Fourth Fiestas

(from Miercoles, 7/7/10)

This past weekend - I celebrated in Paradise. ...Literally though, as the town is named “Paraiso” (near Barahona) and I was there with about 35 more volunteers for the Fourth of July. It was a really great time, and marked one of the first reunions for our training groups (thank you, Clayton for organizing for everyone!). We visited the beach front sites of two fellow volunteers (they are such lucky ducks), to swim and hang out together. It was great too, because our large group was able to support businesses (a volunteer’s tourism PC project, and a colmado/restaurant of a volunteer’s host family) in both towns while we were there. It was definitely a memorable trip, and I loved visiting other Peace Corps sites and catching up with friends. A very American weekend, (well, an American weekend on a Caribbean beach, that is) that featured - camping, bonfires, swimming, singing and dancing to musica de alla. And, I’ll admit: I was a little homesick for the first time here on the Fourth, (usually at home, my family is on the beach or lake after attending a number of baton twirling parades/events on this holiday), so I was definitely glad to be with other volunteers - this group always has a good time. At one point I took a break from the festivities to nap and read in the tent (I know, what a nerd), and when I rejoined later, I was welcomed back by a group of friends shouting and clapping. Then one friend yelled “Happy Birthday, Emma!” as a joke, and suddenly people were singing and wishing me a happy birthday. It was a pretty humorous, and confusing moment, but it felt great to be back in such fun company.

To travel to the southwest for the Fourth, was another adventure in itself. I live in the northwest, so getting to the capital took 3-4 hours, and then from there, another 3-4 hours or so to Paraiso. Some of the group made the trip back and forth from the capital to Paraiso packed altogether in a gua-gua which was fun, and reminiscent of all of our group bus rides during training. This trip, I passed through the capital twice, stocked up on books from the Peace Corps Office library, and got my mail for the first time in over a month, (KC, thank you for the package!). Now that I’m back in Mao, I’m working again on the diagnostic and preparing for upcoming classes. Hearing about friends’ plans for their service, and what others have been up to has been a helpful motivation, and I’m feeling recharged after this mini-break.

During the last couple days, I’ve been finishing up a few final family interviews in my neighborhood. I don’t really know when is a good point to stop interviewing, so I just keep doing more and more. There can never be too many, I guess. A little challenge this week is that it has been raining SO much here, more than usual. It rained for about 6 hours straight today, alone. When it rains, generally people don’t do anything. Rain is an excuse to not show up to a meeting, work, class, family visit, church and so on. Of course, there are exceptions to this, but usually rain is reason enough to cancel whatever you’re doing/about to do and just stay indoors. Sometimes, people will run outside and bathe in the rain. Still, most stay inside, escalating the volume of their afternoon conversations to shouts in an attempt to compete with the rain pounding overhead on their zinc roofs. The sound of the rain on the metal above drowns out just about all other noise to my ears, but somehow people still converse and understand eachother over the noise. My dona shouts, “No te mojas!” - Don’t get wet! - to our neighbors as they scurry quickly back to their homes, as being mojado or “wet” from rain means you chance the possibility of catching gripe (getting sick), and nobody wants that.

And so it rains a lot, so what? Use an umbrella, move on, and get where you need to be. That’s my attitude anyway, but with no one else sharing these sentiments, I end up spending a lot of the rainy afternoons indoors, too. Which means I do as many house interviews as I can in the mornings before the rain. In the afternoons, I go out again for more, but that means risking the likelihood of getting caught in the heavy rain and being stuck, unable to leave an interviewee’s house for two hours. ...Which is what happened yesterday. On the plus side, people don’t seem to mind, and, as it turns out, spontaneous, unannounced, two-hour visits are a fairly successful way to get to know your neighbors. :-)

Oh, and all the rain means I’ve been reading a lot more than before. I added a list of recent read books to this page. Most of the books are all DR-related fiction, a couple are non-fiction, and I’d recommend any of them, but especially Why the Cocks Fight. It’s a book about the underlying reasons of fighting (and cockfighting, too), including history of DR-Haiti politics, and culture, and essentially reasoning why the two countries clash so much. And the author references a lot of interesting, related reading throughout and at the end of the book. Really good, just read it. That’s all.

I hope that everyone had a memorable and safe holiday. Thanks for reading and checking out my pictures. As usual, I didn’t take enough photos, but here are pictures from the Fourth and my first real camping experience in a real tent on the real (and really hard) ground. (Sleeping outside in college for “Hunger & Homelessness Week” years ago is the only other time I could remember doing something similar...but I don’t think the St. A’s quad counts as camping). Enjoy, take care of yourselves, and God Bless America! ...and Hispaniola. :-P

xo,

Emma