The tube burst again.

We've been 8 days without agua but there has been no rain.

So, I walk this dog . . .

. . . along this path . . .

.. . . to this cañada . . .

. . . to fill buckets to flush the toilet. (We have, no joke, asked our landlord to install una latrina - an outhouse.)

This little pilgrimage takes me past these modest homes.

This is one of the Haitian enclaves in town.  Here, there is no running water and no electricity. Food is cooked over a fogón -  a "stove" that, lacking a chimney, is basically an indoor campfire. When we signed up for Peace Corps service these are the type of living conditions that I imagined Cat and I would experience, but to be honest, I'm glad we don't. I am grateful for the luz and water - fitful though they might be.

This particular enclave only has two houses. There are other houses much larger. For the most part the Haitian community of our pueblo lives in the old houses where the Dominicans lived before the installation of the concrete houses that give the pueblo it's congnitive-dissonance-inducing suburban appearance.  The enclaves themselves tend to be on foot trails off the main, paved streets.

These homes are often literally behind the homes of Dominicans, like a shadow. This is sadly appropriate. The Haitians make up a good half of the population in town and do more than half of the agricultural labor in town - the type of work that many Dominicans have left (or hope to leave) behind as their increasingly educated children head to university instead of the finca. That is to say, as their society develops.

I have written 30+ entries in this blog and this is my third about water scarcity. I write about it because it is a much bigger part of my life here than I anticipated, because I find it interesting, and, because it helps me process the stress of the experience.

I hope that it doesn't sound like complaining because I know that however challenging this is to me, it is that much harder for the inhabitants of these humble houses.

Small world, small starts

The other day Cat and I woke early to get on the first pickup out of town to head to a community called (in Spanish) "The Cherry Trees". We went there to meet some Chris and Matt of Earth Sangha, the NGO who were the iniciating force behind the tree planting that we participated in not long after we first arrived in site.

I recognize that the phrase "iniciating force" is somewhat awkward, so allow me an explanatory note: I want to give ES the credit they deserve but not all of it. They are essential to the reforestation project of which the planting was a small part - they literally started the project and it is doubtful that this type of project would have (literally) taken root without them - but the vast majority of the work is done on the ground by Dominicans.  The planting we participated in was organized by another Peace Corps volunteer with the help of the local Asociación de Productores del Bosque ("Association of Forest Producers"). There are 3 paid staff here in the DR and the directors of ES only need to visit once or twice a year.

Before heading out to check on the seedlings we planted we sat down with Chris and Matt for a get-to-know you conversation.  Cat recorded some great audio that should be up on the podcast shortly.  Earth Sangha is an interesting organization. Sangha is a Buddhist word that means "collection of things". Originally the word referred to the community of monks who followed the Buddhas but can also be understood to include the community of all living beings. Por lo tanto, the "sangha" in ES includes not just the staff and the members of the association but also the trees themselves and the wildlife that will return to the new forest.

It turns out that Chris, the founder, and I studied under the same Buddhist teacher despite doing so at different decades in different countries and being more than 20 years apart in age. Small world! So how did Chris come to planting trees after studying Buddhism?

After many years working for an organization trying to raise awareness about the dangers of deforestation he wanted to produce more tangible results than just reports. He began with the idea in 1997 and after nearly 10 years of false starts he was able to establish a sustainable project among the Cherry Trees of la República Dominicana. To me, this is an inspiring Buddhist lesson about the importance of persistence in the face of difficulty, whether he thinks of it that way or not. A key Zen teaching is "continue under all circumstances" - never give up. No matter what happens.

And so today the Earth Sangha has led to the reforestation of over 200 acres of hillside in the Cherry Trees. Erosion has been halted, rainwater conserved and pesos injected into the local economy. I am truly impressed by the variety of different programs that ES operates here and in the US. I won't go into all that here since their website does a far better job of that and has better pictures. Check it out and donate some money while you are at it.

So how are the trees doing?

There was some failure but enough have taken hold that a forest will soon stand where now there is only grass.

In Peace Corps we often talk about the long game of sustainable development. Unlike other groups that build buildings or donate goods PC works with the people to introduce ideas and teach techniques that will continue to have impact long after we've left. Volunteers don't get to see that impact while they are in country and may never see it at all. Some volunteers leave country after two years of hard work with the feeling that they have failed.  The metaphor often used is that PC service is like planting trees in whose shade you will never get to sit. I get that - I just never thought it would be so literal!

Coño y vaina

A toddler called me a c*nt the other day.

I was helping his mother with her English homework and he kept demanding her attention by attempting to destroy things. She and I took turns wrangling him and I think I surprised him with how fuerte I was. When it sank in that I meant business he pointed at me and said: "Coño. Tú."

