I must credit my older brother immediately for the title. It came up in a conversation on how very little changed here for the celebrations of Christmas. I’d been told practically since arriving in this country that Christmas is a huge deal here. I was thrilled because I’m a huge lover of December and all things Christmas. They said there would be parties all the time, music playing constantly, relatives from out of town, more food than I could eat including lots of pork and fresh fruit, and much more.
Well, some relatives did show up and there was pork (the kind you put on a stick and barbeque over an open pit flame.) But besides that, the days (the 24th and 25th) were pretty uneventful. I spent the majority of the 24th reading because no one was around; my Dona went off to Mexico to visit her daughter, which is all fine and well except that that left me more or less alone until she gets back in mid-January. I went to a party with some friends in the evening and ate well there. The party didn’t feel too different from other parties I’ve been to here and at their house in particular. They tend to be the party-throwers, these friends of mine. I guess one difference is that we listened to Christmas meringue instead of regular meringue. Oh another thing that was different is that my host father, who had drunk a lot of rum at the party, handed me his hand gun for safe keeping. He told me to put it in my suitcase because he didn’t want anything to happen. I found myself wondering what exactly could have happened on Christmas Eve with the gun, that wouldn’t have happened any other night?
On the 25th I spent a lot of the day reading again, I watched All The President’s Men (which might I add is an incredible Christmas movie, and I hope will be broadcast on one of the major networks for Christmas next year), and made an effort to go out at see people. The 24th is the more important day here so I didn’t want to impose on people when their families were visiting, but I didn’t mind imposing as much on the 25th. After a nice long call with my family back home, I played some dominoes, did some chit-chatting with some people here, and watched the stars at night. What is it about Christmas that always makes the stars look brighter?
Now don’t feel too bad for me having been away from home for Christmas for the first time. Although it was that, as well as sad day for some other reasons, I did get to spend the day in the Caribbean (whereas I’m pretty sure the bulk of you reading this were experiencing wind chills of negative 18 at the time) and I got 3 incredible Christmas presents. A while back I bought 2 boxes of Kraft Macaroni and Cheese (the powder kind, A.K.A. my all time favorite food.) I decided to prepare a box for my Christmas dinner, which took much explaining to many people; meals and my general lack of eating is a popular topic of conversation here, not just in my house, but all over the community. Anyways, although prepared in the dark, it was delicious. *I should caution fellow lovers of said deliciousness that the flavor of the milk and margarine that you use strongly influences the flavor of the end product, so if you’re going abroad and bringing some with you, be warned. Both Chilean and Dominican mac and cheese dinners haven’t been exactly what they are in Illinois and Washington DC.
I’d known for a few weeks that my family will be coming to visit me here in mid-January. What I also knew was that my older brother wouldn’t be able to make it. However, on Christmas I found out that he too is coming! I’m so excited for them to come. (PS-If you want to send me a letter or something, send it to them before the 16th or so and they can bring it to me here! That would be a lot faster and easier than using actual mail.)
The other Christmas present, which although I wasn’t aware it was happening at the time I immediately claimed as my own, was the Chicago Bears incredible triumph over the Green Bay Bumbling Fools. Oh I’m sorry, the Green Bay Packers. This wonderfulness (which really should have happened last year) took place just moments before the Christmas festivaling began and I had a little dance party when I saw the score on ESPN, the only English-television channel that seems to always work, rather, it seems to always work when the power is on, and the cable is functioning too.
In general the days were nice and fun, but I didn’t see what all of the hype was about. The gift exchanging, which is mostly just for the little kids anyways, is supposed to take place on Three Kings Day, the 6th of January. I have a feeling it will turn out to be not such a big deal as well. Oh and as for the hand gun, I’m nervous my host father doesn’t remember giving it to me because he was too drunk that night, so I haven’t brought it up with him. It’s sitting on the other bed in my room under some sweatpants.
Sunday, December 30, 2007
I CAUGHT THE FISH!
Though I’ve beaten particular Dominicans at dominoes more times than they’ve beaten me, they like to tell me how terrible at the game I am, and in general think I’m pretty crazy, and terrible at a lot of things. And it’s not just some selected individuals, it’s pretty much everyone. One moment they see me do something they don’t understand, perhaps I throw down a domino that they wouldn’t have, or use a seat belt in a car, and the next minute I’m kicking their butt at that hand of dominoes, or am the only person not jolting forward in the car when someone slams on the breaks. Defeating people who were rude to me, or in front of me because they think I don’t understand Spanish, was what I thought was the greatest feeling in the world.
But I found another one. It’s when you go out fishing for hours, trying different types of bait, in different areas, with a guide who seems just as surprised that nothing is biting as your know-it-all friend who took you out, having people walk you through every step of casting a line multiple times (even though all of the steps are pretty easy) because they think that you’re a bumbling fool, and no one is having any luck. And then, you’re the only person in the boat, of all locals who are experienced fishermen, who catches something! Now, I shouldn’t say they didn’t catch anything. In our group of me, my friend who spoils me, and 2 guides, one of the guides caught a very small fish, and the other 2 had crabs on their lines that they wouldn’t even let in the boat because their such a nuisance. So, it’s not that I’m the only one who caught something; it’s that I’m the only one who caught something large.
Catching the fish came after playing dominoes with the same group. My friend who thinks he’s an expert and is always telling me how to play “ better” wasn’t on my team because he thought this other guy was the best and he thought I, the worst, should play on the team with the best, and he would play with another guy. On the game for my team they bet yogurt and cheese (only in the DR) and rum for my alcoholic friend and his partner. Well I’m happy to say that my friend will be buying my former domino partner some yogurt and cheese, because we won. Not only did we win, but I won more times than my apparently “expert” partner.
I took some triumphant pictures with the dead animal, which is very scary-looking, by the way. Part of me wanted to name it, but I was supposed to eat it the next day and I didn’t feel right eating something I’d named. But more relevantly, I don’t feel right naming something that looks like this thing. It’s long and slimy and doesn’t have any fins and has a pointy face with razor-sharp-pointy-teeth. It looks like an eel. (Oh! I saw my first real-life jelly fish today! It got stuck on my line for a moment. They look a lot like they did in Finding Nemo and in SpongeBob except that the one I saw wasn’t pink, it was clear with black outlines.)
We went out to fish twice, once in the morning-afternoon, and once at dusk which turned into night very soon after we went out. I didn’t think the latter trip made a whole lot of sense because it would get awfully dark awfully fast and then what would we do? Well apparently I would catch the fish, but even more importantly is that I would be able to see an incredible amount of stars which followed a breathtaking sunset. But we really were just sitting in the boat, and waiting, in the dark.
Something else that turned out to be a downside to fishing at night was having everyone tell me that unlike the only other fish I’ve caught in my life (a poisonous fish out of the Mississippi River, wait, isn’t that redundant?) I could actually eat this one. Well it turns out that on closer inspection no one but sharks eat this sort of fish. I must say I’m a bit glad because it really was eel-like and I sort of didn’t want to eat it. Also I thought they’d make me eat it alone and even if it was “just” 2 pounds or so, I didn’t want to eat 2 pounds of scary-fish. I guess I’d be more relieved still if I hadn’t also just found out that shark-food is in the place where I spent all day floating around in a boat. Oh well.
But I found another one. It’s when you go out fishing for hours, trying different types of bait, in different areas, with a guide who seems just as surprised that nothing is biting as your know-it-all friend who took you out, having people walk you through every step of casting a line multiple times (even though all of the steps are pretty easy) because they think that you’re a bumbling fool, and no one is having any luck. And then, you’re the only person in the boat, of all locals who are experienced fishermen, who catches something! Now, I shouldn’t say they didn’t catch anything. In our group of me, my friend who spoils me, and 2 guides, one of the guides caught a very small fish, and the other 2 had crabs on their lines that they wouldn’t even let in the boat because their such a nuisance. So, it’s not that I’m the only one who caught something; it’s that I’m the only one who caught something large.
Catching the fish came after playing dominoes with the same group. My friend who thinks he’s an expert and is always telling me how to play “ better” wasn’t on my team because he thought this other guy was the best and he thought I, the worst, should play on the team with the best, and he would play with another guy. On the game for my team they bet yogurt and cheese (only in the DR) and rum for my alcoholic friend and his partner. Well I’m happy to say that my friend will be buying my former domino partner some yogurt and cheese, because we won. Not only did we win, but I won more times than my apparently “expert” partner.
I took some triumphant pictures with the dead animal, which is very scary-looking, by the way. Part of me wanted to name it, but I was supposed to eat it the next day and I didn’t feel right eating something I’d named. But more relevantly, I don’t feel right naming something that looks like this thing. It’s long and slimy and doesn’t have any fins and has a pointy face with razor-sharp-pointy-teeth. It looks like an eel. (Oh! I saw my first real-life jelly fish today! It got stuck on my line for a moment. They look a lot like they did in Finding Nemo and in SpongeBob except that the one I saw wasn’t pink, it was clear with black outlines.)
