Thursday, March 31, 2011

One year in the DR

Here are a few pictures that give you a glimpse into our daily lives.

I’ve found it difficult to update since we’re back from vacation. Part of that difficulty is to be blamed on a pair of ladrones who managed to swipe my laptop and other electronics. I was on a carro publico, squeezed in the front with the driver and another unsavory passenger, when the driver asked me to adjust his mirror. He kept shouting that I was not adjusting the mirror right, saying that the gringo didn’t understand while in turn I was yelling at him that yes, I did understand and in fact the confusion was his fault because he clearly didn’t know up from down. Meanwhile his clever-fingered friend was talented enough to get a zipper open on my backpack and amidst the yelling confusion he nicked my laptop. I of course didn’t realize it until later when I opened my bag to get something and realized my computer was missing. After thinking carefully over the previous trip it became obvious that the only place I could have been robbed unawares was in the carro publico.

Yes it was partly my fault. I should have been more careful. Hindsight has 20/20 vision. I’ve been living here a year now and in my campo things are really much more tranquilo. I think if someone robbed me there my neighbors would find out who it was and tar-and-feather them. So I guess I have been too lax in the capital. Thankfully I have insurance so I mostly just lost some photos and various work-related documents.


Thanks to insurance I now have a new computer so I will again be able write updates at home. I didn’t have much internet access this past month and most of my internet time was used up on work-related business.

Our latrine projects are moving forward. We spent a lot of time these past two months in visiting homes, deciding exactly which homes have the greatest need for bathrooms, and getting everything set up so that we’ll be ready to actually officially start soon. We bought materials last week and construction on the first bathrooms is slated to begin the first week in April. I’ll keep you updated.

Last week I organized a tree-planting activity. Along with the school-kids and a neighbor guy we planted about 40 trees around the cisterns of the aqueduct system. The previous week community members had fenced in the cisterns to keep out nosy cows that wander through the pasture and these trees will eventually help shade the cisterns to keep the water cooler.

I took two young boys from my community to a weekend Brigada Verde conference in the beginning of March that was held at a conference center in the south. I gave a talk on deforestation so as part of my class I carried along some tamarind trees and another volunteer brought along a cherry tree, a mango tree, and an avocado tree so as part of learning about the importance of trees the kids actually got to plant trees at. Hopefully future kids at the center get to enjoy the fruit from the trees.


We finally got a saddle for our horse Lucero, affectionately known as Luci. I haven’t ridden her very much. I’m still learning how to ride as I’ve hardly ever ridden before but Anna spends a fair amount of time with her.

As you may know cockfighting is a major sport here in the DR. A cockfighting ring is called a gallera. This is where the parties happen. In my community cockfights are held most Sunday afternoons and it often is as much a part of the day as going to church. It’s where the guys get together to drink a little Dominican rum and roughhouse around betting money on crazy roosters while the ladies hang out gossiping. For some reason they pluck all the feathers off of the fighting roosters’ legs and thighs. I asked my neighbor why and he said that it makes them más fuerte, stronger. I’m pretty sure that it just desensitizes them to pain on the lower part of their body. Another neighbor boy has a fighting cock that has developed a taste for beer. Sometimes on the way to the gallera he stops for a beer and when he does the rooster that he’s holding will drink beer directly out of the same plastic cup that he’s using. Apparently this isn’t all that uncommon. Another neighbor told me that immediately before or after a fight he will often let his rooster take a few sips of rum to really boost its energy. Many men also give their fighting cocks some sort of energy pill (I don’t know what the ingredients are) about an hour before a fight so that their rooster is more aggressive and stronger in the fight. A lot of money is bet on these cockfights. In my rural community I’ve heard that people sometimes bet up to 1,000 pesos($26)on one fight. I know one young guy who is saving up his winnings to buy a motorcycle. At the galleras in the bigger towns hardly anyone bothers with 1,000 peso bets. I know my neighbor kids go to watch the high-tension cockfights in neighboring towns where you supposedly have to pay 25-100 pesos just to get into the gallera. The sizes of the bets there make their eyes bulge. They have reportedly seen bets of over 50,000 pesos (about $1,322) placed on a single cockfight. For obvious reasons tensions are usually simmering in the alcohol-soaked air of the galleras. Just last month a young twenty-something Dominican was killed in a machete fight at a neighboring community’s gallera. Two days ago in a jeep coming down off the mountain I heard about another guy who was killed in pistol fight at a local gallera. I have yet to go to a cockfight and hopefully I’ll never go. Cockfighting is clearly a mistreatment of animals and I’ve met various Dominicans who don’t raise fighting cocks because they just don’t like the bloodiness of it all. But they are in the minority. Cockfighting has been and continues to be a huge part of many Hispanic cultures. Obviously many people find the strong mix of blood-stained roosters, dusty shout-filled air, seemingly endless alcohol, and gambling to be an irresistible and heady combination. So unfortunately for the roosters involved it doesn’t seem likely that cockfighting is about to die out anytime soon.