A Grotty Old Soccer Ball & A Few Chickens
It was February 2016 in Puerto Viejo, Costa Rica. I was 7 months pregnant, riding a bike up the road in the picture. I was basking in feeling the sun on my body, and the smell of the Caribbean Sea on the breeze. Often as I biked up that road I would see children playing with a grotty old soccer ball on that rocky dirt track. There was a row of small scruffy houses shooting off at an angle on a dead-end trail. They were built of cement block and wood with tin roofs. Chickens roamed and pecked about the houses. There was a rusty old bike leaning against a post.
All I could think was how rich the families who lived there were, rich to wake up to warm weather every day, rich to wake up to fruit trees in their back yards and fish in the sea just a few steps from home, rich for the jungle teeming with wild life steps behind their shabby little homes, rich to never know the bite of cold, rich to never feel the strain of debt, rich to have realistic expectations about their children’s futures. And rich to take for granted that their grand children would likely always live just a stone’s throw from them, rich to be able to walk to work and be home for supper with family, rich for not having to participate in the materialistic, debt laden, stress inducing North American way of life.
By North American standards those children live in poverty, without opportunity. Even by Costa Rican standards those families were poor. And I’m not advocating lack. But that day I felt that there were many different categories of poverty, and while these families certainly knew material poverty, I wondered if they experienced the special kind of spiritual poverty that we in the developed world don’t seem to know we live in.
What makes a child who is growing up in a developing country, who is well fed and sun kissed, who’s parents love him and who leads a relaxed pace of life less fortunate than a child who is raised in North America? Why is that child less blessed than the child who is shuttled from pillar to post, from day-care to extra curricular, who spends 2 hours tops every day with their parents and more time with paid care givers than his own family? Is the North American child more fortunate? And if so, what makes him so? Is it his opportunity to go to university, or the amount of Minecraft he plays daily, or the structured piano lessons or soccer nights? Is the North American child’s future going to be a happier one? And I wonder why we as parents feel so driven to make sure our children “have it all.”
The absence of family togetherness, the want for close relationships, presence of stress, the fear of not providing, the exhaustion from striving for an unclear promise, the resentment of expectations placed on us by society; to have a nice house, the right furnishings, the latest tech gadgets, clean bathrooms, fresh paint, a tidy flower bed, these are all feelings that I am familiar with. These are feelings of poverty that I have felt often, while sitting inside my 2000 square foot bungalow complete with ensuite, modern electronics and enough toys to trip over and break a neck on. Though my material cup overfloweth, my spiritual cup has often run dry living in my North American paradise of choice and opportunity.
But that day in Puerto Viejo, all I felt was rich. I felt rich because the sun was kissing my skin, and the wind was blowing my hair. During those months we lived in a 2 room flat containing a tiny kitchen and bathroom and enough beds for our entire family. We had no car. All our time was spent outside, with no toys, and no deadlines, and no expectations other than a little home-school work and a little swimming. It was a very rich winter indeed.
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