altitude: 0m and sinking

When the viajita died, her children commenced to cry a flood of tears, inundating the only bridge out of town, leaving them isolated in their mourning, from the velorio to the funeral 9 days later. It was like something out of a Gabriel Garcia Marquez novel. I wish I had so eloquent a way to describe having 9 days of explosive diarrhea while the latrine’s flooded.

* * *

Imitating a miniature tiguere, a toddler known affectionately by all as El Chiquito takes his uncle’s pistola (not loaded at the time) and stuffs it down his pants. 2 minutes later he soils himself.

* * *

After watching his Tigueres de Licey win the serie final, Ullo runs outside and fires his pistola into the air. All the wannabe tigueres go cruizing down the mud trench of a main drag, revving their motorcycle engines. Up in Nueva Yoi we call our national pelota championship the World Series.

* * *

A year or two back, Noel got a micro enterprise loan to start a small motorcycle repair shop, which he runs from his mother’s veranda. As in any self-respecting mechanic shop, there’s a calendar with the image of a topless blonde prominently displayed.

* * *

10-year-old Nungito likes to walk around the yard, sucking his thumb, wearing nothing more than plastic chancletas, tighty-whiteys, and a XX-large t-shirt reading, “FBI: Female Body Inspector”.

* * *

Guillermo asks me to translate an English phrase on his grandson’s school bag. It reads “Raytheon Benefit Center”.

* * *

The biggest hit in the campo now is the bachata ballad “Algo Grande” by Anthony Santos. The second biggest hit is an “1812 Overture” ringtone that the kids play incessantly on any cell phone they can get their hands on.

* * *

In San Jose de Ocoa, the barbershop, Peluqueria el Flow is adorned with a portrait of Che Guevara – the classic picture with the locks flowing down from the iconic beret. Precariously close to the locks are hair clippers.

* * *

At a conference at a Catholic retreat center, I present a report on the state of affairs in my campo. At the opposite end of the room is a large portrait of Monseñor Romero.

* * *

Altitude, ahora mismo en la capitai: 0m and sinking (i.e. everything's flooded and the road back to my site is impassable).

catorce cortas

Che Guevara ends every entry in his Bolivian diary with the altitude at the time of writing.

* * *

A young man, mouth gaping open, stares at a Rambo movie, wearing a hat with the iconic image of Che Guevara emblazoned on front and the New Era logo on back, resembling a (United States of) American flag.

* * *

A fat gringo in a Speedo lies passed out and sprawled out on the beach, getting sunburns on his sunburns. His friend comes and nudges him with his foot, and then takes a photo of him with his camera phone.

* * *

An Asian tourist bends over to take a photo of some flowers. Checking out her posterior, Ullo tries to get her attention, commenting “¡China! ¡Estás tirando fotos de flores!”

* * *

The wannabe tigueres who loiter outside of the school point out a muchacha that they say is enamorada with me. Her t-shirt reads “I love you, loveaholic.”

* * *

Golgotha overlooks Puerto Plata, with a cell phone tower built alongside the cross. Beneath lies a tomb housing a gift shop.

* * *

Seed boxes are piled in the corner of the room. All the labeling is in English. They’re genetically modified and imported from Israel.

* * *

Two Haitians work together to till a field. Each wears hand-me-down work clothes, including baseball caps bearing the names of opposing candidates in the last Dominican presidential election.

* * *

A convoy of jipetas comes into the campo, carrying local political figures here for a holiday pig roast. They come bearing gifts for the children, toy jipetas and pistolas.

* * *

The ice cream man here drives a motorcycle, not a truck, and plays merengue, not circus music. The milk truck also announces its presence with festive merengue played at full blast, though the driver is a little more gruff and surly, likely because he works 365 days per year. I often take volas to the pueblo with him.

* * *

The guy who I always see at the bus stop in Imbert says he learned English in Alaska, where he went to middle school and high school. He later got in some trouble, sent to jail, and then deported.

* * *

During a household interview, when asked what she does during the day, one of the abuelas responds, “¡Fumo!”, “I smoke!” as she lights up her pipe.

* * *

Every morning Chulo trains his fighting cock, running laps in a 5-foot radius circle with another cock in his arms, as his pugilist in training follows, pumping its bald legs, leg feathers having been plucked making them look ready for purchase at the supermarket. Chulo’s cock gets killed within minutes during its first fight on Christmas Eve. As per tradition, Chulo will not eat his own fallen fighter.

