Quick minutes

Since the last time I have written for this blog time has seemed to be in fast forward. The summer was packed full with exciting, exhausting, painful and beautiful moments, all of which I would like to have recorded. My past attempts to paint a picture of my life here seem now to capture a clumsy sketch of the Technicolor, 3-D, heart-wrenching comedy that it is. Once in a while I catch a glimpse of myself that portrays just how much I’ve changed and connected…

…slouching in a plastic chair outside Soledad’s house eating kenepa (limoncillo) and chatting while in other patches of shade hair is braided, clothes are washed in buckets, children jump ropes made of rags tied together, motorcycles are wiped down, and goats eat plantain peels…

…my accent as I shoo children from mischief in the school: “pa’fuera to’s, ahora mi’mo”…

…walking through the rocky streets of the village with their competing soundtracks: twangy bachatas booming from the “big” colmado, Haitian music I cannot yet classify, full volume Christian pop, dembows and reggaeton on cell phone speakers, an occasional salsa or Omega’s deep voiced merengue caliente…

…picking my way through the same streets after a rain, expertly avoiding the muddy majority of the street, carrying a bowl of portioned out food sheltered by a plate, greeting people outside their houses with singsong versions of their names…

…stopping at the turn off from the highway to help ferry a woman I have never seen and her enormous sack of avocados, oil gallon of water, a box of who-knows-what, somehow balancing it all on my motor until I can drop it at the house in the batey I've been instructed to…

…peeling green plantains to fry or boil or puree…

…sitting in semi-darkness of the house of Jilda’s family (who I have adopted even though she returned to Haiti in July) following the kreyol conversation of cane workers and even joining in at times in my halting but understandable aysien…

…waiting for in the hot sun at the bus stop in Barahona, waiving as various Hoyeros and Bombiteros pass me 3 to a motorcycle and chatting with those who have not yet found a bola or free ride, until I can wedge myself into a rusty van with 18 others not including the cobrador who stands outside the open sliding door signing to potential passengers standing on the side of the road…

….having to translate from thoughts in Spanish as I compose this…

A few photos of Bombita

To put some faces to the names...

Orquedia and I

In the kitchen at Jilda's house. Her mother is making the dough for bisquitte, a delicious Haitian bread baked over charcoal that she sells in the evening about once a week. Other days she sells empanadas or fried potatoes with a spicy sauce. Customers gather on the plastic chairs outside the house, their dinners often bought on credit and recorded by Jilda in a notebook.

Maria and Nino, Jilds's little brother and sister, hamming it up.

Jilda and Alba outside a newly painted house. Probably a result of the election season. Most houses in the batey are a mix of wood like this one, cement filling, and for those that can afford it, cement block.

A peek at the village outside Orquidea's house. Photos that actually give you a sense of the place coming soon....

Elecciones

With the director away in the US for two weeks, I’ve shifted temporarily to her house in La Hoya living here and commuting a few days a week to Bombita. It has been nice to get more time with my friends here and really feel like part of the group. We gather at one or another person’s house and cook or just chat. The director’s house also has an American sofa (read cushy and informal – Dominican sofas are the opposite) as well as a TV, DVD and a full movie library. It also has a screen room with more seating space than any Dominican house could afford. We’ve tried to take full advantage.

el coro in the screen room

Work has been slow but I have two very full vocational classes organized to begin May 31st. Reposteria (bread and pastry making) for the women and electricity for guys. I tried suggesting that I might take electricity or that men might learn to make bread but it always came out a joke – gender roles are not very flexible here.

La Hoya girls (R to L: Amy, Rosalbe, Nairobi and Francia)

The office is rocking as much as any nightclub as a campaign parade passes by on the newly paved streets of La Hoya. A fast paced merenege urges me to vote for Fabio Vargas “un hombre serio” and claims if there is an improvement I need made I should “pideselo, bum ba bum ba, pidaselo, ba ba upba” ask him for it. The music shakes my desk from an entire truckbed of speakers. It is followed by pickups and minivan guaguas with people, flags, and fliers with the candidates’ highly retouched faces hanging out.

