The Right Thing to Do at the Bus Station

I have seen the man in the wheelchair making his way through the middle of the Alajuelan streets begging for change. His legs are withered and he seems to have a death wish hanging out in the very center of the streets amongst the crazy wreckless drivers like he does. It seems like a hard life, to be disabled and to have to beg in the middle of a Costa Rican street.

I am soft when it comes to situations like this and I know that I tend to get taken advantage of because of it. It’s hard for me to understand the behind-the-scenes dynamics that go into play when I see a disabled person begging for money. What’s the story on these people wandering around with major handicaps? Why isn’t everyone giving them money? Most of the time, it’s because they know something that I don’t know. Or because they’ve given money to the disabled person many times before. But as a newbie, in a new place, I feel touched. And I am gullible. I feel obligated to give them something because I have something to give them.

At the bus station, the first thing we did was buy water from a blind man at the concessions stand and then we took our place in line, waiting for the Alajuela to Atenas bus. I wondered if he was burdened by having to work at a concession stand as a blind man or grateful for the opportunity to support himself.

As I was considering this, there was a man in a green and white striped shirt  with a very odd gait who came up to us as we were waiting for the Atenas bus. He had a single gold Colon in his hand and couldn’t speak, but kind of grunted and tried to smile to get someone to give him money. The people in line looked straight ahead. They didn’t budge, didn’t respond at all. I could call them heartless, but again, I have to assume that they know something that I don’t know. The three of us stood there in line following the behavior of the people ahead of us and behind us. The disabled man wasn’t pushy, but it’s hard to watch someone being ignored like that. Again, I don’t know why they were ignoring him.

After he walked away, John went over and gave him money privately. Perhaps we are idiots, but we felt like it was the “right” thing to do

whatever that means. Shortly after the man came over soliciting for money, a big fat woman came over with an older man and a wooden box with a slit in the top and offered us some different colored pens or religious figures on trading cards in exchange for a donation. I bought two pens, one red and one pink, thinking they had red and pink ink (I was actually excited about the pink ink pen and gave it to Lydian, but it turned out to be a pink plastic pen with blue ink). The woman and her old man then left us. The other people in line turned around and looked at us (they wanted to see what real idiots looked like perhaps).

The two pens I purchased “by donation” from the old woman and her companion. They are pink and red, but the ink inside them is sadly, a very boring and typical shade of blue.

In China, there was a man who crawled onto the subway system, dragging his paralyzed legs behind him. He carried his donation container in his mouth and we didn’t give him any money. I still can’t say that I feel good about that decision, which was based on a journalistic documentary that we had watched about how people will prostitute these disabled individuals in China and India and have them go collect change in this dramatic way by pulling at heartstrings. Whether it was the “right” decision or not still remains up in the air for me. Something should be done for these people, I think. And then I wonder why no one has stepped forward to help. And then I think, probably somebody has…but these people are being used and exploited by other people to make a buck. But I don’t know for sure.

Through the window, I happened to see the woman and the old man who had been selling pens and Christian paraphernalia while standing in line waiting for the bus to Atenas.

Later, I saw the woman with the pens and the man sitting at a restaurant as I was sitting on the bus waiting for it to turn the corner. It was not incriminating that they were at the restaurant, just interesting and coincidental so I discretely snapped a photo of them. I figured that what they were doing with their pens and Jesus trading cards was more respectable (perhaps) than the man on the sidewalk who had tried to mug us earlier by throwing his change on the ground right in front of us and then trying to trip us. (He pursued Lydian and I until John came up behind him and said in English, “Uh-I don’t think so…” with a very menacing look that is universally understood in all languages to mean, “I’m going to kick your ass.”)

Ticos might also come up and spray mustard on your shirt to distract you while they steal your money.

