Message in a Post Card . . . .

Attempt to contact the outside world using the postal service was made today. For the huge expense of 280 colones (or 50 cents) a message was sent via post card to family back home. Bets have been placed. Some say under a week, but my moneys on two, before it arrives in the States. Either way, we'll be waiting anxiously to see if our note is received. Should it be, then we can start sending out birthday, thank you cards and notes of survival to family, friends, and skeptics. We can stop with the smoke signals, messages in a bottle, and carrier pigeons.

I most say traffic here is of the unusual sort. Cattle with long horns and skinny tails roam the roads at their leisure. Sometimes with a cattle rustler, sometimes not. In no hurry, no direction, and certainly no respect for cars on the road, they wander the paved paths chewing. There is such young happiness at each sighting. Time stands still in wonder as neck straining, face pressed against the glass, I watch them pass by like fur covered waves. Their dark eyes, just above the window line of the Trooper, peer back with the same childlike wonder as we watch each other go. If all traffic jams were like this, then what fun it would be to get "stuck" with them.

There are other such challenges here on the west side of Costa Rica when it comes to driving. With no sidewalks in the surrounding area, there is no place where people can stroll along main roads and avoid cars. Man and machine must share the way along with bike, horse, cow, iguana and dog. Since there is such interaction between all species of transportation, you encounter varied sorts of obstacles. One such challenge is an old man. He is ancient, nearly blind, with a face a canvas of wrinkles so numerous his eyes are hidden behind them. His steps are a simple shuffle, but they keep him moving forward. Head on against us he comes nearly every time we see him, but with a fearlessness I marvel at. Unable to see us or the white faced panic on our faces, he continues his journey down the dark asphalt road in one of the busiest intersections here.

Now if there were sidewalks he would not be noticed, walking safely away from our beast of steel, but because he walks in the main road we always see him. With nervous anticipation we try to see how close we can come to avoiding him and not also careen into the oncoming scooter carrying three people or have the barreling truck from behind smash into us. In those seconds of slow motion where doubt hangs in the air on whether or not you will die, or kill someone, his sun weathered face becomes etched in your mind. Forever immortalized by those split seconds of fear, I cringe, but he doesn't flinch as we pass within a breath of each other. Then its over and he's only an image in the side mirror fading quickly as I look back. One thing is for sure, wherever he is heading, he'll get there. It is the rest of us that may end up elsewhere. . . .

On a safe stationary note, my African bracelet broke today. Like my past slipping away, the string caught on a fence post at the playground and I felt it release. I've worn that string of beads all the way from Ghana to the States, and then to Costa Rica, for a total of seven months. Now it is just a lose string with a few plastic beads, lying limp on the table. I kind of feel as though it is a sign from God that I need to let go of Africa and move on. It was the last piece from that trip that I carried with me and now that reminder is broken. My wrists are free again. Here's to moving on and moving forward only with God's help. . .