work and play

My apologies for being out of touch! My computer died (and is now nearly fixed) so I've been m.i.a. for the past few weeks.

WORK

One of my favorite times of my week is the time I spend with Guilena. Every session with her has been especially fruitful and memorable. During one session, I brought along Green Eggs and Ham for my next student. Milena (10) started reading it aloud as I was teaching Guilena, and all of her other children gathered around her to listen. Then her husband even came over and kept commenting: “Wow, doesn’t she read well? She is a good reader!” He then explained to me that she had only started going to school three years ago. It was so nice to see her family so proud of her, and the little ones excited about her being able to read. Unfortunately, not all of her siblings have been so quick. Samuel (12) still cannot read, and is on the same reading level as his younger brothers Juli (6) and Johan (8).
During another session, she’s breast-feeding Katrina (13 months) while Johana (3), Joelito (5), and Juli (6) color on the floor with paper and crayons I’ve been bringing lately. I really don’t have to bring anything as a distraction because her children are so CALM (not in school! But in the house I think they’ve adapted to their mother’s health situation—she’s suffered a stroke and (I think) mental illness and she’s very sensitive to loud noise). ANYWAYS, we’re reviewing vowel sounds with flashcards we’ve made. She starts to make the “i-i-i” sound and suddenly Katrina (the baby) lifts up her head and says “i-i-i” and then starts laughing. Then we move on to “a.” Guilena starts to repeat the sound “a-a-a,” and then Katrina lifts her head and starts making the sound. Then the three on the floor chime in with “a”s. Guilena and I got a kick out of it. The kids knew we liked it so they were all giggling. It was so cute and also exciting because at least they’re getting SOME kind of exposure to sounds and letters! My time with Guilena has really shown me how valuable our small and limited services can be to the people in the batey. ALSO, small addition from our session today: a neighbor brought Guilena a small bowl of food for the whole family. She insisted on offering me some, which she always does when they have food, and she actually put the spoon in my mouth. THEN, she scooped spoons into other bowls for her children, Johana (3) eats her spoonful, goes into the corner, pees in the bowl, empties it out onto the floor, and then licks the edge of the bowl. It was so painful to watch. Guilena was aware of what was happening but not looking closely, so I didn’t want to say anything and embarass her incase it was okay with her, but at the same time it was so awful! Oh man, it’s a whole ‘nother world here.
I’ve been becoming closer to Elizabeth, one of the other women I teach, as well. She’s the same age as me (22). She’s definitely a lot more fortunate than other people in the batey. She has a Dominican “husband” (not legally but effectively) with a pretty steady job. For her son’s third birthday (he’s now 4), they had a party with a big cake and music. She showed me pictures—pretty much all of the kids in the batey were there (you couldn’t keep them out—they live on top of each other). She said that she wasn’t sure when they’d be able to celebrate his birthday again, but that they really wanted to do it for him. When the water was out, they didn’t have to go to the river but instead could afford to buy clean water (pretty expensive). I got a striking example a couple of weeks ago to do with the range of economic situations among the people in Batey Lecheria. Getting nails done and going to the salon is a big thing here, and everyone in my neighborhood does it—it’s not a sign of having money if you go to the salon on a regular basis. For the most part, salons do not seem to be a luxury accessible to those who live in the batey. However, Elizabeth goes pretty frequently (once every week or two), and she tells me that it only costs 30 pesos (less than 1 USD) for a pedicure. The same week that she tells me this, Katie found out that Altagracia (mother of 7) had a lump in her breast. A consultation at the dispensary PLUS a prescription would cost 40 pesos (a little over 1 USD), and so she decided she could not afford to go to the dispensary. Luckily, it turned out to be an infection within the next week. One woman has no trouble dropping a dollar once a week to get her nails done, while another was going to let a lump in her breast go unchecked because of the one dollar price barrier. Another strange thing about this range is that sometimes it’s present within a family. Elizabeth lives right next door to her three sisters, their families, her brother, and her mother. Elizabeth and Jaqueline (one of her sisters) both have husbands and one-two children each and are financially stable. Luisa (another sister), however, seems to be a little crazy (we’re not sure if it’s drugs or just a condition) and pretty violent with her kids (i.e. sticking her 4 year-old’s hands in boiling water and hitting her 5 month-old). Melania (the final sister) has three children under the age of 5 and her husband is in jail. She has been sick for more than a month, and I just found out that it’s because she tried to abort her baby (it’s illegal here but apparently she was taking something orally?) and it failed. So now she’s on her way to having her fourth child. I wouldn’t write anything about these people simply for shock value; it just seems like a very strange family dynamic. They all live next door to one another, are always sitting together in their plastic chairs, and seem to help each other out (with childcare, emotional support), but at the same time it doesn’t seem strange that they live in very different realities.

