Blood blisters. That's the next step in the "it will get worse before it gets better" healing process. My skin on my hands is very tender. Bumping my fingers against something, or accidentally scraping them results in a blood blister. Anywhere else on my body and this isn't an issue, but think about how much hands are almost always being used. I have no choice. No pictures this time, I think you get the point.
This year marked my first ever Thanksgiving outside of New England. The Caribbean isn't a bad replacement. After work on Thursday, the executive director of the organization hosted about thirty people at her house and cooked a genuine Thanksgiving dinner. We all had to write on a card what we were thankful for. Some said family, friends, and Obama as president. Mine said my hands. The food was great. Turkey's good. I really like turkey. I wouldn't have minded providing a certain chicken for dinner to change things up though. Let me explain.
A few posts ago I mentioned (and had video of) the constant noise going on in my neighborhood. The noise pollution is incredibly between people yelling, music, and motorcycles. I've learned to sleep through anything, even the way-too-loud avocado man who's out yelling stuff from his stand just next to my apartment by six in the morning.
Last weekend, just before bed, I noticed a peculiar sound coming from my back window. It sounded like a dying animal of some kind. The noise it made was most like a rooster I guess, but it definitely wasn't the stereotypical and very familiar "cock-a-doodle-doo" that I always hear here. Plus, it was like midnight. That's not the normal time for a rooster to be making noise.
Cue mid-week. The noise was back and obnoxiously loud. I woke up, which I don't do, not from noise, and looked at my clock. 4:30am. What? The sun's not up until almost 7 here. This noise sounded like it was coming from INSIDE my room (I checked, it wasn't).
I started talking about this weird, still unconfirmed animal sound at work. My next door neighbor Adriana confirmed hearing the noise too, and that it was definitely a rooster. Apparently roosters sleep in trees too. I didn't know that. So that puts this rooster's sound trajectory much more in line with our third floor windows (as opposed to being on the ground). This rooster is living in a tree directly behind my apartment building. Thursday morning I was woken up again, so did my neighbor.
We needed a plan. After brainstorming ideas ranging from firing pebbles at the chicken in the hopes that it would up and leave to getting a garbage bag, grabbing the rooster, and giving it to one of our friends with a motorbike so that it can be relocated. My idea was to eat it for "Dominican Thanksgiving."
Okay, let's be honest. I have no idea how to properly kill (although I could use that awkward method used for turkeys in that Sarah Palin interview), de-feather, gut, cook, and serve a real life chicken. Thursday came and went. But Friday morning when I was woken up at the earliest time yet, I grabbed my camera and hit record. So, below is a link to YouTube with the video. Nothing astounding, just to get a sense of how loud this animal was. The best part is that a motorbike drive by at the same time, and it sounds very faint compared to the rooster (and trust me, the noise of those engines are not faint). I like how the rooster noises just get louder and louder as it goes. And no, there's no solution to this problem yet.
Listen here: Rooster
I went swimming for the first time today since October. So yeah, it's nice to be able to do normal things again.
_______________________
As an aside for anyone who hasn't caught up with me outside of this blog. My work here in the Dominican Republic is done in two weeks. I will be traveling around the country for a week before heading home for good a week or so before Christmas, and I will be living and working in the United States come January. I still have a bunch of stories that I haven't told and haven't had time to tell. Hopefully I can put them together over the next few weeks.
Saturday, November 29, 2008
Sunday, November 16, 2008
The Healing Process
If you don't want any details, and there aren't too many...skip this post.
When I woke up the air mattress was completely deflated. The gauze around my finger was completely yellow and completely soaked. Tissue fluid. I know all about it from the half dozen or so serious raspberries I've gotten on my legs from playing softball at Seton Hall and the Cape.
Over the course of the next few days, as I changed gauze, it repeatedly would become soaked with tissue fluid escaping the broken blister on my index finger. Meanwhile, my other fingers began to start their healing process. My left index finger blistered a little, my left thumb blistered a lot while fingers on my right hand just remained bright red, which is good, less severe.
The good news is I ended up getting three days off from work. Three extremely boring days of learning to do everything with my ring and pinky fingers on each hand.
By Saturday, still leaking tissue fluid, my dad ordered me to perform minor surgery on my hand. I needed to cut off any dead tissue that could be cut off. I can now say that I've been eaten by ants. As I removed each piece of skin I put it on my counter as I continued, trying to get it all out of the way. By the time I looked down dozens of small ants covered the dead skin on the counter. That was gross. What was underneath the dead skin was much more gross.
Bacitracin and wrap. That was the process.
Traumatized, I went to the beach for the first time in a while just to sit. The next thing I knew I was participating in happy hour at one of the bars. After going home to eat dinner, I decided it was best if I just went out and tried to act normal again. Cold drinks would certainly feel good on my hand.
One of the hole in the wall places here in Cabarete is called Blue Bar, well because it's blue. It's not on the beach, but it about a minute walk off the beach and across the street. Very few people know of it/how cheap its drinks are. Now Blue Bar also happens to have a "challenge." Drink 8 of their cuba libres (rum and cokes) in one night and you get your name on the wall. Now these are not your average American drinks. Think a good sized styrofoam cup, then 4/5 rum, the rest coke. Now that's a challenge. I decided to try it.
Last Monday was a national holiday. No school. Sweet. So the organization took us to a German owned Thai restaurant with a pool and a dog named Ganja (yeah, no one could keep a straight face when the Arnold Schwarzenneger sounding guy told us). So I got to be the boring non-swimmer while everyone else had a blast. Great timing. At least the food was amazing (see that mom? I'll even eat Thai food now).
The rest of the week went like this:
Tuesday - everyone had questions about my hands
Wednesday - I stopped leaking tissue fluid
Thursday - the blister on my thumb broke...during class...while I was writing on the board
Friday - The rest of my bad bad right index finger looks like the finger of a dead person. Pale, pale, pale, and becoming very loose. As it starts to come off in the shower, I peel the rest off. I now have a bright red finger that looks worse than anything before it, but is actually much better off. It will, like my other fingers, start to lighten in color and become my skin.
For now it's still incredibly disgusting and raw.
***Obligatory picture warning***
The progression of one of my burns...with a few other pictures thrown in.
This is the beginning of my new finger.
And yeah, I completed it.
When I woke up the air mattress was completely deflated. The gauze around my finger was completely yellow and completely soaked. Tissue fluid. I know all about it from the half dozen or so serious raspberries I've gotten on my legs from playing softball at Seton Hall and the Cape.
Over the course of the next few days, as I changed gauze, it repeatedly would become soaked with tissue fluid escaping the broken blister on my index finger. Meanwhile, my other fingers began to start their healing process. My left index finger blistered a little, my left thumb blistered a lot while fingers on my right hand just remained bright red, which is good, less severe.
The good news is I ended up getting three days off from work. Three extremely boring days of learning to do everything with my ring and pinky fingers on each hand.
By Saturday, still leaking tissue fluid, my dad ordered me to perform minor surgery on my hand. I needed to cut off any dead tissue that could be cut off. I can now say that I've been eaten by ants. As I removed each piece of skin I put it on my counter as I continued, trying to get it all out of the way. By the time I looked down dozens of small ants covered the dead skin on the counter. That was gross. What was underneath the dead skin was much more gross.
Bacitracin and wrap. That was the process.
Traumatized, I went to the beach for the first time in a while just to sit. The next thing I knew I was participating in happy hour at one of the bars. After going home to eat dinner, I decided it was best if I just went out and tried to act normal again. Cold drinks would certainly feel good on my hand.
One of the hole in the wall places here in Cabarete is called Blue Bar, well because it's blue. It's not on the beach, but it about a minute walk off the beach and across the street. Very few people know of it/how cheap its drinks are. Now Blue Bar also happens to have a "challenge." Drink 8 of their cuba libres (rum and cokes) in one night and you get your name on the wall. Now these are not your average American drinks. Think a good sized styrofoam cup, then 4/5 rum, the rest coke. Now that's a challenge. I decided to try it.
Last Monday was a national holiday. No school. Sweet. So the organization took us to a German owned Thai restaurant with a pool and a dog named Ganja (yeah, no one could keep a straight face when the Arnold Schwarzenneger sounding guy told us). So I got to be the boring non-swimmer while everyone else had a blast. Great timing. At least the food was amazing (see that mom? I'll even eat Thai food now).
The rest of the week went like this:
Tuesday - everyone had questions about my hands
Wednesday - I stopped leaking tissue fluid
Thursday - the blister on my thumb broke...during class...while I was writing on the board
Friday - The rest of my bad bad right index finger looks like the finger of a dead person. Pale, pale, pale, and becoming very loose. As it starts to come off in the shower, I peel the rest off. I now have a bright red finger that looks worse than anything before it, but is actually much better off. It will, like my other fingers, start to lighten in color and become my skin.
For now it's still incredibly disgusting and raw.
***Obligatory picture warning***
The progression of one of my burns...with a few other pictures thrown in.
This is the beginning of my new finger.
And yeah, I completed it.
Saturday, November 15, 2008
Full Finger Functionality
I almost have it. My right index finger is still maybe a week away from being totally useful, and my left thumb still has a patch of raw skin, making me hit the spacebar with a different finger.
The weekend before election night I was hanging laundry on my balcony when a frog casually leaped into my apartment and hid behind some furniture. I couldn’t find it. The next day I came home and found it dead on my bedroom floor. Poor frog asphyxiated itself on the dust under my bed.
I swept it into a dustpan, into a plastic bag, and out into the trash. I joked that I hoped I wouldn’t get any warts on my hands from nearly handling it. A few days later my hands had disgusting, liquid filled bubbles on it. And no, the warts never came.
Election night was a pretty memorable night for a lot of people. Americans turned out in huge numbers and made history by electing the first mixed race president. Some people held watch parties, thousands went to Grant Park in Chicago in anticipation of Obama’s victory speech. It was a momentous and memorable night for a lot of people. It was a memorable night for me too, only, from what I remember, I don’t remember a heck of a lot about the presidential election.
Just before seven that Tuesday evening a half dozen or so volunteers descended on the air conditioned/cabled TVed/guaranteed electricitied apartment of one of the organization’s staff members. We all made different food, or in my case were planning to there. I have become a sort of expert in making tostones. Tostones are plaintains, cut, fried in oil, squished into a patty, and then fried again. How could I not love something that’s fried twice? It’s a finger food and I eat them with ketchup, so I guess they’re a little like french fries. With nine plaintains in tow, I went to work making dozens of tostones. I had basically finished just as the first results were coming in from Indiana (remember we’re an hour ahead now).
I turned off the stove, grabbed a few tostones and checked out what was happening on CNN. I remember it was something like 51% McCain, 48% Obama with few precincts reporting. That was probably the only percentage I saw until Wednesday morning. These few minutes with the stove off may have saved me from something much worse, or it may have really made no difference, who knows.
The room became a little smoky as the fan above the stove did little to suck up smoke coming from the pan of oil still sitting on the stove. Weird, I remember thinking to myself, it never smoked like that the almost two dozen times I’d made tostones before. I decided to move the pan to the back burner, directly underneath the fan. I grabbed a towel for my hand and went to grab the pan.
This is where stuff gets weird. Against the direction that I was moving it, the pan somehow became unbalanced and came crashing down towards me off the front of the stove.
What’s your instinctual reaction anytime you see something falling? Exactly. Terrible idea.
“Oh sh-t.” That was the only thing I said out loud, quietly to myself, as the hot oil came cascading down over my hands. “My hands are going to be messed up for the rest of my life” was my first inward thought.
