The one about books

BOOKS! Gobble gobble! My humble opinions about the books I've read since embarking on my Peace Corps Response Panama adventure in October 2015. You'll find title, my rating and a short synopsis!

1) Serena by Ron Rash (3.5/5) - a wonderful novel (terrible terrible missed opportunity to create a spectacular movie with a cast like J.Law and Bradley Cooper) about a timber baroness in the south and her desire to control her husband and their timber operations

2) Room by Emma Donahue (4.5/5) - brilliantly told story of abduction from the perspective of Jack and his mother during captivity

3) Super Sad True Love Story by Gary Shteyngart (3.5/5 - set in the near future, it's a meh story about two insanely boring people trying to make a failed romance work

4) The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah (4/5) - poignant WWII story about two sisters doing their part to support the Resistance

5) Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World by Haruki Marukami (4.7/5) - beautifully exploration of sub-consciousness

6) The Cuckoo's Calling by Robert Galbraith (aka JK Rowling) (3.5/5) - murder mystery that gets too caught up in small details to create a compelling story

7) Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff (4.8/5) - Apparently it's Obama's favorite book of 2015 and already ranks in my top 3 of 2016! Unique story-telling narrative similar to others like Gone Girl and Serena (other favorites of mine). Lots of big vocabulary, too, perfect for studying for the GRE!

8) Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea by Barbara Demick (4.5/5) - A easy-to-understand history of North Korea told through the stories of six brave defectors. Easy entry book to understand what is North Korea! Highly recommend.

9) Euphoria by Lily King (5/5) - By far my favorite book of the past year, it was on plenty of official "Best of 2014" lists and I'm just getting around to it a few years later. About an anthropologist couple spending time in a tribal community in New Guinea. Speaks to the complexity of living in another culture and the beauty of learning from other people - helpful for PCVs and non-PCVs alike.

10) Modern Romance by Aziz Ansari (4/5) - A hilarious book about dating in the modern era of technology. Makes me want to throw my iPhone in the ocean and never download the Tinder app, however, dating apps now account for more than 30% of marriages, so get swiping!

11) Redeployment by Phil Kaye (4/5) - A fictional compilation of short stories form Iraq/Afghan veterans and their experiences on deployment.

12) This Town: Two Parties and a Funeral-Plus, Plenty of Valet Parking!-in America's Gilded Capital by Mark Leibovich (4.5/5)

13) Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates (5/5) - Should be required reading. It tells the tale of being black in America through a letter Coates writes to his son.

14) Father of the Rain by Lily King (4.5/5) - A wonderfully told tale about a girl-then-teenager-then-woman's relationship with her alcoholic father. I wanted to simultaneously strangle and hug the narrator the entire time and she took me through the gambit of emotions and strange family relationships.

15) The Japanese Lover by Isabel Allende (4.5/5) - Wonderful! Read it now.

16) A Constellation of Vital Phenomena by Anthony Marra (4/5) - It took a while for me to get into this book because off the complexity of all the characters involved in the story but as I got used to the storyline and used to Marra's prose, I feel deeply in love. Set in Chechnya during wartime, it's a beautiful story of the complexities of life and love.

17) Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (4.8/5) - I love the way she writes and brings you into the harsh reality that is the Nigeria-Biafra War in 1960s Nigeria. Told from the vantage point of three characters, it elegantly expresses the beauty and tragedy of themes like close relationships, war, peace, and education.

18) No One Every Has Sex on a Tuesday by Tracy Bloom (1/5) - This book is so mind-numbingly dull that I have nothing to say about it other than "meh." It's about a woman who is eight months pregnant and doesn't have a supportive partner or know which of two men the father is, so basically it's 221 pages of my worst nightmare.

19) The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen (4/5) - 2016 Pullizter Prize winner and the third on my war novel streak, this book is a complicated, intense, dynamic and poetic account of a "sympathizer" from Vietnam's confession of supporting his native country. Anyone want to have a book club and discuss? This one deserves a lot of unpacking!

20) Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth and Happiness by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein  (4/5) - I was over the tragic war novel stories and took my stab at this non-fiction book. I'd heard Sunstein explaining many concepts brought up in Nudge on a favorite podcast, Freakonomics, and thought I'd give it a go. An approachable way to understand the way humans make decisions and the ways in which we can nudge humans to make better decisions in all areas. Plus, it feels like I'm getting some really good economic tips too.