I am unsure what he meant by that.

Don't get me wrong, I am 100% confident on the translation: tú means "you" and coño refers to that other thing.  Also, I am sure that he knew what he meant. What I am still unsure of is how offensive this word is in Dominican Spanish.

I know that in Mexican Spanish coño is considered pretty vulgar. Years ago, while working in a greenhouse, I asked a Mexicana coworker to pass me the following plant:



In English this is called a "Rabbit's Foot Fern" which would translate to Pata de Conejo, but with my terrible Spanish I asked for a Pata de Coño. The deep discomfort instantly visible on her face told me how much I had embarrassed her, even if it was an accident. Generally speaking, Mexico has a very conservative culture.

They say that you can tell a lot about a culture by it's curse words. Por ejemplo, curses in Castellano (that's what they call Spanish in Spain) feature a lot of Catholic imagery. Given that Spain has gone from the land of the Inquisition to one of the most atheistic countries in Europe I don't think it is a stretch to imagine that phrases "Yo cago en la hostia" ("I sh*t on the communion host") are a reflection of the ambivalent relationship Spaniards have with their Catholic history. 

Some say that the US notion of obscenity, which elevates "f*ck" to the highest level of vulgarity and considers "c*nt" to be borderline hate speech, reflects our culture's unease with sexuality. In other English speaking countries c*nt is considered only mildly vulgar. In Australia and the U.K. calling someone a c*nt is like calling them a jerk. Both those countries have had female prime ministers whereas we can barely muster a female candidate so perhaps it says something about our relationship to female power as well.

The Dominican Republic may be in the Americas but when it comes to coño Dominicans are clearly not Americans.  They use the c-word so often that I won't bother to censor it here.

It's not just that they use it a lot that fascinates me but who gets to say it and in what context. The toddler I told you about was not castigated by his mother and I don't think this is a matter of lax parenting. I have seem campesinos discipline their children for talking back but that same child is allowed to holler coño and drive cattle through the street with a bullwhip. Groups of children shout coño while they play in the street. If a group of my friends and I had been overheard shouting f*ck, c*nt or even "oh hell" someone would have told my parents and I would have been in a world of trouble.

This, of course, would have been a double standard. My parents swore all the time growing up - I learned to talk from them after all - and now that I am an adult I curse in their company without making either of us uncomfortable. I have become one of those millennials that sprinkle sentences with the word "f*ck" like salt over popcorn. I am so comfortable with the f-bomb that I feel a little silly censoring it here. But I do it because I am writing in a professional context. Casual conversation is one thing but you (almost) never say "f*ck" on the job. This double standard is part of my culture and so it makes perfect sense to me.

The rules of Dominican swearing are still unclear. I have mentioned previously the versatility with which Dominicans use coño and at that time I assumed that the word and was roughly equivalent to "f*ck" and that concho (the second most common curse) was more like "goddamn." But now I suspect that there is no easy parallel to be drawn. 

It's not that Dominican campesinos are inherently vulgar people or that the concept of obscenity doesn't exist in the DR. Most Dominicans would never curse God like a Spaniard. Coño, if not exactly obscene, is clearly considered a strong word: the muchacho called me coño because he was mad. My project partner might mutter it under his breath when he can't get the computer to work but we would never say it to a client. You never hear anyone say it on TV.

Another word that interests me is vaina. It's an informal way to refer to an object - like calling something "crap" in English. My deeply Evangelical host mother, who says concho sometimes, won't say vaina. I think that the obvious etymology of the word is what bothers her. Not clear what I'm hinting at? Insert a "g" between the first "a" and the "i."

In other Spanish speaking countries "vaina" refers to a sheath. This comes from the Roman Latin "wagina" which referred both to what you put a sword in and the female reproductive organ. My host mother learned her religion from American missionaries and perhaps along with the theology she absorbed some of our discomfort. Non-evangelical Dominicans call the thing I stick my machete in a paqueta ("packet") and call just about everything else a vaina. The word features in the title of some movies.

"¡Qué vaina!"

So what does swearing tell me about DR culture? Coño if I know!

I suppose, if anything, the little sense of what I have made of all of this only reinforces my key perception of campo culture: people are very casual here. Campesinos wear flip flops into city hall and will answer the door in only a towel. In Dominican cities where they produce TV shows and have a professional culture similar to ours people dress for success and use double standards but here in the campo people say what they mean without shame and drive bulls down the streets with whips and blunt words.

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.

