24 April 2006

A Jewel of a Site

We found out our sites today, and I'm going to be up in the Northeast Cibao region. My pueblo is called La Joya, and it's 9 km NW of San Francisco de Macoris, which is the third largest city in the DR. All I know is that the high school that I'll be working in has about 350 kids, and the area is mainly farmland. We meet our project partners tomorrow and leave with them to go check out our sites and cell phone service, and then return to the capital on Sunday. I'll be able to say more about my site then. I am fairly excited for my placement so far, because it sounds like a great location and I won't have to forgo vegetarianism (my fear if I got placed in the desert south!). My technical trainer described the area like the childhood home of the Maribel sisters in the movie In the Time of the Butterflies if anybody has seen that movie. I'm mostly excited about the size of the pueblo (small) and the proximity to a city with a grocery store and internet. I'm extremely nervous about this weekend, so wish me luck.

17 April 2006

a capital homecoming

Semana Santa is over, and we´re back in the capital. For an idea of our timeline, we spend one and a half weeks in Santo Domingo, and this Monday we find out our permanent site. Then we visit that site for a half a week and meet all the people in town and our new families there. After the visit we return to our training grounds in the capital for a last week of settling-in workshop stuff, and then we swear in on Cinco de Mayo and move to our sites for good. Scary and exciting, all wrapped up in one. I´m sad to have left El Seybo, it´s been a great little town!

Our host brother Adonis commented that Jenny and I were his buddies, which was a huge thing for this little kid who people only talk at instead of with. It was hardest to say bye to our host mom Daisy and one of my sisters who I´d gotten to be really good friends with. I wasn´t sad to leave the crazy puppy at all, though! We had a fun last lunch on Monday all eating together and chatting, and telling stories together.

We had some vacation days during Semana Santa before Easter after finishing up a few days of training with our group in El Seybo, and the break from workshops about computers and teaching and Spanish was welcome. Jenny gave me a haircut Thursday morning to start out our vacation that´s unexpectedly short right after she cut her own hair. We were supervised by my little host brother Adonis and the neighbor´s visiting relative (also Adonis) who were riding their "horses" which were actually palm trees right next to us. As far as I could tell, it was a pretty close race. I´m thinking about visiting her every time I need it cut from here on out – it´s great! On Friday morning our family mentioned that we were going to go to the beach later that day, but it turned out that it was one of those Dominican comments that means that a stated plan is actually just a thought running through the person´s mind. Instead a few of us ended up going down to the river in town to hang out at the get together the town was having: there was volleyball, swimming, boxing, hula hooping, political stuff, and lots of drinking – but no music, because it was Good Friday. Ironic? Maybe, but enjoyable, and we didn´t get our eardrums blasted out for once!

On Saturday our host sister and her boyfriend Jesus were taking their half sister back to her house a ways away, so Jenny and I went along. Road trips are pretty fun here, because you always stop a million times to buy things from people on the side of the road or get out for some reason or another. One little clarification: when I´ve talked in the past about our truck rides, we actually pay for those. People drive trucks as another form of public transportation here which is really good on unpaved roads. Anyway, the sister lives in a little town called Yuma, and after dropping her off there we headed the 15 minutes farther to the coastal town of Boca de Yuma to eat by the water at a little seafood stand and walk around by the water. It was close to a national park that I want to go back to someday soon. To get to the beach there, you have to take a little boat across a canal and walk a good little ways, or take a boat out into the ocean. We didn´t go all the way there since we didn´t have our suits and it was starting to rain, but instead went back to Higüey, the big town between El Seybo and Boca de Yuma. There was a beautiful cathedral there that we got to visit with really cool architecture that reminded me of Gaudi. Jesus (the boyfriend) decided he wanted to go by his aunt´s house which turned out to be in Miches, far away from where we were. So we were in his car a long time that day, but I never get tired of seeing more of this beautiful country. The aunt lived on a farm and so we explored around a little bit before it got dark. I convinced everyone to work on their palm tree climbing skills and so we were climbing when we got surprised by the toro that´s guapo. Guapo does not equal good-looking like it does in the rest of the Spanish speaking world. Here it means angry, and to be around a bull that is characterized as guapo by the excited kids around us was sort of scary.

Speaking of crazy words here, anyone who can email me the correct answer to the next question gets a piece of real snail mail from me. But no cheating online or anything. If you ask for a guineo here, what would people give you? One hint: you wouldn´t get a punch in the face.

On Easter, the group of us went for an awesome hike in the next little town over with the volunteer there to some waterfalls. Jenny managed to step in three different cow patties. They say here that stepping in one means you´re going to be rich, so I think she may just get lucky. We all got eaten up after we swam right below the falls – my legs look like I have chicken pox.

