As Jay-Z once said, “Another day, another dolla. In my case, the lyrics go, “Another week, another compilation of stories and too many spent pesos.”
Here’s the highlights.
1) Crashing a fancy Dominican wedding
Last weekend, my mom and dad were invited to a wedding (between the richest family in town and a Dominican from New York) so like any Dominican would, I tagged along sin invitación. I knew it was going to be fancy because all week long people had been gossiping about how much the cake, decorations, buffet, invitations, etc cost. True or not, rumors were spreading that the couple spent (in pesos) $35,000 on the cake, $93,000 on decorations, $64,000 on the buffet and no one could even speculate on how much the chocolate fountain must have cost! In total, the couple spent around $7,000 US dollars on the event, not a shocking figure by American standards, but buys you a hell of a lot here! From the moment we sat down, we were drinking rum, eating chocolates, munching on meringues (smuggled in from America), dipping marshmallows in a tiny chocolate fountain, and watching the couple take thousands of pictures in front of the four story cake. It really was a beautiful wedding, and has since been the talk of the town. Good times were had by all.
2) Participating in a 5k running race
At 8:30 in the morning last Saturday, a bus full of children, the school’s P.E. teacher and I went to a nearby town called Loma de Cabrera for a “maratón” aka a running race. We rolled in around 10am and I thought the race must start around 11. Nope. We ended up splashing around in the local river, eating pounds of rice, going back again to swim in the river (haven’t they heard of the wait 30 minutes rule) and finally heading to the race course (a 1.25km loop around the town) and starting around 4:30pm. It was one of my favorite experiences in this country because a) thousands of spectators were out watching the race while drinking rum and beer and b) every 1km people would be handing out water and throwing water on the competitors and c) there was loud music and people cheering everywhere and d) cash prizes for the top three in each category including 9-year-olds. I got 4th place, bummer!
3) A morning spent shucking beans and killing cows
On Sunday, I trucked into the capital to visit my old host family from El Portón, the campo where I spent six weeks during Community Based Training. It was so great to see my family again as it’d been more than 7 months since I’ve been back. I got to see my little nephew, my favorite grandma, my 38-year old pregnant neighbor who’s “way too old” to be pregnant, God bless her, and the rest of my favorite families. I also got to help them prepare for their patronales, or a day celebrating the patron saint Altagracia. In the DR, each town/city has it’s own patron, a saint guiding the city to greatness or something like that. And each year, when it’s that community's patron saint day, big festivities (traditional and not) are held to celebrate, drink, dance and worship. For this celebration in El Portón, a town of 40 that was expecting a crowd of over 200, we had some serious food prep to do. The men (and me taking pictures) spent the morning killing a cow and hanging it to cure while the women spent the entire day shucking beans. It took ten women eight hours to shuck an entire sack full of beans. UEPA! And then the women cleaned the church while the men played dominoes. And gender roles were perpetuated...
4) Teaching sex-ed class after the professor cheats on her husband and with the local bus driver
I was on a morning run, when I kindly got invited to dinner with one of the professors I work with in the high school. He’s a great guy and I’ve been to his house lots to eat with him and his family so I accepted right away. “I’ll meet you at your house, I said.” He responded, “No I’ll pick you up,” which I thought was strange. Turns out, he took me out to dinner mostly because he needed an ear since he recently learned his wife was cheating on him with the bus driver. The real kicker though, is that I work closely with him but even closer with his wife, as she’s the sex-ed teacher in the high school. Awkward! And talk about chisme (gossip), the whole town’s been speculating about it for weeks now and it sounds like their lives are kind of in shambles. Anyway, as we are munching away on fried chicken and green bananas, I’m trying to give him advice like, “God’s the only one who knows what will happen, I promise he will take care of you.” Umm...who am I? I felt really bad but we somehow got through dinner without him crying. He took me home and I couldn’t wait to snuggle up in bed and read the rest of the book She’s Come Undone (such a great read). At 11pm, I heard a knock at my door and it was the director of the high school asking me if I could teach sex-ed class alone for a while. “Ya tu sabes, nadie va a cojer clase de un cuernuero,” which translate to, “You know why, no one is going to take class from a cheating whore.” 1) Aggressive language on the director's part, 2) Teaching alone to Dominican youth? God save me and 3) I feel so bad for their family this is the worst place for gossip.
5) The Peace Corps Volunteer “Gossip Network”
Speaking of gossip...It's not unusual to be staying in the capital at our Peace Corps approved hostel fondly known as the “Bella” and see one two or forty other volunteers there for various medical, personal or work related events. Last night, I happened to be staying there with some ladies in my group and a business volunteer from a region north of the capital. She spotted us and looked like she needed to talk. “Let us have it girl, what's up?” As it turns out, she has been semi-permanently evacuated from her site with four months left to go in her service. Turns out her Dominican boyfriend is a loan shark (loans money to people who can't get them from the bank and has high interest rates) who at some point or another got mixed up with narcotraffickers and owes big kahuna drug dealers $20,000 USD. WHATTTT? So, fearing for her safety should the drug lords ever chose to go after her, she's on permanent evacuation. Hearing her story surreal, we live and learn among Dominicans and it can be so easy to forget the serious problems out there. I intellectually know that drug trafficking is a huge problem here, but it’s easy to forget when you can’t directly see it. Interesting how sometimes the closer you get to a community or a culture, the harder it is to see its problems.
6) Traveling 12 hours to get to my friends site and celebrate the patron saint day in her community
This is a relatively small island. The size of NH and VT combined, okay it’s actually tiny. And somehow, it took me 12 hours to get home on Wednesday. Tuesday, four of my good friends and I went to the province just north of the capital (Monte Plata) to visit our friend Laura’s site an celebrate her patronales because her town’s patron saint also happens to be la Altagracia. I’ve had this date marked on my calendar for over six months because she said, “It’s pretty much the only time my community is fun.” We did end up having a great time, but in general, I love seeing other people’s site and realizing how diverse this country is and how different volunteers make their sites work for them. She’s created a wonderful life for herself in a town without internet or cell service and less than 200 people. And my site couldn’t be more different but we both make it work for us. So we ended up dancing palos a traditional Dominican dance, eating freshly killed pork, hitting the one discoteca to dance bachata, merengue, salsa and dembow and ended up staying out until 6am. We woke up at 8am, made breakfast and I lamented the fact that we needed to be off because I couldn’t miss my 2:30 bus. Well, we were waiting for a bus on the side of the road that only passes once every hour and decided hitch hiking was the way to go. A great ride we got, but the driver ended up getting lost, I missed by bus and the next one broke down...the travel saga continues...I had to call a friend to pick me up from the town over...and I ended up making it back to the ‘Zillo a mere twelve hours after I started. Inefficiency at it’s very best = multiple hours spent reading The Brief Wonderous Life of Oscar Wao, another must read.
So there you have it, another few weeks in the life! When the going gets nuts/rough, here's to chalking it up to adventure and giving it your all.
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