So, basically, there were several people who solicited us for money in different ways at the bus station: a man begging, a woman selling worthless crap, and a man trying to mug us. We gave money to the beggar and to the woman selling pens and Jesus stuff, but we were ready to beat the crap out of the man on the street trying to mug us. I’m not sure if that makes us “good” or just “gullible”. A lot of times those two things are by nature, intertwined. Perhaps the good people are the people begging or maybe even the people mugging. It’s hard to say what motivates any of them to do what they do. I’d like to think that I “did the right thing” and all that bologna, but in reality, all the stuff that people do regarding money is silly. Giving it, receiving it, working for it, stealing it… perhaps it’s all sort of the same.

Anyway, it’s something to think about when I’m standing in the hot sun waiting at the bus station.

Lydian – Day 3 – Much walking, two buses, and seemingly dead leaf bugs.

Today was a day FILLED with walking, if I do say so myself. We did achieve our goals, in the end, but I’ll get to that.
As we exited the house and checked our bags to make sure that we had everything we needed, and suddenly noticed a “leaf” on the wall. No, it’s a bug! It wasn’t moving, but it seemed to like the lighter shade of yellow on the wall in opposition to the darker shade further to the right.

We were going for a walk. Just because we had kind of oriented ourselves at a certain distance from the one and only intersection we knew of, we decided to be adventurous, and wander off on the street going left. I figured that we were probably going to go for a little while until we figured we better turn back because it might rain.

Coffee and chocolate are commonly grown products here, and one might think that there would be coffee and chocolate products EVERYWHERE. So far, what I’ve found is that when you find chocolate, it’s in the form of a powdered chocolate drink mix, and when you discover coffee, it’s usually in the same supply as that in the United States.

Along the walk to the main intersection, there were two people, an older man and a boy probably my age, on horses. The old man had a horde of dogs following behind him, all yipping uncontrollably.

Dogs, are the most common animal here so far, and most of them are pets, unlike some of the other places I’ve been. In China, there were no animals, other than their pet birds. In Turkey, cats ran loose, and worked for food by begging at outside restaurant tables. In Morocco, there were cats. Lots of cats out and about. I must say, also, that frequently, one might find Chihuahuas attempting to be big, vicious dogs. They may chase you, in which case, fake a kick. They’ll back off, but you may have to do this a few times.

As we walked down the edge of the street, trying not to run into trees, or step in mud, or get ran over by the cars driving at speeds too high for the area, a man running in the road passed us. Now, I have no clue where this dog came from, but he must have thought that the man was a car or something because he launched himself from his hiding place behind a tree, and ran after the man as fast as his little legs could carry him. The yipping was high pitched and frenzied as the man attempted to get the dog to go away by stopping abruptly, running faster, and kicking at it. The dog went away eventually, but probably only because he saw us and decided we would be easier prey. This was a little dog, but he was mighty malicious.

There were huge coffee plants where we stopped, and a blue building like a small warehouse that probably said something like, “Coffee irrigation control”. This was where we decided to turn back, but not when the day ended. We had walked a little ways, and we heard a bus pull up behind us. Turns out, it went to Alajuela.

Once we successfully got into Alajuela, after a rather lengthy bus ride of about ten minutes, we stopped at the Mega Super. Mission one accomplished. I’m beginning to think that milk, soymilk, rice milk, ANY milk, is very expensive. For one, non-refrigerated box of any kind of milk, one must pay five dollars or more. We checked at both her and at the Pali.

As I was standing and eating my chocolate peanut Clif bar waiting for my dad to get out of the restroom, I contemplated the Mega Super. It did look like it was an older building, like most grocery stores that aren’t Walmarts that I’ve been in. I had just begun thinking that it was actually kind of nice when something that hasn’t happened to me anywhere but in my bathroom. A spider was dangling in front of my face. I looked at it, and it looked at me, until I realized that this little spider would need a lot of space to successfully get back up to the ceiling, which was a long ways up. So I backed up, and watched him as he began his long ascent.

