Mealtime

Note: This is my essay entry for the World Teach Spring Journal Contest.

Rice and Beans

They told me that I was going to eat a lot of rice and beans when I got to Costa Rica. I just didn’t understand what that meant. It amazes me now that two such simple ingredients could be the center of life.
At 5am, when the first roosters started to crow outside of my bedroom, my host Mom was already up making the first pot of Gallopinto for the day. (A mixture of rice and beans essential to the Costa Rican diet.) As my host siblings and I rose, we would heat up the gallopinto accordingly and serve ourselves small portions coupled with lots of delicious coffee to jump-start our day.
I complained about the rice and beans constantly. Not to my Costa Rican family of course, but rather: to my friends back home. I moaned about how much I missed yogurt and how hard it was to have to eat the same thing 3 times a day, every day. I begged for my parents to send me peanut butter and protein bars. I bought snacks, fruits and vegetables as often as I could, just to alter my diet. As a self-proclaimed foodie, I could hardly believe that an entire country (and possibly even an entire region) could rely on just rice and beans.
Logistically, I understood, it was the cheapest way to make a whole protein, but what amazed me was that everyone seemed to enjoy rice and beans so much. My host mom was always quick to tell me that rice and beans were the best kind of food for you and that the reason Americans are so fat is because they have so much fast food and they need more rice and beans in order to be healthy.
When a fellow volunteer got sick partway through the year, her host Mom assured her that it was because she wasn’t getting enough rice in her diet. We laughed at this and regularly asked our field directors when the rice and beans would go out of season, but of course, they never did. Week after week, bags of rice and bushels of beans appeared in our kitchen. My host mom went through them with due diligence and the entire family ate well enough to live.
Occasionally the rice and beans would be coupled with an egg or a slice of avocado, but those treats were usually saved for dinner. My first night with my host family, my Host Mom asked me whether or not I liked Tuna. I told her that I did and in that instant she opened a can of Tuna and heaped a spoonful onto my plate of, you guessed it, rice and beans. In that moment I was somewhat taken aback, but I came to look forward to the days that I got Tuna for dinner.
To be perfectly honest, dinner became my favorite part of the day. Two Thirds of my meal was always pre-determined, but then, there was the wild card. Would it be fried cauliflower or plantains? Sliced tomato or a scrambled egg? Maybe even green beans and carrots or a deep-fried hot dog.
I remember my delight when one day, I went into my classroom to discover that a chicken had laid an egg on my desk and then abandoned it, leaving me a delicious lunchtime treat. What Costa Rican food lacked in flavor, it certainly made up for in character.
Despite the fact that the fare was plain and just about everything was fried, I came to love Costa Rican food as if I had been raised on it. When I was hungry, I would find myself thinking “Well of course you’re hungry, you haven’t had your rice and beans today.”
I learned the distinctions between Gallopinto, arroz y frijoles and rice and beans. Sure they all had the same basic ingredients, but no one thinks of them as the same. These simple meals are just as essential in a Costa Rican life as the expression ‘Pura Vida.’ When students pray in school they say that they are thankful for the food that they have been provided with, they thank God for their Rice and Beans. I prayed for the day that I would never have to eat rice or beans again.
I considered myself a martyr for sacrificing my body to the impact of the rice and bean diet. When I got home, I overloaded on meat and potatoes. I ate at my favorite deli’s and Indian restaurants with friends. I ate fresh fruit and vegetables every day just because I could and I was thrilled to be able to eat what I wanted at my leisure. Even so, somehow, within 10 days of my return to the United States I had made a typical Costa Rican breakfast of gallopinto for my entire extended family.
It was only then that my two worlds merged. My life in Costa Rica, my students, all of the long days and cold showers and bug bites, somehow blended together with my family and my hometown. As much as I thought I wanted to leave it behind, Rice and Beans were some of the only things that I was able to bring back with me (or rather find at home) to try to explain my experiences over the past year. Gallopinto doesn’t explain my life during my year in Costa Rica, but if you don’t understand Gallopinto, you can’t even begin to understand Pura Vida or any of the beauty that comes with it. It’s not just another meal. It’s the food of life—or at least, the pure life.