Drowning in Water

The Meaning of Water

A favorite parable of mine goes like this:

Two young fish are swimming along side-by-side talking about the things youngs fish talk about when an elder fish says to them in passing:
 
"'Morning fellows! How's the water today?"

The young wish swim on without reply. Only When the strange, old fish has safely passed does one turn to the other and say: 

"What the heck is water?"
Culture is like water. We swim in it without knowing it for what it is. We take it for granted.

(For a more extensive exploration of this idea, I recommend the following commencement speech by David Foster Wallace.)

This parable has been helpful to give me perspective on my own culture. To be more see more of the thins that I take for granted. when I lived inside my own culture.

Lately, though this has metaphor has taken on a whole new  dimension of meaning.

A Very Bulla Christmas

The holidays were hard for me. (Cat, too). I would have been hard pressed to explain it at the time but with the wisdom of a few weeks perspective I can see it was a matter of cultural difference.

Being out of my own culture meant swimming in unfamiliar waters. The winter holidays in the DR are just different and that made me uncomfortable and a bit depressed in a way I wasn't anticipating.

So, you ask, how are they different?

These lights on a neighbor's house are one on a short of five items that DR and US Christmas celebrations have in common. The others? Family comes home, people take a week or more days off work, they celebrate with food and drink, and the special day gets special recognition in the church.
(We were invited to Mass but we didn't go. I now wish we had - the familiarity might have been grounding for me.)

Gift giving? That's really only for kids here and it's done on the el Día de los Tres Reyes, which is January 6. In the Hispanic tradition the Three Kings give the gifts instead of the Germanic, quasi-pagan figure of Santa Clause.

Christmas trees are a bit too nothertn, too. There's been some adoption of "l arbolito in the cities but here in the campo with a significant deforestation problem "holiday cheer" is not a good enough reason to cut down a perfectly good tree.

Christmas music? The two or three songs I heard para la Navidad (yes, one of them was by Jose Feliciano) were Mexican imports.  These were far outnumbered by the secular bachata, merengue, salsa and dembow tunes. These I heard all night, every night, from la Noche Buena (Christmas Eve) through la Noche Vieja (New Year's Eve).

The Spanish word for this - used with pride by some locals - is bulla which translates as "racket." This is, of course, directly contrary to the Christmas traditions of Northern Europe and the Northern America. Underneath all the crass commercialism, Christmas in the United States is still a spiritual and introspective time. You stay in because it's cold. You spend time with your family. You try to be nice in a way that you aren't normally.

The folks in my campo mostly use la Navidad as an excuse to get together with people  they don't normally see and hacer la fiesta.  They drink and dance in la discoteca. Because Christmas just isn't that big a deal here.

What is a big deal is Semana Santa (Holy Week), the last week of Lent before Easter. I'd love to write about it's role in Dominican culture but that will have to wait until I've actually experience it.


It all makes sense in perspective. I come from a society that is Protestant Christian at it's core at it's core while Dominican roots are distinctly Catholic. The water felt wrong, so it was hard for me to go with the flow.

I wonder how Dominican immigrants to the US feel in to find themselves in a society where their biggest cultural event isn't celebrated outside of a few ethnic enclaves? I imagine that the first Semana Santa they spend away from home passes not so - how, shall I put it? - swimmingly.

This post is part of Blogging Abroad's 2017 New Years Blog Challenge, week three: Cultural Differences.

In your face

So this happened:



(It happens a lot actually). Pictured is the ruptured tubería that brings agua from a gravity-fed aqueduct to our pueblo. As you may have guessed, we don't have water right now. We haven't for a week, actually, which is the longest dry run since we moved here.

We haven't bathed in the better part of a week and have restricted dish-washing to once a day. Our standard go-to-meal - soup - has been replaced with something less liquid intensive. Thankfully, it is raining. A lot. I have written previously about how we often have less water when it rains due to the peculiarities of the aqueduct but that was in the summer when the rain would knock out the pipe and then promptly disappear. Now, in the tropical winter the rain comes, on average, a couple hours a day. So at least we don't have to hike to the river to replenish our stores. We can collect it more or less directly from the roof.



The dictator that built our house didn't think to include rain-gutters in the design so we need to locate strategic corners.




Each of these buckets holds about 2 gallons of water. We have been using the rainwater to off-set the water we use from our main storage tanks, which we fill from fresh water from the tap. 5 buckets * 2 = 10 gallons, or about 1/4 of one of our storage tanks. What are we doing with all this water, you ask, if we are not cooking, washing, or bathing much?

We`re pouring it directly down the drain.



This jarra is about 4 liters, or one approximately 1 gallon. If we aim it right we can flush with just the jarra but if there's a lot of waste it might require an entire cubo. Or two. In one day, if we are not careful, we can literally flush 10+ gallons of water down the toilet. When things work as they should we can waste this water without thinking. But when things break down you can't lift the lid without the waste being in your face.

When Cat and I first moved to our house we were relieved to see that it had a proper inódoro as opposed to a latrine but now we are considering asking our landlord to install one. There are many houses here that have both. At first I thought this was anachronism but now recognize its utility. In makes sense in the same way that many houses keep their solar panels even though there is luz de la calle. Or how many homes maintain a fogón (wood-fired stove) in a separate outbuilding away in case the gas goes out.

