In the Dominican "campo" (countryside), people have a different idea about what it means to be "married". Since most people can't afford to get married officially by the church, marriage is more of an unplanned event and a lifestyle. The unplanned event being, usually, "amaneciendo" (waking up) in someone else's house (you can guess what that might imply), and the lifestyle being then living with that person and having their kids (although most likely, the male won't feel obligated to having kids exclusively with his "wife"). Once the first thing happens (SEX!!) the expectation is that the couple will live together. So as you can imagine, marriage is even more fun to gossip about in the DR than it is in the US.
So if "maridos" (married people) are people who live together and have sex, then "novios" (boyfriend/girlfriend) are people who like each other but don't live together and definitely don't have sex (ha). Then there is the questionable category of "marinovios", which refers to certain couples from the city or abroad, who strangely seem to think that people are allowed to have sex even if they don't live together and don't have kids together. Crazy idea, right?
Anyway, since I already had a marinovio I don't know if I was still technically allowed to get married to someone else or not. But the men in the community would definitely not have complained if I had decided to get a boyfriend or two from Los Marranitos. In fact, they encouraged me to. This kind of "joking" (that didn't always seem like joking) was ceaseless and took place even in front of the men's wives. "Naomi, when will you leave your boyfriend for me??" was a common greeting as I walked down the "street" (dirt road).
Even small children were pulled into the jokes. When I took small boys to the library, parents got a kick out of teasing them about liking me. One 4-year-old, Elvis, was a little shy and didn't seem to appreciate it very much. But his cousin, Cristofer, was a bit more of a ladies man. When asked if he was in love with me, he just gave a big mischievous smile. When people suggested he hold my hand or give me a kiss on the cheek, he was not shy about it. He was only encouraged by the adults' laughter. And so began an ongoing joke that Cristofer and I were going to get married.
At first, it was just simple teasing by Cristofer's relatives. But then I decided to start playing along. One day I asked him, "Cristofer, when are we going to get married? You keep saying we're going to get married but it never happens." He told me, "Tonight." "What time?" "Ten o'clock." (To an American this might seem late for a marriage, but considering the campo definition of "marriage", it makes sense that it would happen overnight.) Cristofer's older brothers and sisters thought that was hilarious and went around spreading the word that Cristofer and I were going to get married that night at my place. The next day I said, "Cristofer, I was waiting for you at ten o'clock, but you never came! What happened?" He smiled, not knowing what to say. "You better not stand me up tonight, OK?" He agreed.
Once that little game began, the teasing was upped a notch. Adults would say, "Cristofer, here comes your girlfriend, go give her a kiss!" or "Cristofer, you better watch out, she has a boyfriend!" One day when I came walking by his house, Cristofer asked me when it would be his turn to go to the library. Since I didn't know when I'd be able to take him next, I told him, "I'll take you to the library as soon as we get married." The adults of course chuckled, but Cristofer really wanted to go to the library. So he decided to marry me right then and there.
He took my hand and led me into his house. We went through one room and into another that was evidently being used as a storage space. It contained a bike that Angi (a Spanish ceramicist living in the community) had given Cristofer's brother, and a few boxes. Once we were hidden from the view of his family members, he opened his arms wide and I squatted down to give him a hug. Then he gave me a kiss on the cheek. And it was done! We were married. He took my hand and led me outside with a huge smile on his face.
"Now can you take me to the library?"
I was so charmed that I was at the point of taking him alone to the library for a short honeymoon, but his parents did not agree. "Cristofer, you're not going anywhere right now, it's going to rain!" It was clouding up, and there is nothing Los Marranitos parents are more afraid of than their children getting wet. Cristofer started to cry. In an attempt to convince his mother, I told her that Cristofer and I had just gotten married and we were about to go on our honeymoon. The adults in the room were uproarious with laughter. Cristofer stopped crying for a minute and smiled his proud smile.
But then they started to take it a little too far. "You tiguere [player], Cristofer. What is Fermin going to think? Fermin is going to come here and beat you up." Cristofer's face suddenly became serious. Indeed Fermin is much bigger than he, and he was clearly worried. Someone looked out the door and shouted, "Look out, Cristofer! Here comes Fermin!" Cristofer, startled, slid off the lap he was sitting on and went out the door to peer down the road. He didn't see anyone coming, but the unpleasant thought was already in his head. Someone else said, "Cristofer, when Fermin comes, he's going to beat you to a pulp!" Cristofer started crying again.
