Community banking in the land of fiao

Each country that invites Peace Corps to send volunteers has it's own priorities. Some countries could benefit from assistance with environmental education, others want their citizenry to learn English, etc. In the Dominican Republic, volunteers serve in one of three sectors: Youth Development, Education, and Community Economic Development.

Cat's an education volunteer. I'm in CED, or, as I often explain in Spanish, negocios ("business").

There's a joke among CED volunteers that the least useful thing you bring to country is the business casual clothes that Peace Corps insists you pack. While presenting oneself as serio is definitely important in la capital, it's not so necessary in the campo where people are way more casual. What good are khakis when you are working with campesinos in baseball caps and gomas (rubber boots)?

Me, I wear my business casual clothes everyday. This is because my project is una cooperativa de ahorro y crédito – a community bank.

The cooperativa has about 500 members and, aside from some seed money kindly donated by an international NGO a few years back, the funding is composed entirely of the contributions of los socios (members). When the campesinos in my pueblito take out a préstamo (loan) to finance next seasons crop they are using the money of their friends and neighbors.

It's a beautiful thing - and a necessary one given that most of the socios are considered too high a lending risk by other financial institutions. Those big banks are too far away, anyhow. Our nearest "big city" (24,000 people!) is two hours drive and the the trip is expensive. If you make 800 pesos profit on a sack of habichuelas (beans) and it costs you 300 pesos roundtrip to deposit it and another 300 pesos to withdraw it next month, how much money are you really saving?

In the campo, the "bank" part of community bank it not always clearly understood. A friend of a friend, upon discovering that I worked with el banquito whispered to me about some cosas muy malas (very bad things) that were going on. "If you lend me 5000 pesos," he demanded, "How can you can charge me more than those same 5000 pesos? ¡Muy mal!"

To be fair, let's try to see it from his perspective. Say you're a campesino with no real education. Big banks won't give you the time of day and the financial institution set up in your town is only a few years old. It's financed in part by your money and staffed by people you have known your whole life. On top off that you're a Dominicano used to the interest-free credit system known as fiao. 

Fiao is a Dominican version of the Spanish word fiado ("credit"). When you buy something on fiao the store owner trusts you to pay them back later. Bigger stores don't do fiao, but virtually every smaller business does. In the campo, where people often only have cash after each seasons harvest and sometimes not even then, fiao is a necessity. It's how friends and neighbors support each other through the hard times.

The other credit option available to poor Dominicans are prestamistas - loan sharks. Your average Dominican prestamista isn't a dangerous criminal like your average American loan shark, but they still mean business. A "good" prestamista will only charge 20% interest, but  100% is not unheard of.

In this context, the standard banking practice of charging interest might seem fishy. Why would a financial cooperative composed of friends and neighbors do something like that?

I also wonder if religion plays a role. Usury (Bible-speak for charging interest) is denounced in multiple books of the Old Testament. It's literally a sin. “If your brother becomes poor and cannot maintain himself . . . you shall not lend him your money at interest, nor give him your food for profit.” So if our socios know their Leviticus, what are they supposed to think?

But charge interest we must. I work for free but the other staff doesn't. And the lending fund must grow if we are to keep making loans. Interest, implemented at non-sinful rates, helps the “community” part of our community bank grow. A neighbor down the street is using one of our loans to build a new house. A peluquero friend of mine wants to use one to buy an inversor so he can continue cutting hair when there's no luz.

The system works! Kind of.

Because the same lack of education that makes common financial practices seem suspect also makes for poor financial literacy. My neighbors started building the house without a budget, so they ran out of money and had to apply for another loan. And many loans just don't get paid back. To be fair, living off the land is tough – if it rains too much, or too little, your crops just die – but far too many of the cooperative's loans are in default.

My peluquero friend, at least, is willing to listen to me about the importance of keeping books. Maybe it's confianza but I like to think it's part of a general shift in awareness. The board of directors recognizes the need to improve our lending controls. Our general manager, my project partner, is excited about expanding services to neighboring communities.

I think for campesinos, money is like smart phones and computers. It's all so new! And when you've never had access to something before it usually takes a while to figure out how to use it right.

