Road Rage

The water’s out right now. This is not an uncommon occurrence in the Upala region, but its frequency doesn’t make it any less annoying when it happens. Last night there was an accident on a bridge over the Chimurria river and a car hit the water pipe that runs beside the bridge. The bridge hasn’t had guard rails for the past year and a half, and has always been a major safety concern for the community. One of the guard rails was taken off during a flood and the other was taken off during a car accident. About a year ago the elementary school organized a petition to the municipality to fix the bridge, but the petition was basically ignored, and the bridge has remained guardrail-less. People are talking about using this accident as motivation to write another petition. I hope this time the municipality listens.

There was another accident earlier this week on the same stretch of road. A student from the elementary school was riding his bike home from school and he got hit by a motorcycle. He experienced some serious head trauma and they had to airlift him to the big hospital in San Jose. At first we weren’t sure if he was going to make it, but it looks like he is going to pull through. The stretch of road that he was riding on was the 1km of highway between the elementary school and the entrance for the pineapple plantations. Along this stretch is the guardrail-less bridge. About half of the students in the elementary school have to walk or ride their bikes down this stretch of highway in order to go to school. There are no school busses for elementary school, just high school. The highway is the biggest safety concern that my community faces, and I worry about my students that have to walk on the highway to get to school. I would love to see a sidewalk here, but I just don’t know where to begin to start up a project of that scale.
My secondary projects that I’m working on right now are much less grand, but are still taking up a lot of my energy. Some of the women in the community and I have started up a workout group for women and children. We do it twice a week for one hour sessions. For me, the class is important because there is no other organized effort to encourage fitness in women or children. The men have a soccer team, but the women’s soccer team disbanded a few years ago. At first there was a lot of interest in the workout group, but participation has started to drop off. We’ve been going for about two months now and I need to find a new way to get the momentum going again.

Another project I’m working on is organizing a summer camp. There is a two week break from school in July, and the pcv in Upala and I are working together to create a free summer camp for 40 kids. We’ve been working hard at figuring out crafts and activities that we can do that are entertaining and super low budget. We’ve also been writing letters asking for donations, and we walked around the town of Upala going to certain businesses asking if they could donate materials to our camp. I’ve also been writing letters trying to get snacks donated. We have been pretty successful so far. Some businesses were not interested in helping, but there were quite a few who were willing to help us out. We are still working on collecting materials- paint, thread to make friendship bracelets, and a few other small things. We are getting local youth to volunteer to be camp counselors, and some of our pcv friends want to help out, too. It really looks like we are going to pull this off. The camp will take place the second week of July, so we still have time to tie together all the loose ends. I am really looking forward to camp and seeing how it all turns out!


I have a lot of work to keep me busy, which is good because it is helping distract me from a big wave of homesickness that just struck. Three of my very good friends from college came up to visit me a few weeks ago. I had a blast hanging out with them, and they brought out parts of my personality that I mostly have to abandon while in my site. In my site I am always in bed by 9, no one thinks I’m funny, I’m always taken very seriously and I always take myself very seriously, all the other twenty-something’s are married with children and I don’t have a peer group. Loneliness is my biggest struggle as a PCV. It was nice to hang out with my friends from home and remember who I used to be. It was nice to have people laugh at my jokes and to have a social life again.

While my friends were visiting, I had an excuse to go traveling around Costa Rica! For most of my time as a volunteer I have stayed in my site and gone to San Jose a few times, but I haven’t really seen much of Costa Rica. It was great to go travel around this country like a tourist. We went dancing in San Jose, we went to Manuel Antonio- a national park along a beach, we toured the pineapple plantation of Upala, and we went to see the Arenal Volcano. The Peace Corps stipend I get doesn’t allow for me to do a lot of touristy things, but I got to see the sites and spend time with my friends. It was a really fun week, and it has been a little hard re-adjusting to life in my site. I miss my friends.