Left: el tanque. Right: la estufa. Center: la goma that makes it all work.

When the gas goes out it is not because of infrastructure fracaso like el agua, or irregularity, like la luz but because there are no gas lines here. To fill your propane tank you pay your friendly neighborhood chofer to load it in the back of his camioneta (pick up truck) and take it to the nearest filling station, located conveniently 2 hours away. His surcharge is reasonable because he know how important it is.

But if you've had a bad harvest, or the market is bad, you just might not be able to afford it. It pays to have back up even if it means la mujer spends the better part of the day tending the fire and inhaling woodsmoke while the muchachos fetch firewood instead of going to school. This contributes to deforestation, of course, but that is a secondary concern to poor, hungry people trying to feed their families.

A few weeks back I wrote about how "suburban" this mountain village sometimes feels, but these superficial similarities hide profound differences.  The differences I speak of here are not just the gap between the level of infrastructural development but also the extra time that this gap adds to everyday tasks and the subsequent psychic toll it takes on individual aspirations.

At a similar house in the US the utilities arrive with such regularity that people literally don't even think about where they come from or at what cost. They are thus free to think of other things: their careers, their children's education, etc. Cat and I talk about a projects a lot but we talk about water even more. We talked about it much less in the United States, despite inhabiting a state in the midst of a five year drought.



We recently baked a birthday cake. We used a special stove-top pan (the oven uses way too much gas) and mixed everything by hand because there were no electric appliances. It took 5 hours. Without a gas-powered dryer and a single chamber washing machine, doing the laundry takes the better part of the day. And this requires the right combination of sunshine, running water, and luz. This doesn't happen every day. We try to plan for it, sometimes even plan our week around it, but if that day finally comes after too many days without our plans change. Instead of going to work, we stay home and wash clothes.

In this context it is obvious why parts of the Dominican Republic are so slow to "develop," why it is so hard to get a parents group going at the school, why people are so reluctant to volunteer for the advisory councils that oversee the savings cooperative. It's not that people in the campo don't care about these things, but like the environment these are secondary concerns. When resources limits are right in your face it can be hard took think about anything else.

Why does the town council own a butcher shop?

The sign below says "Ayuntamiento of the Municipal District of *Town Where I live* Services Open to All."

Ayuntamiento translates exactly to "town council." People use the word to refer to the building, the elected officials therein, the services offered thereby, and the employees who provide them. I've known this word since I talked to the vice-sindico of my CBT pueblo . Despite its flexibility, I was hard pressed to make sense of it in the following context:

In case the blood-red letters in drippy font didn't clue you in carnicería means "butcher shop" and the sign therefore reads: "Town Council Butchery of M.R.L" (¨M" is for Municipalidad and R.L is the initials of the town where I live). This building is right next to the savings cooperative where I work everyday. I can see it through the window near my desk.

Despite this familiarity, or perhaps because of it, I haven't given much thought to what it is or what goes on there. Like I wrote in my last entry, the first six months in site have been intense. When I'm overwhelmed I tend to either shut down or open up all the way, so I ended up accepting a lot of things without much investigation. Sometimes it's best to just file things under "that's weird" and move on with your day.

Last week, I saw a handwritten sign that I lamentably neglected to take a photo of. It was posted on a street corner and declared in the formal language of Dominican government announcements that the ayuntamiento would be holding a subasta for municipal service providers and that anyone was welcome to attend.

After 8 months in country, my written Spanish is pretty good. I can read the paper (without a dictionary) and contemporary novels (with one). I can write a professional email. I can write poetry. My spoken Spanish it pretty good, too, though it varies depending on context. If you are a complete stranger with a thick country accent, talking about something I am not familiar with, I might only get 60% of what you are saying. If you are an educated, urban stranger I probably bat about 80% and my average goes up when I tune into your particular way of talking. When conversing with someone I know well about a topic where I know all the vocabulary, I can sometimes communicate with 100% fluidity. On a good day, I go to sleep feeling like I speak Spanish.

That day, I was feeling confident: I understood all the words on the sign except for subasta. I looked it up in the dictionary: it means "auction." What municipal services was the town council going to auction? I was intrigued. I also felt guilty for never before having attended a meeting of the ayuntamiento. It seemed like a basic background thing that I had neglected for too long. I decided to attend.

In a small town everyone knows everyone, so even though I've only lived here half a year I recognized half the people in the room.  Some were you usual movers-and-shakers whose presence was to be expected. The presence of some of the others might have been surprising if I knew what the heck was going on. There were some greetings and smiles of recognition.  I don't know if you can tell from the photo, but the building is the exact same vintage as my house and has an identical floor plan.  The meeting took place in the "kitchen." Imagine, if you will, 30+ people in the following space.

Cluttered kitchen table included for scale.

I took a seat and the meeting began. That 60% to 100% I just bragged about? That only happens in a one-on-one context where I am able to ask follow-up questions of polite people who are concerned about whether or not I understand what the heck was going on.

