Literacy

Every step of the way has been a struggle so far.  Seven months spent working with so many students, so many facilitators, who lose motivation, lack resources and knowledge.   Seven months spent working with people at an unbelievably disorganized foundation, who consistently show up three hours late, if at all; who would rather gather a random group of people together to take a photo of a “literacy class” than admit that the class has fallen apart and no longer exists.  To be honest, I haven’t written much about my work in the last several months because it’s generally been quite frustrating.  So, disclaimer: much of what follows might sound kind of negative, but I’ve had a lot of good moments too, and, ultimately, the successes and failures probably even out.  (And by that I mean, if one person actually learned to read for every five people who gave up and left class, it was worth it.)

I arrived here in May somehow already feeling responsible for this work.  I was introduced to my community as “the Americana in charge of the literacy program” – a program that began in March (two months before I even knew that I would be living and working in Tabara Arriba for two years) with approximately 300 students in 26 classes between 5 communities.  My role was actually never made clear.  In fact, I was generally the one initiating communication with the foundation that solicited for me.  Somehow I’ve always felt that it should have been the other way around…

So I ended up defining my own role, amidst much misunderstanding and self-doubt, many roadblocks and pauses.  While they would have been happy using me for administrative tasks (which is explicitly against Peace Corps goals for volunteers), I stated my case pretty strongly – that there was no way I could work effectively with all of the classes, that they needed to help me with transportation money to travel between communities, and that I am not here to be an administrative employee.  Instead, I would focus on motivation, learning tools, team-teaching with the facilitators… ie. Quality control.   Which was sorely needed, as they continue to be more concerned with quantity than quality, some of the facilitators are barely able to read themselves, and only one or two have any teaching skills whatsoever.   

But I was not here when this program was planned, when facilitators were seemingly chosen without any sort of screening process.  And I was not here for the exciting beginning stages either, when everything was new and possible.  I arrived just in time for the program’s many problems to come to light and become serious issues.  Adult literacy is probably the most difficult area of education to tackle.  Learning to read is no easy task, add to that the fact that you are beginning from square one with a group of people who are older (ranging in age from 13 to 75), maybe have never entered a classroom of any kind before, and have many real life issues that keep them from coming to class…

Though a few classes took place in actual classrooms, most were held in the facilitators’ homes.  Most of my evenings up until now have involved working with one or two classes in rotation, finding anywhere from two to twelve students present on any given day, sitting in a circle of plastic chairs in the facilitator’s yard, a chalkboard hung on the wall of the house, notebooks in their laps and pencils in hand.  The daily work of teaching literacy is usually not exciting.  It’s repetitive, frustrating, and requires extreme patience.  Some of the most dedicated students just couldn’t seem to remember what they learned from one day to the next.  Others weren’t all that dedicated.

During the rainy season, days went by without class, as the sky always seemed to open up just in time to keep people in their houses.  When it started getting dark earlier, class became dependent on whether or not we had electricity on any given night.  When it came time to pick coffee, half of the students disappeared to the mountains to work.  Mothers missed class because they had to cook dinner; teenagers missed class because they would rather hang out on the corner with a beer.  But classes persisted.  The students who completely lost motivation just stopped coming.  New students showed up who hadn’t started the program with everyone else.   Facilitators became frustrated, teaching to different levels with few materials or skills to work with.  Some facilitators quit before their students did!  I’m sad to admit, my standards lowered drastically. 

I would have done a lot of things differently, but it’s nearly impossible to change things that were put in place long before I got here.  I tried.  But I am just one person, and it took me until somewhere around October to calm down, accept the many things that I could not change, and be happy with the small successes.  Of which there are many!  When I was feeling most frustrated with the big picture of the program as a whole, I always felt better after working with a class.  Women who used to sign their names by writing “XXX” in the blank could now write their full names, and the names of their family members.  Teenage boys, who in the beginning literally needed someone to hold their hand to help them shape their first letters, could now write a simple sentence about daily life.  Despite all the struggle, I like to think that I was able to hold at least some of the classes together, help some of the facilitators do a better job, keep some of the students encouraged and supported.

Tabara Arriba’s literacy program ended last week with evaluations for the students who were still standing.   26 classes became 20, 300 active students became 189.   Of those, only 98 participated in the final evaluation (most of the rest were up in those mountains, working).  48 passed, and 50 failed.  And these numbers are probably a little bit generous.  There was a pretty huge learning curve coming into this.  It’s a good thing I already had a high Spanish level, because if language had made things any more confusing than they already were I might have just given up.  I recently said something to another volunteer about how I wish my work would eventually just settle into a routine so I can stop pushing my way forward and just relax a little.   He responded that that probably only happens if I stop caring… Gave me something to think about.

But 48 people learned enough to pass a test!  That’s something.  Especially considering that some of them had never held a pencil before last March. 

M'Pale Kreyol

The further south you go in this country, the drier it gets and the poorer it feels.   When people talk about the southern Dominican Republic, they mean the southwest, between the Haitian border and cities approaching the capital.  San Juan and Azua are considered the south, and my town is located between the two – so if you’re thinking of a tropical paradise with constant rains and lush green, you’re not thinking of where I live.

Tabara doesn’t quite feel like a desert yet.  It rained plenty during the rainy season, but that ended in October and it hasn’t rained since, so it’s probably only a matter of time before the fields turn brown and dust takes over.  But I am lucky to have even this much rain, this much greenery.  I’ve traveled further south on two occasions, both to visit the bateyes around Tamayo, and just an hour in a guagua brings me to a world that is drier, dustier, and even hotter than my community.  In the summer there is no relief from the heat, not even at night, but thankfully December brings a cool night breeze.