Once again, the adults of Los Marranitos took a joke way too far for my comfort. And like far too many marriages, mine to a 4-year-old ended in tears.
Thursday, September 10, 2009
Saturday, September 5, 2009
A Man Called Nano
There are a handful of people from Los Marranitos who made a lasting impression on me for one reason or another. One of these people was Nano, the only male single parent in the community, and an anomaly in the Dominican Republic in general.
Nano was an interesting guy. He was highly self-educated and sensitive, one of the very few people in the community I felt like I could sit down and have a real conversation with. The first time I talked to him, we discussed, among other things, the problem of the HIV epidemic and the importance of HIV education. We talked about the community and he commented on how he considered everyone in the community his family, even the Haitians, "because they are such nice people." It is rare to hear such an openly positive statement about Haitians from a Dominican. I wondered how someone who grew up in the same limiting environment as everyone else in the community could have developed such different ideas.
So there was that. And then there was the hush-hush talk of how Nano's wife had left him years ago because he used to beat her. And talk of him being bipolar. And the slight stutter he had that became worse when he got angry. And there was the fact that he was a single Dominican man, and all single Dominican men have one thing on the back of their minds when they meet an American woman: a visa.
I usually visited Nano's house not primarily to talk with him, but to help his 10-year-old son, Alex, learn to read. Nano would sometimes ask me to stay for lunch afterwards. So began a meaningful yet somewhat strained and uncomfortable friendship between us. Nano would always ask me about my boyfriend, Fermín, and comment that he wanted to be invited to the wedding if it was held in the DR. One day he even suggested we have the church wedding in the DR, and the legal wedding in the US. I thanked him but said we were planning on getting married in Nueva York. To suggest that marriage plans were not underway was out of the question; for him it would have implied that my relationship was not that serious and that I was up for grabs.
Nano lived with two sons that his wife had left with him when she moved to Jarabacoa because she couldn't take care of all five kids herself. He owned a modest plot of land where he grew beans, bananas, plantains, root vegetables, and sugar cane. That land was the only resource he had to sustain he and his sons. Unlike most people in the community who had (successfully or not) integrated into the wage labor economy, Nano was a full-time farmer. He also did "women's" work, cooking and washing clothes for himself and his sons. Earlier that year one of his sons (one who lived with his mother) had gotten into a horrible motorcycle accident that left him crippled. So in addition to working his own land, Nano was working for someone else to pay off debts from the boy's hospital bills. Although Nano placed high value on education, his sons rarely had time to come to the library for class, because they were needed to help keep up the land or watch over the house while Nano was gone.
When I unveiled my plans to take a group of older kids from the community on a trip to the ocean (many of the kids had never seen it), the talk of the town was that Nano would never let his 13-year-old son, Javé, go. But I knew that Nano could be reasoned with, so I went to talk to him. Whether it had to do with his real reservations or not, he said that his only concern was that his son might drown in the ocean. When I told him the kids wouldn't be allowed to swim, he reluctantly agreed to let Javé go. But on the day of the trip, Javé didn't show up to board the bus. I figured Nano had changed his mind at the last minute and put Javé to work in the fields. It was only days later that I ran into Nano and he told me why Javé hadn't been able to go on the trip: One of his dress shoes was broken, and he couldn't leave the community without nice shoes. That broke my heart. The broken shoe might have only been the straw that broke the camel's back, but it was a symbol of Nano's poverty and pride, and a classic example of the materialism pervasive in Dominican society. No parent would let their kid go out in public with a broken shoe, even for a trip to the beach where shoes were hardly necessary.
One day shortly after that, Nano invited me to his house for lunch. When I arrived, he was reading some kind of booklet he'd acquired on the theme of human rights. Most older community members, if they could read at all, would nine times out of ten be reading the Bible. Nano sat around reading about human rights. He began talking to me about what he'd been reading, listing some basic human rights: the right to be free, the right to live, the right to work. And somehow we got to the topic of international human rights. He asked me how many countries I had traveled to in my life. Since I have a bad habit of being honest in situations where maybe I shouldn't, I told the truth: "Maybe eight or ten."
Nano scoffed. "For you, it's so easy!" he said almost accusingly. "For us it's not so easy. I would love to travel like you. But I have never left this island in my life. But you know what? It's easy for you to make it easy for us."
