coastal development & anthropology of surfing: university field course in Costa Rica

teamed up with Dr. Bro, expert environmental anthropologist-slash-formidably mustached lifelong surfer, we took on a crew of fifteen of UGA’s brightest minds, the kids they pay to stay in-state instead of going Ivy League, offering them the chance to explore Costa Rica’s Guanacaste coastline, learning to surf and studying the relationships between surfing, tourism and development in one of the world’s leading surf tourism destinations. the following are highlights from the course.

1. Marco, Jose and Choco keep it real

after pulling a few teeth, the guys at Choco’s Surf School finally agreed to sit with us on the beach and share about their experiences as surfers growing up in the now bustling tourist town of Samara. they told stories of having to hide their boards on the beach so dad wouldn’t take them away as punishment for not going to class; the days when it was nearly impossible to get a board so they’d take turns on the ones that gringos and family members had gifted them; and how they would never trade surfing for anything on earth. Marco and Jose agreed that Choco‘s classic surf style was the best, with all the kids in town trying to copy his moves – after all, now in his 40’s, he’s one of the original cats from the pioneering generation of Costa Rican surfing. and he kills it on longboard in the national surf circuit.

they reminisced about the old days before tourists starting showing up in Samara, expressing nostalgia for the past, yet acknowledging how tourism had provided them with a legitimate livelihood as the foremost surf school in town. their way of giving back to the community is through using profits to support local kids in surfing and helping keep the beach clean. and they agreed that the only way to protect Samara from ‘becoming another Tamarindo’ is for the community to be organized against foreign interests and the easily-bought municipal government. through his high-fashion mirrored sunglasses – so hot right now -- Marco shared a funny story about how the municipality had sold the soccer field in town to a foreign resort developer, but since his grandfather had gifted that piece of land to the community, they had to battle with the government to revoke the property title already given to the gringo. in the end, they were successful and the soccer field is still a soccer field, an important cultural landmark in Samara and local mainstay in any Costa Rican town.

gracias chicos, por vivir la pura vida y por compartirla con nosotros. nos vemos en mayo!  

2. turtle world wars

it’s no doubt off-putting when you first hear about a coastal community whose livelihood relies on its national monopoly over the legal distribution of Olive Ridley turtle eggs sold at farmers’ markets throughout Costa Rica. but after we visited the Asociacion de Desarrollo Integral de Ostional (ADIO), watched their informative documentary on a flat screen set up in the Community Director’s backyard (talk about field study!) and had a chance to ask a ton of clarifying questions (all the while drooling over the nonstop perfect barrels on the beach behind us), that creepy feeling about shady dealings in turtle eggs subsided as we gained a clear understanding of ADIO’s work in turtle conservation. for the past thirty years, they’ve teamed up with biologists to protect a 7km stretch of coastline from animal predators and illegal turtle egg poaching, utilizing 900 meters of those 7km for the collection of turtle eggs once every month over the course of three days. the entire community gets involved in the collection process, recognizing that conservation ensures their livelihood, creating a “symbiotic relationship between the turtles and the community,” as Gilbert Rojas explained to us on his back patio. “we help the turtles and the turtles help us.” lead biologist Rodrigo Morera assured us that the eggs extracted from the shoreline represent less than 1 per cent of the total eggs laid each year, and that this past year, nearly half-a-million adult female Olive Ridleys shored themselves to lay their eggs, the highest number recorded in the history of the arribada, the three-day period when the turtles take over the beach every month to lay eggs: an indisputable success story in turtle conservation.

while no one is getting rich from the sale of the turtle eggs, there are tangible benefits incentivizing community involvement and support for the project. each month, community members are entitled to their share of turtle eggs for household consumption, plus a small salary paid equally to everyone involved in the project – the Director receives the same number of eggs and the same pay as the egg collectors, and leftover funds support community projects and social services. With the profits from the sale of the eggs, Ostional now has a community center and functional medical clinic, and members receive health benefits, paid maternity leave and cash incentives for kids to stay in school. where the municipal government may still be unable to provide for the townspeople, ADIO has filled important gaps for social wellbeing: community-driven development in action.  

