‘Juanita, Quick,Get me the Witch on the Other Line please……’ **

An Inter-Cultural Dating Adventure

Like the Eskimos with their different words for various types of snow, Costa Ricans (or Ticos, as they’re called) use different terms for for various strengths of seismic activity: a small shakes is a ‘temblor’; a run-outside- fast earthquake (Richter #5 - 6 or higher) is a ‘terremoto’.

I’ve lived in Costa Rica for many years; built a new life here. A year or two after I arrived we had a quake to welcome me. It was a 6.2 magnitude doozy, quite adequate to put the fear of Nature into the heart of the most stalwart of men ——- definitely a ‘terremoto’! A few people died, dozens of houses collapsed, hundreds of people left homeless, many roads buckled!

That is why I thought of Martha—— so attractive and sharp she was! . The quake left me very nervous; especially at night, sleeping, when it would take longer if you had to run for your life. My technique to relax and bring on sleep, was to think about recent girlfriends. Martha sticks in my mind for a particular reason, even though I only went out with her two or three times. Each time I would call her at work (she had no phone at home and cell phones hadn’t appeared yet) to ask her to go out, she asked me to wait a minute and put me on Hold, before accepting. Now what the heck?

I finally asked her about it and she told me, in her mixture of Spanglish. Since she didn’t know me at all ( we had met casually at the local Post Office, each checking our box) while I was on Hold, Juanita, was hitting the the speed-dial memory button for the bruja (Span.: witch). She would ask her witch if I was an OK person to go out with (while I’m still on Hold!) She is the only woman I dated here who did that ——so far as I know.

** ‘Rápido, Juanita, llámame la bruja en la otra linea, porva…..’

But a small number of brujas in CR still survive in some areas, though not nearly as numerous as the old days. Besides giving dating advice, they concoct herbal potions for various purposes, perform ‘alternative’ treatment of sicknesses, tell you your fortune, maybe read tarot cards—— I don’t know the full menu.

Why did I stop seeing Martha? She turned out to be a severe alcoholic and a very troubled woman——- and I, with my own relocation problems and without a witch of my own to warn me from the very beginning of problematic situations!