Echando pa' 'lante (Onward, ho)

I realized last week that it’s almost three months since I’ve updated my blog. The original point of this blog was to help share the excitement and exoticism of living in a foreign culture. So what do I say when the culture no longer seems so foreign or exotic? Increasingly it’s the American life that seems strange, not the Dominican. For example, last week Anna was reading a home decorating magazine that she had scavenged from a passing visitor. On page five there was a picture of a bright yellow door with the caption, “A front door says a lot about who lives inside. Is yours friendly? Low-key?” After my initial shock at the fact that some people get to choose what front door they have on their house, I wondered what it says when you just have a cracked door made of nailed-together wood scraps with the paint peeling off in chunks and strips of tin to cover the rotted holes. Low-key? Definitely. Friendly? Well it’s certainly unimposing. Then I noticed that the bronze door handle alone cost $278. About the price of a really nice functional latrine here, more than twice the average monthly salary of many of my neighbors.

There are of course those silly moments when I realize that I could only be in the highly-caffeinated culture of the Dominican Republic, and that’s what I tried to convey in the last blog. But increasingly there are less moments when I feel like an alien. This morning a neighbor boy hung around my house for about 15 minutes before he finally broached the reason for his visit. He had to make a trip to the city and had no money (since he hadn’t been paid for picking coffee because his employer hadn’t been paid for selling the coffee) so I loaned him 500 pesos (about $13). “No money” in the US means that you’re almost broke but probably have, at the very least, a few hundred dollars in the bank. And the ATM is a few-minute drive away. Here it means what it says. No money. Nada. Ni un peso. Most people don’t even have a bank account. So someone is always borrowing a few pesos from someone else until they get paid for their coffee or their beans. When I go to the colmado to buy food I occasionally don’t have enough money with me for everything I need, so I take it on credit until the following week when I have the cash to pay. A country where stores only allow you to buy what you can pay for in the moment, even though you need to buy the rice for lunch today and will have the money next week, seems cold and harsh. Although I guess that´s why Americans have so much credit card debt, they plan on paying tomorrow.

In the States I used to go to the supermarket or farmers’ market about once a week to stock up on food supplies. Here I buy most of what I need on a daily basis. The colmado is a two-minute walk down the road. If I start to make banana bread and find I’m short on sugar or eggs I’ll walk down to the colmado or yell for a neighbor boy to go. Imagining a life with unlimited electricity becomes increasingly more difficult. We’re at least fortunate enough to have a solar panel which provides for more than our electrical needs most of the year, except for the cloudy winter months. But most communities only have electricity a few hours a day, and over half of my neighbors have no solar panels which means they never have electricity. I was at a conference last week and beforehand I had made sure to ask if there would be electricity so that I could show a video. They replied that that particular town’s electricity usually lasted until seven or eight and as it was still only six o’clock I would be fine. I accepted the answer without pause, and only later began musing about how strange it would be to have electricity all the time and to live where neighbors never bring over their cellphones to be charged. I also no longer view having a private vehicle as the norm. If you have a personal car, no matter how beat-up, you’re somewhat well off. If you have a jipeta (SUV) you’re rolling in the money. Don’t be surprised if I ask you for food.

In January, I believe it was the 19th, we woke in the middle of the night to find the house shaking and rattling. As Anna succinctly put it, “It felt like we were inside a large box that an unruly giant was shaking as hard as possible.” As I came zooming up into consciousness from a deep REM sleep my first thought was that some cow was outside scratching its flanks against a house corner and thus rocking the house back and forth. I dove out from under the mosquito net and ran to the front door to scare away the cow. As my left hand opened the door and my right hand grabbed my machete from the wall the house stopped shaking and my dream-stained brain cleared. As I jumped out into the dark I realized without even looking that there was no cow. The next day everyone was talking about the (approximately) 5.3 tremor that had shuddered its way through the night. Naturally my neighbors wanted to know what the Americans did when they felt the earth quake. They mocked me when they found out I had thought that it was a cow scratching itself. But the simple truth remains, a large cow could give my tiny house a very dramatic and scary shaking. The DR had several tremors over the magnitude of 5.0 in the month of January. I only felt two, the one described above and other that made my plastic chair sway as I sat at an internet center in Ocoa. As I was working intently at the time I thought that someone had brushed my chair, and it was only about five minutes later as the room erupted into a roar as everyone found out about the tremor that I realized what had happened. As far as I know no one was seriously hurt in any of the tremors and property damage was mostly limited to cracked walls in a few houses.

