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.

A Tale of Two Murals

Two friends of mine in San Francisco are landscape designers. When, about this time last year, I was asked to oversee the installation of an educational garden at an underserved school I went to them first. They are at the top of their game, well-respected and well-connected, and were generous with their time and talents and their network. They not only worked for free but recruited a well-known local artist to paint a mural at the school and got them to work for free, too.

It was an exciting project. My friends put together an innovative design with several unique features, almost all of which never got off the drawing board. There was a permit that we had to sign, you see. It was over 20 pages and had very specific guidelines about what could and couldn't happen. Must of what we wanted fell into the "couldn't" category. The mural was one of these things. It wasn't exactly prohibited by the garden permit but was subject to it's own 10 page permit. This required the artist to, among other things, submit the proposed design to the Design Approval Committee for review and sign away all rights to their work while at the same time agreeing to maintain the mural if it was damaged.

They didn't sign it and I can't blame them. I wouldn't have signed it, either, though I did sign the other permit. The kids didn't get a mural but they did get the garden, even if it was a pale imitation of the original vision. The permitting process dragged on for months and was so dispiriting that one of my designer friends literally broke down in tears at one point.

What does this have to do with the DR, you ask? Well, despite having been here for less time than the aforementioned permitting process, my fellow volunteers and I have already completed a mural at the wall of a school. This was another project of my "advanced" Spanish class. Here's a picture of it:



I am (almost) not exagerrating when I say that we were able to complete this world map in less time than it took me to read the permits for the San Francisco project. The "permit" here was a simple conversation with the directora of the school. Instead of bureacratic obstructionism the process was marked by trust and flexibility. When the project was delayed (twice) by political actions and (once) by weather we had only to make a simple phone call to change plans.

In a previous entry of this blog, I used the phrase "Third World" when reflecting upon the Dominican Republic. A fellow volunteer has since told me that "developing nation" it a more accurate phrase. As I noted, it's not that the DR doesn't have the stuff of modernity it's just that it's not always evenly distributed or hasn't reached same height of complexity. In that vein, it's not that don't Dominicans have bureaucracy but it hasn't invaded all levels of society in the way it has in "developed" countries like my own.

Sometimes, this is a good thing.

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.

What is the worth of a bird in the bush?

I was sitting in a plastic chair in the galeria at the front of the house, working on this blog, when my don passed me carrying a slingshot. He
took a rock from the gravel driveway and shot it into the bushes. I asked what he was aiming for.

"There's a bird I want to kill."

"What kind of bird?"

"Un palmero."

I wasn't sure I understood. "The national bird of the Dominican Republic? Why do you want to kill one?"

"Because they taste good."

My don here in CBT is running for office and for the right reasons. He hopes to serve for the love of his community. He is decente y educado and here he was  attempting to shoot his national bird. I couldn't help but laugh. I explained that in the US a person shooting the national bird would probably be arrested.

"¿Por qué?"

I explained that the bald eagle is "scarce," not knowing the word for endangered. He explained that there are mucho palmero in the RD and nobody worries about them. There's lots for them to eat here and so lots of them are eaten. He told me that if I brought a pair of bald eagles here in a cage, un varon y una hembra, there would be lots of them in no time.

I've never heard of anyone eating a bald eagle, except at legendary feasts where the rich and evil dine intentionally on endangered species. I don't know if this actually has ever happened. I just heard the story when I was in my early 20s and kept company with paranoid activists. Bald eagles, of course, became endangered due to environmental contamination. Toxins in the waters where they hunted accumulated in their food and thinned the shells of their eggs. They were as rare as unicorns when I was growing up. I didn't see one outside of a zoo until a few years ago when I saw one flying not far from the Golden Gate Bridge. If I'd taken a picture, I could have put it on a political flier.

DR environmental regulation and enforcement are surprisingly strong for the region - Haiti has effectively none and you can see the difference in outcome in photos taken from outer space - but it still lags behind the U.S. I am uncertain if bald eagles would thrive here but palmeros, for what they're worth, seem made of tougher stuff. I don't know if eagles taste good and am uninterested in finding out. Like most Americans, the idea raises feelings akin to sacrilege.

