Up to Date

Oct. 24, 2009
A layover I Singapore. I have just enough time that I could go out and explore the city. The adventurer in me has read the travel guide on the flight from Hong Kong and is itching to see the sights. Then there is the rational me that says if I want to get a job or have any friends left I better spend some quality time with my laptop. It has been pretty crazy lately and my gateway has sat most of it out. So lets back up here, where have I been the last two weeks?

Oct. 8---
Even my send off from San Francisco is chaotic with last minute unexpected visitors from Juneau and the ladies next to my assigned seat on the flight to Miami asking me to switch with their friend 10 rows away. After losing sleep to so many errands and goodbyes I thought the first step in my new life is to sleep but apparently it’s the overhead bin luggage shuffle.

I’m a little overwhelmed by how much love I’ve gotten from the Bay Area. I’m so lucky to have the friends I do. Everyone has been so supportive of my decisions and goals. It’s scary to be on my own in the big wide world but its also exhilarating.

The notes I was taking went downhill quickly from there, apparently the fatigue finally hit me. I continued in a sleepy haze through the delightfully bilingual Miami Airport where I vaguely remember eating a guava and cheese pastry before boarding my flight to the Dominican Republic. I woke in time to regret having an aisle seat on the decent to Puerto Plata Airport. My Uncle Art met me at the exit and promptly bought me a cold Presidente beer before driving me past palms and sugarcane fields to his beach house in Sosua.

My uncle’s house is unbelievable. It looks like its straight out of an in-flight magazine article on tropical vacations. First thing, I went for my camera and discovered it had zero battery (which never happens, I swear) and I had not brought the cord. So no pictures, but I’ll try to be descriptive.

That first night we went to the next town over, Cabarette, which has a wide beach lined with bars and restaurants. The lounge chairs are collected once the sun goes down and replaced with tables and chairs. Though we had planned to meet them later in the week, we happened to run into friends of my Uncle’s who had been working on education related projects on the north coast. Tricia, who has tons of connections and ideas about possible work for me in the DR, is now starting up a coffee house and a new foundation. Sarah who used to work with Tricia, is now opening a Montessori school. Both had interested opportunities to offer me in terms of community development work but neither could pay me.

Having seen mostly the walled-in houses and gated developments in Sosua and along the highway, I was glad to get a fuller sense of the area. We drove through Los Cheramicos, a mostly Dominican town across the bay from Sosua. Brightly painted cement houses and shops line narrow but paved streets where motorbikes and cars pass food carts and people gathered outside in plastic chairs. I also got a glimpse of a poorer neighborhood, small houses with dirt floors, front rooms with hand painted signs, their inhabitants sitting outside on the narrow, rutted streets, watching us pass curiously.

I saw a whole other picture of Sosua when we drove home one night thought the main street. It was lit up by bars full of (mostly foreign) men and girls with a lot of make up and not so many clothes. Sex tourism is big in the Dominican and apparently Sosua is part of the scene.

I’d like to report that all of my time was spent learning about the country and its people, observing the burning social issues, and picking up local slang, but truthfully, especially the first weekend, I spent a lot of time at the pool soaking in sunshine and relaxing.

By Monday I was ready for some less sedentary activities. My uncle had a massage scheduled in Cabarette so I took the opportunity to check out Sarah’s Montessori school. The space was perfect, light and airy – just missing a few more things before little ones from the nearby neighborhood would have an unusually well supported start at education. I helped varnish some low tables as Sarah told me about her plans for the school.

We ended up eating lunch with Sarah and her boyfriend on the beach in Cabarette right next to a windsurf/kiting/sailing rental place. It came up that I had taught sailing which excited my uncle since he knew the owner of the rental place. A couple conversations later I had a “technical interview” the next morning. Returning the following day I was introduced to a friend of the owner’s who was to be my test student. It was definitely not my best lesson but we had a great 2 hours on the water. Apparently I passed the test, leaving me with a good possibility of paying work should I decide there is some underpaid calling in the area I must answer to.

Though my uncle’s Spanish is quite good in daily situations, I translated a bit for his newest household help, Olga. She was the night guard’s cousin’s sister in-law, or something like that. Once business was out of the way I kept her company in the kitchen, learning the recipe from her as she made Dominican stewed chicken. I also learned that her little house was built by a foreign development project and her eldest of five daughters had been adopted by an American family and goes to high school in the US.