I spent last week learning Haitian Creole in Batey 9.   It was kind of like summer camp – five days spent eating, sleeping, learning, and playing games with seven other volunteers and our teacher Getro, a capitaleño Haitian who speaks four or five languages.   Our host was the evangelical pastor, who told us a little bit of Batey 9’s history – of slave labor and killings, of distrust between Haitians and Dominicans.  Problems between the two groups reach back to before the border existed between their countries, and these fears persist today.

Bateyes, by definition, are communities based around sugar cane production.  They have primarily Haitian or Haitian-Dominican populations, and are some of the poorest places in the country.  There are clusters of bateyes in the south and also in the east (not so far from Punta Cana).  In the south, many don’t even have names, but are just numbered Batey 1 through Batey 9.  Until recent decades, these could almost be considered slave communities.  Haitians were brought across the border and dumped into the cane to work, receiving little or no pay and fearing the Dominicans they might encounter if they tried to leave.  Today, many men still work endlessly in the cane, seven days a week from dawn until dusk, but the bateyes themselves have developed as communities.  Resources arrive through NGOs, The Church, Peace Corps Volunteers… bateyes aren’t the easiest places to live, but volunteers generally have a lot of success working in them. 

I frequently find myself defending Haitians to my Dominican friends and neighbors.  A good friend of mine, a police officer, recently said:  “Yo no quiero nada que hacer con ellos.  Te matan!  Crecen como animales, y creen en brujeria!”   I don’t want anything to do with them.  They’ll kill you!  They’re raised like animals, and they believe in witchcraft!   These words came from a person I really like.  And I still like him, despite his small-minded perspective of the world.  I haven’t found many friends who aren’t bigoted, though I think I am changing a few perspectives – at least those of the people I am around a lot, those who are willing to change.  It’s a constant conversation, and I mostly hear the Dominican side.  My community doesn’t have a large Haitian population – the Haitians here literally just walked over the mountains to come work in the fields.  They are straight from Haiti, maybe speak some Spanish, probably have no education, and are at the lowest end of the social ladder.  If Haiti were the richer country, it would probably be the exact same situation in reverse.

But anyway, I learned some Creole.  Now I’m searching for a Haitian buddy to practice with. 

Kids...

The batey's "play" (baseball field).

To the Loma!

Over the last two months, some of my neighbors and a lot of literacy students (mostly male) have disappeared.   I’m told that they are en la loma, “in the mountain.”  It’s coffee picking season, and those who have land or just work it for somebody else move up into the mountains for months at a time.   Coffee grows up where it’s a little cooler, which could be anywhere from an hour to three hours away from Tabara (meaning an hour or two on a motorcycle, followed by a long, vertical hike… or going a different route on a donkey.)  So instead of an impossible daily commute, whole families just stay up there for a while, living in clearings in the middle of their coffee trees. 

My neighbors have been talking about taking me up to see their coffee ever since I arrived in Tabara six months ago.  Last week we finally got ourselves together and caravanned up to the mountain on motos (and then on foot), where I found a bunch of my missing friends!   They had already finished picking for the day, and were now sitting around, playing cards, waiting for lunch to cook and taking turns spinning the crank on the machine they use to shell the coffee beans.  After more than a month without leaving the mountain, fifteen people sharing two rooms in a shack house with bedrolls and hammocks, they seemed pretty settled in.  My arrival was a big surprise!  

Home sweet home!

Laura visits the mountian!

Cooking lunch for everyone.

Coffee ready for picking.

Shelling the beans.

Beans drying in the sun.

Mom in the DR!

I just received my first visitor since coming to the Dominican Republic almost eight months ago!  Mom decided that she just couldn’t take it anymore.  She had to come see me!   And it was pretty great to have my mom here, to show her my town and see how everyone reacted to her.   The general reaction:  “Ay, pero tu mama es jovencita!  Podia ser tu hermana!  Es tan bonita!  Ella es mas bonita que Laura!”   Oh, but your mom is so young!  She could be your sister!  She’s so pretty!  She’s prettier than Laura!  (My host dad repeated that last one a lot… thanks Papo.)  In short, they all loved her.  When she met Victoria, my host mom, they both teared up and hugged each other… and I realized that my moms from completely different worlds are really very similar.   At one point Victoria asked, “How did you let your daughter go away for so long?”  And mom just gave her a look like, “If it were up to me…” Then Victoria said I should stay here for Christmas and mom gave her a death stare and they both laughed.  Much interpreting was needed, but some things are universal. 

Victoria also cooked several meals for us so mom could try some Dominican staples (viveres, salami, rice and beans, tostones, cheesy spaghetti), and she liked it all!  And everyone (friends, acquaintances, the motoconcho guys on the highway) made a point of telling her that they love me and are taking good care of me.  That was really nice.  I hope all this made her worry about me less, but maybe nothing will make you worry less about your child living in a developing country for two years. 

So we spent two days in the Capital and three days in Tabara, which was a perfect amount of time for mom to walk all over the place and meet more people than she could ever remember, and for me to become exhausted from translating.   And more people keep asking me why I didn’t introduce them to my mother!  Ay, Dios.  You can’t make everyone happy.  But they do all tell me that they saw us walking around and that my mother is very beautiful and that they hope she will come back and stay for two months next time.  My Dominican family sent her off with six avocados, two pieces of yucca, and a bag of fresh picked coffee from the loma… Gotta bring a little bit of Tabara home to the rest of the family!