Buen provecho, buen tiempo

When you see someone eating in the DR it is customary to wish them "Buen provecho," which more or less translates to "Bon appetit." This is a ritualized greeting. You say it like you say "salud" (health) when someone sneezes. This is more common in the campo than in the city, which leads me to believe it is an older custom.

You are especially obliged to say "buen provecho" if someone sees you see them eating and first wishes you "A buen tiempo." Not responding to "a buen tiempo" with "buen provecho" is straight up rude, like not saying "You're welcome" when someone thanks you.

Confused? Allow me to translate.

A buen tiempo means literally "A good time."

Buen provecho means literally "good advantage" or "good benefit."

Still confused? Don't feel bad. This custom continued to mystify Cat and I long after we had adopted it ourselves. I recall clearly a visit not long after we arrived in site while we were making our initial introductions to the community. We entered a house to find an older man eating who was quick to wish us a buen tiempo. Seconds ticked by painfully and his smile turned to a frown. He stared at us impatiently as if we were holding him up. "Buen provecho," he prompted us. Only Cat stammered "buen provecho" did he return to eating, clearly annoyed at our maleducación.

Later, at home we attemped to process the incident together.

"What the hell was that about?"

"I don't know!"

We imagined the encounter in English.

"Good times over here!"

"Well, good on you for taking advantage of it!"

Guandules, pigeon peas. ¡Good times!

What kind of person, when eating, looks at a stranger who is clearly not eating and not only brags about what a good time they are having but also gets mad when the possibly hungry person doesn't congratulate them? It seemed uncouth. Especially since Dominicans in the campo are normally so polite and generous.

Maybe it was a hunger thing. The people in our pueblo are mostly well-fed but real hunger, as in not having enough food, persists within living memory. Or maybe it was sarcastic?

"Check it out! I'm eating!"

"Good for you, daddy-o!"

Whatever. The first days, weeks, months, were intense and overwhelming. We accepted this bizarre custom like we accepted the fact that people dip bread in their hot chocolate and call that dinner. Culture is just weird sometimes. It can't be helped. It's like in English how the correct answer to "How are you?" is "I'm fine," regardless of how you really feel.  What's truly weird is not to play along.

Well, after 8 months in country and 6 months in site we have finally figured it out. We now have friends with enough confianza that we can ask delicate questions and our Spanish has advanced to the point that we can understand the nuance of their answers. So we asked. (Cat did).

It turns out that we had all the pieces of the puzzle but had just put them together in the wrong order. Yes, Dominicans are generous and polite. Yes, real hunger is a thing here. Yes, it is important to wish someone "a good advantage" when they are eating, especially if they first tell you what a good time they are having.

Because A buen tiempo is not a brag.  It's an invitation to dine.  As in, "Come share this good time with me." And when you wish them buen provecho you are saying "No, I'll be happier if you to take advantage of that." It's a mutual expression of care. Beyond polite, this is generous. And it means so much more in a society where hunger is still a thing.

So now when I greet my rounds and saludar my neighbors I always respond to their "buen tiempo" with "buen provecho." That is, if I don't beat them to it first!

Morbid poetry for Halloween!

Yo quiero un mapa

de viaje inesperada,

del tipo que fanteseaba

cuando era optimista.

Las fronteras rodearán

un espacio puro blanco,

o sea, vacio, como sueños

que se quedan no deseados.

Cuando trece yo tenía

todas cosas yo merecían.

Y todo descubriá

por la fuerza de fantasia.

Pero ahora con edad

me alegría tener solo

visión no prevista.

No me importa el lugar.

Cuando me muera,

solo debajo la tierra

sin guía ni pareja y

andaré nunca más.

No me importa adónde

mis huesos  estarán

mientras los gusanos comen

un cerebro bien viajado.

---------

I want a map
of an unanticipated journey,
the kind I used to fantasize about
back when I was optimistic.

The borders will surround
a blank white space,
that is to say, empty,
like dreams that stay unwanted.

When I was thirteen
I deserved everything.
And I discovered everything 
through the force of fantasy. 

 But now that I am older,
the only thing that would please me
would be an unforeseen vision.
The location doesn't matter to me.

When I die

I will leave the earth on my own,

without guide or partner, and 

I will wander nevermore. 

It matters not to me

where my bones end up

so long as the worms can eat

of a well-traveled brain.

Gratis para la gente que no puede leer

Una voluntaria
salió de la República
y dejó en la acera
afuera de su casa
dos sillas plásticas en una pila.

En esos lo
puso un letrero.
¿Qué dijó?
Te digo:

-Gratis para la gente que no puede leer.

