Strikes, the usual

Cesarito and Pedro are really proud of this blue car.  I don’t know when or how it was acquired, but now it can usually be found parked in front of my house, full of pan de agua and biscochitos to be sold at Neno’s colmado.  The windows are tinted, the dashboard ripped out, and the seat covers hide who knows what God-awful upholstery underneath.  At night, when the jóvenes set up their empanada stand on the sidewalk by my front door, and the girls borrow books off my shelves to read by the light of one bare bulb outside the colmado, Cesarito and Pedro lean against the car and the rest of the men settle into their plastic chairs on the sidewalk.  There they discuss the same three topics and continue the same game of casino, voices rising to the same tempo night after night. 

Nothing ever changes.  This blue car is notable for its newness.  (I mean the fact that it wasn’t here before.  It’s probably as old as I am.)  What happens on my street, and on the next one over, and throughout the whole town, is what’s been happening here forever, and what will continue to happen until the end of time.  At least that’s what it feels like.  This puts my presence here in perspective.  No wonder I’m so special.  I came in two years ago and interrupted the never-ending routine with curiosity and enthusiasm and books and ideas… all of which have gotten less novel with time.  Imagínate. 

The motivation that I felt with my teachers a few weeks ago has already given way to countrywide strikes for higher teacher pay.  School is now just two hours in the morning, and two in the afternoon.  Truthfully, it was only three hours before, so I wouldn’t say that there’s all that much of a difference, except that there is less order than usual.  If that’s even possible.  So forget teacher training for the moment.  My reading program marches on, but everything is affected by the ambiance of the school, the mood of the teachers.  Among the many frustrating things about the joke that is the Dominican public school system, strikes are really just icing on the cake. 

I spent last week wilting in my house because there was no school at all, not even two hours, and I had nothing to do but hang out with the kids in my backyard and suffer a slow, painful death of boredom and lack of purpose.  Ok, that’s a little melodramatic.  But at this point, I swing between complete desperation to be out of this country town and a premature nostalgia for the beauty around me here.  Sometimes I love everyone fiercely, sometimes I feel kind of hateful.  When you’re in a moment, it’s hard at times to remember ever feeling any differently.  When you have a horrible headache, you wonder if you’ll ever be comfortable again.  When you’re healthy, sickness is just a bad memory.  That’s what they say about childbirth, isn’t it?  You forget.  Otherwise, no woman would have a second child.  (Or, here, a sixth, seventh, tenth…)

But just when I think I can’t take it anymore, I’m reminded of some of the lovely, unchanging things about Tabara Arriba.  A few nights ago I had a friend here who had to leave on the last bus passing by from the capital.  The motoconchos we called never arrived, and it was getting down to the wire to get us to the highway… I called for the blue car.  Cesarito and Pedro were so happy to do me a favor.  Like, literally just glad that I asked them to do something for me. 

This reminded me of the night I discovered that the horrible smell I’d been unable to identify for days was a dead rat, electrocuted by the jerry-rigged wiring system in my house.  I ran out into the street, dry heaving and eyes watering with the horror of finding that lifeless beady eye in the dark upper corner of my bedroom wall, and begged them to come help me.  No need to ask twice.  Don’t worry about rat juices running down the walls, or the rotting smell of rat flesh four days later – these guys are just happy that I asked them to help me out.  A la orden to save the day.

Compared to that, pulling themselves away from the scintillating rooster debate happening over that never-ending casino game really isn’t too much of a chore I guess.  Especially if it’s to drive the Americana down to the highway in the car they’re so proud of. 

Fiesta de Palos

Last Sunday was the Dia de la Virgen de la Altagracia, and my neighbors had a rockin’ fiesta de palos all day long.  They pulled out the big drums and the shakers and that merengue grinder thing, and the music was bangin’ while the players got progressively drunker on homemade moonshine and rum.  Of course I danced in their kitchen, to the delight of all my rooster-fighting compadres. 

Between sweaty midday palo dances, I was fed arroz con leche, painted the little girls’ nails with blue sparkles, sat under my mango tree with the muchachos to talk about love and fidelity (aka. why they shouldn’t have five girlfriends at a time), and lent my guitar to some drunk guy because he claimed he could fix the messed up high E tuner (he didn’t really fix it, but somehow made it playable for the day).  We sang outside on the boulders in my yard until all the rum breath and enamoraring gazes got to be too much for me and I had to shut it down.

The palos played strong into the night, but at a certain point I was done.  I have to admit that over the last few months I’ve participated less and less in Tabara’s daily life.  I stay in my house much more than I used to, I leave as often as possible on the weekends, I’m less hospitable to those who show up at my door unexpectedly.  During my first year, I left my door open.  I went to parties, church, community events.  I hung out on the street in a plastic chair, went up to the mountains with my neighbors, talked to everyone.  I shelled beans and deveined tobacco leaves.  I shared my Spanish movies and let kids color in my house until 9 PM.  I had a yoga class and went walking with a group of women, even though I really just wanted to run alone.

It worked.  I am a member of this community.  I have a successful project and lots of enthusiastic project partners – I’ve lost one facilitator who finally got a teaching job in the school, but gained three new ones who are excited to work with the kids.  So now my reading program is going strong, with seven facilitators working with eighty kids!  And ever since I took the principal to the Escojo Enseñar conference, he’s super motivated and wants to change the whole school.  I led my first teacher training with twenty teachers yesterday!  I have no illusions that I’ll revolutionize the place over the next few months, but some motivation is definitely a step in the right direction.

I understand everything here more than I once did, and with that understanding comes more tolerance about some things, and less about others.  I understand the difficulties of the teachers in the school, all that they are up against, and I am much less judgmental about the state of their classrooms than I once was.  I also understand when someone is crossing the line, and have no tolerance at all for a drunk man trying to serenade me with my guitar…  Which happens more often than you might think.  It’s not cute.

So, two years later, I no longer feel the need to participate in everything, or be social when I don’t really want to.  I love to dance, but these campo shindigs never really deliver.  At least not for long.  Even so, sometimes participating is a lot more fun than the alternative.  Everyone needs a reminder sometimes.  Nothing like incessant drumming and dancing in the streets to get me out of my house.