Costa Rica is a beautiful county and is much more developed than Honduras, the difference incredible. Nonetheless, the volunteers are doing good work for the communities that they are in. The three projects are to make a restroom at the soccer field, a beautification of the soccer field and to make a pantry at the soccer field. The reason all three towns (an many others of different towns) have chosen to improve their soccer field is as one proposal mentioned, “the soccer field is the source of the biggest income is for our community”. This is one aspect that I found very interesting about these small communities in Costa Rica (100, 200 and 600 people in my three communities), that almost every Sunday there is a soccer tournament at a different community’s soccer field every week so that all the communities get a fair chance for people to go and purchase food items and drinks during the event. This is how the community raises most of their money and how they have built churches, expansions to the school, community centres, eating halls, etc. They mentioned to me they look out for each other and respect when someone decides to hold tournaments so that no community is competing for people.
Another interesting thing that I learned here is about Costa Rica´s healthcare system. Most of the people that I interact with in the community are self employed since they rely on sustenance farming as their occupation, and are eligible for public healthcare offered by the government for 3000 colones, about 5-6 dollars a month. With this health card that they receive every month, they get 100% free doctor´s visits and free prescription drugs as well. Currently, the hospital does not prefer them to go there as there are medical centres called EBAIS in the small towns. The EBAIS operate by spending 2-3 days in a larger community and then visit the surrounding communities on rotating monthly basis so that at least once or twice a month each community gets a doctor that comes to their community to receive affordable healthcare. The reason though that I learned about this is because on Monday there was a pretty large demonstration (about 300 people) who came to Perez Zeledon, the capital of the region, because the state was saying that they are going to close down every EBAIS in the region. The reason the government has decided to close down these public healthcare branches is because of funding due to the economic crisis. On top of this, in this region all the pharmacies are employed by technicians and not by licensed pharmaceutics which means that across the regions, immediately, there were not allowed to dispense any medicine. (I am not sure if this was due to new legislation, or if it was just recently discovered)
Nonetheless, it now takes over there weeks to receive medicine, rather 22 days. (Costa Rica has the custom to count the days in a week by the number of weeks times seven and plus one. So 8 days means one week, 15 two weeks and so forth. I believe it comes from the fact that if you count the calendar and start the day you are on as day one, and reach the next week, it is 8 days but it is a incorrect because if you use that logic to say in 2 days, that would mean tomorrow, which would be very confusing!) Nonetheless imagine going to the doctor today for a serious illness and the doctor prescribes some antibiotics to be taken immediately and 22 days later, you can receive the pills, because they have to come from the 3 EBAIS that pay pharmaceutics to work at their locations. Nonetheless, the protest yesterday requested the Minister of Health to issue a statement today, so we well see what happens, and the public says there will be a large protest if the answer is not one that is pleasing to them! Imagine getting kicked out of Costa Rica too for large public demonstrations!
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