Next, we hopped a bus going downtown, and looked at where we were going. I saw the music store that I had spied a day or two ago not far away from the Mega Super. It was upstairs in a white building in a rather desolate area down the street from a market, and near to a ferreteria (Hardware store).

The bus dropped us off, and I was thinking, why is everyone getting off here? And then I remembered. When everyone gets off the bus, you’re either at the station, or you have just gotten to the tourist attraction that everyone wants to go to. Duh. Out we got, orienting ourselves as well as we could.

The feeling of getting off of a bus in a foreign is similar to confusion. It’s like you’ve just entered into a new world, and your only form of transport is leaving you for dead. I could describe it, as a mix somewhere between confusion, betrayal, and terror.

After getting off of the bus and walking to the bus station, we walked the block around the station. We discovered many things. First of all, we discovered many shoe shops. Similar to Mexico, shoes are a popular thing here in Costa Rica, but, unlike Mexico, there are few women wearing high heels here. I’ve seen many, but compared to Mexico, where EVERY woman wears high heels, very few women wear them here.

I’m not sure exactly what the Pali reminded me of, but I know it reminded me of something. It is a line of stores, as far as I can tell. At least it LOOKED like the sign had a logo on it. It was stocked with a number of different foods, including chayote, an avacado squash like thing that shouldn’t be used for guacamole.
When we first walked into the Pali, the first thing I noticed was the rice. Big piles of bagged rice. People must love their rice here, because there sure is a lot of it where ever you go. Currently, beans and rice is a pretty common homemade dinner dish here for us every night after our excursions.

Getting home was relatively easy, we just got on one of the buses that said “Poas”, the ones that would lead us home, and rode on it until we got to out street, and then began the long uphill trek back up to our house. When we got back, the leaf bug was still waiting for us, right where he had been when we left.

The leaf bug, our true friend.

Lydian – Day 2 – Pets, Walmart, and Other Things

When you look for a bus stop along a road in Alajuela, Costa Rica, this little yellow line is what you look for. These might be in the rest of the country too, we don’t know yet.

This morning, as far as I knew, the original plan was to get up, work on my homework (Work, in the case of my parents), work on some Spanish, eat lunch, work some more on my homework and on Spanish, maybe talk to my friends, play my guitar, and whatever else I could do. Well, that wasn’t the plan.

As we walked out the door, I had already anticipated that today would go by slowly, and at the end of the day, I would think that the little speckles on the wall were absolutely fascinating, like I usually do when I’m tired. Down the hill we went, hoping to find the bus station that we were told was only a little bit of a walk away. We did find it, but with a little bit of help.
We walked up to a little corner store that was only about a block away from our house, thinking that it, might be the bus stop. It did appear that way, after all.
It was, but all the bus stops here are marked by yellow lines on the streets! These yellow lines are everywhere, but you have to keep an eye out for them. We found this out from a fellow named Leslie who offered to drive us in his van to Alajuela because he was going there anyways. We turned this generous offer down because we were wanting to find out how to get into town and back using local transportation. It was nothing against him. He seemed pretty nice, actually.
So we went on. Leslie had told us that the bus stop was about one kilometer down the road at an intersection. Now, I don’t know how to gauge when I’ve walked a kilometer, or two kilometers, or more. When it comes to miles, I usually consider myself pretty good at that. But whenever I hear the word kilometer, I tune it out. My thought is usually something along the lines of: “Walk until you find the blah blah blah and then blah blah blah… Okay, got it.” I’m hoping maybe I can actually kind of guess how far a kilometer is by the end of this trip… Maybe.
So we walked. Apparently a kilometer was a long ways, or maybe it was just because it was my first time getting there, it’s hard to tell. We found the intersection. We needed to get ibuprofen, so we went into the gas station like store on the corner. We soon discovered yet another store with food, medicine, and beauty supplies, relatively close to home. We asked the boy at the counter where the bus stop was, because we hadn’t found it. He took us outside and pointed us to the station, but we still had one more question.
“How much would it cost to get to Alajuela from here?” My mom asked. He had to think about it for a moment, and then he called somebody (I didn’t think you could call bus stations, but maybe here you can.), and told us that it would be 1000 colons for all three of us. We asked him if we could trade in our US dollars at the shop he was working at for colons, he didn’t think so, but we were able to.
After I took the ibuprofen, and we got the colons, we walked to the bus station. It was just across the street. While we were waiting for the bus, which came every thirty minutes, we watched chickens. They were very cute. There was a mama chicken watching over her exploring baby chickens.