Bang!
The pan hit the floor and caught the attention of everyone in the room. In a blurred instant I reacted by putting my hands under the cold water of the faucet. Three people were immediately by my side to check on me. I stood there, hands under the water, quietly wondering how bad the damage was going to be. After a few minutes I tried inching part of my hands out from under the water. An excruciating sensation that is comparable to…well nothing, overtook me. The hand went right back under the water.
I stood longer, this time wondering to myself what other weird accidents could happen to me. At the end of September a broken glass (like glass of water) that I used as a candleholder sliced open my wrist, almost directly above that main artery where you take your pulse, and in the same direction of the artery. I had never been so scared in my life, bleeding profusely, I eventually got it to stop, and it turns out it wasn’t that deep. But I do have an inch long scar on my wrist. Great.
I knew this accident wouldn’t kill me, but what would it do to me. One of the volunteers who lived in southeastern Utah for the last few years told, and is a certified wilderness first responder or something like that (and I feel like anyone living there would be by default) me that blisters are bad, we don’t want blisters to form. Ten minutes under the faucet and I saw none. Maybe it’s not so bad. Then I went to bend my right index finger again and I saw it. A blister, around my whole finger, but not too too big.
It would grow. And later on it would be joined by some blister friends.
I was ready to remove my hands from the water. I did. It hurt. I walked home, pale, light headed, shaking my hands constantly as though I were shaking off water after washing them. Anything to take my mind off the pain. I got to my sister’s apartment. Ohio was called for Obama. I knew for sure he’d win.
I talked to my dad on the phone. He told me the medical steps to take from that point on. I am lucky enough to never have been to a hospital for a medical reason in my life. I wanted to, and did, keep that streak going. We took pictures of my hands and e-mailed them to him. By now the blister on my index finger was huge, my finger looked like a pig in a blanket. 1,000 mg of ibuprofen later I was asleep on an air mattress in front of my sister’s TV.
Wild cheering. I woke up. I felt pretty good, that ibuprofen stuff works. Obama won, they showed crowds going wild all over the country. I check a clock. Midnight.
McCain gives his concession speech. I’m really glad that he turned back into a human. I really like him when he’s human and not the awkward robot he was on the campaign trail.
I pass out again.
I wake up. Something is trickling down my face. What the heck is that? I turn on a light and go by the sink. Part of the blanket of the pig in a blanket broke. I look back at my pillow. There’s a huge stain is on it. There’s still plenty of fluid inside too. I wrap my finger. I look at my other fingers. Hey they don't look bad at all. Well, that assumption turned out to be wrong too. I catch a re-run of Obama’s speech on CNN (it’s 4am), and pass out. The healing process has just begun.
Considering this entry just took forever to type: To be continued.
************Warning************
Over the next few entries I will be posting pictures of my hands to coincide with the entry. Some might think they look wimpy, some might not mind, and some might lose their lunch. Just be warned. If you don't want to see it, don't scroll down.
The weekend before election night I was hanging laundry on my balcony when a frog casually leaped into my apartment and hid behind some furniture. I couldn’t find it. The next day I came home and found it dead on my bedroom floor. Poor frog asphyxiated itself on the dust under my bed.
I swept it into a dustpan, into a plastic bag, and out into the trash. I joked that I hoped I wouldn’t get any warts on my hands from nearly handling it. A few days later my hands had disgusting, liquid filled bubbles on it. And no, the warts never came.
Election night was a pretty memorable night for a lot of people. Americans turned out in huge numbers and made history by electing the first mixed race president. Some people held watch parties, thousands went to Grant Park in Chicago in anticipation of Obama’s victory speech. It was a momentous and memorable night for a lot of people. It was a memorable night for me too, only, from what I remember, I don’t remember a heck of a lot about the presidential election.
Just before seven that Tuesday evening a half dozen or so volunteers descended on the air conditioned/cabled TVed/guaranteed electricitied apartment of one of the organization’s staff members. We all made different food, or in my case were planning to there. I have become a sort of expert in making tostones. Tostones are plaintains, cut, fried in oil, squished into a patty, and then fried again. How could I not love something that’s fried twice? It’s a finger food and I eat them with ketchup, so I guess they’re a little like french fries. With nine plaintains in tow, I went to work making dozens of tostones. I had basically finished just as the first results were coming in from Indiana (remember we’re an hour ahead now).
I turned off the stove, grabbed a few tostones and checked out what was happening on CNN. I remember it was something like 51% McCain, 48% Obama with few precincts reporting. That was probably the only percentage I saw until Wednesday morning. These few minutes with the stove off may have saved me from something much worse, or it may have really made no difference, who knows.
The room became a little smoky as the fan above the stove did little to suck up smoke coming from the pan of oil still sitting on the stove. Weird, I remember thinking to myself, it never smoked like that the almost two dozen times I’d made tostones before. I decided to move the pan to the back burner, directly underneath the fan. I grabbed a towel for my hand and went to grab the pan.
This is where stuff gets weird. Against the direction that I was moving it, the pan somehow became unbalanced and came crashing down towards me off the front of the stove.
What’s your instinctual reaction anytime you see something falling? Exactly. Terrible idea.
“Oh sh-t.” That was the only thing I said out loud, quietly to myself, as the hot oil came cascading down over my hands. “My hands are going to be messed up for the rest of my life” was my first inward thought.
Bang!
The pan hit the floor and caught the attention of everyone in the room. In a blurred instant I reacted by putting my hands under the cold water of the faucet. Three people were immediately by my side to check on me. I stood there, hands under the water, quietly wondering how bad the damage was going to be. After a few minutes I tried inching part of my hands out from under the water. An excruciating sensation that is comparable to…well nothing, overtook me. The hand went right back under the water.
I stood longer, this time wondering to myself what other weird accidents could happen to me. At the end of September a broken glass (like glass of water) that I used as a candleholder sliced open my wrist, almost directly above that main artery where you take your pulse, and in the same direction of the artery. I had never been so scared in my life, bleeding profusely, I eventually got it to stop, and it turns out it wasn’t that deep. But I do have an inch long scar on my wrist. Great.
I knew this accident wouldn’t kill me, but what would it do to me. One of the volunteers who lived in southeastern Utah for the last few years told, and is a certified wilderness first responder or something like that (and I feel like anyone living there would be by default) me that blisters are bad, we don’t want blisters to form. Ten minutes under the faucet and I saw none. Maybe it’s not so bad. Then I went to bend my right index finger again and I saw it. A blister, around my whole finger, but not too too big.
It would grow. And later on it would be joined by some blister friends.
I was ready to remove my hands from the water. I did. It hurt. I walked home, pale, light headed, shaking my hands constantly as though I were shaking off water after washing them. Anything to take my mind off the pain. I got to my sister’s apartment. Ohio was called for Obama. I knew for sure he’d win.
I talked to my dad on the phone. He told me the medical steps to take from that point on. I am lucky enough to never have been to a hospital for a medical reason in my life. I wanted to, and did, keep that streak going. We took pictures of my hands and e-mailed them to him. By now the blister on my index finger was huge, my finger looked like a pig in a blanket. 1,000 mg of ibuprofen later I was asleep on an air mattress in front of my sister’s TV.
Wild cheering. I woke up. I felt pretty good, that ibuprofen stuff works. Obama won, they showed crowds going wild all over the country. I check a clock. Midnight.
McCain gives his concession speech. I’m really glad that he turned back into a human. I really like him when he’s human and not the awkward robot he was on the campaign trail.
I pass out again.
I wake up. Something is trickling down my face. What the heck is that? I turn on a light and go by the sink. Part of the blanket of the pig in a blanket broke. I look back at my pillow. There’s a huge stain is on it. There’s still plenty of fluid inside too. I wrap my finger. I look at my other fingers. Hey they don't look bad at all. Well, that assumption turned out to be wrong too. I catch a re-run of Obama’s speech on CNN (it’s 4am), and pass out. The healing process has just begun.
Considering this entry just took forever to type: To be continued.
************Warning************
Over the next few entries I will be posting pictures of my hands to coincide with the entry. Some might think they look wimpy, some might not mind, and some might lose their lunch. Just be warned. If you don't want to see it, don't scroll down.
Sunday, November 2, 2008
Little News and Some Notes
Work has been keeping me busy, so I figured I'd take the opportunity to check in with everyone. On Wednesday afternoon it became nearly impossible to conduct classes in my classroom. A road was being built right outside (meaning they were laying down rocks over the already existing dirt, and then flattening it to the best of their ability). Huge Catepillar and JCB equipment went back and forth over about a 50 yard span all afternoon, about 20 yards of which were directly outside the windows of my classroom. While this was by far the most difficult-to -deal-with distraction that has taken place directly outside the classroom (to the point where it's louder than normal human talking), it reminded me of the many that occur on a day-to-day basis, including:
Donkeys braying (this is by far the most common and the most funny. By the way, donkey in Spanish, as many of you already know, is a burro. Keeping in mind that in Spanish "ito" is added to names to indicate that someone is small (e.g. Pablito, Juanito), I have therefore declared that baby donkeys are called burritos. Keep that in mind the next time you're at Taco Bell).
Horses neighing.
Roosters doing whatever they do.
Sidenote: If anyone has ever played the video game The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, I'm fairly sure that they came to my neighborhood here to record the animal sounds for that game.
Haitian street fights.
Motorbikes.
Montessori pre-school students (we have one upstairs in the school) inexplicably being allowed to play drums outside.
High intensity games of Dominoes (Dominoes here is more hardcore than hockey in Canada and David Hasselhoff in Germany combined).
I'm sure there's more, I just can't think of them.
Other than that there are few changes in my life over the last few weeks. I am now teaching a writing class. I am also working on a census that will blow the census done by the organization in August out of the water. We've basically mapped every single house in the entire town, and can attribute each set of data to each house specifically. Plus we changed the questions so stuff that are more applicable to our organizational goals. I'll have plenty of interesting numbers to crunch over the next few weeks or so before I come out with my report. That's my daily job in the morning before teaching in the afternoon. I'll have to compile a post about the census with a few interesting stories.
Tuesday night we plan to go to a staff member's house who has a TV and constant electricity to watch the election results come in. I'm thinking about bringing a camera for some video documentation, but I still haven't decided yet. It will be a pretty partisan crowd; we're all twenty-something volunteers from the Northeast, Illinois, and California (who actually care about stuff like this: http://www.barackobama.com/issues/service/). I'm sure we'll (read: the two guys) make the night into some kind of drinking game, probably involving the word "electoral."
Other than that, I hope everyone is doing well. By the way, I am now an hour ahead of all of you on the east coast. I guess the Dominican Republic already has enough sunshine that they don't need to save daylight over the summer.
Donkeys braying (this is by far the most common and the most funny. By the way, donkey in Spanish, as many of you already know, is a burro. Keeping in mind that in Spanish "ito" is added to names to indicate that someone is small (e.g. Pablito, Juanito), I have therefore declared that baby donkeys are called burritos. Keep that in mind the next time you're at Taco Bell).
Horses neighing.
Roosters doing whatever they do.
Sidenote: If anyone has ever played the video game The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, I'm fairly sure that they came to my neighborhood here to record the animal sounds for that game.
Haitian street fights.
Motorbikes.
Montessori pre-school students (we have one upstairs in the school) inexplicably being allowed to play drums outside.
High intensity games of Dominoes (Dominoes here is more hardcore than hockey in Canada and David Hasselhoff in Germany combined).
