Like a Kid in A Cough Drop Store

This past Thursday I was in San José with a number of other volunteers at the immigration office getting our visas renewed and getting ID cards just like the ones that all Costa Ricans have, making us appear much more legit. I had spent the previous night sleeping in a hostel, and the three nights before that on the floor of the principal's office at a school (more on that later), but, that, with plenty of bus travel had me in contact with all sorts of people, and I had a cold. For the sore throat, I had purchased some cough drops. When I pulled them out in the immigration line, Kyle G., a third year extender that works in the office as a volunteer leader, asked if I had a cough or if I was just really integrated. "Integration" is one of the big goals of the Peace Corps, and can involve (in my opinion) any variety of adaptations to the Costa Rica lifestyle. 

He asked me this because one of the more curious traits of Costa Rican culture is that they treat Halls Cough Drops as candy. No qualifiers, no additions, they simply treat cough drops as candy. They buy them as impulse purchases at restaurants, grocery stores, or corner stores. They will ask you if you'd like one the way we might offer some Skittles or M&Ms to someone when we buy a bag. No cough necessary, not even a bit scratchy throat-I made the mistake of asking that the first few times. The one great thing about this, if you happen to have a cough on the bus-you can be guaranteed that someone around you might offer you a cough drop-so, yes, they do understand that they help when one has a cough, but that doesn't prevent them from buying them all the time. Even the smallest little corner store will probably have five or six flavors. And those little rolling merchants selling newspapers, cigarettes, and gum in the big cities, you bet they've got the full line of cough drops, both regular and creamy. Halls even makes cough drop-esque lollipops which come in stylish black packaging and are called "Halls Nite" and are advertised as something to be sucked on when out dancing at the night clubs. Cough drops just got exciting and sexy. If you don't believe me, check out the website. I've always liked cough drops, so I'm not sure that I won't start buying them now and then, boosting my integration level a little bit. 


Also, ginger ale is strangely popular here. Granted, Coke and Fanta are by far the leaders in the soda/pop/coke market, but ginger ale is almost as popular. While it's not as intriguing to me as the cough drop as candy phenomenon, I can positively state that I've never gone out to eat with five or six friends in the U.S. and had half order ginger ale. It happens almost every time I'm out with other volunteers here…then again, if a restaurant is going to have three kinds of pop, it'll be Coke, Fanta, and Canada Dry. I haven't read their most recent tax filings, but I'm pretty sure that Canada Dry is paying all their stock dividends on profits from Costa Rica. I mean, you just can't keep a company afloat based solely on people making party punch. So, now, don't say you don't know anything about Costa Rica: it's the country where they treat cough drops as candy.