Gracias a Dios, the form of the meeting was identical to municipal meetings I have attended in the US. There was an agenda and a secretary to read it. But the main agenda item, the subasta felt like, well, an auction, and not a silent one. With everybody talking at once my comprehension dropped to about 25%. But one thing was clear: the ayuntamiento was auctioning off the rights to the carnicería that bears it's name.  Only on my walk home did I have presence of mind to wonder, why the heck does a city council own a butcher shop in the first place?

That night, I did not go to sleep feeling like I spoke Spanish.

The next day, I talked it over with Mariano, a community leader who also happens to be one of my favorite people in town. He has lived in the pueblo all his life and has watched it grow from a group of dozen a families to a small town of 2000+. He has been instrumental in that growth, having been involved in just about every community project over the years. He serves on the comite de crédito (credit commission) of my savings cooperative and had been at the subasta the previous night. He has a lifetime of experience that he is eager to share and is kind and patient with my uneven Spanish. He is concerned about whether or not I understand what the heck is going on.

He explained to me that in a small country like the DR it makes sense to organize services like roads, schools and police at a provincial, or even national level. As such, Dominican municipal governments have very few excuses to few taxes on their citizens which means they sometimes have little revenue. By owning, and auctioning the rights to, services like the butcher's shop the ayuntamiento can simultaneously guarantee a source of revenue for itself while also guaranteeing that these services exist in their town. What is more, the ayuntamiento sets a maximum price per pound at the carniceria to ensure that the meat is affordable to its citizens. In a town with serious hunger in living memory that makes a lot of sense.

It's an interesting way of doing business, and governance, that I am happy to have learned about. I'll probably attend more meetings of the ayuntamiento in the future and record my reflections on other interesting stuff here.

Something that bugs me

One of the first Spanish words I learned was "pájaro." Although I was 18 or so the textbook resembled something designed for kindergartners. Learning a new language makes you a child again in your ability to think, communicate, and be taken seriously. Next to the word pájaro was a brightly colored drawing of a bird.

Some Spanish speaking countries use pájaro to mean that but the DR is not one of them. Dominicans use the word "ave" for bird and pájaro to mean other things.

During CBT when a moth flew into the house my host mom called it a pájaro.

"¿No es un . . .  mariposa de la noche?" (It's not a . . . night-time butterfly?)

"No. Es pájaro."

OK. So, if ave = bird then pájaro = moth.

Later, when we were watching a horror movie on TV she called a vampire bat with a human face a pájaro. I didn't ask her but quietly updated my mental definition to mean "weird flying thing."

One day, here in our little town in the mountains near the Haitain border, Cat was walking to a meeting and passed a group of them taking pictures of the fearsome looking scarab, held aloft on a stick.

"Excuse me," she said, "what do you call that insect?"

"Pájaro." Of course.

"Is there another name, maybe more . . specific?"

"Pájaro malo." (Bad pájaro).

We've since heard slugs, spiders and centipedes called pájaro even though they don't fly. So, pájaro = "bug?"

When I showed a local woman a video of the solonodonte and she called it a pájaro I almost yelled at her. It's the size of a small dog! When I was carrying a bucket of water from the river and someone asked me if I had a pájaro in it I just sighed and updated my mental dictionary. Pájaro = "critter."

That definition held rather satisfactorily until last week. Cat and I were sipping coffee in the galería of a neighbor when a local seminarian walked by. He's a nice guy. Thin, always well-dressed, and scrupulously polite. When he borrowed a book from us he made sure to bring it back promptly. After he passed, our friend whispered to us that people say he is a pájaro.

I flashed back to college Spanish, when a professor carefully explained to us that in addition to it's literal meaning pájaro had another less formal connotation. No, he didn't tell us about bats and moths, as helpful as that would have been, but he did explain that pájaro, when applied to the type of sweet young man who helps old ladies to church, has the same connotation as the English word "fairy." That is, a derisive term for homosexual. It's not nearly as offensive as the standard Spanish "maricon" (f*ggot) but it is still not a nice thing to whisper about your neighbor.

Dominicans have adopted the English word "gay" and use it with the same neutrality. When reporting on the Orlando massacre this summer the news here called the nightclub a "discoteque gay." But Dominicans on the whole are not neutral about gayness. The whispers of our neighbor had little to do with Catholic prohibition or rural conservatism. When President Obama appointed the openly gay James Brewster ambassador to the Dominican Republic many Dominicans took it as an offense. When Brewster dared to visit an elementary school with his husband they called for his resignation.

There is a pride parade and a few clubs in Santo Domingo where it is OK for men to dance together but outside of the capital few Dominicans are out and neither are most PC volunteers. Openly gay volunteers might not be exactly unsafe but would not be respected and would have a hard time professionally, especially if they worked in the schools. If you want to get work done, you stay in the closet.

We, a married heterosexual partnership, as privileged a union as exists here, maintain a similar reserve. When we discuss the issue with friends we are careful to phrase our questions neutrally. We do not explain our decidedly pro-gay sympathies or ask where there's lie. It is literally a situation of don't ask don't tell.

There's no good way to end this entry because the issue is not ended. I hope that the DR will undergo a transformation in their attitudes towards homosexuals like what has occurred in the US  but I'm not holding my breath. I continue to hold my tongue, however. Dominicans have their own culture and values - distinct from mine - whether I like it or nor. Working around this gap, being "comfortable" with it regardless of how uncomfortable it actually is, is part of service. Even if it bugs me.