We went out to fish twice, once in the morning-afternoon, and once at dusk which turned into night very soon after we went out. I didn’t think the latter trip made a whole lot of sense because it would get awfully dark awfully fast and then what would we do? Well apparently I would catch the fish, but even more importantly is that I would be able to see an incredible amount of stars which followed a breathtaking sunset. But we really were just sitting in the boat, and waiting, in the dark.
Something else that turned out to be a downside to fishing at night was having everyone tell me that unlike the only other fish I’ve caught in my life (a poisonous fish out of the Mississippi River, wait, isn’t that redundant?) I could actually eat this one. Well it turns out that on closer inspection no one but sharks eat this sort of fish. I must say I’m a bit glad because it really was eel-like and I sort of didn’t want to eat it. Also I thought they’d make me eat it alone and even if it was “just” 2 pounds or so, I didn’t want to eat 2 pounds of scary-fish. I guess I’d be more relieved still if I hadn’t also just found out that shark-food is in the place where I spent all day floating around in a boat. Oh well.
I'm A Peace Corps Volunteer, Damn It
My host mother the other day was overjoyed. Even though it wasn’t laundry day, she’d missed it earlier in the week, we had power and she was determined to get some laundry done. I was glad too because one of the more disappointing things about Peace Corps is how little we were able to bring, chiefly in the area of clothing, and wearing dirty clothes, although I and I’m sure most of us do it often, is gross. The only problem was that she was also so supposed to be teaching classes at our town school. No matter, she decided, I’ll just send Eliza.
Excuse me? At first I couldn’t understand what she was saying, then I couldn’t understand how she would ever think of such an outrageous idea. Not only is it a terrible plan, I also was supposed to go out and do some interviewing, which is actually my reason for being here, which she knew. So, I decided I’d go tell the school director that my Dona had told me to come relay the message that she wouldn’t be coming to class because of the laundry and that if the school director (the only teacher in the building, though there were 4 classes of kids there) needed any help corralling the kids, I could for a minute before going to do interviews.
Well, within a matter of moments I found myself standing in front of a classroom of students who had just been told I would be giving them English lessons. The reasons for which I was full of many an emotion that did not include feeling comfortable should be quite clear, but let’s go through them just for fun’s sake. 1) I am not now, nor have I ever been a teacher. I have no experience with teaching in a classroom and have no training in teaching. 2) I am a 22 year old who is barely out of college. I majored in International Studies. International Studies and English are not the same thing. 3) I am a Peace Corps Volunteer. I work in health, and before I can start doing that, I am to complete a diagnostic of the community. There was a woman waiting to take me to do some interviews. 4) The school board, or local school officials, or regional leadership in education, let alone the Dominican government probably don’t have “inexperienced gringas welcome to teach classes in our rural schools whenever” postered anywhere. I don’t think the situation would fly with them. 5) The situation certainly would not fly in the US where you need a security clearance to enter a pre-school, let alone sit in on a classroom, let alone TEACH A CLASS!
Okay, so now that I’d run through all the ways that this was a terrible idea and that I in no way felt comfortable, I felt it was a good time to have a little chuckle to myself. At some point I looked up and was reintroduced to my surroundings, mainly the classroom-full of students looking at me to guide them in their English studies. Luckily, I’d been running through some possible topics for English classes because of the classes I’m going to start giving after the winter holidays. So, I stole from those. I talked about the days of the week, the months, taught them how to say when their birthday was, and taught them the “th” sound, even letting out the secret that my name isn’t actually Eliza and that because Spanish-speakers have such a hard time with “th” I’d decided to go with my full name in this country instead. I gave them all American-sounding names which were somewhat reminiscent of their names, although how are you supposed to translate “Yaniris” or “Joche”? For that matter, how are you even supposed to pronounce them?
Part way through the class it was time to switch to the older kids who found the names thing less interesting than having me do their homework for them. Luckily, as I was out of ideas for my spur of the moment English classes, and didn’t feel comfortable teaching students who aren’t mine, and doing their homework for them, class was over for the day. These kids go to school for AM or PM sessions only, have a break of about 30 minutes part way through their session, have teachers periodically not show up, nor their substitutes, and got me that day instead. I’m sure it was a real treat for them just as it was for me. (I’m sarcastically smiling right now.)
Excuse me? At first I couldn’t understand what she was saying, then I couldn’t understand how she would ever think of such an outrageous idea. Not only is it a terrible plan, I also was supposed to go out and do some interviewing, which is actually my reason for being here, which she knew. So, I decided I’d go tell the school director that my Dona had told me to come relay the message that she wouldn’t be coming to class because of the laundry and that if the school director (the only teacher in the building, though there were 4 classes of kids there) needed any help corralling the kids, I could for a minute before going to do interviews.
Well, within a matter of moments I found myself standing in front of a classroom of students who had just been told I would be giving them English lessons. The reasons for which I was full of many an emotion that did not include feeling comfortable should be quite clear, but let’s go through them just for fun’s sake. 1) I am not now, nor have I ever been a teacher. I have no experience with teaching in a classroom and have no training in teaching. 2) I am a 22 year old who is barely out of college. I majored in International Studies. International Studies and English are not the same thing. 3) I am a Peace Corps Volunteer. I work in health, and before I can start doing that, I am to complete a diagnostic of the community. There was a woman waiting to take me to do some interviews. 4) The school board, or local school officials, or regional leadership in education, let alone the Dominican government probably don’t have “inexperienced gringas welcome to teach classes in our rural schools whenever” postered anywhere. I don’t think the situation would fly with them. 5) The situation certainly would not fly in the US where you need a security clearance to enter a pre-school, let alone sit in on a classroom, let alone TEACH A CLASS!
Okay, so now that I’d run through all the ways that this was a terrible idea and that I in no way felt comfortable, I felt it was a good time to have a little chuckle to myself. At some point I looked up and was reintroduced to my surroundings, mainly the classroom-full of students looking at me to guide them in their English studies. Luckily, I’d been running through some possible topics for English classes because of the classes I’m going to start giving after the winter holidays. So, I stole from those. I talked about the days of the week, the months, taught them how to say when their birthday was, and taught them the “th” sound, even letting out the secret that my name isn’t actually Eliza and that because Spanish-speakers have such a hard time with “th” I’d decided to go with my full name in this country instead. I gave them all American-sounding names which were somewhat reminiscent of their names, although how are you supposed to translate “Yaniris” or “Joche”? For that matter, how are you even supposed to pronounce them?
Part way through the class it was time to switch to the older kids who found the names thing less interesting than having me do their homework for them. Luckily, as I was out of ideas for my spur of the moment English classes, and didn’t feel comfortable teaching students who aren’t mine, and doing their homework for them, class was over for the day. These kids go to school for AM or PM sessions only, have a break of about 30 minutes part way through their session, have teachers periodically not show up, nor their substitutes, and got me that day instead. I’m sure it was a real treat for them just as it was for me. (I’m sarcastically smiling right now.)
Some Days Just Come and Go
Some days just come and go, the highlight might be a few hours spent at a neighbor’s house playing dominoes or talking, or maybe I get some healthy fried chicken for dinner instead of fried pork. Other days have so much action packed into them that even thinking about writing it all in my journal is a daunting task that wears me out. And the most Peace-Corps-y thing about it is that you really never know what day is going to be which. Days of extreme boredom and days of extreme action cannot be planned. They are in no way premeditated. It’s about rolling with the punches.
Today was one such action-packed day. It started out slow, my first day of Christmas vacation. I completed a couple of long days of interviewing and was pleased that I had 50 (of 120) interviews completed in time for the break. The interview was really starting to get on my nerves. Really, why do I care after how many months it was that mothers started to give their children canned, powered or regular cow’s milk if it takes 20 minutes to describe to the women that I’m not interested in which kind of milk it was that they gave, rather at which time the giving took place. Perhaps you have to sit in on one such interview to truly grasp how frustrating that and some of my other questions might be. But the good news was that I was done, for now. So I spent a bulk of the morning reading. It’s called A Prayer for Owen Meany and I HIGHLY recommend it, especially during the holidays.
