It is Spring Break and I am in San Diego enjoying the sunshine. Yesterday I was excited to find my passport in the mail. It was a tangible step in my Costa Rican adventure. The sun here is yet another reminder of what I am up against once I arrive in Costa Rica. The Portland weather has made me forget the sunscreen mornings and aloe vera evenings.
I invested in a translator today as a little helper for the words that just don’t stick. It is nice and small and will fit in my back pocket. I have been practicing Spanish in my head. Before I say something I think of how I would say the same thing in Spanish. It is tough but it is fun. Even more difficult than translating the language is trying to translate why I am going to Costa Rica in the first place to the friends and family members I talk to.
To be honest, I don’t quite know exactly what I will be doing. I fly in to San Jose and then get in a taxi for about an hour to the tourist city of Jaco. Once there, I am meeting up with an old family friend, Rebecca, who has been doing missionary work in the area for about five years now (?). Rebecca works with the forgotten people of the area. There is a community on a river that has less money, more alcohol, and several prostitutes. In this community, Rebecca has been working with the children. She has shown them what an education can do and how to abstain from substances. I will be working with the children too. I will be teaching them all that I can in the short month that I am there and a lot of this will be simply teaching by example.
So preparation, how do you prepare to do something when you aren’t quite sure of the specifics? I have been doing a lot of reading to calm the anxieties of the unknown. After talking to a friend that has been on many missionary trips himself, I was told to try to stay away as much as I could from trying to learn everything there is to know about the place I was going to and rather to learn more about the issues that I will be addressing. He said that if I tried to learn all about Costa Rica, the culture shock once I got there would be even more shocking and I would have to unlearn some of what I hadn't known in the first place; he said it would just be creating more work. It is sometimes better to just learn by immersing yourself. Rather, I have been reading books about aiding countries in developing countries, education systems, and Latin American politics.
Last week, I read the book Half the Sky and I couldn’t recommend it more. Its focus was on women and injustices they face. There were pictures of the women as you read and many stories straight from their mouths. It was one of the most enlightening books I have read in a while and I am convinced it should be required reading for high school students so that everyone knows the world is much bigger than our own towns before they graduate to the bigger world of college. Not only did it tell you the stories but it left you with solutions. Today I am finishing up the book Africa Doesn’t Matter. I have found that less than the facts about Africa, this book has been the best reminder about foreign aid. Essentially it begs for individuals who want to help to ask the people they are helping what they want before they try to help. As reasonable as this sounds, I think often someone that just wants to go help goes in with an idea of what they are going to do long before asking the people what they truly need. There are stories of American missionaries building bridges for Kenyans but they don't built roads to get to the bridges and therefore, the bridges go unused. This was an enlightening moment. Perhaps, not knowing exactly what I am going to do this Summer in Costa Rica isn’t such a bad thing. It is better to learn what the people need then start making plans for unneeded bridges while I am still in the States.
So, 62 days and counting but until then, lots of reading, Spanish practicing, and money saving!
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