Pink Dresses and Sensitive Ears

Sunlight floats through a filmy window above a deep sink where Vitelina, wearing the bright pink CoopeTortilla dress, scrubs dishes. Pouring pink liquid soap into a big pot, she scrubs away at remnants of breakfast. After spending the morning watching the women cook, the photographer calls Vitelina outside to shoot some pictures of her. This causes quite the stir. The other pink dresses are up in arms about Vitelina being photographed. They follow her outside, pointing and laughing. Vitelina ignores them and starts to warm up to the camera. Her smile radiates far beyond her face, revealing a set of teeth so crooked it appears as though each tooth is continuously rotating in opposite directions. She smiles and straightens her apron, smoothing out the wrinkles.

The pink dresses roll their eyes and mock her. Shouting loudly between giggles they say that Vitelina is too ugly to be photographed. Vitelina's smile drops from the corners of her mouth and her thick body slumps under her apron. She looks at the ground, tugs at her skirt and turns to walk away. The other pink dresses snicker and say they want their pictures taken without Vitelina because she had hers taken too much already.

Vitelina is shy and speaks only of her family. She wishes her daughter would work with her. Sighing and holding her hands in her lap, Vitelina knows this will never happen. "My daughter is too sensitive to work here," Vitelina said. "The girls here are joking, but mean, too."

Out of the Pink Dress and Over a Fire

Wearing a flowered blouse and bright blue skirt, Vitelina greets me with a hug and ushers me into her home. There is a small front room where three deer heads hang on the wall. Her sons were hunters. Pulling away at cobwebs and wiping at flaking fur, she hands the heads to me for closer inspection. In Vitelina's kitchen, a small table and a sink cover all of one corrugated tin wall. A wooden table with a corn grinder bolted to it takes up the other side of the room. Vitelina's daughter, Rose, washing dishes in the kitchen, gives me a smile as her mother and I pass by.

Vitelina's grandson races past us in pursuit of a teacup-sized kitten. Towering trees dotted with lime green iguanas shade the entire backyard. Bright pink flowering vines trail along a broken wood fence, and fresh linens blow almost horizontal on a piece of twine. We sit beneath a sprawling mango tree and listen as the wind rushes past the leaves.

A clay oven, its belly brimming with firewood, sits ready for Vitelina to bake the sweets and tortillas that she sells to local businesses.

Vitelina takes my hand and brings me into the kitchen. She pulls down an orange bowl and three husks of corn. Her grandson skids into the room on the dirt floor and begins to shuck the corn. Rose retrieves another bowl. Vitelina places the bowl underneath the grinder and turns the crank as though she were grinding marshmallows. I try it. It takes all of my body weight and two hands to get the crank to move one inch. Laughing and patting my arm, Vitelina continues to grind the corn. She kneads the mashed paste with both hands and rolls it into a ball.

Pinching the ball with her fingers, Vitelina flips the ball between her hands, slowly rotating the dough she gradually flattens the sphere into a foot-wide disk, producing a perfect tortilla in less than one minute. Out at the clay oven, she places it on a skillet above a flame. Her hands, chaffed from doing dishes, move the tortilla to cook it evenly. Stepping back, she gestures for me to try flipping the tortilla. She grasps my fingers and guides them to the tortilla. After I singe my fingertips, she takes over. From the kitchen window, Vitelina's daughter watches and smiles.

Pura Vida: Ageless Wisdom

Adina de Cabalceta's age-spotted hands gingerly turn the pages of a tattered bible, its pages yellow and dog-eared. Her wrinkled fingers scan the passages until she finds the one she begins every day with -- Psalm five. Cabalceta reads the last few lines, her voice barely audible, "let all those that put their trust in you rejoice ... let them that love thy name be joyful in thee ... ." Smiling, Cabalceta closes her eyes.

"This psalm fills me with joy and reminds me of my goal for each day of my life," Cabalceta said.

Pura Vida: Painting a Neighborhood Niche

Veronica Nunez-Ramos is an artist. Her canvasses are tiny and come in different shapes and sizes. Today's canvasses belong to Michaeline Shuman, a Peace Corps volunteer who props her feet up on a small stool. Her ten toenails await Ramos' talented touch.

Ramos,16, taught herself to paint designs on fingernails and toenails at the age of 12. She lives in a three-room shack made of wood and corrugated scrap metal with her family in a section of Santa Cruz known as the "squatters village." A 1950s refrigerator door provides access in and out of the back of the home.

Ramos saves her profits from nail painting in the hopes of one day attending college.

Pura Vida: Educating the Children

Standing in the midst of loud seventh graders, poking and jostling each other, Enni Cabalceta Leal is hardly recognizable as a teacher -- until she speaks.

"Everyone find a seat and pay attention!" Leal shouts above the din of teenage voices.

Students in uniforms of white shirts, army-green colored pants, skirts and jumpers clamor to find seats in the narrow, crowded classroom.

"Someday I will be old, deaf and have no vocal cords to deal with these kids," Leal sighed. "I need to have an administrative job before that happens; I'll need a rest."

Leal, a teacher at Colegio Bilingue is focused on her students. She said she wants the young girls in her class to understand the importance of education and independence that comes with a good education.

Leal surveys the boys in her class through narrowed eyes. "I tell them that real men do not drink or use drugs and that they do their homework and respect their classmates and teachers."

Pura Vida: Lessons in a Hammock

Sofia Tittles-Lara, 18, swings gently in her hammock and gazes at blue sky.

At 12, Lara left her native Miami for Santa Cruz with her mom. Lara came to a town with crowded dust-swirled streets, no mall, no neon lights and no movie theater.

Lara's home is situated at the end of dirt road. Pigs and chickens are running free amongst the grass and shrubs. Her house, a two-story wood and stucco structure, is surrounded by a circular dirt driveway framed with orange and tangerine trees. Two trees support a couple of hammocks in the center of the lawn, and some stray dogs chase each other back and forth.

She talks about what she knows about Santa Cruz. Before moving there, Lara said she wasn't a very positive person.

"I've had to learn to make the best of Santa Cruz; things are different here but that doesn't mean it's bad -- change is good," said Lara.

Pura Vida: Spiritual Sculptor

"First, you mash it between your toes, something like wine and grapes, yes?" said Santiago Villafuerte, a pottery artist in Guaitil. The small pottery town is located just down the road from Santa Cruz. Santiago, the picture of unabashed happiness, describes the process he uses to make the clay the right consistency for the pots, jars, cups and plates that he sculpts.

Hands on his hips, shirtless, his round belly hidden under a clay-stained apron, Santiago surveys his studio as a smile runs amok across his face. He picks up a piece of pottery here and there and illustrates how he drew each particular design. He speaks in broken English.

When he wakes at 4:30 in the morning, Villafuerte sits at the table his grandfather carved and looks out into the yard thinking of his blessings.

"I thank God for my life and how it is and I tell my grandfather I love him," Villafuerte said, almost whispering. "I know I can feel his spirit in my hands while I am working."