On living without running water

Before we moved out, Cat asked our host mother if people in the pueblo collect rain water. We lived on the Big Island of Hawaii for a while, which has a similar climate and rains a similar amount. There, the people use catchment tanks the size of above-ground swimming pools as either their principal source of water or to guardar it in case there is a drought.

Our Dominican mom said ¨No, not since they installed the acueducto." Most of the houses have running water now, though some poorer families still take plastic buckets to the river. Later, after a couple of days of steady rain, the water stopped coming out of the tap and we put out buckets to collect the rainfall.

Yes, you read that right. When it rains a lot we are less likely to have water. The acueducto draws from the river in las rodillas of the mountain nearby. Due to erosion free flowing sediment sometimes clogs the pipes. When this happens you abre el llave and the pipe coughs like an asthmatic.

The longest we've gone without water is five days. When we moved house one of the first things we bought was a 50 gallon tanque and a mangera (hose) to fill it with. I just passed 3 days by myself (Cat's in the capital for a conference) with no water from the llave and was able to get along fine thanks to the tanque. Instead of taking a shower, I washed myself from a bucket. Instead of flushing the toilet, I dumped a bucket in the bowl. Instead of filling the sink to wash dishes, I- you get the idea.

This machine has changed my life.

The water from the llave is safe use to brush your teeth but not safe to swallow. You have to boil it if you are going to cook with it. For straight drinking we use a botellón, which you might recognize from your office water cooler. This purified water costs $50 RD (a little more than a dollar) a jug and lasts the two of us about a week.



When we walked to Naranjito the guías drank straight from the river near the acueducto. I have heard that the water is generally cleaner and safer straight from the source but I declined to follow their example. They probably wouldn't have let me either, being concerned for my safety as they were.

I have tried the agua filtrada, though, and I did not die. The filters are a previous PC project. All of the houses I have visited have them in their out kitchen. The local water is heavy with calcium and prior to filters the incidence of kidney stones was alarmingly high. There are three filters in the acueducto system but I believe they only filter particulate matter.

And that water? It´s cold. I have yet to encounter a hot water heater in this country, even in the capital. I imagine they exist in the all inclusive resorts where the high energy cost can be bundled into the price of the package. But out here Cat heats up her bath the shower "traditional" way by putting a plastic jug, ideally painted black, in the sun to heat up over the course of the day.

"Solar Power"

Not being able to rely on either water or power makes doing laundry an extra chore. Poorer families still use the river while wealthy (relatively speaking) people have washing machines. This still takes time more time than back home, though. The type of machine than can run on a solar inversor has only one chamber, which means you have to rinse off excess soap in a bucket. There are no gas lines to power machines so the wash needs to hang on a line or the roof to dry. This is yet another example of how much extra time and works it takes to be poor. 

All this thinking about water hasn't facilitated the sort of change in consciousness that living without reliable luz has. California, the state where we lived for five years before coming here, is entering its 6th consecutive year of drought. Cat and I were a "if it's yellow, let it mellow" household there and we continue to be here, though I have taken to peeing in (you guessed it!) a bucket and later using it as fertilizer for the compost pile. I'll post an entry on tropical gardening as soon as I have something to take pictures of.

Haitians and Hanukkah

When winter comes in the US, we say "Happy Holidays." As far greetings go it's pretty accurate but not very precise; most people aren't celebrating generic "holidays" but something more specific. As far as winter holidays go Ramadan is a moving target and Kwanzaa is an asterisk: the biggies, as we all know,  are Christmas and Hanukkah. So, what do we say to our baristas when we drop our change in the tip jar? Merry Christmas or Happy Hanukkah? Neither: we equivocate with "Happy Holidays," for fear of causing offense.

It's easy to see how we got here. Really, how can you tell if someone is Jewish or Christian by appearances alone? You can't!

Sure, sometimes we can hazard a guess and not strikeout. And there are signs we might look for: someone wearing a cross or a particularly ugly sweater is probably into Christmas. A bearded gentleman with prominent forelocks' and a kippe probably will not object to Happy Hanukkah.  We might listen for a name or accent to clue us in. If we are really comfortable (and most likely Jewish ourselves) we might judge by physiognomy.

Of course this is profiling in itself. And it doesn't always work.  Even Jews get it wrong sometimes. Hence, Happy Holidays.

It's July and I'm wondering, how can we tell Dominicans from Haitians? I ask because I am currently enrolled in a Kreyol class. My wife Cat and I stationed near the Haitian border and Kreyol, being tte language of Haiti, might come in handy. The chance to learn another language (Spanish) was one of the reasons we chose Peace Corps, so we're really excited to learn another and are to determined to use it.

Since there is no equivalent of "Happy Holidays" that covers both Spanish and Kreyol, I have to guess. Even though I know I'm going to get it wrong.

So I present here, more for my own mortification as for your edification, a shortlist of the "signs" I've discovered.

Color
Both Dominicans and Haitians have a lot of Africa in their history, but Dominicans are more intermixed with other groups than Haitians. If someone looks "black" in the American sense of the word, they are likely Dominican. If they look "African" they are likely Haitian.

