It’s seems like a dream when I realize that my time with Peace Corps Dominican Republic is over. I’ll be back in Pennsylvania for the summer on May 24. And who knew that leaving was going to be the hardest part?
We spent our last few months finishing up our latrine project. Here are a few photos. The school kids helped me paint a mural of Hispaniola. We played with our cats. We harvested a lot of lettuce and radishes from our garden. We hiked Pico Duarte, the highest peak in the Caribbean. I spent a few days hiking through the national park Valle Nuevo that connects our province, San José de Ocoa, with Constanza, the high mountain valley to our north that produces such wonderful, but un-Caribbean produce like apples, strawberries, cabbage, and broccoli. And of course we spent a lot of time just trying to savor the last few weeks in our peaceful shack surrounded by wonderful neighbors, clever kitties, and verdant lush mountains. And now it’s over.
We also traveled to visit several other volunteers’ communities. The DR continues to astound me with its biodiversity. We visited a batey in the southwest. Batey’s are small communities where agricultural workers live in close proximity. They spring up around sugar-cane, coffee and cacao plantations. Some bateys only have inhabitants during harvest time, while others have become permanent communities. Traditionally bateys were filled with migrant Haitian workers. But in many cases a lot of those migrant Haitians just stayed so that several generations later these bateys have become small communities of mostly Spanish-speaking people of Haitian descent. This was the case for the batey that we visited. The people in the bateys still subsist off of working on large agricultural plantations, and in the south this consists mostly of working in the sugar-cane fields. The culture and cuisine of the bateys have distinct Haitian influences. The most important food influences, to me at least, are the Haitian bread called biskwi, and the (often spicy) peanut butter called mamba. While in the southwest we also visited the town of Los Rios beside Lago Enriquillo, a salt lake approximately the size of Manhattan. Unfortunately for the farmers surrounding the lake, the lake’s water level keeps rising at a substantial rate engulfing dozens of acres of farmland each year. Deforestation in the Sierra de Neyba plays a large part in the rising water level. Fewer trees mean that the soil cannot absorb as much rainwater thus much more runoff ends up in the rivers that feed Lago Enriquillo. We also visited Los Guineos in the northeast where a fellow volunteer is working on a kayak tourism project on Laguna Limon, a large freshwater lake that occasionally overflows into the Atlantic Ocean just outside of Samaná Bay. From there we took a boat north across Samaná Bay to Samaná Peninsula and visited a few of the most beautiful beaches that I’ve ever seen.
After completing my service I also spent a few days in Haiti. It was very interesting to see the other side of the island. Here are some photos. The DR and Haiti have much shared history and geography, and yet they’ve turned out, so far, very differently. About 27 percent of the DR remains forested while Haiti has only about 1 percent forest cover. This has huge ramifications on things as far-ranging as soil erosion, amount of rainfall, soil quality, and hydroelectricity potential. In terms of development, even when accounting for all the damage caused by the 2010 earthquake, Haiti is a long way behind the Dominican Republic. This is even harder to understand when you realize that at the end of the eighteenth century Haiti was the richest colony in the Americas. Today it’s one of the poorest countries in the entire Western Hemisphere. I have been fascinated with the question of why the two countries, they share the same island after all, have turned out so differently. My visit was partly a continuation of my quest to understand how two countries on one island can have such distinct outcomes.
I didn’t really know what to expect when I signed up for Peace Corps. I knew that I’d be living in a foreign country for two years, and that was enough. But Peace Corps for me has been so much more than just 27 months on an exotic, unimaginably beautiful subtropical island. Like all unique experiences, it’s very difficult to put into words. If I had to pick one single most important thing that I’m taking away from Peace Corps, I would probably choose the perspective on life that it’s given me. Being part of a close-knit community for two years not only taught me about cross-cultural relations, but it also taught me a lot about how communities in general function. The world is big and very complex, much more so than most people believe. What makes perfect sense to you might make no sense at all to someone from a different culture, and like it or not, that’s just the way it is. Open-mindedness, patience, and adaptability are some of the most crucial skills in surviving and working in a foreign culture. Some cultural differences are fun, some are quaint and amusing, and some are just plain infuriating. But, for the most part, they are almost impossible to change. But it's amazing how much more sense all of the differences make when,through living their lifestyle, you try to see the world through the eyes of people from a foreign culture.
Peace Corps has taught me to value friendship more. It has taught me that individuals, as opposed to their environment, can often be the limiting factor in trying to achieve their dreams. I deal better with failure. I can relax more when things are out of my control.
