August 2001

 

Rural vs. Urban Life in Costa Rica
Jamie H. Thompson, thompsonja@missouri.edu

Last month, I wrote about my home-stay family, Melba an Eladio. They live about 3 kilometers up the mountain from the small village of La Argentina. Their home, built two years ago, has two bedrooms, a bath, and a main room. There is no electricity but they do have running water and indoor plumbing. In the evening lanterns were lit to provide some light, but we generally went to bed early.

Behind their home, Eladio has two Brahma cows, chickens, a pigpen for his 3 sows and one boar, and a small fresh water pool for his Tilapia (freshwater fish).

Eladio built Melba a small greenhouse where she grows medicinal herbs—Juanilama Sirve, Menta, Albahaca, Cacote de Limón, and Tilo. Once dried, Melba filled burlap bags with the herbs to ship to her buyer. She did sell small plants to her neighbors and at the women’s cooperative.

In addition to their medicinal herbs, Melba has a small vegetable garden. She also has several fruit trees: guayaba (guava) and guanábana. I remembered eating guayaba as a child but guanábana was very new to me…different!

As a group, we traveled throughout Costa Rica—from the Caribbean coast to the Pacific coast. We did stay two nights in San Jose on our way to other places. Most of us in the group walked from the hotel to the nearest grocery to shop and explore. The men were just as fascinated as the women with the variety of fruits, vegetables, and other goods. We practiced our Spanish reading labels. Refrigerated milk was sold in quart containers only, but we found vacuum-packed milk on shelves; all varieties from skim milk to 1 percent to whole milk. This is what I was served while staying with Melba and Eladio.

When I shared my trip with a long-time friend, she sent me her journal from her trip to Costa Rica several years ago. I want to share with you her experience of living with a family for a month in San Jose learning Spanish.

One thing I’ll always remember about San Jose is the noise level, and the fumes. Several dozen buses, each with windows rattling, and the added cacophony of their brakes sounding like they had no shoes left at all, but were metal-on-metal…and the horns! We walked or took buses everywhere. All along the bus route, I saw, among the working populace, throngs of students. Some looked like the beautiful children native to the area, with thick, shiny dark hair, white teeth, and beautiful skin, neatly dressed in their uniforms; I also saw Asians and heard German and French, and British accented English, and Caribbean lilts. I saw people working and prospering. Construction was everywhere. Stores of every description seemed to be thriving.

My Costa Rican family had been boarding students for years, and with the extra income, seemed quite affluent. The father was a chauffeur, but they had built a new four-bedroom house, very modern, with parquet wood floors in the bedrooms, and tile throughout the rest of the house, and vaulted ceilings with high windows to let in indirect light. They had a hot water heater, a washing machine, and a real dryer, almost unheard of in their culture.

We were very used to the routine of stumbling through our very inadequate Spanish when we tried to deal with markets and restaurants, but the locals were quite helpful. On our way back from lunch one day, we stopped in a bakery to see if they had any brownies. We employed the usual technique, which was to ask the local expert, "Por favor, como se dice en español…" and then pointed to the item in question. We all listened up, curious to know what "brownie" was in Spanish. The lady looked seriously into our eyes, and carefully enunciated, "BROWNIE."

Most of the people I met were lovely, friendly, open people who love us.

In short, even though our cultures seem worlds apart, the people of Costa Rica are no different than we are—they laugh, they cry, they live, and they die.

A final interesting fact about Costa Rica…

Costa Rica is considered to be one of the oldest democracies in the Americas. Like the United States, Costa Rica has three branches of government: Executive, Legislative, and Judicial. Under their Executive Branch, Costa Rica has a president and two vice presidents, plus advisors. The Legislative Branch has 57 deputies, and the Judicial Branch, 17 magistrates on the Supreme Court, plus the lower courts. Interestingly, the president and deputies are elected by popular vote to a four-year term, with no reelection privileges. The magistrates are appointed by the Legislature for an eight-year term, whereas, in the United States federal judges are appointed for life.