Bilingual..Si o No?

I have lived in the mountains of Puerto Rico for the past twenty seven years. If I had lived in any other Spanish speaking country for this amount of time, I have no doubt that I would be totally bilingual.

Having studied Spanish in both high school and college, I came to Puerto Rico with the ability to read and write and a pretty good vocabulary, although once I got here, I spent most of my time saying, “Que?....what?..slow down….mas despacio, por favor.” After living with a Neyorican who speaks extremely fast,in both English and Spanish, I finally can understand most people face to face. But how come I still can’t understand the guy on the radio telling jokes in the morning? I used to ask the kids if they understood what the guy said, and they would laugh and explain the joke to me. It may have been a lousy joke, but they understood it. Oh well..so much for radio banter..what about the printed page? I should be able to read the headlines…and yet sometimes I’m at a loss for the key words….maybe they’re slang..I don’t know but it seems unbelievable that I can’t!
We have guests that swear that no one speaks English on this island. They’re amazed that with English classes in the schools and so much stateside influence of movies and television that more people don’t speak English and yet everywhere I go and ask a question, people answer me in English. I think people are shy to speak English but anxious to try and practice it, so when I ask a question in Spanish they jump at the chance to answer me in English. I suppose it’s my accent, but I’m often asked if I’d be more comfortable speaking English even though the person asking me may have their own heavy accent.

I have the utmost respect for any person who lives in a country and has to speak a language other than their native tongue. It can be exhausting…or is that just because I haven’t passed the fluency barrier? I do know that it just takes practice to speak another language. After a recent article in the local paper, we’ve had a lot of phone calls and I’ve answered a lot of questions..and with just a month or so of telephone talk, I’ve become more fluent..at least on the subject of TJ Ranch…so practice is the key….but Puerto Rico can make you lazy. The beauty of Puerto Rico..besides the physical beauty…is that I can live here in a ‘foreign’ country where people speak a ‘foreign’ language and yet I can speak English, pay in dollars…it’s foreign, but ‘convenient’. I can also get by with butchering both languages and speak the familiar Spanglish. I can invent words and can be readily understood. I don’t think that would be the case in the mountains of Bolivia.

And so mis amigos….I’ll say adios and tu sabes…I’ll try to work mas duro and practice so that I don’t get so cansada trying to speak. Yo se que yo puedo..I know that I can. Don’t let me switch you over… hablame en español y dejame contestarte.

Hasta luego..

Talkin' Chicken - TJ Ranch Farm Update

Our chickens are loose; they run all around. I guess now a days the term is “free range”. Our chickens, like all chickens, lay eggs; but finding them is an Easter egg hunt all year long.

In the “old days” there was ‘candling’ to find out if the egg was edible. We put our discovered eggs in water and if they float, it’s time to toss them. Sometimes we let the hens sit on their eggs and then watch her leading her baby chicks around. There will be various hens with their chicks behind, each day the number diminishing due to various obstacles in the life of chicks here on the farm. Our chickens are known for breeding fighting roosters. I’m not sure how we started with them because we don’t raise roosters, but they are tough and do survive the elements. The eggs are small and cream colored with dark orange yolks.

Periodically the roosters fight on their own. It’s their nature and although I don’t believe in adding power to their battles with sharp spurs, etc., cocks are pretty brutal and fight whether you bet on them or not. Periodically we kill a gallo (rooster) and make soup. Too tough to eat, they make an excellent broth which we freeze for future use.

We’re thinking of getting some “ponedoras”…egg layers. It takes about 6 months of careful care before the chicks lay eggs, so it’s usually better to buy older chickens ready to lay…but for now…come join us at TJ Ranch and hunt for some fresh eggs. You won’t regret it. See ya………..

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly: Health Care in Puerto Rico

Whether you’re a tourist visiting the island or a resident, you can rest assured that Puerto Rico has top quality doctors. For whatever reason there are still well qualified doctors who choose to remain or return to the island. “Brain drain” is well known here. Companies entice university graduates to well paying jobs in the states; NASA picks students from UPR, Mayaguez like ripe grapes on a vine, but there are a variety of doctors and specialists all over the island 'doing medicine" and doing it well.