I felt a lump in my throat. I knew where he was going with that argument. He wanted me to write him an invitation letter so he'd have a better chance of getting a visa to go to the US. A few years before I came, a Peace Corps couple lived in the community for a year. They ended up writing a letter for one of the local women who dreamed of bigger and better things. The woman, Carmen, got the visa, went to the United States, and the rest is history. Years have passed. Her husband and four kids are still awaiting her return, but rumor has it she's found another man.
"You can do it for a friend," said Nano. "Have I not been a friend to you?"
I made every argument I could think of to convince him that me writing him a letter would not do him much good. "Things are bad in the United States right now," I told him. "You'd be worse off than you are here. Besides, even if I wrote you a letter, it would be hard for you to get a visa. Peace Corps volunteers can recommend anyone, but I'm not in the Peace Corps." I didn't voice my major reservations: I wouldn't feel comfortable choosing Nano above everyone else in the community who wanted a visa. I wouldn't feel comfortable inviting him to stay in my house in the US. And I wouldn't feel comfortable writing an invitation letter for someone I knew very well would overstay his visa.
Nano wasn't convinced by my arguments. "If I enter the country legally, I'll have more rights than someone who came illegally. You would be helping me to have more rights."
"But Nano," I said, "Once you stay longer than the visa allows, you'll be illegal too. Then you'll be in the same boat as everyone else. You won't have any rights at all. You'll have to stay under the radar."
He wouldn't believe that what I was saying was true, insisting that if he arrived legally he'd always have an advantage over people who arrived illegally. We began to argue, and we were both becoming visibly upset. I felt betrayed and unjustly attacked. Here I was teaching his son how to read, and he was accusing me of being selfish because I wouldn't get him a visa. He was clearly jealous of Fermín, who he assumed would get a green card out of our future marriage.
"Nano," I said, "I am sorry the world is the way it is. I didn't choose to be born in the United States any more than you chose to be born here. But it's not my fault the world is that way. And me writing you a letter won't solve anything."
"You could do it, it's just that you don't want to," he insisted. "For you it would be so simple. I work so hard every day and nothing comes of it. All I do is work. And you could help so easily. You don't think you can do a favor for a friend?"
I got up to leave. I felt extremely uncomfortable and didn't want to keep being attacked. "I don't do favors for people who beg," I said, and walked away.
After that, I didn't want to ever go to Nano's house again. I was angry and hurt that he had treated me that way. But on the other hand, I felt almost guilty that I couldn't help him. I sympathized with his feeling of being trapped, but couldn't foresee a way he could escape, short of marrying an American woman. It wasn't that Nano was significantly worse off than everyone else, but unlike others, he knew that the world had a lot more to offer. He wanted much more than he had.
The other day a friend of mine used the term "compassion fatigue" to describe a situation where you feel tired of giving, where you feel you're not capable of giving another person what they need. One of the most difficult things about development work is learning to set your boundaries and accept your limitations. I was not there to solve all the community's problems. I was only there to teach the kids to read.
Nano's son, Alex, had basically learned to read by the end of the year. It happened unexpectedly, not as a result of anything I can directly take credit for, but more just the effect of the constant time he spent at home looking at books from the library. I can only hope that Alex will one day pick up a booklet about human rights, and that his skills and intelligence will help him gain access to opportunities his father never had.
Nano was an interesting guy. He was highly self-educated and sensitive, one of the very few people in the community I felt like I could sit down and have a real conversation with. The first time I talked to him, we discussed, among other things, the problem of the HIV epidemic and the importance of HIV education. We talked about the community and he commented on how he considered everyone in the community his family, even the Haitians, "because they are such nice people." It is rare to hear such an openly positive statement about Haitians from a Dominican. I wondered how someone who grew up in the same limiting environment as everyone else in the community could have developed such different ideas.
So there was that. And then there was the hush-hush talk of how Nano's wife had left him years ago because he used to beat her. And talk of him being bipolar. And the slight stutter he had that became worse when he got angry. And there was the fact that he was a single Dominican man, and all single Dominican men have one thing on the back of their minds when they meet an American woman: a visa.
I usually visited Nano's house not primarily to talk with him, but to help his 10-year-old son, Alex, learn to read. Nano would sometimes ask me to stay for lunch afterwards. So began a meaningful yet somewhat strained and uncomfortable friendship between us. Nano would always ask me about my boyfriend, Fermín, and comment that he wanted to be invited to the wedding if it was held in the DR. One day he even suggested we have the church wedding in the DR, and the legal wedding in the US. I thanked him but said we were planning on getting married in Nueva York. To suggest that marriage plans were not underway was out of the question; for him it would have implied that my relationship was not that serious and that I was up for grabs.
