Rambles & Stories

(April 5, 2011)

Why, hello.

A list of big and important events around here (sans pictures so make use of your imaginations, amigos!):

• New Election of Junta de Vecinos - The Junta is the neighborhood group that works together in the barrio. My host dad had been leader of this group for the past four years. But it was time for a new election, so 4 candidates stepped forward and then the election itself was held this past Sunday. A lot of people in the barrio showed up to vote - between about 150-200 people altogether, including people whom I had never seen before (even my dona said she had never seen some of these people before). Anyway, though I obviously can’t (and wouldn’t even if I could) vote in the neighborhood election, I went to support the neighbors and see what this was all about. Aside from starting forty-five minutes late (always. without fail.), it was pretty darn organized. All of the ballots had the candidates’ names and pictures (photos to be clear, and to help those who can’t read know who they’re voting for). Residents cast their votes behind a big tablecloth curtain held up by clothespins and hung in the corner, making a voting booth in the open garage. After they voted and deposited their vote in the ballot box, their hands were marked by stamp and ink. The whole process took about three hours, and at the end of it all, the ballots were counted one-by-one, tallied on a chalkboard, and a winner was announced. Of course, the event started and concluded with a prayer, asking God to help pick the best candidate then after thanking God for the elections.
• The 12th Anniversary - The school turned twelve! And they had a big mass that lots of other Maenos (people who live in Mao) attended. The ceremony lasted nearly 2.5 hours, and it was filled with people singing and playing live music.
• Shakira Concert! - Recently I saw Shakira & Pitbull in the capital. Aside from seeing local bands and musicians, this marked my first big DR concert. Yay. If pictures did exist for this one, they would show a far away and small Shakira. So, I guess no real loss photo-wise - still a fun time, of course!

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And since this post has no visuals to keep it on track, I’m going to write about whatever I want. Get ready.

Yesterday I had a conversation with a Dominican friend about tigres. We were talking about what “tigre” means in English, and I was having trouble deciding what it meant. (Well literally, it’s kind of simple -  it means “tiger,” but I’m talking about the slang meaning, they way I hear it used everyday. Besides, there are no tigers on this island anyway! Who around here uses “tigres” to talk about actual tigers?). It’s a word that is so wrapped up in the culture and it can have a positive connotation, negative connotation or both (depending on who you talk to about said topic). So long explanation short - I couldn’t really define it in one English word for him. For me - I’d translate it to “punk/someone who hisses at me/someone who catcalls and I pretend I can’t hear him.” ...Or something along those lines. But not everyone shares that experience (how nice for them). The friend then told me that “tigres” are people who are “full of life and energy and live without shame.” Hmm, okay. A little different, but yes I’d say he’s correct, too. I was mostly just interested in this because even though I use the word “tigres” all the time, I couldn’t translate it using just one English word.

This is the same friend who gave me Minnie. And I just realized I never really wrote about that one, which is a shame because it is a swell story filled with surprise/and self-questioning...questions which fall mostly along the lines of “Why is this happening to me?/Is this my life?/How do I say ‘no’ to a cute puppy?/I should have seen this coming./etc.” Okay, now for the story itself. Once upon an afternoon at the cultural center, some English students and friends were hanging out with me waiting for class to start. This is one of the only places I can access internet, so I Google-imaged a picture of a Yorkshire Terrier and asked the group, “Hey! Does the Dominican Republic have dogs that look like this?” I was curious/tired of seeing the same type of scrawny street dog/just wanted to know/had internet and was able to Googlear things. They told me that yes, furry smaller-type dogs exist here - then that was sort of the end of that conversation, and everyone moved on. Fast forward a few weeks later, and I have a puppy. Huh? Is my pronunciation so bad that I accidentally spoke the words, “Oh! Yes please, give me a dog!” ..? Looking back, my asking about dogs, was taken as an indirect way of asking for a dog. Big difference. Lesson learned: careful what you say in a culture of indirect communication. Or actually, who cares, don’t be careful, say whatever you like, take it all in stride, and randomly get a free puppy one afternoon - that works alright too. So that’s where Minnie came from. Pa’ que lo sepan. Just another day in the DR.

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What else, what else...just little things I think are sweet/funny/odd/cute (in that order) that normally I wouldn’t bother writing about. Guess I will share some more stories though and just title this post “Rambles,” because that’s what’s going on right now. 

