Mambó and "Pelofino"

This is the first part of an unfinished short story I started last fall, obviously semi-autobiographical. If nothing else it depicts one of my favorite students, Mambó, better than I could do summarizing her in a couple paragraphs.

Mambó was six years old. Seis, she decided, and she liked how that sounded, short and rounded both in dominicano and haitiano, the language of her country and the language she spoke to her mother. Seis. Sis. To make six fingers she had to hold one hand out flat and stick the short finger out like a little stump from the other, like the Americana had showed her. It looked like a lot, and it made her laugh.
She didn’t know when her birthday was. Her birthday meant the day she was born, and that had a number too, like uno dos tres cuatro cinco. When the Americana asked Mambó what day she was born, she went home and asked her mama, and Pelo said it was a Tuesday in the evening and cold and raining and she was about to boil bananas when she realized Mambó was about to come out of her bouboun, so then instead of making dinner she just laid down on a wooden bunk, and when Mambó came out a woman called Natacha caught her and said she was long and thin just like Pelo, and then when her papa came back he was hungry but instead of giving him dinner Pelo gave him Mambó, and he was happy. But Mambó didn’t tell that to the Americana because it wasn’t a number like seis and she had a feeling it wasn’t what the Americana wanted to know.
But one day she heard the Americana say to someone else that Mambó was probably five or six, and then another day she heard her saying that she was probably six or maybe even seven, and Mambó liked the number seis and she liked how it looked on her fingers, so from then on she told all the other kids she was seis. And after awhile they forgot about when Mambó used to say she didn’t know her age, and they all knew that Mambó had six years.
It was still early, and the fog was slowly burning off the mountaintops as the sun gained strength. Mambó felt the hot sun on her back as she walked down the hill, but it felt good after her chilly early morning bath. She was holding both her elbows in her hands and looking down at the movement of her feet when she heard her aunt call out to her.
“Mambó, kikote ale?”
“I’m going down to Miguel’s,” said Mambó.
“Pou ki sa?”
“To buy something for my mama.”
“Wait, take these cuartos and buy me a quarter pound of sugar,” said her tía, switching to Spanish. She scurried into her house and came out with two coins in her hand.
Mambó took the change from her tía and continued down the hill. On her left was the Ramirez farm, where her mama and most of her family picked coffee. On the right was the other farm of the family that was called Vasquez. Today there was some ripe coffee to be picked, but not as much as other days. All of the men were working but most of the women weren’t, including her mama, who had stayed just outside the workers’ quarters, washing her and Mambó’s clothes with a bucket of water.
A little farther down Mambó came to the Dominican part of town. Yaqui was hanging clothes out to dry on the barbed wire fence. “Mambó, adónde vas?”
“To Miguel’s,” answered Mambó. “To buy something for my mamá.”
“For Pelofino?”
“Yes.”
Yaqui paused and kept her eyes on Mambó, holding a wet, bright blue blouse that she had been about to hang on the fence. “Mambó, why do they call your mama Pelofino?”
People always asked Mambó that question, and one day she went home and asked: “Pelo, how did you get your name?” Pelofino told her that when she met Mambó’s papa he thought she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen, so he called her Fine Hair because to him her hair seemed as fine as any white girl’s. But once Mambó told that story to Miguel at the colmado, and he laughed.
“I don’t know,” said Mambó, and kept walking, twirling one of the twists in her hair. She did this whenever she felt nervous or tired. It made her think of her mama.
“Ay, hombre.” Yaqui was shaking her head now, almost as if she were sorry for Mambó, except she had a grin on her face. “Has your mamá ever looked in a mirror? She don’t got no pelo fino. She’s a prieta like all the rest of ‘em and she’s got pelo malo.”
Mambó kept walking and twisting her hair, her own pelo malo. Yaqui’s words brushed by her like the wind. Mambó knew what they meant and didn’t need to let them enter her again: she was a prieta. Her mama was a prieta. Some Dominicans were dark too, like the young woman she saw now who was always sitting out on her front porch with her baby. She almost looked like a haitiana, but her baby boy was more white than she, so everyone said he was precioso. Mambó never got too close to the baby because she knew that if she touched it some of her dark tint might rub off and the boy could become a prieta like Mambó or her mama. Then Mambó’s best friend, Denís, would probably be angry with her and might not want to play with her anymore.
Mambó stopped when she got to the house where the Americana lived. She stood still facing the door and listened to see if the Americana was awake. Her mama had not instructed her to go see the Americana, only to make a purchase down the hill at Miguel’s colmado. But maybe today Mambó could convince the Americana to give her veinte pesos, or the pairs of jeans her mama wanted for going out. Or maybe the Americana would walk with her down the hill and sing her the alphabet song again. But putting her ear to the door, she heard no sound inside the Americana’s little casita.

Mambó was a very beautiful, intelligent little girl and motivated student, the only child for whom the Montessori literacy method I was attempting to use (for lack of any other literacy training) actually seemed to be working. She started off not knowing even one letter of the alphabet, and was too timid and/or apprehensive to even to pick up a crayon and express herself. Within a couple months of me working with her in the library, both one-on-one and with groups of other children, she not only knew the sounds of several letters but was creating a series of expressive drawings of human figures in which males and females were distinguished by their genitalia (an "O" shape representing a vagina, an "I" for a penis).

She was my biggest success story, and I loved working with her. But at times I also felt uncomfortable in her presence. Her mother (who was actually universally called "Pelofino"), was very poor and had taught Mambó to be a very effective beggar. Sometimes she would send Mambó down to the library at times of day when I hadn't been planning on opening it, and would instruct her to just hang around for lunch because she knew I or someone else in the farm office would eventually give her food (which we did on several occasions). Mambó sometimes would ask me for money, often for her mother, but giving out cash was where I drew the line. I was only living on a volunteer stipend after all, and even though that stipend was still a lot more than most families in the community earned, I didn't want to be seen as Miss Moneybags.

Once, Mambó told me very matter-of-factly that her mother would like two pairs of pants that she could use for "going out". (I later heard rumors, unconfirmed but believable, that Pelofino's boyfriend was exploiting her as a prostitute.) She didn't want me to buy her clothes, but rather, just give her some out of my supposedly infinite supply. I repeated the request to Mambó just to clarify: "Your mom wants me to give her a pair of pants?"

"Two pairs of pants," Mambó corrected me. I told her I was very sorry but that I only had 3 pairs of jeans total, and I didn't think her mom would want them because they were old and stained and not really any good for going out. Still, it wasn't the last time the request was brought up.

The most strange and vivid memory I have of Mambó and her mother is one day when I went outside of my casita to use the outhouse, only to find Mambó and Pelofino standing right outside my door and kind of staring at it. They hadn't actually knocked and I can't remember if I had any inkling at the time of why they were there. I hardly ever invited people into my house, but put in that position it seemed like the only thing I could do. I offered Mambó and her mother seats at my small kitchen table, feeling self-conscious because even if I'd been able to communicate easily with Pelofino (who spoke hardly any Spanish) I wouldn't have known what to talk to her about.

Generally when you enter the house of any campo Dominican they immediately offer you a cup of coffee. Since I didn't have any coffee in the house, I asked Pelofino, with Mambó serving as a translator, if she would like some hot chocolate. She said yes, but no milk. I heated up some water and served Mambó and her mother a mug of hot chocolate each. But they had each only taken a few sips before Pelofino took both the mugs and brought them to the sink. At first I thought that she hadn't liked it and was pouring it down the sink, but it turned out she had taken an empty water bottle she'd found in my house and was pouring the hot chocolate into the water bottle, presumably to save for later.

I will never forget that moment. Any American and even most Dominicans would have considered her behavior very rude, but when you are poor you do what you have to do, and practicality equals survival. That night, or maybe the next morning, Mambó and her mother, and probably also their friends and extended family in the batey, would be in for a rare treat: a few sips of sweet hot chocolate, reheated in an old dented pot above the fire.

Let's talk about dating!

