Suspendido

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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.

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.

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.

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.