Mi Vida en Sarapiqui...

Wow – just three weeks left at SCLC. How quickly time passes here!

My experience as a volunteer at the Learning Center has exceeded all of my expectations. Meeting new friends from Central America, Asia, Africa, and Europe, becoming bilingual, traveling throughout Costa Rica and Nicaragua – all of these experiences have caused my worldview to expand dramatically. Even the hardships of living here (and being without income for six months) were worth it. I feel tougher and more resilient than I have ever been in my life. I will certainly never again take for granted the opportunities, luxuries, and daily conveniences that characterize life in America. At the same time, I’m confident that I could live quite happily without these comforts. That’s saying a lot for a girl born and bred in Los Angeles, CA!

My tenure at SCLC was unusual in that I did many jobs: Tourism Coordinator, English Teacher, and finally After-School Program Coordinator (the post where I spent the last 4 months.) Without a doubt, my experience as the ASP Coordinator was the most demanding and the most rewarding. Not only did it require me to call upon all of my training as a teacher, it also forced me to quickly develop my Spanish language skills, and to remain positive, focused, and patient, even in the face of stress (the kind of stress that only rambunctious little kids can cause!) Luckily, I had tremendous support from the Director, Volunteer Coordinator, the other volunteers, and especially from local community members.

For example, in teaching children about plant biodiversity, I teamed up with a community member (and a part-time nature guide) to take the kids out on a botany excursion on his family’s nature reserve. Another community member, a senior citizen with extensive knowledge of medicinal plants, came to the Center to give a wonderful charla (informal workshop) for the kids in the Eco-club. And a local business owner helped me organize a reforestation project on his property. With his help, we planted hundreds of baby trees on the banks of the Sarapiqui river, an area which had formerly been brutally deforested.

Another way in which I connected with community members was by visiting some of my students in their homes a few evenings each week. Over time, this allowed me to develop close relationships with specific students and their families. Although “home visits” were not specifically required of me as part of my job, I feel that the hours I spent working one-on-one with kids and their families were vital to my success as the ASP Coordinator. My reason for doing these visits was twofold: first, to get some extra support from parents in disciplining the more unruly kids in my program, and secondly, to serve as an English tutor for my students, their siblings, and anyone else in their families who was interested in learning my native language.

The relationships I developed during these home visits will stay with me for the rest of my life. Many of the kids I visited started out as my “worst” students – the most unruly, and the least motivated to learn. After a few months of spending time with them and their families, I witnessed completely different personalities emerge. One of them, as a result of our time together, developed an interest in learning about rocks and minerals; another is now completely obsessed with reading fairy tales. Yet another is on his way to becoming an artist.

To my surprise, several parents and grandparents were regular attendees for these English tutoring sessions as well. Many of the adults had been working all day (intensive labor in the pineapple and banana fincas), but they always turned off the TV and made room on the kitchen table for us to sit down and work. My efforts at teaching were generously rewarded with gifts of fresh pineapples, plates of fried bananas with butter, and hot cups of coffee. I always left their homes feeling upbeat and positive.

Don’t get me wrong – I did plenty of relaxing, too. Whether hanging out at Chilamate Jungle (a local rainforest lodge with plenty of hammocks) or taking off for trips with the other volunteers, I always managed to have plenty of down time. One of my most relaxing experiences was hanging out at the beach in Montezuma on the Pacific Coast, watching surfers, drinking cold water, and getting tan. That was a fantastic trip. We started out as a group of six, but met so many cool travelers along the way, we ended up with 13!

I hope people reading this blog are able to get a taste of the volunteer experience at the Learning Center. Life down here is by no means easy, but it is rich and rewarding. The key to living happily down here, I think, is to try to experience Costa Rica without judging it. This is not always the easiest thing to do, especially when you come from a place that has vastly different attitudes toward education, treatment of animals, the roles of women, etc. And it is even harder, in some ways, for Costa Ricans not to judge us. But since arriving here in June, I have witnessed firsthand many instances of people with different values working together towards common goals. It’s more than possible – it’s happening!