by Jamie Wright
Y’know, just in case anyone forgot.
I loved the lush tropical paradise that Costa Rica is known for, but I was surprised by how much I also loved the chaos and grit of Costa Rica’s city streets. You can be overwhelmed from all sides by the constant beeping of car horns and the blaring of music—rhythmic reggaeton, brassy salsa, and cumbia’s wicked accordion riffs—all pouring simultaneously from open windows. Even the rumble of diesel engines and the chugging of buses at stoplights manage to add something more than choking fumes to the atmosphere. When you’re in the mood, the activity of San José is just kind of delicious.
The sidewalks were crowded with people walking, people standing together under eaves, people tucked back into recessed doorways to chat. On the street, age and economic status flowed together, from slick young men in crisp suits and pointy polished shoes to leathery old women with aprons tied over faded housecoats. In the afternoon, young kids in school uniforms walked hand in hand with their curvy Latina moms, who teetered along in stilettos and skintight jeans, turning heads and collecting catcalls with swinging hips and sloshing cleavage. From dawn till dusk, the flurry, smog, and din never let up, and when you threw in an abundance of tourists and stray dogs, it made for prime people watching.
In all fairness, the bad surprises usually resulted from our inexperience or silly assumptions about the climate and/or the culture.
For example, if you grew up in California’s dry Central Valley, you don’t think about what happens to clothes jammed in the back of your closet during thirty-seven consecutive days of rain at one million percent humidity. Move to Costa Rica and pull out a T-shirt you haven’t worn in a while? Surprise! There are mushrooms growing in the creases.
Or, for example, if you’ve had a longtime love affair with all things baked and carby, you’ve probably developed certain expectations for the cakes, doughnuts, and breads in your life. So when you move to Costa Rica, the abundance of bakeries showcasing beautiful pastries in their windows makes your heart go pitter-patter. But when you take your first bite? Surprise! It’s a trick! It smells delicious, but that golden baguette is so hard and dry you could use it to bludgeon an intruder.
I was also surprised by allergies. I’d never had allergies before, but as rainy season kicked into high gear, I learned that I’m quite allergic to the mold that thrives in Costa Rica’s damp conditions. Our youngest son fell victim as well, and the two of us coughed, hacked, and sneezed almost constantly, watching the clock impatiently, like junkies, waiting for the next dose of antihistamines that would give us relief.
Oh, and one other thing I hadn’t expected? I ended up being really bad at Spanish. I mean, really bad. Like, I talk Spanish even more worser than I does English.
* * *
Steve and I were supposed to spend our first year abroad learning Spanish together at a language school for missionaries, but after only one semester, our team leaders asked if Steve could ditch school and start work, and (no surprise) he said yes. He was stoked about this change of plans, because school is lame, and I was happy for him, but I was also super jealous.
For the rest of the year, I studied Spanish in a tiny classroom with sweaty missionaries while he commuted an hour across the valley to work and learn Spanish by immersion in the community. He picked up the language quickly in the company of his new Costa Rican friends and coworkers, and in no time he was spouting slang and swearing a blue streak like a true Tico. Which, of course, made me even more jealous.
During the first trimester of classes I’d done pretty well, which was unfortunately misinterpreted by the school’s administration as aptitude. They moved me into a more advanced group the following trimester, and from day one I was behind. I had missed some of the fundamental building blocks of the language, which left me dazed and confused and revealed the fact that I did not have an aptitude for Spanish.
I began to think I would never complete a sentence in Spanish that actually made sense. Never. And, it turns out, learning a second language is extra hard for a perfectionist head case, because making mistakes is an unavoidable part of the process. I tried to relax and practice my new grammar and vocabulary on the unlucky locals who crossed my path, but this usually led to looks of confusion or amusement, and sometimes pity. Once, when I really felt like I was getting the hang of things, a friendly grocery-store clerk handed me my receipt and said, in Spanish, “Thanks for shopping at Mas X Menos. Come back soon.” Feeling confident, I smiled and tried to sound casual as I replied, “¡Sí! Volveré pronto porque tengo que comer mi familia!” which sounds lovely but translates to “Yes! I’ll be back soon, because I have to eat my family.”
I said that. Somebody shoot me, please.
As I realized my mistake, a permanent anxiety about speaking Spanish became my new normal. Remember after 9/11 when Homeland Security used color-coded “terrorist threat level” advisories to warn the American public? This was a lot like that, but instead of feeling threatened by foreign terrorists, I felt humiliated by my own foreignness in general. I was walking around at Awkward Encounter Level Orange, and with each new embarrassment (“My son has seven anuses”), I became more afraid to open my stupid mouth.
I know you probably already thought of this, but when you live in a Spanish-speaking country, not wanting to speak Spanish is (surprise) kind of a big deal.