Dos primos Dominicanos
quienes estaban paseando
(Sus nombres eran Randrika y Romeano)
vieron la pila y el letrero.
-¿Qué dices? preguntó el varón primo
a su prima alfabeta.

Y en voz alta Randrika lo leyó
a tu primo Romeano:

-Gratis para la gente que no puede leer.

La jóven bien educada pensó 
tan grosero el letrero, pero
a su primo no lo molestó.
-Perfecto, el tiguere dijó.

-A ti una silla doy.
Vamos a tu casa y luego me voy.

La pobrecita voluntaria de educación
despidió a su sitio con mucha decepción. 
Pero el letrero, su última lección,
enseña que todavía hay cosas que son
gratis para la gente que no puede leer.

---

"Free for People Who Can't Read."

A volunteer left the Republic
and left on the sidewalk outside her house
two plastic chairs in a pile.

On those she hung a sign.
What did it say? I'll tell you:

"Free for people who can't read."

Two Dominican cousins were walking by
(their names were Randrika and Romeano)
and saw the sign and pile.
"What's it say?" the male cousin asked
his literate female cousin.

And to her cousin Romeano
Randrika read in full voice:

"Free for people who can't read."

The well-educated young woman
thought the sign was very rude but
it didn't bother her cousin.
"Perfect," said the tiguere*.

"I'll give you a chair.
Let's take it to your house
and then I'm out of here."

The poor education volunteer
bid farewell to her site
with feelings of great disappointment.
But the sign, her last lesson,
teaches that some things still are
free for people who can't read.








*A word in Dominican Spanish with no direct translation. It comes from the word tigre ("tiger") and is used to describe a person with street smarts.

On throwing plastic chairs at fighting dogs

When I told a Buddhist teacher that was I serving in Peace Corps he thanked me for my "life of sincerity." I believe he did this because he assumed that my service was motivated by a desire to help relieve the suffering of others. (It was, in part. I also wanted to learn Spanish.) The one-word name for this motivation is "compassion," which is the key Buddhist virtue.

This seems beautiful and simple, but like any other world religion Buddhism is subdivided into different schools of thought and what exactly constitutes "compassion" is a matter of debate. There are probably as many different Buddhist interpretations of compassion as there understandings of God's Love among the different Christian churches.

Zen, the Buddhist school in which I have principally practiced, teaches a very specific understanding of compassion. It is not the self-sacrifice of Christ, nor charity, nor generalized goodwill toward all beings. This is all good stuff but it's just not compassion. In Zen, compassion is not just the desire to help but the correct extension of help itself. And help, also, is a complicated notion.

Sometimes when we "help" someone we do them no favors. We "help" them because it makes us feel good about ourselves and thus we do things that are unnecessary or downright counterproductive. Which is to say no help at all. Sometimes the best help is no help at all! Every parent knows that sometimes the most compassionate thing you can do for your child is to consciously withhold aid so that they will develop the capacity to do things for themselves.

Zen, in all things, is wary of multiplying entities beyond necessity and compassion is no exception. Dogen, perhaps Japan's greatest Zen Master explained Buddhist compassion by likening it to a sleeping person who adjusts their pillow in the middle of the night. They do it selflessly, without thinking of anything at all, let alone how good it will make them look. And they do it just right. No more or less than necessary and without some complicated system of ethics to justify their actions.

The checkered history of international aid is full of examples of ego-gratifying help that was really no help at all. In my Peace Corps service I think a lot about how to get things just right. I tend to err on the side of caution. Many times, it seems like so much more work would get done (and faster!) if I just pushed my Dominican counterparts aside and did things for them. But where will that leave them after I leave?

Instead, I ask questions to make them think, answer questions when I actually have the answers, and show them how to do the things that I know how that they do not, even if it takes me longer than I'd like. I am unsure if this is approach is compassionate. Sometimes though, my work here presents a situation where it is so perfectly clear what help is needed that the compassionate thing almost does itself.

The other day I visited a Dominican counterpart at her home to offer her my aid in preparing for an important, upcoming meeting. Her literacy is only so-so and though she did not ask, I imagined that she would appreciate my help composing the report required of her. She accepted my offer readily and, no, that is not the compassionate act I am talking about.

We sat in plastic picnic chairs on her front patio so she could keep an eye on the kids and as we talked I petted the following dog:

¡Superma'!

He is not mine but follows me around because, unlike many of the humans he is used to, I am kind to him and, no, that is not the compassionate act I am talking about. That virtue that is commonly translated as "loving kindness."

In the middle of our conversation, in the blink of an eye, my friends' dog confronted and attacked the dog whose head was in my lap.

