The Beautiful Struggle

Life here has been hard lately. I’ve hit the six month mark of being in country. The milestone should be exciting; unfortunately, it has had the opposite effect. It is daunting knowing that I have been here for such a significant amount of time, yet have so far to go. Six months down…twenty-one more to go.

I haven’t written in a while because the last thing I want to be is a bummer to all those living vicariously through me here. I am also trying to figure out a way to express my frustration in an appropriate manner. However, the past few weeks have been positive, and taught me how to take the good with the bad.

I came to this country with (and like to believe that I still have) an open mind. As a sociology student, I’ve trained my mind to be culturally relative: cultures other than mine aren’t better or worse, they are just different. For example, the fact that people do not use flavor in their food here doesn’t make them culturally inferior. The fact that the soccer players here take more flops than others does not make their culture inferior.

During about three weeks ago, I tossed all that out the window. I was ethnocentric, and it didn’t help me one bit.

My friends and I made it a tradition to meet and explore the country once a month. This has been very important to our collective mental health. We have had something to look forward to, time to be ourselves, and time to decompress.

We cancelled our weekend for the month of August. Due the first week of September was an enormous diagnostic that we have to write of our community including everything one would ever need to know about its resources and challenges. Without my monthly break, and with a challenging assignment over my head, I began to get stressed out.

The diagnostic requires extensive field research. I have been going door-to-door, interviewing my fellow community members about the challenges and resources that my housing project has. Turns out that the resources are few and the challenges are great. Big surprise that I was placed here.

I found out information that made me very angry. Mothers prostituting their twelve year old daughters out of their homes. Mothers keeping their children home from school so that they won’t get lonely throughout the day. Fathers few and far between. A municipality that has to have its arm twisted to pave a road so that a disabled child can get to school in his wheelchair. A municipality that threw up the project in haste and forgot about sewage and recreational opportunities for their children. I became sour and resentful. I’ve blamed Ticos in general for all of this. It may not be fair, but when you are up to your eyeballs in it, it is hard to be level-headed.

A few weeks ago, I walked out of my bedroom to see my host sister, Jose, playing with a girl her age who I vaguely recognized as my host brother, Memo’s, girlfriend. They were playing with dolls. I turned around to find Ania holding a beautiful little baby girl. I smiled and asked her name and how old she was (eight months) and played with her for a second. I asked her whose it was, and she replied nonchalantly that it was Memo’s. My jaw dropped. I asked her a few more times if she was sure, and she thought it was funny that I didn’t know. I asked her who the mother was. She pointed to the little girl playing with dolls with Jose. I was taken aback.

The girl couldn’t have been older than fifteen. With an eight month old daughter. I was rattled and had to leave the room.

I couldn’t decide what was more upsetting to me: the fact that the mother was so young, that Memo was so uninvolved with the child’s life, or that everyone was so hunky-dory about it. The mother stayed with us for a few days, and every time I saw her with the baby, I got a bit freaked out. She looked (and may have been) younger than fifteen.

I stewed in anger for days. Not at Memo or the mother or Ania, but at the culture in general. How could this be acceptable to everyone? Ania was thrilled; neighbors would come by and remark to the mother how beautiful her baby was. She was congratulated. And then, I realized that the situation fit perfectly into the way of life of my barrio. Women are often not expected to do more than procreate, and fathers are often not expected to have much of a role at all. I knew that this was not uncommon in my area, or even some areas of the U.S., but it was difficult seeing it up close and personal. It is especially hard for me, a volunteer who has been sent to Puntarenas to prevent that sort of thing exactly. I was not prepared.

My anger didn’t subside until I met up with friends in San Jose to see the Costa Rica-El Salvador World Cup qualifier. Removal from my site was vital. I got to vent to my fellow volunteers who empathized; my experience was not unique. We relaxed together; I had my first drink in a month. It was as if a rope in my stomach was unknotted.

I started to feel good about Ticos again as I entered the soccer stadium. The whole country had united to support their national team, and I got caught up with them. I knew the chants, I knew the players. I sang the national anthem with the rest, and screamed like hell when the game started. When we scored the only goal of the game, the place went wild. I jumped and hugged my Tico neighbors around me: an act of citizenship. They may have their problems, but they are a family…an often dysfunctional family that I have become part of.

I felt better when I returned home. Ania runs a lunch counter at the school, and spends every evening pouring juices into plastic baggies to sell (note to gringos: one, more often than not, purchases juice or coke in a bag here). I tossed down my backpack, sat across from her and began tying the baggies as I do every night. She was happy to see me, and asked me about the game. We fell into a nice rhythm, speaking softly while tying bags. Rain tapped lightly on the tin roof. My mind relaxed and found that faint euphoria that comes with repetitive hand work like the mowing of a lawn or the washing of dishes.

We sat for hours, pouring, tying, talking. Suddenly, I realized that Ania and I had crossed a barrier. We were no longer acquaintances, but close friends. She shared sensitive information with me, and we discussed it. I also realized that my Spanish was no longer slowing me down, and that I could have a complex conversation without missing a beat. It felt good to be home.

For better or worse, it is my home.