Up In Arms (written 4.22.09 – Happy Earth Day!)

I was sitting on a bus coming back from a relaxing weekend at the beach (it was birthday, ok! And the Peace-Corps wide “bola race”, in which we hitch-hiked in pairs across the country. Me and Michal came in 5th!) and although it was filling up, so far, no one had made a move to sit by me. Although I had begrudgingly moved my bag off the seat next to me, I was secretly hoping to have a little arm and leg room for the rest of the trip.

We made a stop and on the bus gets, literally, the fattest Dominican I have ever seen. This middle-aged Doña took one look around the bus and decided that sitting by me, the flacita blancita (skinny white girl) would be the best option, and proceeded to do so with much gusto. She was not at all shy about her overbearing presence, and made no attempts to remove her clammy upper-arm from the position it immediately assumed smooshed up against mine.

I’m an environment volunteer, so I feel obligated to chastise the youth in my Brigada Verde group when they throw trash on the ground. But when that imposing figure reached across me, without so much as an excuse me or an embarrassed smile, to throw a piece of plastic out the window, I surrendered immediately. Well, maybe not immediately. I slowly turned my face toward hers (only a few uncomfortable inches away), and was met eye to eye with a look that calmly said “I dare you”. Dominicans typically don’t think twice about throwing a piece of trash out the window, but I swear she knew what was going through my head when I looked at her.

And I lost.

When I got back to my community and walked down the street, I was caught up in about 30 immensely cuter arms, those of the children who had just gotten out of school and insisted on walking down the street with me, fighting to have their arms around my waist and their hands in mine. It’s good to be loved.