As sad as I am to leave I will not miss LOUD music (I’m pretty sure that I’ve experienced hearing loss), the it-will-eventually-happen attitude which makes everything take 10 times as long as it should, blatant animal and child abuse, the culture of procrastination, and lack of waste management.
I will however miss neighbor kids who pop in to visit at any hour, the view from our kitchen window, the freedom to take siestas almost whenever I want, colmados, free lunch at any doña’s house when I visit over noontime, the culture of sharing, Peace Corps friends, public transport that can take you anywhere in the country, and just generally La Gran Libertad of this crazy island where pretty much everything goes.
It has truly been an incredible life-changing adventure. Thanks for sharing it with us.
-Leon
Showing posts with label freedom. Show all posts
Showing posts with label freedom. Show all posts
Sunday, May 20, 2012
Sunday, May 15, 2011
Chivos sin Ley
Dominicans have the expression Chivos sin Ley (Goats without Law) for good reason. This is one of the more noticeable aspects of Dominican culture and everyone who has spent any amount of time here can usually recount dozens of incidents to illustrate this. What does it mean to live like a chivo sin ley? Well imagine a frisky young goat that is smart enough to always get out of its pen and then it wanders about wherever its whims lead. A lot of Dominican public life is just that.
Imagine a life with no rules. If you are driving down the road and you get thirsty, stop. Walk into a colmado, pay no attention to whether there is a line or not, walk up to the counter and shout for a cold one and some chips. Don’t settle for a small beer; get a whole liter while you’re at it. Grab the beer and get back on the road. And now that you’re feeling so good with that ice-cold liter in your hand you might as well driver faster because that will just enhance the good feeling. You finished your bag of chips. Bag goes out the window and the wind cartwheels it smack against a no-littering sign. Forty minutes later that jug of beer left your bladder bloated. The next rest area must be five minutes away. Stop, no matter where you are, relieve yourself on the highway shoulder or on the sidewalk.
If you are in the city only stop at red lights if you’re on a four-lane road. If it’s a smaller road you might consider slowing down so that you can look left and right as you breeze through. If it’s a stop sign just speed up and lay on your horn to scare off any incoming traffic.
If you need a parking spot at your barber’s and none exist just drive to the closest bank, park right in front of the “Parking for Clients Only” sign, and walk jauntily away from your vehicle. When the bank guard (who’s holding a sawed-off shotgun) yells at you that this parking spot is for clients only, you menacingly reply, “But I am a client.”
Last month, in an attempt to clear some land for pasture, a neighbor of mine started a giant fire up in the mountain. It burned for days and piled smoke high into the sky. The green trees have been replaced by an ugly singed scar. It’s illegal to burn down forests, as you might well imagine. So on the fifth day some police arrived and demanded that the owner of the land appear at court in the provincial capital. A few days later I overheard someone ask the culprit’s nephew how much the fine was for burning down so many trees. The nephew inhaled deeply on his cigarette, leaned back against the painted palm-board house and spoke though the swirling smoke, “Nada, tuvo conexiones” (Nothing, he had connections).
I was standing at the hardware store one day ordering supplies when the guy behind the desk who had been helping me suddenly picked up his phone and as a look of consternation crossed his face he ran out into the street, jumped on a motorcycle, and roared away. Confused I asked another worker what just happened. He shrugged and mumbled something about someone taking their truck. Taken aback and curious I kept asking him until finally it was clear that a policeman had stolen their work truck. Yes, you read right. A policeman walking by jumped into their truck, apparently the keys were sticking, and drove off. After persistent questioning the story came clear. To get sand (for cement mixes) from the local river you are required to get a permit from the ministry of environment. The hardware store had just illegally picked up a load of sand at the river and brought it up to the store to sell, and that’s when the policeman walked by and took the truck. After completing my purchase I walked back to the motorcycle stop to catch a ride home. On the way as I went by the police station I saw the guilty truck weighed heavy with sand and the hardware store owner and the policeman were leaned lazily against the truck bed as if discussing the previous night’s baseball game. The following week when back at the store I asked the hardware man how much the fine was. He gave me a noncommittal shrug and said, “Nada, lo arreglamos” (Nothing, we got it straightened out).