On unsolicited advice

I don't make decisions lightly and reflecting back on my year of service, I am so glad I'm here serving in the DR. Thinking back to the years before I applied and when I thought, “I kinda wanna join the Peace Corps," I wish more people had given me unsolicited advice on the subject. Surprisingly, a few months into service, a friend connected me to his old college roommate and the unsolicited advice came! I read his words and they've helped me time and time again throughout my service. So here is some uber helpful advice for anyone serving in the Peace Corps or contemplating it. All from a man who did the Peace Corps over 30 years ago. Many of the sentiments he describes from “back in the day” are the same feelings I have today...years and a world apart. The words are his, with a few edits!

  

"I served by myself in a remote part of Malawi where no whites had ever lived before (or since) working in a health program setting up child care clinics. What strikes me and reassures me is how similar Peace Corps is today as it was “in the day.” I am also very impressed with how you are approaching the experience.

I don’t want to be presumptuous but let me pass along a few humble wisdoms I gleaned from my service.

1. Expect to go through periods of depression and loneliness and wondering whether you are doing anything valuable.

2. You will never be able to evaluate the “impact” you will have, so trying to measure the effectiveness of your service by “things” accomplished is somewhat of a fool’s game. The eternal debate between the job and the experience is a false dichotomy because the job is the experience: the how you do what you do is more important than the what you do, and don’t let anyone try to diminish that.

3. NGO’s, aid workers, etc. etc. are not volunteers, they are not living with the people and working alongside them. We can never divorce our ego from what we experience, nor should we, and, yes, you will get more out of this experience then you think you will give but only Peace Corps volunteers enter the communities they serve with humility and an open heart and with no other agenda. Host country nationals are not fools…and they get that…and they respect and love volunteers in return because they get that.

4. When I stopped trying to help, I finally started to serve. It took me about 6 months to work through that one and you seemed to be sensitive to it from the beginning and maybe starting to deal with that now. Helping is our issue, it is our need to feel useful, significant; it is our need to get an “A” on our assignment (I am here to HELP so I must constantly evaluate how well I am doing by looking at what I am doing and then self-evaluate how the doing is measuring up to the standards I am setting for myself….I think you get the point.) It was when I finally stopped helping and started living without the burden of trying to self-evaluate something that is impossible to measure that I started to become a member of the community, an equal participant in the lives of the people that I live with, yes with more knowledge about certain things (and clearly a lot less knowledge about many, many other things) and relieving myself of that burden of needing to help, what I was trying to do became more organic and natural and human. The villagers I lived with got that…I had the benefit of living where dancing was a part of daily (evening) life of the people. It took me a while before I would leave my hut and just go to where it was happening and just watch (I also didn’t want to engage people until my language skills had improved until I realized I would never have the fluency to avoid instances of lack of communication and I finally realized that it didn’t matter, it wasn’t just that non verbal communication can work but that my presence was communication). In any case, I then started to watch the dancing and observe the steps then after awhile I took the plunge I entered in…..much to the delight and howls from the villagers…..until they realized that I knew the steps….and then…..I was one of them. I was no longer an “other”….I was someone from another place (they had no idea that whites came from different places) but I was in their world and living life on their terms, not making them engage me on my terms. I often say when I first came there they thought it was great that I greeted them (and could communicate somewhat) in their language, they thought it was even better when I would work alongside them, digging holes and doing the work of the community, but when I danced with them I was one of them, I was interacting with them at their most intimate level, and the respect and love I gained from that defined me and my experience from that point on.

5. My experience is my experience and the amazing thing about Peace Corps is that everyone’s experience is different and yet somehow the same….I encourage you to find a way to take the leap of faith that will lead you to connect with your Dominican community in a way in which you are letting go, finally, of the person who has lived 22 years in the US and been imprinted in ways known and unknown to be and act in a certain way. When you lose yourself in the experience and the barriers/divisions between “them” and “you” begin to dissolve is when you will learn certain truths about yourself and life that is the unique opportunity of Peace Corps. It is at that point, as well, that your impact really begins…although you will never be able to measure it and you alone will be the only one who will ever understand what you did and what your experience was like.

6. Lastly, whatever each day brings is part of the experience…it is all good…there will be bad days and good days, days when you want to hide with a book, days when you bond with fellow volunteers who can relate to who you are and you can come home for a day, weekend, whatever. Peace Corps is a “time away” when we can stop needing to grade ourselves, when there is the unique freedom to be out of responsibility and most importantly it is the one time in our lives when we can lose who we are (and all the unseen cultural imprinting that goes into defining who we are) in order to discover the “truths” to life itself that will become the jewels you will take with you for the rest of your life (and no one else will truly ever understand…but that is another story).