Also, Mom took lots of pictures!  Here are a few:

My moms!

Mom and some of my Dominican family!

With my neighbor Lou, my most frequent visitor (she checks in about every 10 minutes).

Cooking with Sami and Victoria

Cousins

Papo and his rooster, so proud

Sisters

Transportation

I’ve always liked the feeling of public transportation, of settling in for a long ride, nothing to worry about except when to get off again.  You’ve bought your ticket, made it on time, found a seat, a place for your things, and all you can do is let the bus or train or plane take you wherever it is that you’re going.  Every movement in life has a moment like that – when the preparation is done and all that’s left is to go.  You’ll face what’s on the other side when you get there, wherever there is. 

But this job isn’t about traveling.  It’s about staying in one place, even when you feel like you’ll go crazy if you don’t get out for a day.  You’ve gotten off on the other side, and now you’re back to worrying about all the things you need to do, about how to make a life and be effective in a place where everything takes three times longer than you expect.  

Sometimes it’s enough to take a five-minute ride to the other side of town, to feel the wind on your face and get a taste of movement again, to remind yourself that you are free.  But really, most freeing of all is leaving.  That’s not to say that daily life is unpleasant or that you don’t like where you are – you like it a lot actually, you feel at home – but there is a stress that comes with being constantly observed, constantly foreign (no matter how much you joke about being Dominican too).  You barely even notice your stress until a motoconcho delivers you to the highway and you feel a slight sense of relief.  You wait under a tree for the bus headed towards the Capital, or towards Haiti (these are your options, depending on your destination), ignoring the cluster of concho drivers who stare and yell piropos from their hangout spot at the crossroads.  They are irritatingly bold here, where it’s just you and them, but also chivalrous.  They’ll flag down a bus, carry your things, help you up the steps (all things that you resisted until recently because you are a strong, independent woman, but hey, turns out it is easier to let some muchacho carry your stuff)…  And when you get back from wherever you went, they’ll take you wherever you need to go next.  In fact, they all know your name and where you live, even though you’ve never really introduced yourself and you just moved.  You could consider this creepy… or you could choose to look at it as pleasantly small-town.  You’ll end up safely on your doorstep without saying a word.

I read somewhere that the Dominican Republic is the loudest country in the world.  I definitely believe it… I can’t really imagine any place maintaining a higher volume in general.   Everything involves a lot of yelling, blasting music, gunning motors.   That describes the guagua (bus) situation pretty accurately.   Guaguas approaching from either side of the street slow as they pass, cobradors (the guys who collect your money) yell out the doorway for you to get on:  “Hey!  We’re going somewhere!  You should come with us!   What’s that?  You’re going in the opposite direction?  What?  You’re not going anywhere at all?  Doesn’t matter!  Come with us, we’ll get you there eventually!  Comeoncomeoncomeon!”   And if you happen to be a white American woman (or any woman?), they’ll probably add something about your beauty and mangaring their visa and a marriage proposal.  Basically, by the time the bus has passed (with or without you on it), you’ll feel very special.  That cobrador really wanted you to get on that bus.  You must look extra pretty today.   

Once on the bus, the yelling does not stop.  General practice is to scream “Dejame!” (Leave me!) to the cobrador when you want to get off.  But you really have to scream it for him to hear over the music and the wind and the other passengers.  I like to sit at the front of the bus so I can just tap him on the shoulder and be like, “Hey there.  Please leave me at the next corner.  Oh, no thank you, I would not like to marry you.  No, I don’t want a sip of your soda.  Ok, sure, I’ll take a cracker.  Thanks.”  Dominicans are very hospitable people.  If I take any Dominican habits home with me (which I know I will, I am becoming more Dominicanized all the time), I hope they will mostly just involve sharing.

Last week I was on an early bus to San Juan, on my way to a meeting at my foundation.  Buses are most crowded in the mornings, and a pregnant woman got on holding a baby, her purse, and the hand of another child. The cobrador took the baby, another passenger took her purse, and the man sitting next to me took the child and sat her on his lap for the hour-long ride.  When the woman had settled into the last open seat, a few rows behind us, the baby was passed between four strangers to reach her, followed by her purse.   The kid stayed up front with us, never asking about her mother, perfectly content to sit with people she had never seen before.  An old man got on a few minutes later and slapped everyone on the back, calling them cousin, brother, telling a story about plantains or something, making everyone within earshot laugh.  The tiguere sitting closest to the front got up to give the man his seat, standing by the door with the cobrador.  He handed a piece of his half-eaten empanada to the little girl sitting with us...  And so life goes, collectively, everyone a member of the same big family.

New house!

The front room of my new house.

My first visitors! 

View through the whole house. 

Neighbors grinding coffee to gift me!

My host mom - she thinks I'm really funny.

Seeking Solitude

I am writing this as I enjoy the silence of my first night alone in my new house.  After four months of searching, I’ve finally found a place to live in Tabara, and there is a definite sense of peace that comes with some personal space… though of course it isn’t really silent.  The ever-present children are yelling about something outside, the occasional moto drives by, some men are slapping down dominos across the street, and I saw a rooster strutting past my back door earlier, so he’s sure to make his voice heard sometime soon.

Everyone thinks it’s crazy that I want to live alone.  They offer to send their children to come sleep with me.  “But… Laura… aren’t you going to sleep with a muchachita?”  Um, no thanks?  In this culture of constant sharing and togetherness, no one is ever alone.  They thought it was weird that I didn’t want to sleep with a child in my host family’s house, but I nipped that one in the bud, and now they just go with it.  Still, my independence is probably one of the most confusing things about me to them.  They ask, “Pero, por que tu andas sola?”  But why do you walk alone?  As though I should have an escort with me… not for issues of safety, really just cause Dominicans seem to like the buddy system.  