Nano lived with two sons that his wife had left with him when she moved to Jarabacoa because she couldn't take care of all five kids herself. He owned a modest plot of land where he grew beans, bananas, plantains, root vegetables, and sugar cane. That land was the only resource he had to sustain he and his sons. Unlike most people in the community who had (successfully or not) integrated into the wage labor economy, Nano was a full-time farmer. He also did "women's" work, cooking and washing clothes for himself and his sons. Earlier that year one of his sons (one who lived with his mother) had gotten into a horrible motorcycle accident that left him crippled. So in addition to working his own land, Nano was working for someone else to pay off debts from the boy's hospital bills. Although Nano placed high value on education, his sons rarely had time to come to the library for class, because they were needed to help keep up the land or watch over the house while Nano was gone.
When I unveiled my plans to take a group of older kids from the community on a trip to the ocean (many of the kids had never seen it), the talk of the town was that Nano would never let his 13-year-old son, Javé, go. But I knew that Nano could be reasoned with, so I went to talk to him. Whether it had to do with his real reservations or not, he said that his only concern was that his son might drown in the ocean. When I told him the kids wouldn't be allowed to swim, he reluctantly agreed to let Javé go. But on the day of the trip, Javé didn't show up to board the bus. I figured Nano had changed his mind at the last minute and put Javé to work in the fields. It was only days later that I ran into Nano and he told me why Javé hadn't been able to go on the trip: One of his dress shoes was broken, and he couldn't leave the community without nice shoes. That broke my heart. The broken shoe might have only been the straw that broke the camel's back, but it was a symbol of Nano's poverty and pride, and a classic example of the materialism pervasive in Dominican society. No parent would let their kid go out in public with a broken shoe, even for a trip to the beach where shoes were hardly necessary.
One day shortly after that, Nano invited me to his house for lunch. When I arrived, he was reading some kind of booklet he'd acquired on the theme of human rights. Most older community members, if they could read at all, would nine times out of ten be reading the Bible. Nano sat around reading about human rights. He began talking to me about what he'd been reading, listing some basic human rights: the right to be free, the right to live, the right to work. And somehow we got to the topic of international human rights. He asked me how many countries I had traveled to in my life. Since I have a bad habit of being honest in situations where maybe I shouldn't, I told the truth: "Maybe eight or ten."
Nano scoffed. "For you, it's so easy!" he said almost accusingly. "For us it's not so easy. I would love to travel like you. But I have never left this island in my life. But you know what? It's easy for you to make it easy for us."
I felt a lump in my throat. I knew where he was going with that argument. He wanted me to write him an invitation letter so he'd have a better chance of getting a visa to go to the US. A few years before I came, a Peace Corps couple lived in the community for a year. They ended up writing a letter for one of the local women who dreamed of bigger and better things. The woman, Carmen, got the visa, went to the United States, and the rest is history. Years have passed. Her husband and four kids are still awaiting her return, but rumor has it she's found another man.
"You can do it for a friend," said Nano. "Have I not been a friend to you?"
I made every argument I could think of to convince him that me writing him a letter would not do him much good. "Things are bad in the United States right now," I told him. "You'd be worse off than you are here. Besides, even if I wrote you a letter, it would be hard for you to get a visa. Peace Corps volunteers can recommend anyone, but I'm not in the Peace Corps." I didn't voice my major reservations: I wouldn't feel comfortable choosing Nano above everyone else in the community who wanted a visa. I wouldn't feel comfortable inviting him to stay in my house in the US. And I wouldn't feel comfortable writing an invitation letter for someone I knew very well would overstay his visa.
Nano wasn't convinced by my arguments. "If I enter the country legally, I'll have more rights than someone who came illegally. You would be helping me to have more rights."
"But Nano," I said, "Once you stay longer than the visa allows, you'll be illegal too. Then you'll be in the same boat as everyone else. You won't have any rights at all. You'll have to stay under the radar."
He wouldn't believe that what I was saying was true, insisting that if he arrived legally he'd always have an advantage over people who arrived illegally. We began to argue, and we were both becoming visibly upset. I felt betrayed and unjustly attacked. Here I was teaching his son how to read, and he was accusing me of being selfish because I wouldn't get him a visa. He was clearly jealous of Fermín, who he assumed would get a green card out of our future marriage.
