Hay que arrancarle la postura de chisqué de Inglaterra...

El jablador les ta jablando desde Inglaterra.

And first off, would like to apologize for being blogically challenged this summer.

To keep things short and sweet, it's interesting (forgive generic bland adjective) to be in a foreign country where things run almost exactly the same as your own country. For example:

I'm walking around downtown Norwich (donde vive la abuela) and I pass a small barefoot child looking forlorn, standing outside a department store. I'm thinking, "No, it can't be... (niño ambulante)". Of course, I was right. The little punkass was simply pouting waiting for mommy to get done with her clothes shopping, and mysteriously insisted on appearing in public with bare feet.

There are also WAY too many white people here. Like, entirely so. Eerily so.

Mi tierra

Tierra dura

Tierra empedrada

Tierra tan empobrecida hasta que la dejaron la gente pa' que se abandonara y crecieran los árboles como hierbas malas en las fincas damnificadas

Tierra dura

Tierra dura

Tierra dura y fría

Tierra tan fría que nunca se sabe cuando se congele ni cuando caiga la nieve

Tierra dura

Gente fría

Gente fría y dura

Gente cerrada, hasta que sospeche maleza cuando uno le sonría e intente hablarle de novedades

Gente fría

Ciudades duras

Ciudades duras y rotas

Ciudades tan rotas que sólo le invitan a gente más cálida, más amable de tierras más cálidas y amables

Pero esta gente es mal recibida

Porque no le sonríe la gente vigente

Le sospecha maleza

Se cierra la tierra y cae la nieve y más rompen las ciudades y más se damnifican las fincas y más se abandonan la naturaleza

Es maleza, esta naturaleza

Pero yo quiero a esta tierra

Esta tierra empedrada, empobrecida, dura, fría, cerrada, rota, mal recibida

Es mi tierra

La hora de volvé

The entire state of Massachusetts looked as though it were about to commit suicide when I arrived yesterday evening.

I feel a bit like the opposite of Rita Indiana in "La hora de volvé":

Toda la gente vuelve a la tierra en que nacieron
Al embruje inconfundible de su sol
¿Y quién quiere estar comiendo mierda y hielo
Cuando puede estar bailando algo mejor?

(Translation)
Everyone goes back to where they came from
To the unmistakable spell of the sun
And who wants to be eating shit and ice
When you could be dancing something better?

Now, don't get me wrong. I love Worcester, really, I do. It's a love-hate relationship of sorts, and as though I were starting right back at square one, the hate definitely comes first.

There's a certain indescribable energy here, good vibes, that unfortunately decide to run and hide whenever it rains. It's all good when you've been here a while, but a little disconcerting upon recently disembarking from an airplane spitting you back in the physically and emotionally frigid north after your Caribbean adventure.


Ccccccccccccooooooooooooooooooñññññññññññññññññññññoooooooooooooooooooooooooo.......

I returned to the States almost a month ago. Writing in English feels slightly unnatural, much less life in general. While of course I can seamlessly slide around through the mundaneness of this great country, it's little obscure things que hacen falta.

No pickup trucks with soundsystems in their flatbeds blasting politically-motivated reggaeton, síndicos/alcaldes/senadores begging for your vote.

No one chasing after you in the street trying to sell you avocados/their wife.

Everything appears kinda sterile here, especially in the suburbs of Boca Raton, Florida. Luckily I'm getting out of here in a few days, to return to my 'hood in Worcester. I get separation anxiety. It will also be interesting to return to my heavily Dominican New England neighborhood and see how many aspects of la cultura get translated.

I'm not quite sure if culture shock has set in; of course, I sometimes have to remind myself to speak English instead of Spanish. Aside from that, however, everything seems so easy here. Which feels strange, but I can vibe with it. I'm lazy. But I also vibe with constant challenge and thrill. Yo no sé.

Yes, I suck at blogging. This has been made apparent as over the last month I've posted exactly twice.

In other news, I'm done. We're finished. This life-changing semester has come to an end, and it feels more than slightly surreal. I emerged physically unscathed from the dark, dank, fetid, drippy tunnel that was my workload laid on me by CIEE-Santiago Service Learning, but otherwise utterly stimulated and mind-expanded, emotionally and intellectually.

My service project, which I had begun to write off as a total fluke, an ego-fluffer for your typical privileged white college student who believes he can really "make a difference", was received most warmly by Acción Callejera, which makes me think it wasn't such a fluke after all. Also, the fact that I came to be recognized and loved and asked after in El Fracatán had made the experience altogether more worthwhile.

