A little luck brought me this profile Vegan Farmstay - Animal Rescue, Sanctuary and Organic Vegan Farm in Central Costa Rica (since removed) on Workaway, but a more personal experience is better—farms that don’t have a program for volunteers. Enter a 70-page directory of organic farms in Costa Rica. The challenge became searching in a maps app to see how far they were from me. It was easier to search for the closest farms. Two came up on Facebook pages and I prostrated myself before them.
This is what my email (it’s from a while ago and cringy for its unrestrained, naive-sounding enthusiasm):
To whom it may concern [couldn’t find names]:
Born in Jamaica, I would like to work voluntarily on an organic farm in San Jose close to where I’m staying.
The longer version:
When I was an adolescent I didn’t know how I’d like to spend my life. I graduated in Business, but started to teach English to travel, learn languages and have experiences beyond the little island of Barbados where I grew up.
I’ve learned that, to change the world, you must change yourself. I want to learn to cultivate my own food in a sustainable way but, more importantly, to live a life in accordance with the values that I’ve developed over the years. I’m also interested in composting, vermicomposting and medicinal plants [like marijuana - of course I didn’t say this!].
In a monetary system, the focus is on profits and a few farms that have voluntary workers, seem more interested in earning money than in helping people to become environmental custodians. I feel this isn’t the case with your farm.
I hope that you can offer me an opportunity to work with you. I can offer English classes to you and your workers and I’m available long-term.
I’m aware it’s labour intensive, but I want to work in the open air, learning skills that are important if we are to stop and reverse the effects of humanity’s persistent shortsightedness.
If you can’t offer this opportunity, perhaps you know of other farms in San Isidro that can. Thank you for taking the time to read this. I hope to hear from you soon.
Please find attached, some references.
Best regards.
That same night I got a response from Farm X but didn’t open it until the next day, thinking it would be like the other, from Farm Y, which read:
“Thank you for your interest. At this time we can’t receive volunteers at the farm.
We thank you for your interest.”
My intestines fell out onto the floor. It seemed like they’d done the least they could do which was to hit send on the suggested email text after typing the first word of each sentence. The effort to thank them for their response took everything, like Kirsten Dunst as Justine in Lars Von Trier’s Melancholia, but you have to at least build the bridge before you can torch it.
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