The power of a teacher’s gaze

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What is the most important part of a teacher? 

What about her gaze?

Bullying starts in silence. In subtleties. It’s glances, murmurs, a passed note, a brushing-by in the hallway that’s a little too rough. Sometimes this is invisible to teachers, but not to Niña Lidiabeth. She could see that the other kids didn’t like the new first-grader: already una nerdita, overly eager to please and excel, cursed by a Panamanian accent after four years spent abroad for her father’s work. La Niña Lidiabeth protected her over-achieving charge just as silently and subtly. An authoritative glance. A well-placed word of support. A little chineo, a tiny singling-out: not enough to increase the ridicule, just enough to warn off the vultures. Those jaws of bullying, poised and threatening, never closed down on the little girl.

So small and precise, impeccably dressed, with large, beautiful earrings framing her face, la Niña was full of sayings: The lazy and the mean must do everything twice. Do it slowly, because we are in a rush. These truisms, such throwaways on someone else’s lips, were transformed by the steady gaze of la Niña Lidiabeth into standards that would shape her students for life. 

One day, she pressed a set of papers into the little girl’s hands and issued an order: run for student body president. “But Niña, no one even likes me!” “You’ll do it, and you’ll win.” What did she see, deep inside the girl who somehow won that election, whose voice now seemed to matter? 

The nerdita had never held a proper camera or learned to take a photo, but with Niña Lidiabeth, she learned more than math or reading. She learned the power of the gaze. What we choose to view. What we leave out of the shot, ignore, obscure. What we do with what we’ve seen. Will we look and leave it be, or will we, like the greatest of teachers, find a way to act?

As published today in El Colectivo 506. Image courtesy of El Colectivo 506 and Mónica Quesada Cordero. Text by Katherine Stanley Obando, inspired by photojournalist Mónica Quesada’s love for her teacher, Lidiabeth Leitón García. Is there a Costa Rican teacher who looms large in your mind? Tell me! Our weekly #MediaNaranja series this month is dedicated to teachers.

El Colectivo is the new, bilingual media organization I co-founded with two friends last year. Our Sunday #MediaNaranja series collects short love stories with a Costa Rican connection: romances, friendships, love of humans, animals, things, places, ideas. To share your own ideas for stories to be featured in this space, write to me at katherine@elcolectivo506.com. 

Ahhhhh. Hello, Sunday.

Posted on by stanleyobando

This week, today really is Sunday, in every sense of the word.

In San José, Costa Rica, the sun is shining brightly after a week of heavy rains. In many communities around the country, that sun is shining on destruction, landslides and flooded homes (read more from El Colectivo 506, including relief effort links, here). So the work continues. But thank you, sun.

In the United States, events took place over the past five days that allowed my daughter to watch the first female vice president in U.S. history to take to the stage last night in a fierce white suit. My daughter dressed up in her Wonder Woman costume for the occasion and waved a flag she had made with the names of Joe Biden and his two dogs, Major and Champ. The work continues. But thank you, U.S. voters, poll workers, campaign volunteers.

At El Colectivo 506, we’ve raised nearly $10,000 thus far to help us start a new media organization that’s journalist-owned, community-driven and woman-powered. We’ve got a lot more road to traverse (read more here). But thank you, every last person who has given us a donation, words of encouragement, ideas during these critical early weeks.

Are you taking a deep breath today? If not, you should. If so, take another one. Shake your booty. Raise a glass. We’ve earned it. We’ll need it. We deserve it.

Featured image by Creatista via Shutterstock.

I run the virtual volunteer community Costa Rica Corps and am the co-founder of the new, bilingual media organization El Colectivo 506. I also work as a freelance grantwriter, fundraiser, and communications coach, and write essays, articles and books. I live in San José with my husband and daughter. Sign up at top right to receive an essay in your inbox each Sunday morning: a chance to dominguear together (a lovely word that literally means, “to Sunday,” and describes a leisurely trip or ramble). We’ll explore a project, changemaker, community, or idea I’ve come across, or just watch the world go by. See you next Sunday!