Pretty soon my friend who likes spoiling me almost as he likes drinking rum arrived and told me it was time to go to the beach. I was thrilled because I really wanted to meet up with my volunteer neighbor who lives there, speak English, be reminded that I’m not alone, and most importantly, compare medical issues. I wanted to show her what I believed to be a series of mosquito bites in a somewhat condensed area, resulting in a very scary, very bumpy, very vast piece of skin on the upper part of my leg where mosquitoes typically wouldn’t be able to have access. I’m pretty sure that’s what this weird protrusion was because my legs were covered in some very severe looking bites in other areas, and, I killed a mosquito in my bed net this morning when the teenagers came around chanting Christmas merengues at 4:30. I have no way of knowing how long said mosquito was in my net, and feel it’s safer to blame said (dead, haha) mosquito for the protrusion than some rash or other contaminable condition. Let me just tell you, it’s not fun to be scratching at something under your pant leg that feels just like all of your other mosquito bites only to be “quickly changing into your bathing suit” and find that it’s a new, very 3-dimentional abscess that’s bright red and painful.
We got to the beach and ate fried fish with tostones, perhaps my favorite Dominican food. It’s sliced of plantain fried in soy oil. With a little salt and a ton of catsup, it might even be more fulfilling that French fries. Now please don’t think that I’ve abandoned my love and appreciation for good American cooking by having said something even comes close to comparing with French fries… it’s just that because potatoes get such a bad rap for being a starch, and because I’m not sure if plantains count as a starch, and since I’m not sure, and because they remind me of bananas which are really good for you, I feel better about tostones as a healthy option than French fries. But believe me, if someone handed me a box of Arby’s curly fries and a plate of tostones, and told me I could only have one, the fries, even if I couldn’t have Arby’s sauce, would win. Hands down.
I did some swimming, and as I hope you will see, some photograph taking. If you find yourself wondering why I’ve taken so many pictures of the same beach (yes, they are all of the same beach) I assure you I’m in no way trying to persuade you to visit. The photographs are merely for my records. I want to remember what that beach, which you will remember I have described as the most lovely, beautiful beach I’ve ever been to, looked like at every moment I was able to be there and soak it up. The fact that you are (theoretically) seeing it so often is just a by-product of my record-keeping.
You might notice some odd pictures of a man sitting on the ground at the beach. I’m quite conflicted about these photos, as I am about something that took up the bulk of my thoughts today. You guessed it: the Haitian situation. I’d love to report that I haven’t felt uncomfortable again like I did that terrible night in front of my neighbor’s house when the police rolled through my community. Unfortunately, I saw something equally disturbing this morning. As we were driving to the beach, my friend slowed the car down and stopped next to a Dominican man and a Haitian boy who was probably 10 years old. The Dominican was very upset and there was a crowd of Dominicans and Haitians watching him. He had a rope, and was tying up the hands of the boy. As it did the other night, it took a moment for me to realize what was going on. As soon as I did, I realized that the other end of the rope was attached to the saddle of a horse and I started to get really scared. From what I could hear outside the car the boy had been caught stealing from the orchard of the Dominican man. He was furious and the boy looked scared to death. This particular Dominican man has rather light-skin so the scene looked like something out of Roots.
All I could think was please don’t whip that horse to make it start running! My friend tried to explain to me that the boy had been caught stealing lemons, a sack of which apparently costs around US$60. Okay, I thought, I can pay for the lemons, just let the little guy go! He’s a kid, but he’s a thief, my friend said, like all Haitians. But don’t worry, he told me, that man is just going to take him to the police to describe what happened, and the two of them will probably resolve it on the way there; he just wants to scare the kid.
So Dominicans are allowed to tie up Haitians? Are Haitians allowed to tie up Dominicans? Let’s insert any adjective that describes human beings and see if it makes any sense. I was, again, visibly disturbed so my friend, who up until this point I didn’t realize had such a crude sense of humor, said it used to be worse, like in the Old West where someone like that, who committed a crime, would be hanged from a tree. Not so crude except that he said this with quite a forceful laugh behind it. I didn’t find the reference to lynching as funny as he did.
I also didn’t find what happened to the man at the beach very funny. When we first arrived, a drunk Haitian was being pretty friendly to my friends and the people seated near us. I went for a swim and when I came back a while later, the man had gotten much drunker. Everyone was having a good laugh at his expense, especially my friends, although they weren’t much more sober, and then something happened that was hysterically funny, or incredibly demoralizing, depending on your point of view. The man attempted to sit down and fell into his plastic chair in a way which made the chair buckle beneath him, and he, and the broken pieces of plastic, fell to the ground. I’ve seen a great many broken plastic chairs in this country fastened together with wire or staples, so I wasn’t too concerned for the chair’s owner. The chair’s owner, however, was. He came rushing with such speed I didn’t think Dominican waiters could achieve. He dove into the pockets of the inebriated Haitian, now lying on the ground, presumably looking for money to pay for the plastic that was once a chair. After turning both pockets inside-out, the waiter picked up the broken leg of the chair, and began to hit the man on the head with it. The audience for the afternoon entertainment was about 5 Dominican men, myself, and some other foreign women. The Dominican men laughed at the spectacle. The man attempted to get up but fell over. His arm was covered in paint which I can only assume got on him when he leaned into a recently painted wooden post at the restaurant. A Dominican man came over to offer some help. A hand, perhaps, to help the man to his feet. No, but he did offer some sips of a much-needed non-alcoholic beverage, a 7up. This Dominican must have been feeling extra generous because instead of just some sips, he gave the Haitian so much soda that he couldn’t drink it all and the 7up poured over his mouth and down his face. The man, at this point, did not seem to be appreciating the help the Dominican had offered, and instead looked defeated. The Dominican offered more soda, this time apparently to refresh his scalp, because he poured the rest of the contents of the bottle on the Haitian’s head.
One of the foreign women approached the Haitian, still lying on the ground, and poured what appeared to be ocean water on his head and over his face. Unlike his reaction to the soda, the man appeared to welcome this shower, even turning to look at the woman who had given it to him. The sight of a foreigner cleaning the man was more than my friends, or the other Dominican men, could take. The laughter was more than it had ever been, and so the man retreated into his lap, still in the spot where he’d initially fallen.
And so I took a picture. I didn’t mean for my friends to laugh harder, I even looked at them to try to inquire to what they thought was so funny, to shame them into stopping. At the time I believe I was thinking that I wanted something to remember the humiliation I’d seen given to Haitians at the hands of their Dominican neighbors that day. The man at the beach did not just represent himself. To me, the humiliation he suffered represented the humiliation that the 10 year old boy suffered, as well as those men who got carried off by the police a few weeks ago. And it’s one thing to be humiliated by one group of people in such dramatic ways as have been going on here for some time, but I was there too. It wasn’t just that Dominicans were humiliating Haitians, there was an American there too, and she didn’t do anything. In fact, she was taking pictures.
What if it had been me that broke the chair? An American woman goes to the beach of a developing country over winter break, has one too many, and brakes a chair. I’m sure it’s happened before, probably at that beach, perhaps at that very same restaurant, and even while that same waiter was working. Would he hit her over the head with the chair leg? He was the only Haitian at the beach that day. I was the only American at the beach that day. So what made us so different?
Today was one such action-packed day. It started out slow, my first day of Christmas vacation. I completed a couple of long days of interviewing and was pleased that I had 50 (of 120) interviews completed in time for the break. The interview was really starting to get on my nerves. Really, why do I care after how many months it was that mothers started to give their children canned, powered or regular cow’s milk if it takes 20 minutes to describe to the women that I’m not interested in which kind of milk it was that they gave, rather at which time the giving took place. Perhaps you have to sit in on one such interview to truly grasp how frustrating that and some of my other questions might be. But the good news was that I was done, for now. So I spent a bulk of the morning reading. It’s called A Prayer for Owen Meany and I HIGHLY recommend it, especially during the holidays.
Pretty soon my friend who likes spoiling me almost as he likes drinking rum arrived and told me it was time to go to the beach. I was thrilled because I really wanted to meet up with my volunteer neighbor who lives there, speak English, be reminded that I’m not alone, and most importantly, compare medical issues. I wanted to show her what I believed to be a series of mosquito bites in a somewhat condensed area, resulting in a very scary, very bumpy, very vast piece of skin on the upper part of my leg where mosquitoes typically wouldn’t be able to have access. I’m pretty sure that’s what this weird protrusion was because my legs were covered in some very severe looking bites in other areas, and, I killed a mosquito in my bed net this morning when the teenagers came around chanting Christmas merengues at 4:30. I have no way of knowing how long said mosquito was in my net, and feel it’s safer to blame said (dead, haha) mosquito for the protrusion than some rash or other contaminable condition. Let me just tell you, it’s not fun to be scratching at something under your pant leg that feels just like all of your other mosquito bites only to be “quickly changing into your bathing suit” and find that it’s a new, very 3-dimentional abscess that’s bright red and painful.
