Mesh tank tops are for everyone! Old doñas wearing just bras, 5 month pregnant young women, old men with beer bellies, young children (boys and girls). It’s the new fashion: Mesh tank tops!
What has happened since March:
- For a few months I was teaching English in the local grade school for the 5th – 8th graders. I would teach in each class once a week. So that was about 224 students that I taught. I tried to make the classes fun with activities, but that is hard when each course is 30 min long. Also, teaching Dominican students (at my school) reinforces the reasons why I never wanted to be a teacher.
- In the middle of March I moved into my own place. It was a long and drawn out process with my host mom (because I am renting 2 rooms from her in a barrancon, but she didn’t want me to leave the house because of the good income that she got from the PC). The barrancon (barracks) that I live in is made of cement, so it is an oven, and was built in the time of Trujillo. The barracks were built to house the sugar cane cutters/workers that were the prominent income for Dominicans. Then, like in most circumstances, Trujillo and the sugar companies brought in Haitian and people from the West Indies to cut the cane, because they would work for less than a Dominican (sound familiar?). These barracks are migrant worker housing made out of cement or wood. Now , in my Batey, they are used as apartments/houses and are as loud as living in a college dorm.
I had to clean, paint, fix locks, put in Electricity. I had help from my muchachos because they would see me painting or cleaning and they come in and be like let me do it…so my house was painted by mainly 13 year old boys…and cleaned by 8 year old girls. Finally when everything was ready I moved in. This occurred at night and my proudest moment came when I was carrying my large suit case on my head through the batey. That first night I was too excited to sleep, plus there were all of these new noises to get used to.
- Living alone has been an adventure in itself:
- Cooking ( I invent a lot of different things. Most successful creations has been a curry-pumpkin soup, and fried chicken with pancakes.)
- Hand washing clothes (only takes a few hours, but rough on the hands)
- Looking for water ( makes you strong)
- Cleaning (there has to be a better way to mop and keep the floors clean)
- Adventures in cooking: Dominican white rice, American white rice, eggs (fried, scrambled, scrambled-omelet), pancakes, French toast, fried chicken, stir fry, curry-pumpkin soup, eggplant, hot chocolate, pastas, no-bake cookies, and whatever else I can invent.
- The Canadians came again in March. I got to translate for a week in the Bateys. It was a great time. However, that Wednesday I got violently ill after they left and I was sick out of both ends with a fever and chills. I made it through the night and felt better in the morning, but a little lethargic. The good thing about when the Canadians come is that I get kidnapped to Yamasa and am fed real food (they came to visit a week or so after I moved into my own place so I wasn’t cooking that much then.
- The first week in April my Mom came to visit
- Picked Mom up from the airport with my friends Nuris and Miguel. We watched her plane land and waited for ever for her to come out…Turned out that the luggage of about 15 people didn’t make it on to the plane in Miami..including the luggage of my mom. We then picked up Miguel Angel and went back to Yamasa.
- The next few days were full of phone calls to the airport and we finally got the luggage a few days later.
- Angela, Zach and Hansel came over to welcome my mom and we made French toast and then taught my mom how to dance with our friends Felix, Gris, and Miledi. Then we took her to the disco to show off her new moves. (every said that my mom learned faster and better than I did)
- We took my boys to La Mina to have a baseball game
- Nuris, Miguel and Miguel Angel took us to the beach at Boca Chica. We all had a great time.
- We went to Los 3 Ojos with Alicia and her sister Michelle. Los Tres Ojos are underground lagoons. It was beautiful and a lot of fun. Although both of our taxis there and back almost broke down…
- Mom also played grandma and spoiled all of my kids by letting them into my house in undesignated playtime hours and when she left I had hell to pay with with… haha
- Angela and I took my mom to the Colonial zone for a little bit
- We spent the last night in Villa Mella with Maria and Pedro
- Semana Santa (Holy Week) – is a week of no school, no work, drinking and partying (except on Good Friday). In Haitian communities during this time they celebrate Gaga. They dress in crazy clothes, lots of colors, play instruments, sing/cant and dance. So to see Gaga Zach, Alicia, Stacey and I went to Angela’s house to see it. There were a lot of pancakes made, rum and dancing with everyone from Antonci (I still don’t know why they all were there).
Angela and I got up at about 6am (leaving the others to let themselves out) and were on the Guagua in Don Juan by 7 heading to the office to meet up with Kristi so that we all could be on our way to Constanza. We took a taxi to Kilometro 9 to get on a Guagua to Abanico. From Abanico to Constanza we rode in a back of a pickup truck. By the time that we got into Constanza, we were there for no less than 5 min before I was recognized by one of the muchachos on a moto. We visited our host familes, friends and youth. It was a great time and we hadn’t danced that much sense the last time we were in Constanza.
- My muchachos did an impromptu limpieza of the community to obtain more baseball equipment.donated from MLB through BRA. We cleaned from 8am to 12:30pm. I was very proud of my boys about 14 showed up throughout the limpieza.
- Then after the limpieza it started to rain and when it stopped I was able to go to Yamasa. I was invited to a wedding by Nuris (she was the Madrina, master of ceremony – and it also her niece was getting married) so I got to help getting the cakes ready and setting up for the reception. Then the next day was the wedding and it was beautiful, with flowers from Constanza.
- The next morning I had my first Escojo Mi Vida group. It went well and we have had about 3 charlas and then 4 weeks of no classes due to rain, holidays, conferences and deaths.
- I started English classes for the community and have 3 different classes, 3 days a week. They are going well and the kids are learning.
- Kids love puzzles.
- Starting Grad School stuff, meaning thesis ideas and what not
- The Zona Francas that used to house American factories are now call centers for phone companies and medical stuff. So the next time you call to get help for your phone, you will probably be transferred to the DR.
- Mango season just ended. We would go on horses to find mangos and ate so many. One day a muchacho brought me 17 mangos.
- I took 2 of my girls to a Mobilizing Marginalized Populations brought to you by the Dominican Haitian Relation Committee. It was a fun 3 days and after that I went to In-Service Language Training for a week. It was good to see the old host family.
- This past week, almost none of my students showed up for English classes on Monday and Wednesday, and none of them came on Friday…Needless to say I wasn’t very happy and a little bit discouraged to be back in the Batey. But there is hope because on Monday we had class in the afternoon and a great Construye Tus Sueños class (a business course, where students learn to write a real business plan and can submit it to win money to start up said business. Great opportunities and learning experience).
- On Saturday, I went to Don Juan with Angela to help her set up for her English Class Graduation. As we were setting up, blowing up balloons and tying them in clusters of 3, the tape started to fall off the table. As a natural reaction I reached out to grab it with my right hand, but missed and jammed my pinky finger on the table. I started saying things out of pain and Angela thought that I had cut myself in the effort to save the tape (because I was holding the scissors in my left hand, dangerously close to where I jammed my finger on the table). After waiting for about 45 min, 2 of the students arrived and then about 15 min later the others did (after the students would come on time for classes and begged Angela to have the graduation outside of Guazumita). It went well and we ate a lot of food and pop. After that Angela and I shared a beer sitting with our favorite motococho guys who promised to take us dancing the next night (which didn’t happen, to our disappointment). We walked home and jumped in the river to cool off for a bit (spontaneously with our clothes on) and then got free rides home.
Later that night I was taken with my neighbors to La Mina to witness their Patronales for a couple hours. Ate spaghetti on a hill and watched some traditional dancing.
