We walked 14 clicks to get this video and then walked 14 clicks home

The Tropic of Beisbol

During CBT, I knew a family whose teenage son was a talented pitcher. I had trouble with his name (in my defense, there were eight kids) but I never forgot that he was (and presumably still is) actively being scouted by the Detroit Tigers. His father mentioned this to me with a particular type of pride that I recognized across the divide of language and culture. It was pride that American parents show when  their kids get into a great college. A sort of casual pride that implicitly acknowledges while this is awesome, it's something that happens to lots of people. It's something special, but not like "winning the lottery" special.

In my high school graduating class in the U.S. two students got into Harvard and another kid while another scouted by the Yankees. The kids who got into Harvard got pats on the back that showed the sort of comfortable pride I described above, while the baseball player got treated as being only slightly less important than the President of the United States.

Maybe it's a Yankees vs Tigers thing. Or maybe it's because the Dominican family I mentioned is one of achievers: the eldest daughter an abogada (lawyer) and the father is a major mover-and-shaker in the local political party.  But I think this disparity in enthusiasm is due to the fact that so many Dominicans go to the grandes ligas (Big Leagues).

Dominicans go to the Big Leagues at a greater rate than Americans go to prestigious universities; than Americans go to college at all; than Dominicans go to college at all; and, last but not least at a far greater rate than Americans go to the Big Leagues. It's not even close.

There are currently about 1000 Dominicans in the MLB system. That means in a nation of 11,000,000 people, about 0.0009% play professional ball in the U.S. With 30 clubs and about 250 players on the main team and associated farm teams that makes for about 7500 players in the Big League system. Even if the remaining 6500 are all natural born citizens of Los Estados Unidos (which they are not, but let´s pretend for simplicity's sake) in my nation of 300+ million that's only 0.00002%. That extra 0? That's literally an entire order of magnitude of difference.

All this to say that preparing Dominican youth for American ball is big business here. Would a $10 million contract blow your mind? Now imagine that feeling multiplied by an exchange rate of 45:1.

There are tons of professional trainers, many MLB veterans themselves, and there are dozens of baseball camps and academies. Like anything that involves children doing the work of adults it has it's dark side. Mother Jones called the training system  a "sweatshop" and unscrupulous trainers can pervert a mentoring relationship into something exploitative. This happens in the States with tiny gymnasts and teenage pop stars (paging Dr. Luke) but I daresay the stakes are higher here. Dominican parents are not blameless, but being broke is more forgivable than being merely fame hungry.

The business is quite a site to see, and I've only seen a little bit. And thankfully, what I've has so far, mostly been good.

In one corner of my pueblo, near the cemetery and there is a dusty play. The grass is mixed with weeds and trash blows around the bleachers, so I had assumed it was inactive. This puzzled me because I see kids playing pelota (which is what you call baseball when you play it with a stick and empty milk carton for a ball) in the street nearly everyday. It turns out I just went to the play on the wrong day. A friends brother is a trainer and one of the elementary teachers coaches a practice team.

I learned all of this when Major League Baseball came to host a clínica (clinic) in my isolated town in the mountains. Cat and I showed up to watch like everyone else in town, but unlike most of them I didn't know what clínica was. I assumed it was something vaguely medical, like a weigh-in for boxers or the type of "turn your head and cough" physical exam they put me through when I ran Cross Country in High School. It turns out a clínica is a miniature baseball training camp.

Like most Dominican events the clínica started an hour past the official time to allow everyone to show up. In that space Cat and I talked to a woman from MLB whose job is to improve the prospects of Dominican recruits to MLB. The big business I mentioned has a history of producing technically expert players with no emotional intelligence or critical thinking capabilities. They make poor decisions when in the heat of the moment and explode in the dugout afterwards. They may be professionals, but their personal development is arrested at the age they entered the system.

Players "released" from their contracts be retained by the Grandes Ligas as técnicos (technical trainers), managers, etc. and some will bounce around in the international leagues - not a horrible fate- but many, being booted from MLB is the end. With have no job experience and no other skills they have no future. Improving their prospects means improving education.

In addition to equipment, MLB donates books and scholarships to schools. They are also raising their internal standards. You can't play if haven't graduated high school, and you need to learn English - one of the most valuable job skills in the DR. And your parents need to be involved, from the beginning, and until you are an adult.

She says she watches the game now differently. She knows the players and their stories. When a Dominican player fouls a play and the camera zooms in for the reaction shot of his pained face she knows what he has to to through to get there and the problems that pain him back home.
Learning all this from her I looked again at the tecnicos as they put the boys through their paces. Some were retirement age and some were still young. I  wondered about their stories.

