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!