In the last few weeks of my time in Los Marranitos, I was inspired to make up for lost time and hold some sex, gender, and dating themed info and discussion sessions for the young teen and preteen girls in the community, with whom it had taken me so long to establish a real rapport. It had been one of my goals for the year to start a "girls' group" that would involve discussions on these themes, but I had struggled to find just the right way to go about it.

Two years before I arrived in the community, another volunteer started a girl scout troupe with girls from both Los Marranitos and Los Dajaos. However, after talking to a girl scouts' representative in Santiago and bringing a couple of the girls along to a one-night girl scout sleepover camp there, I was totally turned off by the organization's exclusivity, military origins, and emphasis on getting totally hyped about cheering and screaming all day and night long. I also found that the girl scouts catered more to privileged city girls who wanted to become more "in tune with nature" by learning to start a fire and the like. This was simply ridiculous when applied to girls from Los Marranitos, who would never build a campfire just to roast hot dogs and marshmallows, and could have benefitted more from a lesson on crossing busy streets.

So, the girl scout troupe idea went out the window. I was going to do the girls' group my own way, dammit, and preferably without all the high-pitched screaming and giggling. But I soon realized that 1) it was hard to get a regular group to attend reliably once a week, and 2) it felt kind of inorganic for me to try and start discussions about sensitive issues with these girls I still didn't know that well. So the group began with activities mostly centered around self-esteem and self-image issues, and then, when I still didn't feel completely comfortable delving into the female reproductive system, evolved into a girls' arts and crafts group. I always was nagged by the feeling that I wanted to be doing something more with the women and girls, but could never figured out the best way to approach it.

For some reason, I have never been good at connecting with 12- to 14-year old girls (I think they remind me too much of the mean, cliquey girls in my middle school past). I have always found it much easier to work with younger kids. But near the end of the year, I finally realized that I had developed the rapport I needed with a small group of girls to launch into some "girl talk". So one day, I told five of them to come to the library the next day to talk about dating, and the differences between the Dominican Republic and the United States. Suddenly, the attendance problem was no longer an issue; the girls might have actually showed up to the library early. Beforehand, I prepared a little quiz full of value statements that the girls could either agree or disagree with, such as "Is it OK for a man to have more than one girlfriend? For a woman to have more than one boyfriend? Is a woman a whore if she has sex before marriage? Is a woman who isn't married by the age of 20 an old maid? Is it OK to use condoms or pills? Should a married woman drop her studies and stay at home? Is it OK for a Dominican to marry a Haitian? Is it OK for a man to beat his wife?"

When it came to the way we answered those questions, I was actually in agreement with the girls on most value questions. No one thought that it was OK for a man to be a cheater or beat his wife. Everyone agreed that a woman had the right to use birth control, to continue her studies, to have help in household chores from her husband, etc. In short, the girls supported gender equality in theory, and even agreed that Dominicans and Haitians should be able to marry in theory. But when I reworded the questions in more personal ways, the responses were different: "Well, I wouldn't have sex before I got married. You can do that in the United States, but not here." And more disturbingly: "I wouldn't have a Haitian boyfriend. They smell bad. I like blue eyes and blond hair." Naomi, the most outgoing of the group, insisted that this was just her personal preference and she was definitely not being racist. As disappointed as I was, I realized that my arguing with her wasn't going to do much good.

We also got into an interesting discussion about the other aforementioned issue. It was generally agreed that in their community, a girl who had sex and didn't commit to that person as a lifelong partner would be seen as a slut. However, for a man to have multiple sexual partners, both before and after "marriage", would be considered normal. The girls clearly thought this to be unfair, but when I asked them, "Would you get married to someone who had had sex before?", Naomi chimed in with, "Well, as long as he didn't tell me about it." I countered, "But isn't honesty the most important thing? He would be putting you in danger by not telling you-- what if he had HIV?"

"Well," said Naomi, "I would marry him, but I would make him get checked for HIV first."

It turned out the girls knew more about HIV than I'd anticipated; happily because they had some of the knowledge they needed to protect themselves, and sadly because the reason they knew about the disease was because it had affected their community. I learned from this conversation that there was a boy attending the school in Los Dajaos who had been born with HIV. The major misconception they had was that they seemed to think that the boy with HIV had "gotten better" and that he wouldn't ever actually get AIDS. They simply refused to believe me when I said that although he might live for a long time, he would eventually die of AIDS. They were also taken aback when I explained that you could protect yourself from AIDS with a condom, but not with the injection form of the pill that many women get here if they don't want to become pregnant right away. Although the girls thought that using a condom is kind of gross (hardly anyone in the community uses them since the birth control injection is more popular), they seemed gratified to have learned this important piece of information.

That first discussion session, despite some frustrations, went so well that I decided to schedule another one for the next day and do a mini-lesson on the reproductive system. It quickly became evident that the girls had never heard anything about this topic before. They didn't know whether to be weirded out or scandalized by the anatomical drawings I was making on the board. When I asked the group if anyone knew why women have their period, Ariel chimed in, "Because we're women!!" All the girls chuckled when I explained that women produce "eggs" inside their bodies and were both fascinated and disgusted to learn that their period blood was actually a discarded bed for the eggs.

Then Yaneli, always the inquisitive one, began asking me personal questions about sex. This is the same girl who, a few months earlier, had the gall to ask me with a smirk on her face if I staid over Fermín's house when I went to visit him in San Cristobal. After a brief hesitation I decided to give her the straight up truth: "yes." I tried to explain to her that in my culture it is not just that people want to have sex all the time; rather, a couple might wait many years before deciding to get married, so it may not be that important to them to stay celibate until marriage. To this, Yaneli had responded, "I wish here could be more like there!" But I am still not sure which part of the American cultural norm appealed to her: getting married later or having sex without being married. Probably both.

Even though she had a tendency to ask impertinent questions and make the usual smart-ass teenage comments, I had become fond of Yaneli over the course of the year because I recognized that she was very intelligent and much more likely than her peers to think critically about issues rather than clinging steadfastly to the set of (often machista) values she had learned growing up in the campo. She also was an avid reader. When I first started opening the library in September, she (at 13 years old) insisted on reading children's picture books even though I kept encouraging her to try out the young adult novels. I tried to counter this tendency in the pre-teen and teenage girls by reading to them out loud from classic young adult novels translated to Spanish: first Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, then Charlotte's Web. By the time I was halfway through Charlotte's Web, Yaneli got impatient because I was not reading enough for her in one day. So she took home a copy of the book that night and by the next day she had finished the entire thing. Since I had not read the book for awhile, it was she who had to remind me what happened in the end! (When I went back to visit the farm the following March, Yaneli was already halfway through the Harry Potter series.)

Back to my educational session on the reproductive system: I was done with the female and beginning to explain the male reproductive organ when Yaneli, with that familiar smirk on her face, took in her fist a piece of pink sidewalk chalk about 3 1/2 inches long and maybe 3/4 inch in diameter, with a rounded point at the end. "Naomi, is THIS what one looks like?" she asked, giggling. "You know, one of THOSE?"

I laughed and said jokingly, "Well, a little bigger than that."

But Yaneli stopped laughing. She was incredulous. "BIGGER?!"

"Well, yeah, usually, I mean, a little bit," I said nervously.

"But then how in the WORLD do you get it IN??"

The smile returned to my face. "Well, I think when the time comes, you will figure it out," I said. "Don't worry."

When the time comes. When I came back to visit the community a little less than a year later, Naomi, at age 14, had gotten married and was probably on her way to having her first child. In Los Marranitos, the transition from "young girl" to "married woman" happens instantly. I can't judge anyone for that, much less change the minds of these girls in a day. And indeed, some women (though probably a minority) seem truly happy with the child-rearing life. But I admit to finding some consolation in having at least helped prepare Yaneli for her future first encounter with the male organ. Perhaps she won't be as frightened when she finds that it is, indeed, just a bit bigger than a piece of sidewalk chalk.

My Campo Marriage

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.

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.

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.