One of those quirky facts that stays in your mind long after high school history is that the US national bird was almost something more acceptably edible.  Benjamin Franklin suggested the common turkey as an alternative. Turkeys, too, are native to the US and bald eagles were known to scavenge and occasionally steal from other birds - in addition to soaring majestically over the waters.

I imagine an alternative alternative universe like those in bad science fiction. There, some alternative American is hunting a turkey right now, his heart full of patriotism as he pulls back the slingshot.

How to Play Dominoes

My wife and I own a set of dominoes with fruit on them instead of numbers. The set is called, both charmingly and obviously, "fruitominoes." We read that dominoes is a national pastime in the DR, so we packed our set. We have since discovered - though, it seems glaringly obvious now - that every Dominican household already has a set. If we do end up using the fruitominoes it will likely be in our own home, wherever that ends up being.

We played it once or twice before we left, but prior to that it had probably been 20 years since I last had. I hated it. It seemed stupid. Why would I want to spend time matching numbers that I drew randomly from a pile? It was something I did because I was expected to when we visited my grandparents. I would excuse myself to do something solitary as soon as I had the chance. At the time I was so busy being bored that I failed to notice two important facts about the game.

The first is that although the fichas (tiles) are dealt randomly, the outcome is far from arbitrary. As with all enduring games there is an element of chance but strategy and attention to detail matter. You can count dominoes the same way you count cards. This is not considered cheating. A skilled player will have a good idea of what is in the hands of the opposing players. In games of four, the players form teams of two sitting across the table from each other. You have to work together without communicating directly. I don't know the Spanish for "table talk" but it goes over here about as well as it does back in the US. Tile counting is all the more important with teams because you need to think about the best moves for two players. This is challenging for people who, like me, are unaccustomed to thinking in terms of limited probability and is all the more impressive considering that a good session of dominoes usually involves more than one round of cerveza.

The other important fact about dominoes is that the game doesn't really matter at all. It's nice if you know the rules - if you don't, Dominicans will gladly teach you - and better still if you are a skilled player but the most important part is the time spent together. The Spanish word for this is compartir, which means "to share." In practice, it's meaning has something common with our US notion of "quality time" but has additional subtlety. While substance is certainly appreciated, quantity matters too: confianza ("trust," the secondary product of compartir) accumulates like interest in a bank account. When you compartir, you soak up each others presence like a plant does the sun and from this a trusting relationship can blossom.

A key part of CBT is a performing a diagnostic in which you ask community members probing, sometimes nosy questions about their families, religion, how much they earn, etc. It makes perfect sense that in order to provide meaningful assistance to a community you need to get to know it first, but how do you get people to answer such intimate questions? One answer is dominoes.

During research for my community diagnostic, I spoke to the dueña (owner) of a local colmado - think of a corner store where people also drink and dance in the evenings. The colmado is across the street from where a friend lives. I've visited him there to work on projects and have shared meals with his host family. The dueña knows the doña of that household and, more importantly, she knows that the doña knows me. She also knows me because friends and I have passed many an evening at her establishment drinking cerveza and playing dominoes once our work is done. It's mostly us gringos but when there is an opening at the table we offer the spot to any Dominican who wishes to join us. She has sat across the table from me herself. When it came time to ask diagnostic questions she spoke openly about her community, her business, and herself because I had earned some confianza.

Compartir and confianza are key concepts in Dominican culture. They have been drilled into us during core PC training in a way that seemed redundant at first but I have since come to appreciate. In a society where the official systems, be they government or business, don't function as reliability as they should  personal trust is that much more important. This could be a chicken/egg thing - maybe the systems don't work well because people put relationships above impartiality? - but it's too early for me to call and nothing I think I will be in a position to change. Right now, I am just really glad I learned to play dominoes.

Catholicism, here and there

Since my last entry, I've left the capitol and moved to a medium sized pueblo of about 15,000 souls. I'm here for what is called CBT: Community-Based Training. Having learned the rules and been assessed for Spanish, the time has come for Peace Corp to teach me the job Iv'e been sent to do. I won't say much about this particular pueblo because (A) I can't and (B) I won't be here much longer.