 

Women who put my 2020 in perspective

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We’ve all got a lot on our minds on this particular Sunday. If you’ve even had the mental energy to click “open” on this email, I salute you. But I’m writing this post to share an experience that, while very connected to the difficulties of life today, really helped me take a breath and put some of the challenges of 2020 in perspective.

Earlier this year, I won a Creative Grant from Costa Rica’s Ministry of Culture to carry out interviews with women in San Josés comunidades urbanomarginales. These low-income communities can range from neighborhoods that look fairly standard for San José, to tin-roofed shantytowns, often built along riverbanks or other unsafe terrain. I wanted to ask women about their experiences during the pandemic, how they’ve gotten through it, and how they think these crises could be better handled.

Our conversations reminded me that, while certain moments in history can have a huge impact for years to come, there is also a continuum of injustice and justice, weariness and energy, selfishness and generosity that began long before any of us were born, and will continue on. The resilience of these women shows us how we can tip the scales towards goodness from wherever we are.

I hope to continue these interviews next year through El Colectivo 506, because I know I’ve only scratched the surface of the deep reserves of wisdom and knowledge that exists in these communities. I also hope that, today or at some point over the coming weeks, you’ll find a moment or two to skim these short reflections from Verónica, Corina, Elizabeth, Sara, Yamileth, and Berlín. You can see them all at https://medium.com/five-questions-2020/. 

Wishing all these women, and all of us, fortitude during the days ahead.

I run the virtual volunteer community Costa Rica Corps and am the co-founder of the new, bilingual media organization El Colectivo 506. I also work as a freelance grantwriter, fundraiser, and communications coach, and write essays, articles and books. I live in San José with my husband and daughter. Sign up at top right to receive an essay in your inbox each Sunday morning: a chance to dominguear together (a lovely word that literally means, “to Sunday,” and describes a leisurely trip or ramble). We’ll explore a project, changemaker, community, or idea I’ve come across, or just watch the world go by. See you next Sunday!

 

What would the world be like if we all pulled together?

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What would the future look like if all of our cities and towns used the global pandemic as a chance to pull together? How would the world change if we truly understood that we’ll all succeed, or we’ll all fail?

The community of Bijagua, Costa Rica, is showing us part of the answer. Its families have spent decades building an ecotourism industry that protects rainforest and wildlife in a critical biological corridor. Their latest effort, a new fundraising campaign, seeks to help those families keep food on their tables during the worst crisis Costa Rica’s tourism industry has ever faced. And it’s pursuing that goal with a relentless fairness, making sure each community member has a chance to chip in with whatever skills or resources they’ve got.

“The thing is, this crisis is like a river,” rural tourism entrepreneur Donald Varela told me a few months back. “Everyone in this town is standing on one side of it. And if we’re going to get to the other side, we’re going to have to cross that river together.”

As an old friend of Donald’s and his family’s, and in my role as an impromptu emergency fundraiser during the pandemic, I’d been proposing that Donald get some support for his extraordinary rainforest conservation project, Tapir Valley. His response, in effect, was: “Not without my whole community.” As president of the Río Celeste Chamber of Tourism (CATURI), he wanted to make sure that any emergency fundraising in Bijagua was shared equally, across the board.

This was, of course, the right approach. But given the intense strain every single rural entrepreneur has been under in Costa Rica since the total suspension of its tourism industry in March, I find that kind of solidarity rather breathtaking. “Solidario” is an essential adjective in Costa Rica, and one without an exact English translation; maybe there’s a reason for that. At any rate, it’s the adjective that describes every aspect of the campaign that the community launched this past week through the U.S. nonprofit Amigos of Costa Rica: Río Celeste Forest Stewards.

CATURI’s board and affiliates worked carefully for months to come up with a campaign that would benefit as many community members as possible. You might be familiar with the concept of payments for environmental services, where, for example, landowners who protect forest are paid by the acre. CATURI sought to do something similar in terms of rewarding local families for forest conservation, but without excluding anyone – without leaving anyone behind on the side of that river.

Large landowners receive the same amount as a family protecting a few acres of forest. That family receives the same support as a naturalist guide who’s helping monitor species (and essential activity to help sound early alarms on poaching or logging). If you don’t own any forest, and can’t do species monitoring, you can receive support for working to create a tribute to conservation at the heart of town. They’ve made sure there’s something for everyone.