"Yo no sé na'a"

My number one goal for the course of the year is to do away with the above phrase: “I don’t know anything.” I hear it over and over from kids in Los Dajaos school and the library, usually in response to asking them to do something other than copying what they see on the board: “Yo no sé hacer esa vaina” or “Yo no sé na’a”. It’s no mystery where they learn that from: adults in the community are always telling their children that they know nothing, or commenting to others that their child knows nothing. When the kids are old enough to go to school, their teachers tell them the same thing (implicitly or explicitly). And as adult campesinos, the rest of the world tells them that they know nothing. Some of the problems I’ve been observing in the community over the past month seem to be largely the result of a vicious cycle of inactivity, apathy, and a failed public education system.

Life in the campo moves at a much slower pace than that of the city; that much is not surprising. The difference between life here and the campesino life that I observed in the Peruvian Andes is the comparative lack of activity here. For instance, in Huilloq, Peru, where I lived for 3 weeks, many men had jobs in tourism that took them away from the community most of the time, while women stayed home raising the family and weaving items to sell in the tourist market. You would rarely see a woman anywhere without a handful of wool that she would spin into yarn as she walked. During the time I was there it was potato harvesting season, so in addition to weaving and domestic tasks, men, women, and children alike spent entire days digging up potatoes. Here, by contrast, a common daytime activity is sitting on one’s front porch and “chismeando” (gossiping). Some people have land, but some don’t, and some do but don’t cultivate it. There is very little subsistence agriculture even though there is plenty of potential for it. Some men work during the day, but many don’t. Women look after their young children and do household chores like cleaning and washing clothes, but these activities don’t come close to filling up the day. And considering that many parents are illiterate and some kids of schoolgoing age are kept at home with seldom a toy or book in sight, it’s no wonder the kids here are so starved for creative stimulation. It’s no wonder kids start screaming and running down the hill whenever they hear the word “biblioteca.” And, it’s no wonder women (girls) commonly start having kids at age 15. What other options do they have? Besides starting school (which usually turns out to be a letdown), having children is the one big event in their lives.

Last week my big challenge was to finally set down a regular schedule for the library, and getting the right kids to come at the right times. Grouping the kids into different classes was a challenge in itself, considering that I know kids as old as 13 who don’t know how to read, some kids don’t even go to school, and some go to school but are two grades behind and/or still don’t know how to read. After hand-picking the groups by a combination of age, reading level and maturity level, the next challenge was to get them to come to my classes. The process of going from house to house, getting to know the families, and spreading the word about the library schedule has taken up much more of my time than actually opening the library. About half of the families in Los Marranitos live in a cluster of houses along the same little stretch of dirt road that I do, but the other half are scattered about further up the hill, some as much as a 30-minute walk from the library. On top of that, it’s sometimes impossible to pass by someone’s house without stopping by for a 15-minute or half-hour visit. As you pass by a home, someone yells “Entra!”, in response to which you either have to stop and take a seat on their porch, and usually drink a cup of coffee with three times as much sugar as you would like, or come up with a very good excuse not to. No matter how long and until what hour you sit with someone on their front porch, and no matter what percentage of that time you sit in silence racking your brain for a conversation starter, inevitably when you get up to leave your host will object, “No te vayas! Es temprano!” (“Don’t go! It’s early!”). You either sit for another five minutes before announcing again that you have to go, or repeat your motive for leaving a couple more times before saying, “Nos vemos más tarde,” (“See you later”), and your hosts mechanically responding, “Si Dios quiere” (“God willing”).

It’s a long and drawn out process, but ultimately a rewarding one, through which I’ve drunk dozens of cups of coffee and ate plenty of fried guineos (bananas), and gotten a chance to observe the regular flow of life here, in both Haitian households and Dominican. I’ve had dozens of conversations with parents about what their kids should be learning in the library, and what they themselves would like to learn (most popular request: English). And most importantly, I feel like a little bit less of an outsider than I did before, even though I know I will never really “fit in” here.

So, here’s the weekly library schedule for the year, or at least for now:

Tuesday/Thursday
9:00—Clase Chichi (baby class)—for kids ages 2-4
10:00—Preschool for kids ages 5-9 who aren’t in school or don’t know how to read
Wednesday/Friday
9:00—Class for primary school kids age 8-12
10:00—English class for high school kids
3:00—Class for middle school kids
Saturday
10:00—Girls’ group for girls age 12-18 who don’t have children

In the preschool classes, I am mostly just reading books to the kids and then letting them draw, and for the slightly older ones, trying to teach them the alphabet and basic reading skills as well. With the primary school kids I’m trying to develop activities fostering creativity and critical thinking skills, and also improving their reading level since none of them can read well and a couple don’t seem to be reading yet at all. For the middle school kids, who mostly know how to read, I’m going to try to do a novel study of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by reading it out loud to them bit by bit and having guided activities and discussions related to the book. Lastly, the girls’ group is going to consist of mainly middle school and some high school girls. My objective with that is to foster conversation about deep stuff like values and life goals, and eventually to start talking about sex-related issues, which is going to be a challenge considering the amount of attitude these girls have and their generally very low maturity level. I’m both nervous about it and excited, because if it accomplishes anything at all I think it will be among the most important things I do here. I am also planning in teaching the girls in the group to knit. Thank God there is a Peace Corps couple living around here, the female half of which gave me lots of donated yarn and knitting needles and a couple of really helpful manuals for starting a girls’ group. We’ll see how it goes.

In addition to the library schedule, I’m also still going to the school in Los Dajaos on Thursday afternoons, to teach the 5th grade English class and read books to the other two classes. On Tuesday afternoon, I might teach a computer class in the computer lab in El Manguito. The rest of my time I’ll reserve for lesson planning and visits around town. I’m sure I will be plenty busy. In fact, I kind of already am.

Another thing I’ve been busying myself with these days has been learning Creole. There are a fair number of Haitians around Los Marranitos, many of which are male migrants, but some of which are semi-permanent workers on one of the coffee farms in the area. Two guys in particular, Pablo and Pitit, have been working on the Finca Alta Gracia for a number of years and are good friends. Petit is known for his amazing self-taught guitar skills, while Pablo has taken upon himself to teach me as much Creole as he can. Almost all of the Haitian guys seem somewhat musically inclined; one, Leonaldo, has a sizeable set speakers, and the other day in front of the office a handful of them hooked up amps to acoustic guitars and had a jam session, which also involved a drum set improvised from a wheelbarrow, a rake, and two screw drivers. As you can imagine, it was an unforgettable performance.

There are also a few Haitian families who live in Los Marranitos, and one of my favorite kids who comes to the library, Octra (also called Simé), comes from one of those families. Interestingly, I’ve encountered a lot less explicit anti-Haitian sentiment here than I did in Santo Domingo, and some of the Dominican boys with Haitian friends even know a fair amount of Creole (“Haitiano” as they call it). So far I’ve learned how to say a few essential things in Creole, such as “I am the teacher in the school” (“Mwen mem sayou madmwazel likol”) and “I like to eat rice and beans” (“Mwen renmen manje diri ak pwa”). Hopefully those phrases will come in handy some day.

Before I conclude this entry I thought I’d also mention one of the biggest challenges for a woman living in this community: the men. The machismo in this country, but especially in the campo, is like nothing I have seen before. I thought maybe it would help to tell people I have a boyfriend in Santo Domingo, but except when Fermín comes to visit, that hardly gets me anywhere. At least 5 times a day I have a conversation with some married man who tells me that I should dump Fermín and find a boyfriend here, because Santo Domingo is too far away and because he probably has another girlfriend there anyway. Of course you learn to ignore them and not take them seriously, but having the same conversation day after day with the same people gets tiring. Most of the time I just avoid talking to the men in the community altogether, which is kind of a shame. Also, now that Dylan and I are living in the same house, some of the girls have started making snarky comments about us sleeping in the same bed, even though the house clearly contains two rooms and two beds. In this country, people rarely ever actually get legally married, so “marrying” someone is essentially the same as sleeping with them, or as Dylan put it, “going into a room with someone and closing the door.” That said, I would have no problem with people thinking that Dylan and I were “married” if it weren’t for the fact that I already have a boyfriend. On the positive side, so far I’ve heard less chisme (gossip) about us than I expected, and most of the adults in the community seem to think that us living together is “mejor” (better) than living alone. But I sometimes wonder what people are saying about us when we’re not around. I just hope the fact of my supposedly having two boyfriends doesn’t affect how the younger girls in the community view me.