* * *
It’s not like I thought it would be easy. Learning Spanish was on our list of Very Hard Things we were ready to deal with in our first year in Costa Rica. We had planned on the move being difficult. We’d talked about it often, trying to prepare our kids for the road ahead, and it was hard in all the ways we’d anticipated. But speaking Spanish didn’t feel challenging to me anymore; it felt impossible. Steve was working so much, he usually wasn’t around to help with dinner and the kids’ homework and showers and bedtime. Sometimes he’d be gone for a solid week to manage the work teams that came in from the United States or the UK. He took to his new role with all the joy and vigor of a hipster at a mustache convention, but when he was gone, I was left alone to do humiliating things like call a taxi or order a pizza in my hillbilly Spanish.
As I fell further behind in my classes, the barking cough I attributed to allergies stopped responding to over-the-counter medication. When simply taking a breath became a laborious act, one of my classmates (who’d been a nurse in the States) insisted that I see a doctor. The thought of surviving a doctor’s appointment with my limited capacity to communicate made me want to run into traffic. Fortunately, a North American doctor saw patients out of a little office right there at the language school one day a week, so all I had to do was write my name in any open time slot on the clipboard hanging from his door—no Spanish required. ¡Gracias a Dios!
The doctor was a short, serious man, and very…uh…thorough. After he listened to my heart and lungs, he handed me a tissue and asked me to blow and, assuming he was going to look up my nose, I did as instructed. Instead he took the wad of used tissue, unwadded it, and proceeded to gaze into my warm snot with the intensity of a boardwalk fortune-teller. After a long search, he tossed the tissue in the garbage and declared with the authority of a class A snot inspector, “You have an infection.”
He wrote me a prescription for a strong antibiotic, which I took directly to the pharmacy across the street, silently sliding it across the counter to the pharmacist, who immediately produced the prescribed medication in a glass vial with a needle and a syringe. Because (surprise) in Costa Rica antibiotics are often given as injectables—and sometimes you do it yourself!
I later learned the pharmacist would have given me the shot if I’d asked—he probably even offered—but at that point my Spanish brain was not prepared for medical/pharmaceutical terms. I was still working on stuff like “Por favor, señor, how much for one potato?” I certainly wasn’t prepared to respond to a stranger who says, “If you’d like to step behind this curtai
n and drop your pants, I’ll inject that in your butt cheek for you.”
I went back to school and set the little bottle and the syringe on the desk in front of my nurse friend, and she didn’t hesitate for a second. It was a butt-sized needle, but using a deft hand, she was kind enough to deliver the goods through my upper arm. Sadly, a few days later, I returned to the doctor showing no signs of improvement. Everything hurt. My lungs were on fire, and each breath sent shooting pains through my back and chest. For a long time he listened to me breathe, moving his stethoscope here and there, until, putting a kind hand on my shoulder, he said gently, “I think you have pneumonia, and I’d like to admit you to the hospital.”
Surprise! You can get pneumonia in paradise.
Maybe it was anxiety mixed with exhaustion, or maybe it was the lack of oxygen to my brain, but at the mere suggestion of hospitalization, I kind of lost my mind. I plainly told him no, and then I gave him all the reasons I couldn’t and wouldn’t be going to the hospital that day. My husband was gone. My kids needed me at home. I had to study. I had a Spanish test. I had laundry on the line. I had to put a chicken in the Crock-Pot. I had to chase a cockroach out of my sock drawer. And maybe he was scared to disagree with me because of my crazy eyes and slight hysteria, but eventually he relented to the idea of giving me a little more time. He wouldn’t put me in the hospital, but only if I agreed to do exactly as he ordered.
After a chest X-ray confirmed that I would survive a few more days hospital free, he gave me an ancient portable nebulizer and strict instructions to use it a gazillion times a day. It must have weighed like thirty-five pounds, but I was to carry it with me at all times and never, ever, ever miss a breathing treatment. His orders also included respiratory therapy to be administered by my husband at home, which he demonstrated by having me lie in certain prone positions and thumping my torso repeatedly with his hands cupped like paddles. As he thumped, he said, “Please tell your husband I want him to pound you, not spank you—there should be no spanking, and it is of the utmost importance you get a good pounding right before bed.”
I am not even kidding.
Steve was able to come home that night, and between the mandatory poundings, a hearty antibiotic/steroid cocktail, and a number of actual cocktails, I felt alive and human again by the end of the week. It was such an effective course of treatment that, to this day, if I come down with even the slightest hint of a cough, I can count on a generous offer from Steve to give me a good pounding right before bed.
* * *
Strangely, the biggest surprise waiting for us in Costa Rica wasn’t the language or the culture or the climate. It was, of all things, the missionaries.
Surprise! Sometime missionaries are the worst.
Who knew?!
Okay, lots of people already knew this, but I wasn’t one of them.
Before we moved to Latin America, I’d met only a handful of missionaries. Of course, I’d heard all the old stereotypes and generalizations about how they can be kind of awkward or whatever, but the half dozen or so modern missionaries I’d met were fairly normal people with decent social skills. I assumed they were pretty standard as far as missionaries go.
Well, I assumed wrong.