PLAY

Last month I went on a day-trip to Constanza, a beautiful valley in the mountains, with a really interesting group (an 80 year-old visiting nun, two German visitors, a fellow volunteer, and a Dominican family). Our bus driver for school wanted to take us to his hometown. We ended up seeing none of the town or tourist attraction, but we had such a nice time with his family. His entire family lives there (mother, siblings, nieces/nephews). Most of their houses are very simple (well, they’re shacks, but they look pretty good compared to the batey) but they had all of their necessities met. Their houses are right on the river bank so we spent a lot of the afternoon in the river with about 30 nieces and nephews. It was so nice that they have this to themselves! It was clean (and cold!) but beautiful. This is where most of them bathe—it was funny because we were swimming and playing with the kids and then Julio (who we work with) offered us a bar of soap. Anyways, his family was so kind to us. They showed us around—they grow flowers to sell (even to export!)—and they served us lunch. Then we realized that he didn’t even tell his family that he was bringing all of us! They were really kind. I really didn’t want to leave and told Katie that I could see myself living there! I just don’t know what I’d do….also, the mosquitoes (different breed from the ones here—I bled immediately once they bit me) were all over me—my legs were SWOLLEN for the next couple of days. But if I could get past that, I wouldn’t hesitate to live there for a while—it was really beautiful and refreshing to be away from the noise and the heat.
The next weekend we had a volunteer weekend with volunteers from Nuestros Pequenios Hermanos (aa network of orphanages in Latin America) on the beach. We most notable thing about the weekend is where we stayed. We have a rich Dominican contact who owns a beach house and opens her home to us for retreats. This house was literally ON the beach—her yard looked like a resort. Pictures on facebook—it was surreal! The beach it’s on isn’t very notable—not in my guidebook or anything—but it was absolutely pristine. This country is so beautiful—I wish so much that we were closer to the beach (we’re about two hours away—all because of traffic—and Santo Domingo is on the water but doesn’t have a beach :()
Last weekend most of our staff did the Cancer Walk together. There were supposedly 500,000 who did the walk (and I believe it!). Some interesting observations on things that never would have happened in the U.S.
1. My best estimate is that about 75% of the walkers were wearing JEANS. We’re on a tropical island, it’s HOT. I’ve even grown accustomed to wearing jeans to work in the heat, but on a 5k?
2. They ran out of water. Stupidly, we didn’t bring our own, because our friend who had done the walk in the past said that they had stations every half-k with bottles of water. Well, they ran out. People went crazy digging through the abandoned water stations for used bottles with even a little water left—it was kind of scary. Thankfully the station at the very end had water. We thought the walk was a 10k and were getting nervous about making it in the heat without water, but we were relieved when we realized we were at the finish line. Afterwards there was a crazy concert with a lot of famous Dominican singers and groups. It was fun but PACKED and people kept passing out/being dragged out because of the heat—yikes. I’m glad we went and it was a motivating environment but I became aware of some pretty big cultural differences!

I can’t think of much else. This past Sunday I woke up dead—I think I was severely dehydrated—but now I’m back. This upcoming weekend’s a long weekend so we’re heading to a beach on the north coast. After that I’ll definitely be keeping in better touch. I miss you all!