"Nano," I said, "I am sorry the world is the way it is. I didn't choose to be born in the United States any more than you chose to be born here. But it's not my fault the world is that way. And me writing you a letter won't solve anything."
"You could do it, it's just that you don't want to," he insisted. "For you it would be so simple. I work so hard every day and nothing comes of it. All I do is work. And you could help so easily. You don't think you can do a favor for a friend?"
I got up to leave. I felt extremely uncomfortable and didn't want to keep being attacked. "I don't do favors for people who beg," I said, and walked away.
After that, I didn't want to ever go to Nano's house again. I was angry and hurt that he had treated me that way. But on the other hand, I felt almost guilty that I couldn't help him. I sympathized with his feeling of being trapped, but couldn't foresee a way he could escape, short of marrying an American woman. It wasn't that Nano was significantly worse off than everyone else, but unlike others, he knew that the world had a lot more to offer. He wanted much more than he had.
The other day a friend of mine used the term "compassion fatigue" to describe a situation where you feel tired of giving, where you feel you're not capable of giving another person what they need. One of the most difficult things about development work is learning to set your boundaries and accept your limitations. I was not there to solve all the community's problems. I was only there to teach the kids to read.
Nano's son, Alex, had basically learned to read by the end of the year. It happened unexpectedly, not as a result of anything I can directly take credit for, but more just the effect of the constant time he spent at home looking at books from the library. I can only hope that Alex will one day pick up a booklet about human rights, and that his skills and intelligence will help him gain access to opportunities his father never had.
Unemployment, soccer, and the power of positive thought
I guess I didn't keep up too well with this blog while I was in the DR, and maybe it's for the best considering internet access was always a chore. Also, I always spent more time trying to decide what I should write and what I shouldn't write in a blog, so writing for myself seemed like the better option. But the experience itself was so intense that I was pretty inconsistent with the personal writing too. I'd like to get this blog started up again, in the present, but I'd also like to use it to record some anecdotes from my time in Los Marranitos that I never got down on paper and that still stand out in my mind. Those experiences that are just begging to be made into poems, but are going unused because I am just so out of poetry-writing practice that I am intimidated to even start again.
Most of the anecdotes I have in mind have to do with gender issues. Is it that I'm just obsessed with this topic? Or is it impossible to avoid being a white woman around Latino men? In any case, living abroad, among other things, has taught me an awful lot about being a woman.
Anyway, back to the present for a moment. I am unemployed and broke. But you know what? It's ok. I don't want anyone to get out their hanky and violin. Anyway, it's partly my own fault. So I quit AmeriCorps, because it wasn't my cup of tea. Whether that was a good or bad decision is beside the point. What is important, I've realized in the last few weeks of cover-letter-writing, sending resumes into black holes, not-so-perfect interviews, cancelled interviews, rejections, the PA governor refusing to pass a budget (rrrrrrrrrrr) etc... what is important is that I am learning how to do this. There is not much I dislike more in life than trying to sell myself in a few paragraphs or a half hour interview, but it's evidently a necessary skill. All my life, I've been accustomed to things falling into place in my life because everyone tells me I am bright and talented and show so much potential, and went to a great school, and got A's, and on TOP of that speak Spanish and have social responsibility, etc etc etc, and because of that I've come to feel that I deserve certain things. But being turned down from jobs whose minimum requirement was a high school diploma kind of gives you a new perspective on life. Hey, what doesn't kill you only makes you stronger. And in this case, humbled. Thank you, Dubya, for screwing the economy so badly; I am learning life lessons I would have never had the opportunity to learn otherwise.
It is a shame though, really. I am a person that likes to feel useful and productive. There is nothing I would enjoy more right now than a job that would take up almost all my time and all my creative energy. A job where I'd feel I was really making a difference in people's lives and growing as a person. I just freakin want to help people! Doesn't ANYONE want to hire me?? But maybe I am just being self-important.
Another of the lessons I'm learning is about being positive. Even looking back at past blog entries, I realize what a negative spin I sometimes put on things. If there's any lesson to be learned from job interviewing, it's to be positive, positive, positive. To turn every challenge and setback into an example of how you used your creative skills to rise above it!! My friend Alice said to me the other day that she's becoming less and less convinced of the existence of "credentials" and learned skills: "People just say they can do things, and then they do them." And I think that's true. It's not that I'm a negative person, but sometimes I think I give up a little too easily, or make excuses to myself for not trying things because I think they're not going to work, when really, I just haven't thought of a way to make them work. My New School Year's resolution is to quit complaining. From now on, this blog is going to be totally positive and nice. No cynicism or sarcasm allowed.