A few words about voudou

The most recent episode of Cat's podcast is about our visit to a batey, which is is a type of company town structured around a sugar plantation. Most of the plantations went bust in the 80s but the communities persist. Due to historical and economic factors bateys tend to be poor, congested and populated primarily by Dominicans of Haitian descent or recent Haitian immigrants.

The podcast gives the subject a fantastic treatment but does not mention a fascinating aspect of the community: the important role that voudou ("voodoo") plays an important role in local cultural life. (A quick note about italics: in this entry the italicized words will be from Kreyol, the language of Haiti, instead of Spanish.) Both Haiti and the DR are religiously plural societies with many faiths and there are enough voudou believers in the batey to support a hounfour (temple) in the center of the crowded community.

We were unable to speak with the priest and I am far from an expert on this subject so I'll stick to facts from wikipedia.

Essentially, Haitian voudou is a mixture of Roman Catholic rituals and traditional African beliefs. The slaves that were brought to the island were forbidden to practice their native religion so they gave it a Catholic makeover. It's a much better fit than you might expect!

In both belief systems there is a Bondye ("Good God") who is not directly knowable without the intervention of a priest. This Supreme Being is supported by lesser spiritual powers who are also the objects of devotion.

In voudou the African lwa ("spirits") are associated with the Catholic Saints. For example Papa Legba, who guards the entry into the spirit world is represented by "San Pedro" (St. Peter) the guard of the Pearly Gates.

Saint Peter

St. Jean D'Arc (Joan of Arc - Haiti was originally a French colony) is associated with Ersulie Freda.

I have no idea what she does.

Other familiar faces are:

John the Baptist . . .

John is to the right of Jack

. . . .and Saint Anthony.

The images of the saints adorns the walls but the center of the action is the altar.

Offerings from the devout

But instead of the call of the faithful reaching up into Heaven, in voudou the saints descend to the earth and enter the body of the priest - and sometimes the faithful. And what do they do there? Like Catholic Saints, they intervene in the worldly affairs of the devout: they bestow blessings and bring good luck.

They answer prayers.

5 things that make me hopeful for my community

Obligatory Preferatory Paragraph

I think in paragraphs. I sometimes speak in them - much to the annoyance of Cat - and I write in them as well.  To embrace this Blog Challenge as an actual incentive to try something new instead of just indulging in my old habits, I've opted to write this entry as a listicle.

1. Good relations between Dominicans and Haitians

Unlike the rest of Latin America, the DR celebrated it's independence not from Spain but from it's neighboring nation. Things have been pretty tense between the two cultures since that time. So I am especially grateful to see the Dominicans in my community treating Haitian immigrants with a respect and decency that its not universally common across the nation.

2. Multi-generational environmental awareness


While deforestation is exactly improving fast enough, there is a wide-spread awareness of the problem. The old hands know it firsthand from comparing the paisaje ("landscape") of their youth to the bald hills of today, and they have instilled this knowledge in their children. The local national park was declared in 1995 and the local technical high school teaches conservation.

 Mural on the side of a local store

 
3. Conservation of cultural

When cheap digital cameras came to the pueblo in the form of cell phones, what is the first thing the jóvenes (youth) did? Well, after they got on WhatsApp. they made a movie telling the story of a local Don and Doña. Two, actually!

The first, Una Boda de Oro, focused on their courtship and marriage.  Cat and I are very proud to have arranged a local that featured this film.



A second chapter, Teofilo Mora 1966 which premiered Wednesday night at the local community center, tells the rest of the story.

They have be abandoning the old ways in the city, but here in the capital, the young people still young ones can play the traditional music and still dance the traditional dances no matter how much time they spend chateando.




4. Steady arrival of modern convenience

30 years ago this village was all wooden shacks.  They had neither running water, electricity or telephones. Now, it has suburban style houses with all the essential services (however imperfectly implemented) - plus internet. Hopefully this comfort and convenience in the campo will make the capital and points further afield less alluring and thus slow the brain drain. 
 

¨What a difference 300 feet of steel makes"

5. Religious diversity and tolerance

Two generations ago, the pueblo was mono-culturally Catholic. Now it has multiple, well-established Evangelical congregations and a thriving Salon de Reinos (Kingdom Hall) for the local Jehovah's Witnesses. I am officially fine with Catholicism but am a fan of religious diversity because new ways of worship often means new ideas. 

