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.
Sunday, September 18, 2016
Sunday, August 14, 2016
Brief Break
Cat and I are returning to attend a family wedding. Since we won't be living in the Dominican Republic during this time I will have very little to say about it!
I hope to return to a regular schedule in early September.
I hope to return to a regular schedule in early September.
Sunday, August 7, 2016
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.
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.
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.
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.
Sunday, July 31, 2016
On living without power
I have electricity. Sometimes. Cat and I have it most of the time, actually, if we're careful. Which we usually are.
Our house has two sources of luz, actually. The first is the el panel. This was a gift from an NGO, I forget which, that gave panels to the majority of la gente a few years ago.
It weighs about 20 lbs. I heft it up onto the roof every morning to and take it down every evening to keep it from growing legs and sneaking off in the night.
El panel came with the house we are renting. It connects to batteries that store the electricity it collects throughout the day.
These are connected to an inversor that connects to the wiring in the house. You turn on the inversor and voila! there's luz.
The second source is municipal electricity. You plug a cord into the wall and there's power. It works exactly like in the US except that it doesn't work all the time. Sometimes there's just not power. Most of the time, actually. This is common throughout the country, even in the Santo Domingo (link to thoughts on the third world), though para alla and in other places that have political capital there's a schedule. Not here.
La luz arrived in the pueblo shortly before we did. In this town, lacking a paved road to connect it to the rest of the world the sight of concrete palos de luz (streetlights) along the hillside seems shockingly modern. Especially when el cable connects to a wooden house with a zinc roof.
When the la luz is off we use the panel. There's a switch that flips between the two.
These two sources more or less keep us in la luz 24/7. Just like the US, right? Wrong. La luz literally means "light," and the current in the inversor isn't good for much more than that. We can charge our phones and laptop, but forget about having a refrigerator.
The house of our host mom had a hefty inversor system gifted by a son who is a técnico de la luz. It has two car batteries and an inversor of the same size. For point of comparison, our inversor is the size of a paperback dictionary.
Even with this system her TV and fridge can't run at the same time. When using panel electricity the food only stays fresh-ish: leftovers don't keep that long but at least the lettuce doesn't wilt. And that TV? It's just a TV and quite modest at that: no DVD, no home stereo system, no Xbox, etc. All of that uses more electricity than a small home solar system can provide.
Some people still have that stuff but they can only use it when la luz is on. We can tell when it's time to switch from the inversor when our neighbor is bumping Rihanna.
This makes for a lot of small differences that add up to a significantly different lifestyle. For example, people don't have carpet here. Maybe this is because it's not a very "tropical" thing but ask yourself if you would have wall to wall rugs that couldn't be shaken out if you couldn't reliably run a vacuum cleaner. The same is true for power tools. They work when la luz is on but when you're relying on an inversor any motor with a good torque makes the lights blink.
There is a phrase I have been thinking about lately, one I have read in older texts: "all the modern conveniences." These are the things to which those words refer.
Life can still get lived, and quite well, without them. It's just less convenient. Things take longer and require more work. Which mean more labor. In the DR where power is inconsistent you see two things that used to be ubiquitous in the US but are less common these days: full time housewives and domestic help.
I think that it's no stretch to say that the edifice of modern feminism was founded on a platform of cheap energy, but that's another essay for another blog.
Another entry for this blog might be an investigation into where la luz comes from and why it is so irregular. I have done zero research but I'll dare speculate that it has something to do with the fact that DR is an island that, unlike my homeland, does not span a continent and cannot mine it's own coal.
This is one reason I am skeptical of the idea of a purely green future in which everything runs on paneles and wind farms with nary a smokestack or topless mountain to blot la vista. For this to work we would need to less energy, but instead we are using ever more. I am using electricity to write these words and you are using it to read them right now, aren't you?
Our community has a Centro de Tecnológico that it's full of computers. They run great when la luz is on. When it's not, it runs off it's own generator which is the size of a minivan.
That black stuff on the pipe? That´s soot from exhaust.
Our house has two sources of luz, actually. The first is the el panel. This was a gift from an NGO, I forget which, that gave panels to the majority of la gente a few years ago.
It weighs about 20 lbs. I heft it up onto the roof every morning to and take it down every evening to keep it from growing legs and sneaking off in the night.