On one of the guaguas on the way back home Monday, a couple of things scared some of us. 1) We all have started to sort of enjoy bachata music, and even hum or sing along when the songs that play lots come on. 2) We all got really excited to see mangoes at the markets there downtown, just because we´ve been anticipating mango season for a while and watching the mangoes not turn yet is painful. Now we know there is hope! 3) We finally saw a real cinqueño, who are actually more common in El Seybo. Maybe he was from there. That would be a person with 6 fingers on one hand, and we had been trying to spot one the whole time we were in El Seybo. This guy stood right in front of a couple of us, and on a scary swerve he grabbed the seat in front of us and actually brushed my forehead with his sixth finger.

One more thing: sumo dog. Come to find out from another trainee here, dogs see size horizontally instead of vertically, so human legs look very non-threatening. Some trainees have thus built on this information to form a defense mechanism that we like to call sumo dog. It´s where the human being chased by a dog drops low to the ground with their arms spread eagle and makes some sound. I tried it while running with Jenny the other day, and the dog that was chasing us actually whimpered and ran away as fast as it could. The only negative side effect was that Jenny had a hard time running up the hill because she was laughing so hard. One warning: this has never to my knowledge been tried on groups of dogs, only solitary ones. But go ahead and try it at home :)

Don´t forget: guineo.

10 April 2006

Barefoot Weekends: Running and Ríos

Last weekend all of our adventures were with our friend Iris’ host family. Saturday night a bunch of us headed over to her family’s rooftop to assemble pastelitos en hoja, which are the Dominican version of tamales. Instead of having a corn masa, you grate a bunch of their starchy veggies (víveres), like plátanos, yucca, ahuyama, batatas, and more. We cut a bunch of plátano leaves from the yard to boil then use as wrappers, like the corn husks on tamales. To the masa we added meat and raisins (or just raisins for some of us vegetarians). After wrapping them up, we threw them into the pot over the fire we had going to boil for an hour or so, and then there are lots so a bunch of people can eat at the same time. In our case, that was on the roof, under the stars with a big family and lots of friends to share with.

The next day, my family-sharing-friend Jenny and I headed back over to Iris’ house to spend the day in the campo (country) with her family. We rode in the back of a pickup and got dropped off by a little group of houses called Rollo Tabaco. We all got one of the family friends Pedro to take us on a hike to the top of a big hill, and saw the cacao trees and yam area that he farms – the place the yams were planted was on a steep hill high up, and had been "cleaned." That’s how they refer to their slashing and burning farming technique, which is very prevalent on this eastern side of the island: there is quite a bit of deforestation here. We paused during our hike to eat some wild sugar cane and to suck the sweet slime off the seeds of the cacao after you break them open. We ate a little lunch at Pedro’s house which included as many chinas (sweet oranges) from his grove of china trees as we wanted. Everyone here peels them with a knife starting at the top and moving in circles until the whole skin falls off in one spiraling piece; my current goal is to acquire that skill, but I have a long way to go. Then we "let our blood cool down" before we headed to the river – because, if you go by what all of the doñas (women, moms) say here, your face or body will be frozen or paralyzed mid-spasm when your hot blood meets too quickly with cold water. Looks like I’ve just survived all these years by pure luck!

To the river and back, some of us got to ride Pedro’s horse, which was really hard to get on without any stirrups. Playing in the river was incredibly beautiful and fun especially with all the kids. But, it was getting cloudier, and lately it’s been raining almost every day here. We got back to a family friend’s house before the hard rain came, and then we wondered if the pickup truck would come back like he said he would; the road crossing the river isn’t above the water even in normal times, and if the downpour made the river rise, we’d be trapped for the night. He did show up, and we had another drenching ride in the back of a pickup. We Peace Corps girls had brought our moto helmets in case we had to take one, so we wore those for warmth. After the long ride back, Jenny and I got dropped off on the main street a few blocks from home, and we saw our "dad" driving by. We shouldn’t have been surprised, because he’s absolutely everywhere we go for some reason, but this time we weren’t going to pass our chance up to get a bola (free ride) home! He didn’t recognize us crazies in the cascos at first, but cracked up when he realized who was climbing into his front seat.

This host dad of ours is a crazy guy: he’s maybe not all there, but is always up to interesting things. This Wednesday we made a bet with him about whether it would rain in the afternoon or not. If it did, no meat for him all Thursday; if it didn’t, no concón for us all Thursday. (Concón is the part of the rice that sticks to the bottom of the pot, and is dark and crunchy. Jenny and I are both addicted.) He lost, and as I walked by his cement block factory in the downpour, he yelled across the yard, "No meat tomorrow!" Jenny and I made sure to stop by his friend’s cafeteria he frequents to make sure they didn’t sell him any meat that day, which all of his friends found pretty funny. It turned out to be a long and difficult day for Rolando, and a glorious one for us. . .

