The yucca cutting stared up at me defiantly with its ojitos or “little eyes,” daring me to plant it incorrectly. Should the stubs on the root face up or down when put in the soil? I couldn’t remember, so I asked about the planting process in criminally terrible Spanish and a local staff member took pity on me and explained the whole thing again. Sweating off my bug spray and sunscreen in the midday heat, I glared back at the yucca’s ojitos, and told the plant “You’re gonna be delicious for dinner.” Spoiler alert: based on our meal that night, yucca is definitely a top-tier food.
This human-veggie standoff occurred during our visit to Sepecue, a village within the Indigenous territory that is home to members of both the Bribri and Cabécar Indigenous communities. We were planting foods such as yucca, bananas, and peppers and were clearing ground to set up a garden at the local high school. The garden would border a meeting house where local and visiting education administrators regularly met, so we knew we had to pull out all the stops. As we worked, the sounds of loud dance music and excited shouting wafted over from the high school; the kids were preparing a routine to compete in a national art festival.
As with any service program, I was afraid that in our haste to do work that had a lasting impact, we might lose sight of what would be immediately useful to the community–what the locals wanted from us in the present. The work we did, however, felt small but meaningful.
In two hours, we’d covered a lot of ground, but there was still so much more to do and we were out of time. By that point in the trip; however, unfinished business was hardly unexpected. Most of the volunteer work that we were doing was ephemeral and would need to be redone at some point in the near future. But I liked it better that way, and I hope the communities in Gandoca and Sepecue liked it too. Honestly, after listening to the local staff and community members explaining why we were working on these projects in particular, I don’t know if any act of service can ever truly be finished.
Before we arrived, I had been so worried about the sustainability and ethics of our service projects. As with any service program, I was afraid that in our haste to do work that had a lasting impact, we might lose sight of what would be immediately useful to the community–what the locals wanted from us in the present. The work we did, however, felt small but meaningful. Turtle patrols, beach cleans, cacao farming, school wall scrubbing, garden planting, all of this work was going to be done anyway. Rather than coming in and doing a big project, we probably just saved some members of the community several hours of work. We were clearly one small part of a larger process, as the groups that come after us will continue the volunteer work that we did. ACE in Costa Rica has taught me that there are many ways for service to be sustainable. Sure, turtle patrols will continue nightly, the beach must be cleaned constantly, the cacaos harvested as they ripen, and the school cleaned again soon enough, but at least we could help out a bit while we were there: the Gandoca community and future volunteer groups will take care of the rest. Someone will harvest the yucca when it grows.