Fun Birthday Dominican-ness

Last Saturday was Emily's birthday. I made her a loaf of banana bread. Yeah, I know, you guys are like, "What? I must have the wrong person's blog." But like Catherine said, I am becoming domestic. The other day I also made hummus, and then the other day I made "pad thai", which I'll leave in quotations because it did not turn out too hot (correction: it was hot, but not delicious). I also put way too much lime juice in the hummus and Emily thinks I am a weirdo for eating it at work, but I guess you live, you learn.

Anyway. This entry was not supposed to be about my cooking but about Emily's birthday party, which incidentally taught me a lot about Dominican-ness. First of all, I committed the gringo error of arriving way too early. Earlier in the day Emily had told me that she was planning on having people come to her house around 5 PM, but she didn't call to give me the address of her house until around 6:30. I was envisioning there being a full house by the time I arrived there from halfway across the city, but when I got there it was just Emily's husband, mom and sisters, and Emily was still "changing." I sat down on the terrace and tried to make conversation with her family, and I started thinking about how unusual it would be in the states for the first people at your adult birthday party to be your mom and sisters. Not necessarily because they don't want to come, but more likely because they live a bzillion miles away from the city to which you moved off to when you got married. I really think that Americans have forgotten about how valuable it is to have family, and maybe even to stay in the community you grew up in. I did learn, though, that Emily also has two brothers, one of which married a Mexican woman and now lives in Guadalajara. But Emily's mom seemed to see that as new phenomenon; "Kids these days, they're always moving around!" she said, or something like that.

Also when I arrived at the party, the electricity was out, not just at Emily's house but in the whole surrounding area, and they said it had been out since 9 AM. I am lucky enough to live in an apartment building with a generator, and the electricity has only gone out once for about 5 seconds. But "apagón"s, as they call them here, are a really common phenomenon. As far as I understand, the frequent outages have to do with the high price of gas; sometimes the electric companies just can't afford to keep things running anymore, so they just temporarily shut down the electricity in certain areas. I'm gotten used to the electricity going out from time to time in the office where I work, then usually going right back on because the clinic also has a generator. Emily's husband, Gilberto, said that an apagón lasting all day was unusual, but of course it happened on the day of Emily's birthday. I joked to Emily that we were going to have to put a lot of candles on her birthday cake and not let her blow them out. Perhaps partly due to the apagón, none of Emily's friends (besides me) arrived at the party until around 9 PM. Right around that time, luckily, the electricity went back on and we were able to start up the music.

I had fun dancing a little to merengue and bachata, and attempting conversation with some of Emily's friends, which was challenging because of the music in the background and also because I still have a hard time understanding anything people say here when they're speaking fast. But it was probably the largest group of Dominicans I've ever been amongst, so it was fun. However, I did start to notice as more and more people arrived that I was significantly underdressed. Usually the rule of thumb for going out here is that Dominicans will always be better dressed than you. But I thought that maybe since the party was at Emily's house, it wouldn't be as formal. Being underdressed wouldn't have bothered me that much considering I stick out like a sore thumb anyway, but at one point in the party one guy brought it to my attention: "Are you Christian?" he asked me. At first I was confused and thought maybe it was some kind of test of my moral valor, but then I remembered that in Latin America they refer to non-Catholics as "Christians". And here, since Protestantism is a relatively new phenomenon, being Protestant usually means being more devout and more strict. Most non-Catholics are Evangelicals, Mormons or Jehovah's Witnesses, since those are the missionaries that come most often.

"No, I'm not Christian," I said finally. "Why?"

"Well then, why aren't you wearing make-up or earrings?"

I was a bit taken aback. Ironically, earrings are the only kind of jewelry I usually wear, but I guess I just hadn't thought of it before I walked out the door. As for make-up, I don't have anything against it, but I really can't be bothered to use it myself. Is there really no other reason not to be wearing make-up and earrings in this country other than being a conservative Christian? That would be a sad thought. But the comment wasn't completely surprising having observed how people dress here. Whenever people leave the house, it seems, even with friends, they tend to dress more formally than the American standard. Guys usually wear collared shirts and leather or faux leather shoes with squared toes that I'm guessing most of my male friends in the states wouldn't be caught dead in. The women like wearing trendy, spandexy clothes and almost always wear heals. I am actually pretty impressed by the way Dominican women manage to traverse the city in 3-inch heals that would probably make my arches ache and give me blisters and in 5 seconds. And when I went to visit Los Marranitos, I couldn't help notice that Miguelina, the 15-or 16-year-old girl from the village that I met, was also wearing a pair of strappy white high-heeled shoes when she walked with us up a dirt path in the mountainous terrain. I didn't even bring a pair of heals with me here, and I decided rather than spending money that I don't have on a pair, that's just going to have to be one of my little rebellions. I was hoping to find a pair of Tevas here, or something similar, that I can bring with me to the campo, but I just don't think that's going to happen. There is simply no demand from Dominican women for sports' sandals. My only hope is to find an ex-patriate selling Teva contraband.

Later I sat for awhile and chatted with Emily's father-in-law. He was really nice and an intelligent person to have a conversation with. He was glad to hear I was interested in anthropology and started telling me all about the history of merengue and bachata. Interestingly, according to him at least, merengue used to be a very lower class dance, but was popularized in the Trujillo era because Trujillo quite liked dancing merengue. He said the dance used to be a lot slower, but it has since sped up with influence from North American music ("like the music of John Travolta", he said, and I'm assuming he was referring to the kind of dancing you see in Saturday Night Fever). I pointed out that North American music is heavily influenced by African music, AND Latin music... considering that Dominicans have African roots, it's interesting how things come full circle. It got be pondering whether there is really anything that can be called "traditional" music.

Then we got to talking about politics, and after my habitual spiel about why I disapprove of Dubya--just to prove that I am not on the dark side--he asked me which candidate I supported. Assuming it was between McCain and Obama, I immediately went with Obama. Emily's father-in-law (too bad I can't remember his name) said he liked Hillary. It's always of interest to me which of the democratic candidates people support here. Of the people I've asked so far, it has seemed pretty split between Obama and Hillary. The people who support Obama always mention the fact that he is black. But this guy had an equally telling reason for liking Hillary. I guess only the big headline news stories tend to arrive here from the US, so you could probably guess what he brought up regarding Hillary: the Monica Lewinsky scandal. He said that the fact that she stayed with Bill after all that showed that she is a decided, tenacious woman who finishes what she starts. I'm not sure if I agree with that or not, but in such a machista culture I guess it's not surprising that people would support Hillary for that reason. I'm not saying that Emily's father-in-law is a die-hard machista, nor am I saying that that mode of thinking is completely unheard-of in the United States, but it's so ingrained in the way people think here that I'm sure that viewpoint is perfectly accepted. I guess they haven't received the Republican image of Hillary as a firey, venom-spitting man-hater.

Male machismo, female materialism... it is all intertwined if you think about it.

At around midnight, to everyone's dismay the electricity went out again, and there were candles on Emily's birthday cake but unfortunately she blew them all out. And so ended a fun and eventful Santo Domingo night.