To provide all this urgently needed support, they’re asking for U.S. tax-deductible donations on the Amigos of Costa Rica site. This support will keep a town afloat. It will send them a message that their hard work and sacrifices – their choice to protect their forests rather than turning a profit through logging, hunting or development – have been worth it. And it will help them continue to protect their ecosystems until the rest of us can visit them in person to enjoy them once more.

Throughout this terrible year, we’ve witnessed terrible acts of selfishness, recklessness, hatred, and divison. If we’re lucky, we have witnessed extraordinary acts of selflessness and teamwork. To me, the Río Celeste community’s approach to emergency fundraising is right at the top of that list. Despite each family’s individual suffering, they’ve kept their eye on the big picture. They’ve remembered that they must all cross this river together. That’s not just smart, and right, and realistic. It’s also the foundation for a whole new world, don’t you think?

I hope you’ll check out what they’re up to, here. Not just because they need and deserve our help – but also because the rest of us need and deserve this kind of inspiration.

What would the future look like if we all pulled together like Bijagua?

Let’s find out.

I run the virtual volunteer community Costa Rica Corps and am the co-founder of the new, bilingual media organization El Colectivo 506. I also work as a freelance grantwriter, fundraiser, and communications coach, and write essays, articles and books. I live in San José with my husband and daughter. Sign up at top right to receive an essay in your inbox each Sunday morning: a chance to dominguear together (a lovely word that literally means, “to Sunday,” and describes a leisurely trip or ramble). We’ll explore a project, changemaker, community, or idea I’ve come across, or just watch the world go by. See you next Sunday!

No habría película: The value of obvious errors

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My seven-year-old daughter shares my dislike of those moments in a movie when things start going wrong. When the hero decides to explore the spooky basement, or an argument starts to brew, or (her least favorite) kids start doing something that could get them in trouble. Sometimes she even holds up her hands to her ears to block out the sounds, her eyes still fixed on the screen in fascination. She can watch superheroes confront the scariest villains without blinking an eye, but a kid tracking mud through the house will send her scurrying for the exit.

After watching her develop this habit, I realized where it came from: in the Harry Potter books, for example, I always wish I could just keep reading about the lovely holiday feasts and trips to Hogsmeade, without dark forces distracting from the fun. I get especially frustrated when someone does something that obviously puts them in danger or will otherwise turn out badly. In other words, I like my characters risk-adverse, or at least highly sensible, and I somehow passed on that predilection to my kid.

However, she is also her father’s daughter, and she’s learning from him. We watched a movie together the other day where the protagonist ignores strict instructions not to explore a certain part of the castle, and when I complained at this hard-hardedness, my daughter half-turned her head in my direction and said dismissively, “Mamá. No habría película.”

There’d be no movie. If our heroine had been sensible, we wouldn’t be watching this.

It’s something my husband says all the time. Since my daughter reminded me of it over the weekend, I’ve been thinking that maybe I need to say it to myself a bit more often in my daily life.

Why am I having to learn certain life lessons again, and again, and again? If it had been easier, pues, no habría película.

Why didn’t I make a smarter move, years ago, that would have changed the way certain things turned out? No habría película.

I’m going to try making this my mantra the next time I think to myself, “If only I’d…” It’s not a Costa Rican phrase, but of course, the matter-of-factness behind it is quintessentially tico. Shame spirals are not too popular here, which is, I think, why at least some of the country’s population wears Costa Rica’s official religion rather lightly.

Anyway, that’s my deep thought for the day. Does it ring true for you?

Featured image from Mi Costa Rica de Antaño’s piece on the Cine Magaly, which I highly recommend! Read it here.

I’m a writer in San José, Costa Rica, on a year-long quest to share daily posts on inspiring people, places and ideas from my adopted home as a kind of tonic during a rough time in the world. Sign up (top right of this page) to receive a little dose of inspiration every weekday in your mailbox; tell a friend; check out past posts; learn how to join my Overwhelmed Writers’ League, every Saturday at 1 pm EST; and please connect with me on Instagram or Facebook! To learn more about how to support Costa Rica during the crisis, visit my COVID-19 section – or for ways to enjoy Costa Rica from afar, visit Virtual Costa Rica.

