I stood by the front door, anticipating the blast of air that would hit my face when it was opened. But it was a hot steamy blast, not the cold, arctic air I was so used to. Before me lay those creapy airplane stairs leading to a rugged, cracked tarmac and then the impossibly white sand that only Central America knows.

 Our Christmas present to each other this year was a trip to Costa Rica to help build a school for a small village called Tanques... a couple of hours east of Liberia. Our drive over uneven, half paved roads filled me with concern over what our living conditions would be like. When we arrived the village was a blaze of colour and... more vividly... white. Sheets hung from clothes lines, people walked around with bright white shirts on, and the sand... oh the sand, was as white as I'd ever seen.

Four days into our journey, December 26th, I was working to secure a rickety well. I was using some lumber from the school to lift the wall of the well, while I shimmied a new cinder blockunderneath to form a more solid foundation, when "CRACK!!" the lumber splintered and the wall came down on my hand. I was carried to a makeshift hospital room with my hand wrapped in a white sheet, crimson seeping through in spots to form a small Canadian flag (note to whoever started the rumour that Oakvillites are blue bloods... we most definitely are NOT!!!) when I saw it... a bed with white sheets, and a white pillow. The blazing white sunlight was streaming through the window which acted like a prism and broke that pure, white light into every colour under the rainbow, and deposited it onto the pillow upon which I was about to lay my spinning head. 

I suddenly realized that we, on this massive, glorious, planet all come from the same source. Behind every colour, persuasion, or religion... if we trace it back to the root source from our refracted ending... is that one brilliant light. Pure as the driven snow (there... I had to get something about snow in.)

Now we are home and the grass is brown, the leaves are gone, our sheets are blue and I miss the white. Most of all I miss being able to type with two hands. But I refuse to have my white cast signed or maligned in any way. It reminds me of the purity of our week, the friendliness of the people, and the joy on their faces as their school slowly took shape.

It is my last connection with the white of Tanques.