My life here is similar to the resedencial in Santo Domingo - host family, days dominated by training sessions - but one thing that has changed is that I've begun attending Catholic mass every Sunday. I bitterly split with the Church of Rome in my adolescence - not long after my confirmation, which itself was not long after I was conscripted by my parents - but since then my spiritual outlook has evolved considerably and I am now far more simpático than when I was a rabid teenage atheist. I now recognize in the Church an authentic spiritual root hidden within the drawers of it's international bureaucracy. Even if we disagree on many particulars, I feel comfortable enough to accompany my doña to la misa like a good son.

Regardless of its ambivalent place in my life, the Catholic Church is a major part of life in the DR, so it makes sense that I should know it a little better. The padres showed up shortly after Columbus and it's been a major part of the Dominican spirit ever since. Catholicism is the official state religion in the DR. Catholic holidays are government holidays. The country shuts down for Semana Santa (Holy Week).  The president required be Catholic - it's literally in the Constitution - and the warm that the current prez has shown towards Evangelicals (who are in ever increasing numbers here) has lead some Dominican conservatives to whisper that he is a closet Protestant, much like how American paranoids worry that Obama is secretly Muslim.

La misa is the same. I stand and sit along with the crowd. I skip eucaristía (communion) but throw a few pesos into the collection basket and exchange peace with the crowd. It feels good. On the morning of the day I write, this my dona and I sat in separate pews and she seemed really overjoyed to see me after 40 minutes of separation.

I pay close attention to the padre. It's great Spanish practice! During the homily, he he lectures the flock on their general disloyalty to the sacraments. It's true, while faithful (literally every guagua and taxi bears a banner attesting to the drivers trust in God) your average Dominican is not very devout. Semana Santa is mostly an excuse to go on vacation. In many communities, cohabitation is more common than marriage by church or state. Today, the padre takes pains to remind the flock that Protestants can't be padrinos (godparents) no matter how good they are at dominoes.

It is the only Catholic church I can recall without an imposing crucifix looming over the nave. There is a small one adjacent to the altar but behind it, in place of the suffering Christ, is a mural.  It is ably painted, though in a style more reminiscent off a comic book than the renaissance. Above a banner reading "Resucitó!" Jesús hovers among white clouds, looking as powerful and healthy as Superman.  He is exactly as white as I, the whitest person in the room. The angels that surround Him are nearly as white as the clouds in His painted heaven.

This interests me because Dominicans are a deeply mulato people. I know the English equivalent of that word is no longer polite in the US but Dominicans use it as a neutral description with no shame. There are of course, white Dominicans, but I there are none in this church and I've yet to see any in the pueblo. Virtually all the parishioners have clear African ancestry, with skin tones ranging from caramel to roasted coffee. There's a lot to say on this topic, but Dominican ideas about race, and its attendant landmines, will have to wait for another entry.

The parishioners are many. Unlike lots of churches I have been to in the US this place is packed. Every pew is full. Many stand in the aisle and those who were really tarde stand outside where the motos are parked. In Michigan, where I was born, some dioceses are so desperate that churches are being consolidated or closed altogether. Many churches are so vacant that they only have one mass a week, delivered by an itinerant priest who roams the parish like a regional auditor. This is partially because of the brain drain - like many of my educated peers, I left my home state for greener pastures - but I've seen it in thriving cities too.

In San Francisco I lived on a block mostly filled by a Catholic church. The attendant school was filled with White and Asian children whose parents were terrified of the public schools. Shortly before leaving, my wife and I met a young married couple who was new to the church. They told us that of the hundreds of children in the school, the only two or three of their families actually attended church. The priest was so excited to have new young family join that he wanted to feature them in the newsletter. This is a city founded as a Catholic mission and historically home to working class and Irish and Italians.

The simple fact is that young American men simply don't want to be priests and increasing numbers of Americans don't want to be Catholic altogether. In the suburbs of San Francisco, my mother-in-law attends a church predominantly filled by immigrants from Southeast Asia and Latin America.

