5. NOTES ON LIVING IN CENTRAL AMERICA
Central America is a beautiful place. Full of rugged mountains and active volcanoes and steaming rain forests and deserted beaches and remote islands and exotic wild life like monkeys and sloths and jaguars and crocodiles and scarlet macaws and quetzals and incredibly poisonous snakes and tiny brightly colored frogs and whale sharks and spotted eagle rays and hundreds of miles of coral reefs and... well I could make a ten-page list and I'd still be writing.
The natural resources are abundant. Huge swaths of land are almost untouched by human hands. Indigenous people still live in a fashion close to the way they have lived for thousands of years. Expats flock from all over the world. Shots of tequila and local beers are in grand supply. Small villages offer a real sense of community. Farmers markets are packed with exotic fruits like mammon chino and guanabana and maracuya.
There are big expat communities all through Central America where English is spoken and Facebook groups offer real live support and quick connections in unfamiliar places. In fact, people are arriving in droves, fleeing the robotic lives of first world countries and looking for something more authentic. They are building homes and starting businesses in small mountain villages and sleepy beach towns. They are learning how to slow down and embrace Latin culture and life, which isn’t always easy to do.
I love Central America. I love how connected the people are. I love the town squares and marketplaces where everyone stops and says, “Hi!” and I love the outdoor restaurants where people you have never met sit at your table. I love the mix of people. I know people from South Africa, Israel, Venezuela, Columbia, Argentina, Australia, Germany, Belgium, Aruba, Spain, Italy, India, Norway, England, New Zealand. The list goes on and on. These people are my friends. It’s wonderful to have friends from around the world and when they sit down at the table together it makes for some really interesting conversation and brings a sense of how small the world is and how alike we all are. I have never found this back home.
Life is simple here. Well, there are expats who come from the US and Canada and try to bring their country with them, but it never goes over very well. It’s easy to come here and think that you can merge your way of living back home with the amazingness of all that is here. But you can't. I have seen it over and over again and I have tried. It just doesn’t work. Things are slower, MUCH slower. For example; It took me six weeks to open a bank account in Costa Rica!
Living here means changing.
You come here and see the slow pace of life and the way people chat at the check-out counter at the grocery store and how people take time to have lunch for two hours in the middle of the work day and, if you are here on vacation, that’s wonderful. But when you have to get something done because you LIVE here, it gets frustrating. You want to get your wifi hooked up in your new house and you drive a half hour into town through crazy traffic that includes bicycles carrying bed frames and motorcycles carrying entire families and oxen pulling carts full of palm berries and dogs sleeping in the street and when you finally get there, alive thankfully, the place is closed for lunch. From 12pm-2. And its 12:15.
So you have to learn to adjust.
Some people do and some don’t. Many leave before the two-year mark. They can’t handle the electricity going out and the inconsistency of the wifi and the slow service at restaurants. But it’s OK. They simply aren’t happy here and so they go home. It isn’t for everyone.
Adjusting to life in Central America means letting go of the need to be in control. It means letting go of the drive to be goal oriented. It means letting go of the need for everything to be done decently and in order. And making that change can be very freeing.
Don’t worry, ‘bout a ting. ‘Cause ever little ting gonna be alright.
We worry so much. We stress over things that seem to hold so much weight. We don’t sleep. We are depressed and filled with anxiety. And we are so stuck in that way of life that we cannot see the fullness of it. We feel that things need to change and so we move to a place with a slower lifestyle, but we are so entrenched in our way of living that we feel if we let go of it we will die.
And we will.
But the part of us that will die is that part that was killing us. And if we can allow it to go without too much kicking and screaming, we find we are finally living. We find we can breathe, maybe for the first time since we were children. We find we can belly laugh again. We find ourselves finally relaxing. Like when you didn’t even realize you were clenching your teeth and your fists and when you finally let them go the muscles hurt because you have been holding them that way for so long.
And then life begins to get into a routine. You walk on the beach in the morning and then you stop by your favorite little café and order your favorite coffee. You don’t worry about how long it takes them to make the coffee. You strike up a conversation with someone you’ve never met before and before you know it you are both laughing. And then the coffee comes and you are surprised at how fast it was (even though it took ten minutes) and you walk back out into the sunshine smiling from your eyes.
You drive through the crazy traffic and are amazed at the horse carrying a propane tank and you swerve around the dog sleeping in the sunshine in the middle of the road and you admire the sleeping dog’s peace of mind. And when you get to the internet place that’s closed for lunch and discover you have an hour and forty-five minutes to wait, you switch gears and head for that little food cart on the corner, the one that has the grilled meat on a stick. You park and get out of your car and you order one and have the Rasta guy slather it in hot sauce. Then you go for a walk and look at all the little shops you always missed before because you were driving past and you savor your snack like it was a lollipop. And you know if there is someone at your house waiting for you to get back, they will wait peacefully, because Latin American culture is like that.
We were putting cable in at our little house in Panama. And just when the guy had finished putting the dish on the roof and they were coming down to go inside and hook everything up, the electricity went out. So they waited for a bit, and when it didn’t come back on they made a phone call to see what was going on. They found out that the electric company was doing some work and it would be 4-5 hours before the power would be turned back on.
So they kicked up their feet, and they drank a soda and they chatted with us and taught us some Spanish and they enjoyed the afternoon. They only got paid by how many jobs they did each day, so the fact that they could not finish our job and move on to the next one was going to cost them money. But they didn’t mind. Life had offered them the chance to relax and they took it!
As much as I love the natural beauty and exotic feeling of countries like Mexico, Costa Rica, and Panama, it’s the ability to slow down and enjoy the little things in life that keeps me here. It’s the slowly allowing myself to die to the need to be in control that has made room for unexpected adventures and authentic joys. I am grateful for the change Latin America has demanded of me. It’s a change I will carry with me for the rest of my life, no matter where I may go. You can come to the beautiful mountains and beaches of this exotic isthmus thinking you will change your space into what you want it to be. But in the end, my friend, it will have its way with you!