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Published: November 16th 2010
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Ella se fue de la ventana - she went through the window
Se la llevó - he took her (away)
These are the phrases used in my community to explain when people get “married” here. And I would say this is still the area of the rural culture here that most frustrates and confuses me. Marriage, in most senses in my area, does not mean any formal agreement, nor even any pre thought out plan, it usually just means the couple in question decided they wanted to have sex. That, for better or for worse is what serves as the base for many of the marriages that have taken place over the past few months here. Of course there are always other reasons thrown in - many girls want to leave their homes (more freedom), sometimes economics has a lot to do with it, other times no explanation can possibly suffice. Out of the six “marriages” that I know of happening in my communities over the summer, only one of the couples had been together openly for more than four months. Not that it seems to have a great bearing on the success rate of older couples so maybe
We made a cake and put on flowers
Not sure if it was for decoration or a misplaced idea about nutritional value it doesn’t matter. Nonetheless, to illustrate why this baffles me the way it does I present you with three examples.
“I” is my across the way neighbour, or at least was until two months ago. She turned 14 this year and was in 8th grade. She was secretly seeing “W” since December, secretly because of her age and his (22) and also in part because he is darker skinned. Their relationship became public in April and her family was okay with it. She has an older sister who is the girlfriend of a married man in the next town over (which basically means she will never leave her families house and will continue to see this guy forever) and for some reason this left her stuck with most of the housework. In July “W” took her away in the night (or really early evening) to live with his grandmother and one of her older sisters who is married with a daughter in the next town over and that was that. A week later she came back for the Besa Mano (kiss the hand) and was a married girl. She had recently told me that she wanted to have sex
Chicken shack!
I am not sure why we wanted this picture with her boyfriend and between this and getting out of the house, I guess decided to get married. He works occasionally and she occasionally goes to school.
“J” is 16 years old and lived on the other side of the river with her extended family including an insanely protective older brother (in his 40s) and parents that never let her leave her house. It is a house far away from everything except the swimming hole. As the only female left in the house (aside from her mother) basically all the household work fell to her and she was almost never let out of the house aside from going to school (8th grade as well). “L” has a reputation of being a drug addict, a thief and a general tiguere. I know him a little and I think some of this may be an exaggeration because he has complicated designs in his facial hair and generally does nothing. He has his own house and helps out at the family’s colmado (store) occasionally. He, like every young person around here, liked to go to the waterfall and swimming hole, but also had apparently a crush on “J”. One day I was
Ex and I
Most host brother/ ex boyfriend and I walking home and my neighbour told me to hide her in my house because “L” was going to kill the older insanely jealous (and reportedly in love with his sister) brother of “J” with his machete. A few seconds later the brother (who is about 45) is sped down the street on the back of a motorcycle to prevent such an attack. I was told he tried to cut down a tree that “L” sat on so he couldn’t see “J” anymore and then threatened him if he came back. The older brother is a little crazy but not a bad guy when sober - I had an unfortunate run in with him when he was drunk back near Easter that should have gone reported. Anyway, five days later they “got married”. She at least now lives near the center of town, can see friends and is with a family that will take care of her even if her husband won’t. At the same time, they almost don’t know each other and their extreme difference in exposure to the world in my opinion makes her vulnerable to being in a not terribly healthy relationship. But then again, it could just
work out.
Lastly, most recently and most confoundingly, a little over a week ago “R”, 21 years old with a 2 year old son, ran away with “O”, my 54 years old motoconcho (i.e. ride) whose family lives not 5 houses down the road from her. He had 3 daughters living at home (one of which is older than “R”), a son and a wife. “O” basically never bought a thing for his family (his wife and daughters weaved to make the money to buy the food) even though he had money, he just spent it on drinking, smoking and at times other women. So his reputation as a bad family man and womanizer was well known, and yet this young girl with a family that actually let her go out, a job (only one of two girls employed in the community), just finished with high school and a two, almost three year old son decided to give this all up to go run away with him to another town. Not that we often get why people do what they do in the name of love, but this instance really confounds me to the soul. This is of such
a Dominican mindset to say, but it would be totally different if he could offer her something, a better life or more freedom as is often what a lot of young girls are looking for, but what he offers is less than what she had. And of course now the son is here, heartbroken, but better off than he would be with them.
I thought that the summer would be a less attractive time to run off, according to some here, the hearts and the heads go crazy during the time when the dengue mosquitoes are most common. Maybe that actually is the case.
This all in a way reminds me of how I felt about many rural relationships living in India. While I cannot imagine taking part in a system like exists here or there (arranged marriages in particular), I cant say that it works any less efficiently than what the majority of the people in the states have going for them (though the idea that marriage should be efficient seems terribly cynical). There is a certain practicality to the way relationships are viewed here and in India (the basis of them still strongly being on the
ability to provide for a family) that seems to be much less important to many people I know in the US that I feel like at least to some extent is due to the level of independence most of my friends and I have (not to mention value). Not that it isn’t a factor, just like here its not that love and emotions aren’t a factor, its just the priorities that we value and the order we expect them to take. Very few people I know in the US would enter into a relationship like marriage without feeling a great deal of love where as here that is seen as something that can develop from a relationship like marriage. There is something so pragmatic while at the same time completely absurd about seeking someone who can provide and then having faith that some stronger emotion is just bound to result from the circumstances of marriage.
I have not been immune to the pull of Dominican romance, but it ended the day we were pulled in to consolidation in the capital to learn all about the cholera outbreak in Haiti and how to work with the prediction that we have
a 100% chance of cholera showing up here. (This was a few days before we were all pulled in for Tomas) I had been dating my host brother for a while and in our attempt to maintain a more US style relationship I think we proved to be the most confusing relationship for my community. And as we proved, it wasn’t any more successful.
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