There is nothing faster than fighting dogs but I was almost as fast. In the span of a second I stood, lifted the chair on which I had been sitting and launched it into the furry fray. This act so startled the dogs that they parted and fled their separate ways.

That is compassion.

The dogs might have hurt each other - they were certainly trying too! They might have hurt my friend or the children playing nearby. If I had tried to intervene more directly I might have gotten hurt. And the implement of my intervention was soft enough that it didn't hurt the dogs. It was just right.

The dogs were fighting because they were angry. Buddhism teaches that anger is one of the three poisons that we must never ingest if we ever wish to be enlightened. Yes, I am aware that dogs enjoy fighting- as do people. But Buddhism teaches that attachments to the excitements of the body (and fighting is exciting if nothing else!) will not lead dogs or people out out of suffering. Yes, Buddhism teaches that the suffering of dogs is important, and what is more, that dogs have what it takes to be enlightened. Yes, Buddhism is kind of weird.

I am confident of everything in the above two paragraphs but I had reasoned none of this before acting. I just chucked the chair like a sleeping woman reaching for her pillow and it was just right.

When the dogs were gone, I grabbed the chair again and sat on it and we resumed our conversation as if nothing major had happened.

Out of town for my 36th birthday, came home to this

A suburban house in a medieval village

We we first arrived in our Peace Corps site, I was surprised to discover that our small mountain village near the Haitian border was full of American suburban-style houses. They might be made entirely of concrete but they follow essentially the same "ranch" style floor plan that I grew up in.
Even the lot sizes are similar. 




It makes sense when you date the construction - 1990 - and for other reasons that I'll get to later but it was still something of a shock. A slightly bigger shock was discovering that our new neighbors raise pigs in their "suburban" backyard.




It's just enough space for the two pigs to roam and wallow as nature intended with room fo the out-buildings.

I shouldn't have been surprised and the host family where we initially lived raised chickens, and I later learned  (that is to say, I noticed) that the neighbors on the other side raised chickens and pigs. And that my preferred chofer raises rabbits in his backyard. And that people graze mules on their front lawns.

I also shouldn't have been surprised since this type of homesteading was once common in the U.S. and is only a generation or two out of fashion. And what is more it is coming back into fashion. Maybe not pigs, but a backyard flock has been a pretty cool things to have in certain circles for a few years now. Also, I actually used to work for an organization that promotes backyard "farming" as a solution to food scarcity in poor neighborhood.  But that was in the inner city, in the poor neighborhoods not far from the cool neighborhoods where people raise chickens. The American suburbs have staked out their identity by being located squarely between the city and the country while being neither.

I suppose that the suburban style houses made me think on some unconscious level that the pattern of living had something in common with the American suburbs, when in reality where I live is more like a medieval village, with the population clustered in the middle of productive agriculture lands.

When Americans think of farming they think of a large swath of land with a single house in the middle of it, like a lordly manor or castle. This layout works when you have lots of land to raise commodity crops like corn or soy in huge quantities and reflects our individualist culture.  But Dominicans collectivist culture doesn't lend itself to that and nor does the distribution of land. It's hard to grow row crops on the steep slopes of the hills outside (or regrettably, sometimes inside) the national park and in case most people don't own land in enough quantities to make it profitable. Some grow corn as feed but that is in flat parts and those families are few. Most grow a few tarea of cafe or abichuelas (beans) or other staple crops for home consumption and supplement with the kind of backyard ganadería (livestock) or other sources of income if they are fortunate enough to have it.

Last weekend was the Día de la Virgen de Nuestras Mercedes (The Day of the Virgin of our Mercies) and a friend invited Cat and I to a fiesta on his family finca (farm). After a short Catholiic oración before a shrine inside a small house called a rancho we got down to the business of drinking and dancing to merengue típico under the roof of an outdoor pavilion.

"Why do you have the party all the way out here?" I asked my friend.

"We used to live out here!" he shouted over the music. "There was a small pueblecito (village) out here - mostly my family. My abuelo was the last one out here after everyone else moved to town."

This pueblecito was one of many that moved into the main pueblo when the concrete houses were built. I don't know if incentivizing relocation was part of the governments plan when they built the houses but it makes perfect sense from a services perspective. Centralization makes it easier to set up public services like electricity and water.

The rodillas y llanuras (foothills and valleys) that surround the pueblo are cut through with alambre barbed-wire that marks the boundaries of family property. Some of these used to house small family settlements like my friends'. His property is about 2 km outside of town, which is a short distance by motorcycle but a long distance on foot in the rain. Many men and hired hands make a similar trip everyday.

When I think about this daily journey out of town, from home to work, the first word that comes to mind is "commute." In a sense, it is pretty suburban after all.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.