'Cousins' in Costa Rica

by Daniel Griffin

Before we had kids, my wife and I both did a lot of travelling, and for years we’ve talked of taking our three kids beyond the comfort of our North American life. For almost as long, we’ve also worried about how they’d cope. This year we took them to visit the family Kim used to live with in Costa Rica.

Kim has known the Masis family for almost 20 years. They’re a big and generous family. They have a modest house on a farm at the end of a dirt road about a mile from the Pacific coast. Dozens of relatives live within walking distance—aunts, uncles, cousins and grandparents. Kim knows them all, speaks fluent Spanish and has visited many times since she lived there. She settled in easily. My Spanish is all but forgotten which left me a little on the outside. The kids on the other hand hardly have a word of Spanish between them, but as all kids do, they adapted. Or at least they tried to.

It was easiest for our youngest, Vivian. Maybe the younger you are the easier it is to play without language. A five-year-old named Melanie lives next door to the house where we stayed. She’s got big brown eyes. Her long hair is always beautifully brushed and tied back and she’s noisy and rambunctious. Within hours Melanie and Vivian were fast friends. At some point shortly after we’d peeled ourselves, dripping hot, out of the rental car, Melanie simply walked up to Viv, took her hand, and off they went. They found all sorts of games. Once I spotted them standing side by side in front of the couch. Melanie said, “Uno, dos, tres” and fell back. Vivian fell too and they collapsed giggling. Next time, they said, “Uno, dos, tres” together and they both fell. The game lasted for 20 minutes.

Some mornings Melanie camped out waiting for Vivian to wake up, or Vivian camped out waiting for Melanie to return from school. Throughout, Melanie chattered away in Spanish. Either she never figured out that our kids don’t speak Spanish or she didn’t care.

One day one of the kids proposed a game simply by raising her hands to cover her eyes, opening them and then counting one, two, three with her fingers. Universally clear: hide and go seek. It was a great game with lots of screaming and excitement as they roamed the property and its fantastic garden dripping with bright blooming flowers, broad exotic leaves, strange twisting plants.

Of course, our kids also spent plenty of time complaining. Vivian kept saying, “I’m a boiled potato” trying to express how incredibly hot she was. One afternoon the temperature peaked at 40˚C. At dawn and dusk, the bugs came out. Tessa got devoured by mosquitoes and was constantly picking, scratching and complaining. Evelyn got so tired of the beach that she’d scream when we said it was time to pack up and go cool down at the beach.

None of them really got used to eating rice and beans for breakfast, lunch and dinner, and they all worried about the well-being of the stray dogs that lurk about the towns and roads. One day when some of the men on the farm took me to hunt iguanas, Evelyn urged me not to kill any of them, or at least not more than three. (We only got one—it had just enough meat for us all to have a few bites which tasted a lot like chicken.)

The next morning the kids were even more appalled when Miguel, whose son had taken me iguana hunting, started shooting at monkeys in nearby trees trying to scare them away from the farm. Miguel was sensitive enough to our kids’ screams of disapproval that he didn’t really aim, just fired away to frighten them.

We were only at the farm for a week, but Melanie took to calling all our kids “Prima”—her cousin. It’s not hard to imagine why. All of Melanie’s extended family live here. The grandparents who first staked out this farm are within shouting distance of some 37 grand kids and even more great-grand children. Just about every child around here is a first or second cousin to Melanie.

That was a concept our kids struggled to understand. They have only four first cousins and they need to get on a plane if they want to see their grandparents. Before we left, Kim and I asked how they’d like life with family all around. I pointed to one house. “What if Uncle Tim lived here, and Uncle Phil and his kids lived over here? Imagine growing up with all your cousins right here.”

The idea settled in for a while, and then Evelyn said, “That would be great.”

Daniel Griffin is a writer and a father of three. He lives in Victoria.