Tag: Peace Corps
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SAKE IN AN IZAKAYA WITH A FRIEND
In December 1981, I was standing on the sidewalk in San José, Costa Rica while watching the fireman’s parade. A marching band clad in blue uniforms pounded away on their instruments. I looked out amongst the band members and spotted my mate Glen Snyder blowing away on his trombone while keeping in step. Glen and I had arrived in country six months earlier as Peace Corps Volunteers assigned to environmental education projects. Glen lost no time and had already integrated himself into his local community and joined the municipal band. I…
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VALE MARIO
With great sadness I learned today of the passing of my friend, mentor, former boss and co-founder of the modern Costa Rican National Park Service. Mario Boza passed away yesterday at the age of 79. He had been suffering from mouth cancer since late April. His death comes as a shock as only a few weeks ago he wrote to me and suggested that he was on the path, albeit a very slow path, to recovery. Cancer rarely presents a straightforward path to recovery and in Mario’s case it took a…
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WEEK ONE AS A PEACE CORPS VOLUNTEER
Forty years ago today, I set foot in Costa Rica for the first time. I arrived as an altruistic, just-out-of-college, cleanly shaven youngster who was determined to save the world from an impending environmental disaster. I figured I could do that in two years as a US Peace Corps Volunteer. Those two years evolved into five years. I tried but I didn’t save the world. But I set a path for my life and experienced some of my greatest adventures and joys. On the flight from Miami I was sandwiched in…
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THE TOUGHEST JOB YOU’LL EVER LOVE
It was 35 years ago today that a bunch of recent college graduates in agriculture, forestry and environmental education and I landed in Central America to begin our two-year Peace Corps Costa Rica Volunteer assignments. We all got to know each other a few months earlier in Harper’s Ferry, West Virginia. The Peace Corps flew all us in for a bit of psychological testing. For a few days we had to do all kinds of role playing or small group discussion under the watchful eye of some psychologist types. The idea…
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