We got to the beach and ate fried fish with tostones, perhaps my favorite Dominican food. It’s sliced of plantain fried in soy oil. With a little salt and a ton of catsup, it might even be more fulfilling that French fries. Now please don’t think that I’ve abandoned my love and appreciation for good American cooking by having said something even comes close to comparing with French fries… it’s just that because potatoes get such a bad rap for being a starch, and because I’m not sure if plantains count as a starch, and since I’m not sure, and because they remind me of bananas which are really good for you, I feel better about tostones as a healthy option than French fries. But believe me, if someone handed me a box of Arby’s curly fries and a plate of tostones, and told me I could only have one, the fries, even if I couldn’t have Arby’s sauce, would win. Hands down.
I did some swimming, and as I hope you will see, some photograph taking. If you find yourself wondering why I’ve taken so many pictures of the same beach (yes, they are all of the same beach) I assure you I’m in no way trying to persuade you to visit. The photographs are merely for my records. I want to remember what that beach, which you will remember I have described as the most lovely, beautiful beach I’ve ever been to, looked like at every moment I was able to be there and soak it up. The fact that you are (theoretically) seeing it so often is just a by-product of my record-keeping.
You might notice some odd pictures of a man sitting on the ground at the beach. I’m quite conflicted about these photos, as I am about something that took up the bulk of my thoughts today. You guessed it: the Haitian situation. I’d love to report that I haven’t felt uncomfortable again like I did that terrible night in front of my neighbor’s house when the police rolled through my community. Unfortunately, I saw something equally disturbing this morning. As we were driving to the beach, my friend slowed the car down and stopped next to a Dominican man and a Haitian boy who was probably 10 years old. The Dominican was very upset and there was a crowd of Dominicans and Haitians watching him. He had a rope, and was tying up the hands of the boy. As it did the other night, it took a moment for me to realize what was going on. As soon as I did, I realized that the other end of the rope was attached to the saddle of a horse and I started to get really scared. From what I could hear outside the car the boy had been caught stealing from the orchard of the Dominican man. He was furious and the boy looked scared to death. This particular Dominican man has rather light-skin so the scene looked like something out of Roots.
All I could think was please don’t whip that horse to make it start running! My friend tried to explain to me that the boy had been caught stealing lemons, a sack of which apparently costs around US$60. Okay, I thought, I can pay for the lemons, just let the little guy go! He’s a kid, but he’s a thief, my friend said, like all Haitians. But don’t worry, he told me, that man is just going to take him to the police to describe what happened, and the two of them will probably resolve it on the way there; he just wants to scare the kid.
So Dominicans are allowed to tie up Haitians? Are Haitians allowed to tie up Dominicans? Let’s insert any adjective that describes human beings and see if it makes any sense. I was, again, visibly disturbed so my friend, who up until this point I didn’t realize had such a crude sense of humor, said it used to be worse, like in the Old West where someone like that, who committed a crime, would be hanged from a tree. Not so crude except that he said this with quite a forceful laugh behind it. I didn’t find the reference to lynching as funny as he did.
I also didn’t find what happened to the man at the beach very funny. When we first arrived, a drunk Haitian was being pretty friendly to my friends and the people seated near us. I went for a swim and when I came back a while later, the man had gotten much drunker. Everyone was having a good laugh at his expense, especially my friends, although they weren’t much more sober, and then something happened that was hysterically funny, or incredibly demoralizing, depending on your point of view. The man attempted to sit down and fell into his plastic chair in a way which made the chair buckle beneath him, and he, and the broken pieces of plastic, fell to the ground. I’ve seen a great many broken plastic chairs in this country fastened together with wire or staples, so I wasn’t too concerned for the chair’s owner. The chair’s owner, however, was. He came rushing with such speed I didn’t think Dominican waiters could achieve. He dove into the pockets of the inebriated Haitian, now lying on the ground, presumably looking for money to pay for the plastic that was once a chair. After turning both pockets inside-out, the waiter picked up the broken leg of the chair, and began to hit the man on the head with it. The audience for the afternoon entertainment was about 5 Dominican men, myself, and some other foreign women. The Dominican men laughed at the spectacle. The man attempted to get up but fell over. His arm was covered in paint which I can only assume got on him when he leaned into a recently painted wooden post at the restaurant. A Dominican man came over to offer some help. A hand, perhaps, to help the man to his feet. No, but he did offer some sips of a much-needed non-alcoholic beverage, a 7up. This Dominican must have been feeling extra generous because instead of just some sips, he gave the Haitian so much soda that he couldn’t drink it all and the 7up poured over his mouth and down his face. The man, at this point, did not seem to be appreciating the help the Dominican had offered, and instead looked defeated. The Dominican offered more soda, this time apparently to refresh his scalp, because he poured the rest of the contents of the bottle on the Haitian’s head.
One of the foreign women approached the Haitian, still lying on the ground, and poured what appeared to be ocean water on his head and over his face. Unlike his reaction to the soda, the man appeared to welcome this shower, even turning to look at the woman who had given it to him. The sight of a foreigner cleaning the man was more than my friends, or the other Dominican men, could take. The laughter was more than it had ever been, and so the man retreated into his lap, still in the spot where he’d initially fallen.
And so I took a picture. I didn’t mean for my friends to laugh harder, I even looked at them to try to inquire to what they thought was so funny, to shame them into stopping. At the time I believe I was thinking that I wanted something to remember the humiliation I’d seen given to Haitians at the hands of their Dominican neighbors that day. The man at the beach did not just represent himself. To me, the humiliation he suffered represented the humiliation that the 10 year old boy suffered, as well as those men who got carried off by the police a few weeks ago. And it’s one thing to be humiliated by one group of people in such dramatic ways as have been going on here for some time, but I was there too. It wasn’t just that Dominicans were humiliating Haitians, there was an American there too, and she didn’t do anything. In fact, she was taking pictures.
What if it had been me that broke the chair? An American woman goes to the beach of a developing country over winter break, has one too many, and brakes a chair. I’m sure it’s happened before, probably at that beach, perhaps at that very same restaurant, and even while that same waiter was working. Would he hit her over the head with the chair leg? He was the only Haitian at the beach that day. I was the only American at the beach that day. So what made us so different?
Olga Came Through
She was called Tropical Storm Olga and she was very reminiscent of Noel. Despite the fact that they don’t typically tend to come “that late in the season,” nor to the regions I was in at the times, I experienced them both. Thankfully, there was very little damage to my site both times, but even less to my new site this time. There were no deaths near my town, no homes wrecked, no rivers overflowed too much, no trees came down to do too much damage to anything under.
Also thankfully, Peace Corps was a bit more prepared to act for Olga than they (or the rest of the country) were for Noel. On Tuesday, December 11th my emergency action person called my project partner’s house (the only working phone near me) to alert me that I was to get out of my site and go to Santiago to consolidate immediately. I’d missed the bus that leaves my site once a day so I started spreading the word that I needed ride out to the highway about a 1 hour ride, to catch a bus to the city. Everyone has my back here, and they seem to really enjoy helping me. My project partner’s husband got on it and got me a ride, even though no one wanted to leave for fear of bad roads and the impending danger of the storm.
I got to the city within 5 hours of being summoned to leave. Some people had a significantly shorter trip (also much cheaper. Mine ended up costing about $14 one way. I had friends who paid as little as $3 and $5 one way. If I’d caught that bus in the morning it would have cost $6. Sheesh.) But, with the exception of 2 friends of mine who are really isolated and without cell phone signal (or I guess landline either) pretty much every volunteer in the north of the country met up in a hotel in Santiago. Some people came using car, bus, truck, horse and/or mule, and one guy even got to tread through a river, raging since the water of the storm started.
We spent 2 nights in the hotel, mostly watching TV, but if you’ve already seen the pictures you’ll have seen that we did some other stuff too… I feel I should state for the record that all of those pictures are a lot more innocent than they look. No one really got too rowdy, though I know it looks quite the opposite. We’re just goofy. Not having a warm shower (or running water of any kind for some people) for a long time and then getting one for 2 days in a row will do that to a person.
We left after being told it was safe for most of us to leave by Peace Corps. My volunteer neighbor, who uses about 90% of the same road to get back as me was not cleared to go home, so I looked into it, and it turns out that the last 10% of the road that’s just hers was a mess. So she had to stay one more night at the hotel. I made it home safely, after spending a few hours figuring out how to get home. (Cell phone difficulties, compounded with having missed the one bus home from Santiago, compounded with not having brought my motorcycle helmet with me, compounded with other things made it difficult to figure it out.) But it all worked out in the end.
The word thus far is about 20 deaths in the country, all in the north, many a direct result of someone’s decision to open a levee to prevent a damn from overflowing or busting. When it was opened people who lived below and near it were not alerted in time to avoid its path. Look for video on the water flowing over it; it looks like Niagara Falls.