And now, to celebrate my birthday (and the birthdays of two of my closest friends), me he ido a jugar pa la playa. Like what every other tourist comes to the D.R. to do. But I almost feel like I've earned it. Except that's a horrible way to think.

This place has taught me certain vital lessons. The one I pull out of my head most easily is the lesson of patience. We in the US of A (and Europe) are so conditioned to things moving smoothly, going just as we like them to, and we all seem to have forgotten that it's completely impossible to have control over our environment. Therefore we get physically uncomfortable when things don't run smoothly, when things don't go exactly the way we want them to. On the contrary, living in a country for four months where literally NOTHING runs smoothly has taught me (with a roundhouse punch in the face, or whatever that means) that we don't have control over jack shit. The only thing we can control is how we react to our environment and all the curveballs it will throw at us.

Also, I've learned that my pasty, freckled, fair skin renders me incompatible with a tropical climate. I am much better, biologically suited to cool, grey, overcast, chilly places, and plan to spend the vast majority of my future in such places.

I'm sure I've also learned some more profound lessons, that I just can't be bothered to put in writing at the moment.

Al fin y al cabo, I've left part of my soul here in the Dominican Republic. And I'm not expecting it back any time soon, if ever.

Editor's Note

Hola tod@s,

This post is to let you all know I'm still alive and kickin', just a little swamped on the academic front.

Wishing you in Gringolandia well!

Driving in the D.R.

Now I can't actually talk from firsthand experience.

But it's all just so...forceful, aggressive, impressive here.

Here's to emulating Dominican driving habits back home in gringolandia, and breaking every single traffic rule:

- shamelessly running red lights after dark (sometimes not so shamelessly, as much as out of necessity)

- obnoxiously honking at people as you attempt to pass them (only to have some other puto cut you off...in the opposite direction)

- pulling up behind the car directly in front of you, literally within inches, and then swerving across six direction-shifting lanes of traffic with the wrong blinker blinking, with only your hand making an (ambiguous) fist to let other drivers (quienes no están prestando ni un chin de atención) know what you mean to do.

- kick the beautiful white girl out of your car, because you see an even hotter white girl standing on the street corner, and you want her for your (un-)lawfully wedded green card.

(yes, that last one actually happened to my friend Raquel)

By the same token, I'm planning on sticking a big white letter K in the top left corner of my windshield when I get my car back, and drive it through Worcester, to give the many displaced santiagueros some nostalgia. Rides will gladly be accepted, 15 pesos per vola.

Embarazos Adolescentes

Disclaimer: Once again, this entry is not intended to ridicule or devalue people's lived experiences. I apologize in advance if it may seem that way.

Going back to ampliar the list of twenty things you're approximately 1,000 times more likely to see here in the D.R., I've realized once again how trivial and not necessarily deserving of their own blog post some of those things are.

However, teenage mamas definitely fit the bill.

It's something that struck me, slapped me squarely across the face within my first week here. Seeing girls that couldn't be any older than 13 or 14 walking down the street, huge with child. And after having conducted ten interviews in El Fracatán, and having personally met some women who aren't much older than me who have four, five, six kids, it's become real and profoundly disturbing.

On Thursday, I talked to a woman named Yajaira who is 23, has five youngins, the oldest of whom is ten years old.

Do the math.

Two important questions I ask in my interview are:

- How many kids do you have, what are their names, and how old are they?

At this point I'm normally just concerned with getting their names spelled right ('cause they tend to be rather...imaginative), and I'm not thinking too hard about how old they are and what that means for their poor mother.

- How old were you when you had your first kid?

Upon asking Yajaira this question, she replied, matter-of-factly, "Trece". Trece = thirteen. I reply, "¿Trece?", and she responds, matter-of-factly, "Sí, trece".

My body language said, "Well, moving on now..."

Let's learn some Dominican

Given that I featured some classic Dominican language in my previous post (i.e., beginning every sentence with a nonsensical "ah po'", etc.), I figured I'd give y'all a lesson in some of the more entertaining aspects of the language (note that since it bears almost no resemblance to the Spanish I learned nor that which I've heard spoken even by Dominican Americans, I call it Dominican)

Today we'll start with words that have been kidnapped from English and subsequently, brutally beaten, chewed up, and spit out.

