First Day of School

Today was the first day of school--full of surprises as expected. But before I can even get to that I feel like so many little things have happened since I last write.

First, all of the volunteers have been sick except for me (I hope I'm not jinxing myself!). Katie has had a pretty bad cold/cough, and both Amanda and Leah have already had amoebas (I know! You really can have amoebas). It's inevitable that I will get sick, but I'm hoping I hold on for the beginning of school!

Secondly, this weekend I met up with Lynn (a friend from BU from Santo Domingo) and she showed us around (in her convertible! that adds about 100 points to the experience!) the Zona Colonial. It's beautiful and peaceful (shockingly quieter than our barrio!) and it was a nice break (shout out to Lynn--thank you for showing us around your city!!!). Our bus ride home was a whole nother experience. The bus was packed, and I wasn't fully able to decipher what happened until afterwards, but I heard people repeatedly shouting something about Haitianos, and before I knew it a Haitian woman and her two young children got off the bus. Leah, a fellow volunteer who was sitting near them, later told me that the passengers were harassing the little boy about how dark his skin was---disgusting. I was already disgusted, but on top of that, the Dominican men kept bothering us (which we're used to) but then one of them grabbed me. I just kept moving but I was so frustrated with that whole ride. Thankfully there was a lot less traffic than usual so it only lasted half an hour.

Now to the first day! I’ve been walking to the batey in the mornings, which is about a forty-five minute walk. You only have to walk a couple of minutes through our neighborhood before you get on a long stretch of dirt road to the batey. It has pot holes galore, so it doesn’t take much longer to drive than to walk (also, when we drive, we drive in a busted up van with the door open). Then, we take a turn and walk down a long hill into the batey. The gnarled mango tree (with a Cristo viene—Christ comes—sign nailed to the tree) marks the beginning of the batey. This morning, there was a little boy—about 1 ½ - 2—in crawling position in the dirt. His faced looked so pained and anxious, so Katie and I moved toward him to check on him. His mother (I’m assuming) then appeared and yelled at him to stand up and then walked away. As soon as she walked away I picked him up and hugged him. He then grabbed my arms and started rubbing his hands all over them (which got mud all over me—haha, it doesn’t take long in the batey to get dirty). He looked as though he had never been held before. I had to leave to go to school, but it hurt so badly to look into that little boy’s eyes. The morning session of school is for children (ages 7-until they can read, usually 12) who go to public school in the afternoon (school is only a half day here). We use the Montessori method, because in the beginning they tried to use conventional teaching methods and the kids went nuts. When the kids enter, they have 15 minutes of juego de silencio (the silence game), during which they meditate while listening to classical music. It was amazing to see kids that last week were climbing up the school fence (most kids have free reign in the batey—NO supervision) concentrating so hard. A little more on Montessori—it encourages children to be independent and focus on their strengths. Children are allowed to choose which materials they want to work with. Also, the materials—Montessori is all about manipulatives—the young children start off first with “practical life” and “sensory” activities, including pouring sand from one bucket to another, building blocks in the form of a staircase, etc. Once they have focus and coordination, we move them on to language (which includes matching toys with the sounds they start with—manzana (apple) with ma, for example) and math (where they can work with wooden blocks or beads). You get the picture. Anyways, nearly all of the materials at our center were made by the teachers—pretty impressive. I have never seen children so focused while working. It’s a little early to form an opinion about Montessori, but I have a great impression so far.

We rotate groups of children for story time and meeting time (a time to share and socialize), and my group this week is apparently the trouble group. Some of the kids refused to listen or respond, choosing instead to (fill in the blank—think: vulgar dancing, rude comments, non-stop talking), and therefore distracted the other kids in my group. At first I was frustrated, but upon hearing that they were the trouble group, I felt much better knowing that it wasn’t me!

The afternoon session functions as public school for young children (ages 4-6). I can already tell that this is much more my thing than the older kids. This session was a relief to me after my morning experience. Although I did have a couple little monsters try things on me—one girl tried to bite my hand, another little boy tried to bend my fingers back. Anyways, that was pretty much my school day, but just to give you a taste of the craziness and unpredictability of my experience here, my ride home included:

1. witnessing a giant tractor (wheels taller than me) go speeding down the hill to the batey and off the road (drunk or joy-riding are our estimates—we remember hearing laughter come from the truck). This crash was bigger than life—imagine a huge piece of machinery speeding downhill on a pot-hole filled dirt road. It almost ran over a few pedestrians (who fell into and busted a barbed-wire fence) in the process.
2. getting our car pushed nearly a whole block to start it (which it never did, we switched cars)
3. seeing wild boar mating on the side of the road.

And it's only the beginning.