June 23rd, 2009 fmorgan
I hate being injured. Fortunately, it doesn’t happen that often, but about ten days or so ago, I did something really strange to my leg. A storm came up as I was walking from the office to the house. I don’t care if I get wet, but I had some papers in my hand so I started running up the steep path to our house. I do it all the time, but this time something popped in the calf of my leg. It felt like someone punched me or something. I still don’t know what happened, but I had to get someone to rescue the papers and bring me a big stick to lean on so I could hobble my way to the house.
I had an important visitor the next day whom I was going to escort all over the farms. In the morning I could still put no weight on the leg nor flex my foot, so I had a driver take me to pick up the visitor. I made a valiant effort, but after about ten steps, I had to let someone else escort him inside the first plantation. I got home as soon as I could, turned over tour duties to others, and retreated to a couch to attempt not to move for a while.
By the next night it was a little better, and we sat in a hot spring for a while. That helped.
Now after about ten days, it is almost okay, but it still twinges, which tells me I better not go running for a while. Thankfully, it has recovered enough so that I no longer am in danger of country remedies. We have a lot of workers, and they are very concerned if I get sick (very rare) or injured (rarer yet). They want to help, but their help is a bit scary. All that most of the workers know how to treat is horses and cows, and since I am nearly the same size in their eyes, the suggestions for remedies sounded frighteningly similar.
Why is it that anytime someone suggests a cure around here, they start by saying that it will really hurt a lot, or taste horrible, or in this case burn like fire, but then it will really help, too! What I gathered was that some nurse or possibly a pharmacist would take a huge needle and inject a muscle relaxant into my butt. This does not sound good. After the agony was over, the muscle would be fine and I could go about my business, after of course visiting the dentist to fix all my teeth because I had clenched them so hard. I bet the pharmacist does veterinary work on the side. Maybe dental work too.
Just to be on the safe side, I have been working at walking as normally as I can. You never know, if they get the idea I will never walk and run normally again, they might suggest I be put down.
Posted in cultural adaptation, culture, doctor, finca, horses, injury | 3 Comments »
May 23rd, 2009 fmorgan
As we are approaching seven years of doing business in Costa Rica, with five years living here full time, it strikes us how it seems like only yesterday and yet a lifetime ago that we started growing trees.
When we think about how much has happened in the last seven years, it feels like there is enough to fill a lifetime. Because of that, we keep saying, “Was that only a year ago?!”
Yet we are so busy here, time goes by in a flash. OK, maybe that’s just because we’re middle-aged, but time does seem to creep when you’re bored.
And we are anything but bored! They say you learn something new every day, well, when you have a business in a culture new to you this is quite literally true.
Here’s just one example of what we’re talking about. As we continue to grow the plantation and wood processing business in Costa Rica, one area of constant learning is the labor law. The up-to-date books on it are available at many bookstores, both the full version and an abbreviated version. The law tends not to cover all the specifics; for that, we consult with lawyers to see how the courts have ruled in cases similar to the situation we are dealing with at the moment. For instance, we had to lay off someone for lack of work in his area. While he was still working for us, during his period of advance notice, we came up with other work that he could do and told him he was not being laid off after all. He had found another job and still wanted to leave. We didn’t think we had to pay the full separation as though we had laid him off, since he was now leaving by his own choice. One of our staff raised a question about it, so we checked with a lawyer. There had just been a ruling by the labor court in favor of the worker in a case exactly like it. Our former employee wasn’t even aware of our mistake, but we went back and paid him the difference. When you think about it, the idea of losing that separation money could keep someone from accepting a job while they have the chance.
The ministry of labor (MTSS) inspected us recently, along with all the farmers and businesses in our area. It was a lawyer who works for the MTSS who came with two assistants. She was friendly, but had the overall demeanor of a schoolmarm bringing her charges back in line. That was with us, who only had to appoint a labor relations committee and add a few lines to our salary receipts that we give our employees. We can only wonder what her demeanor is with companies and farms that she finds not in compliance with the labor laws.
We noticed that one of the assistants always stays in the car, whether because he is just their driver or because he is watching for illegal laborers fleeing the workplace, we don’t know. It’s so interesting to try to understand what’s really going on under the surface here. It’s no wonder we keep feeling like we’re going in and out of some weird time warp.