Between riding out earthquakes and eating fresh lettuce and radishes from our garden we’ve been building latrines. I want to thank all of you that have donated to our projects. We’ll send you more specific information about the latrine projects when possible. We also hosted a fabulous bunch of friends over Christmas at our tiny hut. We went swimming in the river and ate cinnamon rolls and, on the cold rainy days, kept warm by drinking lots of hot rum toddies. We’ve also spent an unhealthy amount of time applying to graduate schools and travelling 90 bumpy minutes to get internet access. In addition we’ve also been doing a lot of translating and providing logistical assistance to a Canadian NGO that builds houses in our province. I took two boys to a mountains to sea conference in January as well, where we gave workshops on how rivers connect mountain ecosystems with the sea. In the beginning of February Peace Corps Dominican Republic celebrated its 50th anniversary. We spent a few days in Santo Domingo helping organize events, but the real reason we were there was to attend the celebratory parties and listen to the crazy stories of returned Peace Volunteers, especially those from the 60’s and 70’s.

It’s hard to believe we’ll be leaving here in May, three short months away. In truth I can’t quite comprehend it. I’ll be spending as much time here in the mountains as I can before then, hiking, chatting with neighbors and friends over rice and beans, playing with our cats, and puttering in the garden. Here are some pictures from the past months.

April, 2011

It’s hard to believe we’re already in May. This month we’re getting ready to celebrate the completion of one year of Peace Corps service. And that makes it one year to go. April was quite busy for us. We managed to get started on our latrine projects with the grants we’ve received. I also took two teenagers from my community to a weekend-long Brigada Verde conference where Peace Corps volunteers presented a lot of environment workshops to the youth. The third week in April is Semana Santa and in the DR nothing much, besides a big party, happens. Dozens of cars and trucks rolled by our house all week long as city people headed to visit their rural relatives and friends where they hung out by the river and chattered and drank and swam. We spent the week relaxing at home, catching up on reading, and working in the garden. I also applied more roof pitch to the numerous holes in our would-be leaky roof.

May promises to be very busy as well as we plan to start stove projects and we have a mid-service Peace Corps conference where we get together with other volunteers to talk about what worked (or didn’t work) in the past year and plan projects for the coming year. I’ll keep you updated. Meanwhile here are a few pictures from April.

A Caribbean Winter

I uploaded a few more photos of our place and what we've been doing these days.

Winter has come to my part of the Caribbean. Peace Corps didn’t tell me (who knew then that I’d live in the mountains?) to bring a coat. I have a couple of sweaters that I put on all at one time, but it’s still kind of chilly. I don’t know what the temperature is, but my hands get numb when I’m sitting around reading or writing. The last two days it’s been raining so our only recourse has been to crawl under the covers. Earlier in the week, as you can see from the pictures, the weather was just gorgeous for hiking. The sun was slightly warm but the air stayed nippy. If I procrastinate bathing until after the sun goes down, as I usually do, it brings back memories of Pennsylvania winter-baths as a kid in our farmhouse’s unheated bathroom. Only there you had hot running water and you could run to the stove afterward.

Granted it’s not cold enough to see my breath, but I have one bucket of warm water to dump over myself while a breeze wafts through the latrine threatening to blow out the candle. It’s a chilly and uninviting bath. Sometimes I just skip the bath all together. It’s easier that way.

