File this one under Clueless Gringos. I read an article recently about a young couple living in the far northern US who adopted a young child of “Costa Rican heritage,” as they put it. The child’s birth mother was born in Costa Rica but was adopted as an infant and raised in the US. Twenty years later, she became pregnant and in turn gave her baby up for adoption.
The couple who adopted this baby decided it would be a good idea to move to Costa Rica when the child turned 4 so she could “embrace her roots.” The young couple had never been to Costa Rica, spoke no Spanish, had no job prospects, or even any sort of permit to work here legally. They quit their jobs, arranged for a house sitter until they found a home to purchase, loaded a couple backpacks, and were on their way! You can probably guess where they began looking for a place to live once there; that’s right, the Guanacaste beaches. They arrived in December, leaving behind sub-freezing temperatures, and got there just in time for the dry, hot summer season.
Here, in their own words, is how they began their Costa Rican journey: “We spent a lot of time at beaches in Costa Rica, but none felt quite right. For the first few weeks in Costa Rica, we spent our days at the beach or taking the public bus throughout the Pacific side of the country, searching for the ideal place to put down roots……. we traveled the country by bus and occasionally in a rented Jeep. We spent most of our time in Playa Samara, where we enrolled our daughter in a bilingual kindergarten. We roamed the beautiful beaches, kayaked on rivers, and introduced our child to the animals, birds, trees, and insects of her birth mother’s country.”
Then came Christmas, and they were depressed at how different the celebrations were here compared to where they came from. They bought a makeshift cardboard tree and tried to feel merry in their new condo, which they described as empty and soulless. They went forlornly to the beach, drank copos in the heat, and watched happy locals dancing to “Let it Snow.” They came across as completely incapable of embracing, in any way, the fun differences between a tropical Christmas and a traditional, cold-weather, snowy Northern one.
Their decision to make Costa Rica their new home—based on the flimsy connection between their adopted daughter and this country—was in vain. After only three months, they tired of the lifestyle here, the intense summer heat, their inability to embrace the local culture, and their 4-year-old daughter asking daily when they could leave. They eventually returned home.
Back in the States, they continued to fret over how best to celebrate their daughter’s culture. Never mind that a child born in the States to a parent who had spent almost her entire life in the States was really much more Estadounidense than Tica. In the most cringeworthy moment in the article, the mother says that in order to honor her daughter’s culture, she “set about creating a community of kids who looked like our daughter and began taking Spanish classes.”
The article ended with the mother opening a can of black beans so they could learn to make gallo pinto. I wondered if, during their extended vacation there, they were introduced to Salsa Lizano—the spice that perfectly accompanies gallo pinto. I somehow doubt it.