But of course there are "African" looking Dominicans. And there is the fact that nationality is not a genetic trait. A person of 100% African Ancestry, born in Haiti, can magically transform with the right documentation. One of the most celebrated of all Dominican politicians, José Francisco Peña Gomez, a man many consider the first true leader to emerge after three decades of dictatorship was born to Haitian parents, orphaned by a massacre, adopted by Dominican parents and *poof* was magically transformed.

And there is the fact that there are light - even "white" - Haitians. So let's forget about color.

Class
Haitians are, unfortunately, almost universally impoverished. In my town of 2000, which is about half-Haitian, only 2 or 3 Haitian families own their home. The rest rent or squat. They often lack shoes and their clothes are little more than rags.

But national privilege does not guarantee subsistence and I have met Dominicans whose extremely humble house was indistinguishable for their Haitian neighbors and whose clothes were likely picked from the same paca.

So let's scratch class as well.

Occupation
Haitians, like Latin American immigrants in the US, bear the brunt of the agricultural grunt work. They often work longs hours in fincas owned by Dominicans where they are paid by the day.

But Dominicans, too, toil in fields not their own. And Haitians can do as well for themselves as any other group and I've heard a few own land, so maybe occupation isn't that helpful after all.

Language
Haitians speak Kreyol and Dominicans speak Spanish, right? But if *anything* is mutable it's language, right? So many I shouldn't get started with this one . . .

Accent
Kreyol is, well, a creole of many languages but the largely constituent in the stew is French, somany Haitians speak with a nasal acc--- You know what? Nevermind.

Happy Christmas in July!

Nombres, Apodos and Newspapers

;

Shakespeare wrote under many names. Not pen names, mind you, but different variations of his given name. There are documents written by him, literarlly in his hand, where "Shakespeare" is spelled his differently than we are used to: Shagspur, Shakspar. And why not, so long as people could understand what was being conveyed? There is no "right" way to spell Shakespeare, any more than there is a "right" way to spell Kristen. Or Krystyn. Or Christen. You get the point.

The same goes for my name. (Kevin? Why not Kevan? Or Kevon? Pretty much any vowel works.) And the same goes for your name. This is because our names are made up. Even if you have a Roman numeral after your name, even if you are the 15th Franklin in your family line, even if your name has been appears in the Bible, it was made up by someone at some point, even if you believe that person was God. This is to because your name is a product of the literary tradition - that is to say the tradition of literacy, the tradition of reading and/or writing things down. The "right" way to spell your name was established because there was a popularity contest in the written record and Thomas won out over Thomus.

When I learned that I would be moving to a Spanish speaking country I assumed that I would be meeting people with names similar to the Latin American immigrants I am familiar with in California: Jose, Esperanza, etc. And while I have met more than one Juan and Maria here in the DR I have met far more people with names like Tirofio and Yirandy.

More than many names in other American countries - more than Ezekiel, or Enrique, or Steven - Dominican names are more obviously "made up" because they were more recently made up. Some of these recent coinages are poetic (Pijíro, Fredesvinda) but some are less so (Noelvis).

It's hard to talk about this without sounding judgmental, but I think this is a direct result of the literacy problem in the DR. If you've never read a book or written your own name, calling your child "Fraciey" might not seem as strange as it would to an educated person. Right now, Dominicans are doing their damndest to improve their educational system. The current government is building new classrooms all across the country. Most of the university students I meet want to be teachers. This is a beautiful thing, but they still have a long way to go. It is not uncommon to meet Dominicans of any generation who cannot read or write. The job title of Catherine (why not Katheryn?), my wife, is "Primary Literacy Promoter." Approximately 20 others in our cohort have the same position and they are needed.

Beyond the illiterate there are the alliterate - those Dominicans who can read and right but just choose not to. This is part of larger cultural phenomenon that I won't attempt to explain because I know I don't understand it, but I can describe. When Dominicans do do words they do them differently. Libraries don't exist in most towns here and those that do don't let you take the books home. Book stores are only found in the major cities. When I lived in a pueblo of nearly 20,000 I was surprised to learn that I would have to go to the provincial capital, an hour away, to buy a newspaper.

Beyond names, there are the apodos - nicknames. This has nothing to do with illiteracy or alliteracy. It's just a Dominican tradition to go by a name other than what you were assigned at birth. These I understand.

Some, like English apodos are derived from the given name: the "Felo" I know was born Rafael. Juan Carlos is often shortened to "Janqui" (a play on "Yankee"), and I meta Luis Fernando who is more commonly known as "Juife." Some are descriptive ("Blanca," White) and some are crude Cabo Prieto("Black Handle"). Some apodos are as common as given names. In my small town along the frontera, when you talk about Chicho ("Chubby"), you need to be clear whether you are talking about the former mayor or the guy who runs the lodge. My Don Pedro back in the capital is also known as Chicho.

I have met people of whose real name I have no idea and when I ask other Dominicans sometimes they're not that certain either. They can tell me where El Pirata lives and who his parents are is but aren't 100% about what's on his birth certificate.

Apodos are so common that they are included on political campaign signs. My CBT Don is named Victoriano but is better known as Nelson, so when he ran for regidor (Town Council - he won!) he made sure to include his apodo in parentheticals.