I'm going to make an effort to keep up with this blog more from now on, so check back soon.

Discovering the Dominican school system (or lack thereof)

I have now been living in the community of Los Marranitos for a full two weeks, and settling into my new role as “La Maestra” as well as “La Americana.” The community is tiny, with a population of less than 300, and most of the households scattered along one sloping stretch of the one dirt road. On the same road, right before arriving in the main stretch of the community, is the entrance to the Finca Alta Gracia, an organic fair trade coffee farm that also produces a variety of other food products. But contrary to the popular image of rural campesinos, the majority of community members do not own much land and do not grow food for themselves at all. A few of the men are hired by Alta Gracia and many work as day laborers on other farms, while the women mostly stay home and start having children at an early age.

The community is too small to have its own school. The children who do go to school have to walk 45 minutes each way to the neighboring community of Los Dajaos. Those who don’t attend school are only slightly less well off, considering that the Dominican Republic has statistically the worst school system in all of Latin America (and that is a feat). As a result, illiteracy is widespread. A little over a decade ago, Julia (Alvarez) and her husband Bill (the owners of the farm), with a group of volunteers, constructed a small library on the road leading up to the community. Since then, an American volunteer has come to serve as a teacher in the library almost every year, with the goal of increasing literacy skills and fostering a love of books. Last year, though, the community had no “maestra”, so unfortunately the library remained closed. The children’s excitement about my arrival and the reopening of the library has been very tangible and a little overwhelming. Along with Dylan, another Middlebury grad and volunteer here working on issues pertaining more to the farm, I am quite a celebrity. At this point I’m not sure what is more exciting to the kids, the books and activities that go on in the library or my mere presence. Pretty much every time I walk through the main stretch of the community a kid or three yells at me, “Americana! Vas a abrir la biblioteca ahora?” (“Are you going to open the library now?”) The parents, for their part, keep asking me, “When are you going to give classes?” This has been a difficult question since I have not figured out yet exactly what kind of “classes” I’m going to give, let alone come up with a regular schedule, so my answer has to be either “now” or a vague “later” (luckily these inexact measurements of time are all anyone really expects from you in the Dominican campo). Nevertheless, I consider it a success that probably about 70% of the kids in the community between the ages of 5 and 15 have come to the library and taken out books (I made up that statistic, but so what). And I have succeeded, on some occasions, in carrying out organized activities almost resembling classes, despite huge age and education ranges between kids who are in the library at once. The next step is training kids to call me by my actual name instead of just “La Americana.”

On three occasions now I have made the trip to Los Dajaos, where the children from Los Marranitos go to school (if they go at all). The first time I went was with Miguelina, a 16-year-old girl in the community who was a good friend of the last volunteer here, Caroline. The purpose of the trip was for Miguelina to show me around and introduce me to everyone, but I also took the opportunity to sit in on a couple classes. What I saw confirmed my suspicions about the Dominican school system: basically, it doesn’t work. Imagine a schoolhouse with three classrooms. In the afternoon, one classroom contains about thirty 1st and 2nd graders, the second another thirty 3rd and 4th graders, and the third twenty 5th graders. They attend school only from 2-5 PM, which includes a half hour for recess. Three hours in the morning are reserved for 6th-8th graders, with the same routine. The schoolhouse is not the worst I have seen; at least the classrooms are spacey and the kids have some elbow room. But the acoustics are terrible. You can hear every noise coming from every classroom in each of the other classrooms, and this problem is made worse by the fact that kids are constantly talking to their friends and/or wandering in and out of other classrooms. The classrooms are all set up with kids sitting around several circular tables, but since group activities don’t really seem to exist in the Dominican school system, this arrangement only serves as a further distraction. The teachers only half-heartedly feign control of their class; in reality the teacher usually only has the attention of about 20% of the room in any given moment. However, this may be irrelevant to them considering that a Dominican class consists of the teacher writing things on the board and the kids all mindlessly copying it down.

After observing a couple classes, I chatted with a friendly, surely well-meaning teacher called Profesora Miriam. She asked me if I could come to the school some afternoon the following week to read books to first and second graders. I agreed. The next Tuesday when I arrived, I was shown to one of the circular tables in the 1st and 2nd grade room, and instructed to read a book to the five kids there or do an activity with them or something. It was unclear what any of the kids were supposed to be doing at that moment. The teacher (not Miriam, a different one) was sitting in a corner looking odiously at her desk as if in attempt to shut out the rest of the world. A lot of the kids were ambling around the classroom or quarrelling among themselves, and the rest were distractedly writing in their notebooks. I knew one of the kids at my table, Johanni, from Los Marranitos. I noticed that he was drawing a row of the letter ‘B’, so I asked him what letter it was he was drawing. “That,” he said, pointing to the board. I said, “The letter B, right? And what sound does the letter ‘B’ make?” Johanni looked at me apprehensively and did not answer.

“So, who wants to hear a story?” I suggested. The kids around me perked up, eagerly nodding their heads and saying “me!”. By the time I was done reading the first book, every single kid in the room had gathered around the table I was sitting at to listen. Seeing that the situation was getting out of control and that the teacher was still sitting snugly in her corner and observing me amusedly, I stood up, extracted myself from the mob of 6-year-olds, and instructed the kids to sit on the floor in front of me. I then commenced reading “Juevos verdes com Jamón”, the Spanish version of “Green Eggs and Ham”. (I should mention that while some Dr. Seuss books just don’t seem to work in Spanish, Green Eggs and Ham is an exception, due in large part to the fact that “Sam I am” is translated to “Juan Ramón” in order to keep the rhyme with “jamón”.) Before I began reading, I asked the group who among them liked green eggs and ham. About half the children raised their hands. Roughly the same group of kids raised their hands when asked who among them didn’t like green eggs and ham, seemingly for the sheer excitement of raising their hands. Once I had finished the book, I asked, “OK, now, who wants to try green eggs and ham?” Nearly every child raised his or her hand, some even jumping up and down in excitement.

Two days later I returned to the school in Los Dajaos with the intention of reading to kids for 15 minutes, then teaching an hour-long English class to the 5th graders (Profesora Miriam is supposed to teach the class once a week, but she doesn’t know much English, and one of the kids told me she had only taught one English lesson so far that year because she had been waiting to see if an “Americana” would show up and offer to take over). When I arrived, though, the 1st and 2nd grade teacher was missing in action, and I was instructed to read books to the preschool class until she showed up. Profesora Miriam had decided to take an hour off as well since I was teaching the English class, so the girl she had sent as my assistant was put in charge of the 5th graders. Well, guess what—the 1st and 2nd grade teacher never showed up. I read to the kids for about 45 minutes, and then when there were no books left to read, started my own lesson about the alphabet in which I drew things on the board beginning with a certain letter and the kids had to guess what the word was that I was drawing. Finally after an hour and a half, Miriam arrived and told me to go teach English in her class for a half hour. I got through a lesson of “What’s your name?” and a review of the numbers, but only by screaming as loud as I could so that the kids could hear me. By the end of the two hours I had scarcely enough voice left to ask Miriam if I could leave. All things considered, though, the day was a success and definitely a learning experience.

An incomplete list of Dominicanisms

I decided to make this list its own blog entry. Keep checking back, as I will keep adding to it throughout the year. A special thanks to Fermín and José Fermín for making a concerted effort to get me to talk like a Dominicana.