This line of questioning became even more frequent after my friend Nikki, another volunteer, came to visit.  She spent two days here and forever after that everyone was like:  “Donde esta tu amiga? Cuando ella viene?  Por que no vive aquí contigo?  Estas triste?  Estabas tan contenta cuando ella estaba aquí!”  Where is your friend?  When will she come back?  Why doesn’t she live here with you?  Are you sad?  You were so happy when she was here!  Nikki tells me that her community does the same to her ever since I went to visit… As though we don’t smile and laugh and compartir constantly when we are “alone” in our communities.  Oh, Dominicanos.  I think they just thought it was cool to see us chattering away in English and laughing about all the ridiculous situations that we are presented with daily.  It’s like a secret code…

Compartir means “to share,” which basically covers all social interactions, aka. hanging out.  When you are sitting in silence in a plastic chair beside another silent person in their plastic chair, you are compartiring (or, in actual Spanish instead of Spanglish, compartiendo).  Congratulations, you have integrated a little bit more today.  Spend enough time compartiring with the doñas in the community, and they will all tell everyone else how great you are, and protect you from any potentially bad chisme (gossip).   If it came down to it, I know that many women in this community would have my back.  Not that I anticipate problems, but you never know.  It’s good to get the doñas on your side.  

Confianza literally means “confidence,” in both senses of the word:  to be confident, but also to trust.   Here, it is used more often to talk about trust.  You have confianza with people when you know them well, when you trust them and they become “your people,” as my host parents say.  Tu gente.  In general, having confianza in the community is one of the privileges of living here for an extended period of time, and of pushing yourself to compartir even when you don’t really want to.  People do become like family, and friendships are real, though not based on the same things as in the States.  My best friends here all happen to be women with small children.  They are around my age or younger, but they live in a different world than mine.  My host dad said the other day, “Aquí, la gente piensan que el futuro es tener niños, pero allá el futuro es estudiar y trabajar.”  “Here, the people think that the future is to have kids, but over there (in the United States) the future is to study and work.”  While many people here do not seem aware of this distinction (and I suspect that it only became apparent to him after living with me for four months), it’s a pretty accurate statement.  Not that having children isn’t “the future” in the U.S. too… It’s just a future that we usually don’t begin during our teenage years.  I explain this to people daily, when they ask me how many kids I have back in the States and are shocked by the answer.  And yes, people are more surprised that I don't have any children than they would be if I had children and had left them behind in the U.S. for two years.  No biggie. 

Well… so much for solitude.  In the time it has taken me to write this, I’ve had three sets of visitors.   They bang on the door and yell, “Laura, are you already sleeping?!”  “Laura, open the door!” “Policia!”  That third one was my “cousin” who thinks he’s really funny.  My host parents stopped by to tell me things like, “Blow out that candle before you go to sleep,” and “You know you need to shut the gas tank,” and “Make sure you lock your door.”  I try to explain to them that I know how to take care of myself, that of course the gas tank was already shut, and OBVIOUSLY I’m going to blow out the candle and lock my door.  I just have to take a deep breath and remind myself that it comes from a place of love.  It’s like when I first arrived and they were shocked that I knew how to wash dishes… Have you heard that all Americans have a maid at home?

In conclusion, I feel loved, even though it’s often an oppressive love that makes me wish I could just hide out for a while.

I'll try to post pictures of my new house soon! 

Feeling Productive

I wake up around 6:30 to crisp air and almost silence.  The roosters still crow, but the motorcycles aren’t out yet, and the few voices to be heard are just whispers beyond my window.  Some days I run down to the highway and back, enjoying the closed doors and empty streets.  This is the only moment of absolute peace that I’ll have all day, before the rest of the world has risen. 

I tip-toe past the clutter of furniture that fills the house (like most, this one is small and overstuffed), squeeze past Papo’s motorcycle, parked between the couch and a side table, past the curtain that separates the kitchen area from the living room, and outside to the rocking chairs, where chickens hop between yards, wandering under barbed wire fences.  The five other family members still sleep quietly in the room they all share, and for a moment I just sit and rock.  Soon the neighbor will herd his goats up this road, and they’ll stop and scatter to eat what they can of the weedy lot between this house and the next, until his dog urges them along.  Boys will start to ride by on their horses and donkeys, sitting on colorful saddle blankets handmade from scraps of old fabric.  With machetes at their wastes and empty saddlebags beneath their legs, they head for a day of work on the loma.  I watch them pass, and they call out to me when they see me. 

After three months spent sitting on this porch, walking the streets of Tabara daily, introducing myself to everyone, and generally trying to infiltrate all areas of life, I have more or less succeeded.  They know who I am.  They call out my name. Children I’ve never met, people from neighboring communities, friends, acquaintances… I often don’t know their names, but I’m pretty easy to spot and they know mine. 