But even if I understand how these names and apodos came to be, it doesn't mean I understand them when they are given to me in conversation. I'm bad with names in my country. I'm no better in a culture that's not own when I am using a language I still haven't learned to think in. Ilario, I apologize. It's my problem I forgot your name, not yours.

That said, I still feel bad for the kid who told me his name was "Gravy."

Mudos, Ciegos, y Locos

In a small town, 20 minutes inland by camioneta from the northeast coast of the DR, lives a young mudo. His name is Edwin, which he prounounces with the thick accent of those with Down's Syndrome. If you ask Edwin his name in front of his father - with whom he is almost always - his father will prompt him, with visible delight: "Y el otro?" And Edwin will respond with his last name. If dad prompts "And the rest?" Edwin will say "Capicua."

Capicua is a special finishing move in dominoes. If one end of the train of fichas is a 6 and the other end is a 1, the capicua is the 6:1 ficha.  If you win a game by playing the capicua you are awarded extra points because you are awesome. Mudo ("mute") is the generic Dominican campo term for those with developmental disabilities. In the capital, Juife, a young man with cerebral palsy is called "un chico especial" by his grandparents Dona Esperanza and Don Chicho, but in the country he would be mudo.

I rode in a truck with Edwin and his father from the coast into the campo where they lived. I sat in the cab and Edwin sat in the bed, even though there was plenty of empty seats. He rode the bed the way Dominican men do when they have it to themselves: in a partial lunge over the roof, squinting into the wind.

"Why doesn't he ride in the cab with the rest of us?" I asked.

"Because he likes it back there!"

This is far from the sheltered existence that many disabled people live in the US. I can't fault the decision. Edwin really seemed to have things under control, and what is more, he was having fun. His father, too. He expressed his love for his son by allowing him to be a man.

And a man he is. We sat in front of a colmado, watching the night come in and waiting for the electricity to rcome back on. When the delivery truck came, Edwin took his turn with the rest of us, unloading the goods as a favor to the owner of the colmado. He shouldered the heavy bags of rice far easier than I. When we sat back down, Edwin took out a broken cell phone and pretended to take calls like his father, a local mover and shaker. "Dimelo" Edwin said. Tell it to me. Let's talk business.

His father is respected in the community and that respect is extended to his son. His affection, too, is extended to his son by the community. I have heard, but not did not see, that at fiestas Edwin will be given a drink with the rest of the men and that he loves to dance. I did see, however, a young man pat Edwin's shirtless belly and call him tiguere, meaning something like "lady killer."

In the same community as Edwin lives an old man named Reyes. His birth certificate says he is 90 but he estimates that he is closer to 100 since the certificate was not filled out until several years after he was born. He lived through the entire era of the Trujillo dictatorship. He played in a merengue band and was, by his own testament, quite the ladies man. He retired to a small shack where he lives alone. He has a small propiedad of cacao that he cannot maintain but visits daily. He does this altough he is almost ciego (blind). He doesn't see you coming until he is within a meter of you and he hollers when he addresses you because is almost sordo (deaf).

The local boys - not all, but far too many - like to sneak up behind him to scare him. They clap their hands close to his head and when he turns away they are gone. A variation of this hateful game is played by boys the world over, but I found it shocking in this society that normally affords so much respect to elders. It is permitted here because Reyes has no family in the community to shelter him with their respect and affection. A local woman cooks food for him and cleans his house upon occasion but she does this quietly.

I know these stories because I was visiting a friend, fellow PC volunteer, in this town. He tells me that the muchachos torment Reyes much less since the intervention. A friend of Edwin's father, also respected, and member of the same agricultural association talked to directora of the school and she in turn talked to the children.

I do not want to judge these children too harshly but I don't want to excuse them either. Instead, I will say that theor behavior makes sense. What supportive services exist here for the elderly and disabled are paid for by family. If the family can't pay, they do the work themselves. Similarly, special education doesn't really exist. Disabled children have the right to go to school but they are enrolled in classes with normally functioning children. Dominican teachers I have spoken to say that the training teachers receive on disability at university is superficial. When the students are in class they don't know how to care for them, which distracts the other students, who are not taught to respect them. I remember boys on my school bus mocking children with special needs and wonder how much worse it would have been if we hadn't been taught respect, repeatedly, by teachers who had themselves been well-trained.

The intervention occurred because Reyes got into it with a loco (this word means exactly what you think it does). I wasn't there and don't know exactly what happened, but after the fracas the community agreed that things had gotten out of hand. Mental illness is no more or less common in the DR than in the United State, but locos are more visible because again the burden of care falls on the family almost exclusively. During CBT, I facilitated a workshop with a group of local girls where we brainstormed a list of community needs. At the top of their list? A place for the locos.

I am sharing these stories mostly to process them, but as I write this I reflect again upon disparity of development. In a previous entry I wrote that sometimes a lack of organizational infrastructure can be a good thing. When it comes to mudos, ciegos, and locos I must disagree with myself.