Slang:

Aplatana'o= Dominicanized
Qué lo qué?= What's up?
Tranquilo= response to "qué lo qué"
To' manza= another possible response to "qué lo qué", with roughly the same meaning as "tranquilo" or "to' tranquilo"
Qué chulo= cool
Qué heavy= cool
Nítido= awesome
Apero= awesome
Montro= awesome (a version of "monstruo" that I also heard used in Peru in this context, but here they can't be bothered to pronounce all the letters)
Diantre!= an exclamation similar to "diablos!"
Un chin= a little bit
Quilla'o= pissed off
Tener pique= to be pissed off
Tiguere (apparently written this way and not "tigre", like I thought before)= clever or cunning or a ladies' man.
Pariguayo= idiot/loser (comes from the english phrase "party watcher")
Palomo= idiot/loser
Desgracia'o= a really mean/worthless person
Disparate= something foolish (I'm not sure if they use this word in other places, but I've at least heard it a lot more here.)
Todólogo= someone who knows about everything and/or is good at everything
Toyo= a foolish action or failed attempt at something
Toyólogo= someone who tries to do and/or know everything but fails miserably
No soy de na'a= I am neither a pariguayo nor tiguere, and I don't habitually commit disparates or toyos. I am just tranquilo.
Añoñear= to pamper, coddle
Estar en olla= to be broke (In the words of José Fermín: "Siempre estoy en olla, siempre tengo hambre, y siempre tengo una canción nueva.")
Pana= buddy
Sanky panky= a male prostitute
Vaina= thing (Fermín's advice: If you're ever at a loss for a word, just say "vaina".)
Fia'o= a system of buy now, pay later offered at some stores.
Bajar un frío= drink a beer
Dar una pela= give a beating
VELda?= right? ("verdad", but with the stress on the first syllable, an l sound instead of r, and no pronunciation of the final r)
Chepa= an uncharacteristic occurence or coincidence
Coño= exclamatory profanity, used also in other Spanish-speaking places but here used about every 5 seconds.
Cuero= whore
Mi negra= my girl (not necessarily a black person)
Sangrú= an anti-social person, party pooper
Agayú= someone who hogs everything for his or her self
Firmar= to take a day off from showering or bathing in any form
Ajuma'o= drunk
Jambre= hunger
Jarto= full
Jablador= liar or gossipy person
Pasa'o= crazy
Can= a small get together with friends
Cosa/coso= when you forget someone's name, you can call them a male or female thing.
Fulano= that guy who's name I forget/don't know
Grajo= B.O.
pajaro/pajarito= any kind of animal or small creature
sacar los pies= to stand someone up, or say you're going to do something and then not do it. Also, if you are good friends with someone but then stop hanging out with them or betray them in some way
dique= shortened version of "dice que"; in other words, "it's said that..." or "supposedly"

Things that they don't call by the normal Spanish name just to be stubborn:

Guineo= banana
Lechosa= papaya
China= orange
Zafacón= trashcan
Guachiman= watchman
Confle= cereal (you guessed it, the word is a bastardized version of "cornflake". My favorite example of a usage of this word is the text on the front of a bag of granola in the supermarket: "Cornflake natural".)
Guagua= bus
Chancletas= flip flops

Aplatanando

The title of this entry refers to the process of becoming Dominicanized. Since people here eat so many plantains, I guess becoming more and more Dominican is kind of the equivalent of turning into a plátano (you are what you eat). Hence the verb "aplatanar". No one is to make fun of me if my skin has a slightly more yellowish hue by the time I get back to the states.

I have been feeling the urge to write again in this blog but again, just don't know which of the many things going on right now to write about. I've decided to make this entry a tad less anthropological and more personal than usual, and introduce a couple of the main characters in my recent Dominican life. I've also decided to start a comprehensive list of Dominican slang I have learned first-hand and/or attempted to use, which I will keep adding to as the year goes on and I gradually become more "aplatana'a".

So, where to start. I have been hanging out lately with two brothers whose names are both Fermín. Well actually the younger one's name is José Fermín, but he goes by "Fermín" to everyone except his older brother, who calls him "José Fermín" (confused yet)? Fermín and José Fermín are two of 14 siblings, but not all by the same mother. (As both brothers have explained to me, their dad is a great guy but he kind of juggled a few different families. It happens a lot in this country, though it's less common in the younger generation.) So, Fermín and José Fermín are technically half brothers, but they are as close as any brothers I've ever seen. They were both born in Jamey, a town in the campo a couple hours ride from Santo Domingo. José Fermín now lives with Fermín's mom in San Cristobal, a bigger town about 45 minutes west from Santo Domingo and an hour south of Jamey. Fermín doesn't really live anywhere in particular, but stays with his mom and brother some of the time.

Fermín is a full-time abstract artist (painter, sculptor, and performance artist-- you can see his work at ferminceballos.blogspot.com and www.ocana.com) and a self-declared "vago" (wandering person/vagabond). He dresses in all white all the time and shaves his head, so lots of people mistake him for a hare krishna. But he's not. He just likes white, and happens to own only one outfit at the moment. Fermín and I have a lot in common, including that we are both chronically indecisive, introspective, and spacy, which makes for a kind of scary combination, but nevertheless entertaining for all who are there to witness it. Then there's Fermín's younger brother José Fermín, who is involved with Justicia Global. If Fermín can boast the artistic talent, José Fermín has a musical proficiency to rival it. Once he has a guitar in his hands you need a pair of pliers to get it away from him (and even that is not 100% guaranteed to work). He took me to find a cheap guitar in Santo Domingo, and has since been giving me informal guitar lessons (so far I've dabbed in merengue, samba, ranchero, and blues). He also allegedly plays a bit of accordian, piano, and some kind of eastern instrument that I don't remember the name of. Can you get any cooler than these guys? I don't think so.

This past weekend was a fun one spent with the Fermíns. We went to free concerts both Friday and Sunday. The one on Friday was fun, danceable Dominican rock/fusion type stuff, but I forget the names of both bands that were playing. The one on Saturday was even more memorable; the first band, who ther Fermíns both knew well, was called Batey. The word "batey" generally refers to a sugar plantation community usually inhabited almost exclusively by Haitians. So to call a band "Batey" implies that it has something to do with the more heavily Haitian/African-influenced counterculture. The music was mostly based on percussion, but also involved other instruments including flute and guitar. I found out that Fermín sure can sure dance, though maybe not to merengue and bachata. The next band was a Haitian band, that played even more African-sounding music, including one song that I think must have lasted 45 minutes. In the middle of it, I heard gasps and the crowd a few feet away from me suddenly parted. A woman in the center of the newly cleared space was kind of twitching and writhing as two men held on to her, trying to control her movements. Apparently she had gone into a dancing trance, in which she had been temporarily taken over by spirits--something Fermin told me happens a lot at these types of concerts.

On Saturday morning we went to San Cristobal (where José Fermín and Fermín's mom live) because I wanted to check out a literary group there that José Fermín and some of his friends participate in. The group meets every Saturday: sitting in a circle of plastic chairs in an unenclosed cement patio on the second floor of some kind of arts center. The age range of the members is between about eight and thirty-five. They get together to share thoughts about the writing process and read new things they´ve written out loud, over the din of car horns and motorcycle engines from the street. When Fermín and I arrived somewhat late for the meeting after the hour-long bus trip from Santo Domingo, two members of the group were leading a discussion about the responsibility that San Cristobal writers have of representing not just themselves but the emerging movement of writers from San Cristobal. They had a good point: There have probably not been many famous writers from San Cristobal, most coming from urban areas like Santo Domingo. It was interesting to think in those terms; being from the United States and speaking the language most associated with power and wealth, I've never thought so much about one's birthplace being an impediment to being creatively successful, but it is not so easy to have the time to be creative when you are worried about putting food on the table (and/or dividing it between your 14 siblings). Anyone from San Cristobal who is writing is really doing something unusual, and must set an example for other writers and San Cristobal-ians to come.

