It set me to thinking about how I've come to be where I am. I recall the day I pulled up the Peace Corps website, Tuesday, February 24, 2015. One of my dear friends was telling me about her own application process and, for the first time, I considered the notion of being in the PC. I confess that, at the time, I imagined them as nothing more than the people who shove flowers up rifle barrels; however, I have come to find they are so much more than that. They truly are a force for good in this world.
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| Not Pictured: Peace Corps |
But this post stretches back much further than last year. No, to understand this process, I have to take you back to June of 2007, a full nine years ago. I was dating a young lady whose church small group wanted to take a mission trip to Costa Rica. I was surprised to get a call asking if I'd consider joining them. They justified it by saying they needed help with a soccer camp and another Spanish-speaking member. I jumped at the chance, even though my Spanish was very limited in those days. So we spent a good chunk of July in Las Juntas de Abangares in Guanacaste, a cute little former mining colony. During our time in Juntas, I met Gabriel ("Gabo" for short), an 11-year-old local boy with whom I had an instant connection, playing, laughing, joking, and being best buds. I didn't know it at the time, but Gabriel would play a pivotal role in my life.
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| That's Gabo on my back! |
See, I fell in love with Costa Rica - with Las Juntas, to be more specific - during that trip. So much so that I made a mental note to return. And I did! Thanks to some great support from my awesome friends and family, I was able to head back in December of that same year on my own. I spent some fantastic time with Roberto and his family camping out on the Pacific coast, climbing up Monteverde, and taking in the views at Vulcan Arenal. It was a magical time, and I'm forever grateful to the Barrantes family for their hospitality and everything they did to make this gringo feel at home. As I was dragging my bags up the ramp at the Liberia airport, something happened that would stick with me for years to come. I was in the middle of saying my goodbyes, and in the back of my mind I was wholly unsure as to whether or not I'd ever see these great people again. The goodbye that stuck with me the most was from Gabo. He reached his lanky arms up around my neck, pulled me back down to his level, looked me in the eyes and said, "Regrese a mí, por favor." (Come back to me, please.) Speaking softly, I looked right back in his eyes and promised that one day I would. SIDE NOTE: Would you believe that I get to see Gabo for the first time in almost nine years this weekend? Win!
And so I returned from Costa Rica for the second time in late 2007, and I jumped back into the US lifestyle. College, career, job, relationships, etc. all took precedence over my daydreams of one day returning to this incredible place. There were brief moments when I'd plot a trip, going so far as to have a flight picked out and a couple hundred bucks set aside to book it, but it never materialized. Something always got in the way - classwork, a girlfriend, work, the basic elements of life. So I slowly let the notion of a return trip fade over the next few years. Eventually I graduated college and got a full-time job that allowed me to travel all over the country and a little bit overseas, and places like the Bahamas, Puerto Rico and Uganda supplanted my first foreign love.
While Costa Rica never fully left my heart, there certainly were moments when it was firmly seated in the back row of my mind, but I very clearly remember when that Tico whisper started up again. It was a particularly rainy afternoon in North Topsail Beach, North Carolina, and I was about to wrap up another summer camp and head back to Jacksonville, Florida, for some downtime. There wasn't a specific event that took place; rather, my camp setup mind was working overtime, pondering what potential locations we could add to the list. For whatever reason, as I stared out the office window and listened to the driving rain, Costa Rica resurfaced. After a few days exchanging emails with some Ticos, I was informed of a prospective location no more than a half hour from Las Juntas.
Eventually everything fell into place for my much-anticipated return to the land of Gallo Pinto. I spent the next few months researching travel tips and building up a network of support with whom I would eventually touch base when I finally arrived for my initial site visit in Guanacaste. Plane tickets were purchased, rental cars were reserved, and I even booked my stay at a nearby cabin, all planned for the end of March 2014.
But there was one problem - I never got on the plane.
Heck, I never made it to the airport. The day before my scheduled return to Costa Rica, I had a very honest conversation with my boss at the time, and I made an enormously difficult decision to do the unthinkable: I resigned from the organization. It was an incredibly emotional decision in the first place, not to mention the fact that I was tossing away the opportunity to revisit those people and places I'd missed for so long. It took a long time to get over those circumstances, but, as is always the case, life moves on.
It wasn't long before I was distracted by something else, this time manifesting itself in the form of creating a brand new organization from scratch. Enter CO | MISSIONS. Funny, even typing that word brings up so many mixed feelings. CO | MISSIONS was a faith-based non-profit missions organization I was asked to start with the backing of a work contact from years before leaving my former job. Although it lasted less than two years from inception to dissolution, there were many dreams. Among those was a direct-trade partnership with a Costa Rican coffee farm, as well as further discussions with the same potential site near Las Juntas.
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| Remember this little fellah? Weird, isn't it? |
Then the storm came, figuratively speaking. From both internal and external sources, it quickly became nearly impossible to maintain the organization's operations. After a few months of hanging on by what seemed like a thread, I had a very emotionally-charged conversation with the board of directors, confessing to them my feelings of outright exhaustion and an inability to continue on the current path. And so, with a deep breath, I waved goodbye to yet another potential return to Costa Rica, as the board and I agreed that dissolution was the best available option.
Hopefully by now you can see how bizarre the dance is that I've shared with this country for such a long time. Imagine, then, my joy when I received an email in early March informing me that I was, in fact, under consideration for service here in Costa Rica. Visualize the waiting period from early March to the middle of April when my interview was eventually scheduled. Then, take into account all the Spanish and the subsequently required CLEP test, the nearly-insurmountable pile of medical exams and immunizations, and all the little minutiae that had to be done before coming. It was quite the arduous process, finally getting to a point of departure.
Then came February 23rd. The wheels touched down in San Jose, and I was home.
There are many ways to look at the last nine years of my life and how certain things have transpired for me to inevitably return to this place. That's the real focus of my attention as I write this piece. Perhaps at this point in your own journey, you're wondering, "What the hell am I doing with my life?" Or maybe you feel, as I so often did, that you have a goal, but it feels so incredibly unattainable and you can't find it in yourself to continue in that direction.
Please, please, please hear me when I say KEEP MOVING. The light is just around the corner, just around la esquina, and oh is it ever worth it. If only I could recount how many times I had resigned to the fact that I just wasn't meant to come back here. I could have stayed in Pensacola, continued on with CO | MISSIONS, or perhaps pursued a career in education. I could have stayed close to home, able to see my family as often as I'd like. I could have stayed in the land of air conditioning, and perhaps met and settled down with a young woman who'd eventually be my wife and a mother to my children. I could've kept all my stuff - my truck, my guitar, etc. - and lived a content life with my things. But I didn't. I wanted to see what was around the corner.
Here I am, living in Costa Rica, content to look out the window from time to time and quietly whisper 'hola' to all the wonderful people and things that make up my new home.