Elections will be held at the schools on Sunday the 16th for senate seats and local diputados. During my Kreyol lesson on Tuesday night in Bombita I get the scoop from Rogelia who is never slow to share her opinion. All the politicians are thieves: only one local candidate has bothered to do any work in Bombita -repairs of peoples houses, giving cement to shape up the little park. Others have handed out ball caps and flyers but the extreme corruption here means that people only vote for what they’ve already received.

Government employment is all controlled by party politics so naming people to those positions has to be requested and granted before this weekend. Many people receiving government paychecks never show up for their job. Even the city council in Bombita has told the garbage truck shared with Canoa, the neighboring town, not to come in order to avoided having to work at garbage collection. The menagerie of animals wandering the streets take care of anything organic but plastic trash continues to pile up in the play field and garbage collection happens maybe once a month. The women who sweep the streets are paid in rice and oil while the council pockets the check.

Despite its lovely example of poverty and corruption, I miss Bombita while I am in La Hoya and will be happy to move back this weekend when the director returns.

Photos soon of both villages. I swear.

Semana Santa

My vacation in Sosua is as relaxing as expected. A distant cousin, his wife, and young daughters are at my uncle’s house visiting when I arrive so the first day feels like family vacation. As all the bedrooms are occupied, I sleep on the couch on the balcony that night. The hot, heavy air finally breaks into thunder and rain, with the waves crashing just as loudly against the rocks. It is a dramatic but somehow soothing scene that lulls me to sleep.


The next days I spend by the pool with a book, making hamburgers with my uncle, and chatting with various friends of my uncle’s that drop by the house. I go visit Sarah whose Montessori school was just beginning during my last visit and this time I and helping her load shelves up with donated supplies and distract a student who has come even during vacation. The school itself is beautiful and seems to be running wonderfully as well. Check out her photos and website here: www.3mariposasmontessori.com

The pleasant lack of adventure on my way up to Sosua is made up for in my trip back as I converse with my seat mates, first a woman visiting her hometown after moving to Germany a decade ago, then with young woman who has worked with Plan International and helps me to find the right public car from the bus station in the capital to the intersection where I can pick up a guagua headed to Barahona. In the car I meet a computer engineer who is working for a newly launched Dominican NGO before snagging an empty guagua headed to the South where they it pick up nearly double it’s capacity of vacationers headed back into the capital.

Back in Bombita I follow the same relaxed but busy routine. Its nice to be greeted by name as I stroll around town and to feel like I have catching up to do with friends over what has happened in the last week.

New Friends/Amigos/Zanmi

The week passes quickly as I finish up letter writing a much as possible and hurry through what has now become a nice weekly routine. Saturday I come back from the market in Barahona and do laundry before Rogelia comes over around 3pm for a salsa lesson. We have pretty much exhausted ourselves when the substitute teacher for the 7th grade class I worked with on Friday shows up with a large bag of coconuts. He had told me he would do so on Friday but it seemed at the time equally likely he might flake. It turns out he and Rogelia know each other from university so the three of us chat over coconut juice for quite while. I now have 6 coconuts in my fridge and a friend in a nearby village called Piñon.

Sunday I ride over to La Hoya to meet Amy, the health adviser, Rosalba, the school psychologist, and others I don’t yet know to go to the beach. Of course I puncture the tire of my bike on the way in. I assume it is one the bits of glass at the turn off from the highway where there has been protests in the last week but find out later that it was a bone. Strange. I go with Gregory, who will also be joining as at the beach, to the moto repair shop in the side of his house. I sit with him to wait for Amy to bring the truck around and pick everyone up. Chatting, I find out that their group 10 or so twenty-something year olds (plus his mother, the La Hoya school librarian and sometimes a few of her friends) is always together. They welcome me as part of the crew even before we head to Quemaitos beach where we buy mangos, grate coconut for the sauce of our lunch, wade in the shallow water and nap in the shade. By the time we are back my bike has been fixed, I even tear the repairman away from his game of dominoes long enough to give me a receipt.