After that discussion, a few people read poems out loud. The first girl who read looked about 15 or 16, though she could have been slightly older. Her poem ended with the line: "Sigh...oh, how nice to have you in my bed." I was a bit taken aback, not so much because she had written the poem but because she had had the guts to read it out loud. And I couldn't help wondering what the 8-year-olds were thinking. Though the group is meant to be an informal workshop, no one dared to contribute any comments to that one until Fermin offered up, "There is always silence after an orgasm." Laughter ensued. But after a few more people read their new works, I realized that what the girl had read was not really in any way unusual. Just about everyone had written pretty explicitly about some romantic and/or sexual experience. Yes, I know that is a popular topic for poetry in general, but it made me think about how much more acceptable it is here for women AND men to be shamelessly corny, especially in popular art forms like music-- or maybe more than that, the intense pressure to always be thinking about that stuff in such a sexualized culture. Actually, maybe I'm just getting overly anthropological again. But I couldn't help but wonder, "But what if you're not getting any?? What do you write about then?" Well, I suppose you could make something up. That is the beauty of art, after all.

After the literary group meeting, Fermín took me to see one of the main attractions of San Cristobal: a guy who has turned his living space into a kind of walk-in museum, full of miscellaneous antiques. The place immediately catches your eye as you approach it, considering that there is a Volkswagon buggy on the roof with its two side wheels hanging off. Inside, you find a charming long-haired hippie man and everything from portraits of Trujillo to Taino artifacts to antique children's toys to license plates from New Jersey (he had the old blue one AND the new off-white one-- I was impressed). And we left with our hands full of some kind of tropical fruit growing from one of the guy's trees, a bitter fruit I had never tried and can't right now remember the name of. A fun-filled day, overall.

Fun with Profamilia

I thought I'd take a minute to put a word in for Profamilia, the second clinic that I just started working in last week, dividing my time between that and the Dermatologico. As expected, Profamilia is a completely different working experience. It is much smaller than the Dermatologico and serves far fewer patients, but the woman there who works for Estudio SeR, Eliza, is also a full-time nurse, meaning she has less time to do the job and there is often more for me to do. Profamilia, unlike the Dermatologico, is an independent non-profit research and medical institution. Sometimes that means the patients have to pay more for appointments than they would in a government clinic, but evidently through other means of funding, sometimes AIDS patients end up paying less than they do at the Dermatologico. Anyway, partly due to the size of Profamilia and partly the superior resources, the place seems like a very friendly, family-like environment compared to the Dermatologico. I have already become friendly with several of my co-workers, not really through the work itself, but mostly through a very important mid-day event: lunch.

So you thought a middle school cafeteria was loud? Try lunch at Profamilia. It takes place every day from 12:00-1:00 PM, which in Dominican time translates to about 12:15-1:15. It starts out realtively calm, with people meandering into the cafeteria and lining up to heat up the food they've brought in tupperwares. Then everyone sits down at one long rectangular table, and the scene quickly degenerates into a rowdy caucophony of people shoving their tupperwares at you and saying, "Here, try a little of this! It's good! Eat!" While other people are constantly leaning over the table to steal a bite of something off someone else's plate. There is a very Dominican verb for this, the practice of eating something off of everyone's plate: to 'lamber'. If you ask for some food off of someone else's plate, they will never ever under any circumstance deny you at least a bite, regardless of how much is left and what percentage of the dish has actually been eaten by the person that brought or bought it. (In one instance, someone brought in an avocado, then went to heat up the rest of their food. By the time that person got back only about one sixteenth of the avocado meat was left, but no fuss was made.) Furthermore, if you don't 'lamber', everyone tells you that you have to eat because you are going to be so hungry later in the day that you will get dizzy, or worse, in the long run, lose weight. One of the many things that strikes me as funny about the practice of 'lambiendo' is that everyone usually brings roughly the same dish: rice and beans, maybe with some meat. So it is really just a matter of having a little rice and beans with your rice and beans. But that's just me.

Because I do not generally (meaning never) bring a tupperware of rice and beans with me for lunch, it has been a little difficult for me to fully participate in this ritual. No one minds if I just sit there and eat a sandwich (though they might eye me curiously), but they refuse to believe that a sandwich could actually be filling, no matter how big it is or what it has in it. So I have to be careful not to fill myself up too much with the sandwich, or else I will regret it later when a huge pile of rice and beans is shoveled onto my plate and everyone at the table is vociferously insisting that I eat it. I have been slowly getting the hang of it, and now I participate a little more actively, often reaching across the table to grab a slice of someone's avocado or forcing the people around me to try a bite of my peanut butter and jelly sandwich. I always offer my food, but usually whatever lunch item I have is rejected by at least one person at the table. Today I brought in some pasta with a tomato sauce that I'd made-- just a simple mix of tomatoes, garlic and oregano. But Eliza tried one bite of it and said, "But how can you eat this without salt!?" Fortunately, some other people liked it better.

The enthusiastic eating habits and general lack of discretion of Dominicans is something that takes some getting used to, but can be pretty endearing once you let yourself enter that mindset. It could be seen as bad manners, or just as a kind of oppeness and generosity. For instance, you might be annoyed if someone that had known you for a total of 2 minutes asked you something like how your relationship with your husband was going, but they'd be perfectly willing to offer up the same information if you asked them. In the same way, someone might steal a bite or your sandwich or snatch a chunk of meat off your plate, but they would have no qualms about emptying half their tupperware of rice onto your plate. Yesterday, for example, a couple friends showed up at my apartment with a mango about the size of my head. One of them shoved the mango at me and said, "So, you got any more food?" So I cut up the mango while the two of them emptied out the scant items in my fridge, and there were no hard feelings.

Anyway, back to Profamilia-- there is one more essential part of the lunch hour, and that is coffee. There is always coffee readily available in Profamilia, and it's always mixed with so much sugar that you can hardly taste the coffee. Actually, come to think of it, I think the sugar content probably exceeds the coffee content. But again, that's just me. Coffee is never drinken along with lunch; it is more like a sweet dessert. And more importantly, if you have a little cup of coffee in front of you, no one else will pressure you to eat their food (unless of course, they judge that you haven't eaten enough). Quickly grabbing a cup of coffee once I can't handle any more food has proved a semi-effective strategy for me. Another fun perk of this is that you can tease people for eating too much by setting a cup of coffee in front of them, implying that they should be done. Cristian, the tech guy and resident male member of the Profamilia staff, is often the butt of this kind of joke.

Last but not least, and maybe even the most essential part of lunch at Profamilia: dirty jokes. A lunch never goes by without at least some kind of fart joke or sex joke. Today was particularly entertaining due to the presence of a bunch of mini-bananas that someone passed around. Cristian took it upon himself to personally feed a banana to each female left at the table. He started by holding one up to Eliza, who passionately licked the end of the banana before gently biting off the tip. There was applause and uproarious lafter. Then it was my turn. I was pretty mortified, so when he offered me the banana I just quickly took the biggest bite out of it I could. That was enough to make everyone hysterical again. But the best was the next up: a woman of about 60 who proved to be the most sensuous of all with her banana. She took little licks at the tip, then little sucks, then little bites and more licks. This performance was recorded for posterity on Cristian's cell phone.

But perhaps the most fun of all I've had with Profamilia was going to a Colmado after work one day to celebrate a co-worker's birthday. Colmados, as far as I know, are an exclusively Dominican (or maybe Carribbean) phenomenon, and are like little general stores where you can buy essential food items, but also stop in and sit down for a drink of Presidente (a dominican beer) or Brugal (rum) and dance to some music blaring from the juke box. We arrived at this particular Colmado at around 5:30, and found there a staggeringly drunk old man taking swags from a bottle of Brugal and nearly falling over. Everyone laughed at him. It gave the afternoon character. Another notable part of the night was when a beggar missing an arm came up to our table and stood there sadly holding out his hand. Most people at the table ignored him, but after a couple minutes I couldn't bear to look at him anymore and gave him some change I had in my pocket. Cristian later told me not to do that, because a lot of people here make a living and own big houses just from begging in the street, and some twisted people even rent out cripples like the man I saw so they can do the begging for them. I don't know how often that actually happens, but anything is possible in a country like this. I guess I probably won't be giving money to many more cripples.