I walk down to the colmado to buy bread and café for breakfast, and the man behind the counter smiles when he sees me coming, holds out his hand to me.  “Como te sientes?”  he asks.  How do you feel?  As he puts some bread in a small plastic bag and looks for my change, someone comes up behind me and touches my hair.  I turn to find a neighbor smiling at me, “Tu estabas perdida!” she says.  You were lost!  This is what people say when you don’t come around for a while.  I like the way it sounds, as though you’ve been lost and now you’re found again, back where you belong.  I smile and chat and apologize for not visiting her yesterday, I was too busy running to the neighboring communities, I’ll visit later today, I promise.  I have this conversation several times a day.  “Pero Laura, tu estabas perdida!”  The more relationships I create, the more often I am apologizing to someone for not visiting.  Even though I sometimes feel like I am not doing anything at all, I was reminded yesterday just how hard I have worked over the last three months to create all these relationships…

A truck shows up at my house in the afternoon, carrying three people from the foundation that I kind of work with.  I only “kind of work with” them because they hardly communicate with me, don’t pay their facilitators as promised, and generally are a disorganized mess.   So this visit is a complete surprise after over a month of zero communication.  They show up and declare that we must meet with all the literacy facilitators today, as in, now.  They want to “motivate the people.”  26 facilitators from 5 different communities, who absolutely don’t trust this foundation, are pretty fed up with the whole situation, and definitely do not want to drop everything right now to meet with them.  I let them know what I think about this idea.  With that in mind, we decide that we’ll visit everyone and schedule a meeting for tomorrow (today) instead.

I hop in the truck and we drive over the pot-holed dirt road to the neighboring community, where I guide them to the houses of all of the people involved in the literacy program.  We stop at cinderblock homes and wooden homes, I jump out of the truck and find the facilitators, who are eating lunch or napping or sitting with family members in the shade.  They smile when they see me, “Pero Laura, tu estabas perdida!”  And I apologize, ask about their families, greet whoever is around, and then tell them about the meeting.  They hesitantly agree to go, but promise that they aren’t happy about it and that these people better have some explanations. 

We make it through that community, drive to the next, then the next after that.  For two hours we search for all the people who have been involved in this project from the beginning, and I tell them about the meeting, feeling like I am apologizing for this foundation as though their mess is somehow my fault.  To the communities that I’ve only visited once or twice, I can only hope that they don’t see me in the same light that they see the program as a whole.  They don’t know what the Peace Corps is, that I am different from this big foundation that offered them something and then walked away.   At the very least, Tabara knows. 

They turn the truck back towards Tabara to drop me off, saying what a pleasure it was to see me again.  I smile and nod, despite my frustration.  I am afterthought to this organization, though that ride through the communities made it clear just how much work I have done in these last months, how many relationships I have formed, how many times I have looked for a bola to another community and searched for people that I’d met once or twice, to interview them, to ask them how everything is and try to offer what help I can, though with so many people and so little power, there’s not much that I can really offer. 

But even as this literacy program falls apart, and I look into starting other projects (including a better literacy program), all is not lost.  All this running around and interviewing and checking in has allowed me to meet so many people and integrate not only into my own community, but the surrounding ones as well.  There's lots of potential for the future...

I guess we’ll see how the meeting goes. 

In the event of a storm...

Hurricane Emily has yet to show her face around these parts, but all the volunteers in the southern region of the DR have been consolidated for the last two days to wait out the storm.  I am with seven other volunteers in a hotel in San Juan, a big town about an hour away from Tabara.  We’ll be here at least until tomorrow morning, with possibilities of 20-25 inches of rain. 

Peace Corps consolidates us not because San Juan is less likely to get hit with the storm than our communities are, but so that we aren’t stuck on mountains or in valleys, wherever it is that we live, in the case that they really need to get us out of the area.   While my town is pretty close to the main highway, and has a bridge over the river that runs through it, many other volunteers live in more remote campos where they would definitely be trapped in the event of a lot of rain.  

It’s a pleasant change of pace to see a bunch of other volunteers and hang out for a few days in a comfortable hotel (air conditioning, wi-fi, hot showers!), but I think we’ll all definitely be ready to get back to our communities tomorrow.  Hopefully this is just a little passing rain!

LLuvia

It’s almost surprising, the relief that comes with rain pounding on the zinc roof, though maybe this is more for the absence of other sounds, and for the way that any simple change can bring back a world outside of this one.   Suddenly I could be in another place, as I pull on a sweater and look out at sheets of rain, flooding the streets and finally filling the dry riverbed.  For a time, there are no signs of life – radios and motorcycles drowned out, the houses across the street invisible.  I light the stove with a match and the coffee pot is edged in flames, burning blue around its base.   Peace. 

When it rains, most people stay where they are.  Meetings are forgotten, classes don’t happen… which makes running evening classes somewhat difficult in the rainy season.   But the young people in this community aren’t so afraid of the rain that they stay indoors.  When it pours, kids and jovenes roam the streets, drenched and laughing, barefoot in the mucky water, making their way to the park where they’ll stand in circles and drink rum from the bottle.  Doñas will tell you that this is a problem in the community:  Who goes to the bars?  Not mature women in their 20s and 30s.  No, the girls in the bars are 18, 15, 13 years old, drinking rum and dancing to dembow.   The men are older, of course.  

I’ve become so accustomed to this strange country and my place in it that things no longer seem so strange.  People bathing in their yards?  The man next to me on the bus holding a live pig?  A woman hitting her child with a shoe?  Chickens wandering in and out of the house?  Hardly even registers.  But young girls with much older men?  This still bothers me, and will always bother me.  A 16 year-old girl “dating” a 36 year-old man who already has 3 children, the oldest of whom is 12 years old?  Not ok.  Pretty disgusting actually.

