Starting a New Life

August 17, 2011

I’ve finally moved into my own place: a two-bedroom apartment in a great neighborhood for a reasonable price. Only it’s unfurnished…which in Costa Rica means no stove, no fridge, no bed, no table, not even a chair.

To make things more difficult, I moved in on Mother’s Day, and Ticos really love their mothers. Nearly all shops close (the two days prior are so busy they’re like the Black Friday) and the locals spend time with their families. One of the few stores open is Walmart, which is really expensive here, so there was no way I was buying furniture there. But at least I could get a bottle of raid. When I moved into my apartment, the shower curtain was suspiciously closed; then when I opened it, low and behold – a cockroach had discovered a nice wet spot to reside. Throughout the apartment, there were bugs everywhere. My sister had told me a story before I left about how when she was in Costa Rica, she woke up to a tarantula descending towards her. I didn’t particularly want that experience.

I got a little lost on my way to Walmart and found myself wandering through a residential area I hadn’t been. I came across a soccer game and middle class families were watching the players move like acrobats in the rain. This was how I imagined Central America.

Back at the apartment, I took out the bottle of raid and sprayed every nook and cranny of the place. I removed the dead cockroach in the shower, killed the spider in the bedroom, and squashed the small, fly-like creatures, which were easy to kill, but were also intent on sticking to the most difficult to reach corners of the room. I discovered one spider in the laundry room that had built a web that was quite impressive. You could tell that that spider had labored over it, that it had lived there for a long time (in spider years).

When I killed the spiders, they all put up a fight – crawling away, flailing their little legs – except for the spider that made the intricate web. That spider let go after a single spray of Raid, as if it knew this day would come. Although I killed every other insect in the place to the point where my apartment reeked of bug spray, and I obliterated all the other webs, I didn’t tear down that spider’s web. I couldn’t destroy its home.