I danced a bunch of merengue, bachata, and salsa with Cristian and another guy who came, and after a few glasses of Presidente felt like I was dancing much better. There are also some videos for posterity of my own dancing performance on Cristian's cell phone, but no, the videos have not yet been uplouded to youtube. And don't you dare ask again.

Random Encounters on the Street

I haven't written in awhile because too much has been going on. I don't know where to start. In the last couple weeks I've made new friends, visited Julia and a group from Notre Dame on the farm where I'll be working in September, started dividing my working time between two clinics (Profamilia in addition to the Dermatologico), ate a typical Dominican brew called "sancocho", danced merengue, bachata, and salsa in a Colmado (general store type thing, but much much more than that) with some co-workers from Profamilia, bought a guitar, and even subjected some of my Dominican friends to watching my possibly favorite movie of all time, the Bolivian "Quién Mató a la Llamita Blanca?" in my apartment. They liked it, for the record. The movie, I mean, though I'm sure they liked my apartment too. One friend told me that I should make a map of my apartment so he and others can find their way around it. Hardy har har. At least it was affectionate teasing.

Well, I could write about any of those things, but since I don't know where to start, I'll write about something completely different. The theme of today's entry: Random Encounters on the Street. I'll start with the most brief and move on to progressively longer and more disturbing.


Random Encounter #1: "Bella"
This one isn't even an encounter so much as an odd incident. I was walking down the street, and like any normal day, got some catcalls, this time from some men playing dominoes at an outdoor art gallery on the corner near my apartment (believe it or not, dominoes is quite popular here. And it's a man's game). "Bella!" ("Beautiful") they said. "Bella!" I just kept walking and ignored them, the usual. But then the unexpected happened. I heard a woman's voice from the same art gallery: "Bella!" she said, imitating the men. When I didn't respond, she immediately followed it up with "Bella no habla a nadie." ("Beautiful doesn't talk to anyone.") Whoa! Whose side are you on, woman? I thought we mujeres were supposed to stick up for each other! I guess gringas don't count.

Random Encounter #2: Evangelist Guy
One day I was walking down the street and a small guy with a cane, about 50-something, literally just walked up to me and introduced himself without any explanation as to why. He asked where I was from and if I preferred to speak in English or Spanish. I probably should have said neither, but not thinking, I said either would do. So he spoke in English because he said he needed practice. He walked alongside me for several blocks, garbling on and on about random things, like where he lived, how many kids he had, and what church he belonged to. He also asked me some questions about myself, most of which I responded to with a one word answer such as "yes" or "no" without looking at him, just wondering when he would stop talking. Then I started getting nervous and wondering what the best way would be to get rid of him if he tried to follow me all the way back to my apartment. But then he explained that he would walk with me one more block and turn at a certain corner so he could go back to his church and preach the gospel. That was when it all became clear. He asked me if I belonged to any church. "No," I said emphatically.

"Do you believe in God?"

"No. But I bet you're going to convince me I should, right?"

"No, no, because I respect your beliefs. It's always important to respect people's beliefs."

"I respect your beliefs too, but I'm not going to join your church."

He actually dropped the subject, just saying that that was fine, he respected me, and then told me to be careful in Santo Domingo, because I could get robbed or raped. Then, on the corner before he left, he kissed my hand. Kissed my freakin hand! Who does that?! I "respectfully" removed his other hand from my other arm, and he turned the corner, hopefully never to be seen by me again.


Random Encounter #3: Rich Bitch
As I was walking back home from the gym yesterday evening, a young-ish woman just started talking to me in much the same manner as the guy with the cane, except in Spanish. "It's hot isn't it?" Yeah, I said. "Shit, I just ran out of minutes on my cell phone." Oh, shoot. Apparently she thought those openers enough to break the ice. "So, my name in Marisol. Where are you from?" Naomi, from the United States. "Oh, I just fell in love with some guy from the United States. He was from Alaska. But he went back there. His name in John." Then almost in the same breath: "I'd like to be your friend. I just moved to this part of the city and I think it's better to get to know Americans and Europeans." Why is that? "Because, you know, I like intelligent people, creative people." And Dominicans aren't intelligent or creative? "Not usually."

I guess I should have seen the warning signs that this woman was a little crazy, but I was completely thrown off guard because she was female. Sure, if a man approached me in that manner, I would immediately sense danger, but since she was female I couldn't tell what her motives were or what precautions I should take. Yes, she seemed a little off, but when she asked if I wanted to walk around with her for a bit and talk, I figured she was just lonely, and it couldn't hurt to just go to dinner with her somewhere near my apartment.

So that's what we did. On the way to the restaurant, she said, as we passed some "morenos" on the street, "I don't like Haitians, do you?" As if as a casual conversation starter. I do like Haitians, I countered. I think they're very nice people. "Oh. Well, maybe some, but not all." She moved on to a new topic: "I am getting fat. My jeans are tight. And these jeans cost like a hundred dollars!" I have never had a pair of jeans that cost a hundred dollars, I told her. "Why not?" Because I can't afford it. "Why?" Because I can't. Well, for these three months I'm earning a fair amount, but I don't have any savings. "And what about your parents? Don't you have parents?" Yes, but they don't buy me expensive jeans either. That stumped her. So she changed the topic slightly: "Oh, by the way, I'm really sorry, but I don't have any cash on me right now. I accidentally spent all that I had today. So, you can just get something to eat, but I'm not going to." That made me feel sufficiently awkward. You don't have even a cent? "No. By the way, do you think you could buy me a cell phone card, and I'll pay you back on Sunday? I'm out of cell phone minutes." Well, that pissed me off. An ulterior motive for her becoming my "friend"? I said, actually, I'd rather not lend you money. "But why not?" Because I hardly know you, and I don't like lending people money. "But it's just for a cell phone card, and I already said I'd pay you back!" I'd rather not. "It doesn't have to be a lot, it could just be 50 pesos. Are you going to do me this favor or not?" Finally, I agreed to buy her a 50-peso cell phone card, only to prevent her from bitching me out, Dominican-style. I wasn't planning on getting in touch with her again to collect the money, but it was only a little over a dollar.

By the time we got to the restaurant the mood had changed a bit. I somehow convinced Marisol to go to an inexpensive place instead of the classy restaurant she wanted me to go to, and I just ordered a club sandwich and begrudgingly shared. There was not much conversation because most of the time she was playing around with one of her two cell phones. Then I noticed she was wearing a chain with a small gold Star of David around her neck. I figured it was unlikely she was Jewish, and more likely she had no idea what the star meant. I was right. Is that a Jewish Star? I asked. "This? It's just a star. Do Jews wear these?" Yes. "You mean like people from Spain?" No, Jews. It's a religion. It was around before Christianity. "Oh, I didn't know. I'm Catholic."

Then Marisol started up a conversation with the waiter about how much of a nuisance those Haitians are. I guess that's a popular ice-breaker around here. "This country is so screwed," she said. "There's no money here, so much crime. And all these Haitians just wreaking havoc all over the place." Suddenly I felt the obligation to stand up and defend the entire Haitian race. But I didn't know where to start. I just sat there in silence, hating this woman more and more by the minute. Finally, just to see what she'd say, I asked, So how do you tell a Haitian from a Dominican? Part of me was hoping she would take offense to that, provoking her to just get up and leave, but instead she kind of went on the defensive: "Oh, well there are some white Haitians, but mostly they're really black. But I don't know, I'm just busy these days, I don't have time to talk to them." Then how do you know you don't like them? "I just know. Trust me, they cause all kinds of trouble. They're bad for this country." But you don't even talk to them. "Well, do you like people who don't shower?" If they have a good soul, yes. I don't think having a clean soul has anything to do with how much you shower. "OK, whatever, but I still don't like them." Well, I said after a pause, I just don't like people who say they don't like people who they don't even know. "Listen," she said, "I'm a cool chica. I like doing nice things for people." Yeah, nice things for white people. "No, for black people too! I'm not racist. I'm black. My mom is really dark and my dad is white, like you. I just don't like Haitians. I'm allowed to say that without being racist. I know there are Buddhists or something who say that's not true." (Yeah, totally random comment about Buddhists.) Then she brought the waiter into the debate, just to outnumber me. The waiter was as dark-skinned as any Haitian and was obviously not upper class, but he whole-heartedly supported Marisol, saying that yes, Haitians are indeed a nuisance. And he wasn't just saying it to be polite to his customers, either. If there's anything you can get most Dominicans to agree on, it's that Haitians are the scum of the earth. Well, I was outnumbered, and there was simply no more arguing.

