Kevin and I shared a little bit of Halloween with our community English students on Friday. We taught them how to carve pumpkins! Well, not actually pumpkins – ayotes. They’re the Costa Rican equivalent of a pumpkin. Same shape, size, smell, and taste, but green instead of orange.
The best part about doing a fun cultural activity like this one was that we could actually consider it work. We met Peace Corps goal No. 2 of “promoting a better understanding of the United States on behalf of the Costa Ricans.” So sharing our holiday traditions with our students is always time well spent.
We’ve discovered over the last few weeks that ayotes are simply not that popular around here. You can find small ones at the store. But with the exception of our training host mom, Esterlina, we haven’t met anyone who likes to cook or eat them. So you can imagine the fruit and vegetable vendor’s surprise when I ordered ten soccer ball-sized ayotes from her. Her jaw literally dropped.
After I explained my reasons for wanting ten giant squash, she was totally on board. Maybe even a little too gung-ho. She immediately got on her cell phone and started shopping, calling friends and relatives all over the northern half of the country to see what they could offer. Less than an hour later, she called and told me that she’d secured ten beautiful, soccer ball-sized ayotes. Excellent.
The next morning, she called again. The squash had arrived and she was itching to get them out of her store (apparently they were taking up a lot of room.) I told her that my only transportation at the moment was my bike, but that I could probably manage quite a few of them between my backpack and hanging them from my handlebars. I was in for a surprise when I arrived, however, and saw that only the smallest of the ten was the size of a soccer ball. The largest three were the size of toddlers.
“Eighty kilos,” she told me, beaming with pride at her great find. This is when I found myself in a bit of a pickle. Even with the special “family” discount she gave me, I owed her ¢33,000 colónes – about $66. I had no choice but to pay what she had asked. After all, the ayotes had traveled about two hours to get there, and I was certain no one else in the community would buy those massive things if I didn’t. So even though they were three to four times the size I’d ordered, I decided to buy them all.
I managed only to get two home on my bike; the one in my backpack left a giant, puffy bruise on my lower spine. Fortunately our host family took pity on me and helped me get the other eight home by car. (At the time, Kevin was busy working on the Peace Corps magazine in San José and therefore unable to assist me.)
At the end of last Tuesday’s community English class, we told our students we had a special cultural treat for them on Friday, and they should come prepared with a sharp kitchen knife and a couple of strong spoons.
“Who are we going to kill?” was the response from an outgoing student. “The police had better not catch us with those in our backpacks, or they’ll think we murdered someone and they’ll arrest us.”
Fortunately that didn’t happen. No one was arrested for carrying knives, though they probably did get funny looks when they carried their jack-o-lanterns home.
“People are going to think we’re crazy if we put these outside our houses!” said the same outgoing student after we told them we usually display our jack-o-lanterns outside for all to see.
Despite some initial trepidation, it turned out that our students are natural pumpkin carvers. They loved the satisfying sensation of cutting into the orange flesh and scooping out handfuls of guts and seeds with slimy fingers. The faces they carved were surprisingly scary and artistic.
Our students even got to sample some fine ayote cookies I had made. The same student, however, was again concerned.
“We’re all going to wake up with stomachaches tomorrow,” he said. “Our bodies aren’t used to eating pumpkin.”
Despite their unlikely, but possible and impending stomachaches, everyone seemed to really enjoy themselves. They left with bags of seeds to plant, jack-o-lanterns to show off and a funny story to tell about the crazy gringos and their strange tradition.
And some of them even started planning their designs for next year.
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