I was on a public bus the other month and it was the first time I had gone on that route. The fare attendant told me the price was 300 pesos so I paid. A few minutes later a friend of mine who was a few seats back asked me how much I’d paid, and when I told him he replied that it was actually only 285 pesos. I jumped up and asked how many of the passengers had been overcharged. Most of them had. I then turned my attention on the attendant who by now was angry that his secret was out. After much protesting on my part he’d just reached into his pocket to get my change when apparently something I was saying really got his goat and he abruptly withdrew his hand from his pocket and sullenly slurred, “Now your trip really is going to be 300 pesos.” I admit I too got angry. I tried to get the other passengers (after all they’d all been robbed as well) together to do something but they pretty much ignored me.
As a side note, this really puzzled me at first because in my poor community, trying to overcharge one person 5 pesos is enough to set the entire bus in an uproar, but here the attendant had just overcharged pretty much everyone on the bus 15 pesos and no one bothered to say anything. I soon realized that most of the passengers were residents of Santo Domingo where apparently 15 pesos doesn’t matter as much as it does to a poor farmer.
Back to the point, no one would help me in arguing against the attendant so I heckled him every few minutes for the entire three-hour bus ride. Finally after everyone else had already left the bus we came to my stop but I wouldn’t get off the bus. I just stood in the door calling him a robber. The crafty attendant then yelled to the driver to accelerate and I had to jump of the bus as it sped away from the sidewalk. You win some you lose some. But the point here is that even if 15 pesos meant nothing to any of those other passengers they should have stuck together and demanded their money back just for the principle of it all. Dominicans love to talk politics and about how politicians and other leaders are ruining this country, and from what I see they’re quite right. But there is another factor ruining this county and it’s those chivos sin ley.
Interestingly enough, just two days previous to the very disagreeable bus ride just mentioned I had hitchhiked across a substantial portion of this tiny island. Among the many helpful Dominicans who gave me rides were two public transport vehicles. When I flagged them down I asked if they’d please just give me a ride, and they did. And they were not in the least resentful that I was riding for free. Imagine that happening in the states.
This should go without saying, but I’ll say it anyway: not all Dominicans live like chivos sin ley. A lot of people are actively campaigning to try and change this mentality. The government has actually put up traffic signs up that say “We can’t live like goats without law; please obey posted traffic laws.” Now if only government leaders would take the message to heart as well. Many Dominicans, when questioned, will admit that the chivos sin ley method is not a good way to build a society. But they will also admit that they’d miss their freedom if they had enforced laws like the US does. Apparently when most of the other chivos are running around free outside the fence, it’s really hard to not get out there as well.
Imagine a life with no rules. If you are driving down the road and you get thirsty, stop. Walk into a colmado, pay no attention to whether there is a line or not, walk up to the counter and shout for a cold one and some chips. Don’t settle for a small beer; get a whole liter while you’re at it. Grab the beer and get back on the road. And now that you’re feeling so good with that ice-cold liter in your hand you might as well driver faster because that will just enhance the good feeling. You finished your bag of chips. Bag goes out the window and the wind cartwheels it smack against a no-littering sign. Forty minutes later that jug of beer left your bladder bloated. The next rest area must be five minutes away. Stop, no matter where you are, relieve yourself on the highway shoulder or on the sidewalk.
If you are in the city only stop at red lights if you’re on a four-lane road. If it’s a smaller road you might consider slowing down so that you can look left and right as you breeze through. If it’s a stop sign just speed up and lay on your horn to scare off any incoming traffic.
If you need a parking spot at your barber’s and none exist just drive to the closest bank, park right in front of the “Parking for Clients Only” sign, and walk jauntily away from your vehicle. When the bank guard (who’s holding a sawed-off shotgun) yells at you that this parking spot is for clients only, you menacingly reply, “But I am a client.”
Last month, in an attempt to clear some land for pasture, a neighbor of mine started a giant fire up in the mountain. It burned for days and piled smoke high into the sky. The green trees have been replaced by an ugly singed scar. It’s illegal to burn down forests, as you might well imagine. So on the fifth day some police arrived and demanded that the owner of the land appear at court in the provincial capital. A few days later I overheard someone ask the culprit’s nephew how much the fine was for burning down so many trees. The nephew inhaled deeply on his cigarette, leaned back against the painted palm-board house and spoke though the swirling smoke, “Nada, tuvo conexiones” (Nothing, he had connections).