I don’t like the woman hitting her child with a shoe either, obviously…

Goals

I have about a month left of my diagnostic period, and I’m definitely ready to start some of my own projects.   The literacy program is in need of a complete overhaul, and working with a large organization (which has little understanding of the reality of their projects) makes community work very difficult.  I need some smaller and more achievable endeavors to keep me sane as I continue to try to keep half the community (and four other communities?) motivated to learn to read.  Yup… I’m working on staying positive.  In the meantime, I’ve had a lot of time to think about all the things I’d like to do during my time here in Tabara Arriba (and in the Dominican Republic in general):

·      Teach some people to read. 

·      Work with youth!

o   A health education program, covering topics such as AIDS, sexual health and safety, violence, alcohol abuse, etc.  Seriously needed, especially family planning…

o   An art program for kids.  Something to inspire them to actually be creative.  It would be cool if this could involve a mural of the world on some wall… most people have no idea where anything is in the world, including half of their own country.  (You might be able to say the same thing for a lot of Americans actually.)

o   A business plan!  Peace Corps has a business plan competition for youth, in which a group comes up with a plan for a business they think is feasible in their community.  After participating in a 3-month course and writing a full business plan (definitely the longest and most detailed thing they will ever have written), they may qualify for the Peace Corps competition, in which the winners receive a little funding to start their business!  I can’t teach this course until next summer, but it’s on my list.  (To those of you who are thinking, “Laura? Business? What?” Have a little faith!)

o   Whatever else comes up.

·      Try to inspire some teachers to actually want to do their jobs/give them more tools and training to do them.  (Probably my most challenging goal…)

·      Go on a medical mission:  Peace Corps volunteers have the opportunity to go on medical missions to act as translators for foreign doctors!  These are generally week-long missions with different focuses, depending on the doctors.  There are eye missions, cleft lip missions, etc, etc.  I’m really excited about this prospect.

·      Learn Haitian kreyol and work with Haitians.   (And go to Haiti.  This is forbidden during my time as a volunteer, but I fully plan to cross to the other side of this island in 2013.) 

·      Get a computer lab up and running in the high school?  We’ll see about that one.  Right now there’s computer graveyard in the high school…

·      Help the neighboring community build a library?  Perhaps.

·      Teach yoga/pilates?  At best, my community would get super into it and we’d end up with a workout revolution to burn off those rice and plantain bellies.  At worst, it would be amusing and some women would learn to stretch.  Nutrition classes could be a hit too… 

·      Climb Pico Duarte (the highest peak in the country, involving a 5-day camping trek with a guide and a donkey…)

·      See a lot of other volunteers’ sites, which range from mountains to beaches to the Haitian border to an island off the coast of this island… The DR is a pretty diverse landscape.

·      Learn a lot and become a much stronger facilitator in general.

I’d also like to attempt reading groups for children and parents, especially those who are in the literacy classes.  People don’t really have books here… even though my town actually has not one, but TWO libraries.  They’re tiny, and one of them doesn’t have many books, but the other has a pretty solid shelf unit full of literature. Only problem:  people can’t take books out.  No one is responsible enough to return them, and/or no one ever tries to take them out anyway.  I’ve spent some time in the libraries at this point… haven’t seen too many others hanging out there.  Reading’s not really a thing here.  People are concerned that I read too much and it’s going to drive me crazy.  Really.  There is a local crazy man (like, wanders-around-cackling-to-himself-and-drinking-coffee-in-every-house-on-the-block kind of crazy), and people like to tell me, “You know, Keki wasn’t always crazy… he used to be really smart.  He did really well in school.  But he studied too much and didn’t eat, and it drove him insane.”   Right.  They also claim that he can speak English.  Let me tell you, when Keki tries to speak English it comes out like, “Lkiseh, oieuwm msgehiblah!”  Then he lights a cigarette and blows smoke in my face and falls into a laughing fit, chattering about birds or something.  (This is actually funny… most people have to laugh when Keki laughs.)

Sidenote: almost everyone here has a nickname.  And once they have their nickname, which may have absolutely nothing to do with their actual name, most people forget their real name.  There’s Chepi, Pompa, Keki, Buton, Papo, Prieta, Moreno, and on and on and on.   Who knows any of their real names?  Their own families don’t remember!   Their best friends, cousins, siblings, children… half the time don’t know their real names.   People don’t really get why I find this so amusing.   But then, I find lots of things extremely amusing that people in my community don’t notice.  Like a man wearing a woman’s blouse or shoes that he doesn’t know are meant for a woman.   Or a tiguere driving down the street on a motorcycle carrying a bunch of babies.  How many people can we fit on this motorcycle?  Well, three regular size people, if we pegar como anoche (literally: “squeeze like last night.” Such a Dominican saying.), but if we’re talking about babies… we can fit at least six babies!  This is funny because of the number of babies, but also because of the punk who’s carrying them… Love it.  Tigueres here are still beloved members of the community, despite their delinquency.

Also, assuming that they’re mostly harmless, sometimes it pays to have enamorados – especially ones with motorcycles and lots of free time, or ones who really like to go looking for fruit.  I have a chinola man who is apparently half crazy… he asked my host mom where I came from and what I’m doing here (something that lots of people are probably still confused about…) and she was like: “She’s from the United States.  I wrote to them and asked for an American and they sent her right away.  All I had to do was go to Santo Domingo to pick her up… you should ask the U.S. for one too!”  His response: “Wow!  Que bueno!  Here, I brought her more fruit, make her a batida (milkshake)!”   I laughed pretty hard when she repeated this conversation to me (and handed me my batida).   It’s also kind of mean, trying to engañar some loco who brings us bags bursting with chinola and pineapple from the loma so that we can make tons of delicious fresh juice.  You too can get your very own American!  Ha.  My host mom’s pretty cool.  