A week ago we took four kids from our communities to a national Brigada Verde conference. I think the conference was a big hit for all the jovenes (youth) that attended. Recall that Brigade Verde is a Dominican youth club focused on environmental issues. It felt strange towing four teenagers five hours across the country for a weekend conference. But I feel strange doing a lot of things here, meaning that if there’s one thing that Peace Corps (and living in a foreign culture does well, it’s stretching your comfort level. In college I was pretty uncomfortable just talking in front of a group, let alone talking in front of a group in a foreign language. Here that seems laughable. Last month when we participated in the tree planting project the local news station interviewed us about what we are doing in the area. I don’t have TV so I don’t know if it actually made the final cut for the air or not. But it was just another day in Peace Corps. Some days later Anna and I were laughing about the fact that if that had happened in the States we would probably have been like, “Woot, woot! We’re on TV!” But here so many new and strange (at least strange to us) things seem to happen almost every day that you just don’t really have time to process them all. Strange becomes normal. Which means that returning to life in the Stated in two years will seem rather mundane. Unless of course I’ll be used to this strangeness which will make American habits seem strange and so I’ll be in for another stimulating ride.

Some fun experiences:
Anna is sitting on a bus chatting with the cobrador (the fare-man) about where to get off and a man sitting directly behind her says to the cobrador, “Oh, so you speak English?” The cobrador says that no isn’t it obvious that they are speaking in Spanish and the passenger just looks confused, even though he could clearly overhear the entire conversation. Various volunteers have remarked on a tendency in some Dominicans to find it so incredulous that an Americano/a should be speaking Spanish that they literally don’t understand what you’re saying because they are so sure that what’s coming out of your mouth is English (or some other foreign language).

I know two Haitian Creole words. Bonswa is good afternoon and Bonjou is good morning. One day several weeks ago I am walking along the road and here comes a neighbor of mine on his motor bike with a Haitian worker on the back. He stops his bike and yells Leo! Leo! These guys speak the same language as you! I tried to explain that we actually don’t, but he was not to be discouraged and kept repeating, “Talk to him! Talk to him!” So I did. I said, “Bonswa," and shook the Haitian coffee picker’s hand. Of course the Haitian loved this because so few Dominicans (if any) bother to learn Creole. His face lit up in a big smile and he vigorously returned the handshake. My neighbor was ecstatic. He jumped up and down and shouted, “See, I told you!” Then he excitedly points to a group of Haitian workers coming down the road and tells me to talk to them as well. I shook hands all around with a hearty Bonswa for all as my Dominican neighbor cheered loudly. I never did correct him. Last week when I showed up at the school for an English class the professor said, “Ai Leo! I hear you’re speaking some Haitian Creole.” What could I do but shrug and smile?

Piropos, platanos, and a Presidente

Some thoughts on things Dominican. First, ”piropos.” We were given a handout explaining that “piropo” is translated as “compliment” in English. When a pretty woman is walking down the street past a macho dominicano, he pauses the domino game and, lifting his plastic Dixie cup, takes a long sip of cold Presidente (the preferred cerveza here). He proceeds to look the lady over, and after carefully choosing from his vast arsenal, selects and fires the appropriate piropo. If he’s feeling clever, he’ll invent something like the following “¡Cuántas curvas y yo sin frenas! (All those curves and I don’t have any brakes). Or, “¡Como avanza la tecnología que hasta las flores caminan!” (What technological advances, even flowers walk). But if our hero is just having a normal boring day in the barrio he’s more likely to just shout out obvious things like “!Hola linda!” (Hey pretty). Or in the wondrous case that the charming lady is a foreigner, you’ll hear “!Ojos azules!” (Blue eyes). Or, “!Hola rubia!” (Hey blonde). Or, “!Americana, Americana!”

These piropos are ubiquitous. It doesn’t matter if you are walking the street, riding public transportation, or relaxing in the park. If you are a good-looking female, especially una americana, you will receive piropos machine-gun style from an endless stream of admirers. From the phone-card vendors sweating in their bright orange suits, from motorcycle taxi drives leaning intently over their handlebars, from the over-enthusiastic man who charges fare on the bus, and even from a bright-eyed boy in his blue school uniform. Dominican men see piropos as part of expressing (and I think trying to prove) their manhood. Dominican woman seem to mostly ignore them, or just haughtily accept them as their rightful due from a lesser gender. So are piropos really compliments or are they actually just a form of harassment in the guise of clever language? Take your pick. But (ladies) don’t hit the Dominican streets unless you’re ready for some piropos.