Examples:

(By the way, I'm expecting you to look at these words and recognize them immediately. If you're that dense, the answers come at the end.)

konflé - What you eat for breakfast. It's crunchy, kinda bland, and gets really soggy if you pour enough milk in the bowl.

boche - What you say when you just simply can't believe what someone is telling you.

poloché - What uppercrust young Dominican men wear to school.

kolín - It can chop your hand off if you're not careful cracking open that coconut.

jilé - Men use it on their faces, women on their legs and armpits (or not, if they're European).

jipeta - It's obnoxious and unsustainable, but very necessary for getting around a country that, let's be honest, kinda sucks at paving its streets.

baguada - It causes you to get wet by standing outside, possibly electrocuted if you're lucky.

safakón - You put things you don't want inside it. Sadly, many people here miss the mark because such unwanted items often end up on the sidewalks instead.

frise - It keeps things cold.

pire - Great for baking things.

And, last but not least:

vivaporú - A mentholated miracle cure. Perfect for Montezuma's Revenge.

Answers: cereal (Corn Flakes), bullshit, polo shirt, machete (Collins, a historically grand knifemaking firm from New England), razor (Gillette), jeep (or SUV), thunderstorm ("bad weather"), garbage can ("safety can"), freezer, baking dish (Pyrex), Vick's Vapor Rub

Concho Travels

Yesterday, on a whim, I decided to ride the M route all the way around the city. Starting at the lush environs of PUCMM, the route makes a big circle, crossing a bridge and entering the jungle of the Zona Sur, passing through La Villa Olímpica, Pequín, along the Río Yaque between the shanties falling into the river (uninspiringly named Villa del Yaque) and the Nibaje district (so named that if you take the word apart, ni and baje, it means "Just don't go down there"), skirting the edge of the frenzied guagua terminal in the center of town, and then out the bullet-pockmarked Zona Oeste (such glorious neighborhoods as the famous Cienfuegos, Rafey ("Rrrrrrrrrrraaaaaaaaaaafffffffffffffeeeyyyyyy!!!!", home of the life-sustaining and life-taking vertedero (garbage dump), Las Colinas, Monterrico, etc. All the streetlights in that part of town have been shot at.

It got a little awkward as I was the only passenger for a while there.

Then, as we rolled into Cienfuegos, the driver finally couldn't contain his curiosity and asked me, "¿Tú va pa Puelto Plata?" (You going to Puerto Plata)

"No, 'toy paseando"

"Ah po' me da má plata o te pielde la bida, gringo" (translation: Well, give me more money or you die, gringo. I'm not sure what he actually said at that point.)

Kind abuelita sitting next to me: "Dale dinero, gringo." (Give him money)

Me: "Donde pueda. Pero no voy pa Puerto Plata."

"Ah po' o sako mi arrrrma e la meto en tu kabeza, gringo!" (translation: Well otherwise I'll take out my gun and put it in your head, gringo! - once again, I have no idea what he actually said)

I reach into my wallet and pull out another 15 pesos.

"Ah po' eliges bien, gringo!" (You chose well, gringo!)

His temperament eased significantly as the dusty, bullet-strewn, naked cinderblock houses of the Noroeste faded into the luxuriant concrete forests of the Nordeste (where the Cibao's wealthiest unsymbolically look down on the rest of the city), and proceeded to take me back to Puerta 2 of PUCMM.

Al borde de un ataque de nervios

Today is the day the residents of El Fracatan get their asses handed to them about why they never got their kids' birth certificates. Well, maybe not so antagonistic-like. It'll be an informational meeting, a "taller" (workshop) for them, so that they know the process and the necessary steps to take in order to procure this all-important document. This meeting will set them toward changing their children's lives for the better. We hope.

Moral of the story: What do I do? Do I just sit and watch, and nod my head? Or do I pretend to have the slightest smidgen of authority on the matter?

I'm standing on the precipice of really starting my investigation into this threadbare community. Complete with voice recorders, consent forms and delicious shantytown coffee (I mean that seriously). Needless to say (but I'll say it anyway), I'm scared shitless. Not because I think I'll screw it up (how many possible ways could I do that, highly unlikely), more because I ain't never done did nothing like this before.

Feel free to leave me some gratuitous moral support.

Niños ambulantes

So instead of following Raquel's list of DR fun facts, I've decided to switch the "happy children seemingly content with running around in circles" with a discussion of street kids. It seems more applicable to my life right now.