I'm sure there's more, I just can't think of them.
Other than that there are few changes in my life over the last few weeks. I am now teaching a writing class. I am also working on a census that will blow the census done by the organization in August out of the water. We've basically mapped every single house in the entire town, and can attribute each set of data to each house specifically. Plus we changed the questions so stuff that are more applicable to our organizational goals. I'll have plenty of interesting numbers to crunch over the next few weeks or so before I come out with my report. That's my daily job in the morning before teaching in the afternoon. I'll have to compile a post about the census with a few interesting stories.
Tuesday night we plan to go to a staff member's house who has a TV and constant electricity to watch the election results come in. I'm thinking about bringing a camera for some video documentation, but I still haven't decided yet. It will be a pretty partisan crowd; we're all twenty-something volunteers from the Northeast, Illinois, and California (who actually care about stuff like this: http://www.barackobama.com/issues/service/). I'm sure we'll (read: the two guys) make the night into some kind of drinking game, probably involving the word "electoral."
Other than that, I hope everyone is doing well. By the way, I am now an hour ahead of all of you on the east coast. I guess the Dominican Republic already has enough sunshine that they don't need to save daylight over the summer.
Sunday, October 19, 2008
Suspendido
A video corresponds with this entry. Click here to see it (click on "watch in high quality" to read the small text in the video...and for a clearer picture).
________________________________________________
Saturday morning four of us headed up to Santiago, the Dominican Republic’s second largest city at just over a half million people, to go to a baseball game Saturday night. We have to catch the Caribe Tours bus from Sosua, a city about fifteen minutes away by guagua. The buses leave for Santiago, a two-hour trip southwest, every hour on the 20. We get to the bus station at 10:22. Oh well.
According to the girls the bus was freezing. I thought it was a pretty comfortable temperature. The seats on these buses are amazing. They recline really far back and are wicked comfortable. I was asleep within a few minutes. The next thing I knew I was in Santiago. Derek, as a former peace corps volunteer, knows of a place that gives a discount to volunteers, including us. For 250 pesos each a night we each have a bed and a place to drop our stuff. The place is run by what I think are Canadians, but we never verified that. Either way they’re really nice. Like “we have a church group meeting thing that comes here tomorrow morning at ten, feel free to participate” nice.
We headed out to eat at a Cuban restaurant (despite the scolding anti-recommendation from the lady who runs the not-quite hostel place where we were staying) that Derek knew about and had been to. The place was really, really nice. It’s what I assume nice Cuban places in Cuba are like, if the U.S. government would let me go there. It looks a little bit like every Cuban place that is shown in any movie ever. I was thinking I should go to Cuba in December from here. Is U.S. immigration really going to go through my whole passport to verify where I have and haven’t been once I get home? Maybe that’s a risk I’m not willing to take.
Anyway, there’s a nice Cuban gentlemen who runs the place. He at first gives us the menus that have really expensive (and based on the food I ate, very good) food. We ask for the menu that is economico. Basically, we wanted the cheaper stuff. We all order rice and beans and the best chicken I’ve had thus far in this country. Meanwhile, the Cuban guy was busy occasionally dancing to anything from Queen’s “Radio Ga-ga” to a Flock of Seagulls. I immediately think of the movie Eurotrip when they accidentally arrive in Bratislava and a native constantly brings up 80s things like Miami Vice and “Where’s the beef?” I begin to wonder if Cuba is somehow the same way, and if this is new music to this nice gentleman. After all, us Americans have forced them to use cars from the 50s, maybe pre-Pepsi commercial burned Michael Jackson is just arriving on the shores of Havana.
We eat. The Cuban man shakes all of our hands and we all tell him how great his food is. I’ll be going back there. Next stop for now though? Centro Leon.
Centro Leon is a brand new museum created by some rich family/guy. It’s the nicest building I’ve seen in this country. There are a lot of paintings in there that are cool, a lot that are creepy, and a lot that are creepier. I won’t delve into it too much because while this museum wasn’t boring, me describing it would be.
After Centro Leon it was time for the main course of the weekend. Baseball! Aguilas v. Licey. Aguilas are the team from Santiago. Licey is a team from Santo Domingo that is formerly from Santiago. Anyway, big rivalry/insert Sox-Yankees comparison here etc. We get to Estadio Cibao and scalpers try to sell us tickets for 300 pesos. The face value is 200. We are suddenly struck by this ingenious idea, let’s go to the ticket office! We bought the cheapest tickets possible for 200 pesos. The gates open “sometime around 7” the caged-in ticket lady tells us. It was a little over two hours before game time…we had some time to kill. We found a bar/colmado-esque place on the road behind the outfield bleachers (this would be the equivalent to Lansdowne St.). Fortunately, public drinking is encouraged in this country. This place was like a snack bar at a little league field (open air window, pretty small), except it really only sold beer. So, we took the beer and little plastic cups and headed over to the plastic chairs made available across the street. That’s where we spent the next two hours, with a brief ATM run throw in the middle.
Shortly before 8, we headed back to the gates at the stadium. There wasn’t a heck of a lot going on outside for a big stadium that was having an event. The gates were still closed.
“Suspendido,” some random guy says. Postponed. What why? It’s partly cloudy at worst, what is going on? “Una vaina.” A thing. Three peoples responses were “una vaina.” So right now we’re going off the information that the game was postponed because of “a thing.” Next we find out “una vaina adentro.” Okay, that clears up everything, a thing inside. Finally someone says “los torres.” The only time I’d ever heard that word is when it applied to someone’s last name. It turns out it means tower. Two light towers along the third base line were out (what is this, the Cape League? I think to myself), so even though the lighting on the field was still pretty much exceptional, no game. Sounds about right.
The front gate to the stadium was open; we went in to use the bathrooms. I walked to the seating area to look at the field. Like I said, the lighting was still pretty good. We asked when the game will be made up. Doubleheader tomorrow (sweet we could do that), no it will be on Wednesday, no on Thursday. No one really knows is what it comes down to.
Well, the Sox are playing Tampa in Game 6, let’s go to a bar/restaurant and watch it. First though, the next step was to sell our tickets. We already knew where to go, after haggling a little bit over prices before the game. One youngish looking guy tells us to give the tickets to him for free so that he can bring his mom to the game. Charming. Except that we weren’t born yesterday and this is the same guy who tried selling us tickets before the game. The best was the kids around the stadium. The kids were basically our guide. “Don’t listen to him he’s lying” one says. The kids have no reason to lie. And here, as I’ll get to, they’re like little adults.
Another guy we talked to went running all over the place in traffic to talk to what we assume is his partner. They want the tickets for 50 pesos apiece. Our original goal was to cut our losses and take 100 for each, so we are definitely not going below that. They already knew we can’t go to the game. They think they have us compromised. Derek starts by offering to sell for 150, immediately followed by my “we have friends here that we’re just going to give these tickets to if we don’t get the price we’re looking for.” It works like Jim and Dwight’s sales pitches on the Office. Except there’s no “Dunder Mifflin, this is Pam/big paper company putting someone on hold” phone call mixed in. We sell for 100 each. That’ll buy us a few rounds.
It turns out the crazy man who was risking his life to go talk to his partner actually had no affiliation with the guy. He demands a “regalito” for “finding” the guy who buys our tickets from us. Yeah right. Again, with a few kids as our advisors, we just ignore him. A few “coños” and some random Spanish gibberish that wasn’t understandable later he’s gone. But we suddenly have about ten kids surrounding us now. These are the go-getters. They’re trying to figure out a way to earn money from us. The original kid (from here on out “the hey you! kid”) is the only one that is remotely helpful. He kept calling Derek “hey you” and explained where the best places to go to watch the game are. He also explained that using a carro publico (cheap transportation) will be hard because the routes are confusing. A few other kids argue with him. They’re like little four-foot adults. So a taxi is the only option. Once hey you kid gets confirmation from us, he goes sprinting to find a taxi. The other nine boys fan out too, showing little initiative. Finally, with the “help” of hey you kid, we find a taxi right in front of us. The rest of the group swarmed the car looking for a peso or two. All I needed was some flashbulbs going off and I was a bona fide celebrity.
When asked where we wanted to go, Jessica, who is black but is often thought to be Dominican, says “donde se quedan los gringos.” He brings us to the center of town. Ever restaurant has the game on. He drops us off at one across the street from the “Jarro Café,” which shamelessly has the same brown guitar symbol as the real restaurant (if you aren’t picking up on it, say jarro, but mostly concentrate on trying to roll your R. Still nothing? Add a W to the end. Oh P.S., J’s in Spanish are pronounced like an H).
This place looks like a nice establishment. Lots of different kinds of food. We found a table directly in front of a huge screen of the game. 1-1. Not bad for this version of Josh Beckett. We eat, drink, I call Varitek’s home run (this can be vouched for). As we left, I realized, that unlike Cabarete where a restaurant like this would be almost twice as much in price and its patrons would be mostly white people, there are no other white people here. Everyone was pretty dressed up (like night club dressed up, not black tie dressed up). But everyone here is Dominican. This is where the mid-upper class Dominicans go to eat and drink. Coming from where I’m living here and what I’m used to, this is my first exposure to that environment. There’s a Porsche in the parking lot, some Mercedes drive by.
We are across the street from the Monumento de Santiago which, if you Google it, looks pretty sweet at night. This is my first time in one of the two big Dominican cities, I think to myself. It’s a breath of fresh air.
________________________________________________
Saturday morning four of us headed up to Santiago, the Dominican Republic’s second largest city at just over a half million people, to go to a baseball game Saturday night. We have to catch the Caribe Tours bus from Sosua, a city about fifteen minutes away by guagua. The buses leave for Santiago, a two-hour trip southwest, every hour on the 20. We get to the bus station at 10:22. Oh well.
According to the girls the bus was freezing. I thought it was a pretty comfortable temperature. The seats on these buses are amazing. They recline really far back and are wicked comfortable. I was asleep within a few minutes. The next thing I knew I was in Santiago. Derek, as a former peace corps volunteer, knows of a place that gives a discount to volunteers, including us. For 250 pesos each a night we each have a bed and a place to drop our stuff. The place is run by what I think are Canadians, but we never verified that. Either way they’re really nice. Like “we have a church group meeting thing that comes here tomorrow morning at ten, feel free to participate” nice.
We headed out to eat at a Cuban restaurant (despite the scolding anti-recommendation from the lady who runs the not-quite hostel place where we were staying) that Derek knew about and had been to. The place was really, really nice. It’s what I assume nice Cuban places in Cuba are like, if the U.S. government would let me go there. It looks a little bit like every Cuban place that is shown in any movie ever. I was thinking I should go to Cuba in December from here. Is U.S. immigration really going to go through my whole passport to verify where I have and haven’t been once I get home? Maybe that’s a risk I’m not willing to take.
Anyway, there’s a nice Cuban gentlemen who runs the place. He at first gives us the menus that have really expensive (and based on the food I ate, very good) food. We ask for the menu that is economico. Basically, we wanted the cheaper stuff. We all order rice and beans and the best chicken I’ve had thus far in this country. Meanwhile, the Cuban guy was busy occasionally dancing to anything from Queen’s “Radio Ga-ga” to a Flock of Seagulls. I immediately think of the movie Eurotrip when they accidentally arrive in Bratislava and a native constantly brings up 80s things like Miami Vice and “Where’s the beef?” I begin to wonder if Cuba is somehow the same way, and if this is new music to this nice gentleman. After all, us Americans have forced them to use cars from the 50s, maybe pre-Pepsi commercial burned Michael Jackson is just arriving on the shores of Havana.
