The girl who cried blog − 30 March, 2008
So I remembered that I actually had my flash drive on me. Enjoy!
I played dominoes with an older Dominican man for a very long time this afternoon. I came away with some very important lessons:
-It takes humility to learn.
-It takes humility to teach.
-Winning all the time is very boring (not that I’d know from personal experience).
-You can’t control everything, despite your best-laid plans; sometimes you’ve just gotta play what you’ve got.
So, today, here’s what I’ve got:
Mama mia!
We’re starting to get all settled in here to the rhythm of El Seibo - we’ve even already checked out the town’s big hot spot: Club WOW, which, I’m sad to say, really wasn’t all that terribly WOW. It’s all good, though - we just went across the street to where there was a mass of people hanging out in front of Harolt’s superfarmacia, or superdeli, or whatever the heck the DJ/MC guy was calling it, and got our respective grooves on. We also managed to make a new friend! Well, sort of.
You see, what happened was that Cecilia, her host-sister, and I were the first to leave Club WOW for Harolt’s - we were hanging out with some other folks on one of the big, high-curbed traffic islands in the middle of the street, when all of the sudden we spotted this blond, touristy-looking guy dancing over by the DJ table with some Dominican women. We relocated to the sidewalk across the street, where we were gradually joined by the rest of the volunteers, to whom we pointed out this random varón (guy/dude) that we’d seen. So there we were, this huge group of like fifteen (more or less) white people in a sea of Dominicans, gawking at this other random gringo. Finally, our resident photographer, my friend Justin, just walks over to the guy, introduces himself, and brings him back over to meet the rest of the group. Turns out he’s actually Italian - go figure. I couldn’t hear much of the rest of what he said - heck, I couldn’t hear much of anything until we were a good three fourths of the way back to my house - but it was pretty cool to meet someone from a different different country.
The daily stuff
Today (aside from blogging, eating, domino-ing, and catching up with my host-sister Lorena), I am working on a presentation I have to give on Tuesday in Spanish. We’ve been working on how to conduct diagnostics on a community, using labs around El Seibo to practice - my friends Karina, Trisha, and I have been working in the lab at the liceo (high school - liceo secundario). The presentations are basically to consist of some aspect(s) of our findings during our diagnostics, so I’m just going over three of the major issues with the lab that I feel could (and should) be addressed - namely that, in the class we attended, there were 9 functioning computers between 33 students, 33 students were actually supposed to be 53 students, and the teaching consisted of computer terms being read and defined from a list, without the students basically ever touching a computer. Sad day.
Our day-to-day schedule here is a lot more fluid than the one back at Entrena - Ann (our trainer) and Andres (our other trainer, who doesn’t speak English) tend to call sessions half an hour later than written on the schedule (fine by us, of course) and my Spanish class tends to be rather sporadic. The people leftover from the three advanced groups at Entrena just got lumped together in one large, generally advanced group, which our teacher Juan further broke down into two groups that now alternate meetings. We’ve a presentation to give in that class next week as well - we’ve been practicing interviewing people on the street about random things - our group is presenting its findings about domestic violence against women, and the other group, I believe, is presenting on juvenile delinquence. Pretty interesting stuff - and good practice getting over the awkwardness of interviewing unknown people in preparation for the real thing.
Mi familia nueva and the traveler’s suitcase
I think adjusting to a new family is happening more quickly this time around, now that I’ve had the experience once already. I’m starting to get comfortable here and to develop a bit of a routine. I’ve also mostly figured out who actually lives in my house, though I’m still working on getting to know them.
My doña is a very easy-going woman in her mid-late forties whose name is Daisy, which I think is great. Though she knows quite a bit of English, she didn’t actually realize that daisy is the English name of the “margarita” (Spanish for “daisy”) until I mentioned in conversation that I liked her name because it was the name of one of my favorite flowers. She’s already pretty much wholeheartedly accepted me as one of her daughters :^) - earlier today, when I was playing dominoes, she came into the room, and stroked my hair, saying, “ya estás como una hija nueva - mi’ja gordita, blanca, y linda.” Which translated, means, “you are already like a new daughter - my fat, white, pretty daughter.”
