Tag Archives: Puerto Rico

Tropical Paradise Has Challenges Too

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“I didn’t have power for 4 months. My daughter got lice because we couldn’t bathe properly; with my long hair, I got them too when I picked them out for her. We washed our clothes by hand. During those months, some areas started to get power and I was able to bring my big items (like bedding) to a laundromat. I lived in a place where I wasn’t allowed to have a generator. But even the rich people with generators didn’t have power because you need gas to run generators and we didn’t have that. I couldn’t keep food all that time because my fridge didn’t work. It was hard… So, I think we all have a little PTSD when it comes to hurricane season,” a Puerto Rican said, recalling her experience during Hurricane Maria. She’d just given me a tour of San Juan’s primary hospital campus, including pointing out the street where they used to have shipping containers lined up to hold corpses during Hurricane Maria because they couldn’t identify them fast enough.

“It was bad. Help didn’t come or it was delayed,” she said. I remembered this; it was all over the news. Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico in 2017. You might remember the politics of the US then; there was a lot of news about the hurricane’s effects and how the US government delayed or didn’t send aid. Perhaps 3,000 Puerto Ricans died, but we’re not exactly sure of the true number. Many more lost their homes.

I remember someone asking me if Puerto Rico had been rebuilt since Hurricane Maria when I left for Puerto Rico. At the time, I found the question odd because it’s been 6 years since that hurricane struck. But I have an answer now and have come to realize that it was a good question. The answer is: yes and no. If you visited Puerto Rico today, your first impression would be that it’s a tropical paradise and you might fall in love with the place. There’s a reason why Puerto Ricans are so proud of their home. As a tourist you’ll enjoy both friendly hosts and living accommodations equivalent to those in the continental US. But if you dig deeper than the average tourist experience, you’ll discover that the island has challenges. Despite the beauty of the island and its strong identity people are leaving Puerto Rico. This Washington Post article describes the situation of Puerto Rican’s leaving their home (and people leaving other US territories too).

If you explore beyond San Juan (Puerto Rico’s capital and biggest city), you will see shadows of Puerto Rico’s complicated situation. In the town where I’m staying (and all throughout the island), you find deserted houses on most blocks. A coworker explained that sometimes people just leave their homes and move, often to the continental US. The pay here is lower than in the continental US (often in general) but especially in industries of interest to me such as healthcare. Infrastructure throughout the island, like healthcare, is much like in rural regions of the continental US, which is to say that many people don’t have easy access to the healthcare they need.

My husband and I visited a small island just off Puerto Rico’s coast called Vieques. It’s where the brightest of the 3 bioluminescent bays in Puerto Rico is and that’s why we visited. Being me, I had us walk the 5ish miles from the ferry to the town in which we were staying. Again, being me, I googled to see if there was a hospital on Vieques and the number of beds it has (as I do everywhere I go) just in case I wanted to move there and work. I learned that Vieques doesn’t have a hospital because it wasn’t rebuilt after being destroyed in Hurricane Maria. I also noticed signs demanding that the hospital be rebuilt on a chain-link fence as we walked across the island. On our walk back to the ferry from our Airbnb, a local stopped to offer us a ride because it was hot. We accepted. I can’t remember if I asked about the hospital or if it came up naturally in conversation, but the local explained that the hospital hadn’t been rebuilt and it was a point of political tension. Further, in 2020, a teenage girl died because there wasn’t available transport to San Juan when she needed it and Vieques didn’t have a ventilator to help her breathe. According to the local, even the family of the girl helped manually give her breaths (with a bag-mouth mask which is what EMTs use on ambulances until they get to the hospital), but she died anyway.  

From these conversations, I’ve learned that Puerto Rico has a complexity that can be overlooked as a tourist. Living here a few weeks has not made me an expert (or even a novice) in Puerto Rican anything…except maybe dengue because I’m doing an internship about it and fruit juices because they are delicious. But my time here has allowed me to see that beyond the beautiful beaches, blended frozen beverages, and seafood Puerto Rico has a historical, political, and economic reality. Puerto Rico reminded me of the confusion I had while living in DC: It is odd to me that there are territories that are part of the US where the inhabitants aren’t granted the right to vote and to have congressional representation because it seems rather undemocratic. I don’t know if it would change anything in Puerto Rico if they were represented in US congress or participated in US presidential elections. I also I don’t know if that is something Puerto Ricans want. But, at the very least, I’ve come to see that I have a lot to learn about Puerto Rico’s history, its current governance, and its relationship with the US before I can fully unpack my experience living here.

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Nothing to Do but Be Happy

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The water is so clear it’s like looking through nothing to see the creatures and plants that are stuck in small salty pools contained in the rocks until the tide comes in again. I’m on the edge of the tide, so an especially high wave crashes on the rocks and skuttles across the other pools and seaweed to reach the pool absorbing my gaze. The longer I gaze into the pool, the more I see and the more the patterns swirl. The wind ripples the surface of the pool, such that I must be patient if I want to take a picture – timing my snapshot for when a high wave isn’t threating to dowse me, and the wind isn’t distorting my image.  

