Last Weekend.....

On Friday night we had big plans to help a neighbor, Kenya, with her wedding invitations. The weekend before we helped her paint little memento boxes. Mid-painting, Kenya invites us (all FOUR of us) to be her bridesmaids. We hesitate and smile and de facto accept—we weren’t really asked, so how could we decline?? Her family is very close to the sisters—two of the daughters work as teachers in the school and Kenya is one of the sister’s secretaries. However, we barely know Kenya, so it’s definitely a weird situation. You should also be aware that her wedding is on Dec. 19, leaving three weeks for invitation-making and delivery. So Friday night we sit down to invitation-making, which includes mesh, green glitter, and butterflies. It was really horrible. I felt like I was doing an arts and crafts project with my kids.

Saturday morning:

After much discouragement (you can’t go without a Dominican! They’ll rip you off!), I decided to go to the Loz Alcarrizos market—they sell everything from clothes to medicine to fruits and vegetables. I took along an American volunteer visiting from a city on the coast to show her the real Los Alcarrizos. Not a really pleasant place to walk around---really congested, barely any sidewalks—but I like it. My mission was to look for jeans, as mine have gotten significantly holier since being here. After being shown several pairs of playboy bunny jeans (it’s an obsession here, people don’t even know what that bunny means), I found a nice (sans bunny) pair of $7 jeans (never buying jeans in the states again!) While in the dressing room (or behind a sheet), I hear the salesman giving my friend a gift that looks like her, and her responding by asking if she has blonde hair (she has my color hair). When I come out I see that the salesman has gifted her a fake (blonde-haired, blue-eyed) Barbie doll because it looked “exactly like her.” Upon exiting he told us in English, “I wait for you.”

Saturday night: the sequel to bad invitation making. So the first horrible thing about this wedding is that the celebration was scheduled for the night of the Beyonce concert, which Leah and I were determined to go to. Post-Saturday night, however, Leah found out that the concert date had been changed to March! Thank goodness. Two weeks to go until the wedding, and we still have two rehearsals and shopping for green and coral clothing to go. Wish me lots of luck.

Sunday morning

Every Sunday morning (since about a month ago) I have been going into the batey the liturgy and my youth group. There are about 7-8 girls (ages 10-14) who come regularly, which is a huge change from the beginning. I used to hold the group during the week, but attendance was poor. Now that it’s on Sunday I have a regular group and it’s going pretty well. They decided they wanted to put on a Christmas pageant, so we’re in the planning process. I foresee it being a little chaotic but you gotta give the people what they want, right? We are one child short for the number of characters, so I am currently slotted as a shepard. I’m hoping God sends me some other child to spare me from this role, but I’m sure that I’ll provide some entertainment.

After the group, I had promised some of the girls in my group that I would go to the river with them. The river is about a twenty-five minute walk from the batey, and the people go there to bathe and fill up on water when there is none in the batey (for example, right now). The kids love to go to swim and have fun. First, the girls cook spaghetti to bring along. I didn’t bring a THING to the batey that morning, and I hadn’t planned on eating, but they insisted on making food for me to bring along. The people here are so generous. Makes it a little difficult to refuse food you’re pretty sure will make you sick, but I haven’t gotten sick yet!

So, I’m sitting on the porch with the mother while the girls cook. I should mention that this family is doing really well compared to many families in the batey. The father is Dominican, so the girls have all of their papers. They have a four room house for 7 people which is also really incredible. But the mother, Elena, is 30 years old and has five children, the oldest being 14. Not strange for the batey standards, but so hard to grasp. While sitting on the porch a woman comes up and joins us. I quickly realize this is Elena’s mother, but I can’t believe because she looks no older than 45, and EVERYONE in the batey looks older than they are. I haven’t confirmed her age, but I’m almost positive that she’s no more than 15 years older than her daughter. While sitting on the porch I hear a commotion, and suddenly Elena grabs a stick and moves towards it. I stay with Mariano (5 years) to distract him, but I see someone with a machete and kids running away in my direction. I’m still not exactly sure what happened, but I do know that the fight involved Chichi, a woman I tutor, and someone getting their hands cut up by a machete. Just seeing those kids running from a machete was horrifying—how can they not respond with violence if this is what they see everyday?

So we finally head out to the river, and on the way we pick up about fifteen-twenty other kids and a rabid dog. Well, not rabid, but crazy--he had the week before bitten a chunk out of a little girl’s leg. So the walk to the river consisted of frequent scares in which the dog would go crazy and run after us and the children would run and hide. I, meanwhile, was fighting my temptation to put one of the kids in front of me and instead shield the kids. NOT easy, that dog was so scary.

Anyways, we arrived safely at the river. It’s wide and beautiful and lined with rocks. The water seemed to be pretty clean, definitely cleaner than the water we get at our house (how do I measure this? I swallowed some while swimming and I haven’t gotten sick, which would not happen with the water from the street). The river was shallow, knee-length in the deepest parts where we were, but the current was very strong. I was nervous a lot of the time because really young kids (5 years old) came along. The kids were so calm and good and they played so nicely with each other. The girls shared their spaghetti with every single kid there (and me). It was so nice to spend a lot of time with the kids outside of the school. We collected white shiny rocks (called americanas, “because they’re white”), skipped stones, floated down the river, and ate spaghetti. It was such a great afternoon, but it was long, and I was late for a plan to meet friends in the city.

On the way back home, I stopped quickly to pick something up at the school, and ran into Ricardo, one of the most malnourished and neglected children in the batey. He’s on plumpy-nut (peanut butter like meal substitutes, essentially), and he asked me to feed him, so of course I did. I thought it was so crazy that the thing that was “holding me up” was feeding a malnourished child. I had planned to meet a couple of the Dominican profes I teach with in the Colonial Zone for the free concert that’s held every Sunday night. They play a lot of Cuban son music, which we didn’t know how to dance to, but we gave it our best shot, ate fried chicken (they gave us extra pieces that we didn’t pay for…..and we didn’t tell….:)), and ended the night at a car wash.

Not a typical weekend here, but there isn’t really such a thing here. This weekend we’re having a Christmas decorating party in the house. And, of course, we have the first wedding rehearsal. Until next time.....