I was standing at the hardware store one day ordering supplies when the guy behind the desk who had been helping me suddenly picked up his phone and as a look of consternation crossed his face he ran out into the street, jumped on a motorcycle, and roared away. Confused I asked another worker what just happened. He shrugged and mumbled something about someone taking their truck. Taken aback and curious I kept asking him until finally it was clear that a policeman had stolen their work truck. Yes, you read right. A policeman walking by jumped into their truck, apparently the keys were sticking, and drove off. After persistent questioning the story came clear. To get sand (for cement mixes) from the local river you are required to get a permit from the ministry of environment. The hardware store had just illegally picked up a load of sand at the river and brought it up to the store to sell, and that’s when the policeman walked by and took the truck. After completing my purchase I walked back to the motorcycle stop to catch a ride home. On the way as I went by the police station I saw the guilty truck weighed heavy with sand and the hardware store owner and the policeman were leaned lazily against the truck bed as if discussing the previous night’s baseball game. The following week when back at the store I asked the hardware man how much the fine was. He gave me a noncommittal shrug and said, “Nada, lo arreglamos” (Nothing, we got it straightened out).
I was on a public bus the other month and it was the first time I had gone on that route. The fare attendant told me the price was 300 pesos so I paid. A few minutes later a friend of mine who was a few seats back asked me how much I’d paid, and when I told him he replied that it was actually only 285 pesos. I jumped up and asked how many of the passengers had been overcharged. Most of them had. I then turned my attention on the attendant who by now was angry that his secret was out. After much protesting on my part he’d just reached into his pocket to get my change when apparently something I was saying really got his goat and he abruptly withdrew his hand from his pocket and sullenly slurred, “Now your trip really is going to be 300 pesos.” I admit I too got angry. I tried to get the other passengers (after all they’d all been robbed as well) together to do something but they pretty much ignored me.
As a side note, this really puzzled me at first because in my poor community, trying to overcharge one person 5 pesos is enough to set the entire bus in an uproar, but here the attendant had just overcharged pretty much everyone on the bus 15 pesos and no one bothered to say anything. I soon realized that most of the passengers were residents of Santo Domingo where apparently 15 pesos doesn’t matter as much as it does to a poor farmer.
Back to the point, no one would help me in arguing against the attendant so I heckled him every few minutes for the entire three-hour bus ride. Finally after everyone else had already left the bus we came to my stop but I wouldn’t get off the bus. I just stood in the door calling him a robber. The crafty attendant then yelled to the driver to accelerate and I had to jump of the bus as it sped away from the sidewalk. You win some you lose some. But the point here is that even if 15 pesos meant nothing to any of those other passengers they should have stuck together and demanded their money back just for the principle of it all. Dominicans love to talk politics and about how politicians and other leaders are ruining this country, and from what I see they’re quite right. But there is another factor ruining this county and it’s those chivos sin ley.
Interestingly enough, just two days previous to the very disagreeable bus ride just mentioned I had hitchhiked across a substantial portion of this tiny island. Among the many helpful Dominicans who gave me rides were two public transport vehicles. When I flagged them down I asked if they’d please just give me a ride, and they did. And they were not in the least resentful that I was riding for free. Imagine that happening in the states.
This should go without saying, but I’ll say it anyway: not all Dominicans live like chivos sin ley. A lot of people are actively campaigning to try and change this mentality. The government has actually put up traffic signs up that say “We can’t live like goats without law; please obey posted traffic laws.” Now if only government leaders would take the message to heart as well. Many Dominicans, when questioned, will admit that the chivos sin ley method is not a good way to build a society. But they will also admit that they’d miss their freedom if they had enforced laws like the US does. Apparently when most of the other chivos are running around free outside the fence, it’s really hard to not get out there as well.
Tuesday, November 23, 2010
La Gran Libertad
I met a young twenty-something boy in my community the other day who is fresh from spending several months in Milwaukee. I think he plans to go back again after coffee harvest. I, of course, asked him what he thought of life in Neuba Yol (the Dominican version of the Spanish word Nueva York for New York). Dominicans commonly use the term New York instead of the US. Apparently over fifty percent of Dominicans who live abroad live in New York. This has made New York synonymous with the US which is an endless source of merriment and also frustration for those of us who really aren’t from New York and would like to represent our own state. Anyway, back to my story.
In response to my question the boy in the yellow t-shirt smiled kind of funny and said, “ It’s great and all over there, but you just don’t have La Gran Libertad, which roughly translates as The Great Liberty. I was puzzled. Aren’t we after all the country that tries to promote freedom above all else? We seem to give freedom precedence over reason, safety and health. And what could be more free than that? Consumerist America generally doesn’t like rules against consuming anything, even when it comes to environmentally-degrading plastic bags, killer fast-food, or lumbering one-passenger SUVs that consume about as much gas as a small Cessna. For better or for worse, we have a lot of freedom.