Like ethnic inclusion, religious tolerance better prepares a society (however small) to whether the changes in a rapidly evolving world. Unsurprisingly, the members of these minority religions have a major religion in the local culture. Los evangélicos and los Testigos are well-represented in non-religious leadership positions around town.

CHALLENGE FAIL
OK, so my bullet points turned out to be paragraphs. At least I tried. Thinking positive, especially as I emerge from a mild holiday induced depression, was challenging enough.


This post is part of Blogging Abroad's 2017 New Years Blog Challenge, week four: Change and Hope. My final one actually! I hope you've enjoyed the more regular posting schedule. I'll be taking next week off. If you want something to read in that absence give the other bloggers participating in this challenge a try.

Drowning in Water

The Meaning of Water

A favorite parable of mine goes like this:

Two young fish are swimming along side-by-side talking about the things youngs fish talk about when an elder fish says to them in passing:
 
"'Morning fellows! How's the water today?"

The young wish swim on without reply. Only When the strange, old fish has safely passed does one turn to the other and say: 

"What the heck is water?"
Culture is like water. We swim in it without knowing it for what it is. We take it for granted.

(For a more extensive exploration of this idea, I recommend the following commencement speech by David Foster Wallace.)

This parable has been helpful to give me perspective on my own culture. To be more see more of the thins that I take for granted. when I lived inside my own culture.

Lately, though this has metaphor has taken on a whole new  dimension of meaning.

A Very Bulla Christmas

The holidays were hard for me. (Cat, too). I would have been hard pressed to explain it at the time but with the wisdom of a few weeks perspective I can see it was a matter of cultural difference.

Being out of my own culture meant swimming in unfamiliar waters. The winter holidays in the DR are just different and that made me uncomfortable and a bit depressed in a way I wasn't anticipating.

So, you ask, how are they different?

These lights on a neighbor's house are one on a short of five items that DR and US Christmas celebrations have in common. The others? Family comes home, people take a week or more days off work, they celebrate with food and drink, and the special day gets special recognition in the church.
(We were invited to Mass but we didn't go. I now wish we had - the familiarity might have been grounding for me.)

Gift giving? That's really only for kids here and it's done on the el Día de los Tres Reyes, which is January 6. In the Hispanic tradition the Three Kings give the gifts instead of the Germanic, quasi-pagan figure of Santa Clause.

Christmas trees are a bit too nothertn, too. There's been some adoption of "l arbolito in the cities but here in the campo with a significant deforestation problem "holiday cheer" is not a good enough reason to cut down a perfectly good tree.

Christmas music? The two or three songs I heard para la Navidad (yes, one of them was by Jose Feliciano) were Mexican imports.  These were far outnumbered by the secular bachata, merengue, salsa and dembow tunes. These I heard all night, every night, from la Noche Buena (Christmas Eve) through la Noche Vieja (New Year's Eve).

The Spanish word for this - used with pride by some locals - is bulla which translates as "racket." This is, of course, directly contrary to the Christmas traditions of Northern Europe and the Northern America. Underneath all the crass commercialism, Christmas in the United States is still a spiritual and introspective time. You stay in because it's cold. You spend time with your family. You try to be nice in a way that you aren't normally.

The folks in my campo mostly use la Navidad as an excuse to get together with people  they don't normally see and hacer la fiesta.  They drink and dance in la discoteca. Because Christmas just isn't that big a deal here.

What is a big deal is Semana Santa (Holy Week), the last week of Lent before Easter. I'd love to write about it's role in Dominican culture but that will have to wait until I've actually experience it.


It all makes sense in perspective. I come from a society that is Protestant Christian at it's core at it's core while Dominican roots are distinctly Catholic. The water felt wrong, so it was hard for me to go with the flow.

I wonder how Dominican immigrants to the US feel in to find themselves in a society where their biggest cultural event isn't celebrated outside of a few ethnic enclaves? I imagine that the first Semana Santa they spend away from home passes not so - how, shall I put it? - swimmingly.

This post is part of Blogging Abroad's 2017 New Years Blog Challenge, week three: Cultural Differences.

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!

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.

I Heart Evangelical Christians

My wife has a hard time with heavy metal. When I listen to Falls of Rauros or Wolves in the Throne Room, I do it through headphones. She can't take the screaming. She is quite sonically adventurous - she likes everything from classical music to an experimental genre that is called, literally, "Noise" -  just not when it comes to certain extremes of the human voice. It reminds her of being yelled at.