Long story short, you can't miss 'em. With their beaten-up wooden boxes (which appear to be lunchboxes to the untrained eye) complete with shoe mold on top, rest assured they're there, at any commercial establishment frequented by the relatively better off. Sometimes they carry around gallon bottles of water and a dirty dishrag, hoping to find a willing stalled-in-traffic windshield to wash. Sometimes they have parents, sometimes they don't. Sometimes they attend school in the morning, sometimes they've never been. Sometimes you buy them ice cream or an empanada at the internet cafe you frequent, where they hang around outside all day but never in their wildest dreams will they ever enter. Sometimes you notice that amazingly broad, ear-to-ear grin spread across their face when they notice you walking by, and you stop to chat with them, always small talk, because you can't really get much deeper than that before the ear-to-ear quickly dissipates into a look of foreboding that you can't even hope to comprehend. Sometimes you play sports with them, on a run-down blacktop covered with trash and forgotten laundry that's now growing more grass than the eroded hillside they call home. Sometimes they cooperate, other times they curse you out to your face imagining your well-intentioned gringo ass won't understand them, but you understand them perfectly and you take them aside to let them know that although they want to hurt you, they can't, and you'll always be there for them. But you also know, as damn well as they do, that you have no fucking clue what's going on inside them and outside, and sometimes it makes you feel, for a split second, as utterly disempowered and marginalized as they have their whole lives.

Clean Rivers (y otras cosas)

So since a couple of you insisted that I review (not resume) my stay in Río Limpio during the last week of February, I've complied.

Río Limpio is a small town close to the Haitian border, in Elías Piña province (the most isolated, deprived province of the D.R.), and in turn Río Limpio, for most of its existence, has been the most isolated and deprived municipality of the most isolated and deprived province. That's been changing, however. Ever since a few beneficent Peace Corps volunteers established CREAR, the agricultural-technical high school in 1980 (?), Río Limpio has surged forward (at a typically Dominican snail's pace, but nonetheless). The town is home to several NGO's, some international and some local, which have done a great job at involving a great deal of townies. Additionally, CEDDIEL (one of the Dominican NGO's, whose initials are so verbose I forget what they stand for) has established an ecotourism complex with several roomy and relatively comfortable cabins for foreigners, where I stayed with my group. The eight of us spread across four rooms of a large cabin made for an unforgettable bonding experience, with each other as well as with a multitude of frogs who call the bathrooms home.

During our six days there we learned how to make fertilizer (in a process that eerily resembled lasagna or shepherd's pie), learned different organically agricultural technqiues, under the tutelage of Don Domingo Alcántara, one of the first graduates of CREAR and now a wise old (err...middle-aged) sage in the field of organic, sustainable, renewable agriculture. On the fourth day (Wednesday), God (Elaine) divided each of us up with different NGOs, and I went with Don Juanito to the CEDDIEL cooperative farm, which was a thoroughly heartening experience - not only are a great many Río Limpienses employed by the cooperative, but they're also working under two female overseers (only after spending two months and a bit in the DR would that make any kind of impression). They have a timber plantation as well as a horticultural center, and they educate locals how to slash wood without burning it. Consequently slash-and-burn agriculture has been eradicated in the valley of Río Limpio, although it continues in the surrounding mountains. One of Don Juanito's major concerns, as head honcho of CEDDIEL, is to make sure people stop moving into the nearby national park (Nalgas de Maco ["Toad's Butt"] knocked out of commission by Hurricane Georges over ten years ago) and, well, slashing it down and burning it up.

Along with all that boring stuff, we got to know some of the CREAR students a little, who were shy but awfully friendly once they opened up. For once I felt like I could really share myself with people whose experience is so fundamentally different from my own.

Since returning to civilization, I've been busy. I've started my investigation in El Fracatán almost in earnest, going to many different people's homes and chatting it up (Dona Gloria, for example, served me the best coffee I've tasted here so far). It always amazes me how warm they are and how open and ready they are to receive us gringos/Spaniards/rich Dominicans.

Anywho, I hope this fulfills your expectations.

Hasta próximo!

More apologies...

For any of you who might be concerned, I'm not dead. I left my heart and soul in the campo near the Haitian border last week, where I (unsurprisingly) had no internet access, and lately I've just been procrastinating updating this thing because I don't know what I should blog about next. I almost can't be bothered to resume the entirety of last week, but if y'all are curious, I guess I can do that...

So, please comment if:

- You wanna read about the rural stay in Rio Limpio

- You wanna read about something else

República Dominicalcantarilla (destapada)

Foreword: I don't actually know the girl who fell in an uncovered manhole and had to get stitched to the 80th.

In any case, you're never safe here. In order to be prudent (read: like a well-behaved gringo with a target on your back) it is necessary to sidestep through the streets of Santiago like a zombie Michael Jackson, posthumously moonwalking ever so cautiously, so as to stealthily avoid the ground giving way beneath your feet and falling to an embarrassing injury covered in, well, the typical contents of a sewer.

