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.