How You Can Help - Letter From Costa Rica

Getting Along in Costa Rica

October 2003

Dear Family and Friends,
We have started the historically rainiest month of the year, but the month began with very little rain. We have made up for that.

We had three tremors in two days. They were all less than 4.0. The third one lasted for several seconds.

We had a surprise at the Saturday market. Cantaloupes are back. They normally do not show up until January. The ones we have here are field ripened like the North Carolina June cantaloupes.

One Saturday George was waiting for Dee and Squirt to take a walk around the block at the farmers market. A door to door salesman approached George after George indicated that he wanted to buy a hat. He showed him several, including one that he indicated was US camouflage.

From the newspapers: in free trade agreement talks the US is still after CR to include telecommunications; Intel has also indicated that it wants the telecommunications market opened to foreign competition; last month the government received a letter signed by union leaders representing over 100,000 workers to freeze the free trade talks; exporters have come out in favor of the trade agreement; a former president has come out in favor of opening the state monopolies to foreign competition; after pressure was exerted by the US, Costa Rica and Guatemala have left Latin American countries (G20) urging all countries, including the US, to stop agricultural subsidies; fuel prices are increasing again; conjunctivitis has struck 14,000 people so far this year; dengue fever has spread from the coasts to the Central Valley; a bridge built by the US Army Corps of Engineers during World War II collapsed (the bridge was built to access the only vegetation available to the US to make quinine); Costa Rica is the largest exporter of pineapples in the world; the area under cultivation has more than doubled; now world prices are falling; Condor Airlines is starting to serve CR through Orlando on Mondays; Canada Air has started a flight without a stop in the US to avoid the increased paperwork required for passengers not bound for the US.

Volunteer Activities
We quit teaching English October 3 in order to work with the chiropractors this month. We will resume teaching November 17th after a brief trip to the US starting November 1st to the 11th. We were informed that the chiropractors are changing the first trip of the year to February for next year's schedule. We will adjust our proposed teaching schedule, if we are to help them. We are spending most Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays this month with the visiting Chiropractors. In one community we had a woman come in to say thank you for the pain relief she received last year from the Chiropractors and that she didn't need any additional treatment. In Los Chiles and Alajuela we were assisted by Peace Corps volunteers serving as translators. Over 700 people have been treated through this program since its inception.

After the last treatment session, George was sitting with one of the Peace Corps volunteers and a sixth grade girl. She asked the volunteer that if she was born in the US why she didn't have blue eyes. She thought all people born in the US have blue eyes. The volunteer asked several of us to show our eye color to her to prove that that was not factual.

As they say here, if God wills it, we are thinking about taking some time off in 2005 to revisit Mexico and take CFCA Mission Awareness trips to El Salvador, Kenya, Madagascar, and the Philippines. We have a sponsored child in the Philippines who wants to go to college and be a teacher. George knows from having talked with a former Peace Corps worker that teachers in the Philippines are considered to have the same professional standing as a medical doctor.

Squirt & ETC
Squirt rode with us to pick up and take home the workers doing the remodeling job for us. They finished October 1 and packed up their tools. As they left the car they said goodbye to Squirt. She has always politicked to be taken on these trips. October 2 she didn't. It's as if she understood they would not be coming back. She really seems frustrated or disappointed when she can't go on other trips.

Kiko, our neighbor's dog who has adopted us stands there with a frown wondering why he can't go.

God bless,
Dee & George
San Jose, Costa Rica