We eat. The Cuban man shakes all of our hands and we all tell him how great his food is. I’ll be going back there. Next stop for now though? Centro Leon.
Centro Leon is a brand new museum created by some rich family/guy. It’s the nicest building I’ve seen in this country. There are a lot of paintings in there that are cool, a lot that are creepy, and a lot that are creepier. I won’t delve into it too much because while this museum wasn’t boring, me describing it would be.
After Centro Leon it was time for the main course of the weekend. Baseball! Aguilas v. Licey. Aguilas are the team from Santiago. Licey is a team from Santo Domingo that is formerly from Santiago. Anyway, big rivalry/insert Sox-Yankees comparison here etc. We get to Estadio Cibao and scalpers try to sell us tickets for 300 pesos. The face value is 200. We are suddenly struck by this ingenious idea, let’s go to the ticket office! We bought the cheapest tickets possible for 200 pesos. The gates open “sometime around 7” the caged-in ticket lady tells us. It was a little over two hours before game time…we had some time to kill. We found a bar/colmado-esque place on the road behind the outfield bleachers (this would be the equivalent to Lansdowne St.). Fortunately, public drinking is encouraged in this country. This place was like a snack bar at a little league field (open air window, pretty small), except it really only sold beer. So, we took the beer and little plastic cups and headed over to the plastic chairs made available across the street. That’s where we spent the next two hours, with a brief ATM run throw in the middle.
Shortly before 8, we headed back to the gates at the stadium. There wasn’t a heck of a lot going on outside for a big stadium that was having an event. The gates were still closed.
“Suspendido,” some random guy says. Postponed. What why? It’s partly cloudy at worst, what is going on? “Una vaina.” A thing. Three peoples responses were “una vaina.” So right now we’re going off the information that the game was postponed because of “a thing.” Next we find out “una vaina adentro.” Okay, that clears up everything, a thing inside. Finally someone says “los torres.” The only time I’d ever heard that word is when it applied to someone’s last name. It turns out it means tower. Two light towers along the third base line were out (what is this, the Cape League? I think to myself), so even though the lighting on the field was still pretty much exceptional, no game. Sounds about right.
The front gate to the stadium was open; we went in to use the bathrooms. I walked to the seating area to look at the field. Like I said, the lighting was still pretty good. We asked when the game will be made up. Doubleheader tomorrow (sweet we could do that), no it will be on Wednesday, no on Thursday. No one really knows is what it comes down to.
Well, the Sox are playing Tampa in Game 6, let’s go to a bar/restaurant and watch it. First though, the next step was to sell our tickets. We already knew where to go, after haggling a little bit over prices before the game. One youngish looking guy tells us to give the tickets to him for free so that he can bring his mom to the game. Charming. Except that we weren’t born yesterday and this is the same guy who tried selling us tickets before the game. The best was the kids around the stadium. The kids were basically our guide. “Don’t listen to him he’s lying” one says. The kids have no reason to lie. And here, as I’ll get to, they’re like little adults.
Another guy we talked to went running all over the place in traffic to talk to what we assume is his partner. They want the tickets for 50 pesos apiece. Our original goal was to cut our losses and take 100 for each, so we are definitely not going below that. They already knew we can’t go to the game. They think they have us compromised. Derek starts by offering to sell for 150, immediately followed by my “we have friends here that we’re just going to give these tickets to if we don’t get the price we’re looking for.” It works like Jim and Dwight’s sales pitches on the Office. Except there’s no “Dunder Mifflin, this is Pam/big paper company putting someone on hold” phone call mixed in. We sell for 100 each. That’ll buy us a few rounds.
It turns out the crazy man who was risking his life to go talk to his partner actually had no affiliation with the guy. He demands a “regalito” for “finding” the guy who buys our tickets from us. Yeah right. Again, with a few kids as our advisors, we just ignore him. A few “coños” and some random Spanish gibberish that wasn’t understandable later he’s gone. But we suddenly have about ten kids surrounding us now. These are the go-getters. They’re trying to figure out a way to earn money from us. The original kid (from here on out “the hey you! kid”) is the only one that is remotely helpful. He kept calling Derek “hey you” and explained where the best places to go to watch the game are. He also explained that using a carro publico (cheap transportation) will be hard because the routes are confusing. A few other kids argue with him. They’re like little four-foot adults. So a taxi is the only option. Once hey you kid gets confirmation from us, he goes sprinting to find a taxi. The other nine boys fan out too, showing little initiative. Finally, with the “help” of hey you kid, we find a taxi right in front of us. The rest of the group swarmed the car looking for a peso or two. All I needed was some flashbulbs going off and I was a bona fide celebrity.
When asked where we wanted to go, Jessica, who is black but is often thought to be Dominican, says “donde se quedan los gringos.” He brings us to the center of town. Ever restaurant has the game on. He drops us off at one across the street from the “Jarro Café,” which shamelessly has the same brown guitar symbol as the real restaurant (if you aren’t picking up on it, say jarro, but mostly concentrate on trying to roll your R. Still nothing? Add a W to the end. Oh P.S., J’s in Spanish are pronounced like an H).
This place looks like a nice establishment. Lots of different kinds of food. We found a table directly in front of a huge screen of the game. 1-1. Not bad for this version of Josh Beckett. We eat, drink, I call Varitek’s home run (this can be vouched for). As we left, I realized, that unlike Cabarete where a restaurant like this would be almost twice as much in price and its patrons would be mostly white people, there are no other white people here. Everyone was pretty dressed up (like night club dressed up, not black tie dressed up). But everyone here is Dominican. This is where the mid-upper class Dominicans go to eat and drink. Coming from where I’m living here and what I’m used to, this is my first exposure to that environment. There’s a Porsche in the parking lot, some Mercedes drive by.
We are across the street from the Monumento de Santiago which, if you Google it, looks pretty sweet at night. This is my first time in one of the two big Dominican cities, I think to myself. It’s a breath of fresh air.
Sunday, October 12, 2008
Realizing Reality
4:50 am. My dad wakes me up. “It’s 5.” I roll back over as soon as he leaves the room. It’s too early. I fall asleep for fifteen more minutes or so before I crawl out of bed.
5:04 am. I’m downstairs and look at the microwave. 5:04. He knew I’d go back to sleep.
5:40 am. The Mass Pike has way more traffic than I anticipated. It’s still a smooth ride into town.
5:55 am. We pass Fenway Park to our right. The lights are out. I realize the game just ended five hours ago. I was awake when it ended. I need to sleep.
6:45 am. Standing in line at Dunkin Donuts in the JetBlue terminal, I let a woman who is only ordering tea go ahead of me. The lady behind the counter is incredulous, thinking my sister, her boyfriend Derek, and I had been bullied by this tea lady. The three of the us and the tea lady start laughing hysterically when the woman behind the counter refuses to accept her order and keeps asking Derek “Who’s next? I know who’s next, who’s next?” as she waited in vain for one of us to step forward.
6:48 am. Sausage, egg and cheese on a croissant.
7:30 am. Another Monday, another plane.
9:15 am. JFK, no bag retrieval this time. It’s much easier leaving the States.
9:45 am. Tricia, my organization’s executive director, is on the same flight. The U.S. ambassador and some head honchos from USAID are coming to our school this week. She’ll be spending 48 hours in the country. She tells me I look skinny. I tell her how I’ve lost almost ten pounds since she saw me six weeks ago. I think I eat more in Cabarete, there’s just nowhere that caters to my dollar menu tendencies there.
11:15 am. We’ve been in the air since about an hour ago. It’s basically a DREAM Project chartered flight. September is the beginning of the down season on the Dominican north coast, and the empty seats prove it. I enjoy JetBlue’s satellite TV and pass out.
1:30 pm. I’m startled awake by the pilots announcement that we are making our final descent into Puerto Plata.
3:00 pm. The Callejon is under construction. For weeks huge concrete cylindrical prisms had been sitting on the side of the road. I had been adamant that they were sewers or something involving manholes. I had some doubters. Now I see that they are replacing some kind of pipe/drainage system on the road. I grin.
3:03 pm. There’s no access to my apartment from the usual road. Our taxi driver takes a detour down the next road. I learn how to get into my neighborhood by using back roads for the first time.
3:15 pm. One of the norms of volunteer travel is that when you’re in the States, you become a supplier. All of our bags are packed full of mostly random supplies. A printer, ink, toner, and baseball gloves. JetBlue only allows two bags at no more than 50 pounds each on flights to the Dominican Republic. All of our bags weighed 50 pounds. A few were 50.5. They didn’t mind I guess. My dad gets credit for getting this weight-conscious packing down to a science.
3:18 pm. I’ve sweated through my first shirt. Just when I had gotten used to the heat I’m right back at square one. I forget how loud my apartment is. It’s loud. To get an idea of how loud it is, click here (the music isn't from an apartment, trucks actually go around with speakers on the back).
7:01 pm. After a nap, I eat some pasta for dinner. My sister brought down a very small television in her suitcase. All of our apartments have a cable box, but no one has a TV, and they’re too expensive to buy in town.
7:03 pm. We are amazed that we get nearly 100 channels of cable. This had been sitting under our noses for the last two months. Most of the channels are in English, including New York’s CBS, NBC, ABC, and Fox. I still can’t watch The Office. It turns out I work with 10 girls who found out there’s a TV and Grey’s Anatomy will be on at 9 on Thursdays instead. We’re pretty spoiled now. I watch an E:60 piece about Ugueth Urbina's ongoing "ordeal"/prison sentence in Venezuela and a 13 year old girl who is kicked out of a boys league for being too good. I tell my sister I could beat her, she's only 6'1" and I have a 6'3" wingspan (plus in the footage her shot is still originating from her chest, instead of over her head, pssh). She gets offended.
8:36 pm. Red Sox v. Angels. I can’t believe I’m watching the Sox in my apartment complex. We change over to Monday Night Football during commercials. I didn’t realize Gus Frerotte is still employed.
10:00 pm. I come out of the bathroom and walk through the kitchen as an aerial view of Fenway is shown during a transition back from commercial. I pass Fenway Park on my right. The lights are on this time. I can tell it’s cold there. All the windows are open in the apartment and the ceiling fans are working hard to keep up with the heat. I’d like to tell Dane Cook that there are apparently all kinds of Octobers (and that he sucks /Chris Blake).
11ish pm. I’m struggling to stay awake. I’m peeved at Justin Masterson because I think the game’s going into extra innings. Jed Lowrie hits a grounder. I think it’s hit too weakly to be anything substantial. I’m wrong. I let out a sigh of relief. I go home and go to bed. I think of the flight attendant from my flight home a week before. Welcome back to reality.
5:04 am. I’m downstairs and look at the microwave. 5:04. He knew I’d go back to sleep.
5:40 am. The Mass Pike has way more traffic than I anticipated. It’s still a smooth ride into town.
5:55 am. We pass Fenway Park to our right. The lights are out. I realize the game just ended five hours ago. I was awake when it ended. I need to sleep.
6:45 am. Standing in line at Dunkin Donuts in the JetBlue terminal, I let a woman who is only ordering tea go ahead of me. The lady behind the counter is incredulous, thinking my sister, her boyfriend Derek, and I had been bullied by this tea lady. The three of the us and the tea lady start laughing hysterically when the woman behind the counter refuses to accept her order and keeps asking Derek “Who’s next? I know who’s next, who’s next?” as she waited in vain for one of us to step forward.