After the clínica I learned that last year a local boy had been released from his contract before he even made it to the States. He had been using his pending fame to chat up women, something prohibited during training. Clearly, he still had some growing up to do.

A Race from Top to Bottom

Our first few weeks have mostly been concerned with getting to know our way around but we've already been able to participate in a satisfying project. It was not just technically outside of my site but also technically out of my province and far outside of my assigned project. Though it took place just up the mountain road from our pueblo when we hopped out of the pickup bed we were no longer in Elias Piña but Dajabon. And just as I don't live in the hot and dry Elias Piña of the south, this was not the busy and bustling Dajabon of the famed international market. We were in a small hillside village and we were there to plant trees.

The project was coordinated in part by another PCV and an NGO but most of the work was done by locals. The trees had been grown in a vivero (plant nursery) owned by the local Asociación de Producción de Bosques (Reforestaction Association) and the lion's share of the labor was done by local high school students.

The land was steep and the day was hot and the bosquedores had grown some 2000 pines and other native trees for us to plant. We worked the entire hillside from the bottom to the top and back down again. The jovenes (youth) approached the job with the uneven effort of teenagers everywhere. Some worked, but the kids who were literally too cool for school (they got the day off for volunteering) chatted in the shade. My work with troubled youth in the States has taught me skills rooted in positive reinforcement to challenge and motivate the disengaged. This worked with some of them, but the doña's approach was more effective. "Look at me! I'm over 60 years old and I'm dripping with sweat! What are you, flowers?"

Dominicans, generally speaking, are more direct with their children than American parents but slightly less so than American drill sargents. They worry about delincuencía (juvenile delinquency) but this to me seemed more like garden variety laziness. Also, some of the muchachos would likely be working in the fincas (agritultural tracts of land) later that week and possibly for the rest of their lives so I can't blame them for lack of enthusiasm. Still, we got the work done in time for lunch. We were assisted by a kicky mule who dutifully hauled saddlebags of matitas (seedlings) from the bottom of the slope to the top. He was a huge help but you had to steer clear of his hindlegs.

The land we planted was owned by the bosquedores so we know the trees won't be cut down but in the national parks it's a different story. The slopes of nearby Nalga de Maco are steadily being denuded of their timber. Some blame Haitians coming over the border to harvest carbón (charcoal) but more often than not it is poor Dominicans. Without better prospects the best way to make a living along the border is to plant beans in the hillside and sell them at market.

They lack land and opportunities but not consciencia. Dominicans are well-educated on the problem of deforestation. Haiti is so badly deforested you can see the difference from space. During the years of dictatorship and caudillisimo the Dominican forestry service was militarized and illegal loggers and farmers were jailed. Today, enforcement is lax. I imagine it is a grim business. Just barely getting by and knowing you're not doing yourself any favors them in the long run.

Every time it rains the water washes loose clay from the hillside where it runs into the valley where it runs in a ruddy band in the river. The locals tell me that the river is wider and deeper than it used to be. Without trees to drink it it the water flows into the valley. Without trees to retain the moisture and release it as mist it rains less and each season grows hotter. Climate change is real.

One local I talked to likened it to a race between deforestation and reforestation. It remains to be seen which side will win but I got back in the pickup proud, tired, and happy to have carried the baton a little further in the right direction.

Nombres, Apodos and Newspapers

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Things that I saw in San Francisco that I don't see in my DR pueblo

Neutered dogs.

Human waste in the streets.

People walking dogs on leashes.

Declawed cats.

Collars on pets.

People cleaning up after their dogs.

Children wearing bicycle helmets.

Stop signs at intersections.

Recycling bins.

People you have lived next to for years but still don't know their names.

Police cars everywhere.

Adults jumping in terror at the sight of a cockroach.

Children going to school without uniforms.

Students sleeping in class.

People carrying hand sanitizer with them everywhere.

Newspapers.

People with visible displays of non-Christian religious identity.

People of non-European or non-African descent.

Openly gay people.

Rats the rize of chihuahuas.

Things that I see in my DR pueblo that I didn't see in San Francisco

Dog testicles.

Animal waste (dogs, chickens, horses) in the streets.

People walking horses and mules.

7 year olds riding horses bareback.

10 year olds driving motorcycles.

People walking safely in the middle of the street.

Children wandering safely and freely without adult guardians.

Speedbumps everywhere.

People burning trash.

All of my neighbors, every day.

Police sleeping in plastic chairs on the lawn of the station.

Adults jumping in terror at the sight of a frog.

Parents spanking their children.

Adults disciplining strangers' children.

People sharing food with strangers.

Everyone's laundry.

Doors left unlocked and open when no one is home.

People walking with parasols.

Ditches laterally bisecting the streets

Flying cockroaches the size of business cards.

Living the Good Life