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!