Also thankfully, Peace Corps was a bit more prepared to act for Olga than they (or the rest of the country) were for Noel. On Tuesday, December 11th my emergency action person called my project partner’s house (the only working phone near me) to alert me that I was to get out of my site and go to Santiago to consolidate immediately. I’d missed the bus that leaves my site once a day so I started spreading the word that I needed ride out to the highway about a 1 hour ride, to catch a bus to the city. Everyone has my back here, and they seem to really enjoy helping me. My project partner’s husband got on it and got me a ride, even though no one wanted to leave for fear of bad roads and the impending danger of the storm.
I got to the city within 5 hours of being summoned to leave. Some people had a significantly shorter trip (also much cheaper. Mine ended up costing about $14 one way. I had friends who paid as little as $3 and $5 one way. If I’d caught that bus in the morning it would have cost $6. Sheesh.) But, with the exception of 2 friends of mine who are really isolated and without cell phone signal (or I guess landline either) pretty much every volunteer in the north of the country met up in a hotel in Santiago. Some people came using car, bus, truck, horse and/or mule, and one guy even got to tread through a river, raging since the water of the storm started.
We spent 2 nights in the hotel, mostly watching TV, but if you’ve already seen the pictures you’ll have seen that we did some other stuff too… I feel I should state for the record that all of those pictures are a lot more innocent than they look. No one really got too rowdy, though I know it looks quite the opposite. We’re just goofy. Not having a warm shower (or running water of any kind for some people) for a long time and then getting one for 2 days in a row will do that to a person.
We left after being told it was safe for most of us to leave by Peace Corps. My volunteer neighbor, who uses about 90% of the same road to get back as me was not cleared to go home, so I looked into it, and it turns out that the last 10% of the road that’s just hers was a mess. So she had to stay one more night at the hotel. I made it home safely, after spending a few hours figuring out how to get home. (Cell phone difficulties, compounded with having missed the one bus home from Santiago, compounded with not having brought my motorcycle helmet with me, compounded with other things made it difficult to figure it out.) But it all worked out in the end.
The word thus far is about 20 deaths in the country, all in the north, many a direct result of someone’s decision to open a levee to prevent a damn from overflowing or busting. When it was opened people who lived below and near it were not alerted in time to avoid its path. Look for video on the water flowing over it; it looks like Niagara Falls.
Wednesday, December 12, 2007
Really Creative Title
My day begins between 8 and 9 when I slowly get out of bed and go looking for my breakfast. The exceptions to this are when I go to the city, which requires waking up at 5 to catch the bus at 5:45, or when the youth get together and get their drum, scratchy metal instrument, and tambourine and go marching down the street, and up to the windows of helpless sleepers to wake them up in lots of Catholic chanting/singing. So far that’s happened twice, and I’ve been promised it only happens in December. We’ll see.
My morning routine changes quite often. It’s the time when most of the little kids are in school, and their older siblings are working, or helping their moms around the house, and the dads are mostly off working too. The jobs around here are mostly in agriculture: sugar cane, plantains, bananas, little fat bananas called rulo, and cattle. When I first arrived at my site I was surprised by the wealth that some members of my community seem to have. I have since learned that the overwhelming majority of people who seem to be doing pretty well have relatives overseas, the majority in New York, sending them remittances. A dollar will go a lot further here than there, except when it comes to gasoline. A gallon of gasoline, since I’ve arrived here, has consistently cost at least US$5. The other group who seems to have some money are those who are related to the cheese factory we have in town. Dominican cheese is not an asset to the country; in training a lot of us nicknamed it squeaky cheese, and I really can’t think of a better name. Luckily, the cheese that they make here is not said squeaky cheese. It doesn’t smell so good near the factory, but the final product is pretty good, and anything bringing money into our little community in the middle of nowhere is a grand and glorious thing.
So because everyone is off being busy, and because my host mom is usually off teaching, I have to scavenge for different things to do. Some days it is Peace Corps work in the strictest sense, (working on my community diagnostic of the entire community, working on a map of the community, planning for English classes that I’m about to start giving), and other times its work that Peace Corps really wants us to do, but there’s no expiration date on it, such as visiting different homes to build confianza with the kids, donas, and dons, playing dominoes, sitting and talking, and drinking coffee, but since I don’t like coffee, they usually give me more fruit than I can carry in my hands. So far I’ve been given apples, oranges, mangos and some super sweet, super small fruit that I can’t remember what it’s called.
In the afternoon it’s more of the same, but the donas tend to have some more free time, so perhaps, now that I’m starting the 120 interviews of my community, it will include a couple of those a day. The interview is just about 90 questions, most of which are short answer. I compiled it from one that Peace Corps health gave us, and from one that some former volunteers gave me. It’s pretty good, but instructing the women in my health committee on how to give it properly has been a bit of a challenge. Picture people you know who haven’t had a lot of formal education. They tend to have trouble with filling out forms and things such as that, don’t they? That’s sort of the way of it here too. It didn’t help that the 4 page interview got stapled in the wrong order. That adds at least 30 seconds to the process. So far I haven’t had a lot of success with people offering to help me with the interviews. My boss from PC came a few weeks ago and almost started demanding that people offer to help me, and people started volunteering others to do it. (The rationale for me not doing it alone is so that the women answering the questions are a little more comfortable and also, it’s just easier for a Dominican to understand another Dominican. Additionally, this project, like everything I do here, is not supposed to be seen as my work, but is supposed to be seen as something for the community, so community input and contribution is essential.) I can understand how it’s hard for some people to offer to help. In a home with 4 or so kids, with different school schedules, the main meal of the day (lunch) requiring a few hours of preparation every day, while also having time to potentially bring some more money into the home, can be a lot for one person. I’m hoping that as we go along, more and more people will see that it’s not too big of a commitment and will want to be involved as word of mouth passes on what the American is up to these days.
Evenings are dominoes, hanging with the teenagers, or the babies, or the adults, and my favorite is when it’s all three together. My dona likes to have me watch TV in English if there is power and if the cable isn’t out. So far that has happened twice in 2 weeks. I realized that although I’ve missed watching the news, and knowing what’s going on in the US on a national level, I haven’t missed CNN at all. Those people are just way too obnoxious.
By far, my favorite activity to do here is sit and talk with my dona. She’s a really smart lady; she’s the director of a high school near here, which is a very respectable job. Everyone knows her and lovingly calls her “teacher.” Sometimes we sit outdoors, looking at the stars at night, or under the huge (and I mean huge) tree in the front yard during the day, or sometimes in the kitchen as either of us is eating, or as she is cooking and giving me small lessons in Dominican cooking, whether she knows it or not. I’ve noticed that she is one of the few people in this community that makes a real effort, everyday to understand me, and for me to understand what is going on around me. I’m sure more people will do that as time goes on.
I feel so lucky to have her because the last two donas I lived with, although they were both great, were not as lively as the one I’ve got now. In the capital my dona had had 20 volunteers live with her before me. So she knew the scoop and was seasoned to know how little time I would in fact be there, so did not make a huge effort to really get to know me. That was probably pretty smart on her part, as I really was only there for a few weeks, though now it feels like a few days. And during our community based training my dona was very shy. It dawned on me when I left that no one in that house had ever asked me about my family or life back home. It wasn’t that they were being cold, or didn’t care, I think they were just legitimately too shy to ask such “personal” questions.
But more of why I feel lucky has to do with what I’ve heard about other donas. For example, there are donas that other volunteers have had/have that won’t let them leave the house without a chaperone (and these are all people of at least 22 years, so you can see how that could get pretty annoying pretty fast), donas who insist that the volunteer goes to church with the family, and in one extreme case that was three times a week, no matter what religion (or lack thereof) the volunteer practiced, donas who pester their volunteers about their relationship status, especially when it comes to finding them a Dominican counterpart, donas who tell their volunteers that they’re too fat or too thin, donas who just aren’t pleasant and just don’t want to talk, or who are never home, etc. This one and the last both have been very open to my ideas about what I eat, and have been very impressed with the fact that I don’t like very little of the food. In fact, my last dona used to tell people that I was a good eater! In my house in Illinois I never got to be a good eater growing up under the shadow of my brother, who I’m pretty sure was known in all the land to be the best eater in the history of food. Sure I was a better eater than my little brother, whose diet for many years consisted of nothing more than Twisslers and Slushies. Oh wait, it still does.
Well anyways, here’s what I eat every day, ranging from best to worst: 1) fried onions (thank God I told my dona day one that I adore them because there have been days where I’ve gotten them with every meal!), 2) mashed potatoes or yucca (obviously I’d prefer potatoes but beggars can’t be choosers and all that, and yucca isn’t really so bad), 3) plate of vinegar drenched veggies such as carrots, boiled slices of potatoes, and sometimes cabbage or lettuce, 4) fried salami (I know, it’s so gross to think of, but it actually tastes really good), 5) beans (much, much, much better than lentils which I also sometimes get), 6) eggs with peppers and onions (sounds good right? Well the problem is that they’re drenched, like all the friend foods I’ve been mentioning, in oil, and damp eggs have never been my thing), 7) white rice (never been much of a rice fan, and white rice just seems pointless to me) 8) mashed plantains (not so bad with stuff added to it, but alone is so boring), 9) fried cheese (picture almost rock solid cheese globs, dripping in oil. I’m going to have to speak up on this one too…) 10) boiled bananas (I don’t even need to describe this one do I?) I finally got up the nerve to say that I’d rather have yellow bananas than boiled bananas. It was getting to a ridiculous level with those boiled bananas… I can swallow them as well as the next guy, but can I really be expected to eat them 5 or 6 times a week?