El panel came with the house we are renting. It connects to batteries that store the electricity it collects throughout the day.
These are connected to an inversor that connects to the wiring in the house. You turn on the inversor and voila! there's luz.
The second source is municipal electricity. You plug a cord into the wall and there's power. It works exactly like in the US except that it doesn't work all the time. Sometimes there's just not power. Most of the time, actually. This is common throughout the country, even in the Santo Domingo (link to thoughts on the third world), though para alla and in other places that have political capital there's a schedule. Not here.
La luz arrived in the pueblo shortly before we did. In this town, lacking a paved road to connect it to the rest of the world the sight of concrete palos de luz (streetlights) along the hillside seems shockingly modern. Especially when el cable connects to a wooden house with a zinc roof.
When the la luz is off we use the panel. There's a switch that flips between the two.
These two sources more or less keep us in la luz 24/7. Just like the US, right? Wrong. La luz literally means "light," and the current in the inversor isn't good for much more than that. We can charge our phones and laptop, but forget about having a refrigerator.
The house of our host mom had a hefty inversor system gifted by a son who is a técnico de la luz. It has two car batteries and an inversor of the same size. For point of comparison, our inversor is the size of a paperback dictionary.
Even with this system her TV and fridge can't run at the same time. When using panel electricity the food only stays fresh-ish: leftovers don't keep that long but at least the lettuce doesn't wilt. And that TV? It's just a TV and quite modest at that: no DVD, no home stereo system, no Xbox, etc. All of that uses more electricity than a small home solar system can provide.
Some people still have that stuff but they can only use it when la luz is on. We can tell when it's time to switch from the inversor when our neighbor is bumping Rihanna.
This makes for a lot of small differences that add up to a significantly different lifestyle. For example, people don't have carpet here. Maybe this is because it's not a very "tropical" thing but ask yourself if you would have wall to wall rugs that couldn't be shaken out if you couldn't reliably run a vacuum cleaner. The same is true for power tools. They work when la luz is on but when you're relying on an inversor any motor with a good torque makes the lights blink.
There is a phrase I have been thinking about lately, one I have read in older texts: "all the modern conveniences." These are the things to which those words refer.
Life can still get lived, and quite well, without them. It's just less convenient. Things take longer and require more work. Which mean more labor. In the DR where power is inconsistent you see two things that used to be ubiquitous in the US but are less common these days: full time housewives and domestic help.
I think that it's no stretch to say that the edifice of modern feminism was founded on a platform of cheap energy, but that's another essay for another blog.
Another entry for this blog might be an investigation into where la luz comes from and why it is so irregular. I have done zero research but I'll dare speculate that it has something to do with the fact that DR is an island that, unlike my homeland, does not span a continent and cannot mine it's own coal.
This is one reason I am skeptical of the idea of a purely green future in which everything runs on paneles and wind farms with nary a smokestack or topless mountain to blot la vista. For this to work we would need to less energy, but instead we are using ever more. I am using electricity to write these words and you are using it to read them right now, aren't you?
Our community has a Centro de Tecnológico that it's full of computers. They run great when la luz is on. When it's not, it runs off it's own generator which is the size of a minivan.
That black stuff on the pipe? That´s soot from exhaust.
Thursday, July 28, 2016
We got a lot less work done today because someone in my community captured an endangered species
Translation:
"OK! This animal is called el solonedonte. It was captured in the foothills of Nalga de Maco National Park. This animal, I think it only exists in the island of Hispaniola and was last seen in this part - I think it could have been - in 1990. The dogs killed that one and it was dried and now it`s in the Museum of Dominican Humanity. This is the soloneodonte!"
The critter was caught by a farmer. The video was taken by my project partner. As it happens he was instrumental in the foundation of the aforementioned national park. Immediately after taking this video we got the Ministry of Environment on the line and they told him to release it back into the wild.
In terms of rarity they are somewhere between wolverine and unicorn. We showed the video to anyone willing to look. Reactions were mixed. Some shrugged ("It looks like a big rat.") to very impressed. What a difference environmental education makes.
Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hispaniolan_solenodon
Sunday, July 24, 2016
Gracias for your servicio
I was long overdue to meet one of my neighbors. In the States, especially in the cities, it is not uncommon to live for years next to someone and not know them well (or at all) but in the DR the reverse is true, especially in the campo. In addition to being good for confianza there's a pragmatic fatalism to knowing your neighbors in a small pueblo. People will know your business whether you like it or not, so you might as well pull up a plastic chair, accept a cup of coffee, and make the most of it. I wasn't exactly avoiding the neighbor in question - I said hola when I saw him - I has just been too busy to really talk.
But not too busy to be conscious of the oversight. I was very appreciative when he introduced a subject of real conversation, though I was surprised by the topic.
"My son is a colonel in el ejercito," he said to me over our shared fence, apropos of nothing.
I shouldn't have been surprised. There was a new-ish 4x4 parked in front of the house. Here in the pueblo vehículos are thin on the ground and visitors that arrive in them are usually pretty well off. He added: "He just got back from Iraq."
I was confused. "¿En el ejercito Americano?" I asked. Some Dominicans become Americans and go on to serve. His son wouldn't be the first Dominican American soldier I had here.
"No," he said, "de aquí.¨ From here.
Like many of my generation I spent the early 2000s opposing the war in Iraq: it's announcement, execution and failure. And like them I quickly forgot about it after the majority of the troops came home. One of my most embarrassing gaffes during my courtship with Cat was using the war as a preterite reference point.
"Back when the war was going on. . ." I said.
"It's still going on," she corrected me. This was 2008. It's 2016 now and it still is.
Before I knew it the son had been produced from the house. He looked exactly as one expects of an army colonel: late 20s, closely cropped hair, and imposingly fit.
I see Dominican soldiers all the time. The frontera is littered with checkpoints where las guardias stop vehicles to check for undocumented Haitian migrants. In a small country it makes sense to combine the army and the border patrol. I was mistaken in believing that this was their only occupation.
In my group of volunteers there is a man about my age who is a combat veteran. He served four tours. I am impressed by him even if, as he says, he was "just doing what he was told." He served alongside soldiers from a much ballyhooed international coalition that supported my patria's foreign misadventure. I remember being very skeptical of the smaller constituent nations of the coalition - really, what could a small country like the Dominican Republic contribute? - but never would I have imaged that I would one day meet a member of that coalition and see the smile on his face after he returned. Nor in my wildest dreams would I have imagined that his service would be 13(!) years after the initial invasion.
I shook the colonel's hand and told him that I was glad to see him home safe. He told me that it had been hard to be there and see how the people suffered but vale la pena. It had been worth it. I told him there is a refran (saying) that Americans say to soldiers: "Gracias para su servicio." Thank you for your service.
These were the same words that an aunt of mine used when she first learned that Cat and I had joined the Peace Corps. This was a woman whose step-son had seen active duty in Afghanistan. I remember being surprised at the phrase; normally Americans speak it to warriors, not to peacemakers. I accepted the compliment but was inwardly uncomfortable. Surely my sacrifice paled next to that of my cousin, who had been shot at.
As I write this now I think of a Dominican professor who is deeply grateful for the presence of Peace Corps in her country. She was tremendously impressed by the generosity of the volunteers. "They do such good work and they give two whole years of their lives." She did not use the refran. I was less uncomfortable this time.
Another volunteer in our group is a self-described military brat. Her parents recognize her work here as a service to their country not dissimilar to their own. Another volunteer has a brother in the army. She says they are proud of each other. I am glad for them and grateful for their example. If they can accept a little praise, so can I.
But this kind of appreciation does not make me think that I serve at the same level as a soldier. I chose to serve but I got to chose where I serve and what I would do here. Peace Corp volunteers do get hurt and die during service but the odds of something truly bad happening to me are vanishingly small. If I return home, which I am free to do at any time, there is no penalty or shame associated with the decision.
And respecting these soldiers does not make me believe any less in the cause of peace. Even if, like many comfortable Americans, I have been able to forget a war is being fought because I wasn't asked to fight it.
All of this, though, makes me take my work here very seriously, regardless of the name of this blog.
Tuesday, July 19, 2016
Don't take my word for it
The truth is, Cat and I are not the only volunteers in this little pueblo in the mountains. We have recently received un jóven named Chase who is kindly assisting us with an ecotourism project. He is here on an internship between Washington and Lee University and Onwards, Inc.
Like me, he maintains a blog of his experiences here.
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