On that note, let's talk about the positive things in my life. I joined a soccer team in South Philly made up almost entirely of Mexican women!!! It is the best decision I have made in awhile. How did I find out about this team? you might ask. Salsa dancing. Yes, since I moved to Philly I have been salsa and swing dancing every week like it's my job. Evidently, salsa clubs are great places to connect with the Mexican community of South Philly. I met a Mexican guy who told me his friend's team was looking for more players, and before you know it, I was playing team soccer again for the first time in 5 years (high school was really that long ago? shit).
Needless to say, part of the fun of being on the team is getting to play soccer in Spanish. I knew Mexican Spanish was different from Dominican, but just how strange it sounds to me after living in the DR for a year is incredible. The other day someone asked me "Cómo estás?", and I only realized what he had said about 5 minutes later. It sounded so different than how a Dominican would say it that it just threw me off.
Soccer practice is two days a week starting at 6, but in typical Latino fashion, no one ever arrives before 6:30. It's a girls' soccer team but we practice with the guys, and they all have funny nicknames, such as "Rebelde", "Indio", and "Chorizo" (isn't that a type of sausage? isn't that dirty?). One guy told me his name was Juan, but they someone else told me his name was Fausto. It turns out he doesn't like the name "Fausto" and "Juan" is the name he has on a fake ID (for passing as a legal resident, not just buying drinks). But both of those names are useless, because everyone calls him "Indio." At least they don't get nonsensical nicknames made up for them by their fathers at birth, like "Pololo" and "Purundingo" (the inescapable family nicknames of my boyfriend and his brother, respectively).
The girls are mostly around my age, in their early 20's, and most have a toddler or two, including one girl who can't play this season because she's pregnant. Even after living among 15- and 16-year-old mothers for a year I still get a strange feeling seeing women ("girls") my age with kids. Maybe being on the same team together is an equalizing factor. I just cannot for the life of me imagine having kids anytime before I turn 30. I assume it will happen one day, but it's still very abstract.
The other day I was talking with one of the guys, in fact, the only one who speaks English, and he claims he's only learned it in the two years he's been here. Because of that he can work as a waiter instead of a dishwasher, and make more money to send back to his family. He told me he'd like to go back to Mexico, but he knows he couldn't earn enough there to continue to help his family. Then I started telling him how I wanted to eventually become a teacher in a bilingual school, and how I had been teaching in the Dominican Republic. He said in English, "I think it's really good, the work you do... because, you know, you're helping Latinos." I thought about it for a second and said, "Yeah, we're in the same line of work. You're helping Latinos too." It was kind of a spontaneous revelation, and the more I thought about it the more I realized how true it was. To a person like me his ambitions might seem lowly, but it takes an extreme amount of generosity and selflessness to do what he does, and he's been incredibly successful at it. I have never had to help my family; on the contrary, my parents have always helped me. It's almost as if I've had to seek out other less fortunate people to help in order to feel fulfilled.
Maybe it would do me good just to have a dull, meaningless job for awhile, one where the main purpose is to make money to live. Just to see what that would be like.
Most of the anecdotes I have in mind have to do with gender issues. Is it that I'm just obsessed with this topic? Or is it impossible to avoid being a white woman around Latino men? In any case, living abroad, among other things, has taught me an awful lot about being a woman.
Anyway, back to the present for a moment. I am unemployed and broke. But you know what? It's ok. I don't want anyone to get out their hanky and violin. Anyway, it's partly my own fault. So I quit AmeriCorps, because it wasn't my cup of tea. Whether that was a good or bad decision is beside the point. What is important, I've realized in the last few weeks of cover-letter-writing, sending resumes into black holes, not-so-perfect interviews, cancelled interviews, rejections, the PA governor refusing to pass a budget (rrrrrrrrrrr) etc... what is important is that I am learning how to do this. There is not much I dislike more in life than trying to sell myself in a few paragraphs or a half hour interview, but it's evidently a necessary skill. All my life, I've been accustomed to things falling into place in my life because everyone tells me I am bright and talented and show so much potential, and went to a great school, and got A's, and on TOP of that speak Spanish and have social responsibility, etc etc etc, and because of that I've come to feel that I deserve certain things. But being turned down from jobs whose minimum requirement was a high school diploma kind of gives you a new perspective on life. Hey, what doesn't kill you only makes you stronger. And in this case, humbled. Thank you, Dubya, for screwing the economy so badly; I am learning life lessons I would have never had the opportunity to learn otherwise.
