I Finally Made it to the Dominican Republic

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iiBuenos Dias familia, amigas y amigos!!

Well, I finally got here and have had a week and a half to look around and see what's up. Saw some service sites, went up north to an all-inclusive resort, didn't get a sunburn. Also, made friends with Creighton kids, they all seem nice, and they all like me a lot. Missing the family and SLU community quite a bit. I keep thinking of things to say to you guys, or jokes only y'all would laugh at, and nope, some don't go over that well down here, particularly the crude jokes. Creighton girls don't think those are funny.

I've got almost everything in line except for a loan that's supposed to come in from SLU, and I don't remember too much Spanish, so that kind of sucks.

I expect this will be a challenging semester, but it can't possible be more stressful than the last one. On our first day we toured the center and then we rode guaguas, which is Taino for public transportation, into Santiago itself. La Mision ILAC is actually outside of Santiago, on the way to Licey. A guagua is a van that should hold about 12 people, including the driver. The first one we got on had 23 people at one point.

First Sunday, 8 January 2006
The second day we got cultural sensitivity training, how to deal with Dominican culture, specifically dress code and a focus on the machismo culture. Machismo culture meaning all the women here dress up nice. Everybody dresses up nice here, everybody always looks good (translates: I’m not supposed to wear shorts in public, or a shirt without a collar). But all the women wear tight clothing to accentuate their femininity. They are not necessarily second class citizens, but public radical feminism wouldn’t fit here. It’s normal for men to cat-call and

Pssssst!

at women in the street here. And if a woman doesn’t hear that, all the time she spent in front of the mirror is wasted, and she feels hurt.

Monday, 9 January 2006
We also saw two service sites on our Monday, Hospicio and Hogar Luby. Hospicio is a care home for the elderly. Surrounded by jungle greenery, as everything is here, it’s beautiful. Open-air hallways, plenty of rocking chairs and benches. Rachael and I met a man who spoke English. He was born in Iraq and lived in New York for 34 years. He was nice. After we shook hands, he told us he had chicken pox.
Hogar Luby is a government funded home for disabled children. It was nice enough, but places like that always kind of depress me. Halfway through our visit, the army guard (with gimungus rifle) came in ‘to check on us.’ I didn’t think too much of it, but a lot of the girls were put off. One 13 (or so) yr-old. with Downs Syndrome came up to talk with me and ended up molesting me for about 15 seconds until one of the caretakers yelled at him in Spanish. Later he did much the same to Anne, and they all called him ‘el tigre’ which would probably translate as ‘what a playa.’ Which is funny, because in Spanish ‘playa’ means beach.

That night we went to a jazz bar called

Bar Code

. HAHA. I got to have my first Presidente and listen to some good jazz. We went in through a door, but ended up under a split roof, meaning open-air, so I could see the night sky. It was a good size for a bar, but it shared walls with two houses and was in a residential zone it seemed. The music filled the entire neighborhood, which could be good or bad, depending on whether or not the neighborhood likes free jazz. We left while they were playing ‘Moon River.’

Tuesday, 10 January 2006
On Tuesday (10/1/06) we saw more of Santiago, which is the large city we live next to, by doing a scavenger hunt. We had to buy a pineapple and got ripped off. We paid at least double a normal price. We had to buy a single band-aid, find a bunch of buildings, talk to a shoe-shine boy, learn local historical trivia. At one point, I actually said to a nice guy who was running the community recreation center…“Who was the famous Dominican man who sat in the chair over there and shine your shoes.” I apologize now to everyone I ever made fun of for struggling with a language, including babies. I now know why babies cry.

Wednesday, 11 January 2006
We were supposed to see two more service sites, Caritas and Sala de Tarea. But Sala de Tarea (Homework Room) was closed because the building had flooded with all the recent heavy rain, so we kind of just have to wait until the new room is built somewhere else. (They people who own the current space get grumpy when kids are around (Why do they let volunteers bring about 100 kids there everyday to teach them extra-curricular lessons? Who knows)). Caritas was a nice place where nuns provide food for school kids. La Republica Dominicana has a rule that says that you can’t go to school unless you get at least 2 meals a day. Yeah. Yes.

Dominican History Time!
I get to see lots of palm trees, sunshine, rain, rain while it's sunny, rice and beans, and I get to ride lots of guaguas, which is Taino for public transportation. The Tainos were the indigenous people when Columbus landed here in 1492 and renamed the island, Hispaniola, brought diseases the people had never seen and conquistadors hungry for gold and subjugated labor forces. There where between 400,000 - 600,000 Tainos here in 1492. By 1506, there were 35,000. By 1520, there were no full-blooded Tainos left on the island.