For almost every volunteer there is no other experience like Peace Corps…..and no matter what it is …it is all good……

Thanks for letting me bend your ear…"

Gordon Radley

RPCV Malawi ’68-‘70

On a week in the life!

What does a week in the life look like? Here are the highlights!

May 25th was Mother's Day in the DR and our women's group went all out, with raffle prizes donated from businesses in town, a skit, poem reading and a cake! 

Women singing a hymn at our Mother's Day celebration. Very moving.

My 8th graders had a beautiful graduation ceremony and even honored me as their favorite English teacher! Cute!

We made a nice big life size representation of the male bits with my friend Essaul from my youth group Escojo Mi Vida. Just some fun activities to learn about the reproductive system.

Last night I got puked on my this little devil child, Haydee. She was giggling so innocently while she did it so I can't even be that mad. Good thing we had water in the tank so I could shower immediately after! 

Time spent just hanging out with some of my favorite neighborhood kids. 

Stopping in to deliver some reading glasses to my favorite colmado owner, Negra. She has a hard time reading the labels and my real mom sent down some glasses that I gave to a very happy Negra!

Roy came to visit! A very relaxing and wonderful few days of R&R!

And that my friends, is just another week in the life of a health volunteer in the Dominican Republic. Couldn't be more different than cubicle life!

On big fancy wedding cakes

Jhanna and Macho's (my cousins) Wedding: November 24, 2013

Beauties!

Bridesmaids!

My niece, Lisset and cousin, Rosa

Perla and I

Macho and Jhanna tying the knot

Walking down the aisle

Sachel my favorite!

The beautiful cake

Too bad this photo was staged, no cake was eaten

On being una voluntaria

What a week! 

I arrived back to the capital last Sunday, the 26^th and low and behold it was my host mom’s birthday. So we sat in a colmado (corner store) and listened to really loud music and drank Presidente. I hadn’t realized it was her birthday, so in a hurry I rushed to the nearest store and bought her a nice bottle of wine (surprisingly expensive here!). She was very thankful and suggested we make tacos and drink wine the following day in celebration of my near completion of training. I was so excited. Well the next day came, and when I got home, my host sister was vomiting all over the floor and we were fairly convinced she had dengue (she doesn’t) so tacos were off. It happened to be my last day at my original host family’s house and the mood was like a horrible terror movie – it was raining, I was using candlelight to pack a suitcase, the sounds of vomiting were in the background, and I could hear cockroaches crawling up and down the walls. It was depressing way to leave my first family, but what can you do, ya know?

Meanwhile, back at work, I had to give a presentation called “Readiness to Serve” to my bosses. Turns out, I was ready to serve, so Wednesday, the second-in-command at the US Embassy swore in forty-four (we lost five people before swear-in) volunteers and we took the Peace Corps oath to serve in Spanish and English. I teared up because I’m not gonna lie, it felt like a pretty big deal to finally become a real live Peace Corps Volunteer! To celebrate, straight after the swearing in ceremony, my newly minted volunteer friends and I went to a professional baseball game - tickets were $1. And of course, no celebration here would be complete without topping the night off with a trip to a discoteca for some merengue and bachata dancing, so that's just what we did. 

I spent the next two days downtown in the capital running errands, swimming at the US embassy pool (not nearly as elegant as it sounds), eating American food (Pizza Hut), celebrating Halloween (I dressed up as Earth in a threesome costume of Earth, Wind and Fire), fixing my computer (!!!), chatting with my bosses to confirm how I would start the health projects at my site, and dancing!

Friday, I hopped on a bus up to the beach town of Monte Cristi, only about 30 minutes from my lesser known site in Manzanillo. There, I met two other Peace Corps volunteers who live there and they’ll be my crew from here on out, so it’s a good thing they rocked. Saturday, I ventured to yet another Peace Corps Volunteers’ site in a town called Palo Verde (Green Stick). We went to a Dominican wedding, in which the church service was dominated by little kids getting baptized. Finally, on Sunday I jetted back to Manzanillo where in a random twist of events, I changed host families and now live in the center of town (instead of up on a hill) in my own mini-apartment above the house of an awesome family (mom - Luisa, dad - Enriquito, brother - Dawen, aunt - Chichi, and five little nugget kids) who are super social, chevere, helpful, bacana and fantastic. 

