A woman with a severe peanut allergy says she endured humiliating treatment from an airline on a journey from London to Costa Rica.
21.07.2023 - 08:31 / roughguides.com
Indigenous communities in Costa Rica are relatively unknown and often overlooked, so visiting them makes for a truly fascinating and authentic experience. In the remote Bribrí village of Yorkín, men and women are equal and sustain themselves through farming, fishing and hunting. Rough Guides writer, Anna Kaminski, met the woman behind the collective.
Our motorised dugout canoe makes its slow way up the Bribrí river, with dense jungle looming on either side and the air heavy with the promise of rain. The stillness around us is broken only by the lapping of the water and the frantic fluttering of parakeets overhead. It’s the beginning of the dry season, and parts of the river are already shallow; Victor, our guide, periodically jumps into the swiftly-moving, knee-deep water to help the boatman steer our craft towards deeper patches. Even getting to the boat dock was an adventure – a drive from Puerto Viejo de Talamanca, through the town of Bribrí, and then a trundle along a bumpy track, complete with stream crossings, to the path through the cane fields leading to the boat landing.
Finally, a cluster of thatched huts on the riverbank comes into view. We have reached our destination: Yorkín, a remote village of 210 Bribrí people that sits just across the river from the border with Panama.
Though Costa Rica is very well-trodden as a tourist destination, the country’s indigenous population is often overlooked as it’s relatively unknown. Costa Rica’s eight indigenous groups – the Boruca, Bribrí, Cabecar, Guaymí, Huetar, Maleku, Matambú and Térraba – number just over 100,000 and are spread over 22 reserves, the largest ones located in the southeastern part of the country, near the Caribbean coast. The Bribrí account for roughly a third of this population, and all communities face serious challenges – in spite of getting the right to vote in 1994 – such as stopping the government from encroaching on their land and preserving traditional culture and languages.
We’re met by Bernarda, a robust woman in her late thirties, with a ready smile and braided hair. She leads us to a large elevated communal space topped by a conical roof made of woven palm fronds. I ask her about the sign above the door that reads “Stibrawpa”, which apparently means “women who make handicrafts”.
“This is the meeting place of the women’s collective that I started twenty years ago. I was only nineteen years old; it was very hard work at the beginning. When I was fourteen, I had my first baby. I wanted a better life for him than what we had, so when I was eighteen, I went to university in Alajuela for a year to study tourism and equal rights. My idea was to find ways to preserve Bribrí culture and to educate outsiders about it. Sustainable
A woman with a severe peanut allergy says she endured humiliating treatment from an airline on a journey from London to Costa Rica.
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