El Nuevo en El Seibo

This post is a medley of a lot of different things at once. Lo siento in advance.

I’ve been here in El Seibo for almost two weeks now. A typical day contains 3-4 hours of both language and technical training. This week in language class we gave diagnostic presentations (toda en espanol) about El Seibo. We surveyed and interviewed members of the community for our data, and everyone chose a different topic. There seem to be hundreds of kids living in my neighborhood, so I figured interviewing the local youth would be a good choice. I interviewed 15 muchachos in my barrio about education. Kids here I’ve found are really enthusiastic about learning, and not one of the kids had a single complaint about school. Unfortunately though, DR education isn’t always of the best quality. Public school is supported by the government, and from what I’ve read, no one pays taxes for education. So the money the government has for education often goes to constructing new facilities, and little is left for maintaining the quality of existing materials, supporting teachers, updating equipment, etc. I read an article recently that said that on average people here complete about 6 years of schooling, often less. As someone who has just recently taken a break from spending my entire life in school, that’s pretty strange to fathom. Imagine just completing 6 years? In the US we’d be through by age 11 or 12. Anyway, I am pretty shocked by what I’ve learned recently about education here, yet impressed by how ambitious kids are about wanting to go to universities and start careers. If quality could match all this enthusiasm, I’m sure students would stay in school longer.

Some of my neighbors

After training and classes, I’ve been running in the evenings. There is a campo area here with cows and other rugged attractions, so I’ve been taking advantage of all the hills and fresh air. However, “going for a run” is not something I’ve seen any Dominican do yet, so all of the runners in our group must be quite a sight.

Campo looking out over El Seibo

Recently, I’ve been happening unexpectedly upon all sorts of cultural events. Twice now I’ve walked down the street to class, and all of a sudden am surrounded by a parade. The first time it was a bombero (firefighter) parade, and the second time, I really have no idea what it was. At first, I figured it was a political celebration of some sort, but when I asked my don and dona, they described it with words like “Satano" (Satan) and “Diablo,” (devil) and didn’t explain too much more about it. I do know that I saw a man twirling a baton though, so it can’t be all bad.

The Bomberos Parade

Man with baton on left!

Speaking of batons or “batutas” en espanol, I’ve started to use them here. I usually head out across the street to the baseball field since it is a really nice open space. On the way there, my little neighbors appear out of houses and start to join me. By the time we arrive at the field, there’s usually about ten of us, I no longer have the batons, and all of a sudden I’m giving mini baton lessons in Spanish to the kids in the neighborhood. It’s pretty fun though, and I can tell that a few of the kids have had lessons before, which means that there’s more twirlers around here somewhere. If nothing else, these batons have survived three flights from Boston to Santo Domingo, and many hours bouncing around in the back of gua-guas all the way to El Seibo - might as well put them to good use.

Last week a friend loaned me "The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao." If you're looking to read a book, it is a really good one - and about the DR, too. Anyway I hope that wherever you are, all is well with you!

xo,

Emma