tribal day

today we went to visit the indigenous tribe of costa rica, no one knew what the name of the tribe is. but it was amazing witnessing their craftsmanship with cotton, dye made from plants, weaving techniques, and wood working. the first thing that happened was we were served coffee or juice, and some sort of fry bread in a roll (cant remember the name of the food). as we ate and drank, the head craft worker gave us a history lesson on their livelihood as a tribe, the corruption of the government, and how their crafts came to be. she had great amount of detail that was lost in translation. she said that the community is strong together, the tribal members knew every member (pretty much). they are only 4 family names within the tribe. they are becoming more advanced, but progress is a double edged sword. the youth are getting educated but are becoming more explorative, and being married to outsiders. the village is local only residential, pretty much only tribal members or married in. she said that visitors pay more attention to the natives than the government. after a 2 hour history lesson, she and her family served lunch for us. after eating, she did a demo of all the crafts they do for revenue. she started with making cotton into a sting, or twine. she had a bowl, a stick with a weight towards the bottom, and a handful of cotton. she started by pulling the cotton apart, then formed it into a string and tied on the stick. she twirled the stick as she pulled on it and making uniform thickness. after she made the cotton twine, she demonstrated how they make dye the traditional way. she had an assorted leaf collection for purple, green, and blue. bark was for browns, and some fruits for red and orange. she told us that they used clay for black, but sometimes the clay comes out blue. for leaves, she rubbed the twine and leaves together with little bits of water for green and blue, but for purple she had a bucket with water, and hand grounded the leaves with the twine in there (longer soak time for a deep purple). after dying, she went on to show off their weaving techniques, she started with a loom to set up the colors in an order for the bigger homemade loom. the bigger loom was designed to lean back for tension, it was magic. could of, should of, would of got a video of it, but didnt. i was just so memorized by it. after that, mike was curious about the rest of the village, so we went to go check it out. there was some nice houses, a fairly good sized school, and a creek. christmas in the tropics. but we missed out on the wood carving, but got to see the painter do his thing. he gave us all an unpainted mask. some people painted theirs on the spot, but i want to take my time so i am just taking it home as is. we left the village to get back to the camp grounds in time for dinner. 

mike was talking about ice cream while we was at the village, now i want some.. 

p.s computer is being weird so no pictures today