Saturday Nights Are Hot

And it couldn’t have been hotter this weekend. You see, as I was getting ready to go out for a night of dancing, a family friend came upstairs (my host family was out) and asked me again what my name was. I told her, and she said immediately, okay, come. I was confused and not quite sure I heard her right. She left, picked up her son who was sleeping on a bed and started yelling, Come, Come! I left my room and there before my eyes was a fire. A wire of some kind had gone ablaze. We hurried down stairs and up the street a ways to avoid being near it. The entire barrio was watching as the fire spread up and down the wire. I tried not to be too scared. What were the chances it would spread; the people who take care of something like this will be here soon.

Well, it spread. It wasn’t too dramatic but it still spread. Bits of hot plastic or pieces of the wire fell downwards on a car that was parked right underneath and onto the awning of a store. The awning caught fire and when that happened I started to get really nervous. One of the onlookers jumped on the car and reached up onto the awning to put that fire out. As scary as what he did was, I was glad he did it because from there, the fire could have spread to the building. The woman who came to rescue me saw I was a little nervous and wanted me to watch her son who looked tired and confused, and perhaps also a little nervous. She took me a neighbor’s house and sat me down and told me to watch her son and not worry. I still wanted to watch, but did as I was told. The pueblo had my back.

I got up a few times to see if the situation had changed. It hadn’t really, it was just one bigger wire ablaze. No one was coming to put the fire out, which didn’t really surprise me. I couldn’t help but wonder what would happen if it just kept growing and growing. Since it was electrical there we couldn’t fight it with water, and I doubted anyone had a fire extinguisher. But, someone was brave enough to reach up and repeatedly shake the wire. Eventually the blaze went out, except one little spot. I was determined to remain outdoors until that last little bit had been put out and just as I was thinking that, someone threw something up at it, he had perfect aim, and it went out.

Well the night had only begun to get hot. The nightlife here is very interesting. There are these colmados on every block that remind me of open White Hen Pantries and Walgreens. The difference is that they have chairs and beer so people can go and have a drink for a while pretty much anytime. I thought it was unlikely that the colmados were the only thing people did at night, because even though they all blast music, no one ever dances at them.

The other part of the nightlife are, prepare yourself, car washes. En serio, people will take their cars in to get washed and stop for a beer. At night, the car wash portion shuts down, but the bar and the dance floor do not. The one we went to had a big dance floor and tons of seating. Things really started to pick up by 9:00 which was nice for those of us who have to be home pretty early. We danced meringue, or least tried our best. It was a great night because there were 3 of us girls, and 4 guys. Remarkable that the boys should outnumber the girls, because in Peace Corps it is quite the opposite.

I learned the next morning that Saturday was also hot for some other volunteers but for a much more depressing reason. Caliente, which means hot, has a lot of connotations here. In addition to meaning hot in terms of temperature, it also means hot in the way of robbery. Yesterday, three volunteers went to the botanic garden and were robbed and “gun” and knife point by 2 young Dominican men. I was supposed to have gone there that same afternoon with my host brother, who is a police officer and wants to take me there in the future. They had their watches, cameras and money stolen, and the female volunteer had her purse stolen. Luckily she had a hidden pocket on her pants where she had some money, so they were able to get home. This of course makes me think twice about bringing my camera out, but it also makes me not want to wear my watch. But mostly it makes me want to travel in big groups and ideally with Dominicans.