From Concrete Jungle to Actual Jungle: Reflections on Life and Work in the Rainforest
By Hannah To
EARTH Ventures Associate, Universidad Earth, Costa Rica
Weaving across the road, a steady line of leafcutter ants carry plant fragments back to a tree where, deep under the roots, lies a den in which the ants are cultivating the pieces into a fungal garden for their own feeding. Far above, within the canopy of the same trees, jump around howler monkeys (though they’re usually heard before they’re seen). As they munch on the vegetation above, the material will eventually pass its way through the monkeys’ guts, and facilitate seed dispersal far and wide. This entangled web of symbiotic interactions all lie right outside my apartment, here in the tropical Caribbean lowlands of Costa Rica.
Saying that these flora and fauna lie just outside my apartment though wouldn’t be quite accurate. On occasion, to my initial dismay, the outside makes its way inside. Industrious ants don’t just make lines across the road to their dens – they’re smart enough to find the cough drops deep inside my backpack. The same dampness that fuels the leafcutter ants’ fungal den has cultivated the mold that’s claimed my favorite pair of suede shoes (yes, I know in retrospect that I shouldn’t have brought suede shoes to the rainforest – take note future PiLA fellows).
Three months ago, when I was packing up my belongings from my last apartment in New York City, my favorite line to quip to my friends was that I was moving from the concrete jungle to the actual jungle! Having seen the lush pictures of Costa Rica’s waterfalls and canopies, I knew that I was plunging into an environment completely different from where I was then living. I just didn’t know how deep I would be going, and what it would mean to really live in the rainforest.
A sunset seen on campus.
A sloth and a monkey spotted right outside my apartment! Sloth seen in the center of the photo, and the monkey is chilling out on the upper right.
On my second day of being in the country, I started my work, and received a tour of a commercial banana farm. For my PiLA fellowship, I’m currently working as a Program Associate at EARTH Ventures. Ventures is the business division of EARTH University, a global university which provides an agricultural sciences education to students from Latin America, the Caribbean, and Africa. The role of the division is to cultivate businesses which support the University’s operating budget and bottom line, while also putting into practice the University’s values, such as sustainable development and community engagement, through measures like modeling a sustainable agribusiness and supporting innovations in food systems. One such business is a commercial partnership with Whole Foods, to sustainably produce bananas. As part of my introduction to campus I was able to tour the fields and the packing plant.
Walking among the mature banana plantation.
Planting bananas from the nursery into the fields.
Seeing the operations was both novel and eye-opening. Obviously, I know that the bananas, and all of the food I eat, have to be grown somewhere, but this was the first time I had the opportunity to see such a large part of the life cycle and system that gets bananas to grocery stores and into my yogurt bowls. As part of the tour, I helped plant weeks old banana plants, fresh from the nursery, into the fields, before seeing banana fields of varying maturity and ending with the plant that cleans, processes, and packs the bananas for shipment.
EARTH University’s operation is fairly small, compared to the mass industrialized operations that occur nearby from giant corporations like Dole and Chiquita. Still, I was impressed by the intensity and amount of labor which went into every fruit. Getting to partake in even just a small part of the operation, reminded me of the importance and scale of the food systems that EARTH students and staff are working on transforming.
I’d love to say that romping around in the fields has been my every day, but having been trained as an economist, and coming from a role where I previously worked as an economic consultant, my background differs greatly from the agronomists around me. While my first day included a tour to the working farm, my day to day work since then with Ventures has pertained more to assisting with financial operations of the farm, or engaging in strategic land planning proposals for the University’s second campus. Though still engaging, my work filling in Excel fields can sometimes feel like a far cry from the projects students are engaging in the pineapple fields.
Of course, much of my time is spent outside the office, exploring EARTH’s campus. Since arriving, I’ve had opportunities to tour the many facilities where students and staff work, study, and research, such as organic working farms, live bee hives, and renewable energy labs. My meals are eaten in the campus cafeteria, where I indulge alongside my coworkers in natural yogurt and fresh juices, produced and processed directly on campus. I’ve learned how to patch up my bike tire, when it inevitably rips after miles of zipping across campus, in the agricultural engineering lab, where the tractors are maintained. And I spend some free time on campus too – running on trails which criss-cross through the fields wherestudents gain work experience, and playing music in a band with other students.
The center of a mandala garden, located on the campus' organic farm.
While the campus of 400 students, nestled in the middle of the rainforest, felt so foreign coming from the bustling streets of downtown Manhattan, over the past three months I’ve come not only to get to know the campus, but feel like I’ve become a part of it. By not only working, but living here, both my work and I exist outside the confines of my office and instead in a deeply embedded network. As time passes on the tropical campus, I see the symbiotic nature of the rainforest reflected in my work – I see the programs my work supports, and conversely, relations with both EARTH and its students better inform the strategic plans I help draft for Ventures.
Views from a trail run through the fields. Spot the volcano peeping out on the right!
Thinking about the scale of global food systems and ecological structures and the intractability of the challenges these networks face often feels daunting. But being able to pinpoint my role within this University, and understanding how I am working with and supporting the institution’s mission of sustainable and shared prosperity provides some level of repose.
I’ve come to appreciate what it means to live in and within the rainforest, and how I fit in the ecosystems of the rainforest and EARTH University. I don’t mind as much now when the outside comes inside my apartment: there are helpful ants that carry out other dead bugs, and small salamanders that munch on other bugs. I’m still not used to the tiny worms that seemingly come out of nowhere once a month, but I guess I have 9 more months (and maybe a few blog posts) to get used to them.