Marisol gave me her cell phone number, but fortunately did not ask for mine, and I can only hope I will not run into her in the street ever again. Let's just say it's a good thing that my Random Encounters on the Street are not the only things I have to judge Dominicans by. I'm sure I would be much less fond of this place if it weren't for my Justicia Global friends, who I guess you could say aren't typical Dominicans, but that's not even fair. They're Dominicans too, but in different ways.

The other day I told my friend Raldy about the crazy yoga class I took here where everyone was dressed all in white, and asked if he knew why that craziness was the custom. He said, because white is supposed to symbolize purity, and I said, well yeah, I suppose that makes sense. But then he countered, "No, it doesn't make sense! There's a common conception that white represents Good and black Evil, and that's just not true. Black is not evil." He's completely right, but it has been so ingrained in my mind all my life that white is the symbol of purity that I don't always make the connection with black being seen as evil, at least not in the context of yoga.

It might be "the Buddhists" who are so fond of those Haitian rascals, but racism here extends even as far as a yoga class.

Highs and Lows

Some of the patients in the HIV Unit are characters. There is one guy who I don't think is part of the study but I constantly see him hanging out in the Unidad. He has a hobby of selling pirated DVDs and his favorite phrase, the only one he appears to know in English, is "OH my GAD." He calls himself "Freddy Cougar", a fact he reminds me of every single time he sees me: "It's me, Freddy Cougar!" Even though I've had a number of conversations with him, he still seems to think I don't understand very much Spanish, and also evidently thinks I have a really bad memory.

There is another guy, this one in the study, who Emily just refers to as "your friend", because I led him through the informed consent and also the questionnaire for the first visit. "My friend" is quite the confrontational one though. The informed consent, which usually takes about 10 or 15 minutes, took at least a half hour with him. He has pretty bad arthritis, and the whole time he kept complaining to me that he didn't really want to start taking antiretrovirals, that arthritis is MUCH worse than HIV. He seemed to take personal offense when I told him I didn't know anything about arthritis. I tried to explain to him that I wasn't a doctor or a nurse and that really the only qualifications for my job are speaking Spanish and knowing the basics about HIV, but that didn't appear to be an acceptable answer. For a minute there I felt like I was going to break down and cry, but then I remembered that he was the one being ridiculous, that counseling patients about their arthritis has never been and never will be part of my job description.

He's another one that I see all the time in the Unidad, mostly in the mornings. As many times as I told him that he would have to come for his visit with us in the afternoon (since the doctor that does the Medical History part of the survey doesn't arrive until 2), every single time he reacted with surprise and acted as if it was a big injustice committed towards him, making him come in slightly later in the day. When he finally did come in for his visit with the study, my friend and I had another hour of stimulating conversation. Among other topics, he asked me where else I had been in the Dominican Republic, and I said Jarabacoa. He responded, "Oh, I KNEW you were going to say that. ALL the gringas go to Jarabacoa." Again I felt personally attacked, and couldn't help responding, "ACTUALLY, I'm going to be living there for 9 months." "Oh, you'll like it, all the gringas like it," he insisted.

Part of the reason the interview took so long was that he claimed to not understand one question I asked him the first time I said it, so I had to repeat everything two or three times. The other reason was that he started telling me things about his personal history that had nothing to do with the questions I was asking. I am usually happy when a patient gets talking, but this was a little different. He admitted that in the past he had consumed drugs including cocaine, and had been quite "promiscuo". It's pretty easy to figure out what that word means even if you don't know Spanish, but my friend was not convinced I understood, and made me give him the definition just to make sure. "I admit, I also enjoyed participating in orgías," he continued. Again, another word you don't need a translator for, but another one that I was required to explain to him just to confirm that we were on the same page. Ayayay. You've got to love honesty though.

On Friday I had the opportunity to attend a support group for patients in the study who have been found to have resistance to certain drugs. It was heart-wrenching and heart-warming at the same time. There were five patients who attended the meeting, and I was afraid that they wouldn't want to talk. The room we were in wasn't exactly the most comfortable or homey, plus it had terrible acoustics and no locks on the doors. When Dr. Lina began talking at the beginning of the meeting, explaining why everyone had been invited here today, I expected an awkward silence to follow. But to my surprise, everyone was more than willing to tell their story to the group. I don't know if this has more to do with the nature of Dominicans, or simply because they were glad to have a venue to let it all out. On top of that though, they all seemed whole-heartedly appreciative of the work of the people in the HIV Unit as well as Emily and my work with Estudio SeR. These patients, in particular, have reason to be thankful for the study: the resistance test that we do as part of it is something they wouldn't normally get in standard HIV care; it's a really expensive test and the blood has to be sent to the United States to be analyzed. Normally, if a patient is on medication but their white blood cell count is dropping nevertheless, the doctors will take that as a sign that the patient is resistant to one or more of the drugs he or she is on, and change them. But the resistance test saves the patient a lot of time and illness, and in some cases can prevent the patient's developing resistance to additional drugs they are taking (the antiretroviral regimen involves three different drugs at a time, so it is possible for someone to be resistant to one or two but not all).

Anyway, it was nice to hear the stories of all of the patients, most of which had relatively happy endings because the patients are feeling better and happy with their new drug scheme. But a special case was the one patient present at the meeting who we found to have primary resistance (meaning that he contracted an already resistant form of HIV, rather than developing it after missing a few doses of his meds). Every time I see this guy in the Unidad I want to just go up and hug him because he looks so morose and kept to himself. And also, because I've heard his back story: he's in one of the high risk groups for primary resistance, men who have sex with men. And when he first came to the Unidad he had told absolutely no one about his diagnosis. He was completely miserable. But the doctor presented him with an ultimatum: he had to tell at least one person about his diagnosis before he could start antiretroviral treatment (the reason being, the treatment is a lot more likely to fail for a patient with no one to remind them to take their pills every day). Reluctantly, he told his sister, and apparently he's been much, much happier ever since then. But of course, on top of it all, he just found out from us recently that he has primary resistance.

Anyway, I was getting nervous for him when it was getting close to his turn to speak at the meeting, because he has the same nervous habit as me of shaking his legs like a fiend. He also had his hands in between his knees and was shaking them too. But when his turn arrived, to my surprise words just began to poor out of him, and you could see that saying these things out loud was a huge relief. I was on the verge of tears again when he started talking about having been suicidal, and how he is so thankful to the Unidad and Estudio SeR for basically saving his life.

After all the patients had taken their turns, Lina again stressed the importance of adhering to the drug regimen they are on now, especially for patients with resistance whose options are running out. But it seemed she hardly needed to say that, because all the patients were clearly ready to be in it for the long haul, to do whatever they could to keep themselves alive. Then Lina asked me if I wanted to say a few words, so put on the spot I just said that we in Estudio SeR are glad to have been of some help, that we hope everyone will keep taking all their meds so that they stay healthy, but that we are hear to help whenever they need it. Immediately everyone chimed in with an emphatic "Thank you", which I hadn't even been expecting.

At the end of the meeting, everyone hugged each other, and it was just one of those indescribable moments. To realize that these people I hardly know, only a couple of which I've ever had a conversation with, were so grateful to me was pretty strange and reminded me of why I'm here to begin with.