 

Open the ocean

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I love sharing music on Fridays, when I can. Here’s a recent recording from Costa Rica that’s emblematic of our times.

“Open the Ocean,” released this week by Earthstrong, pleads with the Costa Rican government to fully open the country’s beaches. Whether or not you agree with the lyrics, the song – like so much of the art being created now – will be an interesting reminder, in the years to come, about what 2020 was really like.

Wishing you a wonderful weekend.

The unvisited spot

Posted on by stanleyobando

On this Travel Thursday, I’m thinking about places I’ve yet to see in Costa Rica. I don’t know about you, but the enforced lack of travel this year has made me even more motivated to plan a visit to those places as health regulations allow.

One of mine is San Vito, a valley town in southern Costa Rica. I’ve always been fascinated with the town’s unique place in the history of Costa Rican immigration: it was a government-sponsored relocation spot for many Italians who first came to Costa Rica to work on the railways.

I’m eager to take a stroll around San Vito, learn more about its interesting history and, yes, try to sniff out some Italian food. What are the new spots you want to explore, when you can?

(Image by user Jarib, via Shutterstock.)

I’m a writer in San José, Costa Rica, on a year-long quest to share daily posts on inspiring people, places and ideas from my adopted home as a kind of tonic during a rough time in the world. Sign up (top right of this page) to receive a little dose of inspiration every weekday in your mailbox; tell a friend; check out past posts; learn how to join my Overwhelmed Writers’ League, every Saturday at 1 pm EST; and please connect with me on Instagram or Facebook! To learn more about how to support Costa Rica during the crisis, visit my COVID-19 section – or for ways to enjoy Costa Rica from afar, visit Virtual Costa Rica.

A motherlode of inspiration

Posted on by stanleyobando

This piece came out elsewhere on Saturday, but it’s just so good that I want to make sure no one misses it and that it’s officially a part of the Daily Boost as well.

Here’s what my dear friend Pip Kelly Varela, co-owner of a lovely B&B in northern Costa Rica, wrote for my Five Questions 2020 project this past Mother’s Day (August 15th) about the results of an effort I first featured last week. This beautiful story will be lifting my spirits for many months to come, and probably forever. Read on:

Everything has changed this year. My husband and I run a tourism business, Casitas Tenorio B&B, in rural northern Costa Rica. At the start of 2020, I was doing what a lot of parents do: switching my brain into entrepreneur mode when my two daughters went off to school every morning, and then juggling between the two modes as soon as they returned. Activities, classes, our team at the business, our community of Bijagua, the needs of our guests and the needs of the animals on our farm. A demanding routine, but one that filled my husband and me with joy and satisfaction.

With the pandemic, that juggling mode became a 24-hour affair. Costa Rica entered “Season Zero” — borders closed, no tourists of any kind, in a country where tourism is the leading source of income — and, of course, school was cancelled. Now my focus switches every few minutes, it seems like, between my daughters and the business and community we are trying to sustain and rebuild. We have no income between us, and it has been like this for five months. We have spent all our savings. And we are not alone: a whole country full of small enterprises like ours is in the same boat.

The whole thing has made me even more sensitive to how hard it is for moms who are doing this juggling act under even more stress than me. When I lie awake at night worrying about how we’ll keep our family afloat, I know there are so many other mothers around me in my town, and beyond, doing the same. So when I saw that eight women from Bijagua had joined forces to create a Mother’s Day gift box, each woman contributing something special that she makes — from homemade candy and bread to hand-crafted gifts — I wanted to do whatever I could to help them achieve their dream, sell some boxes, and have some income for their families.

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Through our B&B we’ve met so many people who love Costa Rica and Bijagua, but don’t live here and wouldn’t be able to receive a gift themselves. So I posted on our B&B’s social media inviting people to “pay it forward” via PayPal, buying a box for $15 that we would then deliver to a mother in Bijagua.

When I posted this, there were only two days for people to order these in time for the boxes to be made by Mother’s Day, which Costa Rica celebrates on August 15th. I hoped that the women might sell 10 or 20 boxes through this scheme.