6:48 am. Sausage, egg and cheese on a croissant.
7:30 am. Another Monday, another plane.
9:15 am. JFK, no bag retrieval this time. It’s much easier leaving the States.
9:45 am. Tricia, my organization’s executive director, is on the same flight. The U.S. ambassador and some head honchos from USAID are coming to our school this week. She’ll be spending 48 hours in the country. She tells me I look skinny. I tell her how I’ve lost almost ten pounds since she saw me six weeks ago. I think I eat more in Cabarete, there’s just nowhere that caters to my dollar menu tendencies there.
11:15 am. We’ve been in the air since about an hour ago. It’s basically a DREAM Project chartered flight. September is the beginning of the down season on the Dominican north coast, and the empty seats prove it. I enjoy JetBlue’s satellite TV and pass out.
1:30 pm. I’m startled awake by the pilots announcement that we are making our final descent into Puerto Plata.
3:00 pm. The Callejon is under construction. For weeks huge concrete cylindrical prisms had been sitting on the side of the road. I had been adamant that they were sewers or something involving manholes. I had some doubters. Now I see that they are replacing some kind of pipe/drainage system on the road. I grin.
3:03 pm. There’s no access to my apartment from the usual road. Our taxi driver takes a detour down the next road. I learn how to get into my neighborhood by using back roads for the first time.
3:15 pm. One of the norms of volunteer travel is that when you’re in the States, you become a supplier. All of our bags are packed full of mostly random supplies. A printer, ink, toner, and baseball gloves. JetBlue only allows two bags at no more than 50 pounds each on flights to the Dominican Republic. All of our bags weighed 50 pounds. A few were 50.5. They didn’t mind I guess. My dad gets credit for getting this weight-conscious packing down to a science.
3:18 pm. I’ve sweated through my first shirt. Just when I had gotten used to the heat I’m right back at square one. I forget how loud my apartment is. It’s loud. To get an idea of how loud it is, click here (the music isn't from an apartment, trucks actually go around with speakers on the back).
7:01 pm. After a nap, I eat some pasta for dinner. My sister brought down a very small television in her suitcase. All of our apartments have a cable box, but no one has a TV, and they’re too expensive to buy in town.
7:03 pm. We are amazed that we get nearly 100 channels of cable. This had been sitting under our noses for the last two months. Most of the channels are in English, including New York’s CBS, NBC, ABC, and Fox. I still can’t watch The Office. It turns out I work with 10 girls who found out there’s a TV and Grey’s Anatomy will be on at 9 on Thursdays instead. We’re pretty spoiled now. I watch an E:60 piece about Ugueth Urbina's ongoing "ordeal"/prison sentence in Venezuela and a 13 year old girl who is kicked out of a boys league for being too good. I tell my sister I could beat her, she's only 6'1" and I have a 6'3" wingspan (plus in the footage her shot is still originating from her chest, instead of over her head, pssh). She gets offended.
8:36 pm. Red Sox v. Angels. I can’t believe I’m watching the Sox in my apartment complex. We change over to Monday Night Football during commercials. I didn’t realize Gus Frerotte is still employed.
10:00 pm. I come out of the bathroom and walk through the kitchen as an aerial view of Fenway is shown during a transition back from commercial. I pass Fenway Park on my right. The lights are on this time. I can tell it’s cold there. All the windows are open in the apartment and the ceiling fans are working hard to keep up with the heat. I’d like to tell Dane Cook that there are apparently all kinds of Octobers (and that he sucks /Chris Blake).
11ish pm. I’m struggling to stay awake. I’m peeved at Justin Masterson because I think the game’s going into extra innings. Jed Lowrie hits a grounder. I think it’s hit too weakly to be anything substantial. I’m wrong. I let out a sigh of relief. I go home and go to bed. I think of the flight attendant from my flight home a week before. Welcome back to reality.
Thursday, October 9, 2008
Six Days, Seven Nights
I spent my week in all too familiar places.
I spent my week in West Roxbury. We had all just congregated two months ago in the exact same place. Same church. Same cemetery. This time it was to pay our respects to the Buckley matriarch. It was an honor to be asked to read the first reading. It was from the book of Sirach. I finally came to understand the meaning of a funeral as a celebration of someone’s life.
I spent my week getting lost in Medford trying to find my cousin’s apartment, despite being vaguely familiar with the area. My sister lived just down the street in Somerville while attending Harvard graduate school last year. All the cousins within a 5-year age range of me were there. We watched Palin call McCain a maverick. And then we spent the next hour on YouTube watching her “greatest hits.” We talked about how it was too bad that we all live in Massachusetts where, let’s be honest, our vote is much less important. We’ll basically just be piling on.
I spent my week on the couch. I watched baseball. I watched baseball again. And again. Evan Longoria hit two bombs in his first two at bats. We lost a playoff game to the Angels for the first time since I was four months old. It didn’t end up mattering. I spent my Saturday afternoon like every other autumn Saturday since I remember Rick Mirer scrambling and throwing to the corner of the end zone for a two-point conversion to beat Penn State in the snow. I’ll have to Google what year that was (edit: 1992, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5qfWhTP-Ek). My dad was in his usual spots, sitting in front of the fireplace instead of on furniture, or standing and watching while leaning against the doorframe of the kitchen between his pacing. I spent my Sunday watching the Patriots struggle on all sides of the ball for the first time since Drew Bledsoe had his torso crushed by Mo Lewis. They still somehow won.
I spent my week playing wiffleball. John was home on leave from Afghanistan. We teamed up again for the first time in years when met up with my brother to play. It still wasn’t quite the same with Kevin still missing from the usual foursome.
I spent my week in the Hanlon’s kitchen. Where Mrs. Hanlon used to make me and Kevin grilled cheeses and chocolate milk. I talked with Mr. Hanlon about everything and anything. He’s doing great with his recovery and really hasn’t changed at all. Except well, maybe his stance on Bush. He says I’m getting tall, just like every other time I’ve seen him in the last five years. John hasn’t changed either. Like when he walked in with a “400 Facts About Chuck Norris” book and showed me all the lines he thought were hilarious.
I spent my week on my bed with my Fender. It hadn’t been touched in seven weeks. It was much easier to play than the acoustic I am borrowing from my neighbor in Cabarete.
I spent my week eating Dominos, Subway, a huge turkey dinner, and Mama Celeste pizzas. I didn’t make it to McDonald’s. Talk about a disappointment.
That’s basically how I spent my week at home.
I spent my week in West Roxbury. We had all just congregated two months ago in the exact same place. Same church. Same cemetery. This time it was to pay our respects to the Buckley matriarch. It was an honor to be asked to read the first reading. It was from the book of Sirach. I finally came to understand the meaning of a funeral as a celebration of someone’s life.
I spent my week getting lost in Medford trying to find my cousin’s apartment, despite being vaguely familiar with the area. My sister lived just down the street in Somerville while attending Harvard graduate school last year. All the cousins within a 5-year age range of me were there. We watched Palin call McCain a maverick. And then we spent the next hour on YouTube watching her “greatest hits.” We talked about how it was too bad that we all live in Massachusetts where, let’s be honest, our vote is much less important. We’ll basically just be piling on.
I spent my week on the couch. I watched baseball. I watched baseball again. And again. Evan Longoria hit two bombs in his first two at bats. We lost a playoff game to the Angels for the first time since I was four months old. It didn’t end up mattering. I spent my Saturday afternoon like every other autumn Saturday since I remember Rick Mirer scrambling and throwing to the corner of the end zone for a two-point conversion to beat Penn State in the snow. I’ll have to Google what year that was (edit: 1992, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5qfWhTP-Ek). My dad was in his usual spots, sitting in front of the fireplace instead of on furniture, or standing and watching while leaning against the doorframe of the kitchen between his pacing. I spent my Sunday watching the Patriots struggle on all sides of the ball for the first time since Drew Bledsoe had his torso crushed by Mo Lewis. They still somehow won.
I spent my week playing wiffleball. John was home on leave from Afghanistan. We teamed up again for the first time in years when met up with my brother to play. It still wasn’t quite the same with Kevin still missing from the usual foursome.
I spent my week in the Hanlon’s kitchen. Where Mrs. Hanlon used to make me and Kevin grilled cheeses and chocolate milk. I talked with Mr. Hanlon about everything and anything. He’s doing great with his recovery and really hasn’t changed at all. Except well, maybe his stance on Bush. He says I’m getting tall, just like every other time I’ve seen him in the last five years. John hasn’t changed either. Like when he walked in with a “400 Facts About Chuck Norris” book and showed me all the lines he thought were hilarious.
I spent my week on my bed with my Fender. It hadn’t been touched in seven weeks. It was much easier to play than the acoustic I am borrowing from my neighbor in Cabarete.
I spent my week eating Dominos, Subway, a huge turkey dinner, and Mama Celeste pizzas. I didn’t make it to McDonald’s. Talk about a disappointment.
That’s basically how I spent my week at home.
Wednesday, October 8, 2008
No. Privado
6:46 am. My alarm goes off, just like it always does. I hit snooze, just like I always do.
6:51 am. My travel alarm clock goes off again. Again, I hit snooze, knowing it will only go off one more time.
6:56 am. If I hit snooze this time, the alarm won’t go off again. There’s no Kevin Bowles snoozing with this clock. Three warnings and it’s done. “I don’t have to be at work until 8:30,” I think. Even on days when I have to be at work at 8 I trust my internal clock to let me sleep an extra twenty minutes or so until 7:15. So far it’s worked.
7:04 am. My phone rings. I groggily look at my phone. “No. Privado.” Private number. That’s what it says when someone from home calls me from their calling card. It’s all I need know. They would never call this early. I’m prepared to pick up the phone and say, “I’m on my way home.” I already knew my parents had ended a kayaking trip my dad was taking in western Maryland a day early to head back to Boston. “Did I wake you up?” my dad asks. I lie and say no.
12:30 pm. I’m picked up by Moreno, my organization’s go-to taxi driver, at my apartment. “You’re leaving already?” he asks. I tell him I’m just going home for a week. I feel so detached from home I’m not ready to say why I’m going home. We both sit quietly and listen to the static laced radio for the twenty-minute ride to the airport.
2:55 pm. I board my plane. A large southern flight attendant greets everyone. When an Indian man in the row in front of me attempts to put his carry-on bag under the seat in front of him she demands that he put it in the overhead compartment. This turns into a JetBlue security officer getting on the plane and one of the pilots coming into the fuselage to ask the man to apologize (I’m not sure what for). The flight attendant is very antagonistic. I wonder if she thinks he’s Middle Eastern. I’m sure she does. I think she’s going to keep at it until he’s kicked off the plane. Things finally smooth over.
3:10 pm. We are taxiing onto the lone runway at the airport. “Well folks, welcome back to reality!” the same flight attendant says over the intercom. Hmm, I think to myself. I’m not so sure that this applies to me. I think of the long warm shower I’ll take when I get home. I think of my comfortable bed, my dog, and New England foliage. I think about how when I get home I don’t have to guess if there’s going to be electricity, or water for that matter. Her connotation of reality seems to be a bad thing. Despite the somber circumstances I think I’m looking forward to this reality.
6:30 pm. JFK. Immigration. My bag. Customs.
7:08 pm. Re-checking my bag I ask if I can get on an earlier flight (than my scheduled 10:30 pm flight). “Oh yeah, I’m sure we have one before then…oh no it just left at 7.”
7:30 pm. Dunkin Donuts in the terminal.