And to drink, oh the juices… oh My God they are SO delicious! By now most of the people here know I don’t care for coffee, so I either drink my water bottle, which is always by my side, or if God is smiling on me that day, I’ll get a juice. They blend up papaya, mango, passion fruit, orange, or other delicious fruits in a blender and add a dash of vanilla, sugar, and sometimes some milk. It’s so delicious.
My favorite part of the day is bed time. It’s when I get to be alone-alone, read, write, think, plan, and finally dream. We are required to take anti-malarial medicine here, and one of the side effects is wacky and vivid dreams, to the point where some people can’t take that kind of medicine anymore. I’ve always had extremely bizarre and oftentimes very vivid dreams, but ever since my last dosage of the medicine my dreams have been more nuts and more vivid than ever before in my life. Seriously.
And then I go back and do much of the same again the next day. It’s a good life.
Some highlights of the past few days:
-Day One. I opened the door to go to the bathroom while the power was out. Behind the door was one of the things God put on this planet for one purpose: to scare the living s**t out of human beings. Yes my friends, it was a tarantula. I’d been lucky in never finding one in the 2 plus months before this day, and it took me a minute to realize exactly what it was. I slowly backed out of the room and went to my host brother and mother and said, “I don’t remember the word, but there’s something GIGANTIC in the bathroom!” My brother went and “took care of it.” The next day, as I was passing the bathroom window outside, I noticed a familiar site on the window ledge. Oh yes, it was my furry friend from the night before. He was dead, but I still conducted a thorough investigation. I didn’t know it at the time but my host brother was watched me investigate it and started laughing hysterically, and then he threw it into the bushes. Sheesh.
-First trip to Santiago since arriving. I BOUGHT A BIKE! The next day I found out how incredibly out of shape I am. In a 15 minute bike ride, on a slight upwards incline, I was toast. Granted I rode incredibly fast to test the bike out for its first official ride, but yah, I’m a pudgy kid who is out of shape! It’s red, and shiny and has shocks in the front AND in the back, and it cost a little over US$100 and it’s going to be my best friend. I get to ride a helmet with it as well as with motorcycles, so I might be looked at as even more ridiculous than I was before, but I’m okay with that.
-A Typical Friday Evening. My host mother asked me if I had grandparents. I said no, they have all died. I then explained how one of the reasons I’m a bit nervous about this Christmas is because my grandfather died on Christmas last year. She and her son expressed their sympathies in a nice, “Oh” followed by a silence during which we all had a chance to reflect. The silence was interrupted by my dona, who if you didn’t know is 52, saying in a very consoling tone, “my grandparents are dead too.”
This was of course followed by a roar of laughter from all three of us, as well as her son stating the obvious, “but at your old age, of course they’re dead!” I haven’t laughed like that in so long! I couldn’t stop either. Funny things that happen after someone brings the mood down like I did are always 10 times funnier than they would have been on their own. God I love this life here!
My morning routine changes quite often. It’s the time when most of the little kids are in school, and their older siblings are working, or helping their moms around the house, and the dads are mostly off working too. The jobs around here are mostly in agriculture: sugar cane, plantains, bananas, little fat bananas called rulo, and cattle. When I first arrived at my site I was surprised by the wealth that some members of my community seem to have. I have since learned that the overwhelming majority of people who seem to be doing pretty well have relatives overseas, the majority in New York, sending them remittances. A dollar will go a lot further here than there, except when it comes to gasoline. A gallon of gasoline, since I’ve arrived here, has consistently cost at least US$5. The other group who seems to have some money are those who are related to the cheese factory we have in town. Dominican cheese is not an asset to the country; in training a lot of us nicknamed it squeaky cheese, and I really can’t think of a better name. Luckily, the cheese that they make here is not said squeaky cheese. It doesn’t smell so good near the factory, but the final product is pretty good, and anything bringing money into our little community in the middle of nowhere is a grand and glorious thing.
So because everyone is off being busy, and because my host mom is usually off teaching, I have to scavenge for different things to do. Some days it is Peace Corps work in the strictest sense, (working on my community diagnostic of the entire community, working on a map of the community, planning for English classes that I’m about to start giving), and other times its work that Peace Corps really wants us to do, but there’s no expiration date on it, such as visiting different homes to build confianza with the kids, donas, and dons, playing dominoes, sitting and talking, and drinking coffee, but since I don’t like coffee, they usually give me more fruit than I can carry in my hands. So far I’ve been given apples, oranges, mangos and some super sweet, super small fruit that I can’t remember what it’s called.
In the afternoon it’s more of the same, but the donas tend to have some more free time, so perhaps, now that I’m starting the 120 interviews of my community, it will include a couple of those a day. The interview is just about 90 questions, most of which are short answer. I compiled it from one that Peace Corps health gave us, and from one that some former volunteers gave me. It’s pretty good, but instructing the women in my health committee on how to give it properly has been a bit of a challenge. Picture people you know who haven’t had a lot of formal education. They tend to have trouble with filling out forms and things such as that, don’t they? That’s sort of the way of it here too. It didn’t help that the 4 page interview got stapled in the wrong order. That adds at least 30 seconds to the process. So far I haven’t had a lot of success with people offering to help me with the interviews. My boss from PC came a few weeks ago and almost started demanding that people offer to help me, and people started volunteering others to do it. (The rationale for me not doing it alone is so that the women answering the questions are a little more comfortable and also, it’s just easier for a Dominican to understand another Dominican. Additionally, this project, like everything I do here, is not supposed to be seen as my work, but is supposed to be seen as something for the community, so community input and contribution is essential.) I can understand how it’s hard for some people to offer to help. In a home with 4 or so kids, with different school schedules, the main meal of the day (lunch) requiring a few hours of preparation every day, while also having time to potentially bring some more money into the home, can be a lot for one person. I’m hoping that as we go along, more and more people will see that it’s not too big of a commitment and will want to be involved as word of mouth passes on what the American is up to these days.
Evenings are dominoes, hanging with the teenagers, or the babies, or the adults, and my favorite is when it’s all three together. My dona likes to have me watch TV in English if there is power and if the cable isn’t out. So far that has happened twice in 2 weeks. I realized that although I’ve missed watching the news, and knowing what’s going on in the US on a national level, I haven’t missed CNN at all. Those people are just way too obnoxious.
By far, my favorite activity to do here is sit and talk with my dona. She’s a really smart lady; she’s the director of a high school near here, which is a very respectable job. Everyone knows her and lovingly calls her “teacher.” Sometimes we sit outdoors, looking at the stars at night, or under the huge (and I mean huge) tree in the front yard during the day, or sometimes in the kitchen as either of us is eating, or as she is cooking and giving me small lessons in Dominican cooking, whether she knows it or not. I’ve noticed that she is one of the few people in this community that makes a real effort, everyday to understand me, and for me to understand what is going on around me. I’m sure more people will do that as time goes on.
I feel so lucky to have her because the last two donas I lived with, although they were both great, were not as lively as the one I’ve got now. In the capital my dona had had 20 volunteers live with her before me. So she knew the scoop and was seasoned to know how little time I would in fact be there, so did not make a huge effort to really get to know me. That was probably pretty smart on her part, as I really was only there for a few weeks, though now it feels like a few days. And during our community based training my dona was very shy. It dawned on me when I left that no one in that house had ever asked me about my family or life back home. It wasn’t that they were being cold, or didn’t care, I think they were just legitimately too shy to ask such “personal” questions.
But more of why I feel lucky has to do with what I’ve heard about other donas. For example, there are donas that other volunteers have had/have that won’t let them leave the house without a chaperone (and these are all people of at least 22 years, so you can see how that could get pretty annoying pretty fast), donas who insist that the volunteer goes to church with the family, and in one extreme case that was three times a week, no matter what religion (or lack thereof) the volunteer practiced, donas who pester their volunteers about their relationship status, especially when it comes to finding them a Dominican counterpart, donas who tell their volunteers that they’re too fat or too thin, donas who just aren’t pleasant and just don’t want to talk, or who are never home, etc. This one and the last both have been very open to my ideas about what I eat, and have been very impressed with the fact that I don’t like very little of the food. In fact, my last dona used to tell people that I was a good eater! In my house in Illinois I never got to be a good eater growing up under the shadow of my brother, who I’m pretty sure was known in all the land to be the best eater in the history of food. Sure I was a better eater than my little brother, whose diet for many years consisted of nothing more than Twisslers and Slushies. Oh wait, it still does.