They sold 80.

That’s $1,200. I can barely explain the impact of that support on these families — support sent from around the world to a community that has lost almost all of its income during the suspension of tourism. It’s enough to ease a lot of sleepless nights. Some of the women had to hire additional women to help meet the demand, thus generating income for even more families. Kids were enlisted to help out, too, including my own.

I spent the day before Mother’s Day and part of Mother’s Day itself helping deliver the gift boxes all over town. Imagine two days of torrential tropical rains, and tears almost as copious! We made videos of the women showing off their handmade gifts in their kitchens: Lilliam Alpizar, Miriam Barrantes, Maryuri Soto, Kathy Soto, Maria Luisa, Karina Vargas, Nelsy Rodriguez and Jessica Morera. We boxed and loaded and drove through puddles to house after house. We put these gifts, which were full of treats but really full of love from all around the world, into the hands of women who have faced all kinds of challenges over the past six months (and in many cases, throughout the years before 2020 even arrived). Pregnant women. Mothers of newborn babies. Great-grandmothers.

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I saw tears of joy and shocked expressions when they realized that someone cared enough to do this for them. I met a lot of dogs. I encountered, as anyone who knows Costa Rica will understand, lots of funny directions: for example, “the second house after the hibiscus that’s painted the same color as wine.” (White or red?) We drove and delivered for 13 hours, down dirt roads aplenty and tiny lanes.

With each gift, we gave a certificate showing the recipient who had purchased the box for her. The grateful moms sent audios and WhatsApp messages to the women, often thousands of miles away, who had made their gift possible. Usually, the recipient didn’t know the donor, and a new friendship was made. a smile on the faces of dozens and dozens of mothers. Sometimes, though, when I told them who’d sent the gift, I was met with a happy cry of recognition. For example, Peace Corps Volunteers who served in our town more than 10 years ago bought boxes as a surprise for the families they’d known.

I haven’t cried so much in a long time. By the time we were done, our whole town was abuzz with excitement and love.

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What I learned this Mother’s Day in Bijagua, and want other people to know when they need help during this international crisis, is this: never underestimate the human spirit, or the need to feel part of a community. I would never have thought that in just two days, 80 people around the world would buy Mother’s Day boxes for people who, in many cases, they may never meet. I think they did it because we all want to feel part of something bigger than we are, whether that’s the town of Bijagua, or the country of Costa Rica, or a global community of mothers.

Sometimes, it’s just about opening the door and letting all that goodwill come through.

Five Questions 2020 is a short survey that’s collecting responses from people around the world about what they’ve learned to do, realized, or created during the year 2020. Participate by filling out the survey, or contact Katherine Stanley Obando at kstan.cr@gmail.com to recommend someone I should interview. Please follow the Five Questions 2020 project on Medium.

Pip Kelly Varela is the co-owner of Casitas Tenorio B&B, an award-winning rural tourism enterprise in Bijagua, Costa Rica. She is already planning a Christmas project for Bijagua microentrepreneurs. To donate, visit https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/Casitastenorio.

 

Remember the climate crisis? These Costa Rican leaders sure do

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A couple of weeks ago, El Faro, an incredible media organization in El Salvador that I’ve long admired, contacted me and asked me to write a piece about the state of climate change mitigation efforts in Costa Rica. I am pleased to share it here because I think it will truly give you a boost to read about these incredible leaders, all 40 or under, who are shaping the future of transportation and urban development in Costa Rica.

As they observe in the piece, the COVID-19 crisis has created new challenges for environmentalists and sustainable living advocates, but it has also opened doors. I hope you’ll check it out here!

I’m a writer in San José, Costa Rica, on a year-long quest to share daily posts on inspiring people, places and ideas from my adopted home as a kind of tonic during a rough time in the world. Sign up (top right of this page) to receive a little dose of inspiration every weekday in your mailbox; tell a friend; check out past posts; learn how to join my Overwhelmed Writers’ League, every Saturday at 1 pm EST; and please connect with me on Instagram or Facebook! To learn more about how to support Costa Rica during the crisis, visit my COVID-19 section – or for ways to enjoy Costa Rica from afar, visit Virtual Costa Rica.