talamanca

My husband was watching Channel 7’s midday news on Saturday when he shouted to me, “Come see this!”

I was glad he did. The show was covering a story that took me some time to wrap my head around, thanks in no small part to the biases and preconceptions messing around in my brain. The headline said that indigenous communities in Talamanca, in southeastern Costa Rica, had donated huge amounts of food to professional female soccer players. I kept thinking, “Isn’t it the other way around?”

No. No, it’s not. A group of Talamanca women spent 10 weeks going door to door in their communities, on foot and by boat, to collect more than 10 tons of yuca, plátano, chayote, ayote, chile dulce, culantro coyote, pejibaye, limón, malanga, caña de azúcar, mamón chino, fruta de pan, naranja, toronja, carambola and cacao. And others. But you get the idea.

They donated the food to women soccer players who are having trouble making ends meet during the COVID-19 crisis and who, in many cases, have themselves been voices for solidarity and philanthropy during this difficult time. (Check out this Boost from July.)

“We don’t have much moey, but that’s no reason not to show solidarity and share the little we have with people having a hard time,” community Edith Villanueva told Channel 7. “This country has helped us during our toughest times – during floods and earthquakes and now during the pandemic… so we thought we could show our thanks to Costa Rica by donating part of our harvests.”

Why soccer players? She said they know that these women practice all day long, holding down jobs and studying in many cases, and have been affected economically just like others in Costa Rica.

This isn’t the first time Talamanca’s indigenous communities have taken my breath away with their philanthropic efforts. When Hurricane Otto devastated northern Costa Rica, they gathered food and sent it all the way across the country to help those in need.

Once again, this region is giving us a master class in what it means to stand with others.

All images from Vice President Epsy Campbell’s public Facebook profile.

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.

As someone who grew up in cold climates, I still find the idea of taking the beach for granted to be a little bit strange. There’s a part of me that is incredulous every time my toes hit the sand. However, 15 years in Costa Rica has also allowed me to glimpse what it’s like when the beach is just a short trip away – or, for some, a part of every single day.

This past Monday, the first day in months that coastal residents could access the beach (from 5 to 8 am, weekdays only), I saw a lot of posts from around the country expressing the pure joy that families, surfers, and others felt when they were finally reunited with the ocean. “We’ll never take this for granted again,” many wrote.

When I asked earlier this week what readers would like to see during the four final months of this year of the Daily Boost, a couple of people said, “Please share mouthwatering beach and travel scenes so we can daydream about the future.” Here’s one such, a particularly delectable shot by Cris Young showing a point between Puerto Viejo and Manzanillo on the Caribbean coast. At the moment, it’s almost as distant a dream for me, in San José, as for someone a plane flight or two away.

We gaze at it, thinking to ourselves, we’ll never take it for granted again. Almost as soon as the words pass through our brain, we hope that they are true. We also wonder what they actually mean. For me, at least, part of what they mean is that I will pay more attention to the people who have now dipped their toes in the ocean again, those who notice its health and illnesses, those who have been telling us for years how to take better care of it.

One of the many words that keeps coming up for me during this crisis is “attention.” In Spanish, you “put” it. In English, you “pay” it, which I think is even more powerful. During these weeks when focusing our own attention is sometimes like chasing a swarm of flies around a room, we have come to understand how valuable our attention truly is. We notice the golden coins clinking by, sometimes in ways that matter, sometimes in silly ways. We have started, perhaps, to notice more often where we spend it, and how important that is.

Maybe that’s a start. Wishing you a safe weekend, and some happy dreams of warm waters.

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; and please connect with me on Instagram or Facebook! If you want to learn more about how to support Costa Rica during the crisis, visit my COVID-19 section, updated regularly – or for ways to enjoy Costa Rica from afar, visit Virtual Costa Rica.