Or maybe that's just me.

Moral of the story, don't take manholes for granted. Nor womanholes, nor non-gendered holes. Okay, now it's starting to get too risqué for my liking.

P.S.

Watch out for how many times the word "coconut" appears in this blog. Whoever finds them all wins a prize.

Repúplaya Dominicana

Con una brisa poca fuerte

Los palmares cargados de coco

Traen una muerte sencilla

Y rápida, y bacana

With just a slight breeze,

Palms laden with coconuts

Bring a simple, swift, and badass

Death

DR Fun Fact: Six people die from getting hit on the head by falling coconuts every year.

But that barely chips away at the tip of the (melted) iceberg that is the balmy coastline of the Dominican Republic. No matter which direction you go (except the wrong direction), within a day's (or three, depending on the number of bus-trapping potholes) drive, you hit the playa. Warm waves lap against soft sand, sunburnt-pink Eurotrash lay like beached humpback whales, bold tiburones with gringo-happy glints in their eyes shove cigars, artesanato, and boat/snorkel/slum tours in your face, and loads of shapely locals gracefully descansan en la arena. And the water is blissfully clear, save for errant plastic cups, coconut shells, beer cans, condoms, and thongs that never made it back to their rightful places. As well as wonderfully cooperative starfish.

I apologize for the overabundance of adjectives and adverbs, so not professional. As soon as I decide to unburden my camera, you'll be able to see everything I didn't mention, because everything I didn't mention is the part that's worth photographing and that defies words. For real, yo.

Santimachete de los Caballeros

Están por casi todas partes, como hombres que faltan de una cosa particular.

Security culture meets machismo meets rough and ready thirdworldness.

Guarding mansions, cracking coconuts, stripping wood, artfully peeling citrus fruits.

Hacking working-class bacanos one finger at a time.

That's an overweight haiku about machetes. I hope y'all enjoyed it.

Santimoto

Motocicletas, motoconchos, motowhatever.

Sometimes they try and run you over.

Sometimes they pick you up and take you places, and you have to hold on for dear life, onto the exhaust pipes and try with all your earthly power not to burn your hands to the second degree. It's even more fun when you're carrying an absurdly stuffed backpack that impedes your grasp onto said exhaust pipes. And the roads traveled make Worcester streets seem as smooth and relaxing as a tempurpedic mattress.

They're everywhere, and due to their small size and maneuverability they routinely zoom through red lights (just about the only guarantee of a pedestrian's right of way) and during rush hour tend to use sidewalks as additional lanes of traffic (more about that in the near future).

Moral of the story: Beware the moto. Respect the moto. And never, never, never look it in the eye, because it will pounce at you...err...run you over. Maybe.

Otra vaina...

I've appropriated a list of "20 things one is about 1,000 times more likely to encounter in the Dominican Republic than in the U.S." from my friend Raquel, who's been living here en La Quisqueya for almost six months now.

1. Motorcycles
2. People walking around with machetes
3. Beautiful beaches
4. Uncovered manholes (the girl who lived with my host mom last spring had
to get 80 stitches after falling into one)
5. Pitstains
6. Happy children content with just running in circles
7. Lizards
8. Use of sidewalks as additional motor traffic lanes
9. Individual and systematic racism
10. Individual and systematic sexism
11. Litter
12. Palm trees
13. Exposed beer bellies
14. Drinking and driving (which is not illegal)
15. Street vendors with delicious food and drink
16. People walking through the streets screaming aguacate
17. Hanging out with your neighbors
18. Matching outfits
19. Diarrhea
20. Bottled water

Over the next few weeks I plan to discuss each and every one of these.

La religión del cabello

Cabello lacio. Cabello duro. Cabello rizado. Cabello desrizado. Cabello tejido. Cabello aumentado. Cabello negro, moreno, rubio, marrón, castaño, rojizo, color de café con leche, cabello bueno, cabello malo.

El cabello domina la sociedad dominicana. Afecta a toda la gente igualmente.

Hair dominates Dominican society. Hair issues affect everyone equally. Women want straight hair and men want "hard" hair (cabello duro) because straight hair makes you look gay, apparently. The Dominican Republic has the world's densest concentration of barbershops and salons. Thanks to the racial-ethnic dynamics of the country, sharing a tiny little island called La Española with Haiti, which if the DR had its way would be floating miles and miles away, keeping one's hair looking a certain way is crucial.

