Pura Vida

Travel Stories: When life as a teacher at Escuela Otto Kopper takes yet another wild and embarrassing turn, Cara O'Flynn learns to deal with it Costa Rican-style

07.31.01 | 12:59 AM ET

The P.T.A. meeting was in a half-hour, so I chewed a couple of Pepto-Bismol tablets. It was a Friday night and I was nursing a stomachache, but I knew if I stayed home to rest, the other teachers would think I was at a discoteca with my friends, light beer in hand. The afternoon rain turned to drizzle as I walked to meet the other teachers, Katia, Hilda, and Nani, and the principal, Don Federico. We squeezed into Don Federico’s covered jeep and arrived five minutes later at Escuela Otto Kopper, my school in Grecia, Costa Rica.

Across the street at the community center, kids, teens, and the men who preyed on teenage girls hung out. We parked in front and a few students squealed our names, rushed over to kiss our cheeks, and raced back to the center’s front steps. Don Federico unlocked the school’s gate and we proceeded to the cafeteria, a flimsy structure with a rusted tin roof, red cement floor, and wood-burning stove. Eight parents had lined up two picnic tables and were arranging the food. Discussion revolved around raising funds to build more classrooms. Within minutes, it changed to joke-telling. Not understanding many of the jokes and not finding those I could understand all that funny, I felt out of place. That was nothing new.

I went to Costa Rica as a volunteer on assignment to teach English in an underprivileged primary school. My home for the year was Grecia, a large farming town in the mountains northwest of San José. I lived with the former superintendent of schools, her parents, and her son.

Though my host family was well-off and had a spacious home in the center of town, the school where I taught was in San Vicente, Grecia’s poorest district. Located on the side of a valley of coffee and sugarcane plantations, the community consisted of three dead-end streets threaded by one longer dead end. Wooden and cement shacks lined each street. My host family had warned I’d be robbed or raped on the desolate road that led to the village, but most of the people I met in San Vicente were friendly and kind. Escuela Otto Kopper sat in the center of the village and was small, four classrooms and a separate cafeteria for kindergarten through sixth grade. Because all 110 students couldn’t fit, they came in half-day shifts.

I had known I was in over my head since the first day of classes three months earlier. A fifteen-year-old third grader. An eleven-year-old first grader who drank and smoked with twelve-year-old fifth graders. My only teaching experience, as an assistant for an adult English as a Second Language class in central Maine, didn’t give me much to draw from. So I tried not to be offended when my mischievous second graders accused me of not knowing English. I’d reprimanded them so much in Spanish we spent two weeks too long on the fruits and vegetables unit. And I tolerated moments like the time the fourth-grade boys held their desks above their heads for half a class. Despite their behavioral shortcomings and my inability to control them, my students also gave me the sweetest gifts, like the dirty squeeze toys they found in the trash and the kisses they demanded at the beginning of each class.

So while the parents told their stock of jokes, I ate and ate to pass the time. I ate even though I doubted the food had been prepared in sparkling kitchens—most Costa Ricans, like my host family, don’t seem to follow the rigid food safety instructions drilled into most Americans. Meat cooked for lunch gets left on the stove until evening, despite the sweltering heat. If you want an afternoon snack, just turn on the pilot and reheat. I’d come to think of it this way: If something tasted good, then it was. And with a spread of tamales, picadillo with fresh-made tortillas, and hot tortilla chips with refried beans, I couldn’t resist.

When the plates were cleared, I came to regret my gluttony. I had forgotten my afternoon dyspepsia and it became clear that the Pepto-Bismol’s effects were wearing off. I’m not the kind of person who has any control over when and where they vomit, so I asked Don Federico if he knew the number to call a taxi. I was anxious about leaving the school’s locked grounds to use the pay phone, home base of the men who tormented me daily with dirty catcalls, but I knew I had no choice.

“Ahorita,” Don Federico said, motioning for me to wait. I knew from experience that ahorita could mean anywhere from five minutes to several hours. It was sooner than ahora, but I needed to leave ya. I was used to not being taken seriously by teachers and students alike, but if there ever were a time to listen, this was it.

Resigned to waiting, I walked outside for some fresh air. Almost immediately, I puked the tamales and picadillo. I sped up the hill to the bathroom on the side of the school and almost cried when I saw the padlocked door. I was trapped.

Doña Cecilia, the janitor, was outside the cafeteria and had seen me throw up. “¡Niña!” she called out. A second later, Elizania, one of my third graders, waved her hands between the gate’s bars, calling “¡Ticher!” I looked down at Cecilia and back up at Elizania, held up one finger, and expelled the rest of my stomach’s contents in a projectile flood.

When I finished, Cecilia was holding my hair back and moaning, “Ay, pobrecita.” A small crowd had gathered at the cafeteria’s entrance. Car keys in hand, Don Federico approached, followed by the other teachers. Though my first instinct was to run into a nearby cow pasture and never return, I apologized feebly. They said no big deal, these things happen, and dropped me at home. There, my host grandmother brewed me chamomile tea with some extra leaves she picked in the backyard to calm my stomach.

I dreaded going to school on Monday, fearing everyone would have heard. I was accustomed to lessons interrupted by the details of the new acne eruption on my chin or questions such as, “Niña, do you have pubic hair?” so I figured this was prime material. There was a small population of students who refused to believe that I didn’t commute from the United States each day in a spaceship, and I could only imagine where this would take them. I pictured the story mutating into something like, “La ticher yakked on Don Federico because he canceled her class again to plan the staff trip to the beach.” But to my surprise, no one said anything about it, ever.

Costa Ricans have a phrase, pura vida, which means “pure life.” It’s almost a mantra, used as both an informal greeting and an adjective that roughly translates to English as “cool.” After three months of trying to get brawling first graders to mutter “I am happy,” this perspective was all I had left to rely on. So yes, I barfed on school grounds before an audience of students and fellow teachers. Pura vida.

Tags: Teaching English, Voluntourism, Central America, Costa Rica

Cara O’Flynn lives and writes in New York City.

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