So, we’ve now been in Costa Rica for seven weeks, which means we’re more than halfway through our first “tour” out here. I suppose the answer to the question in the title is… sometimes, but perhaps not always in the way you might expect.
Noms and I are very different people, so I’ll let her give you her own opinion in due course, but for me the experience has been fantastic. We have a double bed, which is a massive bonus because it means Noms can give me a shove when I snore. Although, to be fair, I’m not convinced she actually needs the bed to do that. She seems perfectly capable of launching an elbow from several feet away. Yes, the bed is in a hut that is open to the elements, with a tin roof and mesh instead of proper windows, but it’s surprisingly comfortable. We have spiders, ants and a rat who regularly leaves me a little present on my bed — always on my side, I might add. Never on Noms’ side.
I’m beginning to suspect the rat has been briefed.
But honestly, it’s a great little home and, after eleven hours working at the Rescue Centre, I reckon I could sleep on a bed of nails.
The work itself isn’t particularly hard in the traditional sense and it certainly isn’t stressful. The hours are quite long, but there are plenty of breaks and downtime, so I really can’t complain. Every day follows broadly the same routine, and routine is important here. I move between coordinating two different animal-zone teams, while Noms remains permanently coordinating the sloth team. I suspect she has now been officially classified as part of the sloth species. The repetitive nature probably affects her more than me, but strangely, although we do much the same things every day, every day is also different. The animals always behave slightly differently, our interactions with them are never quite the same and the volunteers allocated to you change regularly, so you are constantly working with different people.
Then there’s the unexpected stuff. A raccoon steals your keys. A scorpion decides that Noms looks like a comfortable place for a piggyback. An ocelot decides it would like to have a fight with a snake. Something happens every day that surprises you. As the saying goes, never work with children or animals. Well, apparently I’ve decided to work with both.
And that brings me to the biggest stretch outside my comfort zone:
Children.
Now, my daughter is 29 and, as far as I’m concerned, she is still my little girl. So, in my very old-fashioned brain, most of the volunteers here are basically children. If my daughter were here, she would be one of the older ones. Of course, they aren’t children. Most are between 18 and 25 and they are perfectly capable adults. The problem is that, from their perspective, I am ancient. Not quite dinosaur ancient, perhaps, but probably somewhere between “old bloke” and “uninteresting historical artefact”.
This has made me do quite a lot of self-reflection. I left school at 16 and went straight into the workforce, where I was rarely surrounded by more than one or two people my own age. During my degree studies, I attended evenings and weekends, so the mature students were a real mixture of ages. Later, as a leader in industry, I worked with people of all ages — older than me, younger than me, people with doctorates and people without degrees. I was always comfortable with that. But now I’ve been thrown into an environment where almost everyone is within a very narrow age range, and I’m the weird one.
OK, most people who know me will probably tell you I’ve been the weird one for years, but you know what I mean. This time, I’m the one who has to adapt.
And that has been surprisingly good for me. The volunteers are intelligent, well educated and incredibly motivated, and with that comes a level of self-confidence that is wonderful to see in young people. They have huge amounts of knowledge. What they perhaps don’t yet have is the accumulated experience — or, depending on your point of view, the accumulated mistakes – that comes with getting older.
And that’s where I’ve had to have a serious word with myself.
I’ve been genuinely shocked by some of their culture and attitudes. Not negatively shocked, just surprised and occasionally completely baffled. I’m on the cusp between Baby Boomer and Generation X, and I’m afraid I’m simply not fluent in the language of Generation Z. And I thought German was difficult!
I spent my childhood working on a farm and then spent 42 years working in engineering. I’ve spent most of my life surrounded by practical people, so it genuinely never occurred to me that an 18-year-old might never have learned how to use a hosepipe properly, sweep up properly or sharpen a knife. My first instinct is often, “How can you not know how to do that?” But, of course, the problem isn’t with them. It’s with me. Why should they know? If they’ve never had to do something before, why would they automatically know how to do it?
My constant and rather illogical attitude of “I can do it, so why can’t they?” is both unfair and, frankly, ridiculous. It’s exactly the same as someone asking me to turn on a PlayStation or Xbox and wondering why I haven’t got a clue what I’m doing. I’ve never owned a games console. I wouldn’t even know where to start. Although, to be fair, I’m pretty sure I’d be rubbish at it even if I had.
So, my biggest learning experience so far — and probably my biggest expedition outside my comfort zone — has nothing to do with Costa Rica, the jungle or even the animals. It’s learning about a particular species: Homo sapiens. More specifically, the subspecies Gen Z. And blimey, what an interesting animal.
I’m learning that my experience isn’t necessarily the universal standard I sometimes seem to think it is. Things that I consider obvious are only obvious because of the life I’ve lived. Things that seem completely alien to me are perfectly normal to them. And perhaps that’s the whole point. They have things to teach me just as much as I have things to teach them.
I might know how to sharpen a knife, use a hosepipe, fix things, organise people and survive 42 years in engineering. They know things I haven’t got the faintest clue about. I suspect I’d last about three days in a school before being dragged in to see the head like a student found smoking behind the bike sheds.
The thing that has struck me most, though, is just how amazing the volunteers are. Maybe they aren’t always as experienced or practical as I am, but their attitude, enthusiasm and motivation are fantastic. They genuinely want to help. They throw themselves into the work, they care about the animals and they are mostly willing to learn. And that’s something I really admire.
It also makes me wonder whether my generation sometimes forgets just how much young people have to offer. Perhaps we’re too quick to concentrate on what they can’t do rather than what they can do. I certainly know I’ve been guilty of that here. It is very easy to look at someone who doesn’t know how to do something you have been doing for 50 years and think, “How on earth can you not know that?” It takes a bit more humility to stop and think, “Why would they know that?” And, if I’m honest, that has probably been one of the more valuable lessons of the whole experience.
So, after seven weeks, I think I’ve learned something rather important. Maybe being outside your comfort zone isn’t necessarily about doing something frightening or difficult. Sometimes it’s simply about being somewhere where your own assumptions stop working. And believe me, there’s nowt quite like being surrounded by 20-year-olds to make you realise just how many assumptions you’ve been carrying around for the last 50-odd years.
Would I survive in a school? Absolutely not. Would I survive as a member of Gen Z? Not a chance. Would I survive without my multitool and sharpening stone? Well… let’s not push things too far.
But would I swap this experience? Not for all the chippies in Yorkshire.
Now, if anyone’s got a “How to Understand Gen Z When You’re an Old Git” dictionary, I’d be chuffed if I could borrow it.
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