I love walking along the ocean’s edge and gazing into the tidal pools – each is a mini world populated by the randomness of being caught in a rock hole as the ocean slides toward center, letting its edges dry for a few hours. The creatures in the tidal pools are waiting for the ocean to return but, until then, they live their lives and try to avoid the birds and others searching the pools for their next meal.

I can’t help but identify with the little stripy fish in the tidal pools. My life, too, is in the tidal pool phase. The daily requirements of living and being a responsible adult remain, but I’m suspended in time – I’m caught between being a med student lost in her studies and residency. These days I’m finishing up my last medical school credits, by design some of the easiest courses I’ve taken. I continue to strive to remember the medicine I know and solidify and learn new things. But mostly I’m enjoying the salty air while I wait to find out where I’ll do residency.

As my husband pointed out recently, “There’s nothing to do but be happy.” It’s hard as a planner to not think of the future. But, when you’re in limbo there is no future only now, the moment. Once I know where I’m destined to train as a resident there will be hundreds of things to sort out – but none of these things can be tackled until I know where I’m headed. I have about a month of not knowing and shortly after that I wrap up my last rotations of med school.

The stripy fish darts around the tidal pool, at first worried I’m going to eat it. It becomes bolder and still as I wait; its attention span is shorter than mine. I peer into the pool. We stare at each other. The sound of the waves is my soundtrack. The sun is sparkling in the sky. By some happenchance of luck and delivery on the part of my planning nature, 7 of my last 12 weeks of medical school rotations are in Puerto Rico, which is even more awesome when you realize these weeks fall exactly in the worst of New England’s winter. I’m studying while I’m in Puerto Rico, but I have plenty of time to explore the island.

Nothing to do but be happy and be present. And it’s not a hard task with the sun shining down on me, the waves and wind fluffing my hair with salt spray, and a party of palms and plants wearing their best green, red, and yellow dancing at the edge of the beach which abuts a turquoise sea. Nothing to do but be happy, what a wonderful situation. Eventually the tide will come in and I’ll be tossed into the wake of wrapping up school and starting residency, but that’s the tide chart of a different day.   

The Ocean

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I’ve never lived by a sea or ocean before. But for a few weeks this winter I am. And not just any salty expanse but the Caribbean Sea and Atlantic Ocean around Puerto Rico. It’s not hurricane season so, in the few days I’ve been here so far, the waves have crashed with careful, well-mannered regularity. Right now, I’m on the Atlantic Ocean coast. The water is warm and blue. Walking along the beach I find myself covered with a salt film both from the lapping waves and the salt in the air. The temperature has been perfect and the sun a beautiful gold. Proximal to the sand and rocks that meet the water are coconut trees, marking where the beach ends and the rest of the island begins.

As I walk along the rocky bits of the shore crabs scuttle so quickly that they’re hard to see – their shell patterns match the sea plants and the design the sunlight creates as it dances with the waves. Pelicans hover above the water, make a diving plummet with a smack as they break the water’s surface, rest on the ocean’s surface to swallow the fish they caught, and then take flight to follow the wind off the water to only scoop around like a boomerang and head back out to fish again.

People sit on the beach and hangout in the water. They listen to their loud music, dig holes in the sand, throw rocks, and drink alcohol (mostly beer). I walk along the junction between the water and the sand – sometimes more on the side of the sand and other times more on the side of the saltwater. The waves fill the gap between me and the seemingly infinite ocean. Sometimes I’m taken by surprise when a large wave barrels to shore and splashes up against my legs and catches my shirt in its spray.

Where there are tidal pools, I look down at the ruby red sea urchins with deep crimson spikes – their colors remind me of the colors of fresh and dried blood or, perhaps more appealing, the colors of red I’d expect royalty to wear. There are little fish that dart around in the tidal pools; they’re the color and pattern of sand. There are sea plants that look like little green balloons. There are shells hiding live creatures whose names I don’t know. Some of the bigger pools have sea anemones. I peer into each tidal pool, eager to see what it keeps in its mini-sea haven.

I love the sound of the waves and the smell of the salt water against the sand. It’s new to see coconuts. But, in this serene backdrop I can’t help but notice the broken glass and plastic bits, bottles of all varieties, cans, and all the other trash humans on the beach have failed to pick up…or humans elsewhere tossed in such a way that their trash found its way to the beaches where I wander now. I walk barefoot in the sand, but it’s almost a bad idea because so many people have broken their beer bottles.

The creatures and features of the ocean are no less beautiful with the trash present, but I imagine how it would be paradise without the plastic bottles there as a reminder that so many places I love are being filled with trash. Will this beach be swimmable when my grandchildren are alive? There must be a better way. There must be a way to keep this beach with its crabs and sea urchins for the generations to come.

As I turn up the road between where I’m staying and the ocean I see heaps of bottles, cans, Styrofoam, plastic bags, and other discarded single use items on the side of the road. They create a scattering of litter among the snake plants, palm trees, mango trees, papaya trees, pothos vines, and other plants of the tropics. Is there another way or is it already too late to return our natural spaces to paradise?