And in business as in life, “learning is not compulsory…neither is survival” (W. Edwards Deming).
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Posted in business in Costa Rica, cultural adaptation, labor law | No Comments »
March 16th, 2009 fmorgan
One of the many big surprises to me when we moved down to Costa Rica was how primitive the wood business was. Here you have a country with hardware stores, tools, etc. but if you want wood, you go to the sawmill and buy green! There are also depositos de madera, or lumberyards, but they usually sell green wood, too. Of course, you can’t install it green, so you have to dry it yourself.
Many people who are building their own home in Costa Rica are surprised to find that you can’t just go down to something like Home Depot and buy a 2×4; nope, you have to find it. Then, after you find it, make sure to get more than you need, because some of them are going to warp, especially if you don’t know how to dry it properly.
The Ticos are an interesting mix of planning and not planning. If they are building your home, it is hard to find someone who understands buying supplies ahead. I think I have finally figured out why. Most Ticos accumulate material and build in stages. Unlike we do in the USA, they don’t generally get a loan, but they store up money for labor and materials until they have enough to start. This means the wood they need for beams, etc. has probably been in the barn for a few years.
We, on the other hand, land here and want to build our home now, the sooner the better. Often the wood is not available except in a tree somewhere, which will require permits that take weeks to get. The wood will be rough cut, often by a chainsaw, then you will wait perhaps 3 months or more for it to dry (sort of). Since most construction people have nothing more than a power hand planer, the cost of planing and sanding can cost as much as the wood itself.
We paid our dues on this for sure. The first house we built was from trees to house using chainsaws with guides and a 15″ planer. It felt like the timeline for the construction was stretching out forever (we know those of you who live here can relate).
As we grew, so did our milling operation, and we got faster and faster — and more predictable. Now if we need a beam, it comes out of the factory dry, at the right dimensions, planed and sanded and ready to install. The cost of planing and sanding isn’t much when you have the equipment. It is a lot less than paying a construction person to do it by hand. In fact, the costs saved in having the wood ready almost pays for the wood itself when you deduct the labor cost of working with rough cut wood. And of course, the quality is better. We use specialty equipment that allows us to work with beautifully grained wood that would otherwise have a lot of tearouts. With our equipment, we are able to make gorgeous teak products that cost about the same as cedar.
Now we are in the process of educating the construction bosses from Guanacaste to the central valley that they can buy wood ready to install, which helps keep their clients happy. We not only sell the dimensional lumber, but also the tongue-end-groove wood for ceilings and walls (called tablilla here) and floors. In fact, just about anything that is wood in a house, from furniture to cabinets, to floors and doors, we make and sell. And that uses a lot of wood, which is good for our tree owners.
Posted in business in Costa Rica, cabinets, campo, construction, cultural adaptation, doors, drying wood, forestry, furniture, kiln, tablilla, teak, trees, wood | 1 Comment »
July 18th, 2008 fmorgan
After living in Costa Rica for nearly 4 years, I am finding that I am turning bilingual. Not like Amy who can speak English and Spanish very well - I have enough problems with English. This is not to say that I can’t communicate well in Spanish, I do, it is just I mangle it at times.
When I say I am turning bilingual, I mean that there are words that between English and Spanish, I select the one from one language or the other, depending on the concept I am trying to express, even though they both, in theory, mean the same.
A good example is months of the year. July means hot, dusty, Fourth of July - grass dying, daylight until 9 pm, etc. Julio (Spanish for July) means planting seasons, mud, everything super green, well into the rainy season with no sign of dry for the next 6 months. If I say that it is July now, my brain gets seriously confused. Darkness here is at 6 pm and we have roughly 12 hours of daylight. That should be March, but no, it is too warm. Much easier for me to think, it is julio now.
Another word is nursery, as in our tree nursery. My family had nurseries in the USA, and a nursery is something with a plastic over it and a source of heat so you can start plants early while there is still threat of frost. Excuse me? Costa Rica doesn’t even use the word for frost, unless maybe it is referring to what builds up inside the freezer. What we have here is a vivero, where you put up shading material so that the new seedlings aren’t cooked by the sun, even during the rainy season. Also, since we tend to start the seedlings during the dry season, a water supply is important - and there is no need to worry about heat, except perhaps heat stroke!