Despite criticism from other foreign and government-subsidized turtle conservation projects who hate on ADIO for profiting off turtle eggs, it’s clear that their initiatives are serving mutual benefit for both turtle and human, undoubtedly inspiring sustainable development practices across the globe, and it is indeed at least partially because of the profit motive that their conservation efforts have been so successful. And when haters like the foreign scientists at the Leatherback turtle reserve of the Parque Nacional Marino Las Baulas, whose nearly 25 year government-funded project to save the Leatherback turtles has been nothing short of a failure (read: current adult female leatherback population diminishing rapidly, down to below 20 total, despite – or potentially as a result of – conservation efforts), the proof is in the (egg?) pudding.

more haters in their midst: ADIO faces real threats outside the turtle nerd world, and we were shocked to learn that Gilbert and his wife narrowly escaped death last year when their house was burnt down in the middle of the night while they were sleeping inside. “they destroyed our transport vehicle, too,” he confided in me as we said goodbye. i asked him if he knew who it was; he raised his brow and looked up at me – of course he knew who it was. “the government?” i questioned, aware of local corruption by means of vigilante injustice. “yeah, in cahoots with the poachers. they’d rather we didn’t exist here.” speechless, i gave him a hug in solidarity, promising we’d be back in May to keep supporting the project.  

i waited to tell the students until we got back on the bus; we learned firsthand it’s not all pura vida when you’re dealing in turtles.

3. changing perspectives

one of the students, admittedly outside his comfort zone, shares with the group that the course and activities have expanded his horizons, provoking him to think about things he otherwise wouldn’t, particularly tourism and development’s impact on local communities and cultures. “i’m not one of those guys you can easily make feel guilty about something i didn’t do,” he said in slow southern. “i’m not gonna feel bad for the Holocaust just because i’m German, but i will admit that coming here and talking to people has changed the way i think about a few things, especially about our role as tourists in developing countries.” knowing that he is one of our most conservative students on the course, this was a sweetly satisfying victory indeed. because that’s all we want, really, and the foundation for why we do what we do: sharing realities to open horizons and potentially shift thought patterns and ways of being toward greater sustainability and social harmony. i’m sure i was grinning like an idiot.

another validating verbatim testimonial: “although i was vaguely aware of some of the issues we talked about, the trip brought them to the forefront of my mind. even though it was such a short trip, i feel like i have a much broader perspective on things--ecotourism, market economics, community activism, foreign vs. local ownership and investment, etc. i loved learning how to surf, and i definitely plan continuing to learn sometime in the future. what resonated most personally with me was when we talked to Javier in the dessert shop near Playa Negra. he talked about living a simpler life and being more fulfilled not in spite of but rather because of it. he was always smiling and seemed to just radiate positive energy. he looked so youthful and happy that i was genuinely shocked when he said he was about to turn 43. i'm glad i was sitting on that side of the table and was able to have a more in depth conversation with him, because it definitely made me rethink the way I live my life.”  he’s right, too, Javier is rad, and embodies so much of what the surfer lifestyle is all about – finding your happiness in nature and the simple things in life, being open to every adventure, and living your dreams one wave at a time.

4. challenging climate change solutions

“but what if i don’t want to compost or make biodiesel in my backyard or do all the things i’m supposed to do to save the planet? what if I’m just not willing to do that?” this honest question -- posed to professor, biodiesel guru and environmental news blogger, Ryan King, whose talk on Safari Surf School’s new biofuel project in Playa Guiones sparked controversy when it digressed into theories of global change science and the destruction of energy infrastructure as green anarchy’s valiant means of protest -- brought existing tensions to light as students reflected on their own roles in climate change and what they could possibly do about it. in a world preaching ‘be the change you wish you to see’, it takes courage to admit you’re not willing to act locally while thinking globally, reminding the environmental movement that it’s still quite an uphill battle, perhaps requiring adjustments in rhetoric and strategy to appeal to those who, quite frankly, might not be rolling up their sleeves and starting the next community garden. we hope they get on board, and they very well might, most likely out of necessity rather than inspired motivation to the save the world; but when these kinds of challenges emerge, we need compassion and real answers, not defensive quips that further alienate those questioning our solutions. how else will we move from preaching to the choir to actually achieving our critical mass?

(un)coincidentally, on the last day of the course, another student’s shirt had written on it in bold block letters: ‘if you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem’. i smiled at the perfect irony and felt en eerie sense of closure as i watched those words bounce through the security checkpoint before disappearing into airport anonymity.