From my personal experience: an ectopic pregnancy, pre-eclampsia in another pregnancy, a basal cell carcinoma on my lip which could have left me looking like Stacy Keach under the knife of a not too steady dermatologist, I have gotten excellent medical treatment. I know both friends and family who have survived breast, kidney and prostate cancer, all receiving medicine at its best.So that’s the good news. From broken bones to root canals, modern medicine is on the island and doctors know their stuff!

The bad news is that you may die waiting for treatment. We’ll start with a typical situation for a non life-threatening stye. You call the office of the ophthalmologist who says to come between 7am and noon. You arrive around 7:30 and sign the list (number 20) and figure you have time to go for coffee at the truck outside. While you’re gone, your number was called so you lose your turn…finally you are called and you move to a secret waiting room to wait some more. After about 5 hours you see the doctor and are prescribed antibiotics to reduce inflammation and told to return for another appointment. For your second appointment you forgo your coffee and stay firm…you wait 4 hours and are told your stye looks better but come one more time…if it’s not gone, you’ll get it cut out. The next appointment is ‘cutting time’ so you have to go. You wait 2-3 hours and in 5 minutes your highly skilled doctor removes your stye. You have spent approximately 12 hours to get a simple stye removed and have done extensive damage to your back sitting in the office chairs. This doctor is highly recommended for cataracts and all other eye diseases; you decide you’d rather go blind.

I’m not sure where Latinos get their hot headed fiery reputation…maybe in affairs of the heart. I have never seen more patient people waiting to see a doctor. I bring a book or two, some magazines, then I watch TV and talk to the other patients. When my bony butt gets too uncomfortable, I get up and start pestering. I have a mini tantrum stomping my feet and grimacing trying to see the doctor and get through the receptionist who should block for the NFL.

I’ve often asked doctors why they won’t make appointments and they say people don’t show up. That’s when I say that I’m a Gringa and I promise to arrive 15 minutes early and I’ll never stand them up. Pleeeze let me make an appointment by phone…they smile and ignore me. Some offices are more adept than others. My dermatologist makes you sign in and the receptionist can tell you about what time to come back. If you’re not deathly ill, if you have some shopping to do, or if you live nearby, a doctor’s visit doesn’t have to make you crazy. Some offices close for lunch…I arrive at my dentist at 12:30 and sit on the steps with a sandwich til 1 so that I get ‘first’ in the afternoon (and apologize for the pastrami in my teeth). My gynecologist no longer delivers babies so his office has gotten better. Even though he makes appointments with dates and times, there is no way to gauge how long it will take. I honestly don’t know how people can go to medical appointments and hold down a job. So that’s the bad news…and for me, it’s very very bad.

The ugly is as ugly is everywhere…the costs, the insurance, the mess. The fact that my insurance covered a hip replacement operation but not the hip, nor the rehabilitation is ridiculous. The fact that my prescription discount card can reduce a $200 prescription to $140 is a joke. Who knows what ailment is around the corner? I am confident that I can find a competent doctor on the island to treat my problem although I’m not sure I have the mental wherewithal to do it.

If I can only get a doctor to TJ Ranch one time, I’m sure I could get future house calls. I could lure him/her with the food…I could tempt him/her with the privacy of no cell phone service… I can see it all now…the doctor tells his/her receptionist to pass any call through from that crazy Gringa just so she/he has an excuse to leave the office and get away….doctors tell their friends, other doctors …and soon the word spreads and we never have to come off our mountain. Oops…excuse me…I just nodded off…. must’ve been dreaming………..gotta go….they just called my name….J o a n….K???

Here are some pictures of the good ole days when our vet made house calls.

Hats Off to TJ Ranch Guests

I’ve been thinking about how much our guesthouse and guests mean to me. I usually do this kind of refection around Thanksgiving, but I’m thinking about it now because I realize how important it is for my psychological well being.

