La Escuelita de Esperanza

Ok clearly a quick explanation is due:

Sorry I didn't update the blog as promised. After spending the first three days of my trip in a hostel with free, unlimited internet access, I began my work at a school in San Jose. At that point I started spending a majority of my time at school, hanging out with the other volunteer there (a sophomore from Middlebury) or sleeping. At the end of that week I left San Jose, and had no consistent internet access for the rest of my trip. So these posts are an attempt at piecing together this trip retrospectively.


I spent this week working at La Escuelita, a school in a neighborhood on the edge of San Jose. Neighborhood however might be a generous word; shantytown is honestly more descriptive. The school serves a neighborhood of illegal Nicaraguan immigrants who have formed a community on the fringes of a city which they are attempting to integrate themselves into. But their efforts are not hopeless; the older men in the community seemed to have some sort of jobs and Costa Rica is an enlightened country that allows anyone, regardless of their immigration status, to attend public schools. So despite appearances, the people here had the chance to do better than they could have in Nicaragua.




On the first day I had some difficulty finding the school, turned down some wrong streets, got attacked by some vicious, semi-wild dogs (that I kicked in the mouth to chase off), and almost turned back and gave up. But then a rainbow broke out over the whole valley that this neighborhood sits in and I knew I was going to be alright.

Essentially a one room schoolhouse. Each morning, from 9-11, and afternoon from 1-3 anywhere from 20-40 kids would cram themselves into this space, tearing apart this short-lived order and calm that I photographed before my final day at the school. The time with the kids was spent pretty informally, playing uno (with pretty fun La escuelita house rules that the kids had made up over time) doing lots and lots of jigsaw puzzles, reading dora the explorer (actually a great bilingual teaching tool, who knew?) and doing the occasional arts and crafts activities when we could grab the kid's interest.

Little Jose walked into school on the second day with his new toy: a syringe-less plunger.

I took it away from him and gave him a walrus puppet instead. I definitely preferred the second one, I hope he did too.


The kids never, ever, ever got bored of Uno, but I sure did. One remarkable thing about the kids in the school was how little they fought, bickered, or bullied each other in any way. You'd think in a tough neighborhood like this there would be a lot of hard kids, but I didn't see a raised fist all week. The kids in this circle probably ranged in age from 7-10 but there didn't seem to be any problems between them. One of the nicest aspects of working with Costa Rican kids in general as it turned out.

Milton playing Jenga. Costa Rican kids had the craziest names! Milton, Gixie, Disney, Brandon and many other super American (or just ridiculous -- Gixie??) names were popular despite the fact that the kids could not come even close to pronouncing them correctly. There were also a lot of names that began with S, Stephanie/Stephen etc. that were inevitably pronounced "eeeeeStephanie/eeeeeStephen" because Spanish speakers naturally put an e in such cases (escuela, estudiante and so on). By the end of the week, I couldn't help but do it.

eeeeStephanie herself, the very cute daughter of the school's teacher. I hung out with her a lot. Between the morning and afternoon sessions of school, we (me, Julie the Middlebury girl, Marci the teacher, eeeStephanie, and Victor the teacher's son) all went back to Marci's house for lunch. She cooked rice, beans and homemade tortillas every day and also made guacamole a few times. The guacamole was amazing, made from avocados picked in her backyard, but the tortillas were actually pretty awful. On the first day I helped her make them from scratch and figured that they would taste incredible. Instead they tasted exactly like flour and water, which is what they were. Costa Rican's strong dislike of spices, herbs, flavor and variety became quite a debilitating aspect of the country's cuisine. More on that later.

My parting shot as I walked away on Thursday afternoon. Overall the experience was a mixed one. It was amazing how quickly I became close with many of the kids and the last afternoon was a legitimately sad parting, especially with Victor and Stephanie who I had a lot of time with. On the other hand, I got the despairing sense that as soon as many of the kids finished primary school, which was all that was required them, and became teenagers, they would stop going to the Escuelita and become like any other shirtless, 14 year old drug addict I saw sitting on the train tracks day in and day out (who I didn't get to photograph unfortunately). It was a fun week, I improved my Spanish from non-existent to usable and I learned something about the enthusiasm and flexibility of young kids. But I also saw firsthand how these qualities can be so quickly lost without encouragement.


As a side note, it's interesting to see how much the tone of the blog has changed now that I'm writing it all after the fact rather than in the moment. Would have preferred it all in the moment but So it goes. Next post in a few hours probably.