¡Saludos!
This week has been fairly relaxed, with the students in their finals period and everyone else on vacation mode, things have chilled out here in Manzanillo. We still have our baseball tournament going on, and people are certainly still working, but most people are eager for Christmas to arrive and a lucky few are anxiously awaiting family members fortunate enough to be able to visit from the states.
As for me, on Sunday I ventured to the nearby town of Monticristi for a Christmas dinner with five other volunteers serving up here in the Rowdy North. It was no one’s idea of an extravagant meal, but it was delicious. My personal favorite dish being the canned baked beans sent as donations from America but rejected by Dominicans and subsequently given to us to “make good use of.” We also had rotisserie chicken and fried plantains. Dominican comfort food does an American Christmas dinner make.
I’m still chugging along in my community analysis project although I’m pretty sure I’ve reached the point of saturation, meaning I’m not actually collecting new data since the information being told to me is repeated in almost every interview I conduct. That doesn’t mean I don’t think it’s important to be conducting these health surveys, because it’s given me greater access to my fellow community members and allowing me to build trust with them. But the amount of times I’ve heard “No I don’t think obesity is a problem in the community, God makes some people fatter than others,” is remarkable. When asked what they eat for every meal, the usual response is, “I eat what appears, whatever God sends our way.” It’s amazing the way God can be made as an excuse for poor behavior choices and ill-fated health outcomes. Nerdily enough, it’s been extremely fulfilling to be conducting such a methodological community health assessment that was once only a homework assignment in a Tufts Community Health class. I am impressed with the ability of my fellow volunteers and I to enter invasively into the lives of Dominicans and ask extremely personal questions about their health and family. It’s a great lesson in being politely invasive and one I hope will translate to other professional missions I embark on eventually.
Oh, and I’ve been reading Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotamayor’s autobiography, My Beloved World, and it’s inspiring, especially for where I am currently in my personal and professional life. She reminds me to be diligent and hard-working and to continually ask myself, “Am I doing my best work, am I trying my hardest, am I making a difference?” I realize that I can always be pushing myself harder, but pushing myself harder in my current context means taking each day slowly, truly getting to know my community, and preparing my community for the health groups I will start formally in January. It doesn’t necessarily mean to continue with the pace of work-life I had come to know in America, with each day full of meetings, computer time and email checking, I have adapted her advice for my own non-traditional job and it has absolutely helped keep me in check. Her book has also helped reflect largely on what I want to get out of my service, how meaningful I want my service to be, and how strong of a volunteer I wish to be. At best, I feel overwhelmed with the possibilities and scope of the work I can accomplish in two years, and at worst, I feel frustrated by the way people have begun to take advantage of me, believing that I’ll do anything and everything for this community. But two years is simultaneously a long and short time, and I think it’s important for me to periodically reflect and check back in with my progress and set goals for myself. Thanks to my newest role model Sonia Sotamayor, I have been doing just that this week.
Beyond all this self-reflection I’ve been doing lately, I keep wondering when I will wake up and stop feeling like I live in a fantasy world and finally feel like what I’m doing and where I am is real life. I still can’t quite believe all this is real. The day I think “Oh, yes, my life is normal here now,” will be strange at best. And in order to get through these fantasy days, there are lies I have told the people around me. White lies I would say. Here are a few:
1. I am a lawyer. This is perhaps one of the bolder lies I tell people here. I’ll admit it’s a bit of a stretch, but trying to explain my major in Peace and Justice Studies to an American is challenging, let alone explaining it to people in another language and another culture. So I just say I studied law, and let them decide how they wish to interpret that. Additionally, I am looking at it like self-fulfilling prophecy. If I say it enough over two years, maybe I’ll leave here, head to law school and actually become a real lawyer like was once a childhood fantasy.
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2. I live in New York. It’s not really that bad of a lie unless you take into account the fact I really dislike New York and will most likely never ever live there. I spend a lot of my free time in America telling everyone how much I hate big cities and how New York scares me, but sometimes, when people ask what part of Nueva Yol I’m from, it’s just too much to explain that “No no no, not every American is from New York.” And it’s even harder to explain that I come from a very small town in the middle of a state kinda sorta located by California and on the entirely opposite coast as Nueva Yol. Usually, if I’m feeling like telling a half-truth, I tell them I’m from Boston, because odds are they know the Red Sox. “Ay, eres amiga de Big Papi!” they say, “You’re a friend of Red Sox hitter David Ortiz!”
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3. I am a vegetarian. Compared to some of my more carnivorous friends (ahem, my college roommates), I don’t really enjoy meat. Even less so here when the entire chicken (often with feathers) and always the two feet are thrown into a pot and boiled with cups of salt, oil, butter, seasoning, and god knows what else. And I just can’t stomach the rice and pig stomach concoction (the famous chicharron) that I’m often fed. And an entire fried fish with the eyes and gills still in tact is hard for me to eat. So I tell them I don’t really eat meat. Really being the qualifier. My conversation with Chichi went like this, “Okay, so as a vegetarian you don’t eat red meat but you eat chicken, right Bea? And you don’t eat the chicken foot but you’ll eat the breast? And you don’t consider salami on top of your mashed up plantains meat, right? Okay, perfect, I understand.” Ah yes, I have become a Dominican vegetarian where not eating meat means eating chicken, salami, hotdogs and fillet of fish.
4. I’m feeling sick. Some days I just need to take a few moments for myself to rejuvenate. I tell my family I feel sick, which admittedly I feel a little guilty about, but I just have to give myself personal time and space that will help me remain mentally healthy and happy. Dominicans don’t need “alone time,” and in fact they think it’s strange that I should wish to hole up in my room reading a book for hours on end. The countless hours I spend on porches with my friends and family here are always wonderful and I do it gladly, but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s exhausting. It’s only when I come back to my site from a day spent with fellow volunteers that I realize how taxing my days in the pueblo really are. It’s amazing how fast a day goes by when you’re speaking English. The days when I think to myself, oh my god how am I doing this, I tend to take a break by retiring early to my room and watching an episode of the West Wing.
I feel that it’s appropriate to invoke these white lies to keep myself sane. My relationship with most people exists on a very superficial level, and it’s easy to say something simple and watch them assume something about me. Like when I say, “I’m a mujer seria (serious woman)” and days later having them tell me “Pero, Bea, tu no bailas, you don’t dance because you’re a mujer seria.” Wow wow wow, I never said that, but I don’t correct them. I’ve begun to tell people I’m muy divertida (very fun) and that algun dia (one day) they’ll see me dance. But for now, I’m perfectly content allowing everyone in Manzanillo to assume I’m a serious, no-dancing, no-drinking, no-nonsense hardworking lawyer from New York who’s here to do some health stuff. It’s easier that way, and then I’ll get to surprise them with my sick bachata and merengue skills when I do finally bust them out. Two years here will change me in ways I can’t even begin to comprehend, these first four months already have. I know that I want to come back to America having grown personally and professionally, knowing how to navigate another culture and country, and with passion for helping others, but right now, I am still grappling with how to find my footing as a professional in my community while demonstrating the fun, carefree parts of my personality that I’m proud to have cultivated in my 22 years alive. It sure is a process!
Sending a photo of my housepig Canchito who we’re going to slaughter for Christmas and lots of love.
Missing snow, skiing, Santa and Christmas carols.
Xoxo,
Bea
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