11:30 pm. After an hour delay, boarding begins. At the gates next to me, passengers wait to board their flight to Santiago, Dominican Republic. A Hispanic man in a Kansas City Royals hat goes down the boarding line for my flight asking if anyone has change for a dollar. He gets to me. “Creo que si.” I reach into my pocket; I hold out three quarters, and two 10 peso Dominican coins in my palm. The man looks at where my flight is going, and then back at me, he’s flabbergasted. “Hang on.” I find a fourth quarter in my other pocket.
1:00 am. Logan. Despite resorting to pre-1990 methods of communication I still get picked up. I know where to wait. My dad knows where to pick me up. I get in the car. He had hit his head on a rock over the weekend while rolling over in his whitewater kayak. The gash on his forehead makes him look like Mikhail Gorbachev. I comment. “It looks a lot better than it did before,” I’m eventually told.
1:30 am. I spend about forty-five minutes in the shower and go to bed.
9:30 am. I wake up. Complete silence. “It must be seven in the morning,” I think to myself. That’s the only way it could be this quiet. There are no people hawking produce outside, no constant drone of motoconcho engines. I get up and walk downstairs. It’s 9:30. Everyone else is already up. The floor is freezing. I put on socks for the first time in a long time. Welcome back to reality.
6:51 am. My travel alarm clock goes off again. Again, I hit snooze, knowing it will only go off one more time.
6:56 am. If I hit snooze this time, the alarm won’t go off again. There’s no Kevin Bowles snoozing with this clock. Three warnings and it’s done. “I don’t have to be at work until 8:30,” I think. Even on days when I have to be at work at 8 I trust my internal clock to let me sleep an extra twenty minutes or so until 7:15. So far it’s worked.
7:04 am. My phone rings. I groggily look at my phone. “No. Privado.” Private number. That’s what it says when someone from home calls me from their calling card. It’s all I need know. They would never call this early. I’m prepared to pick up the phone and say, “I’m on my way home.” I already knew my parents had ended a kayaking trip my dad was taking in western Maryland a day early to head back to Boston. “Did I wake you up?” my dad asks. I lie and say no.
12:30 pm. I’m picked up by Moreno, my organization’s go-to taxi driver, at my apartment. “You’re leaving already?” he asks. I tell him I’m just going home for a week. I feel so detached from home I’m not ready to say why I’m going home. We both sit quietly and listen to the static laced radio for the twenty-minute ride to the airport.
2:55 pm. I board my plane. A large southern flight attendant greets everyone. When an Indian man in the row in front of me attempts to put his carry-on bag under the seat in front of him she demands that he put it in the overhead compartment. This turns into a JetBlue security officer getting on the plane and one of the pilots coming into the fuselage to ask the man to apologize (I’m not sure what for). The flight attendant is very antagonistic. I wonder if she thinks he’s Middle Eastern. I’m sure she does. I think she’s going to keep at it until he’s kicked off the plane. Things finally smooth over.
3:10 pm. We are taxiing onto the lone runway at the airport. “Well folks, welcome back to reality!” the same flight attendant says over the intercom. Hmm, I think to myself. I’m not so sure that this applies to me. I think of the long warm shower I’ll take when I get home. I think of my comfortable bed, my dog, and New England foliage. I think about how when I get home I don’t have to guess if there’s going to be electricity, or water for that matter. Her connotation of reality seems to be a bad thing. Despite the somber circumstances I think I’m looking forward to this reality.
6:30 pm. JFK. Immigration. My bag. Customs.
7:08 pm. Re-checking my bag I ask if I can get on an earlier flight (than my scheduled 10:30 pm flight). “Oh yeah, I’m sure we have one before then…oh no it just left at 7.”
7:30 pm. Dunkin Donuts in the terminal.
11:30 pm. After an hour delay, boarding begins. At the gates next to me, passengers wait to board their flight to Santiago, Dominican Republic. A Hispanic man in a Kansas City Royals hat goes down the boarding line for my flight asking if anyone has change for a dollar. He gets to me. “Creo que si.” I reach into my pocket; I hold out three quarters, and two 10 peso Dominican coins in my palm. The man looks at where my flight is going, and then back at me, he’s flabbergasted. “Hang on.” I find a fourth quarter in my other pocket.
1:00 am. Logan. Despite resorting to pre-1990 methods of communication I still get picked up. I know where to wait. My dad knows where to pick me up. I get in the car. He had hit his head on a rock over the weekend while rolling over in his whitewater kayak. The gash on his forehead makes him look like Mikhail Gorbachev. I comment. “It looks a lot better than it did before,” I’m eventually told.
1:30 am. I spend about forty-five minutes in the shower and go to bed.
9:30 am. I wake up. Complete silence. “It must be seven in the morning,” I think to myself. That’s the only way it could be this quiet. There are no people hawking produce outside, no constant drone of motoconcho engines. I get up and walk downstairs. It’s 9:30. Everyone else is already up. The floor is freezing. I put on socks for the first time in a long time. Welcome back to reality.
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
Conjunctivitis
September 22
No, I don’t have conjunctivitis. But I feel like I should be acting Boris the Rusisan computer programmer from Goldeneye (the mid-1990s Bond movie, if you haven’t seen it you’re just going to have to read this post for the non-references. See this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXW02XmBGQw&feature=related). I should be standing up and yelling “I am invincible!” But I’m not going to. Because once I do, I know the big vat of nitrogen whatever will explode and freeze me in my celebratory pose. Except in my case it would be a big vat of pinkeye.
So what am I going on about here? Well, let’s see. A week ago, my teaching partner Rachel came down with the visible symptoms of conjunctivitis about halfway through the day, leaving me to fend for myself (read: teaching) for two days. The secretary at my school? Pinkeye. By Wednesday, one of my students came in with it. He was sent home immediately. Thursday morning my sister woke up with it. Bad too, in both eyes. By Friday night, Gabriel, a Dominican guy who we hang out every so often looked in the mirror in my apartment. His eyes were red. By the next day he looked like a boxer at the end of a title fight. By this morning (Monday), Laura, the library coordinator was out with pinkeye. By lunch Rachel (the co-teacher) was showing symptoms again. She went home, leaving us with about half of the staff at the school actually AT the school. Even another volunteer, who up until now had been able to fend off contracting this stuff, was commenting about possibly having itchy eyes towards the end of the day.
Now, there are a few other people who haven’t had the pleasure of missing work because they want to scrape out their eyes, but I’m particularly proud of myself, if that’s okay with you, because my sister, who I usually eat meals with (and did even when she had the hardcore symptoms) had it. Added on to that is the fact that the person who co-teaches with me has now had it twice in a one week span. For now I think I’ll wait until everyone I know is free and clear of the symptoms before I start perfecting on my Russian accent, but that doesn’t mean I’m not practicing clicking my pen in front of the mirror.
Update: September 24
So. One of the volunteer writing/art teachers now has “the junk” (yes that’s the name that has been bestowed up on it), leaving 2 out of 5 adolescent program teachers at the school over the last two days. It’s been pretty crazy. Thankfully, there’s free HIV testing tomorrow at my school, meaning no classes. Which is awesome. We’re giving out a half-pound of rice to everyone who gets tested too. I think I have to do that job. I'm going to take a few minutes to be one of the rice giver-outers, which I’m sure will be an experience, especially when if we come across someone who is distraught they’re HIV positive. I’m sure they’ll be thrilled to see me there telling them, “Hey, look on the bright side! Here’s a free half-pound bag of rice!” Yeah right.
Update: September 30
My eyes are legitimately invincible.
No, I don’t have conjunctivitis. But I feel like I should be acting Boris the Rusisan computer programmer from Goldeneye (the mid-1990s Bond movie, if you haven’t seen it you’re just going to have to read this post for the non-references. See this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXW02XmBGQw&feature=related). I should be standing up and yelling “I am invincible!” But I’m not going to. Because once I do, I know the big vat of nitrogen whatever will explode and freeze me in my celebratory pose. Except in my case it would be a big vat of pinkeye.
So what am I going on about here? Well, let’s see. A week ago, my teaching partner Rachel came down with the visible symptoms of conjunctivitis about halfway through the day, leaving me to fend for myself (read: teaching) for two days. The secretary at my school? Pinkeye. By Wednesday, one of my students came in with it. He was sent home immediately. Thursday morning my sister woke up with it. Bad too, in both eyes. By Friday night, Gabriel, a Dominican guy who we hang out every so often looked in the mirror in my apartment. His eyes were red. By the next day he looked like a boxer at the end of a title fight. By this morning (Monday), Laura, the library coordinator was out with pinkeye. By lunch Rachel (the co-teacher) was showing symptoms again. She went home, leaving us with about half of the staff at the school actually AT the school. Even another volunteer, who up until now had been able to fend off contracting this stuff, was commenting about possibly having itchy eyes towards the end of the day.
Now, there are a few other people who haven’t had the pleasure of missing work because they want to scrape out their eyes, but I’m particularly proud of myself, if that’s okay with you, because my sister, who I usually eat meals with (and did even when she had the hardcore symptoms) had it. Added on to that is the fact that the person who co-teaches with me has now had it twice in a one week span. For now I think I’ll wait until everyone I know is free and clear of the symptoms before I start perfecting on my Russian accent, but that doesn’t mean I’m not practicing clicking my pen in front of the mirror.
Update: September 24
So. One of the volunteer writing/art teachers now has “the junk” (yes that’s the name that has been bestowed up on it), leaving 2 out of 5 adolescent program teachers at the school over the last two days. It’s been pretty crazy. Thankfully, there’s free HIV testing tomorrow at my school, meaning no classes. Which is awesome. We’re giving out a half-pound of rice to everyone who gets tested too. I think I have to do that job. I'm going to take a few minutes to be one of the rice giver-outers, which I’m sure will be an experience, especially when if we come across someone who is distraught they’re HIV positive. I’m sure they’ll be thrilled to see me there telling them, “Hey, look on the bright side! Here’s a free half-pound bag of rice!” Yeah right.
Update: September 30
My eyes are legitimately invincible.
Tuesday, September 9, 2008
A Brush With Ike
I think Wednesday afternoon it was really hot and sunny. Maybe part of Thursday too. Otherwise, it’s been raining here. A. lot. It’s even pouring right now. At the beginning of the week we got the remnants of Tropical Storm Hanna (I honestly don’t remember if it was a hurricane of a tropical storm by the time it passed us to the north). It always seemed like Hanna was going to pass pretty far north of us, that is of course until it took a sharp, almost ninety degree southerly turn towards Haiti Haiti
Cue Tuesday night.
Everyone in Cabarete was in full freakout mode. According to the news and the radio (neither of which I have access to from my television and radio-less apartment), Hurricane Ike was set for a direct hit on the north coast. I was still a little skeptical. It was due to hit sometime Saturday, way too far in advance to know anything for sure. As the week went on it seemed like the
When I came home from work Friday afternoon my apartment door was wide open. Oh sh-. That was my first thought. Then I walked in and found my landlord’s son taping X’s on all my windows in preparation for the hurricane. That’s when I knew for sure we weren’t getting hit directly. It was definitely jinxed. Saturday morning came around, the windsurfing class I help with was cancelled, unbeknownst to me and Derek, my sister’s boyfriend who lives here now. We showed up and there were pretty good sized waves so we went swimming. Dominicans thought we were nuts, but we remembered the vitals of swimming, don’t swim against an undertoe, swim parallel to shore, et cetera. There was a slight riptide but nothing dangerous. That and we could touch the ocean floor at all times. 
