Volunteering in Costa Rica

I was selected by Youth Challenge International (YCI) to go and work in remote areas of Costa Rica for twelve weeks. There were fifty Canadian youth in total, and for most of us, this would be our first experience working on a development project. It took eight months of preparation (fund-raising, physical training, language training and vaccinations) before we left Canada to go into the field in Costa Rica. In addition to the cultural challenges, the climate challenges, the challenges of group life and the demands of development work, I was met with the challenges of being a person with a disability. I use a walker and I have a slight speech impairment. Being the first person with a mobility disability on the program, I was facing a lot of unknowns. The YCI coordinator and staff were not scared off by my disability. Instead,  they were eager to see how disability issues would fit into YCI’s vision of international cooperation.

Our project group consisted of fourteen people (eleven participants and three staff members) from four countries including Canada, Costa Rica, English Guyana and Australia. None of us had met before. Our first community project was to construct a dormitory out of prefabricated material. We were working and living in a remote community of 400 people situated on the Southwest coast of Costa Rica for six weeks. The most frustrating issue I had to deal with was the extended length of time taken up by my daily routine. Showering took ten times as long because of the way things were set up. Living in such a remote community meant making do with what was available. The extended length of time spent on aspects of my personal care took away from spending time with both my group and the community. As a result, it took longer for us to get to know each other. On the third day after our arrival, I spoke to my staff and the participants about the kind of support I needed. The main reason for this meeting was to minimize group apprehension surrounding my disability.

I wanted to make people feel comfortable about asking questions. More importantly, however, I wanted to ensure that I would be seen as a co-participant capable of working and contributing to the project. The next twelve weeks were among the most frustrating, yet the most rewarding of my life. On my first walk through the community itself, I was met with wild-eyed stares. People came running out of their houses to watch how I walked. They turned away when I said, “Hi.” One of the younger children went running back to my group, obviously sent by his nervous parents, yelling, “He has escaped! Come and get him!”

Within a week the community was starting to become comfortable around me. It was the children at first, whose curiosity about my walker overcame their fear. Soon they were playing games with me, amused that I could not climb up into the tree after them. They would assist with pushing my walker over the soft sand of the beach, laughing when I purposely let go and fell to my knees. The adults approached me with a bit more caution, often asking the other participants questions that they should have been asking me.

The issue of being seen as a full participant of the group at the same time as needing physical support was difficult to overcome. I often had to be especially vocal to ensure I was included when responsibilities were being delegated. Much of the work involved physical labor. However, I found I could do much of the light physical labor, such as clearing the land-site and laying down rocks for the floor. I also took care of much of the administrative duties, such as accounting for all the tools at the end of each day and doing the books for our finances. The more outgoing I was in taking on different duties, the more the group accepted me as a co-worker, and with that came less of a focus on the assistance I needed to get around. I was forced to be creative when it came to taking on tasks I had never done before. Often a lot of time and energy was spent on figuring out how to do something before actually doing it. This was frustrating for both me and my co-participants, but we had to learn to be patient with one another, even on the bad days!

I gained the experience of living and working within a group of people whom I did not know before starting. We had to respect each other’s space. As someone with a disability, I had to learn how to accept more assistance than I was used to because of the climate and terrain; yet I had to maintain my own sense of independence and self-worth. To do this, I learned how to offer organizational support, as well as moral and emotional support. In this way we all learned how to accept my disability as being just another part of group-life. On our last day, I was introduced to a community member with Down’s Syndrome who was eighteen years old. Her parents spoke to me of her isolation. We had never seen her during the whole time that we were there. I think her parents were starting to realize that she should get out more often. I hope my presence encouraged this to happen.