Episode 28 - Puerto Rico's Doing a Fabulous Job

So impressed with the island territory that sits on the southern end of the Bermuda Triangle. What sets Puerto Rico apart is its people and their commitment to the animals that share their space.

A transcript of this Haiku Life podcast together with photos will be available on the mygreatergood.com website.

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Transcript

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Hello and welcome to the Haiku Live Podcast, where we take a little exploration into some abbreviated moments. Haiku is a Japanese form of poetry. It is traditionally focused on nature and captures a fleeting moment within the space of three lines and a 5-7-5 syllable count. In a world so overwhelmingly immersive, a haiku is a moment of respite. These haiku are mine, moments of life, thoughts in the ether. Welcome to episode twenty-eight, the final in the Puerto Rico series Turquoise Water Ebbs Palm Fronds Cool My Sunburned Itch Plier Chickens Scratch. I knew very little about Puerto Rico before we traveled there, apart from the fact that it's a US territory and it sits on the southernmost tip of the Bermuda Triangle, something that irrationally used to keep me awake at night as a child. What a gift to have spent a little time there. Yes, we loved walking the streets of old San Juan. We learned a little history, watched some golf, took in the shredded limestone magnificence of the coast. But we have traveled many places in the world. Puerto Rico would not be rated in the top five of our island destinations from an architectural, historical interest or aesthetic point of view. But what really sets Puerto Rico apart are the people, the spirit of the place. That was an eye opener. The authenticity and connection with nature that infuses daily life there. The Puerto Rican identity is a vibrant blend of Spanish, West African and the indigenous Taino people. Perhaps living on an island makes it easier to retain a connection and community with nature. Puerto Ricans take pride in this connection with wildlife, domestic animals, and natural habitats. We drove by a yard off a rural road and behind the fence was an old guy sitting on a chair, his horse standing in front of him eating out of a bucket on the old man's lap. It was the most delightful image. I was so amazed to drive the streets and see outside a local bank and various other businesses pet food stations set up for the free roaming dogs and cats as well as roosters and hens who seem to roam the roads absolutely safely. There are posters up on street corners and on bridges of street dogs that have been rescued and found wonderful homes through grassroot rescue efforts and connections with international adoption partnerships. There is a real pride in how help is provided to animals in Puerto Rico. The Taino people, who were the original inhabitants of Puerto Rico, lived in complete harmony with their environment, believing that every tree, every rock, river and animal possessed a spiritual consciousness that required respect and reciprocity. No doubt vastly diluted at this point, but elements remain. Puerto Rico at the core of its culture appears to actively accept, acknowledge and work towards living in harmony with the animals around it. The horses on the road, street dogs that are actively adopted into mainland American families that want them, cats feeding at corner feeding stations, chickens scratching around in the sand on the beach to the rhythm of the bomber music on the boombox. Are we so egotistically evolved to just run roughshod over the world's origin stories? The Taino people with their complete respect for the natural world. The American Native Indians recognized a kinship with the whole universe. The Aboriginal Australians are assigned a totem of a plant or an animal at birth and are spiritually responsible for protecting that species throughout their life. The Maasai of Kenya and Tanzania have coexisted with Africa's most dangerous wildlife for centuries. They don't kill wildlife by the way for food. The people who first populated the earth believed that they did not own the earth, they belonged in it. They lived with ideas and concepts based on mutual respect and reciprocity. But as the African proverb goes, until the lion has his historian, the hunter will always be the hero. The narrative is always controlled by the powerful. The perspectives of the weak and the defeated are ignored. The hunter is the dominant power, the colonizer, the conqueror. The lion is the conquered. Because he cannot write or present his written defense of territory, his suffering is ignored or twisted into a threat that must be neutralized. It is a story as long as time. Generation to generation the stories, customs and beliefs held dear by one are marginalized by the next, and so on down the ages. We are as a culture so very far removed from living in peace and harmony with our next door neighbor, let alone an opossum or a fox or a raccoon. And what about the street dog cursed at and chased from town to town? Puerto Rico has pet feeding stations placed outside banks and other businesses. People personally feed their horses from buckets on their lap. Hens scratch around on the beach. The culture still clings to the tenuous strings of tano harmony with all living things. Childhood promises to never fly anywhere near the Bermuda Triangle. Be damned. I'm going back there for sure. Maybe I'll even adopt one of those street dogs. Those Puerto Rican street dogs kept alive by a community feeding station. Thank you for listening to today's Haiku Live Podcast. You can follow me on Facebook and Instagram. A transcript of this podcast can also be found on the mygreaturgood.com website. See you later.