When I get home I have just enough time to shower before I head to church with Verona to see the special service they’ll do to begin holy week. I’m beckoned out of the last row halfway through by a couple of faces at the window. A young woman and her auntie greet me, and explain sheepishly that the girl wants to be my friend. She, Yilda, a 19 year old girl from Port-a-Prince, has come to live with her auntie here. Though her auntie speaks some Spanish she speaks only Kreyol and French. Luckily there are plenty of willing translators in the batey including Yesenia who didn’t end up going to the capital for lack of funds.

Meet Jilda

Monday is quiet as I translate the letters high school students have written. In the evening Yesenia’s 3rd grade niece and a friend show up at my house hoping I’ve made the traditional sweet beans for Semana Santa. I haven’t of course, but I make them dinner before wandering over to Yesi’s where she is blowing out a friends’ hair. We pass by to see Yilda who literally jumps up and down at seeing us. She comes along as we visit various houses with Yesi translating between us from time to time.

My usual Kreyol lesson will be substituted this week for Rogelia cooking dinner at Ruben’s house in exchange for guitar lessons from him. More spaghetti and tostones!
Tomorrow I’ll catch a guagua into the capital then take a bus up to Sosua to stay of the rest of the vacation with my uncle. Looking forward to some time by the pool and seeing the progress some of the projects I visited last time have made.

Caña Quemada (Burnt Sugarcane)

I ride back into Bombita from a day of letter writing with classes in La Hoya feeling very cool as kids call out my name when I pass by on my motorbike. I soon realize they’ve burned the cane field by the school as the air is filled with strips of charred leaves and the small of burnt sugar. Every surface in my house is covered with a layer of soot. I am disappointed to have missed the spectacle since its quite a pretty sight – especially when a field is burned at night.

(The cane train)

Friday after work I walk down to the river with the volunteers. We cross the highway and follow the muddy road next to the irrigation canal passing plots of banana trees and a student with the cow he is leading back to the village before arriving at the river. The quiet that would usually accompany the lazy movement of its slightly brackish water is replaced by the grinding of the pump which sends river water through the canal and into the reservoir by the village that everyone calls “the metro”. The metro is the size of a cane field and constantly sends a cool breeze out along its raised sides making it perfect for a stroll.

(Verona and Enmanuel )

As we return from the river Ruben and Santiago, ringleaders of the cook-at-COPA contingent, drive up on a motorbike to tell me that they will be making dinner at my house tonight. They will show up a Dominican 30 minutes later they tell me. An hour or more later they join other guys who are already sitting in my kitchen, drinking juice made from a powder and arguing about what to make. Enmanuel, the self declared chef, finally gets to work on rice and corn and our conversation turns to preparations for Sunday’s trip to the beach. With no shortage of drama we sort out who will buy and cook 2 chickens and 10 pound of rice.

Sunday morning we are on the road in the truck borrowed from La Hoya. I pass up the passenger seat to ride in the back with the rest of the crew – Santiago, Ruben, Enmanuel, Yosi (pronounces Josie), Azul and the volunteers – Sinead and Layla. We pick up 3 friends of Ruben from another village at a crossroads, pass through Barahona, stop to buy ice and more sodas, then continue on to San Rafael. It is only 11am when we arrive but the first thing the guys do is start heaping their plates with food. The beach is mostly pebbles and the surf is powerful so our first dip turns into a game of dumping sand down each others backs and washing it out with a rush into the balance-defying waves.