5. the full-circle fallout: embodying that which i despise

two days after the course, feeling pretty damn good about myself that i might have contributed to greater awareness among a group of in-the-know students, i awoke to find this message waiting for me in my facebook inbox:

“what a bad person you are! left my brother hanging! what it's really wrong with you Americans that can insult humble hard working people and simply walk away like nothing! don't you ever get near me! i am tired of dishonest people! be responsible!"

my (apparently now former) friend was referring to an incident where i had reserved 7 longboards from his brother in Avellanas only to have to cancel an hour beforehand when all of the students decided they were tired and didn’t want to surf. understandably, dude was pissed, and i had no clue how to play it. should i have paid him for the boards we didn’t use with money that wasn’t mine for a service that wasn’t rendered? maybe. instead, i apologized profusely and told him it was out of my hands, and that we still wanted to rent boards the next day and that it would be cool if he wanted to charge us extra for what he might have lost in income from the day before. he wasn’t having it, and wasn’t about to reserve boards again without a deposit for a flaky gringa who very well might cancel again at the last minute. i totally understood and told him i’d call the next day if we were going to rent boards. we ended up renting elsewhere to avoid the drama, especially since it was super windy and not that many of the students wanted to surf anyway. i invited him and the other surf instructors to join us for lunch, but got no response. it was probably received as a slap in the face, a pathetic consolation prize for being out the $160 bucks he’d been counting on.

i still don’t know if i did the right thing, but i can’t go back in time and change it, and it still bothers me thinking about it. especially the part about being grouped with ‘you Americans who insult humble hardworking people and simply walk away like nothing”. that part cuts like a knife, since i’ve really worked hard to never embody that image i so despise. in fact, i spent a lot of time in the course itself talking about ownership and how we as gringos have fucked a lot of things up here as tourists and ex-pat surfers trying to live the dream. so being perceived as one of ‘those Americans’ still makes me cringe in my bones, since i’ve always seen myself as one of the good guys trying hard to support local biz and find my niche within the existing community with as little negative impact as possible. but maybe that’s my own naively impossible dream and looking myself in the mirror through the hard words of someone i respect makes it all the more difficult to believe. is there no such thing as ‘a good gringo’? or is it just that so many gringos have given us a bad name that when we make a human mistake or a difficult judgment call in a sticky situation, we’re all grouped together and written off as ‘you Americans doing X thing wrong’? how do we live in the narrow confines of a box like that?

either way, tensions are no doubt rising in the tico-gringo dynamics of puravidalandia, and the surfer community is no exception.  i have a feeling it’s going to get hotter before it gets cool again, but in that scenario, i hope i can still be one of the good guys, even if i never succeed in wiping the gringa stamp off my forehead.    

he who knows nose

i’m back again, this time with more conviction. “let me be guided to the right decision today,” i shared silently with the cosmos, my intention clear as the elevator reached the seventh floor. they were surprised to see me as i slid open the glass door; the empty office awash in dust and fresh paint. “can we help you?” they questioned, not sure what to make of me with my sandals, feather earring and unkempt sun-bleached hair, looking like i stepped out of a parallel universe. i tilted my head to the side, confused. “yes, I have an appointment with Dr. A at 11:00am?” i’m unsure myself now – am i at the right place? did i get the day wrong? that must be it; the appointment was for tomorrow and i was a day early – now it makes sense. “oh yes, Ms. Ruttenberg, i remember, the one with the broken nose who now has insurance… yes yes, right this way.” Dr. A jumps up from his relaxed position in the formerly elegant reception area and, noticeably embarrassed, leads me through the door. “tranquilo,” i assure him. it’s no big deal he spaced on my appointment, i was just glad he was actually there and willing to see me.

dozens of framed certificates of achievement that once adorned the bare walls now crowded the desk as i sat opposite him in the newly expanded office; they’re renovating and it’s apparently taking longer than expected. he begins writing my name on a blank piece of paper in frantic script, seemingly quite eager to get this done and me out of there. “you live at the beach, right?” i pause. that should be an easy one, but truth is i’m not sure how to respond, since quite frankly i don’t really live anywhere at the moment. i had spent the past few days helping my parents at AmaTierra, and before that i was on the road surf-tour guiding along the Guanacaste coast, and before that i was visiting my sister and meeting her new baby in Connecticut and traipsing through the snow in Maine, and before that i was camping out dancing to the moon in the middle of nowhere, and before that i was at the beach in Jaco for a few weeks and even paid the friends i was crashing with what little rent i could afford, so maybe that qualifies as living at the beach... “yeah, I live in Jaco,” i said finally, not wanting to delve into the details; there was obviously no time for pleasantries. 