Said racial-ethnic dynamics result in Dominican women denying any trace of their African heritage, which of course results in coarse natural hair. Such hair is unacceptable in the workplace or indeed anywhere in public. Thus, women spend hours every week getting their hair relaxed, straightened, weaved, extended in order to satisfy a rather impractical and whitewashed standard of beauty. Many women will not go outside when it's raining for this very reason; imagine treating your hair with such not so tender, loving care on a regular basis and that care coming tragically undone within minutes of exposure to water droplets falling from the sky. On rainy days, it is common for school classrooms to contain boys only, as it's understood that parents are not going to send their hair-relaxed or straightened or weaved daughters out in public when the pains taken could be so untimely ruined. A girl's first weave or relax is considered a rite of passage - women take their daughters into salons for the first time on average at the ripe age of 8 or 9, once girls gain enough of a consciousness to mercilessly mock their peers for having cabello malo. Only for their hair to fall out when they reach maturity.

At the same time, the Dominican brand of machismo appropriates blackness to suit its needs - men proudly wear natural hair because to have straight hair makes you marica. Thus, your Spaniard-descended uppercrust Dominican men slather gel over their heads every morning to achieve acceptable cabello duro.

The importance of hair in this country is such that in my Spanish class earlier this week we spent no less than 45 minutes discussing it. Imagine Chris Rock's Good Hair documentary applying to an entire country, and there you have it.

Disclaimer: I do not want to speak with any authority on the dynamics of racialized Dominican hair. I'm merely discussing my personal observations and I apologize if it the tone sounds mocking at any point. I don't intend to devalue people's lived experiences.

My apologies...

Así que I've realized I'm phenomenally bad at keeping this vaina updated. I heretofore comprometo keep track of every single interesting acontecimiento que me pase.

Signed,

Dan Davis

Things I Like About the DR (Installment #1)

Conchos: Beat-up, rickety public cars that should feasibly fit no more than four or five passengers but routinely squeeze up to eight. I especially enjoy sitting on a strange man's lap, or having a strange, well-dressed viejita (old lady) sit on mine. Also, they only cost 15 pesos a ride, no matter how far you're going (15 pesos = 40 cents).

Awesomely brash and energetic barrio kids: Specifically, Isaías, Júnior, Xuxú, Robertico, Yovanny, Ánderson, Guenilson, Carlitos, Franklin and Yusniel. Five of whom beat me in soccer today at the cancha in El Fracatán.

Walking through Downtown Santiago: Makes me feel like I'm in a video game, maybe Super Mario World Latin America style.

Cold showers: When it's so hot outside you can feel it scorching your innards, there's nothing like freezing water cascading down upon your melting body.

Reggaeton: OK, well, it's not like I don't hear that repetitive beat pounding through the streets of Worcester every day, but it just fits better here. Same goes for merengue.

Third-World (err...Developing Country?) Ass Kicking

After three weeks or so, the Dominican Republic has finally kicked me in the bee-hind.

In the beginnings of Monday, January 18, 2010, I was the privileged recipient of a heavy-handed dose of food poisoning, the source of which remains yet unknown. The first gift my bowels awarded to Doña Rafaela's toilet bowl was the remains of some ensalada de repollo, which if I remember correctly was served to me as leftovers from lunch on Sunday evening, having sat out (possibly covered) for the better part of six hours. That it would've triggered a 24-hour rupture of my internal organs seems somewhat unlikely to me, considering I've already eaten quite a fair amount of unprotected leftovers here without my insides getting dragged through the metaphorical dirt.

At this point I'm about 80% back to stasis, except that after yacking every hour on the hour for almost a full day, my throat, and consequently my voice, are shot.

Being sick, no matter the location, sucks, to state it bluntly and obviously. Never more so when you're in a strange location where feeling uncomfortable is substantially more discomforting, due to soul-scorching heat and humidity, dubiously sanitary food and beverage, and a normally absent language barrier that miraculously throws itself up in front of your face when you try to explain to your concerned host mother what's wrong with you. Gracias a Dios pa l@s doctor@s que hablan inglés.

All the more frustrating, I was supposed to begin my internship at Acción Callejera yesterday, which didn't happen because I would've thrown up on a shoeshine boy's shoes. Because my voice is almost nonexistent, I wasn't sure how useful I'd be to them today, so I took today off as well. Here's hoping that my voice will return to me in some form tomorrow, so I can actually start doing what I'm supposed to here.

To all those in the cold North and not-so-cold South, I hope you all are faring better.

Abertura de clases, Playa de Sosua, Cienfuegos, y el fin de semana (in no particular order)

I apologize in advance for the outage.

