One of the advantages of having someone inside my home, working alongside me with me the kids and helping out with the chores around the house, is that I get to question my habits and the roots of my cultures right down to the sink basket. I grew up thinking that metal little catch-all-the-food gadget was for, well, catching all the food that either didn’t go in the mouth or the garbage. Without that little thing, what horror! What trouble we will have. Every time I approach the sink when either a maid or nanny has washed some dishes, the sink basket disappears. Sometimes it’s in the dish dry rack under all the dishes, and sometimes I can’t even find it.

What “heck” I would have gotten from not only my mother but myriad of landlords who would have shaken their fists at me due to all the clutter I was sending down the drain. Do you know how expensive it is to call RotoRouter?? Have you ever seen the black sludge caused from all those little bits of uneaten food?? Shame on you! Whenever I return to the sink. I dutifully put the thing back in it’s hole. When I return, the maid or nanny takes it out. Guess who’s sink clogged up more? In ten years here, I’ve never had a drain back up. In the States? Oh, the sludge I’ve slogged through.

It’s also a custom to dry all the wet towels fully open, splayed across the counter tops. I, on the other hand, installed two spiffy plastic hooks on the side of the oven. What brilliance! I thought. The wet towels will hang out of site (because even though they have cute little red checks when you get them home from the linen store, after two washing they are just plain ugly) and dry from the warmness of the oven and stove. Do you think anyone but me hangs them there? No. Without out fail, when I return to a sparkling kitchen after someone was kind enough to help with the dishes, I can’t find the sink basket and wet towels cover all the kitchen tops.

Ten years ago, I would have fumed at the missing sink basket, just like my ancestors did. This is cultural adjustment in the most basic form. Lifestyle patterns root deeply in the past, and we pass them on often without even considering if they are useful or not. A friend of mine, an anthropologist turned owner of the Don Carlos hotel in downtown San Jose, said once when I interviewed him that culture is like a ball and chain around our ankles. We just drag it along with us, accepting it as our lot. Shaking loose that ball and chain can be hard and scary. I mean THEY cut the grass differently here; THEY use a different kind of soap; THEY eat rice and beans; THEY don’t return phone calls like WE do. Culture is the music, language and artistic tradition created and carried on through generations, but I also see culture as passing on the things we need, or think we need, to make it through our day. I can now speak the language and manage the climate in Costa Rica, but it’s been a much more interesting journey to challenge my own “culture” and shake loose what I have valued as “so” important.

Working women in Costa Rica don’t have dryers. It’s all powered by the sun and not those high-tech panels that capture the energy so it can be harvested for future use. No. The actual sunshine. Flat means it gets dryer faster. Drive across any country side and you’ll see towels and clothes laying on top of bushes and even over the grass - each grabbing it’s spot on the sun in hopes of getting dry before the afternoon rain begins. A working women has no time to concern herself with a stylish kitchen. It doesn’t matter where the towels hang, as long as they get dry.

The funny thing, is not matter how I try, I can’t get myself to wash dishes without that little sink basket in the hole. I’ll dig it out plop it in there. And when the towels cover the kitchen, I take each one down. And instead of getting all worked up that things weren’t done as I would do them, I appreciate the care that went into the act and the history behind it. And the dishes pile up the the sink regardless of what I think.