The cute little chickens that were walking around exploring while we waited for the bus.

The bus ride was pretty uneventful, we sat on the bus, and hoped we were going to the right place, which technically, we weren’t. Where we got off was probably the main bus stop in Alajuela, but it’s hard to tell exactly where we were, because none of the streets are named here.
I derive a certain sense of comfort from knowing the name of the street that I’m on. If I know where I am, I can find my way to just about anywhere with access to a map, easily. No trouble whatsoever. But when there aren’t streets, I just can’t deal with its. My mind begins to run on overdrive.
We asked many buses if they went to Walmart, but none of them went there. I knew we should have stayed on the bus, not everybody was getting off the bus. But then again, who knows. Instead, we hailed a taxi. Here, there are legal and illegal taxis. The legal ones are the red ones with the yellow signs on top. The others are illegal.
On the outside, the Walmart in Alajuela appears to be a ginormous catastrophic building filled with clothing, cheese, and people. Turns out, it’s just an average, U.S. sized Walmart. Maybe even a little smaller.
Y’know how Walmarts in the United States have the “lowest prices”? Well, here in Costa Rica, we’re finding that they actually are very expensive to shop at. Today, we bought one thing of soymilk, and two things of rice milk for twenty US dollars, which is a lot of money. We spent 10 dollars on a thing of honey. Tomorrow, we’re going to try the mega mart and a Pali, and see if those have lower prices. The Palis are supposed to have lower prices. We found this out from one of the locals here.
Tomorrows goal is to get to Alajuela, check out a Pali (I don’t know if that’s a like a line of stores or a type of store yet), and the mega mart, maybe get some stuff, and then go from there. I’m guessing the buses might not be running frequently tomorrow because it’s Sunday, but I wouldn’t know these things. YET!

Until tomorrow,
Lydian

Lydian – Day 2 – The Neighbors

I woke up about thirty minutes ago to loud music. I had just so happened to be having a rather nightmarish dream at the time, so when the eerie music seeped into my dream as I woke up, I automatically started to have thoughts about haunted houses, as eerie things seem to do to me. In the beginning, I thought maybe there was an awesome young female singer living right next door, and that  maybe she played an instrument too! But no, I figured, as the woman who had been screaming at her kids yesterday returned to this seemingly common (perhaps not favorite, but it’s hard to tell) pastime with the loud music in the background over her shouting.

Now, one thing that I’ve noticed here so far, is that when people play their music for everyone to hear, they turn it up. LOUD. When me and my parents walked to the mini  market down the street yesterday, there were probably at least two (if not more) people with their music turned up really loud. This bothers me because my mom and dad have always told me to keep my music down if at all possible, even when I have headphones in, because I could lose the high range in my hearing, which I definitely don’t want. That would suck. And plus, it’s nice for other people when you don’t blast your music, ’cause they might not like the same music that you like, or perhaps they’re listening to their own.

Music is my most favorite thing (next to boys, of course), but this music is a little too obnoxiously loud for my liking. If it was a little quieter, and heard in shorter intervals of time (not constantly), I would be able to appreciate it more. At least I can hear it though!

It’s slower music with a piano. The female singer is singing in a higher voice, and in Spanish (I think). I’m beginning to think also, that either this specific music artist is really popular here, or that it’s a CD, and not a radio. The only thing leading me to believe that it’s a radio is that there have been short interjections where there isn’t any music, and it’s just some people talking about something.