What’s my age again? (written 9.30.09)

A Haitian-Dominican friend of mine recently found himself asking the same question as Blink 182 did in their late 90s pop-punk smash song. This friend stopped by my house the other day to chat and maybe finagle some help with a homework assignment. Toward the beginning of our conversation, he said “Well, I guess you’ll be getting married right when you get back to the states”. Don’t worry, he’s not like THAT – and by that, I mean the Dominican men who don’t even know me who ask me similar questions with lecherous grins painted on their mouths. I told him, “Well, ya know, I’ll get married whenever I’m ready, but that’s not now. I might want to go back to school first.” We’ve had conversations about ambitions and families before, so I wasn’t surprised when he responded that he also wanted to finish school before starting a family (high-schoolers range in age from early teens to late 40s here). He continued, however, with something I wasn’t exactly expecting. He had always believed himself to be 25 (this year at least), and had even told me so in the recent past. I thought he looked a little older, but who am I to say such a thing. A recent review of his birth certificate, however, confirmed my doubts – he’s actually 30! This information was obviously very sobering to him, as he told me “yes, I’ve always told everyone I’m going to wait until I’m done with high-school and have a job before I get married, but apparently I don’t have as much time as I thought”. He was by no means despondent, and was cheered when I offered that you’re only as old as you feel and act. Still, I can’t imagine looking at my own birth certificate and finding out I’m 5 years older – that would make me almost 30 as well!

Burning Bridges

Last week in my site, the motorcycle drivers went on strike in attempt to draw the government’s attention to the poor road conditions in our community. When marginalized groups decide to go on strike in the developed countries, they are more often than not empowered enough to make the strike mean something: they target a group or individual that needs their services, a group that has the power to give them what they want and need, and they deny services until those wants and needs are met. In the developing world, however, strikes often affect most negatively the very people they would be designed to serve.

So when the motorcycle drivers went on strike, no one in our community could go anywhere. My 60+ year old neighbor told me she walked several miles out to the highway in order to get to a doctor’s appointment that she couldn’t miss. The lack of transportation services, so far, had affected no one but the usual customers of the motorcycle drivers.

In an angry mob, the drivers took to the streets. They cut down trees to block access to the roads (preventing the authorities from making any repairs even if they had planned to, which they surely had not), burned tires every 100 yards or so, cut all the power lines, and finally, in a dramatic flourish, burned down the community clinic. Although it was an inadequate rural clinic with leaky roofs and no electricity, basic services are clearly better than nothing, and now all community members are forced to go far from their homes for even the most primitive of treatment.



The anger and frustrations that they feel due to inactive, inattentive local and national governments is entirely founded, but their irrational actions have not inconvenienced those that have the power to make a change, but rather themselves, their families, and their neighbors. It’s not fair that they are so disempowered regarding basic necessary repairs to the infrastructure of their community, and their desire to protest is warranted, but unfortunately the target audience is relatively unaffected. Perhaps the mayor of the region will be embarrassed enough to make some small, temporary changes, but ultimately, their outcry will have hit the hardest at home, where their children can no longer get antibiotics and vaccinations within walking distance.

The God of Small Things (8.10.09)

The title of a beautiful novel by Arundhati Roy that I just finished reading also seems appropriate as title for this blog.

Yesterday, I had my first water filter meeting, and it was completely different from my first stove meeting a year ago. At that point, people still didn’t really trust the new girl in town, probably thought I wasn’t gonna actually do any of the stuff I was talking about, and didn’t exactly flock to my meetings. Now, since word spread quickly that the quantity of filters available will be limited (25 to be exact), they couldn’t get there fast enough. We actually started relatively on time! And there were 78 people present, representing about half the houses in the community. I spoke in Spanish for over half an hour in front of this group, only later recognizing this as an important accomplishment.

Since everyone who came will obviously not be receiving a filter, I’ve created an application that I will be “turning in to Peace Corps” so I don’t get crucified by the majority that ends up without. In reality, I will be making the final decisions, placing the filters in strategic locations throughout the community where the most people can have the most access. If there were 78 filters available, I would gladly solicit that many, but it’s an issue of availability for other volunteers – there just aren’t enough being made in the country to put them in every house.

Anyway, I think I’ve noticed people being especially nice to me today. It’s probably not as calculated as one might think, but one guy brought me 30 bananas today. That’s a lot of banana bread. I guess I’m a little afraid of the power that comes with making this decision, with being the God of the water filters, but it’s mostly self-preservation. I have to live in this community for 9 more months, and I can’t be making 53 enemies who came to the meetings and yet get no filter. Fortunatley, many of the houses are close to one another, and if I plan this right, eveyone should have access to clean, drinkable water, for free, just a short walk from their home.