I wonder if the DR is in for a similar shift in the near future. Protestants (Evangelicals, Mormons, Testigos de Jehova, etc.) are a growing presence. And the Church's eternal prohibition of female clergy poses another problem. In this church their are five altar girls assisting the priest. This may seem surprising in such a macho culture, but girls are conditioned to responsibility by traditional roles at home and better prepared to assist the padre. Boys take to Church about as well as they do to school (la delicuencía is a huge problem in the DR; that, and gender roles, warrant a later entry). The majority of the muchachos in the pews are young enough that their mothers can still drag them by their ears.

Given these conditions, I can see a future where the DR clergy is much like in the US. The priest, if young, is from Nigeria, the Philipines, or Vietnam. If he is native born he is very old. I wonder if the pews will still be full.

Residencial vs Barrio

Barrio is the Spanish word for neighborhood and when I first arrived in Santo Domingo, I used the word it to refer to the area where I live. My doña was quick to politely correct me that we live in a residencial, but my Spanish was so poor that I didn't ask why.

I have since learned the difference, and will share the distinctions that Dominicans value and some of my own observations.

If our residencial were in the United States, I would describe it as lower middle class. University professors (very well paid in the DR) live here but it's mostly populated by industrious people who often work more than one job and sometimes operate an informal business out of their home. The DR doesn't have much of a middle class at all so even the lower end is something that people are proud of.

The residencial is divided into irregularly shaped manzanas (literally "apples" but meaning "blocks") comprised of single family homes. These are universally one or two story structures with a cement patio fronting the street. There may be potted plants but nothing like a lawn. The entire premise - the windows, the doors, the driveway - is enclosed in hierro (iron bars), which are often so gracefully ornamented that you can almost forget their function. Virtually all are occupied, most by their owners, some by renters and some by semi-permanent housesitters paid by owners who live in the US. The road into the residencial is mediated by a portón (gate) with a wachiman (I'll let you guess about that one) who monitors incoming traffic.

Unlike gated communities in the US, several businesses and churches and schools exist within the enclosure, motoconchos (motorcycle taxis) come and go more or less freely, and chiriperos (street vendors) are permitted to enter so long as they present a cédula (national ID card).  After 2 AM, the portón is locked and only vehicles with residential ID stickers are permitted to enter.

There is a junta de vecinos (neighborhood association) much like the Home Owners Association in my parents' subdivision, headed by a director (same spelling, different pronunciation) who is elected by common vote and serves a term of two years. The junta (this word means simply "group" and is used without any of the connotations of corruption that it has in the US) handles contracts with the wachiman and waste pickup, internal noise complaints, etc.

Unlike your garden variety American HOA the junta can manifest real political power. My doña tells me that our residencial used to be part of a larger billing group that included some neighboring barrios. During a drought the water company cut service because so many people weren't paying for service. The junta organized the vecinos to continue paying even though they weren't receiving any water and thus persuaded the utility to break off our residencial into a separate billing unit. Now, we enjoy regular water service two times a week during the rainy seasons, and at least once a week during the dry months.

In a barrio, it's different. There may be a junta and even a portón but, my doña warns me, it makes little difference. Todo el mundo (literally "the whole world") can come and go freely. Crímen, she says, is much worse, and if the neighbors play their music too loudly or too late there is no one to handle it (Dominicans don't bother the policía with such trivialities and don't trust them much in any case). Water and luz are less dependable. Already, some of my fellow Peace Corps Trainees who have been placed in the barrios have suffered water shortages, even though it is not yet summer. A house may lack a proper tinaco (water tank) and store water instead in barrels and plastic buckets.

I've visited PCTs in the barrios and it does feel different. Instead of only single family homes there are multi-story apartment buildings. There is more trash in the street (people in the residencial keep the fronts of their homes and businesses clean but no one takes responsibility for the common areas). Graffiti accumulates and one bothers to paint over it. There are less bars, but that may be because they cost so much.

It also feels more alive. The street life is more active and festive. PCTs from the barrios come to my residencial to enjoy a meditative morning jog and we go to the barrio when there is a party. The parties are modest and mostly temperate because PC does not permit us to walk the streets after 7 PM - we would have to take a taxi door-to-door, even if it's a short walk - and in any case we wouldn't want to scare our doña to death.