The Value of Communication: A Lesson Learned in Costa Rica

   I never knew the true value of communication until traveling to Costa Rica. The host family that my friend and I stayed with throughout the trip did not speak any English. This was something that I was completely unprepared for. To be honest, I was expecting the family to be bilingual and at least speak broken English. What a flawed perception that was! The only way to communicate with the family was to use hand gestures and Spanish words from a handout. I know my friend and I had to look like baboons when talking to the family at first. We would do things like hold our hands over our heads and move our fingers around to indicate water or walk around the house and point at things to indicate what we were talking about. This, mixed in with our few Spanish words had to be a site. It was frustrating at first learning how to communicate this way, but after the first day it became second nature. Before long we were able to have small conversations with our family, even if they were confusing at times.

     Communication was equally as hard outside of our host family’s home. At some of the nursing homes that we went to nobody spoke English. This is when we learned how valuable Laura, our tour guide, was. She was our interpreter and helped us at clinicals. But Laura was not always available, so we had to learn to communicate with the residents and workers at the nursing home in the same way that we did with our host families. This was a big challenge at times, but it was a great way to prepare us for becoming nurses and taught us how to break the communication barrier so that we are able to assess our patients.

     Although we learned how to communicate with the people of Costa Rica to some extent, there were times when we misconstrued what they were trying to say or still didn’t understand each other at all. For example, our host family tried to instruct us on how to turn the hot water on but we thought they were telling us that there was no hot water. So in turn, we spent the first week taking freezing cold shower because of the communication barrier.

      I have learned that communication is a vital part of life. Without it, you feel helpless. Without it, you feel lost. I have also learned that just because people speak two different languages does not mean that they can’t communicate. It simply mean that they have to work together to form their own language. Communication is something that people take for granted every day, but Costa Rica has taught me the value that it holds.