Later on we went to an American owned bar to watch the Notre Dame –
So, happy hour at this bar is 198 pesos (about 6 dollars) for all you can drink beer for two hours (timed perfectly to coincide with the football game). Somewhere in those two hours I must not have noticed (even though it was an open air bar), but Ike showed up, despite being 300km north of us. I didn’t notice anything until the satellite feed crapped out at the end of the game. As we left it was absolutely pouring. I stubbornly refused to believe I was wrong, calling the rain “drizzle.” At least Derek was on my side.
Thankfully one of the colmados (like a neighborhood store) near my apartment was still open, using candlelight to operate. I bought a small bottle of rum and the guy at the counter said “Good idea, for the cold.” For the cold? It’s like 78 degrees. I guess that’s cold to them.
Soon the wind showed up and I was a little glad that I had X’s taped on all my windows in my apartment. All the girl volunteers gathered in the apartment next to me, so I dropped in on that for a while…until the nail polish came out. I took a walk to the beach to see if there was any storm surge. There was a little, with the rising waters creating little lagoons on the beach, but it didn’t pose a threat to the bars and shops right on the beach. The wind howled all night while the rain pounded my ceiling and a chorus of frogs going nuts tried to keep me up all night. I still think Ike was pretty wimpy. But if this is how a storm 300km (sorry I don’t feel like doing the math to convert that to American ) to the north affects us, I still can’t imagine what a direct hit would be like.
Sunday, August 31, 2008
The Flood
I'm going to start this entry off by apologizing for any typos or grammatical errors that I make. It's hard enough for me to see my computer screen, never mind correct mistakes. I'll get into that in a bit. This week has yet again been another crazy week. This is going to be a long entry. Just a heads up.
Tuesday morning I went out into a neighborhood called Barrio Blanco, about a 15 minute walk towards the other side of town, to make an attempt at completing a census of the neighborhood.
Barrio Blanco is one of the poorest neighborhoods in town, with an appearance very similar to a shanty town during the Great Depression. It's incredible, this neighborhood backs up right to the main road and is just behind tall luxury condos and resorts, yet this is the condition that many Dominicans (and Haitians) live in here. They live on under a dollar a day. Barrio Blanco is a strong mix of Haitian immigrants and Dominicans. The questions on my census included everything from how many kids live here? what grades are they in? do they have birth certificates? to do you have a bathroom? latrine? neither? to how do you get your drinking water? All volunteers are required to spend at least one morning on the census, and it certainly gave me a feel for a different part of the community.
In Barrio Blanco there are some well constructed small houses, but most are tin roofed places that seem to have been built in a hurry. Every house I visited I was invited inside immediately, Dominicans and Haitians alike are very hospitable when it comes to stuff like that. It's truly amazing the power of TV, most homes in this neighborhood had TVs, and some had crazy sound systems and speakers, but then little else. Due to the higher number of Haitian immigrants in that neighborhood there were a few times when I got caught in the crossfire of creole conversation, as Haitians spoke to each other in their native tongue. Overall the process was well recieved by everyone there, with a few people eagerly asking us how their son or daughter could enroll in the school run by DREAM.
Wednesday morning I found myself observing classes at Colonia Nueva, the public school directly adjacent to the DREAM Center (the public school where I work here in the callejon). Classrooms are SO overcrowded, another volunteer and I found ourselves observing from outside/the threshold of the doorway because there was absolutely no way we would've find space inside the classroom. Things I learned just from my first class? Marta, the Dominican history teacher believes Christopher Columbus was a thief (and rightfully so). Sex and religion is not off limits or inappropriate either. What is the reason that we're alive today? Marta asked her students this. Kids yelled out all kinds of answers (insert sexual comments from the kids that are all deemed mostly appropriate here). No one got what she was looking for, her answer was God. I don't think there's going to be a Scopes Monkey Trial here or anything anytime soon. So religion (okay so that was evolution, but still) it is.
I've spent most of this week preparing and planning for my classes to start tomorrow morning. I'm teaching English, Math, and eventually Computers here. It's all a little frightening, never mind that it's still pretty difficult just to adjust to living here. Now time to talk about why I can barely see my computer screen.
Friday night the water went out. Sounds silly, I know, I never thought something like that would happen. The power goes out here all the time, making water pressure pretty much terrible. But I've never seen anyone run out of water. All the power was on, yet there was no water. I turned on my shower...nothing. Sink...nothing. The only thing is, apparently my sink was no ALL the way off when I went out for the night (not having showered after a long day at work, I'm sure I smelled nice). I came back at about 3am to find the guachiman (yes that is legitimately Dominican for watchman just like poloche is Dominican for t-shirt [derivative of polo shirt]) sitting outside waiting for me to tell me that my apartment had flooded. Sweet. I walked in to an inch of water on the floor...my faucet trickling, barely on. But on enough that seven hours and plates in the sink allowed that inch of water to cover my floor. Well, my laptop was on the floor.
Yes, I'm typing on my laptop right now. Somehow the hard drive and everything that makes the hard drive function all survived my sinks attempt at drowning it. Somehow, my screen did not. I turned on my laptop right away and only saw a black screen. But I saw that my hard drive was working because well...the light that indicates it was working lit up. The next day I realized that when I turned it on again, I could faintly see the box to sign in. Certainly not well enough to see anything beyond signing in. So today I tried again, same thing.
Except I realized something.
All those times that the power goes out I use a headlamp to make dinner, read, to play the guitar I borrowed from my neighbor, whatever. So I grabbed my headlamp, put it on my head, turned it on and sweet. I can see my screen a lot better. Not very well, I see best when something has a white background (word, AIM, typing in a url). And can't see very well when something is dark in color (parts of ESPN.com, most pictures). Plus I have to lean in really close, but anyway, it'll have to do for now. I have no way to get a new screen, and I have no idea how much it would cost. The good news is all my information on here is safe...somehow.
Yesterday I comforted myself by going to baseball practice in Islabon with my friend Many (as in Ramirez, not as in a lot). I met Many and his cousin Gabriel through people working with the DREAM Project. He picked me up on his motoconcho (that's a motorbike) and I took my first ride on one. FYI...watch where you put your right caf, the muffler's on the right side and will cinge the hell out of your leg if you're not careful. On the way over Many mentioned something about limpiando (cleaning) the field. Practice for the baseball team had turned into an engineering expedition.
The field was soaked from rain over the past week, and within a short amount of time a team of about seven people had made it at least only damp. Their moethod of draining? Building small canals right off the field that run into a bunch of huge holes. The water runs out into the holes, and then buckets are used and passed in a line to each other as far away as possible and dumped out. Pretty interesting stuff. I was immediately part of one of the bucket lines.
Later on I played catch and shagged some fly balls that people hit into the outfield. Overall the field is pretty nice all things considered, the grass is certainly longer than what we're used to. Oh, and I was initially sharing center field with a horse. There were actually a few times when I had to put my hand out, like you would when anticipating that you're about to touch the outfield fence. Except I put my hand out to make sure I didn't run into the horse. He eventually moved once he saw all the commotion.
Once again, if you can believe it, there's so much more that's gone on that I haven't even touched upon.
School starts tomorrow, it's certainly going to be interesting.
Tuesday morning I went out into a neighborhood called Barrio Blanco, about a 15 minute walk towards the other side of town, to make an attempt at completing a census of the neighborhood.
Barrio Blanco is one of the poorest neighborhoods in town, with an appearance very similar to a shanty town during the Great Depression. It's incredible, this neighborhood backs up right to the main road and is just behind tall luxury condos and resorts, yet this is the condition that many Dominicans (and Haitians) live in here. They live on under a dollar a day. Barrio Blanco is a strong mix of Haitian immigrants and Dominicans. The questions on my census included everything from how many kids live here? what grades are they in? do they have birth certificates? to do you have a bathroom? latrine? neither? to how do you get your drinking water? All volunteers are required to spend at least one morning on the census, and it certainly gave me a feel for a different part of the community.
In Barrio Blanco there are some well constructed small houses, but most are tin roofed places that seem to have been built in a hurry. Every house I visited I was invited inside immediately, Dominicans and Haitians alike are very hospitable when it comes to stuff like that. It's truly amazing the power of TV, most homes in this neighborhood had TVs, and some had crazy sound systems and speakers, but then little else. Due to the higher number of Haitian immigrants in that neighborhood there were a few times when I got caught in the crossfire of creole conversation, as Haitians spoke to each other in their native tongue. Overall the process was well recieved by everyone there, with a few people eagerly asking us how their son or daughter could enroll in the school run by DREAM.
Wednesday morning I found myself observing classes at Colonia Nueva, the public school directly adjacent to the DREAM Center (the public school where I work here in the callejon). Classrooms are SO overcrowded, another volunteer and I found ourselves observing from outside/the threshold of the doorway because there was absolutely no way we would've find space inside the classroom. Things I learned just from my first class? Marta, the Dominican history teacher believes Christopher Columbus was a thief (and rightfully so). Sex and religion is not off limits or inappropriate either. What is the reason that we're alive today? Marta asked her students this. Kids yelled out all kinds of answers (insert sexual comments from the kids that are all deemed mostly appropriate here). No one got what she was looking for, her answer was God. I don't think there's going to be a Scopes Monkey Trial here or anything anytime soon. So religion (okay so that was evolution, but still) it is.
I've spent most of this week preparing and planning for my classes to start tomorrow morning. I'm teaching English, Math, and eventually Computers here. It's all a little frightening, never mind that it's still pretty difficult just to adjust to living here. Now time to talk about why I can barely see my computer screen.
Friday night the water went out. Sounds silly, I know, I never thought something like that would happen. The power goes out here all the time, making water pressure pretty much terrible. But I've never seen anyone run out of water. All the power was on, yet there was no water. I turned on my shower...nothing. Sink...nothing. The only thing is, apparently my sink was no ALL the way off when I went out for the night (not having showered after a long day at work, I'm sure I smelled nice). I came back at about 3am to find the guachiman (yes that is legitimately Dominican for watchman just like poloche is Dominican for t-shirt [derivative of polo shirt]) sitting outside waiting for me to tell me that my apartment had flooded. Sweet. I walked in to an inch of water on the floor...my faucet trickling, barely on. But on enough that seven hours and plates in the sink allowed that inch of water to cover my floor. Well, my laptop was on the floor.
Yes, I'm typing on my laptop right now. Somehow the hard drive and everything that makes the hard drive function all survived my sinks attempt at drowning it. Somehow, my screen did not. I turned on my laptop right away and only saw a black screen. But I saw that my hard drive was working because well...the light that indicates it was working lit up. The next day I realized that when I turned it on again, I could faintly see the box to sign in. Certainly not well enough to see anything beyond signing in. So today I tried again, same thing.
Except I realized something.
All those times that the power goes out I use a headlamp to make dinner, read, to play the guitar I borrowed from my neighbor, whatever. So I grabbed my headlamp, put it on my head, turned it on and sweet. I can see my screen a lot better. Not very well, I see best when something has a white background (word, AIM, typing in a url). And can't see very well when something is dark in color (parts of ESPN.com, most pictures). Plus I have to lean in really close, but anyway, it'll have to do for now. I have no way to get a new screen, and I have no idea how much it would cost. The good news is all my information on here is safe...somehow.