One last example is when we are talking about measurements of wood. The standard measurement here is a pulgada cubica (cubic inch) which doesn’t mean a square inch like in English. It is 132 square inches. Usually, in the USA we are used to using board foot (BF), which is 144 square inches. The reason is that a pulgada cubica (usually just said pulgada) is 1 inch by 1 inch by 4 varas. What is a vara you say? It is 33 inches. So, 4 x 33 = 132. A curiosity is that they used to use varas for measuring land in Texas. So, I think readily in pulgadas now - which is a good thing because it is how you buy wood here. You can imagine the confusion when people first start dealing with wood here and someone says that it is 1 dollar per cubic inch!
Before we moved to Costa Rica, I was talking to a little girl whose parents were North American and Costa Rican. She had two sets of grandparents, one who was English speaking, the other who spoke Spanish. She was completely bilingual. Once while making conversation in Spanish, I asked her about her abuelos (grandparents) in California. She told me she had no abuelos in California, only grandparents. In her mind, the parents of her tico father were the only abuelos she had, the others where grandparents. At the time I was amazed, but now I am starting to understand.
Posted in Spanish, business in Costa Rica, communications, cultural adaptation, language learning, nursery, trees, wood | No Comments »
July 3rd, 2008 fmorgan
We use motorized brush cutters (weedwhackers) a lot in the farms. Pretty much all day long you hear them running. Here in Costa Rica, they are called motoguadañas, or motorized scythes. They even cut the grass on the lawns with them rather than using lawnmowers, because the lawns are not rolled smooth.
A motoguadaña here costs about 250,000 colones, or in 2008, 500 dollars. When they are used about 7 hours a day, you can expect them to survive about 2 years before they start to become more trouble than they are worth. Generally speaking, you have to clean the motoguadañas once a week (grease, clean, etc.) or they will deteriorate much more rapidly. The consumption of fuel for a day is about one gallon. That doesn’t sound like much, except down here that costs about 6 dollars now. The mixing oil is a bit more. A good operator can cut about 3,000 square meters a day, or a bit less than an acre.
All of this adds up when you have 750 acres or so. We cut the grass on every bit of the land around our trees once every two months for the first two years. After that, it is about every 6 months. The trees grow really fast in our part of Costa Rica, but so does everything else. You have to keep up with it or it will effect the final shape of the tree and their growth.
Before there were motoguadañas, there were guadañas, or scythes. After a lot of research, we decided that scythes might just make a good replacement for the motoguadañas. It is a bit hard to believe, but in the hand of a person who knows what they are doing, a scythe is actually faster and less work than a motoguadaña.
At least, that is the theory.
Yesterday, the scythes arrived. Since it isn’t the easiest thing in the world to get shipments here, I went ahead and ordered 13 of them. Since we can make our own snaths (the handles), I ordered 5 of them in different styles so we would have something to go by. We also got all the stuff to sharpen the blades.
To prepare people for the coming of the new and improved motoguadaña, I showed them a video of a young girl beating an operator of a motoguadaña in a contest. They were impressed, and of course, since it was a little girl (about 11 years old I believe), I am sure they are convinced they can do at least as well as she!
It appears to be true. Yesterday, I showed Ignacio, our gardener, the scythe. After I explained how it worked, he was off and running. He is convinced that with just a little time, it will be faster than a motoguadaña.
One really big advantage is that the women can use the scythes, whereas a motoguadaña (commercial size) is a bit much for the average sized Tica. Many of the women in the area would love to work clearing the grass but could not before. There isn’t a lot of work for the women in the area, so this opens up possibilities. One other benefit that I really didn’t expect is safety. You wouldn’t think a knife that is nearly a meter long would be safer - but motoguadañas throw a lot of debris and those who operate them often don’t consider this. The other safety issue is your hearing. The steady noise of a motoguadaña can’t be good for your long term hearing and it masks the sound of a snake as well.
So far, the scythe experiment is going very well, although there was a pretty startled look on the faces of the people working nearby when I walked out of my office holding a scythe for the first time, looking like the Grim Reaper…
Posted in campo, conservation, cultural adaptation, culture, importing, scythe, trees, wood | No Comments »
March 20th, 2008 fmorgan
I just spent 6 days with an importer of our wood products in Florida. They were displaying at the Home and Garden show in Orlando so I combined a trip to visit their opperation and a chance to support them in a show.
