A Day In My Life

The other day my mom asked me just what it is that I do here in the mountains. I answered that for starters I play with my cat.

Seriously though, here’s a description of one of my days, and it’s a pretty good description of what my life here is like. At least in the sense that a day is usually measured not by how many things I get done, but if I actually accomplish the one thing I set out to do.

Last week one day we planned to go visit a farmer who lives in my community to talk to him about planting trees on his property. My community is an hour’s very fast walk from our house which is in Anna’s community. About half of my community’s houses are clustered together just on this side of a river. The other half of the community is stretched out along the river’s far side. From the river crossing it takes another 30 minutes of very fast walking downriver to reach to the last of the houses, which is where the farmer lives that we wanted to visit.

Well my day begins around 7 with lots of yawning and a purring kitten jumping around and attacking me. Without getting out of bed I can tell that it’s another overcast day. On sunny mornings the light beams in like weirdly flattened headlights through the cracks in the rotting palm boards, but this morning the cracks are only bored gray lines. During a breakfast of oatmeal pancakes and peanut butter we look out to the mountain across the river where clouds keep meeting and rushing away again in important little swirls. By 8, talking all the while and constantly getting up from breakfast to get a better look at the sky, we have pretty much decided to still go even though the entire sky is now gray. By 8:30 we’re not going because the clouds are even darker. By 9 I’ve spotted some blue patches and feeling very restless I decide I’m going to go anyway, by myself. By 9:30 I’ve convinced Anna that the sky is blue above the sooty clouds and we are off. We manage to catch a ride as far as the river. There is no bridge. The one narrow foot crossing consists of a 12 inch-wide log. Horses can cross farther downstream and occasionally, when it’s very dry, trucks can ford a low crossing.

We head downriver, whistling merrily as we splash though the mud (it had rained a lot the previous day). After about 15 minutes of walking a heavy downpour splashes out of the loaded clouds. It only then becomes clear that I no longer have my umbrella (I left it at a colmado, which is like a little Dominican general/convenience/grocery store). I run, with my backpack over my head, to the nearest house a few hundred yards ahead. The family members are all sprawled under a gallery of sorts in their plastic chairs watching the rain go by, but as soon as they see me they jump up. As I make the cover of the roof they politely push me into the chair and introduce themselves. I had never met them before but we pass a very pleasant 20 minutes waiting for the rain to dissipate. As soon as it does so Anna and I head on through the squishy mud, which is only deeper now.

We get to our farmer-friend’s house just in time to avoid getting drenched. This downpour lasts over 30 minutes. Meanwhile we talk trees, bees, and peppers and farmer-friend gives us a grenadillo (a fruit), some peppers, and a bottle of fresh honey to take home. We explain to him what types of trees the government’s nursery has and he orders about 500 trees to start. The Dominican government gives out free hardwood trees to whoever wants to plant them. The catch is you have to find your own transport (not many people have trucks) and you have to wade through sometimes complicated procedures and hard-to-understand nursery mangers to get the trees. We are basically trying to organize the whole shebang of helping local farmers to plant as many trees as possible.

So about as soon as the rain let up we decided we should head back up river. We had carried along cheese, tomatoes, bread, avocado, salt, and peanuts to have a small picnic lunch. We found a jutting rock right where a tumbling stream crashes down out of the mountains to join the river. I had just finished my first amazingly delectable sandwich when the threatening cloud-thunder made true on its threats and peso-sized raindrops pelted down. We quickly threw everything into our pack and Anne whipped out her umbrella. Just then a wild-looking barefoot mountain man came down the path. I really have no idea where he came from, or where he was going for that matter. I, still umbrella-less, was helping Anna (I had on sandals) step from rock to rock to cross the bubbling stream, thinking only about getting to the nearest house when this long-haired old man in banana-stained clothes came striding by. He had yellowish, tattered mid-calf-length pants on which hung his machete, and his shirt hung halfway open. His face was rather obscured by a wild bushy beard. He saluted and disappeared ghost-like into the rain while ear-deafening thunder cracked repeatedly overhead. (The thunder here really is loud enough to be legitimately scary). It was a rather surreal moment, to say the least.