And on food.

The DR has an overabundance of viveres. Most of these are starchy tubers that must surely be in the potato family: cassava, yucca, batata (kind of a sweet potato), yams, etc. The vivere family also includes plantains and green bananas. All of this is not a problem. But serving a host of viveres with every meal is. All of these viveres are most commonly boiled in water and then served with either pasta and rice or meat. Honestly, when boiled, they don’t taste that great (not to mention that when eaten in great enough quantities they make visits to the bathroom practically unnecessary). But thanks to my lovely doña, I have discovered a way to eat, and enjoy, viveres. Fry them! Fried plantains or batatas are so unlike their pasty, boiled, hard-to-swallow cousins that you’d swear it’s a different food altogether. Never mind all the fatty oils, I say yes! to viveres that suddenly got sweeter and a whole lot tastier, and suddenly I can smile my way through that entire heaping plate of viveres (even if a bathroom visit afterwards is still out of the question).

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And here is an April 2 update from Anna on what we’ve been doing the last two weeks:
There were a lot of blackouts (as is so very common in the DR) in Santo Domingo and the internet cafes were closed the last week before we left. Now we’re in the countryside for our technical training. It’s so much better- we’re in the mountains with fresh air and cool nights and wonderful food and friendly people. We left Santo Domingo on the 26th and had a 5 hour drive to a Brigada Verde conference at Montecristi. Here are some photos of the conference. Just find the "Monte Cristi" album.

Brigada Verde is a Peace Corps initiative, started by volunteers some years ago. Basically it’s a club for teaching youth about environmental issues. Every volunteer is encouraged to start on at their site, with the idea that in teaching the youth the awareness of taking care of the environment will affect future generations. As part of the club, youth are expected to participate in the weekly meetings and activities. For example, when I was on my volunteer visit, I went to a meeting where they learned about the importance of clean water. Trash is a big problem around here; it’s probably the first thing you notice in the country. There’s not really an organized trash pick up system; communities have to get together and figure out a plan if they want to get rid of their trash. So unfortunately there’s a lot of trash by the sides of the roads and some communities use the rivers as their waste disposal, contaminating the water. So one of the activities of Brigada Verde can be a trash pickup, where all the youth get together and clean part of a beach or roadside. They also learned about pesticide runoff, and how deforestation and erosion affects the water supply.

I was pretty impressed by how well they paid attention and answered questions. Anyway, so the conference at Montecristi was a marine conference, organized by volunteers to give the youth information about coastal environmental problems. The volunteers each brought 2 youth from their clubs, for a total of about 40 youth attendees. Montecristi is beautiful; it’s the first time I’ve been at the beach in this country. It’s way up on the northwest side; close to the Haitian border. The water is aquamarine and very calm and shallow and warm. Friday evening was the official start of the conference; we had our first experience organizing activities and entertaining the youth for an hour and a half. My Spanish group has 5 people in it; between the 5 of us we came up with various things to do and play. Of course the biggest challenge is being able to explain the game with our limited Spanish; imagine trying to lead 18 youth in activites when you can only half understand their chattering. But they were really gracious with us, and although I felt pretty frustrated by the end, I got a good score and reviews on leading the group, so I guess it went okay.

The next morning we took a boat over to a beautiful island, where the volunteers gave talks on different marine ecosystems. There was a coral reef where the kids could go snorkeling, seagrasses, mangroves (which are these cool trees that grow in the water), and a presentation on erosion. I thought it was all really well done, and when it was over we got to lounge around and swim for a while. The next day was more of the same, but on the beach, not an island. And that was the conference. The youth were all really well behaved and fun and interactive, and the location was beautiful. The only thing not good was the food. Nobody knows why, but the cooking there was terrible. Leon got sick Sunday night, and I blame the food. There were hardly any fruits or vegetables, just lots of viveres, which are a whole host of starchy plants. The only vivere we’re really familiar with are potatoes, but down here they have a whole host of them: plantains, cassava, yucca, batata (kind of a sweet potato), yams…. Most of them are ok, but if you have them plain and boiled meal after meal, they just sit in your stomach like a big lump of dough. So they fed us lots of viveres and mystery meat. For example, one morning for breakfast there was boiled batata, scrambled eggs with ham, and hot dogs. Everyone was complaining by the end of the week, especially on Sunday when we were running out of food.