It is a shame though, really. I am a person that likes to feel useful and productive. There is nothing I would enjoy more right now than a job that would take up almost all my time and all my creative energy. A job where I'd feel I was really making a difference in people's lives and growing as a person. I just freakin want to help people! Doesn't ANYONE want to hire me?? But maybe I am just being self-important.
Another of the lessons I'm learning is about being positive. Even looking back at past blog entries, I realize what a negative spin I sometimes put on things. If there's any lesson to be learned from job interviewing, it's to be positive, positive, positive. To turn every challenge and setback into an example of how you used your creative skills to rise above it!! My friend Alice said to me the other day that she's becoming less and less convinced of the existence of "credentials" and learned skills: "People just say they can do things, and then they do them." And I think that's true. It's not that I'm a negative person, but sometimes I think I give up a little too easily, or make excuses to myself for not trying things because I think they're not going to work, when really, I just haven't thought of a way to make them work. My New School Year's resolution is to quit complaining. From now on, this blog is going to be totally positive and nice. No cynicism or sarcasm allowed.
On that note, let's talk about the positive things in my life. I joined a soccer team in South Philly made up almost entirely of Mexican women!!! It is the best decision I have made in awhile. How did I find out about this team? you might ask. Salsa dancing. Yes, since I moved to Philly I have been salsa and swing dancing every week like it's my job. Evidently, salsa clubs are great places to connect with the Mexican community of South Philly. I met a Mexican guy who told me his friend's team was looking for more players, and before you know it, I was playing team soccer again for the first time in 5 years (high school was really that long ago? shit).
Needless to say, part of the fun of being on the team is getting to play soccer in Spanish. I knew Mexican Spanish was different from Dominican, but just how strange it sounds to me after living in the DR for a year is incredible. The other day someone asked me "Cómo estás?", and I only realized what he had said about 5 minutes later. It sounded so different than how a Dominican would say it that it just threw me off.
Soccer practice is two days a week starting at 6, but in typical Latino fashion, no one ever arrives before 6:30. It's a girls' soccer team but we practice with the guys, and they all have funny nicknames, such as "Rebelde", "Indio", and "Chorizo" (isn't that a type of sausage? isn't that dirty?). One guy told me his name was Juan, but they someone else told me his name was Fausto. It turns out he doesn't like the name "Fausto" and "Juan" is the name he has on a fake ID (for passing as a legal resident, not just buying drinks). But both of those names are useless, because everyone calls him "Indio." At least they don't get nonsensical nicknames made up for them by their fathers at birth, like "Pololo" and "Purundingo" (the inescapable family nicknames of my boyfriend and his brother, respectively).
The girls are mostly around my age, in their early 20's, and most have a toddler or two, including one girl who can't play this season because she's pregnant. Even after living among 15- and 16-year-old mothers for a year I still get a strange feeling seeing women ("girls") my age with kids. Maybe being on the same team together is an equalizing factor. I just cannot for the life of me imagine having kids anytime before I turn 30. I assume it will happen one day, but it's still very abstract.
The other day I was talking with one of the guys, in fact, the only one who speaks English, and he claims he's only learned it in the two years he's been here. Because of that he can work as a waiter instead of a dishwasher, and make more money to send back to his family. He told me he'd like to go back to Mexico, but he knows he couldn't earn enough there to continue to help his family. Then I started telling him how I wanted to eventually become a teacher in a bilingual school, and how I had been teaching in the Dominican Republic. He said in English, "I think it's really good, the work you do... because, you know, you're helping Latinos." I thought about it for a second and said, "Yeah, we're in the same line of work. You're helping Latinos too." It was kind of a spontaneous revelation, and the more I thought about it the more I realized how true it was. To a person like me his ambitions might seem lowly, but it takes an extreme amount of generosity and selflessness to do what he does, and he's been incredibly successful at it. I have never had to help my family; on the contrary, my parents have always helped me. It's almost as if I've had to seek out other less fortunate people to help in order to feel fulfilled.
Maybe it would do me good just to have a dull, meaningless job for awhile, one where the main purpose is to make money to live. Just to see what that would be like.
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