Monday was a holiday in celebration of the Dominican constitution, and as such, was naturally full of music, coffee, and porch sitting. But I’ve got a job to do, so I went out and made the rounds of town meeting anyone and everyone I could. I also made myself a schedule, and have hit the ground running with full days of meeting school/hospital/government directors and administrators, finding myself a small group of youth to help me conduct interviews, creating interview questions, starting the first of eighty-five interviews/home visits, going to English School to help facilitate classes for kids, attending literacy for adult courses, introducing myself to every classroom in the two elementary schools and one high school, walking up to random groups of people porch sitting to introduce myself, singing at Evangelical church services, being attentive at Catholic mass, and eating my fair share of fried food.

But, enough of that! Let me to create yet another list of the interesting things I’ve noticed this week!

1) You can interrupt anyone or anything whenever you want.

When I went to visit the high school, my project partner and I just stepped right on into a classroom, interrupted the teacher to say, “Hi, we’re here.” The teacher would stop what s/he was doing, and say “Oh hey, Licelot, good to see you, why don’t you introduce yourself and your friend.” Then I would introduce myself, tell everyone that I am a volunteer with Cuerpo de Paz and I will be here for two years working on health things blah blah blah, ask them to be my friends, and repeat my name three times (I'm Bea here because lord knows how hard Bronwen is to pronounce even in English). Then there’d be a few awkward seconds of pause before the teacher would say “Cool, anyways back to geometry.” And you never need to make an appointment for anything. Saying, “around ten o'clock” or “later” or “when God wants” seems to as effective (if not more) than penciling someone in.

2) You can send muchachos (little kids) to do anything for you.

If you have a little kid, are tight with a little kid, or see a little kid, you can make her/him do any number of errands for you. For example, I can send a kid to get me five pesos worth of sugar, flour, or rice from the nearest colmado. I can send a kid to pay my electricity bill, relay a message to a friend down the road, paint my nails, bring back a beer (wow, right?), or recarga my cell phone. It’s nuts the utility little kids have here. And unlike my own little brother in America who almost always refuses to do my errands, these kids here always say yes. It’s awesome.

3) I am still not sick of rice and beans.

I love la bandera (rice, beans and meat) and I eat it every day, without fail. Even when I was in the capital and had the choice of any food my heart could desire, I chose la bandera. It’s just SO good! They call it doña food because it’s the only thing a doña will give you for lunch so she can ensure you’re well fed. Without rice and beans, no meal is complete, she’ll say.

4) Christmas is all around!

You wouldn’t believe the Christmas cheer that’s all around! Since they don’t celebrate Thanksgiving here, the Christmas decorations are dusted off and set up at the end of October/early November. It’s weird (because it’s still 85 degrees everyday) and nice (because Christmas is my favorite holiday) to see all the trees, lights, wreaths, ornaments, sparkles, angels, and nativity scenes in the middle of the DR. Christmas truly is a beautiful thing, and it’s awesome to be able to feel the cheer for more than two months!

5) I’m going to start walking with doñas on the beach at 6am.

Hopefully I can work them up to jogging/running/lifting weights, but we’ll see. For now, I hope they’ll just become my good buddies and that I can develop confianza (trust) with. Maybe I’ll even get some good chisme (gossip) by walking early with them! And I don’t have pictures yet, but my morning jog/walk/run is absolutely gorgeous...I get to watch the sunrise on a beautiful beach.   

6) My job is so cool.

I am an anthropologist. I get to experience a completely different way of life, learn from friendly, warm and caring people, and go to weddings, drink coffee, and chat with people in order to understand their culture. My job rocks! I am so lucky. This is such a unique and vibrant experience to be having and even though it sounds like I’m just sitting on porches and eating (which I do my fair share of), I am learning so much from the stimuli around me. Even the most relaxing day on a porch teaches me something new. The busiest day running around from meeting to meeting allows me to grow in a different way. I talk to people, ask questions, listen, learn and think. I haven’t been bored for even five minutes in this country because there’s always something to be digesting, debriefing, and analyzing about my experience. It’s cliché, but everyone here has something to teach and show me. It’s my job to keep the right attitude about it, remembering to reflect at the end of every day, demonstrate compassion, and practice patience as true integration is neither immediate nor easy.

Sending you all love, fried plantains, and bachata rhythm!

Missing you all, the top music hits in America, NPR radio, white wine, and the streets of Boston after our sports teams win things!

Xoxo,

Bea (often mistaken for Vea (to see) or Bella (beautiful))