My first day at La Casa Verde was a Tuesday, and Tuesday was trash day. The streets of Desamparados were lined with mounds of trash to the point where sidewalks were unwalkable. Rotten food, week-old diapers, used tampons, and sour milk. The stench was unbearable. Street animals broke open the bags in hopes of finding a meal, exposing the putrid contents even more. The summer air was thick like gutter mud, trapping in the garbage, and there was nowhere for the smell (or us) to go.
La Casa Verde looked exactly like its name: a green house. It had an orange tin roof with a gate as a door, and mustard yellow walls inside. There was an old foosball table (two men without legs, conveniently both on the yellow team), thousands of Legos, and a ping pong table. In the kitchen, plastic was microwaved daily, and the bathroom had a faulty door. The stench was less pungent inside, replaced by must and mold.
As a 16-year-old, my life lacked purpose. I was stuck in the same routine with the same people, craving something more. That year, I decided I wanted to be a writer, and I found myself stuck with nothing to write about. Writers lived extravagant lives of love, loss, and adventure. They were bold and fearless, and I was plain. At 16, I decided to live – to go to crazy places, meet crazy people, and write crazy things.
“Desamporados is one of the most dangerous cities in Costa Rica,” said Cailah, our group leader at La Casa Verde. Cailah is a tall, lanky woman who grew up in California. She decided to give up her comfortable American life surrounded by friends and family for a life of public transportation and showering with cockroaches. She had a calling to this life, the kind of life that I dreamed of.
She continued, “You are safe to walk around during the day, but don’t go alone. There is a lot of gang activity and a lot of drugs. La Casa Verde is a safe place for kids to get off the street. Some have been coming here for years and some might walk in for their first time. Your job is to play with them and be a friend.”
Kids filtered in and out for hours, as young as four and as old as 18. I stationed myself at the Lego table, desperate to make a connection with someone. Selfishly, the connection was more for me than them. I wanted to make a difference, I needed it. I was lost and desperate to do something that mattered.
“Aye, gringa!” A voice erupted from the doorway. The voice belonged to Valeria, a short girl with blonde and red hair – not strawberry blonde, literally half blonde and half red. She had the demeanor of a boy – the clothes of a boy, a loud voice, and dominant presence. The rest of the teenage boys in La Casa Verde quieted down and followed her lead, and it became clear that this five-foot girl led the pack. Valeria was 17 years old but looked 14. She was white, but her accent and mannerisms defined her as a local, born and raised Costa Rican.
I stood there shocked as she stared at me, clear that I was the “gringa” she had been referring to.
I leaned into Cailah, “Isn’t gringa, like, a bad word?”
“In Mexico yes, but not here. It just means ‘white person.’”
I thought to myself, If “gringa” just meant white, wouldn’t Valeria be a “gringa” too?
“Quiero mostrarte algo,” she said to me.
I leaned in. She slowly rolled up her pant leg revealing a freshly scarred bullet wound. I’d never seen a bullet wound before, but this was unmistakable. Right on the side of her thigh, with layers of pink scar tissue.
Cailah chimed in, “Aye, it’s looking good Valeria. Healing nicely.”
I racked my brain for an appropriate response that I knew how to say in Spanish, but I couldn’t even think of one in English. I met this girl minutes ago, she called me a gringa, and now she’s showing me a bullet wound. Was this her usual introduction to American volunteers? And why did no one else seem surprised?
I stuttered, “Qué pasó?”
She smiled deviously, like a child who had just gotten away with a lie. Valeria turned to the group of boys who were now standing behind her and spit something in Spanish I couldn’t make out. The boys laughed, and she headed over to the Lego table.
I sat with her for hours playing Legos. We didn’t speak, only built different structures. She’d often knock mine down and laugh, but I didn’t mind.
Around 3 o’clock, the skies turned from cloudless to dark. Heat became humidity and unrelenting rain poured down. La Casa Verde was planted on a hill, so the water gushed by like a river, taking the leftover trash with it. The thunder rolled constantly; when it wasn’t booming, it was about to.
Every summer afternoon in Costa Rica, it thunderstormed. It became a routine: go inside at 2:30 in preparation for the 3 o’clock showers, and by 4 o’clock, it was beautiful again. In school and at home, my life is planned around schedules and routines, so in a place where I was a complete outsider, the rain was something I could count on.
I could also count on my routine with Valeria. Every day, we’d silently play Legos. I watched her meticulously craft buildings, but I could never imagine what she was thinking besides what piece to put next.
Midway through the week, she introduced me to the Costa Rican way of playing foosball. The rules are the same, just more violent. The handles aren’t “maneuvered,” they’re thrown into a spin and smacked to stop. The game is fast, handles constantly flung and stopped and flung again. When she’d get mad, she’d ram the handles into the wood side and yell like a banshee.
She was amazing. She could make a goal within seconds of the ball touching down, sometimes moving so fast I couldn’t even see it. Once, it jumped from the arena and hit a boy in the arm. He made a noise like a chihuahua bark, and a red mark bloomed on his skin.
She laughed, “Jajaja, coño!”
“Qué te den por culo Valeria,” the boy retaliated.
It was apparently some kind of Spanish “F*** you.” My Spanish was good, but I didn’t understand most of the things Valeria and the boys said. I never took a class on Spanish curse words and this made up their vocabulary. The one word I could understand for sure was “gringa.” Valeria would yell at me, over and over, “Gringa! Gringa! Gringa! Ven!” and like a puppy, I followed. Wherever she wanted me, whenever she wanted me, I was there.
I wondered constantly what she thought of me. She always wanted me around, more so than the other volunteers, but when I was with her, she’d often knock down my Legos, crush me in foosball, or yell at me in Spanish, and laugh knowing I couldn’t understand. None of it bothered me, but I wanted to figure her out.
One morning, before everyone showed up, I asked Cailah what happened to Valeria’s leg. A few months ago, Valeria had been dating the leader of a gang. In a confrontational drug deal with a rival gang, Valeria was shot. She’d been coming to La Casa Verde ever since.
On my last day, the once disturbing image of La Casa Verde had been replaced by the feeling of this place as a safe haven. It was a place of simple joys, free expression, and unapologetic personalities. The sun began peeking through the clouds after the 3 o’clock rain – a cue to begin our goodbyes.
“Gringa!” Valeria yelled.
She walked up to me and smiled – not the devious smile I had seen two weeks prior, but one of comfort – and embraced me. It was a tight, warm, welcome embrace. She had never touched me before, and my confused arms wrapped around her carefully. The hard-shelled badass I had come to know melted into me.
She lingered and looked back at me, her face as sympathetic as mine. There was a certain understanding between us that transcended language. I smiled at her.
“Adios gringa.”
While the Costa Rican “gringa” translates to “white person,” I’d like to think that Valeria defined it as “friend.”