But now we’re here in the mountains, and we have wonderful food. Our doña (the lady of the house, pronounced don-ya), is so sweet. She’s about 72 and lives alone, although of course lots of her children and grandchildren live around here and the whole community knows her. Her house is really nice, a block house with a zinc roof that’s airy and spacious. She runs a nursery with tons of plants and flowers growing everywhere, and an empanada stand as well. She makes her empanadas from yucca flour, rather than bread flour, which makes them nice and yellow and healthy. Basically she makes the dough, cuts them out in half moon shapes, and fills them with chicken or cheese. As people order them, she drops them in the deep fryer and out they come, nice and crispy and sooooo delicious. She charges 15 pesos an empanada, which is about 50 cents. On good days she sells about 70 empanadas.

Anyway, she’s really friendly always asks what we want to eat. Her name is Maria, but everyone calls her Maria Dulce (sweet Maria). She’s the first doña I’ve heard of that actually gives me fruit and coffee for breakfast, because that’s what I asked for. Even though I told my doña in the city that, she insisted on giving us cheese sandwiches with salami on white rolls for breakfast (apparently she doesn’t view salami as meat). Doña Maria gives us lots of vegetables, the lack of which is probably the chief complaint of other trainees. And she gives good hugs. So we really got lucky with a good place to stay at for these 5 weeks.

Right now we’re in the community-based training part of our pre-service work. We stay here for 5 weeks and learn how to do practical things, like identify trees and plants, learn about gardening and how to build stoves (wood-stoves that are much more efficient than conventional Dominican ones), and get the feel of a rural community. Yesterday we learned how to make good compost piles (in the pouring rain), and I think we’re going to build one for our doña tomorrow, for her nursery plants. Our classes are on this huge coffee plantation, with a mansion that was used by the former dictator Trujillo. Trujillo ruled this country from the 30’s to the 60’s, and like most dictators, he did good things like build roads and organize schools and modernize the country, but also terrible things like torture and feed to sharks anyone who disagreed with him or got in his way. The mansion is beautiful though, and on a clear day you can see all the way to the ocean. Two days ago we walked around the coffee farm and learned about various trees and coffee plants, and then we went down to a community person’s farm and learned about plants there, how to identify them and where and when they grow. We’re definitely getting a lot of information in a really short time, but it makes the days go by fast. I feel really comfortable here, and hope we’ll get a site placement similar to this area.

Basically the days go by in a sort of scheduled way- breakfast at 7:45, Spanish class from 8 to 12, lunch from 12 to 1, and training at the mansion in the afternoon, which can last till 5 or 7, depending on the day. In the evening we often talk with the doña and people around here, do homework, and go to bed by 9:30 or 10. We have a long weekend this weekend (April 2-4) because of Easter, people take it very seriously here. Children have off of school all week, and the work week stops at 12 noon on Thursday. Lots of people go to the beach or visit their family in other parts of the country. Today Leon and I are just relaxing and catching up on some stuff. This morning some other trainees came over and we played cards and then went to the colmado to play dominoes and buy some snacks. Colmados are a big part of the culture here; they’re like little community stores where you can buy random things that vary from store to store. You can always buy beer there, and a lot of social life happens around them. You pull out plastic chairs and sit in front of the colmado and talk or play dominos (they always have a dominos game) and eat or drink. They have soda too, and a variety of baked goods that cost 5 pesos each (about 20 cents). In addition, you can usually get snickers bars, peanuts, crackers, coffee, batteries, dish soap, sometimes fruits and vegetables and various miscellaneous items. There’s definitely no equivalent to it in the states. Maybe the closest thing is a convenience store, with people hanging out there.

Tomorrow in the evening we’re going dancing with some of the other trainees. We’ve learned the basic bachata and meringue step, so hopefully we’ll eventually be good meringue dancers.

Until next time.