Carried by the Wind: Pieces of My Autobiography

Puerto Rico

       After my family left the states when the war of 1998 was over, we moved to Puerto Rico.  The war, for us, consisted of economic problems, stress, a declining spiritual life and a final desperate attempt to find a better life elsewhere.  My father’s solution was to leave where ever we were whenever things got bad, in hopes that we would find success.  The truth was that if we were to succeed on the outside, we had to have success in our insides.  So there is no wondering why we didn’t succeed until we started believing in success and depending on God.

                We argued constantly with our father, so we wouldn’t leave the states. “What about our friends? What about our language?  Where would we start out?  Isn’t that a 3rd world country?” were some questions that arose during our discussions concerning Puerto Rico.  We had been told of our departure only 6 weeks before leaving.  Although suspicion should have been obvious, since each one of my father’s scouting trips to Puerto Rico had been getting more and more serious. While I had been convinced that it was a phase that he would eventually get over, I didn’t realize that our trip would be so soon.  The final decision to leave was made when our rent was raised.  With hardly any warning we were expected to pack and empty the house.  We ended up leave many pieces of furniture among other valuables back in Florida.

                So, we arrived in San Juan on December 31, 1998, with luggage and over 20 cardboard boxes, filled with a little bit of everything including our year old computer.  My father attempted to reach some connections he had made on a small municipal island off the coast of Puerto Rico, called Culebra.  In my father’s earlier trips he had made friends with some fellow Christians there and they had agreed to keep us for a time in one of their houses.  Apparently, the hurricane that had hit just a few months before had destroyed the house that was meant for us.  We stayed on the island a day or so, and then, early in the morning, loaded our baggage on to the ferry back to the main island of Puerto Rico.   We spent 3 days in Fajardo, the city where the ferry landed, in a guest house thriving on sandwiches and juice, waiting for the car we had shipped, until we finally set out for Camuy, a city located approximately 70-80 km to the west of San Juan.

                Camuy, of all places, was our destination due to my father’s dream of being able to collaborate with Yiye Avila’s Ministry, which was located there.  His hopes had been to be financially helped by the ministry, while helping it out spiritually.  We soon found out that we had misunderstood and could volunteer if we wanted to, but the finances at the ministry were low.   So we set off to find ourselves a house and start getting settled. We arrived in Camuy on the 5 of January, on Epiphany Eve; we first went to the Ministry.  There we found Gladys, a friend of my father’s, she lead us to town to help us search for a house.  The town square was crowded with people and I specifically remember a giant Christmas tree in the center that covered the fountain. A little beyond the square, was a supermarket, and there, next to the market was a vacant second floor apartment for rent.  We left our baggage in our car and all seven of us went upstairs.  Inside was the owner, sitting at a dominoes table with a neighbor.  He was willing enough to let us rent the house and the agreement was $375 a month.  We moved in that same night, and slept on various blankets on the floor.  That was the night that we began to occupy the large 4 room apartment, which was not very elaborate, but was to be our dwelling for almost a decade.

                Before we actually started to go anywhere, our first months were spent indoors.  Our house was large and we hardly had any furniture.  Actually, in those first weeks, our only source of water was that which came from the bathtub, and our only source of light was a string of light bulbs that crossed the living room.  My father had to return to the states every 2 weeks to keep up with the lawn mowing business contracts.  The neighborhood children were curious and friendly, often, we would invite them over, and they were open and did the same with us.  One of the boys I specifically remember, was  “Macho”, was our next door neighbor, I had a huge crush on him for about two years.  Another friend we met in those first months was Marisa, she lived close by with her grandma and aunt, she spoke English and her parents lived in the states.  She also had a younger brother, so my brother and I would visit them often.

                  Those first years in Puerto Rico were full of adventure and discovery, being foreigners in a small town made us stick out like sore thumbs.  Eventually, we started to make true, sincere friends, who soon became more like our family.  We started attending the Pentecostal church close to our house, and visited countless others.  There were many youth in our church, but we didn’t want to join them, until our friends, Benet and Deb, started to integrate us into that group, by being invited to their outings.  Precious teenagers soon befriended us and we felt at home.

My parents, especially my mother, had a deep purpose to help the needy.  Just as they had done in Argentina, they were dedicated to help those who were lost in addictions, homeless or desperately helpless; Camuy was no exception.  Soon our house was visited by all sorts of people who found comfort in my mother’s kindness and my father’s guidance.  Throughout their entire time in Puerto Rico, they did the best they could to help these people.  Even though some people did not really have the desire to change, there were others whose life changed dramatically.  I specifically remember two people who were always at the bottom of our stairs asking everyone who passed by for coins, they were deep in drug addiction.  There was a young man, Luisito, whose body was so battered and thin because of the addiction that he looked decades older.  With him was a woman, Genesis, who was clearly older than him.  The aspect of Genesis that stands out clearly in my memory is how extremely skinny she was.  Like Luisito, Genesis’ drug addiction had taken a horrible toll on her body.  In my young mind, I thought that either of them was weeks away from death.  However, my mother would not give up on them; she would tirelessly bring them food, and try to help get them to rehabilitation centers.  Even when they would get into rehab, they would finish and go back to old ways.  Later, we found out that they had both gone to prison, and didn’t hear much about them after that.  Finally, a few years later, I saw a young man I hardly recognized, it was Luisito who had found Christ while still in jail. The thin frail Luisito was gone; the new Luisito was healthy and dedicated to spreading the word of God, which had so greatly impacted his own life.  Later on we also found out that Genesis story was similar to Luisito’s, they were now both healthy, addiction free and serving God.

                School was another saga; the principal had refused to register my brother and I in her elementary school, Laurentino Estrella.   We had arrived in Puerto Rico in January; it would be another 7 months before the school year started again.  This was my mother’s golden opportunity to fulfill her dream of homeschooling us.  My older sisters had already started middle school, so my brother and I were homeschooled for that semester. My mother was an excellent teacher, having homeschooled us previously the only obstacle was we needed books for homeschooling which were expensive.

At this point in time we were not doing very well financially because our income basically depended upon our father’s failing lawn mowing business he had left back in Miami.  My father had left his business in the hands of some friends, but he would travel every month to Miami to try to keep up with the business.  By the time he paid the workers, airplane tickets and lodging for the two weeks, he barely got together enough money to support all six of us.  Since things were so gloom financially, spending hundreds of dollars on homeschooling materials was out of the question.  We had to make do with what we had and what we had was almost nothing. This was a few years before the internet was so prominent in Puerto Rico, so my mother tried as best she could to get a hold of the materials that were needed even with our meager funds.  She had found out about a missionary family that also lived in Puerto Rico and who were homeschooling, she perceived this as an opportunity to get the materials we so desperately needed.  That was a trip to remember.

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