“What do you mean by La Gran Libertad? I asked, clearly puzzled. It was really hard for him to articulate exactly why it is that los Americanos are missing out on La Gran Libertad. He seemed to think it was a lot the atmosphere of the place, that it was lacking in the spirit of the people. I tried to get him to be more specific. It turns out this boy missed having neighbors who greeted him by name every morning as he went by their houses on the way to work. Lunch wasn’t a one or two hour affair with neighbors and friends stopping by. He worked at the Milwaukee airport so lunch was probably a 30 minute ham-and-cheese event in a small cafeteria smelling of old food. Where’s the freedom if the rice and beans are missing? Also his job was work work from morning to evening, not being able to take a long break to chat with whichever friend happened to be walking by. In the evening he went back to his house and no one asked him how his day was. As he came riding down the street revving his bike engine (obviously he didn’t even have a moto which is where the lack of freedom starts) he didn’t have friends yelling ¡Wepa! ¿Cómo tu tá? or ¿Cómo te fue? while they pumped their raised fist in salute. He couldn’t just walk a few minutes down the street to the nearest colmado to meet his friends for a super fria. According to him people work all the time. No one knows each other. When you walk down the street everyone is a stranger and it’s not obvious that any one you meet really cares about you. People always seem to be rushing somewhere, anywhere but where they are.
He said he’s planning to go back to work in the airport again, but he’s not very excited about leaving his small community where everyone knows him and shares in his day.
It was a thought-provoking conversation for me. Dominicans in general place a high value on friends and spending time with them even though the Dominican culture as a whole definitely values consumerism as much as mainstream American culture does. Dominicans (at least the ones in my community), like most Americans, love acquiring material goods. I think the problem arises when a culture tends to do nothing but scurry about working to acquire things. La Gran Libertad, if I understood my friend correctly, is (among other things) knowing when to slow down and enjoy what you’ve got with those around you. Americans might have a lot of freedom, but take it from a Dominicano who knows, it’s not near as much fun as La Gran Libertad.
In response to my question the boy in the yellow t-shirt smiled kind of funny and said, “ It’s great and all over there, but you just don’t have La Gran Libertad, which roughly translates as The Great Liberty. I was puzzled. Aren’t we after all the country that tries to promote freedom above all else? We seem to give freedom precedence over reason, safety and health. And what could be more free than that? Consumerist America generally doesn’t like rules against consuming anything, even when it comes to environmentally-degrading plastic bags, killer fast-food, or lumbering one-passenger SUVs that consume about as much gas as a small Cessna. For better or for worse, we have a lot of freedom.
“What do you mean by La Gran Libertad? I asked, clearly puzzled. It was really hard for him to articulate exactly why it is that los Americanos are missing out on La Gran Libertad. He seemed to think it was a lot the atmosphere of the place, that it was lacking in the spirit of the people. I tried to get him to be more specific. It turns out this boy missed having neighbors who greeted him by name every morning as he went by their houses on the way to work. Lunch wasn’t a one or two hour affair with neighbors and friends stopping by. He worked at the Milwaukee airport so lunch was probably a 30 minute ham-and-cheese event in a small cafeteria smelling of old food. Where’s the freedom if the rice and beans are missing? Also his job was work work from morning to evening, not being able to take a long break to chat with whichever friend happened to be walking by. In the evening he went back to his house and no one asked him how his day was. As he came riding down the street revving his bike engine (obviously he didn’t even have a moto which is where the lack of freedom starts) he didn’t have friends yelling ¡Wepa! ¿Cómo tu tá? or ¿Cómo te fue? while they pumped their raised fist in salute. He couldn’t just walk a few minutes down the street to the nearest colmado to meet his friends for a super fria. According to him people work all the time. No one knows each other. When you walk down the street everyone is a stranger and it’s not obvious that any one you meet really cares about you. People always seem to be rushing somewhere, anywhere but where they are.
He said he’s planning to go back to work in the airport again, but he’s not very excited about leaving his small community where everyone knows him and shares in his day.
It was a thought-provoking conversation for me. Dominicans in general place a high value on friends and spending time with them even though the Dominican culture as a whole definitely values consumerism as much as mainstream American culture does. Dominicans (at least the ones in my community), like most Americans, love acquiring material goods. I think the problem arises when a culture tends to do nothing but scurry about working to acquire things. La Gran Libertad, if I understood my friend correctly, is (among other things) knowing when to slow down and enjoy what you’ve got with those around you. Americans might have a lot of freedom, but take it from a Dominicano who knows, it’s not near as much fun as La Gran Libertad.
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