Yesterday heralded the end of hectic orientation and the beginning of classes at PUCMM; on Thursday afternoon I'll begin my internship at Acción Callejera, an organization based in the center of Santiago that works with street boys, giving them a place to go during the day, to play baseball or do homework, etc. (because 10-year-old kids shouldn't be working the streets shining shoes at best). They also run outposts in various barrios around the city, and coordinate legal aid and social work for all age groups in deprived communities, including an educative effort in Barrio La Cañada (very close to where I live) whereby they advise community elders and such about the benefits of documentation and birth certificates, in order to compile data for the upcoming census. I'll be helping Acción Callejera with legal aid, and while I don't know exactly what I'll be doing, I imagine there will be some going door-to-door and meeting with community representatives, and getting the opportunity to conduct field research, all in all looking like a profoundly challenging, but fantastic experience.

I have class Monday through Thursday, from 8 a.m. to noon. This conflicts with my primordially lazy 20-year-old body and mind, as well as typical Dominican customs such as eating dinner much later than in the States and staying out much later. That said, siestas are effectively written into law here. Classes at PUCMM (and other universities, I'm sure, as well as in the workplace in general) break at noon and do not resume until 3 p.m., giving students and workers the chance to go home, eat lunch and take a power nap, in order to recharge for a busy night ahead.

Going backwards, on Sunday I and five of my group-mates took a Caribe Tours bus to Sosúa, a small town on the north coast historically renowned as the prostitution capital of the Dominican Republic, but has since diversified into a jack-of-all-trades beach town. Thankfully absent are the maddening crowds of Eurotrash who flood neighboring seaside towns such as Cabarete and Puerto Plata. The beach experience I had was authentically Dominican (i.e. the six of us were the only gring@s), and did not break with the immersion experience (except for the burger and fries I ate at the American-owned restaurant in town). The Atlantic was otherworldly warm and calming, if a little polluted (only cans and such, nothing detrimental to our health), and just made me even more excited to swim in the Caribbean, which will be something like a three- or four-hour bus ride away, on the southern coasts.

I've been getting gradually acquainted with nightlife here, a satisfying experience in that I can walk in and buy a drink, no questions asked. Friday night a couple friends and I ended up at a bar called Froguitos, owned by New York Dominicans, and one of the very few that plays music other than top-40 hiphop or techno (i.e., Radiohead when we walked in). Nightlife here caters to the topmost portion of the socioeconomic ladder, and it's proving difficult at first, trying to reconcile my ridiculous position of privilege here with the close look at marginalization I'm about to witness on a semi-daily basis.

Speaking of which, this past Thursday, our last site visit took place in Cienfuegos, the largest and one of the poorest barrios in Santiago. Some 100,000 people live there, some in run-down government subsidized, one-room accomodations, while most live in actual shanties, precariously clinging to hillsides, hanging on for dear life so that they don't get washed away into the vertedero (dump). Niños con una Esperanza (Children with Hope), the organization based there, is an Evangelical missionary effort that has built a school in the heart of Cienfuegos, their main aim keeping kids in school and passing them on the national exam that all third-graders take here so that they don't drop out and either become busos (dump workers), gang members or dealers. Their life expectancy is low (not only owing to the fact that their community is surrounded on two sides by a garbage dump), and a handful of kids die every year getting pummeled by trash trucks and such. Altogether a thoroughly affecting experience, it reminded me of the opening scenes of City of God, and once again made it clear to me that no matter how well you can intellectually prepare yourself for extreme poverty, you can't predict how it will affect you until it affects you.

What I've gathered so far is: 1) it's good to have a guttural, visceral reaction upon viewing such situations first hand for the first time; 2) I'm not a patronizing Western tourist who fetishizes poverty by going on a slum tour; 3) I am using my privilege in (I hope) constructive and sustainable ways. Reminding myself of that sometimes multiple times a day makes things a whole lot easier on my soul.

Hasta luego,

Dan

P.S. To get a look of what Cienfuegos evokes, click here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLBWdcDdnSg&feature=related. Start at 4:10.

Internet access is few and far between

Como ta?

I'm sitting at a table in my new home, i.e. "Square One", a cafe in the back of a bomba (gas station) opposite the front gates of PUCMM, drinking a legitimately bought Presidente, and acting like a retard in a candy store thanks to the internet being such a precious resource here.

These last few days have been heady, to put it mildly. I arrived on Saturday and was dropped off at Dona Rafaela (host madre) from the airport. She is the coolest 67-year-old lady I've ever met and I think she just may become my Dominican grandma. Her house is airy, spacious, and my bedroom is bigger than that at my mother's house. It's slightly unnerving being hosted in the rather plush barrio of La Zurza (spitting distance of the university and downtown Santiago), but I'll go into more detail later.