A brief digression here, about how appearances are perceived in the Dominican Republic, because it is worth mentioning twice, if I’ve written about it before: this is the country in which one judges a traveler by his suitcase - “conoces al pasajero por su maleta” - but where the identification of certain less-than-favorable physical traits is generally not meant to be insulting. That’s why, although it sounds weird to hear of my host-mom telling me I’m fat, she actually means it in something more like terms of endearment. Almost everyone in the DR has an apodo (nickname) and many of them are things most of us wouldn’t have dared to call anyone else past the third grade, like “gordita” (fatty), “flaca” (skinny), and “negrita” (blacky). The latter is especially touchy here in the Dominican Republic because of the deep resentment and prejudice that exists against Haitians (long history there). Dominicans are “indio” (Indian - although the native Tainos were all but wiped out ages ago) - “indio claro” (lighter skinned), “indio medio” (medium skinned), and “indio oscuro” (dark skinned) - but never “black.” Haitians are “black.” It’s ironic, because every other physical descriptor Dominicans use, including (what we perceive as) the more negative ones, are simply meant as physical descriptors, without some sort of judgment (good or bad) attached. Therefore, I can be my doña’s fat, white, pretty daughter without contradiction.
According to the sheet of information I was given about my family, Aneyi is one of Daisy’s sobrinas (nieces), in her early thirties. From what I can tell, she actually studied English for quite some time - 12 years, I think, and she’s pretty good at it - though it’s been a while and she’s forgotten some. So she likes to practice some of what she knows with me and I teach her new words in English while she’s constantly teaching me new words in Spanish. One of her favorites is telling me (in English) that everyone is crazy. I agree.
Lorena, my host-sister, turned twenty earlier this month - it’s really fun to have someone close to my age to hang out with, especially since where I live is kind of isolated from the rest of the volunteers, almost all of whom are neighbors with each other. Friday afternoon, she made ginger tea (she’s a fantastic cook - she, Daisy, and Aneyi are all great cooks, actually) and we sat around in the kitchen looking at the photos of friends, family, etc. that I’d brought from home and talking about life, relationships, physical appearances, and everything. After we went through the usual, “so did you leave a novio behind in the states?” “no” “why not?” “nobody’s interested in me, I’ve been single for five years” “but why? you’re so linda, etc.” “I don’t know, I’m fat, I’m whatever, etc.” conversation, she said something really wise that I want to remember.
She told me, “no matter where I go, I remember that there are people skinnier than me, and there are people fatter than me. There are people prettier than me, there are people uglier than me. There are people richer than me, people poorer than me, people taller than me, people shorter than me. There are all kinds of people in the world and, no matter who I’m with - even if there’s someone prettier - I tell myself that I’m the prettiest girl there, because believing it makes it true.” I realize that everyone’s been given this advice (or given me this advice) at one point or another, but the way she said it really resonated with me.
Aside from these three that I’ve been getting to know, there are two fifteen-year-old girls who live in the house: Karina, who is the “hija de crianza” I mentioned in a previous entry and who I don’t see a whole lot, and Jenny, who is another of Daisy’s sobrinas (according to my sheet of paper) with a wonderfully snappy sense of humor. Also living here are six-or-seven-year-old Julian (Aneyi’s son) and seven-or-eight-year-old Adoni (who I think is Daisy’s son - still not sure). Juli’s adorable, but a little shy, so he and I are just starting to get to know each other. Adoni, on the other hand, is a bundle of (sometimes malapropriated) energy.
A couple of days ago, Lorena caught him cutting up part of his mother’s comforter with a little razor blade - I felt sorry for the kid, though, even though he’s old enough to know better, because he caught serious hell at least four times between Lorena, Aneyi, Daisy, and Rolando, with whom I was playing dominoes (I think he lives here, because he’s here all the time, but he’s not on my sheet and I’m not sure of his relation - I think he may be Daisy’s husband). Most of the time, however, he’s a fun, relatively well-behaved kid. One of the first days I was here, we bounced around the kitchen doing different “dances,” like the “baile de girafe” (dance of the giraffe), the “baile de tiburón” (dance of the shark), the “baile de pared” (dance of the wall), the “baile de codos” (the elbow dance), and - my personal favorite - “el baile de la cucaracha muerta” (dance of the dead cockroach), among many (MANY) others. By the end of at least an hour, I decided that the grand finale would be the “baile de sueño” (the dance of sleep), which I insisted differed from the “baile de suelo” (dance of the floor), although it looks about the same. At the time, I was also doing a pretty earnest “baile de suda” (dance of sweat), so I figured I could get away with it.