Well anyways, here’s what I eat every day, ranging from best to worst: 1) fried onions (thank God I told my dona day one that I adore them because there have been days where I’ve gotten them with every meal!), 2) mashed potatoes or yucca (obviously I’d prefer potatoes but beggars can’t be choosers and all that, and yucca isn’t really so bad), 3) plate of vinegar drenched veggies such as carrots, boiled slices of potatoes, and sometimes cabbage or lettuce, 4) fried salami (I know, it’s so gross to think of, but it actually tastes really good), 5) beans (much, much, much better than lentils which I also sometimes get), 6) eggs with peppers and onions (sounds good right? Well the problem is that they’re drenched, like all the friend foods I’ve been mentioning, in oil, and damp eggs have never been my thing), 7) white rice (never been much of a rice fan, and white rice just seems pointless to me) 8) mashed plantains (not so bad with stuff added to it, but alone is so boring), 9) fried cheese (picture almost rock solid cheese globs, dripping in oil. I’m going to have to speak up on this one too…) 10) boiled bananas (I don’t even need to describe this one do I?) I finally got up the nerve to say that I’d rather have yellow bananas than boiled bananas. It was getting to a ridiculous level with those boiled bananas… I can swallow them as well as the next guy, but can I really be expected to eat them 5 or 6 times a week?
And to drink, oh the juices… oh My God they are SO delicious! By now most of the people here know I don’t care for coffee, so I either drink my water bottle, which is always by my side, or if God is smiling on me that day, I’ll get a juice. They blend up papaya, mango, passion fruit, orange, or other delicious fruits in a blender and add a dash of vanilla, sugar, and sometimes some milk. It’s so delicious.
My favorite part of the day is bed time. It’s when I get to be alone-alone, read, write, think, plan, and finally dream. We are required to take anti-malarial medicine here, and one of the side effects is wacky and vivid dreams, to the point where some people can’t take that kind of medicine anymore. I’ve always had extremely bizarre and oftentimes very vivid dreams, but ever since my last dosage of the medicine my dreams have been more nuts and more vivid than ever before in my life. Seriously.
And then I go back and do much of the same again the next day. It’s a good life.
Some highlights of the past few days:
-Day One. I opened the door to go to the bathroom while the power was out. Behind the door was one of the things God put on this planet for one purpose: to scare the living s**t out of human beings. Yes my friends, it was a tarantula. I’d been lucky in never finding one in the 2 plus months before this day, and it took me a minute to realize exactly what it was. I slowly backed out of the room and went to my host brother and mother and said, “I don’t remember the word, but there’s something GIGANTIC in the bathroom!” My brother went and “took care of it.” The next day, as I was passing the bathroom window outside, I noticed a familiar site on the window ledge. Oh yes, it was my furry friend from the night before. He was dead, but I still conducted a thorough investigation. I didn’t know it at the time but my host brother was watched me investigate it and started laughing hysterically, and then he threw it into the bushes. Sheesh.
-First trip to Santiago since arriving. I BOUGHT A BIKE! The next day I found out how incredibly out of shape I am. In a 15 minute bike ride, on a slight upwards incline, I was toast. Granted I rode incredibly fast to test the bike out for its first official ride, but yah, I’m a pudgy kid who is out of shape! It’s red, and shiny and has shocks in the front AND in the back, and it cost a little over US$100 and it’s going to be my best friend. I get to ride a helmet with it as well as with motorcycles, so I might be looked at as even more ridiculous than I was before, but I’m okay with that.
-A Typical Friday Evening. My host mother asked me if I had grandparents. I said no, they have all died. I then explained how one of the reasons I’m a bit nervous about this Christmas is because my grandfather died on Christmas last year. She and her son expressed their sympathies in a nice, “Oh” followed by a silence during which we all had a chance to reflect. The silence was interrupted by my dona, who if you didn’t know is 52, saying in a very consoling tone, “my grandparents are dead too.”
This was of course followed by a roar of laughter from all three of us, as well as her son stating the obvious, “but at your old age, of course they’re dead!” I haven’t laughed like that in so long! I couldn’t stop either. Funny things that happen after someone brings the mood down like I did are always 10 times funnier than they would have been on their own. God I love this life here!
Tuesday, December 4, 2007
It's Just Another Day
How do I even begin to describe the evening that has just passed? This has been one of those moments that earn Peace Corps the name of “the toughest job you’ll ever love.” Or, least the “toughest” part. The day in general was pretty good. It started with my first Catholic mass in the community. There was a disappointing turnout, or I suppose it would be disappointing for someone who cares about how many people attend church services. Regardless, there were about 25 people, including me and the priest, in a church that could easily fit 75 people. Most of these were women, and with the exception of one old man, those who weren’t women, were children. Interesting, no? We also have an Evangelical church, which was surprising to see when I first arrived in country, but after seeing a number of them in all sections of the capital and in the various communities where we did training, I’d be more surprised if there wasn’t one in my town. Anyways, my first “service” with them was last night. Just after dinner my dona told me that the evangelicals were going to come over for a prayer session. To the house? I asked. She said yes. But you aren’t evangelical? I asked, because all doubts expressed in Spanish are in fact questions. That’s true, she replied.
I am not at liberty to find things odd here. Obviously this is the case because I’m the weird one, but also because I’m pretty new to find much of anything “different”. To me nothing is typical, so how could anything be atypical? Well, my host brother came in and heard the news about the Evangelicals and responded in much the same way as me, so I guess things can still be unusual with me around. J
So they came, and prayed, very much aloud, which is interesting coming from my North Shore Catholic background. I did not partake in the orations, both because I wouldn’t, and because I don’t understand most of them, most of the time.
After the Catholic mass I attended, I went exploring with my younger friends who live across the street. The regular players are a 7 year old girl, her 5 year old sister, and their 2 year old neighbor. Today we also played with the girls’ 1 year old sister. Very adorable kids, who love to show me around, over rivers, under barbed wire fences, and through piles of manure. I usually get to carry the little ones, who never wear shoes. Today I insisted that they put on their shoes. Still, I ended up carrying my little 2 year old friend, whose name by the way, is Bimbo.
This evening I hung out with my teenage friends. They range in age from 13 to 17, and there are many more of them. They are all pretty enthusiastic, and don’t seem to mind including me in their plans, and in fact tend to seek me out. I love to feel popular with teenagers.
Anyways, we went for a walk. When the power goes out here, as I’m sure you can imagine, it gets quite dark. Passing cars, with their headlights on, are usually the most effective source of light on nights like that. Tonight was one of those nights. As we were walking down the street and laughing and singing and doing other things that cool teenagers do (well I guess I was just observing the cool kids) we came across a car with lights ablaze. When you walk toward something that is the only light, it takes a minute to adjust to whatever is going on near and around that light.
You know when something terrible is happening, and as you observe the different pieces of it, you don’t quite understand what they all mean? That was me tonight. What I saw when my eyes adjusted to the light was men dressed in the police-military uniforms I’ve seen many times before. One man had a shotgun pointed at a civilian, and the other armed man was searching the civilian. To go from singing and laughing to that, was quite a shock. Only then did I notice that my large group of friends had dissipated, but one. I asked her what was going on, if it was common. She said it was rade. She said they were looking for drugs in people’s pockets, oh, and for Haitians. But there are a lot of Haitians here, I said. Yah, and they’re rounding them up, the illegals. Oh, are there a lot of illegal Haitians here? Yah, they all are.
Just then, I looked up into the back of the truck. Another armed man was holding his gun in the second most-scary way possible, gripping it by the nose and hoisting it above his head like a baseball bat. He’s just going to intimidate the men in the back of the truck, he wouldn’t actually hit them like that, I was trying to convince myself. Well, tonight for the first time in my life, I found out what it sounds like when something hard strikes a human body. I guess I’d never heard it before because I’ve been lucky enough not have seen anything like that before, and because it’s the kind of sound that they can’t get quite right in the movies. It’s one that I won’t forget for a very long time. The police officer had struck the man on the head, all of this was an effort to get him to move over in the truck.
My instinct was to turn my back to the violence, a sort of knee-jerk reaction, a hope that if I couldn’t see it, it couldn’t be happening. Maybe I could spare these men from that pain and embarrassment by just turning around. The woman in front of whose home this was all happening was coming out to see it just as I had turned around. Hello Eliza. Hello dona. Would you like a chair?