So far, the group has been dragged through a slew of relatively inane orientation activities, some far more inane than others. Actually, yesterday we went on a "busqueda" (effectively a scavenger hunt) around Santiago, which was surprisingly not as lame as it sounds. It was in fact rather helpful, as we were required to use conchos (public cars which would fit a meager five people in the US but typically squeeze in excess of 10 here in the DR, and feel quite similar to rollercoasters, without seatbelts and windows popped wide open) and walk through the central markets and such. I've scarcely experienced such a lively, vital, throbbing place.

My experience so far has been generally stimulating, in every sense of the word. Of course with all the euphoria of arriving in a foreign and inordinately exciting, yet disturbingly deprived country, with all the good comes the bad. Last night, orientation reached an inane low when the group were introduced to PUCMM's "estudiantes de apoyo" (Dominican students volunteering to help the gringos). We were thrown into a "speed dating" session at the Americanized Plaza Internacional (shopping mall) where we had to ask threesomes of the apoyistas, well, inane questions. All of them were exceedingly nice except for a group of four girls prettier than the rest, ostensibly born into some of Santiago's elite families, who were some of the most glib and condescending people I've ever spent ten minutes at a table with. I thought to myself, these girls come from families responsible for, or at least complicit in fucking this country over.

I got my first taste of Dominican cultural cringe, or racism. The Dominican Republic is unique in that around 90% of the population has some African descent, yet there is almost universal denial of it. Therefore, "natural" hair is all but taboo and people who would undoubtedly be considered black in the US use the reverse of the one-drop rule, and tirelessly aspire to white standards of beauty. Thus, the DR has the world's highest per capita concentration of hair salons, and many women make a living cutting, straightening, extending and weaving hair out of their living rooms so that their compatriots can deny any trace of blackness. Additionally, one of the questions I had to ask the four putas con narices arriba (with their noses in the air) was, "Which actress would you choose to play you in a movie?". Their answers were, in a word, unsettling; they consisted of Angelina Jolie, Jessica Alba, Jessica Simpson and I don't remember the last one. Moral of the story is, I can't fathom how a young women with dark eyes, milk-chocolate skin, full lips and a thick body could see herself in a blonde, anorexic, white American celebrity like Jessica Simpson.

Today we visited two work sites, where some of us will be interning over the course of the next four months. This was the first time I had been outside of the (relatively) swanky confines of La Zurza, or away from the multicolored multitudes of the central city, and I came away from the first site visit shellshocked. The visit took place at the Hospital Juan XXIII, a public hospital in the Zona Sur (the impoverished southern side of the city, across the Rio Yaque) from where we walked to la Clinica del Barrio Corea, where local women are employed by the hospital to provide educational information about family planning, STDs, etc. that the Sureños are generally barred from. They're doing great things and that was heartening to see, but the walk between the hospital and the clinic was absolutely shattering. We waded through piles of garbage taller than me, saw girls who couldn't have been older than 12 huge with child, and were surrounded by squalor in general. I'm still having trouble processing this experience, such that no matter how intellectually cognizant you are about how people live on the shit end of the stick, nothing can prepare you for witnessing it for the first time, first hand.

Until next time, with photos to come! (No Spanish, because quite frankly my brain hurts.)

Hasta luego!

Old habits die hard / Es difícil matar a las malas costumbres

¿Que lo que?

I'm procrastinating packing my life away for the next five months or so.

So many unknowns: This is where I definitely wish CIEE would let us know who our host families are before we get there. This is where I ruminate on everything that could possibly go wrong on this voyage. Except, I'm decidedly clear-headed about this. I'll be receiving the culture shock with arms outstretched. It still hasn't quite hit me that 24 hours from this very moment, I will be in the Dominican Republic, imperceptibly far from the comforts of home.

Estoy procrastinando embalar mi vida entera para unos cinco meses.

Hay tantos desconocidos: Pues claro deseo que CIEE nos dejara saber quienes son nuestras familias de hospedaje antes de llegar allá. Entonces rumío en todo que pudiera fracasar en este viaje. Excepto que estoy de mente bien claro. Recibo el choque de cultura con brazos abiertos. Todavía no me ha pegado que en 24 horas deste este momentito, estaré en la República Dominicana, imperceptiblemente lejos de las comodidades de casa.

¡Que pa ustedes yo les regale con unos acontecimientos más interesantes la próxima vez!

Next time, I hope I can report some much more interesting news!