Chicas Brillantes

I always loved going to overnight camp as a kid.  For a few summers, my friend Christina and I went to Camp Matollionequay in New Jersey.  We played sports and did activities, swam, sang lots of songs, were really silly… the normal camp thing.  It was only a week, which we spent in a rickety wooden cabin with six other girls and a counselor, communal bunk living, but that week was enough to make us a little more independent, a little freer.  And it was a lot of fun. 

Last weekend I took two of my thirteen year-old friends with me to the Chicas Brillantes regional southern conference.  It was camp, pretty much.  We spent three days at a beautiful retreat center about two hours away from where I live, with a few cabins, a pool, and sixty other girls and Peace Corps volunteers.  My girls wanted to stay forever.  The purpose of the conference, and Chicas Brillantes (basically “Glowing Girls”) in general, is to empower teenage girls through activities concerning self-esteem, gender and sexuality, health, sports, games, community work, and whatever else we volunteers can think of.  And, of course, lots of singing and being silly too. 

By the end of day two, our forty girls had turned into some sort of sorority, chanting the words to Chuli Chuli, a song they particularly liked, and calling themselves the Chuli Chulis.  Not only was this funny (although I never want to sing Chuli Chuli again), but it was also kind of great to watch them making friends with girls from different communities, of different ages and varying backgrounds.  I know that my girls do not have a single friend of Haitian descent here in Tabara, so for them to become friends with girls from the bateyes is a really big thing.  It was awesome to be able to give them the opportunity to get out of Tabara for a weekend and do something so cool.  Not a common occurrence for your average Dominican.  I think they learned a lot.

And best of all, I get to take some girls to Peace Corps’ Camp GLOW (Girls Leading Our World) this summer, which will be a lot like this conference except for a week instead of just the weekend.  Who ever thought I would be an overnight camp counselor for Dominican girls?  Hilarious.   

In some ways, living in my town is a lot like camping.  I wash with buckets; I live with my doors and windows open… basically I live outside.  I don’t cook over an open fire, but plenty of other people do.  I can identify every voice passing outside my door – half of the time I feel like my neighbors live in my house with me.  Last night my girls came over, calling out “Chuli” to identify themselves in the dark at my door (there was no electricity) and asked when we can go back to camp.  We can’t go back to camp any time soon, but we are forming a Chicas Brillantes group so that they can share what they learned with some of their peers here in Tabara.  I remember coming home from Camp Matollionequay and singing camp songs for weeks afterwards.  I’m sure their first order of business will be to teach their friends Chuli Chuli…

A day in the life…

Some days are just kind of crazy.  I think this one is worth recounting:

I woke up around 7:30 AM, with absolutely no plans for the day.  It was a holiday for some unknown reason (any excuse for a party really), so there was no school or work, and I’m between projects.  My greatest achievements probably would have included trying to use the Internet (if I could find it working anywhere, which is unlikely), cooking something, and hanging out with my neighbors.

But around 8:30 AM, the priest called me.  I couldn’t understand a word he said, maybe because my phone is awful, or maybe because he talks like a crazy person when he’s excited.  He only lives around the corner, so I told him I’d come to his house and we could talk there.  Upon arrival, I was given the expected sugarcoffee, and then was unexpectedly kidnapped and taken on a joyride to three neighboring communities, the purpose of which was unclear.  I was glad that I had brushed my teeth before leaving my house for what I thought would be a two-minute conversation and turned into a four-hour adventure, though I wished that I had put on sunscreen and changed out of the tank-top I slept in last night. 

We arrived to the first community, stopping the truck every few feet to greet someone, the priest either asking why they weren’t in church last week or calling them terms of endearment and blowing them kisses.  We picked up a muchacho who apparently works with the church, and went searching for some key.  It was a very slow ride – we couldn’t make it fifty feet without stopping to chat with someone.  We never achieved whatever it was we were trying to do, but left the community with three extra people in the back of the truck.

Then we drove out to the highway, went a ways down the road, and turned onto a rough dirt road between a bunch of dirt mounds with absolutely nothing else around.  Not a community.  Just dirt.  We waited a minute.  A man appeared from behind a dirt pile.  (Well-dressed, not dirty.)  He got in the truck and we left the dirt mound area, went back to the highway, drove a little further, entered another community, and promptly stopped for empanadas.  I wasn’t hungry, but the five men I was with each ate two.  After their snack, we drove to someone’s house, paused while one of the guys went searching for someone and talked for a while about building materials, costs, construction, whathaveyou.  He came back with grape sodas for everyone and we left that community and drove back to the dirt piles.  When we got there, the man took out a manila envelope and filled it with dirt from one of the piles, gave it to the priest, and we left him there amongst his piles and drove back towards Tabara. 

Sidenote:  This whole time, the truck is blasting merengue and salsa music, and everyone is joking around and yelling random things at each other and at people on the street outside.  Not bad things, just… campo.  Example: “Mi amor, guardame un chin de habichuela!”  My love, save me some beans!  Also, the priest is tailgating and passing cars and motorcycles so close that I’m pressing my right foot hard into an imaginary break and clenching my fists.

As it turns out, the purpose of the entire morning was to fill an envelope with dirt and write a letter to an American priest in Wisconsin asking for two generator batteries for the parish.  (That’s what we did when we got back to Tabara.)  I’m still not sure why I was necessary for the trip, except that the priest really seems to enjoy my company.  All in all, it was a good morning actually – I was extremely amused the whole time, and we ate some yummy spaghetti when we got back. 

Later, I went up to my host family’s house to hang out with my sister.  What started with the two of us casually chatting on the couch quickly became soap opera material, with a revolving cast of characters in ridiculous situations.  Between one cousin whining about money and make-up, another cousin making us laugh so hard we almost fell off the couch as she talked about men, cabañas, and dirty Dominican expressions, the relatively rich grandmother in-law yelling about how she’s been denied water filters from the church (the filters were given to families who can’t afford the big jugs of water sold at colmados), and the three year old tiguera being a tiguera, it was a full house.  A neighbor also told us of her current troubles with an unwanted guest: an older Spanish man that she met in the capital came to visit her and never left.  Um…what?  He was never invited, and she doesn’t want him there, but he has now been living in her house for four months.  Also, he kicked her daughter.  My response: “WHAT, ARE YOU KIDDING ME?  Throw him out for God’s sake!”  That story is unresolved for now.

Finally, there was some big baseball game on at night, and all my neighbors sat outside one guy’s house watching it through the windows, perched on a truck bed or in plastic chairs on the street.  I sat in the truck with them for a while before I decided that I’ve never cared about baseball, and just because I’m in baseball land doesn’t mean I have to start now.  My little neighbors came over for story time instead, with the background of men directly outside my door screaming at a little TV through a window across the street, some of them peering in every so often to hear the story. 

Quite a day.