Some photos from my site:

My three year old host niece.  Direct quote: "When I want to be good, I'm good.  When I want to be bad, I'm bad."  This was a good moment.  She's usually bad. 

My host family's house.  I spend a lot of time on those rocking chairs...

Tobacco "tube" process. 

Tobacco drying process.  When the tobacco isn't here, this is a popular hang-out spot.  Breezy.

Example of a half-built mansion.  I'm told that it's been like this for about two years... owners live in the States?

Life in Tabara

Lately I’ve been dreaming of a world that involves sweaters… tea… flannel blankets on cozy couches...

It’s hot.  Like, really hot.  The Caribbean sun doesn’t mess around.  People say that this “summer” is worse than usual.  This might be the kind of thing they say every year, but then again it might be true every year.  Apparently I can expect things to cool down around the end of October.  So yeah, I’m looking forward to that… meanwhile I’m doing my best to avoid skin cancer, and considering cutting off my hair. 

I think of the day in two parts: before lunch (6 – 12 AM) and after lunch (3 – 8 PM).  No, lunch does not last three hours, but attempting to do much during this time is generally not a great idea.   Better to sit or sleep after eating a giant bowl of rice and beans, and try not to sweat to death.  (It’s not like anyone else will be doing anything either…) There are only two escape options, and one of them doesn’t exist all that often.   Option 1: sit under a tree, move as little as possible, and catch the breeze.  Option 2 (unfortunately dependent on luz*):  lay on my bed and take a midday nap with the fan blowing on me (hot air, but at least it’s moving).   Option 2 inevitably ends with me waking up sweating from head to toe when the luz goes out and the fan turns off, making the air in the room so oppressive that it’s difficult to breathe and I have to go back outside, where I might find other family members sleeping on the cement floor of the porch, which has room for approximately 2.5 bodies.

*For a better understanding of the luz/water situation of the Dominican Republic:  Some people pay for their electricity and water.  Others don’t.  In the US, when you don’t pay your bills, you don’t get utilities.  Your neighbor, who does pay his bills, does get utilities.  In the DR, when you don’t pay your bills, both you and your neighbor (who does pay) sometimes get utilities and sometimes don’t.   Apply this logic to an entire town, in which some people pay, but many don’t…  We get electricity for several hours, then we lose it for several hours.  Generally this doesn’t bother me (I actually like when the luz goes out, as this means radios also turn off – silence is golden), except for the fan situation…

My survival plan is to get a hammock and string it up outside under the tobacco tarps.  As fun as it is to sit in a plastic chair under a tree with all the muchachos, sometimes a girl just needs a nap.  This really is how most people spend their days here – in a plastic chair, or a rocking chair, or on a curb, or on those steps over there… anywhere they can find shade and a few buddies to sit with.   Most people don’t have much better to do.   Well, correction: most men don’t have much better to do.  Kids too, though they run off, busy with their inventions, their games.  Kids are the same anywhere you go.  Women spend some time sitting around, but you’re more likely to find them cooking or cleaning something.   Men (not all, but most) move from one hangout spot to another, chatting or just staring into space, wishing something interesting would happen.

Saying this isn’t really fair to those who work their butts off all day long on the loma (mountain).  Tabara Arriba subsists off of agriculture.  Tobacco is the main source of income, though many people grow coffee, corn, yucca, plantains, potatoes, etc.   So, sure, lots of men are hard workers, leaving early in the morning on a donkey or a motorcycle, machetes strapped to their waists, prepared for a day of labor in the sun.  They don’t really have a choice – they’re working for survival.   I’m not fully clear on the tobacco process, but I know that it is only sold once a year, and requires a lot of time sitting dormant in long tube things made from large dried palm leaves.  So, between planting tobacco, harvesting it, forming it into those tubes, stringing it out under tarps to dry, putting it back in tube-form, and finally selling it, there is also a lot of waiting involved.  A lot of down time.  A lot of sitting under trees.  (Disclaimer:  I could have that all wrong.  I’m basing this on observation and conversations with campesinos who don’t exactly make themselves clear:  “Lo pones en la cosita, entonces esperas, entonces la otra cosita… y, pues si… ya tu sabes…” Yes, thank you, I understand everything now!)  The fact that it’s only sold once a year means that many families have months-long tabs at the colmados, which they only repay once they sell the tobacco.  The coffee farmers have a better deal, as they can sell their coffee to whoever, whenever.  Tobacco has its system. 

Pretty much the only other source of income here is remittances from family members in the United States and Spain.   Some people have their small businesses, some are paid by the government (the few teachers, police, people who work for “local government,” etc.), but this doesn’t account for much of the money that comes into Tabara.  You can tell who has a relative abroad.  The majority of houses here are made of wood or block, with zinc roofs and cement floors, but there are also a bunch of houses with pretty tiled floors, fancy barred porches, glass windows… Some of these houses are occupied, but the biggest ones, the handful of two-storey houses with two-car garages, appear deserted. They are built, or half built, as though their owners earned some money in the United States, thought they would build themselves a big house in their pueblo, but ran out of money halfway through.  Or just didn’t really want to live in their pueblo.  It’s weird.  Everyone dreams of going to the United States.  Many go to Spain because it’s a little easier.  They may work at low-paying jobs, they may not be rich in those countries, but money goes far here in the Dominican Republic.  Personally, I prefer the campo houses, the colorful wooden ones, the unpainted block ones.   They’re rough around the edges, but they have a charm to them, while the biggest ones somehow seem vulgar, considering the setting… 

I'm looking forward to getting my own campo house in a month or so (provided I can find one), having space and privacy again for the first time since March... and a place to hang that hammock. 

