Costa Rican visiting professor’s past inspires him to help others
Carlos Palma says he never saw himself staying on the two acre coffee farm that his father worked every day.
As he sits in his office in Snow Hall, he reflects on how he used walk a mile without shoes every day to his elementary school in Palmares, Costa Rica, a town of about 20,000 people an hour outside the San José capital.
He remembers carrying pumpkins to sell to his classmates.
He recalls the times his mother and father sent him to collect blood from their cattle after they were butchered to make sausage.
“When one has lived poverty, one knows that only with work can he move forward,” he said in his native Spanish. “The only way you change your life is through education, persistence and responsibility.”
Palma, now a 55-year old businessman, lawyer, professor and director of the school of economics of Costa Rica who is visiting KU until June, said that receiving a need-based, all-expense paid scholarship from the University of Costa Rica was his first step towards a better life.
After graduating with master’s degrees in economics and law ten years later, his career spanned from politics to economics, business and finance. He became an independent economic advisor and stockbroker, started several import-export companies, purchased seven farms with nearly 1,000 hectares of land, became an active politician in the Social Christian Democratic Party and worked as vice president of the Costa Rican Tourism Institute.
“My goal was first to make money to be successful, and later to provide quality education for my children,” he said.
As he flips through the pages of his worn, dog-eared passport sprinkled with red, green, blue and black stamps, Mr. Palma mumbles the names of the countries he visited when he was vice president of the Costa Rican Tourism Institute.
“France, Italy, England, España, Nicaragua, Mexico, Panama, Argentina, Chile, Holland, Czech…Republica…”
Today, his seven children, who he often took with him on his travels, are as scattered across the world as the stamps on his passport. His oldest three sons are living in England, Italy and Germany, while his eldest daughter and three younger children are studying in Costa Rica.
“His principal interests I think are his family and country and he always has been very conscious of the lines that separate work from money,” said his son Carlos-Andres, one of the four children from Mr. Palma’s first wife who now studies chemical engineering in London.
Since Mr. Palma became the director of the school of economics at his university a year ago, one of his goals has been to help educate less-privileged children in rural areas of Costa Rica. He recently initiated a project with the Ministry of Education that will install Internet connections in the countryside. He also gives scholarships to high school students from his hometown of Palmares to study at the public university.
“Life is very short, and one has to leave positive footsteps that help others to improve their situation,” he said.
---
Every day, Mr. Palma is here.
The sessions aren’t required. He’s not enrolled as an Applied English Center student like the others who attend.
“At first I was just wondering why an older man dressed in a suit was interested in a conversation group,” said Melissa Rogers, a conversation leader for the Applied English Center.
His formal attire distinguishes him from the casually clad students at the table. Today, his black hair is neatly combed and he wears a well-pressed black jacket, a burgundy shirt neatly rolled at the sleeves, and black, pleated pants.
Though he normally arrives on time, he is 15 minutes late. As he sits down, he smiles apologetically, his eyes gleaming behind small, gold-rimmed glasses. He gingerly sets his brown leather briefcase and miniature English dictionary on the table.
“I’m sorry…I’m late. Doctor appointment. High blood pressure,” he says, pointing to the pulse of his wrist.
In his native Spanish, Mr. Palma is prolific, almost poetic. Yet at these conversation groups, he struggles to describe his morning routine. His eyes scan the ceiling as he searches for vocabulary.
“I wake…I wake at 5 am,” he says, waiting for nods of understanding from others at the table. “And there were…there was…a loud storm.”
The students chat for the remainder of the hour about their daily schedules, campus events and popular slang. He leans in to listen, often repeating words or jotting them down on a yellow legal pad.
Mr. Palma said his principal goal in his five-month stay here, in addition to advancing the memorandum of understanding between the economics departments of KU and the University of Costa Rica, is to learn English.
Since he arrived, he has been sitting in on undergraduate Macroeconomics and Money and Banking lectures. Professor Paul Comolli, director of graduate studies for the department of economics, enrolled him in the classes to help him familiarize with basic economic terms in English.
Comolli says he meets with Mr. Palma about three times a week. Soon, they will begin to discuss the academic agreement between universities, which will eventually include the creation of joint graduate programs and the share of personnel, research, information and students.
“We haven’t had complicated conversations yet, but I think his conversational English has gotten better,” he said. “He’s been gently pushing to talk about this agreement.”
When he’s not working or studying, Mr. Palma has made an effort to meet Costa Rican students on campus. Piero Protti, a PhD student from San Jose, Costa Rica, has spent time with Mr. Palma and said that it seems he is still adjusting to the transportation and cultural differences, but that he enjoys the work he is doing here.
“I know what it fells like to be lonely in a different place than ‘home’ so I'm trying to organize my schedule to include some social time with him to help make his time here a bit cozier,” Protti said.