I’ve lived twenty-five years in the “boondocks” of Arecibo. The first four years were spent in a physical quest planting our farm, tiling the house and making a life in my jungle home. Then came children and I spent the next eighteen years shuttling the kids up and down the hill or if not physically taking them around then mentally focusing on their well being.

But things are different now. Our youngest is driving and independent. So here I am…spending more time at home with never ending chores to occupy my body, but what of my mind? The guests at TJ Ranch have been my life line to the outside world. I hear about things going on and meet people I probably would never have met, even living in a metropolitan area.

How would I have known about “Green Gas” if I hadn’t met Efrain? Please check out his website at www.greengasllc ....it’s important stuff. Or where would I have met Allison, the Mormon mother of seven, traveling with her eldest son for a week before going back to Augusta to home school her brood. Hey, Rick..thanks for telling me about your father’s 40 acre almond farm and the “shaker” which shakes the trees to harvest the almonds. How come they haven’t tried something like that for coffee? Daniel, the Frenchman who studied in Spain…oolala what an accent! Thanks for fixing our telescope…guess aeronautic engineering has some hands on applications. I just wrote to Steve, the firefighter from Arizona, to see if he went to California to fight this year’s fires…not this year wrote his wife, Nikki…although he’d like to… Don’t let me forget the Boricuas, traveling from other parts of the island. The trip for Carlos and Waleska from Naguabo probably took as long as a flight from Florida to come see us. They had a relaxing weekend celebrating his recent return from Honduras. And good luck to Clarys who needs to make some hard decisions in order to deal with her debilitating lupus condition. I hope the days at TJ Ranch gave her the rest and fortitude to persevere.

And so…keep on coming TJ Ranch guests. Not only do we need you to survive economically, but I need you in order not to go brain dead. Each of you is truly unique and has made my life in the mountains as rich and diverse as that of any city dweller.

(photos included have nothing to do with our guests...just some of the TJ Ranch family)

Rethinking Coffee

In 1989 we planted 3000 coffee trees, spacing them according to the government’s instructions, only to find out that they were too close together and we had to remove about 700 trees.

In 1990 Hurricane Hugo flattened our crop, but they were so young that we could stake them up and they were fine.
In 1999 we removed more trees to build our guesthouse, but we maintained two major areas devoted to coffee.

We enjoy being farmers. We are city folk transplanted in the country, learning by trial and error…Green Acres revisited. We followed the coffee process from start to finish. We picked, skinned, dried, shelled and roasted our beans, although usually we picked the coffee and sold it “uva” to the local cooperative which would then sell it to the various processors. We’d gather a crew together during harvest and pick coffee from early morning until we could load the sacks in the pick up and take them off to some remote location to sell. We were coffee farmers and although we never made much money, our hearts were in it.
Now it’s twenty years later; our coffees are old and so are we. Broca, a world wide coffee plague has come to our area, diminishing the quality and price of coffee and requiring more attention and money. So it’s time to rethink our coffee. Just as we’re approaching a new age in our lives, so must our farm.

There’s no such thing as fallow land here. The jungle has its own life and takes over all in its path. Our cottages would soon disappear, covered by vines of ñame if we were to leave things alone. And so we’re thinking…without investing a lot of money we’re trying to come up with a plan for the future. I’ve heard that the government has reforestation programs, encouraging people to plant trees and leave them for ten years, but it involves government loans and lots of paperwork.

We’ve come up with a preliminary plan. In the past year or so we’ve interspersed some plantains in our coffee plantation. We also have various kinds of citrus trees ready to plant. I even have a fig tree started in a pot. We have a row of asparagus and a row of papayas planted among the coffee. So I think we’re going to continue our various plantings… label them so that our guest can walk around and see….space them so that we can cut the grass with the mower or the tractor and perhaps at some point the trees would provide some shade that would inhibit undergrowth.

So that’s our idea…keep some coffee for “show and tell” but try converting the area to a variety of trees…maybe some ‘exotics’ (vanilla? Venus fly traps???) so that we can maintain our groves, eat from the trees and wander through paradise. Anyone want to trade some bulldozer time for a couple of nights in Eden?