* * *

Altitude = 100m

sabado en el campo

Saturday in the Campo

5:30 A.M. – Ruido Awakening

A false cognate – the word ruido does not translate to rude, but to noise. Roosters, guinea hens, geese, dogs, kids cranky for having been roused to milk the cows. My doña’s in the outdoor kitchen, to which my only window opens, shouting out largely unheeded orders. And then my turn comes, “Vamanos, Juan.”

6:00 A.M. Camino y Cafecito

During a recent visit to el medico, my doña was told that she could stand to get more exercise. Hence, at 6:00 every morning I accompany her on a walk to the river. Now, my doña’s on her feet from waking to sleeping, and I’ve wondered how many miles she covers during the average day, but I still think our early morning constitutionals do her some good. She carries a knife, with which she cuts bushes to make a broom to sweep leaves, fruit pits and peels, and other less-organic basura in the yard. The only other persons we encounter on the road are Haitian farmhands on their way to work. On our return trip, we stop at a neighbor’s house for a cafecito, a shot of strong, sugary coffee. And the folks here take it almost like a shot, chugging it down in a matter of seconds. As for me, I like to hold the warm cup in my hands, as it’s surprisingly cool here this time of year. Not one to waste a minute of the day, my doña begins removing guandules from their pods, a gift from another neighbor.

7:00 A.M. Agua, Agua Everywhere

My host family, like many others in the community, has running water at the house, thanks to an electric bombita ladrona, literally translating to “little thief pump”, and PVC pipe running to the river. Power outages here are more common than power innages, so when la luz se va and the small reserve tank has been depleted, no hay agua tampoco. A couple of weeks ago, during prolonged power outages and several days of heavy rains that stirred up sediment and also left the community stranded by flooding the “bridges” at the entrada and the salida. It was something like some rime from some ancient mariner – hay mucha agua pero no hay nada para beber.

Anyway, it was endearing when my doña sent me to the rió to buscar agua… maybe now I’ll now be treated as just another muchacho in the family, and not as the special guest. I climbed on the ass end of a half-ass (back of a mule) behind one of the other muchachos, with 5 gallon jugs in tow.

8:00 A.M. Third World Xeriscaping

In dry climates, laying flat stones like tiles is a resource-efficient way to beautify you yard. In wet climates, laying flat stones like tiles is a way to avoid walking in the mud. But this isn’t the only use for rock tiling here – they can also serve to cover a makeshift landfill. In a place where there is no service to suddenly make your garbage disappear to somewhere else, there are few options: burn it, bury it, or chuck it in the river, as some do. Now, because garbage doesn’t just get whisked away, people seem to be more conscientious about reusing “disposable” products. Also, overly-packaged processed foods are less ubiquitous than I’ve seen elsewhere. Nevertheless, non-biodegradable solid waste builds up over time, and so I spend the morning carting piedras – 3^rd world xeriscaping.

9:30 A.M. Desayuno

Harina. In Jamaica they call it corn meal porridge.

10:00 A.M. More Third World Xeriscaping

1:00 P.M. Almuerzo

Moro – a pilaf of rice and beans. Also, espaghetti, piled on top. It’s typical to eat both at the same meal.

2:00 P.M. More Third World Xeriscaping

This time with help from one of the Haitian farmhands who’d been planting yuca in the morning. Hunched over, he balances a large rock on his back as he dances.

3:30 P.M. Al Rió Para Bañarme

Still no water in the llave, so I go to the river to bathe.

4:00 P.M. Finally Make My Rounds

I head out on the calle to saludar the peeps. This is how things will slowly get going on the water project.

5:00 P.M. Dominoes

My walk takes me to a game of dominoes, as it typical does around this time of day.

6:30 P.M. More Dominoes, This Time With the Kids

7:30 P.M. Cena

Galletas, a word translating to “cookies” or “crackers”, but these are neither cookies nor crackers. They’re made from flour, but aren’t really bread either. They’re just galletas.

8:00 P.M. Todo el mundo shows up at my house

Kids yell and scream and play marbles outside my door. Others converse in the kitchen, to which my only window opens. So much for a few short moments of tranquility before bed.

11:00 P.M.