So she has something of a hard time when the Evangelical church two houses over from us gets going. I'm not trying in any way to disparage los evangélicos by saying that they're screamers. I am just trying to be accurate. I recognize that they might prefer the word "praise" (or in español, dar oración) but when you are praising so intensely that your voice breaks, you're screaming.

I kind of dig it! And not just because I am the guy that likes screaming music.

As I grow older and become more invested in my own spiritual path the more I celebrate the spiritual expression of other people.  I think it's a good thing that evangélicos pray in the way that they think is best. I also think I get why they scream. Sometimes a feeling is so powerful that it possesses the entire body and forcefully escapes through the mouth. In metal this process is cathartic - bad feelings get shouted out - but it happens to Evangelicals when they are having a good time.

This sonic similarity is one of many things that I am surprised to appreciate about Evangelical Christianity as it is practiced in the Dominican Republic. It might be a bit early to call, but I'll go on the record as a fan. Evangelicals play a surprisingly large role in society here given that they are outnumbered by Catholics by more than two to one.

Despite being extremely expressive in their praise - I've been to other Evangelical churches and even the ones where they don't scream the volume is still turned up to 11 - they serve as a moderating force in Dominican culture. Dominicans dance and drink and do the dirty deed at rates only barely exceeded tourists in Punta Cana.  I don't think that drinking, dancing and doin' it are inherently bad but I do think that these stats for alcoholism and teen pregnancy suggest that Dominicans, as a whole, need to tone it down a little bit.

Which is exactly what evangélicos do. They don't drink, they don't dance (outside of church) and they (allegedly) don't do it before they're married. Yes, all human beings are capable of hypocrisy and, yes, Catholics have moral precepts too, but from my own observations it seems to me that your average evangelical en la República takes their commandments more seriously than your average católico.

I think that this is because Evangelical Protestantism is a relatively new thing here. I have met some multi-generational Evangelical families but I have met more new converts away from Catholicism. This is important not because I am an ex-Catholic myself (though I am), nor because I am a fan of Evangelical doctrine (we actually have profound disagreements) but because when you convert you are by default making a choice. And when you make a choice about a religion you necessarily have to consider your own behavior.

This isn't just a Dominican thing. It happens in other cultures, too.  I, un americano, came up Christian but converted to Buddhism when I needed to make some big changes in my life. Korea, a traditionally Buddhist country, has high rates of alcoholism despite the Buddhist prohibition against abusing alcohol. What religion to Koreans convert to when they want to turn it from 11 to 7? Christianity.

I am into choosers, even if it's a choice I don't particularly agree with. It suggests a certain liberalism, not in the political sense of the word but meaning "openness to new ideas."

This surprised the heck out of me when I first realized it. Like many liberal-ish Americans who came of age during the Bush years the I associated the word "Evangelical" (meaning merely that you preach your faith to others as opposed to practicing it at home) with bad pop music and outsized influence in public policy. I had a negative conception that can only be described as prejudice. How ironic is it my biggest experience of cultural exchange in Peace Corps is a with group I already thought I knew?

The same is true for Jehovah's Witnesses. Don't worry, I won't be knocking on your door anytime soon but I now know something about their practice (as opposed to nothing) and so far I like what I have seen. My project partner is a testigo and upon visiting his house I was pleasantly surprised to discover a shelf full of books - not the most common site here. It turns out that becoming a full-fledged testigo requires a lot of study and therefore the J-dubs are seriously into literacy. The book shelf didn't bear only JW books. They were just books about the world. I am not into their doctrine but I admire the outward facing interest.

I hear that Mormons are on the upswing here, too. This doesn't surprise me. Outward facing interest aside, the RD has to be the easiest assignment in todo el mundo for missionaries, be they Mormon or any other group. The Dominican national pastime (other than baseball) is sitting on the front porch visiting with folks. They prefer folks they know but in a pinch they'll flag down a stranger and give them coffee.

I believe that these different denominations represent the introduction of religious diversity to RD. Even if it's just new flavors of Christianity right now, it's only a matter of time before it includes other religions. That's how it worked in Europe and the US, after all. As a diversity loving heathen, I approve!

Catholicism, here and there

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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