Living in the Rainforest, Carribean Angel

6/2/01

Hello again everyone,

It’s been a while since I last wrote. For any of you who wondered if I was the girl that was recently killed on the Costa Rican Caribbean Coast, the answer is no. That was an awful incident. I’m thinking of avoiding traveling to the Caribbean Coast unless I travel with a group of people.

I traveled to Puerto Limon by myself last month. Puerto Limon is the town where the first American girl was killed a few years ago. During the bus ride there, I met a beautiful boy. The bus stopped at Guapiles to pick up passengers and down the aisle came a tall black boy with corkscrew curls falling around his face and deep-set penetrating eyes. It was another dripping hot day, but he wore a black suite and held a bible. I scooted over so that he would sit with me. He started to speak to me in English. He told me that many black people along the Caribbean Coast still speak English because they came from Jamaica, a former British Colony. They were brought to Costa Rica to build a railroad through the country. He said they brought the Chinese to do the job first, but too many Chinese died of disease. The Jamaicans finished the job and stayed. Puerto Limon is how I would imagine Jamaica to be. It’s interesting that English is a dying second language in these Caribbean towns.

Once our bus neared Puerto Limon, I opened a map and asked my new friend where the American girl had been killed and why. He pointed to the waterfront and said that she was walking alone at night in this dangerous part of town. He pointed to the places that I shouldn’t go. When the bus let us out in Puerto Limon he walked with me through town to find the market and help me find my connecting bus. After I found my bus he walked away, shrouded in a soft light of kindness.

I live nearer to the center of Costa Rica in a rural area where nothing too dangerous happens. The only crime I’ve heard of here is robbery. However, they aren’t very sophisticated about it. One day, someone stole my next-door neighbor Rob’s bike. He has a shiny eight hundred dollar mountain bike that he uses to ride into town. He was bummed and we thought together about how to get it back. I told him that since this is such a small town, maybe we’d see someone riding it. After all, there is only one road to ride, drive, or bike on. Rob thought that they would have at least painted it if they stole it, but since we are in rural Costa Rica, maybe not. Low and behold, two days later, five-year ole little Christian, our other neighbor, spotted a kid riding Rob’s bike and yelled, “stop, that’s Roberto’s bike.” Christian’s father kicked the ked off of the bike, picked it up, and delivered it back to Rob. Funny. I definitely live in the country. Teaching has been keeping me very busy. The kids are so special. Little Flor, Lester, Raul, etc…I’ll write about them soon. Good night all. Thank you to those who wrote back and said that they liked hearing about life in Costa Rica. Laura