All in the Timing (written 8.10.09)

My boyfriend is on vacation on a boat, unreachable. Both of my Peace Corps doctors are in the U.S., leaving behind a substitute I’ve never met. Three of my best friends from the states are visiting me in my site, scheduled to leave in less than 2 full days. There could not have been a worse time to get sick.

Enter gut-wrenching, appendicitis resembling intestinal bacteria.

It started in my community Thursday afternoon as we (me and the U.S. friends) were walking back to my house from visiting the other end of the community. A terrible pain in my stomach, unaccompanied by nausea or a real need to go to the bathroom, that had me doubled over by the time we made it to my house. Luckily, I had one remaining dose of “Spasmosan” ( just as incredible as it sounds – you can really get anything over the counter here), a disgusting yellow liquid laced with barbituates that allowed me a few hours of fretful sleep. Little did I know how much I was going to need that beauty rest.

When I woke, it felt a little better, but probably only because I started pounding anti-inflammatories right away. The next day, on our way down to the capital, I called the substitute doctor, asking her to leave me some form of medication in the office before she left for the day. Even though I wasn’t able to get to the office until 7, she insisted on waiting for me to do an exam – just in case.

After pressing on my stomach and asking a few questions, the sub-doc deemed it necessary to take me to the hospital right away because she was more than a little concerned that it was my appendix. Happy day, and great timing! So me and the friends loaded up our backpacks into her sedan and trucked it over to the hospital, where the real saga began.

I immediately had my blood drawn, a sonogram which supposedly showed appendix inflammation, and my stomach palpitated by 4 male doctors in a less than private setting in the ER. This is a very touchy culture, and although they mean well, their form of comfort (joking around, patting my leg, foot, smiling at my tears, etc.) just served to make me more hysterical when they each reported “yep, looks like you’ll be in surgery tomorrow morning”. One doctor even went as far as to say “I would send you right away, but I want to do a CT scan first”. Yes! I wanted to scream. Do 8 CT scans first! I’m not having surgery in the developing world when my boyfriend and doctors aren’t even in the country!

For some odd reason, they found it appropriate to put me on an IV before they had finished carting me around the hospital, so by the time I got through with the CT scan (if you’ve ever had one of those, they give you an injection of some hot, paralyzing liquid that makes you feel like you’re peeing your pants – I really hope that’s not just a DR hospital perk) and got up to my room, my hand had already begun the epic swelling that was to be the bane of my existence over the next 4 days.

When they finally sent me to my room, I immediately had to be returned to the CT scan room, but at least the news was encouraging: it seemed to be my intestine that was inflamed as opposed to the appendix, so no surgery for now. Yay! I would have clapped had I been able to feel the fingers on my left hand.

So my new struggles were their absolute refusal to let me consume anything, even water, for the next day and a half, just in case I had to be sent into surgery. And, of course, the over-sassy, under-trained nurses that I have heard so much about from other volunteers who have had the fortune to spend a few days in “our country’s best medical facility”. Between the blood tests at 5:00 am, the staff’s insistence that the hospital didn’t have any blankets, and the rolling of eyes when I asked for my IV to be switched to a spot on my body that didn’t resemble the Michelin man, I felt so angry and disempowered that I nearly took the IV out myself. If it hadn’t been for my dear, dear friends, so dedicated to me that they actually slept IN my hospital room on the faux-leather couch and cold tile floor, I would have gone straight from the intensive care unit to the mental health ward. They even changed their flights to stay and make sure I wouldn’t have to go into surgery alone. I felt so lucky and loved, and able to control my would-be homicidal outlashings at the RNs from Hades.

When I was finally allowed to consume liquids, squash soup has never tasted so good. In fact, up to this point, I had done everything I could to avoid it. My final night I was allowed some mashed potatoes, and I almost cried a little. By then, they had basically determined that what I had must be a bacteria – the blood samples showed no risk of infection in the appendix, and an unnecessary number of stool samples ruled out any chance of parasites. They put me on antibiotics and sent me on my merry way, and since I actually made it out alive and feel fine now, my best guess is that they were right in the end.

All of that could have been avoided if I had just gone to the pharmacy and bought some super-strong antibiotics. So what have I learned from this experience? When you’re in the developing world, where everything is OTC…self-medicate!!!*

(*The author wishes to express that this is a joke, and that those who care about her should not fear that her ignorance will negatively effect her health in future potentially critical situations.)

Behind Bars

What does it say about the quality of life in a country when those that can afford to choose to carry out their lives behind bars? Literally. Those with resources fence in their front porches and windows with heavy duty re-bar, albeit decorative, to keep out things that go bump in the night. Schools always have at least a tall, locked gate, if not circular barbed wire atop 10 foot walls. We can't even dream of putting computers (which we received donated) into our library until we have bars across all the windows, and several layers of plywood nailed up to separate it from the neighboring classroom. Food for thought.

