The Way Things Are: NOISE!!!!!!!!

Puerto Rico is a very noisy place for people not raised here. There is a lot of yelling, a lot of use of microphones, cement houses that echo, roosters, dogs everywhere and vehicles that roam around the hillsides blasting information about stores and events. Trucks roam around the hillsides begging you to run out into the road with your gold, your scrap metal or some money to buy pies or "budin" out of some one's trunk.  People here are OBSESSED with noise. Car noise is a large part of the cacophony of assaulting sounds that threaten to break your eardrums at every turn...or stop light. Noise that assaults you as you try to have that peaceful moment of coffee in your home or that moment of quietness at a stop light. Noise in Puerto Rico is everywhere and everyone is competing to do it best!

I'm not talking about the "music for everybody" sound systems, or the two story speakers mounted on trucks that make it look as if the Dr. Seuss-mobiles could topple at any moment...I'm talking about the fake sirens and train sounds that people use instead of horns (which they also use freely). Not that I personally enjoy all the unnecessary beep-beep-beeping, but does anyone really believe it is a cop coming?  Seriously? This is the land where cops drive around with their lights on 24/7 to properly warn criminals that they are coming. This is a place where you rarely hear a REAL siren and when you do, whether it is an ambulance a cop car you do not pull over, you continue on like it is another Puerto Rican in the next car doing a fake out.  So what about the train sound. Has anyone here (that is alive) ever heard a real train? Do they think people are thinking "wow, I better pull over so the train doesn't run me down"? It's not just the sirens and train noises. Puerto Rican's love noise of any and all kinds. Everyone has to have multiple dogs with skin infections and diseases chained up on the roof or in a doorway dragging the noisy chain around barking all the time from boredom and misery. People just stand and have "conversations" next to the barking dogs yelling at each other to be louder than the dog. Is there a thought to move, move the dog or train it or feed it? Nope, noise here is met by more noise.

We had a neighbor in our house in San German who had a barking boxer and a yippy little dog and a new baby. When they had the kid we thought our sleepless nights would surely be over. Not quite how it turned out. "How does the baby sleep?" we asked as we tried to get them to move the dog to the other side of their house. "Oh, if the dog is barking we let her sleep with the TV on." Yes, the onslaught of noise starts when they are young (just like waiting in lines)!