“so when do you want to do this?" he asked, "and is your insurance going to cover it?” slow down, Ace, i thought to myself, i just got here – don’t you want to ask me how i’m feeling or look at it first? wine and dine me a little bit? “well, that’s what I wanted to talk to you about," i'm apparently equally all business now. "the only way I can do it is if insurance covers it. i broke it on November 7 and didn’t get insurance until November 29, and now it’s late March and i need the insurance company to pay for it if i’m going to even consider it at all.” As i spoke, fresh doubts grew in my headspace. i hadn’t yet convinced myself that this was the right thing to do. i made the appointment on a whim since i would be in the neighborhood, and really, over the past few months i had already decided i wasn’t going to do it, and that i was okay with having a twisty nose forever and always. if i get it fixed, then it will just be a liability and chances are i’d break it again some other time on some other crazy surf adventure in a foreign sea and have to go through the whole process again. and really, my friends assure me, it’s not that bad. but after a week on the road eating a bunch of junk i felt flabby and my skin was a wreck and i was feeling generally not so great about myself, and you know what? maybe I don’t want a crooked nose for the rest of my life. is that so wrong? does that make me inexcusably vain or just a little bit normal? 

i took self-photos in the mirror from every angle and uploaded them to Microsoft Paint, using the drawing tool to rudimentarily shave the bump off my profile, trying to get an idea of what i might look like following surgery; my homemade “after” pic. i showed my mom and she thought it looked pretty good. satisfied, i thought, why not? It’s just an appointment, let’s see what he has to say, and if insurance will cover it maybe i’ll go for it. i have the time now before I fly to New York to present on capitalism, commodities and culture at that grad student conference, and it would heal in time for me to still surf Negra and Witch’s Rock in May when I’ll be tour guiding another surf course. the timing’s perfect, especially since Dr. A assured me last time i was there that it would only be swollen for a week. i could do that.

“but we can’t lie,” he said, still scribbling notes on the page. “if they find out i fabricated anything on the report, they’ll take away my license and i’ll never be able to practice again.” wait, really? are we on Grey’s Anatomy or is this the real world where doctors don’t care who pays them as long as they get paid. shit, now it’s never going to work. i start gathering my things ready to bolt. i was banking on an experienced plastic surgeon in his sixties knowing a thing or two about working the system, maybe fudging the dates a few weeks to help a patient out, not freaking out about committing serious insurance fraud. no dice, i start saying things like “oh of course, and i would never ask you to LIE; I completely respect your ethics as a medical professional and I don’t want to lie either, and it’s not a lie really, you see, for the past few weeks i’ve been getting these strange sinus headaches after I get out of the water and it’s just…”

“okay, here’s what we can do,” ah yes, there he is, work with me my brother. “go to the insurance office downstairs and explain your accident to them: you were at a New Year’s party and someone hit your nose and tweaked it a little bit and it started bleeding but you thought it was fine so you didn’t do anything about it at the time, but now a few months later you are having trouble breathing and i, as your doctor, ordered x-rays since your septum is most likely broken…” i stop him mid-sentence, knowing his plan is foiled, but still very impressed with his creativity: “when you looked at the x-rays i got in Colombia the first time i was here you said my septum isn’t broken, so won’t they see that when they look at the x-ray report?” “oh,” he says, scratching his pen over the words ‘New Year’s party’. i reminded him that it was a surfing accident; we didn’t have to white-lie about how it happened, just about when. he writes me an order for a new set of x-rays, and changes his notes to include surfing in the description, assuring me that he’ll tell his secretary to erase my visit in November from record in case the insurance company checks into it. 'FIRST VISIT', he jots down at the top of his barely legible page with my name on it.

he’s already standing up ready to usher me out. i remember this from last time and knew i’d have to get feisty to have him answer some actual questions about the invasive procedure i was considering subjecting myself to, let alone look at or touch my nose before i went under the knife anesthetized in a few days’ time. “could you tell me a little bit about the surgery, like what you would be doing to my nose?” “oh yes, i’d break your nose to make it straight again, remove that bump from there and lift the tip a little bit”. oh god, anything but the tip. that’s what I was afraid of, an upward sloping nose tip, my worst nightmare. you might as well take my entire Eastern European Jewish identity, chop me up, mush my pieces together and put me in a cookie-cutter mold, give me blond hair and blue eyes and call me Christie. “do you really have to lift the tip? like what i really want is just my old nose back, like what it looked like before i broke it, pretty much the same nose, just straight again.” he didn’t know what to do with me. “you mean you still want that bump?” yes, i still want the fucking bump, i want the same nose i had before my surfboard smashed it into a million pieces in the middle of the Pacific ocean a three hour boat ride away from anything resembling civilization, buckets of blood and a fountain of tears pouring down my face.

