From the outset the idea of "service learning" was a difficult concept for many of us to grasp or justify. We all sent in our applications and wanted few things more than to have this amazing opportunity, but many of us questioned why we would raise and spend all this money to fly down to Costa Rica, when we could just send a check down and hire construction workers to do the job for us in the same time for what would undoubtedly be less money.
When we got down to Costa Rica, however, we were introduced to Gail, the founder of the Humanitarian Foundation, and to what the point of our service learning was going to be. "Humanitarian Tourism", as Gail called it, was more than just sending money to get a job done. It was not just funding a clinic, but rather going to that worksite, building it, getting to know the place and becoming tied to the work that you were doing. In the end, it was supposed to leave not only a better impression on the community after seeing fifteen gringos working their butts off and interacting with the community for a week, but also a better impression on us, the gringos, allowing us to leave with a better understanding and perhaps, as it did for me, an insatiable desire to make this sort of thing a part of my life.
Homestays and the D plan allowed us to step out of our lives and into Costa Rica. The term was over, and we were taken away from other Dartmouth students, and thrown in with families that spoke only Spanish, and ate only beans, rice, and fruit. Some of us were fluent, and most of us had taken at least some Spanish in school. A word for the wise, however, is that Spanish 1 at Dartmouth and Costa Rican Spanish have nothing in common other than "baño" ('bathroom’, which many of us had to use frequently while getting accustomed to the new food) and "no lo entiendo" ('I don’t understand’, which we often didn’t). While we’re on education, we also learned that "Estoy embarazada/o" does not mean that "I am embarrassed" but rather that "I am pregnant," and "Tengo lleno" (I am full) means that they will wait an extra half hour before feeding you a second or third dinner.
The life we experienced in Costa Rica was an uncertain balance. Uncertain in that seemingly everything was on the verge of ceasing or falling apart. Balance would, however, imply that things maintain. Not true. Vans often do stop mid highway with not one, but two flat tires, groups of volunteers often do show up to their first day to a site much different than expected, without tools, leaders, or direction. Plans do change by the hour, and construction is far from an exact science.
But things do get done. There is no limit to the number of people you can put into a van in Costa Rica, and we always made it to our destination? eventually? and we even built the medical clinic in the short time we were there. We woke up every day at 8, worked under the equatorial sun until 5, and returned to our families and plates full of food by 6. We interacted with the communities where we lived and where we worked, and learned many important life lessons, not the least of which involved ten-year-old kids humbling our fútbol abilities. So much was done in those few days. The majority of our time was spent digging holes, mixing cement, and lifting columns and sheets of cement into place, though hardly any of it felt like work, and every once in awhile someone would come by and bring us a drink, or some home-cooked food, or some pan dulche.
For many of us, our lives feel so determined at Dartmouth. We must plan out our lives years in advance, we must schedule our days, and we must strive towards goals very distant in the future. I’m sure this happens in Costa Rica too, to a certain percent of the population. But in our Costa Rica, many things were uncertain; such as the shanties in La Carpio or the old van we took to work. As a result we got to live a more simple life, day to day, hour to hour. But let us not confuse this uncertainty with decay. The lives of those around us, and ours for those ten days, were as rich as I’ve ever experienced in my life. At first I thought of "humanitarian tourism" as two separate entities- that we would perform a service, and get to travel because of it. It is obvious to me now how obtuse that view is, that one is essential to the other. That without traveling (although this need not necessarily be to a tropical place, but instead merely the act of entirely stepping out of your normal life), one cannot realize how much service can bring to everyone involved. Even though we were back at Dartmouth taking classes within one day of leaving Costa Rica, it took many of us a week or more to wash the sand out of our scalps and ears, and whether or not the tan has already faded from our faces, I think all of us brought home some of the pura vida that we lived for ten glorious days.
