HARRY TRUMAN LIBRARY Papers of NATHANIEL DAVIS Despatch no. 69, February 16, 1949, San José, Costa Rica American Embassy, Enclosure no. UNCLASSIFIED in the school is in the Cabecar language, using primers and reading books printed in Cabecar by a printing establishment in Mexico. The achool master at Ujarras had taken the full threa year course at the Zamorana Agricultural School in Honduras and was teaching the Indiang. in addition to reading and writink how to care for the soil, irrigate, and grow varioua vegetables and fruits. He is having remarkable succes. The dononatration garden is irrigated by ditches leading from a small stream which has been dammed with an earth and stone dam, using no bought material som a dam such as any Indian in the district can build with his own hands.
Although to a person Just coming from San José Ujarras looked very primitive, it represented a considerabl. advance on local living conditions. Here, as elsowhere on the trip, was impressed with the cleanliness of the people both as to their persons and their surroundIngs.
We had lunch at the teacher house. It consisted of noodle soup, fried pork, beans and rice, platanos, eggplaul coffee, and oranges. The roodles were the only bought Item and were served especially in our honor, having been brought by Mrs. Stone. Before lunch the school children demonstrated their ability to read from the Cabedar primers. The school house consisted of a thatched roof resting on tour poled over a dirt floor and was furnished with one long bench and a center table. There was no other school equipment, After lunch we mounted our mules and retraced our steps to within a couple of miles of Buenos Aires where We called on a Wr. Brundage, an American who has been trying with little success to fare several acres fortunatoly Mr. Brundage had gone to San José but his Costa Rican wife received us and served us coffee and much appreciated cool rain water. am afraid we conBured too much of her scanty store but we all war, hot, tired, and very thirsty. From the Brundage farm rode across the plain and then up a steep mountain trail to Salitre which we reachad just at dusk.
Like Ujarras, Salitre is a place nmno and there is no village, just the school and the teacher house.
Because of the distance from which some of the scholars come it is not possible for all of them to go back and forth to school daily so a large thatched hat has been built where some of the children live during the week.
Here quite a siseable earth and stone dan is being built which 16 18 hoped will store enough water for drinking and irrigation throughout the dry season. Several acres have been planted and many more are being cleared for Large UNCLASSIFIED