We are taking a breather when we see that people are running away from the central area of tables and umbrellas. Two groups of guys are fighting, throwing rocks and yelling obscenities. Those not involved scatter, trying to avoid the rain of stones as the groups move, gathering bottles and machetes as they attack each other. When they have moved far enough away, we collect out stuff and grab the truck to make our escape with the rest of the people fleeing the beach. We are glad to have brought our own vehicle as we pass people arguing over space on the few guaguas available. We hear from others that the fight is over a disagreement over a table between one group of guys and the café owner who was quickly backed by other locals. I am incredulous – do people here lack a cause so much that they will fight over something that trivial?

We go to a beach a few miles away, joined by many of those who have left San Rafael. This beach has less shade but the water is shallow and warm. We eat again, laughing about who was cowardly or nervous during the debacle. We swim out to balance on rocks just a meter below the surface, lie in the sun and generally enjoy the rest of the day.

Monday is back to work, getting the water system fixed after two days of bucket baths, in and out of classrooms writing letters with the kids, and out to Batey Central, near Barahona, for a meeting at the high school. In the evening I walk the village with Orqedia in search of ice for her small cafeteria/food stand after the power has been off and on (but mostly off) all day. Tuesday night will be my Kreyol lesson and Wednesday shopping in Barahona. Thursday night I’ll go with the youth group to visit the youth in La Hoya and Friday I might find some friends making dinner at my house before I get online and hopefully catch people at home. Saturday marks the beginning of vacation for everyone but COPA staff – we don’t have off until Wednesday. Time is already flying by!

Settling In

Its raining today and it matches the mood because yesterday one of the students was killed in an accident. The school is quiet and the words of the boy’s sister calling out for him at the funeral last night are echoed by a kid headed to bathe in the irrigation canal this morning. The tragedy seems dulled by the fact that there has been at least one death a week in the village since Christmas. Many are shootings in a drug related struggle happening in the capital which send the bodies of young “tigres” back to their families in Bombita to mourn and bury but others were health related and this was an accident on the highway and the boy who died was 13. My first moto ride out of the village is to bring his picture to his grandmother in Canoa, the next town over. Although the poverty here makes me feel like I have a reason to be working in these communities, the injustice of my ability to do so makes me feel powerless to make significant change.

When school is back in session on Monday I am cajoling the teachers into helping me with sponsor letters. Each student has two sponsors – one in the US and one in the UK – so they write to each about what they have been learning lately in the spring and then again at Christmas they send cards. Being in charge of sponsorship allows me to get into the classrooms and get to know the kids a bit. I start with the youngest and the high school students but will work my way through all the grades in both schools before the end of the month if all goes well. Meanwhile I’m also trying to get up to speed on financial stuff and toss around ideas for the vocational program.

I’ve made some friends who keep me busy outside of work hours. Yusenia, the kindergarten teacher, literally invites me to be her friend and follows through, coming to find me at my house with her cousin Orquidea and take me on walks around the village. Rogelia who is studying at university comes to my house on Tuesday evenings for a Kreyol/English exchanges and leaves me with homework. Enmanuel and Vladimir come to my house with plantains and whip up Dominican style spaghetti and tostones. Wednesday evenings and Saturday mornings the COPA staff goes into Barahona to buy groceries as there are supermarkets as well as a market with fresh fruits and vegetables. In the batey people sell flat bread, eggs, and small amounts of anything else out of a room in their house in the Dominican version of a corner store/hang out called a Colmado. It looks like I should be able to get the internet every Friday night so that will add skype calls to my weekly routine.

(In Barhaona. Pica Pollo = Fast Food)

This weekend I’m headed to a baby shower for Orquidea’s sister on Saturday night and Sunday to batey 4 where many people in Bombita have relatives. More letter writing with both Bombita and La Hoya classes in the coming week - I have a feeling I will really need the vacation during Semana Santa which starts on the 29th.

I know I should be taking pictures for you all but I havent the heart to take them until people know me better...soon.