Identity

I am the Blanca, the Americana, the Rubia, and of course, to those in the know (a rapidly growing group), Lauwra/Lauwrita.   Those other names used to bother me, but at this point I’ve realized that everyone identifies by color here (prieta, morena, negra, what have you – there’s a big range).   Sometimes they think I’m Española or Puertoriqueña, which I take as a big compliment regarding my abilities to speak Spanish and not be quite so obviously American.   

“Y dondé esta la blanca?”  Papo says when he walks up to the house and doesn’t immediately see me.  “Dondé esta mi rubia?”  Clearly my host dad knows my name, and doesn’t really categorize me as “that white girl” (note the possessive use of “mi”) – it’s actually just normal to scream out to people in terms of their skin color.   Endearing really…  and indicative of the serious preoccupation that pervades this country, where, as in much of the world, lighter is generally considered better.  The darkest skin marks one as Haitian.  No importa how long you’ve been here – as any country with a border knows – if you look like an immigrant, you’re generally treated like one.  For dark-skinned Dominicans (and Peace Corps volunteers!) that means you’d better have some kind of identification when traveling anywhere near the border if you don’t want to be deported to Haiti (or at least have a really infuriating day dealing with bigot officials).  Seriously, it’s happened.

The division between Dominican and Haitian is a big problem in this country, but it is nothing new or unfamiliar (read: United States and Mexico, Spain and Morocco, German and Turk).  Haitians come to the DR to escape the more abject poverty of their own country, willing to work long, hard days for impossible pay.  (I’ve heard of people receiving less than US$3 for every TON of sugarcane they break their backs cutting, for example.)  Dominicans say Haitians are stealing the jobs that they don’t want anyway, though the realistic ones admit that they are hard workers and quick learners.   When I hear someone being particularly bigoted towards Haitians, I like to let them know how lots of Americans view Dominicans (/immigrants in general) in the U.S.  I’ve had some productive conversations after bringing up that comparison. 

But I am white and American, which gives me completely unfair privileges –education, mobility, the general feeling of being welcome wherever I go… at least in this country.    The absolute strangest thing about my life here is feeling like some kind of celebrity when I walk down the street, especially when I admit to myself that I am getting used to it…

I sit on the front porch, reading a book in the rocking chair, and everyone who passes stops to grab my hand in greeting.   I walk from point A to point B, and people yell out, “hello, hola, como estas, how are you, rubia, blanca, Americana, Lauwra!”  They get excited if I actually stop to talk with them.   Often when walking in the blazing sun, someone pulls up in front of me on their moto and offers me a bola (free ride) to my destination.  Sometimes I’m offered bolas when I’m just sitting on the porch too, but I generally don’t accept the joy ride offers…  And if I sit anywhere long enough (or not long at all), I usually end up with something delicious in my hands, be it a cup of coffee, a bag of mangos, a bowl of tostones, or fresh juice (which I need to be careful of, because they most likely made it with “bad” water from the tap, instead of “good” purified water that they have to buy).  Today I was gifted my first avocados of the season from the colmado man down the street!   If I were a man, I’d probably be receiving propositions from parents to marry their underage daughters and make them Americans.   As it is, I’ve received several marriage proposals and more than one mother/grandmother has asked me to take her child back to the U.S. with me in my suitcase… resulting in several scared children who think I’m going to steal them away in a bag.  Creepy.

There’s actually a song by a Dominican group that says, “Quiero una Americana… pa’ mangar mi visa.”  Translation:  “I want an American… to get my visa.”  I don’t know what all the muchachos screamed at Americanas in the street before this song came on the radio, but now this is it.   When I walk past a group of teenagers (or younger kids) that I don’t know, it’s almost guaranteed that at least one will say under his breath, “Quiero una Americana…” And another might finish it for him, “pa’ mangar, pa’ mangar, pa’ mangar mi visaaaaa.”  This makes them super cool.  Ignoring it isn’t really effective, since I walk past the same people all the time.  Best response that I’ve discovered:  yelling back at them that I’m not going to mangar any visas, while giving them the finger-wag with a good-natured smile (which says:  “I know exactly what you’re saying and I don’t like it, but hey, we can probably still be friends”).  There might be some tigueres in my town, but I’m working on making them MY tigueres.   Then they can just direct their tiguere, too-cool-for-school behavior towards someone else, and yell “Hola Laura” instead of song lyrics when I pass by.

Tabara is a relatively small place.  It’s big enough that I probably won’t know every single person during my time here, but small enough that I do run into the same people all the time and all over the place, only to find out that this one is the cousin of that one, and this one was raised by that one (even though she’s not his real mom because his real mom lives in Spain), and this one is the great-grandmother, even though she looks like she should just be the regular grandmother (but everyone had their babies around age 15), and this one is the brother of that one, and this one is married to that one’s sister…etc, etc, you get the idea.   So, in this place where no one locks their doors and they don’t eat nutritious food (oil, salt, sugar, oh my!), where more people are illiterate than are literate and opportunities are extremely limited, and where it may be normal for girls to get pregnant before the age of 16, and for men to get more than one girl pregnant (/have four girlfriends at a time and start more than one entire family), they also are unbelievably generous, welcoming, and somehow possess motorcycles and cell phones with lots of music stored up.   I don’t really have an explanation for this, but considering all the problems they face, this community is not a bad place to be.