Campo Days (written 7.12.09)

Yesterday morning, we finished construction on the 20th and final fuel efficient cook stove in my community. I took a deep breath as I rode on the back of a motorcycle to my house (yes, it was walkable, but it’s hot, ok) where I bathed, had a coffee, and then set off to a neighboring community, where a PCV friend has recently finished construction on an aqueduct and was celebrating with an inauguration. We listened to speeches, ate huge plates of food, and danced the night away, me secretly celebrating my accomplishment along with his. Well, not so secretly.

Hey Mica, how are you? OHMYGODIFINISHEDSTOVESTODAY is probably closer to what it was like. Hm.

Anyway, I hosted breakfast at my house this morning for 4 PCVs and 2 Dominicans who work with the water volunteers. It stretched out into lunchtime – pancakes’ll do that – and by the time I made it down to the other end of my community, to a party I had somewhat grudgingly promised to go to, the main event guests had gone to the river. That was fine with me – I thought the whole reason I was invited was because they were expecting rich white-ish Dominicans from the city, some of which lived in/had lived in/or at least had been to “Nueva Yol”. So when I arrived to find the man of the house, who’s birthday we were to celebrate, with his wife and a few choice kids and grandkids, I was not at all disappointed. He was a little upset that I missed the morning events, but I reassured him that I would hang out until the owners of the out of place Hummer and Lexus parked outside his palm board house reappeared to finish their festivities at the tables they had set up behind his house. Socio-economic hierarchies are incredible here. I was late in arriving, but the woman of the house and her daughter-in-law had clearly worked their butts off to make this event as luxurious as possible for the city dwellers, of whom even the women didn’t seem to lift a finger to help.

When they actually arrived from their jaunt at the river it wasn’t all that bad – they smiled politely and basically ignored me, not at all the hideous “I speaka d’English” event that I had dreaded. I was fed well, as always, visited my host parents in the neighboring house, and was sent on my merry way to take some photos of stoves I had yet to document. The last of these stops was the house of one of my favorite women in the community, whom I was glad to have as the last stove recipient – end on a good note. She is a rare unmarried woman in her 30s who doesn’t have some sort of repelling physical attribute, as sweet as she can be, who lives with her equally kind and alarmingly active father who must be at least in his 70s. She was fixing her visiting niece’s hair, and as soon as she perceived that I was gonna set a spell, sent for a soda and we settled in to chat on the front porch, the coolest place on the top of the hill she lives on. On a whim, I asked her to do my hair as well, and after almost falling asleep under her gentle hands, left her house with an interesting braid across the front/ponytail combo. It was what I asked for, but didn’t quite come out like I imagined.

Next stop, informal English lesson. I don’t mind helping this particular girl who asked for help on an assignment, because she tries really hard and is determined to learn. She asked me to read an “exposition” that she had written and was to read in front of her class, and after thoroughly marking it up with corrections, I complimented her on how much of an improvement it was from the last work of hers I had read. As we corrected her paper, I stopped several times to ask her to translate some clumsy passages into Spanish so that I could tell her how to say what she meant in English. She could never tell me what it was she had intended to say, and finally opened another notebook from which she had copied the entire piece! She said that a friend had helped her write it, but she clearly didn’t know what the majority of it meant. Oh dear. But anyway, she’s trying hard, so I guess that counts for something. I left to make a phone-call, promising to return for the dinner of super-fried cheese and fried green bananas (quite less delicious than the tomatoe version). The call was dropped irretrievably right in the middle of a conversation with someone I had been looking forward to talking to all week, so I sulked back to the house and forced down half of what felt like meal 15 of the day.

I hitched a ride in a passing car with a man who, had I known his disposition, I would have avoided if it meant walking to Santo Domingo – lecherous grinning, asking if I was married before I even got the door shut, etc. When I got out of the car, thankfully before we arrived to my house thereby disclosing it’s location to pervy mc-pervson, I walked up to a group of 3 girls and spoke with one about the strange, painful looking blemish that has recently popped up on her face. As I was speaking, another girl whose name I don’t know interrupted me to ask if I’m pregnant (I apparently need to work on my posture, or stop eating everything I’m offered. Or both.) I didn’t quite hear her, but I must have heard enough to throw me for a loop, cause I asked her to repeat herself, and she, completely straight-faced, re-asked her absurd question. I stared at her for a moment, told her no, and the other girls, sensing my shock, helped with “that’s just how she was standing!” I tried to conclude the conversation I had been having before I was rudely interrupted, but ended up just having to split with a “sleep well!” Being a single pregnant girl here has social connotations that pregnant teens in America could only imagine in their wildest nightmares, so I think that’s what shocked me even more than the insinuation of fatness.

That’s the campo. Dios Santo. Ese sol pica y la gente no son facil. I’m out.

Las esposas

In (Dominican) Spanish, the word for handcuffs is the same as wives. Las esposas.

There's nothing more to say about that.