COLUMN: From Costa Rica, the light that is within us

The dog slept inside a large tire near the front gate. At night, with trucks and motorcycles racing through the darkness in the foothills of the Talamanca Mountains, he kept his ears vigilant to the sounds of the city on the other side of the wall.

His name was Roberto, but everyone called him “Bob.’’ He guarded and patrolled the sacred ground of a mission that was once an old coffee plantation beneath a canopy of banana trees.  

For the past six years, Bob has been a fan favorite during the summer, when churches from the United States travel to the Costa Rica Mission Projects center (CRMP) in San Isidro to roll up their collective sleeves and change lives, including their own.

I spent eight days there last week with two of my sons, Ed and Jake. We were part of a 20-member mission team from Macon’s Vineville United Methodist. Church groups from Georgia and North Carolina were also there with us.

We slept in bunks, worshiped at local churches, drank enough Costa Rican coffee to stay awake until Labor Day and dined on rice and beans at almost every meal. We took photographs of toucans and spider monkeys and survived an intense, sudden storm that knocked down trees after lunch one afternoon. 

While going through customs at the airport in San Jose, nearly 1,600 miles from home, I ran into an old friend from Macon. It’s a small world. That’s why you should always behave.

On the final leg of our trip,  we watched a beautiful sunset on a hill high above the Pacific Ocean. We were having dinner at El Avion,  a restaurant in Manuel Antonio National Park built around the Fairchild C-123 airplane used in the CIA/Iran-Contra affair. 

And, for someone who is not fond of heights, I was persuaded to go zip lining through the Uvita rain forest … so this old guy can now check that off his bucket list.

Our group’s interactions alternated between broken English and broken Spanish. We got to know Wil Bailey, the director of CRMP, who navigated us through our daily work and play schedule. We celebrated the 48th wedding anniversary of Hugo and his wife, Fani, who served us our daily staple of rice and beans with generous helpings of fresh plantains, mango, papaya, cantaloupe and watermelons. 

We became fast friends with our foreman, Pedro, who showed us what to do, how to do it and introduced us to a few Spanish words we will likely be repeating for the rest of our lives. 

Our group will never forget Chima, the pastor of the Vida Church, his wife, Yanci, and their three children. Every morning, we walked four blocks to work on their parsonage. We painted walls, poured concrete, did electrical wiring and sanded doors. 

The family’s command of English was limited, but kindness is the universal language. We could see the deep gratitude in their eyes. They shared corn from their garden and coconuts from trees in their backyard. Pedro sliced them with a machete and passed around straws to sip from nature’s original juice box.

And then there was irresistible Bob. How can you not love a dog named Bob? His face looked like he had chased a parked car. He reminded me of my first dog as a child, a boxer named Elvira.

Bob was 9 years old, which is sesenta y tres (63) in Spanish dog years. He was not bilingual, but he knew just enough English to “work the room.’’ He would conveniently show up at meal time and nightly devotionals, circling the benches around the bonfire until every gringo had scratched him behind the ears.

It was telling that Bob slept in a pen inside walls designed to keep the outside world from encroaching. We were staying in a country where walls and fences surrounded almost every home and business. It was one of the most striking aspects of the trip, especially since walls are such a divisive issue in America.

In Costa Rica, part of it is territorial – it was once under Communist control – and some of it is cultural. There are burglar bars on many of the windows – even on the churches – and those who live there often construct the walls, gates and fences before they build their homes. The barriers are made of concrete, broken glass, sheet metal, barbed wire and razor wire.

The walls keep the bad guys out… and the dogs inside. I am convinced everyone in San Isidro had a yappy dog — and they all barked at us… in Spanish.

Until last week, my only connection with Costa Rica had been one of my former journalism students I taught at  Stratford. She was from the capital, San Jose, and would bring me coffee and chocolate treats after she returned home for a visit. She even got me a bright green baseball cap with the lettering “Costa Rica Pura Vida,’’ which I wore on the trip (and looked very much the part of a tourist, I’m sure).

Our mission team worked hard, toiling in the hot sun. Although we were assigned the duties of carpenters, painters, electricians and concrete mixers, we were there to “be the church.’’ 

We weren’t just building houses. We were building bridges.

There was no deadline pressure to finish our work in a week. It was a process. We picked up where the last group left off, then passed the baton to the group coming behind us. 

When we got tired, we rested. One afternoon, a few of us left the work site early to return to the mission and play with the children who attended the daycare. (The mission also had a counseling center and housing for young women attending the local university.)

Rather than come home with four days of smelly work clothes in our suitcases, we were given the option to donate them to the mission, which washed them and made them available to needy families. I gave up a few sentimental T-shirts, but that’s OK. Someone is now walking around San Isidro wearing a “Dunder Mifflin Paper Company: Scranton, Pa.’’ shirt from the TV show, “The Office.’’

Religion is central to the lives of people in that part of the world, who are mostly of the Catholic faith. Church services are often lengthy (three hours) and deeply spiritual. We were not compelled to preach or try to convert them. Sharing the gospel is not always about reading scripture and telling Bible stories, but being the “hands and feet of Jesus.’’

Poverty in Central America is really no different from what you see back home in Macon. For me, it was an affirmation that the mission field is as close as the end of our driveways. And the poor neighborhoods are often right next to the affluent ones. You don’t have to venture far to help someone.

I was prepared for the heat. Friends who had gone there before assured me that as many summers as I had endured in Macon, I was battle-tested. I doubled down on the value of sunscreen and electrolytes.

We were so close to the equator I felt like we could touch the sun. Not only was it hot, but the light there was different. It was brighter and more intense. 

My fervent prayer is to have brought some of that light back with me. 

Ed Grisamore is a longtime columnist in Macon and Middle Georgia. He was the recipient of the 2010 Will Rogers Humanitarian Award, presented by the National Society of Newspaper Columnists.