The language school I attended during that first year turned out to be a mecca for newly commissioned missionaries who came to learn Spanish on their way to assignments in various other Latin American countries. And after several months of school days trapped in humid classrooms with a few of the most unlikable people I’d ever met, I decided there were three main types of missionary. The first was the kind I’d known—fairly regular people (with just enough of an odd streak to do something crazy like move overseas to serve Jesus). The second was the kind we’ve all heard about—total weirdos with terrible interpersonal skills. But the third type (and, debatably, the most common) were self-righteous dickwads who honestly believed they were so amazing Jesus needed them to save the world.
To be fair, many of these enthusiastic new missionaries didn’t know what to make of me and Steve either. We were the nondenominational, egalitarian beer drinkers. Steve had tattoos and I had a ring in my nose. All of this was taken by some as evidence that we were heathens in need of the gospel. The frequency with which we were evangelized by fellow students was almost hilarious. It didn’t help that Steve kept making straight-faced jokes about our vast collection of Buddha statues, and that the rest of his wives would be arriving in a week.
Despite our differences, Steve and I grew fond of some of the other language-school missionaries. I can’t even imagine what life would have looked like without the community and camaraderie we found alongside some of our compadres that year. Truly, if not for a few like-minded friends, we would have been totally alone on an island in a sea of what the fuck.
* * *
One day a group of us sat together in white plastic chairs around a white plastic table, in the shade of a covered patio, to lament our latest Spanish gaffes and expand on our life stories with new friends. We snacked on greasy empanadas and drank watery coffee out of Styrofoam cups while we talked, and on this particular day, someone set the remainder of a half-eaten banana in the middle of the table. It was all very normal. We were having a normal chat, like normal people who do normal things, when, drawn to the open banana, a soft white butterfly fluttered down into the center of our circle. A few of us continued to watch the pretty little visitor as it explored the fruit, and everyone returned to the conversation…that is, almost everyone.
This one guy suddenly leaned across the table with a scary intensity in his eye. He already had a reputation as kind of an oddball, but this was weird even for him. As we looked on, he inched his face closer and closer to the banana until his cheek almost brushed against it, and the butterfly, sensing his dangerous proximity, stopped moving. The man seemed to have arrived at his intended destination, because there he hovered while his mouth opened slowly, like a small pink cargo-bay door, and then, without warning, he slurped up the butterfly.
Like, he ate it.
It was gone.
The rest of us let out a round of gasps. My hands flew to my temples to keep my brain from exploding out of my head, and I screeched, “WHAT DID YOU DO???”
But he didn’t even look up. With his cheeks puffed out, he leaned back in his chair, ever so slowly opened his creepy mouth once again, and stuck out his tongue…and there it was: the butterfly. Clearly traumatized, but happy to be alive. After about three long, terrible seconds perched on the end of a grown man’s tongue, it spread papery wings and flew away.
I exhaled. Phew! See? It’s okay! He didn’t actually eat it, because…no, seriously, can someone please tell me what the hell just happened?!
While we stared, the guy explained that he had been conducting experiments on wildlife to see how close you can get to another living creature with your mouth versus with your hand. “You’d be amazed at how many things will let you eat them,” he said.
As if that were a perfectly reasonable thing to say out loud.
Unable to further contain myself, I blurted out, “That is the weirdest thing I’ve ever seen in my entire life. That’s not normal. You know you’re not a scientist, right? Like, you’re just some random dude going around licking animals for fun!”
A week later, I glanced out the window at school during a test on subjunctive phrases, and there was the Butterfly Eater in the bright morning sun. His khaki chinos were way too short, his striped polo was way too long, and he was chasing a lizard in circles around the trunk of a date palm with his mouth.
Come on, now. How did that guy end up a missionary in a foreign country? The question begged to be asked. How did this happen? Had he too been “called by God” to do awesome and amazing things?
Let me be clear. I am not saying God couldn’t or didn’t use the Butterfly Eater to bring light or joy or goodness to some quirky souls out
there in the great big world. These questions had less to do with the people themselves and more to do with a system that paves the way for anyone who feels like it to move to a foreign country, and then gives them permission to do virtually whatever they please under the loosely defined title “missionary.”
During our time at language school, we traded stories about how we’d become missionaries. Reports ranged from “I lost my job and didn’t have any good prospects, so God called me to the mission field” to “I was on a luxury cruise that stopped at a gorgeous port city in Central America, and I loved it so much God laid it on my heart to move there.” We met people who’d been dreaming of missionary life since the time they were twelve years old and experienced the thrill of handing out sack lunches to inner-city homeless on a church field trip. We met others who’d never considered missions until four months ago, when, while watching a NatGeo documentary on the History Channel, they discovered a passion for barefoot llama herders in the mountains of Peru. Our group contained hipsters and grandmas, pastors and plumbers, CEOs and college kids, cops and stay-at-home moms, and we were all there because, essentially, we felt like it. At some point, in one way or another, we had each concluded we’d been called by God, and so, apparently, we were.
But was that enough?
Would “God’s calling” and a year of language school make an electrician capable of running an orphanage? Prepare a high school teacher to plant a church or a youth pastor to start a business in a new place and culture? Was it enough to turn people like me into—oh, I don’t know—functional adults? I know this sounds mean, but looking around at the crowd I was running with, I began to have serious doubts.