Costa Rica Post 2 ...a long ways from Denver
Mike and I met a really nice man named Kevin who has lived here in Puerto Viejo his entire life. Only in 2008 were the roads here paved as more and more ex-pats moved in to build homes and make lives here and back 40 years ago it took over a week to travel here from San Jose. Kevin has been a really cool guy to us and I'm not really sure why, he hasn't gotten much out of the friendship other than a bunch of questions from me and Mike, he has been showing us around and tapping us in to best the little micro towns here have to offer us. But just yesterday he said something to Mike that I just can't get out of my head. He was being so nice, telling Mike how great it was meeting him etc, but he finished by asking, "you going home right?" I thought he meant to our accommodations for the night, but after some linguistic deciphering Mike realized he meant back to the USA. Every local talks about the paving of the road, the ex-pats talk about with a sense of civic pride, and the local latino and afro populations we have spoken with have all mentioned it always with an emphasis on how they didn't really need it and Kevin actually just plain came out and said it was for the white people, but here 7 years later it still feels like a hot topic, or maybe just a concrete (no pun intended) representation of how things here have changed so much. It made me feel bad knowing locals worry that vacationers are going to return to buy property and settle down, and I wonder should it make me feel bad? Those of you who know me well, know that white privilege, white guilt, and white savior complex are some of my favorite discussion topics due to the fact that they are all things I personally grapple with, not in the basic understanding of the terms, but in how to live as a white person with these being some major realities of the world in which we live. Just because I am aware doesn't mean they go away, nor does it mean I am the white girl exception to these social constructs. So Kevin's question got me thinking...
Students of life, that's all any of us really are, destined to matriculate only on to the next bewildering level of being human. That is why travel has always seemed to inspire me. It gives one a jolt of energy, a strong and often quick dose of lives lived outside the places from which we originally come. I think too, traveling plays in to this notion and internal desire to return to some kind of nomadic lifestyle that I think so many humans long for on a primitive and even biological level. That is how the human race began isn't it? As nomadic bands? And I subscribe to the theory that the discovery and development of agriculture, that which allowed us as a species to settle down and "evolve" away from nomadic life, was really the beginning of many of the world's problems that affect us today: I am talking about nationalistic and religious warfare on a massive scale, disease, economic hierarchy, poverty, oppression, environmental degradation etc. I will also be one of the first to say many good things came from this evolution as well, things like art, culture, philosophy, mathematics, astronomy, government and technology. And I do not argue with the fact that it would have been impossible for our first people to have foreseen all the problems (and benefits for that matter) that could come thousands of years down the road and so I am not arguing that we all leave life behind and become nomads nor am I saying that this as an issue that can be made black or white, but something that just is so. For every action, there is a reaction; this is true in the social world as well as the biological and environmental, it is all connected. We would never get to all the good stuff, if we didn't have the bad. My goal here is not to give an anthropology lesson, and I should be careful to paraphrase the conclusions I came to based on my limited education on this subject; which consisted of only two, yet very rich, college courses on the subject of physical and cultural anthropology. But that is what I walked away with after taking it in through my lens and personal critical thought process. My point is to say (in way too many opinionated words I am sure) that I think all of us on some level, both conscious and unconscious, are searching and trying to identify with something we once were, and for some of us traveling helps us to satiate that longing.
I think too, travel can make us feel more culturally rich, helping to add meaning and sense of place to our own personal tapestries of life. It is often said that America lacks a culture, and as an American I tend take offense to that blanket sentiment, but I do personally feel our culture lacks a depth or an understanding that many of us seek to find among other cultures during our travels, all the while believing that it is adding to our tapestry. I think it is important to note here that this all comes with a certain set of privileges: I can afford to have this lifestyle, meaning I have the support and education and means and the freedom not only to have these thoughts and desires, but even more so to act upon them. Therefore traveling presents some really interesting questions for me about social responsibility, specifically related to traveling internationally. The more I travel, and the more people I talk to, the more questions I have about the authenticity of the tapestry I am creating and who and what I might be exploiting in order to weave it? I certainly don't have the answer, I am really just beginning to be able to frame the question.
I talked earlier about a longing that I believe we all have to see the world and be a bit more nomadic, and yet we don't see those struggling to just survive making travel a huge priority in life. For obvious reasons this would not be on the minds of most of the world's citizens due to complete lack of resources and often education, and yet in other economically developed nations travel is seen as a right of passage (New Zealand, Australia, Germany to name a few) and encouraged beyond anything we see here in the United States. We all take our place somewhere on this spectrum and I just want to understand the spaces we take up, I want to be able to see it from all sides; the tourist, the guides, the ex-pats, and the locals. I would like to understand the economic vs. social cultural impacts that both travelers and ex-pats have enforced in the places they choose to inhabit whether that be temporarily or permanently. I think answers and insights into the questions I have may illuminate for me what comes next in my life, and how I want to go about doing it. I have often dreamed of an ex-pat lifestyle, but is that right? And how does one resolve their personal dreams, goals and desires with that of the social responsibilities I believe we all have to one another and our environment? How can I act for myself, while also acting for others, or at the very least without doing harm to others?
“Very few beings really seek knowledge in this world. Mortal or immortal, few really ask. On the contrary, they try to wring from the unknown the answers they have already shaped in their own minds -- justifications, confirmations, forms of consolation without which they can't go on. To really ask is to open the door to the whirlwind. The answer may annihilate the question and the questioner.”
― Anne Rice, The Vampire Lestat
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