now he’s showing me his sales catalogue: binders full of noses showcasing his work over the years. “see, look at her witch nose before and how beautiful she looks afterwards. they used to to call her a witch! she has beautiful eyes, but before surgery all anyone could look at was that horrific nose. this is what we would do with your nose, just remove that bump and lift the tip, just a millimeter; see how much better that looks now?” in some of the cases, i agreed with him and the women did look better and brighter in their after photos. But for some of them, i just felt sad that they would go through such a painful process to try and look a little more like what society tells us is beautiful, shaving off their bumps that once gave them character and told a story about their heritage and ethnic identity, trading them in for the image of cultural homogenization that we call 'pretty'. 

i think that’s why this whole process of considering fixing my nose has freaked me out so much. when you have what’s considered an ‘ethnic’ nose, it takes on a personality of its own and becomes such a part of who you are that thinking about changing it becomes an identity crisis. you’ve most likely experienced an evolving lifelong relationship with your nose: first you hate it because it’s huge and the girls in the fashion magazines all have cute button noses and you wish you looked more like that and you start plotting with your girlfriends about getting drunk and smashing your nose with a frying pan so it looks like an accident and then you’d have to get it fixed; then a few years later you learn to accept that, yeah, you might have a giant schnoz, but you’re still a beautiful person in spite of it, especially since true beauty is on the inside, right?; and then finally, into your twenties, you look in the mirror and you actually feel beautiful because now you’re proud of your big Jewish nose because it makes you different and you actually celebrate it because it connects you to your ancestors and all of that history, and to think about changing that would mean losing that connection; in essence, losing a big part of yourself.  

i’m fighting tears again as he flips through the pages of noses, continuing his sales pitch on where he was educated and how he has forty years’ experience and was the director of plastic surgery at the fancy private hospital, as if all that is going to make me feel better about shedding a piece of who i am. i know he’s the best for the job, which is why i came back; if i’m actually going to do this, of course i want the best. but i’m also reminded of why i ran out of there the first time; the whole business transaction feel of a salesman surgeon selling perfect little noses to whomever will pay for them. and after i had called him months ago to tell him i was going to wait and think about it more, his response still lingers in my ears: “if you were my daughter, i would tell you to do it right away; now you’re going to have a crooked little nose that’s harder to fix later.” “thanks for your medical opinion,” i had said, feeling the whip of his words in the pit of my stomach as I hung up. crooked little nose.

“but, you know, it’s your decision,” he says, playing a little reverse 'i don't need you' psychology on me. “think about it and let me know. you know you will look better afterwards with a straight nose, so if you decide to do it, give me a call and we can schedule it for early next week before i leave for Semana Santa.” i thank him for his time and book the procedure tentatively for this upcoming Tuesday, of course pending insurance approval and my committed change of heart. “we’ll be in touch,” Dr. A’s secretary says, smiling; the “don’t call us, we’ll call you” of the plastic surgery industry. 

i fill out the required paperwork and get the x-ray report the insurance company needs to be sure my surgery isn’t just cosmetic, in which case they wouldn’t have to cover it. “so what if you’re in an accident and you chop off your ear somehow? insurance doesn't cover that because your eardrum still works fine without the fleshy part of your ear?” i ask the pubescent insurance rep in the hospital lobby. “i know, it’s a strange policy,” he responds emotionless; it’s not his first time hearing a commentary like that from a smartass like me. i figure the traces of fracture from four months ago would appear all but healed on today’s x-ray, so insurance paying for it was going to be a total longshot. they’d decide it was an elective procedure for cosmetic purposes only and put it in the ‘no’ pile. my crooked bump was safe; i exhaled relief as i walked out the automatic doors into the parking lot.

i hadn't paid much mind to the words on the x-ray report before leaving the hospital since my Spanish vocab doesn’t yet include technical medical terminology. when I got home later that evening, i typed the short paragraph into google translate and gazed in shock at the words on the screen:

Observed deviated septum to the left, along with right inferior turbinate hypertrophy; evident traces of fracture lines in the nasal bones at the middle third section, drawing attention to the loss of bone density at the distal end of the fracture. Moderate depression of bone structure. No soft tissue augmentation observed.  

DEVIATED SEPTUM TO THE LEFT?!? WHAT!? i’m no MD but i’m pretty sure that’s a medical issue requiring a medical procedure to correct. i stare eyes-wide into digital nowhereland and trace my displaced nasal bones between my thumb and index finger. shit. does this mean it's bye-bye bump forever?