I was impressed, especially by her example, of how much foreign impact there is on the lives of Dominicans. There is this distasteful situation of hundreds of Dominicans making the rational economic decision to go into some degree of sex work or another which is fueled by a certain brand of tourism. There are half empty and half finished all-inclusive resorts sprouting up with, I’m sure positive and negative impacts for locals. At the same time here is a woman, who speaks no English and tells me she is semi-illiterate, whose life has will be dramatically changed if her daughter is able to get her medical degree and return home as she has planned.
Wednesday evening my uncle’s girlfriend arrived and we went to a Hungarian restaurant in Sosua. I was constantly surprised by the ex-patriot community in the area. Our Hungarian waiter spoke some English but almost no Spanish!

Before I left the US I wrote to an organization called AgroFrontera doing agricultural development work closer to the Haitian border on the north coast and in the Ciabo Valley. They were generous enough to let me visit so I woke up early on Thursday and boarded a cushy, air conditioned bus for Santiago, a larger city about an hour and a half south of Sosua. From there I switched to a gua gua, a smaller, less well appointed bus, headed for a little town called Villa Vasquez where I was to meet the program director. The plan was to accompany him to the coast where the organization was beginning to work with fishermen. The gua gua stopped at each town along the highway making the trip about 2.5 hours and giving me a great tour of the Ciabo Valley. The road was lined with rice fields which I later learned were the reason for the fairly good ratio of cement to wooden houses I also observed. It turned out that our trip to the coast was canceled so I learned quite a bit about AgroFrontera’s work with rice farmers on sustainability as well as the history of rice production in the area. Super interesting stuff, fabulously warm and helpful staff, but of course no job for me. My return trip, after a delicious Dominican meal with my hosts, was long but air conditioned.

Friday morning we visited the school my uncle had helped to build. The Directora was extremely happy to have us and explained how they taught over 400 low-resource students, k-12, in 7 small classrooms. She was proud to have the largest computer lab in the area of about 12 computers sharing a room with the small library. I learned just how much better this school was than the public ones from Santa, the lady my uncle had to the house to do manicures and pedicures. We chatted about her business and life in the area. She told me her daughters had seen us at the school earlier, that they had switched there from a public school after receiving scholarships. She felt they were getting a much better education and had good chances of finishing high school and possibly continuing to college – huge achievements she never had the chance at.

Saturday we went shopping for all the little things my uncle’s house needed to function as he would like. In order to find some les s common things, we drove into Puerto Plata and went in a few circles on the one way streets of the historic downtown. The shuttered, wooden buildings were easy to imagine in a colonial era - very Pirates of the Caribbean. The rest of the city resembled others in Latin America that I’ve visited – all cement and loud signage.

That evening I met up with Claudia, a friend of a friend, who lives in Santiago, and 3 of her buddies who came to stay in Cabarette for the weekend. (Dominicans work 5 and a half days so Saturday and Sundays are the big nights to be out). I went with them to the hostel and we had a chance to bond before they took me out dancing. We hit up the beach bars at Cabarette filled with techno, reggaeton, and mix of tourists and locals before driving to Playa Dorada, outside of Puerto Plata, where the scene was much more Dominican both music and dancers. By the time I had my fix of bachata it was 5am but the club was still packed when we left. We split the next lazy day between the pool and the beach in Cabarette. It was great to spend a full 24 hours in Spanish and learned from people my age about the country. I was really sad to see them go.

Monday I was off on the next adventure but hoping I could return to the DR soon. I said goodbye to my Uncle and flew out of Puerto Plata arriving in Miami in the evening. As planned, a friend from Juneau, Moose, flew in to meet me and take advantage of the one night layover. Moose runs a Tango school but also works for Alaska Airlines – thus the ability to fly last minute for a one night party and the dancing skills to make the former worthwhile. Unfortunately, I had not planned on the hotel shuttle mysteriously loosing my bag, but they did, and have yet to find it. Moose and I handled the situation by getting some last minute digs and hitting the dance floor anyway. I managed sleep about an hour before catching my flight back to SFO with just my purse and a shopping bag.

My three days in the US were a whirlwind of visiting with my sister and my parents who were in town to see me off, luggage sorting, and last minute shopping to replace the most essential contents of my missing bag. Late Thursday night I was at SFO again, passing out just after take off on my way to the next big thing: India.