On Death and Dying

My neighbor died a few days ago. I’ve been to two other funerals in my town, both for people I’d never met. But this neighbor was actually someone I knew, and she was someone I would have like to have considered a friend. She was sick, always going to the doctor, too thin, and apparently had a blood disease. She was in her 30s.

My project partner came to my window to wake me up to tell me this neighbor had died. I was shocked and sad and went to see her mother. Her mother was a wreck. I’ve never been held so tight by a Dominican. She just sat, crying her daughter’s name, and then mine, and then her daughter’s… They bury the casket the day the person dies. The casket is wood with a window near the face. My neighbor looked exactly the same, but they’d bound a ribbon around her face, perhaps to hold her chin to her face.

I sat for a while in the house, listening to my neighbor cry and watching the reactions of people who came to visit her. A few hours later some snacks were given out and then we went to the town where we’d bury her.

I’d kept it all together until we got there. I didn’t break down, but it did finally reach me that my neighbor had died. It struck me when I watched the men in charge of moving her casket. One of the men was another neighbor, a gruff guy who carries himself like he’s a farmhand with somewhere important to go and then after work like he’s a guy with some serious rum to drink. Seeing him cry over the women who hardly had any visitors, but you could still tell everyone loved, was heartbreaking. I pictured this gruff guy going to school with her, back when they were younger; in my imagination they were the same age, though I don’t really know how old he is. Still, it pained me to look as he cried, openly in a culture where machismo rules. As I looked around at other people, it was the subtle ones that kept me thinking about how sad it really was, and how much it affected so many people.

You see, in this culture there tends to be either lots of acceptance or perhaps even encouragement for people (and particularly women) to be dramatic when someone dies. I’ve heard stories of women crying and screaming so dramatically that they pass out, and I saw people get so emotional that they had to be carried away, one because she collapsed and one because she couldn’t stop shaking. But, it wasn’t them that made me sad-it was all of the women whom I see on a daily basis whom I’ve never seem be anything but friendly and happy, who subtly reacted to the loss of their neighbor, a woman they’d known for their entire lives. But mostly it was the men.

Gettin' Healthy in the DR

A few weeks ago us northern health girls got together (in the mountains) to hold a health conference. We were each able to bring 3 women from our communities to learn about different health topics. I tried to bring 4 women (one neighbor with a friend of hers and my neighbor’s two daughters) but the other 3 couldn’t come and so I left my neighbor to find the others to come with us, and amazingly, she did! All three women that came with me are incredibly dynamic and had a lot of fun.

We headed into the hills of the Caribbean (it was SO cold) and then went further on the back of a truck. It was beautiful, at the base of the highest peak in the Caribbean, but as I said, freezing. There was no cell phone signal where we were, and it was funny to watch the women from my town, who’d only gotten signal a matter of days in their town before the conference, to be unable to believe there was no signal in the area! We gave sessions on nutrition, health campaigns, cancer, HIV, STIs, and I gave one on First Aid, which I am pleased to report went very well. I also gave a yoga class which went very well- it’s fantastic to watch donas doing the yoga!

Immediately after the conference I went off to a stove-making workshop led by a volunteer living very far from me. It was great-I learned how to construct one of these improved, cement stoves and was glad to be able to get in there and get my hands dirty with the work. So, I look forward to the day when I can start construction in my town on these stoves!

This Land Is Your Land, Might We Have Some?

Since September we’ve been working, slowly, but steadily at getting land on which to put a library. When I say we I mean me and my fantastic youth group. We’ve gone back and forth trying to decide whether closing off a public road is a good idea. I guess we decided it wasn’t a good idea and instead of trying to find a donation of land from the farmers (we tried many times, unsuccessfully) we decided to find a way to buy some land (hopefully at a discount) on which to put our library/community center (and perhaps also a community garden or playground or something else because the land is a lot larger than I was hoping for). So, if we’re able to get the land, we’ll have a large space which thrills me.

I just switched power over from me and 2 teens to a new group of 4 teens for our youth group. There’s a new president (I was the former president), vice president, treasurer and secretary. I have passed a lot of responsibilities over to the new president including soliciting donations to buy the land (and get that giant discount we are hoping for) for the next few weeks while I am home. We’ll see how it all pans out!