Enviro-saster?

My brother ran outside and started the car, telling me we would leave in a minute, but it had been three hours since then and we had yet to go anywhere, instead the car sat idling in front of the house.

There are two questions that I can always expect when I am meeting someone new here, and when I first arrived I didn't speak much Spanish but I quickly learned to recognize them in conversations.  The first was always “do you have a boyfriend?”  I'm not kidding when I say that this was usually one of the first things out of someones mouth.  In my first week, teachers would actually stop class in order to ask me. 

While there is simple answer to this, the second question was always a little more difficult for me.  “Why Costa Rica?” they'd ask, and despite being asked this about a million times in the US, I still don't have a good answer.  I suppose the quick answer is that I wanted a Spanish speaking country, but that still leaves like 26 countries to choose from.  Sure, I wanted beaches and someplace warm, but that honestly didn't have a huge influence on my decision either.

Expectations are funny in that usually, you don't really realize that you have them until they are shattered.  Thinking back now, I realize that the factor that tipped the scales was a certain reputation of Costa Rica.  Based on a study done by Yale University, Costa Rica was ranked fifth for most environmentally conscious countries in the world.  I was intrigued by what I'd heard about the governments attitude toward environmental conservation, after all, around a quarter of the country is protected by reserves and parks.  I wanted to experience and learn about this kind of dedication, but the reality that I found here was filthy, literally.  I arrived here and was quickly brought to the realization that Costa Rica isn't quite as “green” as the tourism department would like us to think. 

There are so many things that drive me nuts here, but among the worst is the everyday disrespect that people here give to the environment.  I have always believed that many of our environmental issue in the US are caused by a disconnect between us and nature, that if you show people the value in the environment, they will want to protect it.  Here they practically live in nature.  My backyard opens up into the forest; isolated beaches are a short bus ride away, and yet, the majority of people couldn't care less.  I'd like to believe that its a lack of education, but not throwing your bag of trash into a river seems like common sense to me.  When my friends are done with their soda, they just toss the empty bottle onto the ground, resulting in litter everywhere!  Our washing machine drains strait into the creek behind our house, which I wouldn't have a problem with if they used non-toxic soap, but they don't.  We have a school bus that takes students and faculty home, it even drops us off right in front of the house, but my mom generally will call my brother to get him to drive all the way to the school to pick us up because she says the bus takes longer, but we don't actually get back more then five minutes before the bus anyway, and for what reason?  All she does after school is sit around watching television or talking on the porch.  The list goes on and on, but perhaps the thing that ticks me off the most is when my brother brings home turtle eggs to eat, and while that might well be a lack of education issue, it still kills me inside.

Living in a foreign country is definitely a challenge, but one of my biggest struggles has come from this false reputation.  I have grown up in Boulder, where recycling and composting is a given; gardening has become part of the curriculum in many elementary schools, in many peoples opinion throwing your trash on the ground is among the worse crimes you can commit, animal rights are more important then human rights, and you can always count on there being bikers everywhere, even if there is a foot of snow...  I have always been surrounded by people who care about conservation and it was easy to believe that everything was changing, to believe that the little things that ETF was doing around the community was actually making a difference.  In theory I knew about the Boulder Bubble, but that didn't stop my shock when I saw how little some people care, even in a country that is supposedly among the most environmentally friendly in the world.

I really struggled at first.  I became angry, falling straight back into that “cycle of cynicism” that I had worked so hard to get out of.  I started thinking there was nothing I could do; that nobody was even trying so why should I?  Convinced that this was a problem that wasn't going to ever be fixed until it was far too late, I became incredibly upset, to the point that I even considered dropping ETF when I got back, the club that I love and care so much about. 

Luckily though, last weekend we took a trip that rekindled my passion.  It was an almost eight hour journey from the capital to paradise.  (I will try to avoid repeating my previous post, but I apologize in advance for any repetition that occurs)  The hotel we were in was a two hour boat ride into almost complete wilderness and on our way we motored our way past virgin forest that had never been attacked by a saw, and pristine beaches that made you believe you were the first person to even lay eyes on them.  There were no roads, carved like scars into the earth, and no gassy fields built by deforesting and displacing thousands of species of animals to accommodate our societies growing hunger for BigMacs.  The hotel we stayed in didn't even have electricity, only a generator they ran from six to ten at night for light.  The trip was inspiring, and reminded me of why I cared.  Since then, I have begun to notice more and more positive changes, like for example, my school just began recycling, reminding me that although progress is slow, it is happening, and that nothing is impossible. 

“Impossible is just a big word thrown around by small men who find it easier to live in the world they've been given than to explore the power they have to change it.  Impossible is an opinion.  It's a dare.  Impossible is nothing.”  

-Muhammad Ali