We don’t go that often to the USA so the shock is a bit strong each time. I probably look like a person who has never seen things before — “Gee, would you look at that!” Even though it is once a year, so much changes. I nearly put my foot through the floor on the passenger side as we went through the toll booths without slowing down much!
Being an engineer, of course I want to stop and take apart the sensor to see how it works — but I assume that would be frowned upon.
Living where we do, we don’t see much of anything new. This is fine, and we love our simple life, but it is nice to look. The volume of new things is overwhelming.
One of the highlights is food. I don’t miss the food when we are here, since we have so many tropical fruits and healthy stuff, but it doesn’t mean that I am not a sampling fool when I am back in the land of food choices. However, I would have terminal indigestion if I stayed too long — all good eating habits go out the window when I am in the states.
There are many things I start to miss about Costa Rica after just a few days. One is a good cup of coffee. Since quality coffee is very important to me, this is a bit of a trial. I don’t want a lot of coffee, but I do want it perfect. Another thing that is very hard to get used to is the temperature changes. On this trip, I looked at the weather report for ten days and it said upper 70s. Great, no problem, I thought. I don’t know if a weather front moved in or what, but I was shivering from the cold. Of course I look silly with a sweatshirt when everyone else is in shorts.
One thing that always gets me is the clerks in the stores. When I walk into a store here in Costa Rica, I can be sure I will be swarmed by clerks eager to help. Even when they have to deal with my searching for the right term for some obscure part, they are patient (chunche, which means “thingy” is a favorite of mine). It seems to me that whatever clerk I get first in the USA is having a bad day and just can’t seem to bother with me. Also, as I am trying to remember how to do common things (like swipe an ATM card), they wonder if I am senile or something…
Worse yet, aside from Amy, I don’t speak English with that many people. If you ask me a question, there might be a bit of a pause while I try to start talking in English. Since after I jumpstart my brain I speak as the native I am, the obvious conclusion I suppose is that I was trying to think.
This points to another obvious conclusion — I am going native. Surely in the future this is only going to get worse. That’s okay, we really love living here in Costa Rica.
Posted in Spanish, business in Costa Rica, communications, cultural adaptation, culture, language learning | No Comments »
February 10th, 2008 fmorgan
Since I have been in Costa Rica, my inspiration for riding my bike is seeing so many people riding bikes of all ages — all ages of people, too. The skill level is incredible. Not for chicken hopping, of which I am the local king (they don’t have clipless pedals) but for the ability to ride a bike in the weirdest of possible combinations. Imagine the following: A woman 35 or so riding down the road and between her and the handle bar is a 3-year old sitting on a plank cut to fit snugly on the top tube. It is raining, so she is holding an umbrella with one hand and steering with the other. There is a bulky package dangling from one side of the handle bar. She isn’t riding on pavement, but on a challenging road made of river rock dumped on it and hammered into the sand and mud by traffic. For her, this is no big deal. The ones she considers skilled are the guys who commute to work with their wives. She sits on the plank in front of him. On the way, they are going to drop off the baby she holds in her arms at the sitter, and they will swing by the elementary school to drop off the kid standing behind Dad on the posts that stick out from the wheel hubs. No need for diamond lanes — cars give these bikepoolers a wide berth.
Most people here are small, but I have seen two ladies, each about 50 and each weighing more than 300 pounds, riding on a BMX — yeah, both of them on the same bike. One was pedaling, the other was standing on the posts. They were chatting and laughing the whole time.
Then there is the crazy old geezer around here who rips through town at 30+ kph (19+ mph) on a well-used Cannondale F900 hardtail. Today he caught up and passed two policemen on a motor scooter who waved and smiled at him as he passed. He is quite the sight, I am told, with his white hair whipping behind him and his legs spinning like crazy. I have never seen him myself, since I don’t look at my reflection in store windows as I pass…but I have heard the stories.
Posted in cultural adaptation, cycling | 1 Comment »
February 2nd, 2008 fmorgan
What a challenge it is to make yourself understood even in your own language and culture, much less when everything is foreign!
When we first arrived in Costa Rica, more than 3 1/2 years ago, my Spanish was pretty much non-existent. I had filled myself with enough vocabulary so that I wouldn’t be totally lost but understanding another person was beyond my ability unless they spoke very slowly, with little words and looking straight at me.