And the Spaniards were like, "Well, we still want that gold, cuz it's ours, because we have a flag and we called this island. We called it!" That's what they said, but they didn't want to dig it all out by themselves because they had just put on their nice pair of conquistador-leggings, so, they brought in the Africans. Because it's good enough to subjugate one race because of unequal levels of technology, thereby determining the structure of racism in the Americas for centuries to come. Nope, don't just mess up one little island, go for three whole continents (four if you still think Europe should count as a separate continent). Let's count them, North America, South America, Africa, the Caribbean, and anywhere else with nice stuff and loose immigration policies.

Thursday, 12 January 2006
Sorry, history happens. SO…Thursday we went to an art museum and saw an exhibit on los manglares, which we couldn’t translate for a long time, until, after reading the rest of the exhibit and remembering my class on Conservation in Latin America with Dr. MacKinnon, I figured out that they were mangroves. Then we saw some really cool art from Latinos in Nueva York and a cigar factory that makes the best cigars in the world (as rated by Cigar Afficionado Magazine). Then we visited a university in Santiago called PCMM (pronounced ‘Puca Mima’) and ate crappy cafeteria food. Our community director (good ole Justin Lampe) then took us to their library, where they have a ton of college-level books in Spanish. I don’t know what he expected me to do there.

Saturday, 14 January 2006
En Sabado, we left for our retreat, which was at an all-inclusive resort up north in Samana (pronounced with the accent on the last syllable, sah-mah-NAH, but I can’t type the accent here). Translation: my tuition remission and government grants finally paid off in an open bar, full buffet, beautiful beaches, clases del merengue, body-boarding, bad dance performances by the resort staff (kind of like Cirque du Soleil done by poorly trained dancers in a poor country.
Sunday was getting up early, taking Dramamine before getting on the boat to go whale-watching, and then just being wacked out for four hours and NOT SEEING ANY WHALES!! Stupid Captain Kim, we thought she was a marine biologist. Nope.

It’s actually just a hobby of mine that has kind of turned into an obsession.

Phony. PHONY!!

Monday, 16 January 2006
We started classes. But since my service site time isn’t until after lunch, I went to breakfast and then took a nap until lunch. Well, I tried to read the newspaper about the trouble with Haiti over the recent illegal immigrants into the D.R. 84 came over in a locked truck that got into a car crash. The authorities couldn’t open the truck’s back doors in time and 25 asphyxiated. So both countries are up in arms about that. Also, Chile elected a woman socialist president. I was supposed to read those articles, but Spanish is, como se dice….? Ah yes, dificil. But art class is fun.

My service site, Hospicio, the old home, involved me sitting next to an old man, without teeth, who mumbled his Spanish, whose named I could not catch. I was incapable of holding a conversation with him, but I sat there. The only thing I think I thought I caught was something to the effect of, in Spanish,

If there is something you cannot do, like speak Spanish, don’t worry. There are many things I cannot do anymore.

El Fin
So, that's all. And it rained a lot until last Saturday. The beans and rice are good here, as are the vegetables (fantastic), and the meat (I gave up being vegetarian because I had never tried Dominican-style meat before (that’s a lie, I had a bunch on my trip in high school)). It’s pineapple season here, which means pineapple at EVERY meal. I take a lot of pavitas (Dominican for ‘nap’). Oh, and we have a dirty, smelly, and pretty dog named Valentin. Plus, Presidente, the national beer (as in, produced by the government), is pretty good and costs between R.D. 50 pesos and R.D. 60 pesos, between US $1.50 and US $1.75. And all-inclusive resorts rock, as long as you don't think about the people who work there and then go home to a shack on a hillside without electricity and running water.

peace out til later, hopefully this will become a pretty regular journal. Sorry it’s so long.

Peace,
John

Visited Countries Map

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Photos

ILAC Center
This is the view of our central courtyard from the stairwell to my room. On the left is the chapel, which serves as the church for our neighborhood. On the right is the dining hall. Palm trees are everywhere down here.

Looking for Whales
In Spanish, whales are called ballenas. In reality, they are really hard to find on January 14th in Samana Bay in the Dominican Republic. Getting seasick and wasted on Dramamine is pretty easy. You just take a pill and wait.

ILAC Group Spring 2006
Carne fresca, as they say in the jails here. Fresh Meat.

Beach Life
Life here looks like a Corona commercial. Or a Third World slum. Guess which one the tourists see on their way to resorts or surfcamp.