Did she mean for me to actually sit and watch? I had no intention of staying to watch. The only thing I could possibly conceive of doing was running away. But, if I ran away I couldn’t make sure it ended quickly, and without anyone else feeling any more pain. I looked around and noticed something I hadn’t before. There were many Dominicans standing and watching, and yes, some were sitting. Was this a typical Saturday night entertainment?
Again I asked, is this common? No, my friend told me. All of the sudden I started noticing how dark everyone’s skin was. The stereotype is that Haitians are darker than Dominicans, and all of the men in the back of the truck had much darker skin than those beating them. Quite a few very dark men came to see what was happening. The Dominicans explained the situation, and told them to get lost, and as soon as those men looked to see who had been taken into the truck, they quickly got out of there.
The truck had trouble getting started. The driver wanted to leave, although not as badly as I wanted him to, but the engine was being difficult. My teenage friends and some of their older counterparts, except the women, appeared and helped to push the truck to get it started. This would be one more example of how complex Dominican-Haitian relations are. The same people who never speak, pretend not to see one another on the street, though they live in a community of less than 500 and go to the same schools, alerted the other of potential danger, and then helped the capturers get away with the same people they’d just tried to avoid getting captured.
After this there was little I could do to keep from thinking about it. I think my friend could sense it; she didn’t leave my side for the rest of the night. She wanted to go for another walk, to see someone who was ill. I wasn’t quite sure what that would mean, but if it was getting as much attention as it was, I knew it wasn’t usual. Also, being a health volunteer I thought it would be a good idea for me to see whatever it indeed was.
We arrived at a house lit by someone’s cell phone and a tiny candle. There was a lot of commotion at the door, behind which lay a teenage boy, who I later learned is 13 years old. He was lying down, panting, and was obviously uncomfortable. In a moment like this, once you take in the situation and remind yourself that you’re a health volunteer, it’s hard to know exactly what to do or say. I’ve only just arrived here, after all. Who am I to tell these people what to do? At the same time, there is not a question in my mind that the last thing that boy needed was for so many people, easily 30 or so, to be in his cramped house, making so much noise and watching him.
So, I simply asked what was wrong. Asthma. And does he have medicine? Someone went to go get it, they left almost 2 hours ago and should be back soon. While I was there another car arrived that announced that they’d be taking the boy to the city. They covered him in long sleeves and a wool hat, and carried him into a pickup truck. Some other boys hopped on the back of the truck and then they were off.
Since I first wrote this, I haven’t heard how the boy is doing, although I did learn that he has fits like that every once in a while, so I think he’s better. As for the Haitians who got carried away, I can’t be sure they were actually from community, and I would assume that I would have heard something if they were. Again, I am new here, so perhaps I’m not going to be filled in on gossip for a while, especially Haitian gossip. I do feel fairly certain that the men who got beaten that night were already in the truck from a rade in another town. Not that that makes me feel any better about it.
I am not at liberty to find things odd here. Obviously this is the case because I’m the weird one, but also because I’m pretty new to find much of anything “different”. To me nothing is typical, so how could anything be atypical? Well, my host brother came in and heard the news about the Evangelicals and responded in much the same way as me, so I guess things can still be unusual with me around. J
So they came, and prayed, very much aloud, which is interesting coming from my North Shore Catholic background. I did not partake in the orations, both because I wouldn’t, and because I don’t understand most of them, most of the time.
After the Catholic mass I attended, I went exploring with my younger friends who live across the street. The regular players are a 7 year old girl, her 5 year old sister, and their 2 year old neighbor. Today we also played with the girls’ 1 year old sister. Very adorable kids, who love to show me around, over rivers, under barbed wire fences, and through piles of manure. I usually get to carry the little ones, who never wear shoes. Today I insisted that they put on their shoes. Still, I ended up carrying my little 2 year old friend, whose name by the way, is Bimbo.
This evening I hung out with my teenage friends. They range in age from 13 to 17, and there are many more of them. They are all pretty enthusiastic, and don’t seem to mind including me in their plans, and in fact tend to seek me out. I love to feel popular with teenagers.
Anyways, we went for a walk. When the power goes out here, as I’m sure you can imagine, it gets quite dark. Passing cars, with their headlights on, are usually the most effective source of light on nights like that. Tonight was one of those nights. As we were walking down the street and laughing and singing and doing other things that cool teenagers do (well I guess I was just observing the cool kids) we came across a car with lights ablaze. When you walk toward something that is the only light, it takes a minute to adjust to whatever is going on near and around that light.
You know when something terrible is happening, and as you observe the different pieces of it, you don’t quite understand what they all mean? That was me tonight. What I saw when my eyes adjusted to the light was men dressed in the police-military uniforms I’ve seen many times before. One man had a shotgun pointed at a civilian, and the other armed man was searching the civilian. To go from singing and laughing to that, was quite a shock. Only then did I notice that my large group of friends had dissipated, but one. I asked her what was going on, if it was common. She said it was rade. She said they were looking for drugs in people’s pockets, oh, and for Haitians. But there are a lot of Haitians here, I said. Yah, and they’re rounding them up, the illegals. Oh, are there a lot of illegal Haitians here? Yah, they all are.
Just then, I looked up into the back of the truck. Another armed man was holding his gun in the second most-scary way possible, gripping it by the nose and hoisting it above his head like a baseball bat. He’s just going to intimidate the men in the back of the truck, he wouldn’t actually hit them like that, I was trying to convince myself. Well, tonight for the first time in my life, I found out what it sounds like when something hard strikes a human body. I guess I’d never heard it before because I’ve been lucky enough not have seen anything like that before, and because it’s the kind of sound that they can’t get quite right in the movies. It’s one that I won’t forget for a very long time. The police officer had struck the man on the head, all of this was an effort to get him to move over in the truck.
My instinct was to turn my back to the violence, a sort of knee-jerk reaction, a hope that if I couldn’t see it, it couldn’t be happening. Maybe I could spare these men from that pain and embarrassment by just turning around. The woman in front of whose home this was all happening was coming out to see it just as I had turned around. Hello Eliza. Hello dona. Would you like a chair?
Did she mean for me to actually sit and watch? I had no intention of staying to watch. The only thing I could possibly conceive of doing was running away. But, if I ran away I couldn’t make sure it ended quickly, and without anyone else feeling any more pain. I looked around and noticed something I hadn’t before. There were many Dominicans standing and watching, and yes, some were sitting. Was this a typical Saturday night entertainment?
Again I asked, is this common? No, my friend told me. All of the sudden I started noticing how dark everyone’s skin was. The stereotype is that Haitians are darker than Dominicans, and all of the men in the back of the truck had much darker skin than those beating them. Quite a few very dark men came to see what was happening. The Dominicans explained the situation, and told them to get lost, and as soon as those men looked to see who had been taken into the truck, they quickly got out of there.
The truck had trouble getting started. The driver wanted to leave, although not as badly as I wanted him to, but the engine was being difficult. My teenage friends and some of their older counterparts, except the women, appeared and helped to push the truck to get it started. This would be one more example of how complex Dominican-Haitian relations are. The same people who never speak, pretend not to see one another on the street, though they live in a community of less than 500 and go to the same schools, alerted the other of potential danger, and then helped the capturers get away with the same people they’d just tried to avoid getting captured.
After this there was little I could do to keep from thinking about it. I think my friend could sense it; she didn’t leave my side for the rest of the night. She wanted to go for another walk, to see someone who was ill. I wasn’t quite sure what that would mean, but if it was getting as much attention as it was, I knew it wasn’t usual. Also, being a health volunteer I thought it would be a good idea for me to see whatever it indeed was.
We arrived at a house lit by someone’s cell phone and a tiny candle. There was a lot of commotion at the door, behind which lay a teenage boy, who I later learned is 13 years old. He was lying down, panting, and was obviously uncomfortable. In a moment like this, once you take in the situation and remind yourself that you’re a health volunteer, it’s hard to know exactly what to do or say. I’ve only just arrived here, after all. Who am I to tell these people what to do? At the same time, there is not a question in my mind that the last thing that boy needed was for so many people, easily 30 or so, to be in his cramped house, making so much noise and watching him.
So, I simply asked what was wrong. Asthma. And does he have medicine? Someone went to go get it, they left almost 2 hours ago and should be back soon. While I was there another car arrived that announced that they’d be taking the boy to the city. They covered him in long sleeves and a wool hat, and carried him into a pickup truck. Some other boys hopped on the back of the truck and then they were off.
Since I first wrote this, I haven’t heard how the boy is doing, although I did learn that he has fits like that every once in a while, so I think he’s better. As for the Haitians who got carried away, I can’t be sure they were actually from community, and I would assume that I would have heard something if they were. Again, I am new here, so perhaps I’m not going to be filled in on gossip for a while, especially Haitian gossip. I do feel fairly certain that the men who got beaten that night were already in the truck from a rade in another town. Not that that makes me feel any better about it.
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