Other than the above-mentioned folks, there are always people wandering in and out of my house, part of which is Daisy’s little clothes store. It’s kind of entertaining, actually, because when I’m not out for a walk, at training, or hanging out with friends, I’m usually hanging somewhere around the house and people are always a little surprised to see an American there. So I sometimes get to talk about the Peace Corps and about Nebraska.
Miscellaney
Juana went back to Santo Domingo for the weekend - she comes back tomorrow (Monday) - so I’ve been falling behind on our novelas. I went for a nice walk around the neighborhood yesterday afternoon - visited the internet cafe briefly, went on a sadly fruitless search for Q-tips in three colmados and a farmacia (pharmacy), sat in the park and read for a while, watched some guys playing basketball for a while, got pleasantly lost in the neighboring barrio for a while, and realized I’d accidentally found my street when I happened upon a small white house and a little store with a green awning that looked suspiciously like my small white house and little store with a green awning. I also saw the most adorable, teeny-tiny little kitten - it seriously fit into the palm of my hand. It was so cute! Lisette - one of the two PCMOs (Peace Corps Medical Officers - Borianna is the other) - is the contact person for any PCV wanting a pet. I already told her that I am *so* into getting a cat when I move out on my own.
Earlier this evening, I went over to my friend Stephanie’s house to “study for our test tomorrow,” meaning that a bunch of us - including Claribel and Juan, a couple of the language facilitators that are our age - got together to play dominoes and to watch episodes of “The Office” (freaking hilarious) projected onto the wall of the garage. Good times. Great oldies. KGOR.
Bugs!
I’m adding this as a further note of interest the morning after - this morning, when I woke up, one of the first things I saw was a HUGE cockroach perched on my suitcase. Remember those giant hissing Madagascar cockroaches you maybe had in seventh grade science? FIRST COUSINS. Thing was *huge* - but it scurried away under my door when I gingerly poked my foot outside the safety zone of my mosquitero and tapped the far side of the suitcase to scare it away (I happened upon it about twenty minutes later as a smashed pile of cockroach parts on the kitchen floor).
THEN, right after the cockroach scurried away, I noticed the GIANT SPIDER on the wall above my bed. Including legs - of which, for some reason, it only has five - its circumfrence is about the same size as the palm of my hand. Earlier yesterday afternoon - in a continued series of efforts to postpone actually writing my presentation - I went spider-hunting. For me, spider-hunting generally seems to take the form of me perched on my bed as far away as I can get from the little bugger while still being able to reach, armed with an umbrella and my dominoes box, in which I was trying to trap him so I could dump him outside. The expedition, however, was promptly called off upon its valiant leader’s (my) realization that the aforementioned little bugger is, in fact, still very much alive. So rather than evict him, Juana and I decided to name him Nícolas, after one of the characters in our novelas, and he’s been living in my habitación (room) ever since. I really want to ask him what happened to his other three legs, but - even though there don’t seem to be *any* taboo questions here in the DR - I don’t want to cause him any undue personal anguish.
It’s funny, though; while I was teetering on my bed armed with naught but an umbrella and a prayer (mostly that I wouldn’t end up with a million bites or a giant spider tangled in my hair), all I could think about was the “you knew you were really in the Peace Corps when...” question on the COS (close of service) survey in the PCDR’s semiannual periodical, the Gringo Grita. So I’m *really* in the Peace Corps. I have a five-legged spider named Nícolas for a roommate. And I’m okay with that. I’ve arrived.
Anyhoo, that’s pretty much “que hay de nuevo” (what’s new). I really ought to quit procrastinating and get my butt moving on finishing that presentation.
So chao for now from your favorite fat, white, pretty Dominican!
In lieu of interesting facts, I simply recommend the book “All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten,” by Robert Fulghum - it is very much worth reading.