Last week was the last week of our morning internships, and the kids in Tri and my computer classes were really cute and huggable all Thursday. The teacher they have to return back to doesn’t know any of their names and prefers to lecture even the 8 year olds with big words at the table instead of having them actually use the computers.

This weekend was packed full again: we got up early Saturday morning to plant some trees with a volunteer’s youth group. We did it down by the river that runs through town, because a bunch of the trees had been knocked down in the last cyclone that had passed through. That volunteer had a housewarming party for her youth group and us that night, which featured dominos and dancing (like usual!).

Sunday was a fantastic day. I got up early for an outdoor Palm Sunday mass right next to the cool church in town, where I ran into some people I knew. I got home in time to change fast and hop into our dad’s truck to head to the next little town over where there was a "marathon" going on that day. A guy at a little cafeteria saw Jenny and I going by earlier in the week and told us about this race on Sunday that supposedly was a 10K and started at 10 in the morning – that part made me doubt that it would happen, because it’s already really hot by 10:00. But we decided to check it out, and Jenny, Tri, and I got our host dad to take us. When we arrived in town we knew it was on: we got photographed getting out of the cars and found people warming up. There was no entrance fee, but it was a big race with people from all over. My goal was to finish the race, being my first 10K ever and not having trained or anything! The runners looked like Kenyans, though, and we were all really nervous. It was amazing, because I’ve only seen a couple runners at all in the time I’ve been here, but they all came out of the woodwork for this race. When we started talking to people, it sounded like nobody really knew what the route was or how long it was exactly. As we lined up at the starting line, we also saw people in skirts, people in jean shorts, people in socks, and people barefoot. We looked at each other and thought we’d do fine. Some of those barefoot people beat us! It ended up being a Dominican 10K, which was something around 8K. The heat was killer, and so were the big hills. A lot of the Dominicans would walk up the hills and then pass me on the downhill as I cursed them in my head. Luckily there were people waiting with water to shower us along the way, especially when we ran into El Seybo. One woman got me with a bucket so big on my back that it pulled my running shorts halfway down, and as I pulled them back up and gave a little "Whooo!" all the people by the bucket lady laughed. We got lots of fans cheering for us americanos. Chi had the best time and came in 9th among the men 20 and up, Jenny came in 3rd in the adult women’s category, and I got 4th place in the same.

The fun for the day wasn’t over yet: we ended up going to a river with our family and neighbors as soon as we got home from running which was the best river trip yet. Now that we’re entering into Semana Santa, who knows what will go on this week!

01 April 2006

piropos 101

Running down the not-busy highway last night brought a new moto story: moto-flying. Who knew it could be done? These teens raced each other down the highway on their motos by swinging up so that their bodies were laying across their seats, and their legs were flying out straight in back. All you could see were their hands on the handlebars and their faces looking straight ahead. It was like Superman on a bike, but probably a little more dangerous.

The kids here are my favorite people, I´ve decided. I was helping a little girl around 10 or 11 with a program (called Mousercicio) to help learn how to use a mouse in the classes we´ve been teaching, and I helped her sound out the words she had to read because she couldn´t get by with her reading knowledge at all. By the end she gave me a huge hug, probably for not yelling at her! And now when I´m walking to my classes in the different neighborhoods or just to a friend´s house, I´ll hear all these little voices yelling, "Hola, Rebecca!" It only takes a few kids to know your name before all the kids they hang out with do too. Too bad I only know a few of their names!

Other greetings I get are more interesting. Here, everyone has their birth name (or more like 4: when they tell you their name, it goes on forever!) and most also have an apodo, or nickname. Usually it´s based on what they look like, so I´ve met people who are introduced by names like Flaco (Skinny), Cabezudo (Big head), Negrita (Little black girl -- this woman was around 70), and Gordo (Fatso). The standard for us Americanas here is Rubia (blond) even if you have black hair. So we hear lots of "Adios Rubia!" (Adios is like our Hey) walking down the street from men. Apparently the women here like compliments and expect men to comment on their beautiful appearance, so we also get lots of comments from guys as we walk past. My personal favorite that makes me laugh is when they ask what basically translates to "Can I help you walk?" or "Can I help you run?" even if they look like the laziest bum in the world! I sometimes wonder what they would do if I said sure. . . I have to say that when I have a bad day, the comments drive me nuts. But here, there´s no such thing as being in your own little world -- your life is everyone´s business, right on down to your neighbors that yell out to you as you go by. At least most are friendly, and if I ever need to really get away, there´s always the cow pastures!