On eight strong emotions

Here’s a crazy fact: I have four months and two weeks of Peace Corps left.

Here’s another crazy fact: A new report by the Washington-based Economic Policy Institute finds that 2015 female grads are likely to earn $3 per hour less than their male counterparts. Is it 1950?

But enough facts, let’s talk about the eight words that will help explain what I’ve experienced this week.

1) Help

I translated while thirty university students helped marginalized communities receive access to health care through a medical mission in Montecristi.

2) Pain

I watched a bus run over a dog and break his leg while the bus driver kept backing up and blasted dembow music over the howling of the injured dog.

3) Love

We celebrated Mother’s Day (here, celebrated the last Sunday of May) with my women’s group in Copey. There were presents donated from the mayor and banana company and a delicious meal of goat and potato salad. But the most meaningful part was the speeches the women gave for their mothers, daughters and grandmothers. Many women had lost their mothers and so in a beautiful moment of silence, we sent a cosmic burst of love to mothers – alive, fallen, grieving, sick, young and old.

Copey Women's Center with their gifts

My Copey family: Yesenia (mom), me, Margot (grandma), Calina (aunt) and Keki (other aunt)

4) Talent

My talented 12-year-old neighbor helped me bake a delicious turtle fudge brownie (granted it was from a box) and then clean my kitchen and do my dishes all in under 25 minutes.

5) Celebration

My host brother turned 24 so in celebration, he bought a handle of Brugal rum and drank it with his buddies on the street corner.

6) Sickness

After a wonderful 24 hours in Santiago (my favorite city in the DR), I got food poisoning and spent the better part of two days vomiting Gatorade. I’ve been sick too many times for comfort in this country, but maybe I’ll have a stronger stomach after all this?

Santiago Monument

7) Generosity

Knowing that I had about a million errands to do in the nearby town of Dajabon and after seeing me sick as a dog, a wonderful friend, Victor, offered to take me 45 minutes away in his car to help me run the errands, including: paying internet bills, fighting with phone companies, buying materials for my second improved cookstoves project, finding cake and going to the bank – all things that take (on average) six times longer than they would in the US. 

8) Life

Everyone all around me is popping up pregnant! First, there’s my 19-year-old host sister but it’s hush hush because we all think it’s the 55-year-old Dominican-American baby daddy of her other 5-year old child. Then there’s my neighbor who’s the kindest most generous friend I’ve made so far, except there’s never been a boy in the picture and I’m too nervous to ask who the father is given that her sister’s baby daddy happens to be the Mayor who has another family and perhaps scandal runs in the family. And then there’s the 95-pound paramedic we trained and now has to leave the group from a complicated pregnancy. The baby daddy is the town doctor who promised her a nice house on the hill if she leaves the group and her job to take care of herself while he provides. Grrr.

Is this ostrich preggers too?

And that's just another week in the life. Until next time, take care!