Some shame on Earth Day

I am in the Advanced Spanish class, the highest level here in CBT. Based on the strength of my conversational skills, I have been placed with native speakers and those who have lived in Spanish speaking countries for extended periods of time. I am clearly bringing up the rear and for this I feel a little vergüenza (shame).

I used Spanish for several years at a job in San Francisco but there it was more important for me to be understood than to understand. I can talk fine with other slow Americans. Also I can communicate easily what I mean to Dominicans but when a Dominican is speaking to me it is like listening to a song from a radio station faraway. I can catch words and phrases among the noise but I understand totally only when the signal is particularly clear. I (almost) always get the gist but often miss details. Yes, I am thrilled to be invited to your party but I have no idea where we are meeting or at what time.

Despite that, I am an "advanced" student so my Spanish class is not focused on the practice of grammar and vocabulary but on practical application thereof. As a group we have been required to plan and execute community projects and that means speaking in Spanish without a net. This is how I came to find myself entering the offices of the ayuntamiento (municipal services division) to meetloop with the alcade (mayor) of the pueblo. Hello. I am Kevin. I come from Cuerpo de Paz from the United States.  Us volunteers are organizing a cleaning of the river for el dia de la tierra. Can the ayuntamiento help us?

Such a meeting is bread and butter for me in English but the idea of doing it in Spanish provoked some anxiety. I knew I would recognize the alcalde from his posters all over town (it's an election year - more on that later) but what would I say if he asked me difficult questions? I ended up speaking to his assistant - the alcalde was presumably campaigning - who thought highly of Cuerpo de Paz and spoke slowly for my benefit.

It went exactly as a meeting would in the US except that he did everything longhand on paper. There was no computer anywhere in the office.  He called in the head of the workers who did not speak slowly but I survived. I had to ask him to repeat himself more than once. Would the ayuntamiento be able to help us? Yes, his honor the alcalde would be thrilled to assist the volunteers of Cuerpo de Paz in cleaning up the river with local youth. How many students would we be bringing?

We had already planned to paint a map of the world on a wall at a local liceo (high school) the day before the river. We had also prepared a short charla on environmental conservation. We hoped to recruit some kids there and there's 16 volunteers, so let's say 30 total?

Thirty estudiantes! Que Bueno!

CBT is a busy time. Training sessions and Spanish class run from 8 to 5. Parts of most weekends and evenings are devoted to tarea: individual assignments and group projects. We get so busy that we barely have time to play dominoes and drink cerveza. The morning of the day of we were to paint the mural we took a field trip to a cacao factory in the campo. In a small settlement of 300 souls a dozen women turned the local harvest into dulces, bollos, and vino. They were supported by a PC volunteer who functioned as a sort of live-in business consultant. It was a wonderful project to see.

The fábrica was 40 minutes from the carretera (highway) deep among the fincas de cacao acessible only by treacherous dirt roads. Our guagua bottomed out more than once and a times the river ran over the road a few inches deep.

they were so treacherous that the locals staged a huelga to demand the local government improve them. It is after all an election year and the síndico (the same guy as the alcalde but in a different position, something akin to a state senator - DR politics will get their own post when I am less confused) should be paying attention. The manifestantes felled trees and blocked the road at both access points to the highway. It was a nonviolent action. We were safe but would be delayed. We rolled up the windows and turned around.

Our only option was to cut north, deeper into the campo, through even worse roads to reach a different carretera. As we proceeded into the interior the houses turned from concrete (the construction staple of the Dominican well-to-do) to frayed wood, a legacy of an earlier poorer time. The faces on the campaign posters changed. People sat on their front lawns and laughed at us from plastic chairs. I am sure they thought us to be profoundly confused tourists. Eventually the land flattened and we were in a new country. The fincas gave way to fields of piña and we found the carretera.

Our chofer got us back without complain but three hours later than we planned. We had called the directora of the liceo from the road. It was not a problem to reschedule the mural and the charla but it would be after earth day and we wouldn't be able to recruit estudiantes for the river clean up. After the

The next day my Spanish class advanced, sin estudiantes and somewhat shamefacedly, to the river. It was a gorgeous morning.

Lacking cars and packed into busy families, Dominican teenagers go to the river to have fun and accidentally start new families. We found evidence of this in the bushes and on the banks. Workers from the ayuntamiento joined us. They had provided fundas (plastic bags; Dominicans use the more common Spanish bolsa to refer primarily to the scrotum) and latex gloves for 50, but between bothe groups we were about 15.

The head of the workers was there. He explained that his men (and they were all men) hadn't visited the river to clean up since Semana Santa the previous month after which they removed about 25 fundas of picnic debris.  We worked side-by-side, my radio tuning in and out of my English thoughts to catch the kind of words that working men exchange on a hot day: curses (Dominicans use "c**t" with the versatility that Americans use "f**k") chistes, and fragments of popular songs.

Some unscheduled Dominicans came and the head man entreated them to volunteer: ¿No tienes consciente? Don't they have a social conscious? No, they were just there to wash their horses, or their motorcycles, or themselves.

The radio signal tuned in perfectly for me to hear him say: "It's a c**ting shame that the only volunteers that clean our river have to come all the way from the US.

