Costa Rica
Report by Margaret Turner on working in Costa Rica
Working abroad: things to remember
I worked in Costa Rica, at the National Archives in San Jose, for 4 weeks in November/December 1999, mostly because I wanted to improve my Spanish, rather than from any archival motive. The following points might be useful to anyone contemplating a similar experience:
Expenses
The likelihood is that you will not be offered any salary/expenses to undertake such a placement. You will therefore have to fund most of your stay yourself. The SoA International Affairs Sub- Committee does offer small grants, one of which I received, and these can be a good starting point. You will need money for:
Travel to the country
I found Trailfinders excellent in finding me a reasonable cheap fare to Costa Rica. You could probably find even cheaper flights, but for such a long haul (17 hours) I preferred an airline I had at least heard of!
Living expenses within the country
The National Archives found me a very reasonable hotel in downtown San Jose, which provided me with breakfast every day, and evening meals 5 nights per week, for a fixed cost. Alternatives would be to look for a family to stay with, which might well be cheaper, though for those who like their own privacy, this might be too intrusive. I found the hotel ideal. It was not one of the big conglomerates which handled tourist groups, therefore the staff only spoke Spanish, and the other guests were mostly from Latin America, so I had to speak the language.
You will also need day to day expenses: bus fares, lunches, evening meals, travelling costs within the country at weekends etc. Clearly this depends on where you go. Costa Rica was very cheap coming from Europe, though I did spend a good deal of money travelling around on organised trips at weekends.
Expenses you will also still need to meet at home will have to be taken into consideration. I was granted unpaid leave by my employer, so had to consider paying missed national insurance contributions etc. The advice was that for 4 weeks, it wasn’t worth it, but for any longer, it would be. Mortgages, standing orders etc. also have to continue to be paid.
Other things to consider
Choose somewhere you want to go as a place, rather than for the quality of the archive services alone! You will spend a lot of time on your own, no matter how friendly people are, so you need to have things to do at weekends. The people you work with will probably ask you out, but be prepared to look after yourself if need be. The culture of the country might be that invitations are not issued to people that are not close friends.
Do some research on the country/city you are going to and its social customs (particularly if in a developing country) as well as of the archive service. It helps enormously at least to have a clearish picture of what you are going into. I found that the archive staff were delighted that I knew a little bit about the Costa Rica archive system before I arrived. I also found them very keen to learn about the UK system.
Practice your language, and make sure you know the archival terminology in the language. Knowing IT terms is very useful. Beware of not assuming you know the meaning of words: I spent days sorting out papers for government departments, assuming that ‘hacienda’ meant Home Office, while it is, in fact ‘Treasury’. Don’t be afraid to ask.
Be prepared to do what you might consider ‘low grade’ work. The system may be very hierarchical, as it was in Costa Rica, and I spent my 4 weeks doing para professional work. I enjoyed it, as the people I worked with were wonderful, but my aims were language based, so did not mind not being given detailed listing tasks to do.
Last modified 07/09/2004