It finally quiets down a bit as everybody heads to bed. Except for the barnyard animals and the 5-year old whaling in the room next to me.

strangers

We’re 2 foreigners in the community. We move in opposite directions, one towards survival, the other towards… well, I don’t know exactly, perhaps toward a grain of understanding. We converse in a tongue that is a second language to each. One is the backbone of the community’s agricultural economy. The other’s primary job right now is to go from house to house and drink coffee.

But we’re equals when we sit face-to-face as teammates at the domino table and we sweep 3 games against our Dominican opponents. And the Haitian farm worker can count up the scores on the fichas faster than the college math major.

And to the youngest kids, we’re both just people. The other day I saw the five-year old teaching the words to the latest bachata hits to 3 Haitian farm workers, learning a little more Spanish during their lunch break.

Third-World Living

I live in a 2-room wooden casita, a term that sounds quaint, but that really refers to the modest dwellings of those who can’t afford a more spacious, sometimes concrete, house. My room has one window, which opens to an outdoor kitchen where my doña cooks over a wood fire for an army, including her adult sons, innumerable niños, neighbors, and Haitian farm workers. In the other room, separated by thin boards at the bottom, poster board higher up, and nothing at the very top, lives a family of 4. The 3-year old wakes up crying at some point every night. Even more people live in the, albeit, larger house on the farm. This is third world living. But not quite – I don’t share a room with 3 other people.

observ(ed)ation

“El Profe”, the exuberant school director recounted the history of the modest but handsome school building we stood outside of, explaining how its construction was made possible by funds from the U.S. and how grateful he was, as a way of introducing the awkward new Americano in town. Trying to initiate a discussion in front of the eager crowd seated in miniature school chairs about how with a history of exploitation from colonialism to neo-colonialism IMF and FTA style, the pittance given out in aid might not exactly be gracious, would have been difficult. “El Profe” continued, saying that the Americano was there to build to build an aqueduct. Whoa, whoa, whoa… suave. Here I had to interject. We’re here to build an aqueduct… together.

Really, we´re here together to build solidarity.

One of my assignments during my initial site visitation week was to “observe” the local school. Well, as with any other observation, any distinction between observer and observed is blurred, and what you really end up observing is yourself. My entrance into the classroom had to be a big spectacle, with the school director giving a long-winded address and then having each student stand up to introduce him or herself. And they insisted that I have a box of milk from the school milk program. And they’d already decided to end the already too-short school day an hour early for the water meeting.

Not the initial impact I wanted to have.

I’ll end with a quote from Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed:

“This person (the radical) does not consider himself or herself the proprietor of history or of all people, or the liberator of the oppressed; but he or she does commit himself or herself, within history, to fight at their side.”

How can the construction of a community aqueduct, with the hands of the persons in the community, be a process of liberation? How can I shape my role to allow this process to evolve, rather than perpetuating the traditional paternalism?

a buen tiempo

“A buen tiempo.” It’s one of the many idiomatic expressions that distinguish the Dominican language. If you walk in on people having a meal, a snack, or cualquier cosa, “a buen tiempo” is an invitation to compartir, to share, and I’ve heard that in the absence of more food in the pot, people will give you half of what they have on their plate. Compartir. House visitors are virtually always offered something in the way of food or drink… maybe juice… more often coffee – just a shot, but strong, pretty much espresso. If nothing else, visitors are offered a piece of candy… often really a cough drop… maybe sometimes bubblegum.

And my ass is made of bubblegum. As a major component of our technical training, we’re augmenting parts of an existing acueducto. Our current project is the construction of a sedimentation tank. The concept is that water should flow through the tank at such a rate that it remains in the tank for a sufficient amount of time to allow sediment to settle to the bottom. It’s a big concrete box, constructed with little more than brute strength and steady hands, two things I am in short supply of. But the view, sometimes blurred by the sweat in my eyes is worth any numbness from the daily combination of physical and mental exertion: milder slopes covered in fields growing onions, tomatoes, eggplant, peppers, and beans to steeper slopes covered in trees ranging from palms to pines to some fruit trees, and even some cacti.

There are moments every day that make me feel like bubblegum. One time I was León trudging up the hill, hunched over, hauling a massive concrete vaina (something) on his shoulder. I don’t know what this vaina was, but it looked big and heavy. León is a frail looking old man with long fingernails, fewer teeth than fingers showing in his perpetual grin, always plastic sandals barely holding together with string, and always with his machete strapped to his side as any self-respecting campesino would have. León walks past the work site daily, his arms outstretched to give each person a hug while giving his greetings in a dry, raspy voice, “hermanito… ¿como está la cosa?... hermanito… vaya bien… hermanito.”