The rain let up just as I reached the nearest house, which happened to be the same one where I took shelter before. So, damp to the bone, I continued walking. About 15 minutes later we took shelter from a shower at another house for a few minutes. By the time we reached the river water was already splashing across the crossing-log. This particular log is actually tied fast to a tree because high water washes it out of place so often. When the water goes down they put the log back in place. At this point it was no longer raining, but we were tired from walking so we sat around at a colmado waiting for a truck heading in the direction of our house. After over an hour of waiting it had begun raining again and it was now obvious that there would be no more trucks that afternoon. So we started out into the rain. Thankfully by now someone had loaned me an umbrella.

By the time we reach the first stream-crossing the rain has stopped for good, but the steam is swollen to a several times its normal size. I pull up my pant legs above my knees and start across. The water is so high and fast that I still get my pant legs wet and it almost knocks me over but I manage to stagger across. Then while Anna is debating on how to cross, several people on horseback appear from a small trail on my side of the stream. The lady says to me, “I’ll go help her across on my horse.” One of the men turns to her, scowling. “Don’t be an idiot, she doesn’t know how to get on a horse.” After a bit of convincing they believe me that Anna does indeed know how to mount a horse and one of the men on a mule gingerly crosses the roiling stream and gives her a lift across. When Anna jumps up on the mule, obviously an expert, the Thomas who had at first doubted her now cheers and shouts, “Oh look, she can mount a horse better than I can!”

We walk on, feet covered in mud. At the next stream I again dubiously cross it and survive. Anna is debating when along comes a motorbike and swishes her across. At the next stream she has to take of her shoes and wade it, but thankfully two cute little girls point us to the shallowest crossing. After several more steep hills we finally get back to our shack. By now it’s close to six and we still have to make supper and heat up water for a bath.

It took all day, but the farmer (on top of giving us free honey and peppers) signed up for our reforestation project . As days go here, this was a pretty successful one.

Somos Amigos

Last week Anna and I joined up with a medical mission to translate for a bunch of American doctors and other medical volunteers. The group is called Somos Amigos (which in Spanish is “We are friends”). Anna and I got to the hotel on Saturday afternoon around 2 and I hadn’t eaten anything all day except for two bananas and some crackers. We overslept in the morning so we rushed to the bus stop without breakfast only to end up waiting for two hours for the bus (which turned out to be only a pickup truck) to show up. I went to the hotel front desk and said Somos con somos amigos (We are with we are friends). The clerk smartly replied, “Oh, I didn’t know we were friends.” I just stared at her blankly and her laughter subsided. I looked at Anna, who repeated the joke, and slowly it dawned on me. But I was far too hungry to laugh so I just repeated my request for the room key.

I like to joke with people in my campo (the Dominican word for rural areas), but mostly I am the only one laughing. I am never quite sure if they don’t understand my Spanish or if the joke doesn’t translate culturally. Nevertheless I keep trying even though Anna has often suggested that I give up trying to make jokes to my neighbors. I think the receptionist’s joke was rather clever, but of course it figures that the one time a Dominican makes a joke I love (and can understand) I’m too sluggish to laugh.

Sunday we helped the doctors set up the clinic and then they saw patients from Monday through Thursday. Anna helped out in the pharmacy and in the dental clinic.. In a little rural village Somos Amigos has set up a real dental clinic where dentists can perform root canals and other rather painful (but extremely important) dental procedures. They also make a lot of dentures on site for people who have lost their teeth. It is an understatement to say that it was amazing to watch the dentists work and have them explain to us procedures such as root canals or denture making. Another PC volunteer actually got to assist on a root canal and helped out with multiple tooth extractions.

I was the personal translator and medical assistant for a pediatrician and had a fabulous time. Not only did I learn a lot of Spanish medical terms from translating, I learned a lot medically because the doctor was kind enough to explain a lot of her thought processes. It was an exhilarating job. A large number of Haitians also visited the clinic. At least half of them didn’t know Spanish. We only had one staff person who spoke both Haitian Creole and English and she did an amazing job trying to translate for everyone but there was no way she could keep up. So several times I found myself in a room with two Haitians. The one was the patient while the other translated from Creole to Spanish while I translated Spanish into English for the doctor.

It was an exciting week, quite the change from the slow pace of campo life. I don’t know the exact number of patients Somos Amigos was able to help but I’m sure it was in the hundreds, and they do this several time a year. In case you are interested, check out the Somos Amigos website. They are a non-profit organization supported entirely by individual donations of time, expertise, and money.

Not only did I greatly enjoy translating, working with patients, soaking up medical knowledge, and hanging out with everyone, I was immensely inspired by the doctors and other professionals who took time off from their busy lives and paid their own way to the DR to donate a week of hard work in a clinic. Cheers to you all!