The following is from Anthony Godoy, who recently joined the surfer distribution in Costa Rica with film producer Robert August among others. Anthony is leading an effort to produce and pitch a series of short form video documentaries on the event which will be on our website when complete.

As a photographer, I often repeat in my head, “I’m not here. I’m not here. I’m not here” when facing something difficult. And suddenly, I’m not there. But I am there, right in the middle of it.

On February 24, I was in Costa Rica during Free Wheelchair Mission’s distribution of more than 500 wheelchairs to the disabled. We located a crippled child sitting flatly on a tile porch. I don’t know what it was about the look on his face that triggered it, but suddenly I wasn’t there.

A week later in Los Angeles I'm editing images and my wife notices one child, and asks, “I wonder what he was thinking?” I couldn’t possibly know what he was thinking. But I saw something in the picture that jarred a memory. When excited he’d plug his ears with his fingers. Perhaps he was thinking, “I’m not here. I’m not here. I’m not here.”
 
But now he has his chair, and everyone knows that Free Wheelchair Mission has been there.