WE NEED A NEW ROOF FOR THE SCHOOL: Let’s Have a Turno

By Jack Ewing

When I hear the word “fiesta” a vision of a fundraising event, called a “turno”, pops into my mind. In the late 1970s, our son Chris was a student at the Barú School. There were 27 students in six grades, all in the same classroom with one teacher. Shortly after Chris began attending first-grade classes, Diane and I were invited to a school board meeting. Little did we know that the true purpose of the invitation was to elect us to the board. We didn’t have much choice in the matter. All of the community leaders whose children attended the school were on the board, and we considered serving with them to be a duty as well as an honor.

We soon learned that the school board dealt mostly with financial matters. In the 1970s, the government funding for rural schools consisted of the teacher’s salary, period. The community was expected to cover the cost of the school building, maintenance, extracurricular activities, keeping the grounds clean, buying food, paying someone to cook lunch for the kids, and everything else. At the first board meeting, we learned that the roof over the classroom was full of leaks, and we didn’t have the money to fix it. As a matter of fact, we didn’t have any money at all, or if we did, the treasurer didn’t know where it was. The first order of business was to dismiss the current treasurer and, to my astonishment, the second item on the agenda was to elect me as the new treasurer. I guess I must have done a good job because over the next 30 years, I was elected treasurer of every community committee that existed in Barú, Dominical, Hatillo, and one or two in Matapalo: health committees, community security committees, water committees, a community development association, and numerous turnos.

The president opened the meeting. “Listen up everyone. The rainy season will be here in a couple of months, and we can’t have the kids getting soaked like they did last year. Somehow or other, we have to come up with the money to build a new roof over the classroom. I know it’s lots of work, but we’re gonna have to have a ‘turno’, a big one with a ‘reinado’. 

A new roof will cost a pile of money, and that’s the only way we can come up with it. There are enough teenage girls in the area that we ought to make as much on the reinado as we do selling booze.” (A reinado is a Queen Contest. 

The contestants sell votes to anyone and everyone. The contestant who sells the most votes will obviously bring in the most money, which will be turned over to the school board and be counted as profit from the turno. And, of course, she will be crowned as Queen.) There are many other ways of bringing in profit, including raffles, auctions of things people have donated, contests, special horse races called “ribbon races” where the riders have to gallop under a wire and with a wooden stick the size and shape of a ballpoint pen, spear a ring dangling from a brightly colored ribbon. 

There is always a live band and a dance. One of the board members owned a bar, which he closed for the weekend of the turno so that the school board could use his liquor license. Beer and guaro sales always brought in the most money. Sales of typical foods like tamales, olla de carne, casados, empanadas, arroz con pollo were also big money makers.

As treasurer, I had to handle the money. I would make the rounds of each of the board members who had been designated as cashiers: the bartender, the food manager, the dance ticket seller, and the special event manager. I would pick up the money and give the person a receipt. 

At an opportune moment, the board met privately, in the teacher’s office, with the five queen candidates, each of whom handed over her money from vote sales. The money from each contestant was counted in front of the board and the other candidates. 

A girl named Teresa really worked hard to bring in money. She had gotten her brother to take her to all the neighbors and many other communities as far away as Tinamastes and Matapalo on his motorcycle. She sold votes to everyone and certainly deserved to win. After the counting, we all went to the dance floor, the five candidates stood on the stage, and we crowned Teresa as queen. Then, one member of the community who had a bit of talent as an auctioneer auctioned off the first dance with the queen. Teresa was proud to have brought in so much money for the school. The turno was a tremendous success. We got a new roof built over the classroom before the rains came and had enough money left over to take care of our other expenses for the next two years.

The biggest turno I ever worked at was for the purpose of building a health center that would serve the three communities of Hatillo, Matapalo, and Portalón. The activity was held in Hatillo. It was huge and brought in more profit than any other festival in my history of working at community activities. The band was nationally known and was brought in from San Jose. For me the most memorable part of this festival was that I forgot to bring a big bag for the money. There was always lots of cash, and I usually had a big leather bag with a heavy zipper to carry it in. But for this monster fiesta, I forgot to bring the bag. 

The bartender was the first to call on me to take some money, and I discovered my error. The festival was just getting warmed up, and he already had quite a bit of cash. I was able to stuff it all in the front pockets of my jeans. Later, when the dance cashier called, I filled my back pockets. Next, I started stuffing it down my jeans and into my underwear, and later in my socks. Diane had a small purse, which we quickly filled to the brim. I was getting worried because we were less than halfway through, and we still had to count the money from the queens. 

I went to my car and found that my tool bag had some space, and I put all the money I had in it. I walked back to the festival feeling somewhat relieved when the bartender and the food cashier both called me at the same time. That filled my pockets again. The president of the health committee called me to go with her and the rest of the board to one of the members’ homes to count the queens’ money. I hoped they had it in bags they could give me. Unfortunately, they all had big purses with the proceeds from their vote sales inside. All of the cashiers saved their coins until the end of the festival, but for the queens, the vote count was the end. They were handing in all of their money, and along with piles of bills they handed in loads of coins. It was unbelievable. The queen candidates brought in more than all of the other activities up until that moment. 

This was before the days of plastic bags, and the owner of the home only had a flimsy old shoebox they could give me. I managed to pack all of the bills in the box and the coins in my pockets and Diane’s small purse. After that, I hid money under the car seats and somehow managed until the end. The next morning it took Diane and me three hours to count the money. It was the most profitable festival in the history of the three communities, enough to build the first stage of the health center.

About 30 years ago the government prohibited the sale of liquor at community festivals. That was the end of the turnos. The local schools now have cultural festivals, but the most profitable activities, the cantinas, are things of the past.

____________________________________

A natural–born storyteller, Jack’s articles have appeared regularly in Costa Rica publications, and he is author of several books, Monkeys Are Made of Chocolate and Where Tapirs and Jaguars once Roamed: Ever–Evolving Costa Rica. His latest book is titled Monkeys Are Made of Mangos.