Yesterday I comforted myself by going to baseball practice in Islabon with my friend Many (as in Ramirez, not as in a lot). I met Many and his cousin Gabriel through people working with the DREAM Project. He picked me up on his motoconcho (that's a motorbike) and I took my first ride on one. FYI...watch where you put your right caf, the muffler's on the right side and will cinge the hell out of your leg if you're not careful. On the way over Many mentioned something about limpiando (cleaning) the field. Practice for the baseball team had turned into an engineering expedition.
The field was soaked from rain over the past week, and within a short amount of time a team of about seven people had made it at least only damp. Their moethod of draining? Building small canals right off the field that run into a bunch of huge holes. The water runs out into the holes, and then buckets are used and passed in a line to each other as far away as possible and dumped out. Pretty interesting stuff. I was immediately part of one of the bucket lines.
Later on I played catch and shagged some fly balls that people hit into the outfield. Overall the field is pretty nice all things considered, the grass is certainly longer than what we're used to. Oh, and I was initially sharing center field with a horse. There were actually a few times when I had to put my hand out, like you would when anticipating that you're about to touch the outfield fence. Except I put my hand out to make sure I didn't run into the horse. He eventually moved once he saw all the commotion.
Once again, if you can believe it, there's so much more that's gone on that I haven't even touched upon.
School starts tomorrow, it's certainly going to be interesting.
Sunday, August 24, 2008
La Loma
The most exhausting experience of the week was climbing the loma, which is somewhere between a big hill and a small mountain and is located at the end of my street (aptly named callejon de la loma). The loma is a national park with an abundance of caves, paths, and horses running around. Chiche, the gatekeeper for the DREAM Center (the school where I work), acted as our guide as we headed out for a day on the loma to go swimming in a cave and eat lunch. Initially I intended to memorize the path we took to the cave so that I could come back whenever I wanted. Initially that was possible as we walked down a narrow dirt road. It became a little more difficult once Chiche took a sharp left turn into the woods on a small footpath. Then it became impossible once we got to Chiche's loma hut after about a mile and a half walk up. We rested for a few minutes, he told his family to start making lunch while we went swimming at the cave, and then he pulled out his machete.
Chiche bushwhacked his way through the woods to eventually bring us to one of the caves. It turns out there are a lot of caves that are much more convenient to get to, but Chiche was hellbent on going to this one in particular. We wound through the woods (I swear there are times we could've been going in circles), trying to not let branches drill us in the face after the person in front of us pushed them out of their way. I had no idea how he knew where he was going, or how he found any sort of reference points amongst those trees, but he did. After another long walk we arrived at the mouth of a cave. Peering in it really didn't look like there was any water. It looked like a cave with a rocky bottom. But a closer look showed water so clear that it didn't look like water.
A 2+ mile walk up a hill in a country where sitting at home makes you sweat meant that everyone was in the water in a hurry. Soon there were ten gringos and a handful of Dominicans in the icy cold water. It really was a scene straight out of the beginning of a bunch of horror movies...white "tourists" splashing around and laughing in a dark freshwater cave. No one got dragged under by some random monster/animal in this one though It's a little funny, the Dominicans were freezing while all the white people were fine, not having been "spoiled" by the warm waters of the Caribbean their whole life. We dried off and headed back to our camp, I assume on the same "path" we came on but who knows.
Back at Chiche's it was nice to finally relax and be well fed. Dominicans here are very generous. The portions of food Chiche delved out were way too big, even for me. The food of choice here is known as la bandera (the flag) because it is the Dominican meal. Rice, beans, and chicken. Plain and simple. And good. Chiche threw in some avocado too. Sitting around eating in the shade with a nice breeze was the first time since I stepped out my door earlier that morning that I wasn't wet from sweating or from swimming. That rarely happens here, it's probably one of the most underrated aspects of day to day life back home in the States.
Quick rundown of everything other stuff from this week (that I'll get to more in depth later [I'm definitely going to forget some stuff too]):
Guagua - cheap form of public transportation with 20 people on a bus (read: a little bigger than a minivan).
Spanish fort - pretty cool, I mean if you like forts.
Puerto Plata - meh.
The DREAM Center - wicked nice.
Surfing - frustrating, hard, tiring, and induces sore muscles and bruised ribs.
Helping with windsurfing lessons- awesome except for not knowing how to windsurf.
Tomorrow morning I'm working on a census. I'll be walking around to houses in the neighborhood and asking questions so we can collect data for our school. I think I may try writing more often so I can get more stuff in. Stay tuned.
Sunday, August 17, 2008
El Callejon
Within minutes of getting off the plane in Puerto Plata I was drenched in sweat. I wanted to blame it on my 100 lbs. of luggage but over the last two days I've realized that even the slightest movement here, or no movement at all, induces quite a bit of sweating. And I don't sweat.I live on the third floor of Plaza Mora on the callejon, a dirt road off of the main drag in the west end of Cabarate. My apartment is really nice, all things considered. I have tiled floors and ceiling fans and a fridge. The electricity comes and goes during the day, but outside of the fans there's really no need for it then anyway. There's only cold water, which means I take really quick showers. That's something that's definitely going to grow on me...or grow old fast.
I have a balcony on the backside of my apartment. The view is nothing special (see above), just a trash heap, some trees, and a few abandoned stands. I also live down the hall from a makeshift TV studio. Apparently, despite the fact that some people here are resigned to taking bucket showers, many Dominicans here do own a TV. I have a cable box but no TV.
In the callejon there is a constant buzz of motorbikes as they zip up and down the street. Sitting in my apartment it sounds like someone's always mowing a lawn outside, that's how many there are. People beeping horns or farmers driving through the neighborhood with loudspeakers trying to sell their product from the campo seems to be a normal occurrence. There's also almost always merengue or bachata or reggaeton being played really loud down the street, so it's becoming the soundtrack of my life.
Walking along the callejon to the main road only takes about 5 minutes. We got hit by the very tip of Tropical Storm Fay so it's been raining off and on since Friday, turning the dirt road into mud, and making the short walk a little more of a pain. I've almost taken a dive about ten times already, so I'm sure it'll happen eventually. Along the walk into town there are a bunch of colmados, small shops that sell stuff like eggs or bananas or water. Dogs roam the streets and there's been a donkey and a baby donkey hanging out along the side of the road for last few days.
On the main road there are quite a few white people once you get into town. It's pretty split between Americans and Europeans. Walking on the main road you can see the division between tourism and the Dominican neighborhoods. The road really seems to act as a dividing line. The callejon is on the south side of the main road, running inland, perpendicular to the road, while the beach, condos and restaurants are all on north side.Last night most of the volunteers (there are about 10 of us) hit the beach. There seems to be a ton going on there at night. There are a few American owned bars along the beach, so I caught Michael Phelps eighth gold medal. It's nice to know that I'll be able to catch a lot of American sports at these bars. It actually felt good just seeing Bob Costas on a TV last night. As much as I like Bob Costas I never thought I'd find myself saying that.
I'm starting to get settled here. Volunteer orientation starts tomorrow morning.
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Santa Barbara de Samaná
It was March 25th, 2008. It was a bright Tuesday morning during my Spring Break. I ate breakfast aboard a cruise ship as it anchored just off a bright, abundantly green coast. It was my first time taking a vacation entirely on my own dime. I had made sure this island was one of my destinations.On the cruise itinerary this stop was listed as Cayo Levantado, a lush resort-y island off the coast of Samaná, a peninsula that juts out into the Caribbean on the northeast portion of the Dominican Republic. Cayo Levantado was listed instead of the actual port of call: Santa Barbara de Samaná, probably as a scheme to get more people to book the cruise.
I made sure I was on one of the first tenders to arrive at a small dock with a handed painted sign ¨Bienvenido a Samaná.¨ A huge line of taxis and vans waited, offering to bring people to great beaches nearby, or to Las Terrenas-the location of a beautiful waterfall on the north coast of the peninsula. Others offered ferry rides to Cayo Levantado. I looked to my left, past the line of taxis, and into a town bustling with activity, motor bikes, and beeping horns.
Accompanied by a few of my roommates who had joined me on the trip, I took the ten minute walk into the heart of Samaná. I don´t have anything against trying to get a tan or seeing nature at its finest, but I only had five or six hours in the Dominican Republic. I had to see the real side of it. I had to talk to its people, drink its drinks and eat its foods.
Cruise ships are fairly new to Samaná, making it a mostly "authentic" town, meaning it lacked the truly built up tourist-centric shops found at most other ports of call; a turnoff to most people taking tenders to shore that morning. The Red Sox had opened their regular season in Japan earlier that morning, making my first stop the town sportsbook, where I quickly found out they had won 6-5. Next, as we walked through tents selling Presidente beer t-shirts and cheap cigars we arrived at the town center, a rotary with a few rundown shops, a restaurant/bar, and a large open green space with a horse tied up at the center, perfectly happy to be minding its own business.
After stopping in at a few shops, I was happy to find that my thirteen years of taking Spanish were quickly coming back to me. We eventually stopped in at the restaurant/bar, named Mi Restaurant Terraza Bar, to eat. We were quickly greeted by a freelance taxi driver named Tony who offered to bring us to the beach. When I politely declined, he sat down outside the bar and waited for the next person he could solicit his services to. Very few foreigners had ventured to walk all the way to the center of town and it turned out Tony just lounged and chatted with people at the bar. We were warmly welcomed by two friendly Dominican waitresses and the dueño, a young German ex-pat who wore pajama pants and didn´t seem to have a care in the world.
As I sat having my lunch, two young boys carrying a wooden toolbox came up to me, seemingly struggling to find the right words before blurting out "Shoeshine one dollar."
I was wearing flip flops.
Confused, I replied hablame en español, como vas a hacer eso, tengo flip flops - speak to me in Spanish, how are you going to do that when I have flip flops? The boy responded, yo todavia podría limpiarlos...si quieres - I could still clean them if you want. I kicked off my sandals and each boy took one, grabbed a toothbrush and a bottle of water mixed with some sort of cleaning solvent out of their toolbox, and went at my flip flops. I had no idea how dirty my sandals actually were. Two more boys showed up and ask my roommates if they could clean their shoes. My friends, at first hesitant, gave in when I basically yanked off their shoes. The boys each took a dollar and ran off down the street, returning a few minutes later, each with an ice cream cone-money well spent when you're 10 years old.
As the boys came back, I noticed that across the street on the green were a few kids about the same age, but dressed in what would amount to Catholic school uniforms in the United States. ¿Por que no vayan ustedes a escuela? Why don´t you go to school? Their answers were simple: no es posible and porque puedo ganar dinero en esta manera. Their families needed income from them and their siblings in order to get by. I sat there thinking about the situation, realizing how right then and there there was nothing I could do. I took a picture with the boys and I still regret not asking them their names. That picture will adorn the main page of this blog for the next ten months.
After talking a little more with the waitresses, with the owner, and with Tony, I asked them to take a picture with all of us, after all we had spent most of the afternoon there. We closed our tab, took the ten minute walk back to the tender and headed back to the ship to continue on with the rest of our trip, but the boys' predicament still lingered in my head.
Here I am four months later. I´ve graduated from school, I´m finishing up my summer job with the Cape Cod Baseball League, and I´m preparing myself for the next ten months of my life, which I will spend in Cabarete, Dominican Republic as a volunteer teacher for a non-profit organization called the DREAM Project. My goal? To educate those who otherwise would not get the education they deserve.
At some point I hope to take the four plus hour trip from Cabarete to Samaná so that I can visit the staff of La Terraza and so that I can finally ask those boys their names. Hopefully I´ll find them on the town green dressed in their Dominican school uniforms.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
