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.