Up to my knees in concrete, I hit a wall sometime Saturday afternoon and I couldn’t have told you if it was made of block, stone masonry, or ferrocement. On the other side is the obligatory Saturday night, after the long week of work. In the next community down the road, there are two colmados (general store/bar/dance hall) that try to outdo the other in attracting business with the volume of their music. But the gemelas, the twins, only hang out at one of the colmados. It’s about as absurd as those Coors Light commercials, as if a small piece of the Purple Martini was transplanted onto a dark, lonely campo road. I’ll save a discussion about machismo, tigures, and the exploitative conquista of women, but the campo colmado scene seemed so out of place, and yet so fitting. We’d stop by after the work day, still in work boots and blue jeans still caked in mud and concrete – I feel like a gringo when I’m clean and I feel like a gringo when I’m dirty.

Up to my knees in mud, I trudge through the most treacherous part of the road to the nearest pueblo, San Jose de Ocoa, a perpetual landslide, where on a couple of occasions, I’ve seen the front-end loader that’s there to clear the road has become stuck, and has sat precariously close to plummeting off the steep face to one side. Oftentimes, the only way to travel in the campo, is by vola, by hitchhiking, usually on the back of a long-bed Daihatsu truck or a pickup carrying produce down to market. When road conditions are bad, you have to take one vola to the landslide, roll up your pant legs and remove your shoes and tramp through the mud, and then hitch another vola to town. And Dominicans seem to nearly always maintain clean clothes and shoes. I feel like a gringo when I’m clean and I feel like a gringo when I’m dirty.

In some parts of the campo, the only way to get around is by motoconcho, motorcycle taxi. I recently went to the southwestern part of the country, near to the pueblo of Las Matas de Farfan, in the province of San Juan, near to the Haitian border, to see the nearly-completed acueducto of a second-year volunteer. Being on the drier side of the mountains, the dirt roads are more dust than mud. The word “matas” translates to “bushes” and as the name implies, the landscape is dotted with small bushes, and also grazing cattle. My impressions over my limited time there were that this frontier zone is more underserved than the campo outside of Ocoa. Travel along the main road is briefly interrupted by periodic immigration check points. Which way do the immigration vectors point? Well, suffice it to say that my campo host family owns a modest, but substantial piece of farmland and the labor is performed almost entirely by Haitians. I feel I have no need here to draw comparisons to similar dynamics in North America or in Europe. Anyway, in this particular campo in San Juan, there is only one family that owns a motored vehicle with 4 wheels, so the vola situation isn’t exactly practical. Therefore, you have to hire a moto. With two gringos, feet flailing, clinging to the side of the seat and to the rear fender for dear life, our passing moto must have looked something like 3 krusty the klowns crammed on a miniature tricycle for a circus trick.

The water system, though close to completion, had seen its share of obstacles, including the meddling of mischievous, disapproving indios. Now, the Spaniards quickly wiped out the indigenous Tainos soon after their arrival on Hispañola, so the impish indios mysteriously breaking pipes underground aren’t the literal ancestors of those living in the community, but rather adopted cultural ancestors. If indios interfere with your water project, you have to have a party at the site of the problem. I guess there’s nothing like pouring out a little Coca-Cola on the earth to appease the ancients. Really, people didn’t seem to seriously buy in to the whole indio thing – it’s just a story to account for sometimes enigmatic problems, and an excuse to have a party.

The Monday after returning from was the Día de San Miguel, a fiesta de palos. I didn’t know this until the day of, when a good portion of the community up-and-left to partake in the festivities in the pueblo. Fiestas de palos, which literally translates to “drum parties” are not nationally sanctioned or celebrated holidays, but are more regional affairs. Some pueblos have a sort of patron saint associated with them, and therefore have celebrations on the day associated with the given saint on the Roman Catholic calendar. In order to preserve and continue their religious traditions, African slaves masked their gods with the names and images of the catholic saints, and the surviving remnants of this practice are known as santería on this side of the border. The fiestas de palos are, in part, santería festivals. For many, they’re just another excuse to have a party, with drums, dancing, and drinking rum. When people returned the community that night, there was a feast of espageti, cooked in a big cauldron over an open fire. A buen tiempo.