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.
3 comments:
Sounds like Sarah Palin would be a great teacher at the DREAM school!
(In case you've missed it, McCain's VP candidate is Palin, the Gov. of Alaska, and believes Creationist theory should be taught in U.S. public schools and that climate change is NOT man made)
Wow - what a blog! I guess that'll teach you to leave your laptop on the floor...... :)
Love the picture! I wish you had one of the horse next to you in the outfield.......
You sure are having some interesting experiences!
Keep up the writing - you're keeping me updated way better than my other sibling............ :)
hahaha go figure. The harddrive survives this but for some reason goes out at random times. I assume all IBMs issued by Seton Hall are set to go out in a week. So when yours goes out, so will mine.
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