Surviving The Fall, 18

Costa Rica, or rather, Monteverde, has come back to bite me. When I am travelling I sometimes exchange, or at least offer, contact information with potential new friends. The other day, I got an email from said potential new friend. He is very young, a waiter in a restaurant I was eating in, likely not much more than twenty, if that, and quite reminds me of aspects of me when I was that young, and I think he is aware of me as someone he could turn into when he is older (whether he wants to or not, perhaps). So, he wants me to help him sell some family property, a lovely chunk of land that his parents want to get rid of. I am from Canada, you say? From North America? Like an American but nicer, kinder and with better manners. I am white and speak English as a second language. Therefore I have money pouring out of my backside. Or at least that's what I suspected he might be thinking when he wrote me about this the other day. Mind you, in his first email he didn't tell me what he wanted to talk to me about. I thought it was just friendly contact and that he was looking forward to seeing me when I return to Monteverde next March. And likely, this is all true, since for a lot of people, the most effective way of snaring a new friend is by trying to get the new interest interested in and onboard our personal projects and to flatter them to death by insisting that they have the expertise and we are simply waiting with baited breath for their words of wisdom and help. In my response to his second email I took great care to disabuse him of any assumption that I was going to financially bail out him and his parents, and I told him that I am on a low income, with limited savings, and only because the government pays most of my rent can I afford to visit him in his beautiful country. With dramatic flourish he wrote back that I shouldn't even think that he was targeting me, and simply if I know anyone in my dear Northern Paradise who would want to buy some land in Costa Rica. I had to think hard, and I actually know someone who has already bought property not far from San Jose, so he might have an idea of what channels my friend could go through. Then I recalled another friend who now lives in Costa Rica, a Canadian like me, who owns a bed and breakfast in Alajuela and has contact with tonnes of reasonably well-heeled Gringos just itching to live in that country. I did scold my new friend a bit for not wanting to sell to Ticos (the name Costa Ricans call themselves) and I wrote to him about what offshore millionaires have helped do to housing costs in fabled Vancouver, much as offshore white folk and others have been doing to housing costs in his own Costa Rica. He insists that a foreigner would take better care of the property than a Tico. I think what he really means to say is they would get a better price from a foreigner. Him being young and quite new at doing this, I thought it necessary to snare as much information about the property and their expectations as possible, and he kind of reluctantly complied: a three hectare piece of land, no buildings, with tropical forest and trails and clear areas and a kickass view for around 600,000 USD. Then he seemed to get the idea that I was going to find them a buyer. Again, I had to disabuse him, saying that I was promising nothing. I did suggest that he do an online search for sites where he could advertise, in English and I have offered to translate the ad for him from Spanish if he wants to write one. He balked about the extra work and I told him, too bad, he has to do it, not me. He seems pleased so far, and sometimes the best way to help others is to help them help themselves. In the meantime, I'm not going to worry about it, but this is what has particularly come back to bite me from Costa Rica: it is this revelation I had in the cloud forest about the interdependence of all life forms and the importance of receptivity. So, now, expecting no financial reward, I get to put my money where my mouth is. I do hope they find a buyer for this property. I have no idea if I will be of any help or not, and really, I feel a little bit squeamish about abetting this process of their selling off yet another couple of hectares of their beautiful country to foreign nationals, thus further pushing upward the cost of living and housing for their fellow Ticos.