens, and citrus for the regular compost. Packaging is separated into plastic, glass and metals which can be recycled and paper and cardboard is used for kindling in the wood stove. Another ingenious little system which was put into place since we last visited involves creating building material — mass that can be built into an earthen wall — by stuffing small plastic and cellophane bags that can’t be reused into empty plastic bottles.


Stephen demonstrates how to
‘flush’ the composting toilet

Of course, a major difference from home and one of my favorite parts of being here is the lack of driving. I especially dislike trying to get two kids in and out of their carseats several times a day and fighting the traffic in the Bay Area. The road in here is so rough that you need a good reason to drive out — riding a horse or walking is actually more comfortable. With the number of folks living here, we each only need to leave every few weeks for groceries, though most of us probably venture out once or twice a week to get supplies, go to a restaurant, or visit the beach (about 30 minutes from the end of our bumpy road to the first Pacific beach at Tarcoles. Since I want Lîla to be able to learn more Spanish and have a chance to interact with more kids (there is presently just one other kid here, her good friend Jazz), we’ll be driving a bit more often when the two of them start school next month. Unless we find a school accessible by horse!

Continue on to read Part III

4 Comments

  1. Hi Juliana – What a pleasure to read your letter and learn that the girls, you and Louis are thriving. Loved the pictures. The yoga deck looks inspirational. Best wishes for completing the rest of your home and the village. What are you using for cooking fuel? What do you use to walk around at night after dark? Well, besides moonlight. I remember being awed by the beautiful nocturnal beetles in Costa Rica. Looking forward to pictures of the garden and everyone on horseback! Be well.

  2. I’ve often thought about making the move to Costa Rica from the US… the main thing that is so appealing to me is the beautiful oceans and relaxing temps.

  3. Makes me want to be back. I’ve swam in the Rio Machuca and eaten the avocados and mangos right off the trees there. I’ll be back when I can figure out how Thunder, my pony, will do the trip. Buena suerte y que le via bien.
    James

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Related Articles

Back to top button