Even though now I am pretty functional in Spanish — most people are impressed since it hasn’t been that long — it still is challenging to communicate. If I want to merely get myself fed, no problem at all, and I even have a very good chance it will be what I ordered, but when I try to get into the details, that’s when it gets hairy. I still deal with the ever-expanding scope of communication. For example, as Finca Leola continues to grow (30 workers now) we also are moving into new areas of doing business besides just planting trees. Every time we start doing something new, like furniture making, I get a whole new set of words to learn.
I have learned not to try to give too many details, because that is what gets me in trouble. Let’s say we need to build something with nails. Perhaps I know that you normally use a 10 penny nail to secure it. I won’t say that; I will just say, secure it. The reason is that if I say “use a 10-penny nail” they probably don’t use the phrase — no pennies in Costa Rica, for one thing. Second, I might be distracted and say use a different size nail from the one I want, and because I am an engineer and the owner, my wishes will be carried out even if it is not what the person would normally do. Third, there might not even be 10 penny nails within 2 hours of us and it requires a special order. Fourth, it is possible that the wood itself will eat nails and you should use galvanized…you get the idea.
So I have learned to just describe what I want to achieve. In the campo, often one word is used for everything. Want to connect something? That would be “pegar,” which I remember by thinking of a peg, as in stick a peg in it. It does not say what to peg it with — just get them together. But even that is fraught with risk. Usually I find it much more effective to merely describe the end result I seek (keep the horses off the lawn) and let people do whatever it is they normally do.
This also allows me opportunities to learn how they do things here where our hardware store isn’t exactly overflowing with options. Usually there is only one way to do almost any given thing because nothing else is available to buy — unless of course you want to drive to the central valley for it, 3 1/2 hours away!
I have at times researched in books for the proper word for things, but it doesn’t always help. Once I needed to talk to our workers about putting horseshoes on our horses. After having people look at me strangely for saying zapatos de caballos I decided to look it up. The dictionary says herraduras. Great, so I used that word — even blanker looks until someone showed up from Nicaragua where they use that word. Here it is cascos. This means the hooves of a horse, but also means a helmet. So, if you were to ask someone for a casco without being able to explain the context, they could hand you a horseshoe, a helmet, or left the leg of the horse!
As I have said before, I can now confuse people in three languages. Is it possible to be fluent in confusion?
Posted in Spanish, business in Costa Rica, cultural adaptation, horses, language learning | No Comments »
January 29th, 2008 fmorgan
A book I enjoyed growing up was A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. The story was about an engineer who finds himself back at the time of King Arthur and of course ends up looking like a magician to everyone. Sometimes I can relate.
It isn’t that people in Costa Rica are ignorant — far from it. But most people have no access to either libraries or the Internet for information. Aside from the schools and newspapers, everything is pretty much passed by word of mouth. The impact of this is hard to imagine.
For example, if I want to know what a venturi valve is, I can search on Google and find not only exactly how it works, but how to make one, with drawings and everything. Even though you may never have heard of a venturi valve before you read about it here, in a few minutes you can know all about it too.
Because of this ability to research (and the amount of data stuffed into my head from digging around the Internet), there is a “magical” quality that can get me in trouble at times. No, no one is going to burn me at the stake, but sometimes people don’t know when I am clueless.
There is a big difference between theoretical knowledge and practical knowledge. It takes a bit for people to realize that though I know very well the characteristics of wood and how it reacts to various forces, please don’t expect me to make a piece of furniture. My mind may be well educated, but my hands are as dumb as clubs.
This is very contrary to the culture here. If you understand the science behind something, you almost certainly must be incredibly practiced at doing it. Not so in a society as specialized as the USA. In the USA, you may well know how to design something without the ability to actually use the tools to build it. Among those who know me well, when I head for a shovel, somebody runs in front of me to do the job for me. I think they are a little worried about me.
The other day, I sat at lunch with some of our workers and explained the principles behind the aguaponics system that they are setting up for me (combining fish farming with hydroponics). They were fascinated and can’t wait to see it up and running. If I know Costa Ricans, if they see that it works well, there will be imitators and we will also see it evolve into something more appropriate to the resources and climate here.
Posted in aguaponics, campo, cultural adaptation, engineering, fish farming, hydroponics | 1 Comment »