I wanted to tell him he needn't be embarrassed. The river, honestly, wasn't any dirtier than one in any similarly poor area of the US. I have sat on river banks in depopulated areas of Michigan where no one has come for the beer bottles and condom wrappers in a long time. I wanted to explain to him all the complexity of what had lead to that moment, but I was shameful of my Spanish and tired.

Between us we removed about 20 bags of trash, some of it half-buried in the tierra. Behind a bush I found some feed bags filled with earth. I asked the head man about them and he told me that they had been gathered by a caco farmer to use as potting soil for new plants. These we let be.

Thoughts on the Third World

There's a movie I have seen about the Third World. Actually it's not one film but many, so many that I can't recall one specifically. An exotic montage of unrelated images run together in my mind.

You know exactly what I'm talking about: crowded market places teeming with brown people chattering in non-English, farm animals walking in the street alongside motorized vehicles, auto exhaust shimmering in the heat, beggars missing limbs. The images are quickly intercut and jarring, setting the scene until Indiana Jones or some other asshole comes charging through.

I live in the Third World now. The Human Development Index in parts of the Dominican Republic is on par with parts of Africa, even near the capitol city. I have seen all the images listed above, here, in my own life. But this does not tell the whole story of this place. The DR is no more a Third World cliché than I am Indiana Jones.

The residencial where I live gets water two times a week. I get to brush my teeth everyday because my house has a cistern beneath where Don Pedro parks the car. One of my neighbors keeps horse in his garage and I have seen cows grazing in a vacant lot. But Santo Domingo has a metro that will get you downtown safely and cleanly - it is much better maintained that the one in San Francisco. The government recently established nueve once -  911 - to handle emergency calls. We have the only IKEA in the Caribbean.

Sometimes when I am walking, I can believe that I am in that Third world cliché. The woman who passes me in the street is loudly hawking avocados from a bowl balanced on her head. She is so thin that she has to be hungry. The sidewalk that we share is mostly rubble. We are inches away from a road speeding with motocicletas that carry three passengers plus the driver, none of whom are wearing helmets. And then I turn the corner and enter the parking lot of a supermercado, air-conditioned and as well-stocked as any Walmart. They play, and sell, American pop music.

The rapid switch can be jarring, but more jarring is how regularly these two worlds overlap. People in my barrio walk for exercise in new sneakers but brandish big sticks to fend off perros callejeros (stray dogs). The man behind me at the ATM has a machete in his belt and I am unafraid because I know that it is used from chopping caña (sugar cane) and not unsuspecting victims. The guagua (bus) that takes me across town has broken seats and missing doors but the one that takes me across the country has wifi. I can write this blog on my laptop as it charges because today is not Saturday. That's when the luz (electricity) goes out. The power company schedules the day of the shortage but not the hour.

A Memory of Swans

I rose from an afternoon nap and walked to the end of the road. I was well-rested but slow-waking and in that fuzzy space between I wondered where the swans were.

When I was small my grandparents, my mother's father and mother, lived on a short street in suburban Michigan which ended at a little pond and the owner of that property kept a pair of swans on the water. In my childhood I would often walk down to look at them.

There were no swans at the end of this road. There was no pond but rather a cañada, a sewage canal between banana trees that is actually quite lovely except for the smell. I was not in suburban Michigan but in a residencial in Santo Domingo, the capital of the Dominican Republic, where my wife and I are undergoing training to serve in the Peace Corps.

I can only suppose that I conflated this new reality with a nearly forgotten memory because the people I am currently living with so remind me of my grandparents, now deceased. Like them their skins are tan from childhoods on farms, a lifetime of hard work, and a retirement spent in the tropics. Grandma Violet and Grandpa Leo spent their latter winters in Florida whereas Don Pedro and Doña Esperanza enjoy retirement in their native country having spent their working years in Nueba Yol (New York City). Like them, they are Catholic, cherish their families and enjoy dominoes. I am grateful to know them. They have opened their home to my wife and I in the middle of a profound and disorienting experience. They serve good food and seem to enjoy our company despite our mediocre Spanish.

Don and Doña are Spanish titles of respect given to anyone of a certain age. Their nearest English equivalents are "Sir" and "Ma'am" but they carry more gravitas. You needn't have nietos (grandchildren) to be a   Don or Doña but chances are you probably do. I will refer to them by their titles and first names only, not just to respect their privacy but also as a matter of policy. Peace Corps prohibits me from disclosing certain details about my service.

If you are reading this, chances are you know me, but if you don't I encourage you to leave a comment in the and say hi. I hope to update this once a week and will try to address any questions come up. But, as noted above, I won't be able to include certain specifics. I can guarantee that it all otherwise happened as described. However, It won't necessarily have occurred on the day it is posted. I want to allow time to process experience before writing about it. This first entry, today, comes three weeks after I have been in the country.

A final thought, about the title of this blog: an hombre serio is a "serious man," one worthy of respect. It has been stressed to us repeatedly that maintaining a dignified appearance is important in Dominican society and thus crucial to being trusted enough to get things done. I intend to do my best to keep up appearances while I am here - why should they take me seriously if I can't even bother to shave every morning? I imagine that this will elicit a chuckle from readers who have known me for a long time. For those who don't, I'm sure that I'll stumble sooner or later and my missteps will out me for the goof that I am.

Cero means "zero."