So today my dona mandar-ed me, (aka: sent me on an errand). I’ve done errands for her before, but today it was definitely a muchchacho task. What do I mean by muchacho task? Sending muchachos (kids) to buy random things for you (like cooking oil/bread/laundry soap/beans/etc.) from colmados is to “mandar un muchacho” to run your errrands. And kids love it! It gives them an important mini-mission to accomplish. I do errands for my dona too, but I like to think they’re a little more adult, like - “Emma here’s some money, and next time your in Santiago can you shop for X thing for me?” But that’s not what happened today. Today my dona gave me money, and sent me out to buy a 60 peso phone card and two packets of 5 peso bleach. Without a doubt, this is a muchacho job, and I had been mandar’d like the best of them. As I took her money and walked off up the dirt path to the colmado I laughed in my head, thinking “My dear Dona, do I look like a muchacho to you?” After a couple minutes, I returned and programmed the new phone card into her phone. I checked to make sure she had my number, just in case, and scrolled down to the E’s. Except, “Emma” wasn’t listed. This made me a little sad; after all this time with the family, my number wasn’t even saved. Once I reached the H’s though, I laughed aloud as I read “HemmaMiHija” (aka in English: my daughter Emma) from the contact list, and remembered that when I first came here the family pronounced my name with an H - “Hemma.” Aw so sweet, Dona! :) 

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Sunday I spent the day at the youth group meetings and election, but between these things, I visited at different houses in the neighborhood. At one house, the mom was busy doing her daughters hair. Naturally there was a group of people just sitting and watching, so they called me over and I happily joined the audience. For many Dominicans, Sunday is salon day - a day for hair and nails. This rings true nationwide - rich, poor, rural, urban, city, or campo - Sunday is for the salon. Right now, you’re about to get a campo-salon version. So, back to the scene - the daughter sat down, balancing herself on a empty red crate, as her mother stood behind her, taking a pair of lime green, kids safety scissors with a plastic coated handle to trim the ends of the hair. Once the mom was satisfied with the trimming, she had her daughter go inside and get the rollers. In the meantime, the husband came home. He backed his red truck into the side yard, manuvering through the wooden stick fence laced with barbed wiring then into the bed sheets hanging on the clothesline and drying in the sun. He came out of the truck without saludar-ing (greeting or saying “hi” to) anyone. Meanwhile the daughter came back outside, rollers in hand. She settled on the ground as her mother sat on a bench, and she passed the rollers and pins back as her mother put roller after roller in her hair. The husband entered and exited the house, and didn’t seem very happy. He asked if there was any lunch left for him. The wife said she didn’t save anything, and since he didn’t call and say he was coming, she assumed he wasn’t. At this point the husband got angrier, and kept saying over and over how hungry he was. The wife, with her attention still on the rollers, pointed out the hour - 4:00 in the afternoon - and reiterated that the husband said he would call, and since he didn’t call, how was she to know he’d come by four hours later looking for lunch. It continued like this for a while, with me and the other neighbors just sitting there, watching the daughter’s hair get pinned into the rollers one by one, and listening to the wife and husband argue back and forth about the missing lunch. It reached a dramatic moment as the husband yelled loudly that hair care must be more important than his hunger. During all this, I’m laughing in my head, thinking, “Alright dude, stop whining and make yourself a sandwich.” (But that’s not very culturally sensitive, so I left it unsaid). It ended, with the husband finding something to eat in the house and bringing it back outside so he could continue to let us know how hungry and unhappy he was. He sat down, joining us in the audience of the campo salon, and together we all watched the hair rollers line up in neat little rows in the daughter’s hair. To conclude - Sundays are for the salon - consider yourselves warned lest you go hungry.

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For those who might care to know, I have electricity again! And I also know a great way to spend 5.5 hours, as 5.5 hours is exactly how long it took to wait, work out the problems and pay the electrical bill. Quite the process. So I signed up (for real this time) back in February, got the house connected with the meter, and started receiving bills. That’s when I noticed that on the forms they list every electrical appliance in your house, and that on my form things were listed that I clearly do not own: a large refrigerator, six lightbulbs, a stove, a television, two fans... I laughed, because I obviously can’t afford a television or a large refrigerator. Still I didn’t think too much of it, because I have a meter on the house, so obviously the meter counts and keeps track of exactly how much energy a house uses, right? About a month later, i went back to pay, and this list of electrical appliances came up in conversation. The dialogue that ensued will give you a sense of the electricity system and my ongoing adventures with it:

Me: This list isn’t correct. I don’t have a large refrigerator or a television, but its okay because the meter says the correct amount, and the price is from the meter, right?

Girl working: That’s right, the meter counts exactly how much electricity you use, and that’s the number that you pay each month. The price is from the meter. But if you have someone from the company come check all the electrical appliances in your house the cost will go down.

M: Oh...but I thought you said the cost is only from the meter?

GW: Yes, of course it is. Exactly.

M: So actually, the monthly price will be the same no matter what appliances the paper says I have.

GW: No. If someone comes to see what you have like the stove, refrigerator, television, and if they see that you don’t have many of these things, they’ll write it down, then the cost will go down.

M: Oh. But the cost on the bill is only from the meter...?

GW: Exactly.

Okay, does that system make any sense? Your house has a meter/electricity counter. This counter keeps track of the electricity. The price on the bill each month is from what the numbers say on the meter. Oh! But, wait. If we come to your house to check all your electrical things, we’ll lower your price. ? ...No wonder there are so many problems here with electricity. Even those who actually pay aren’t being charged correctly. Add to that those who rob electricity, those who live without it, and you’ve got the current system - planned black-outs to save energy, people who avoid the system completely and dangerously tie into pre-existing electrical wires, and for those who do pay, the company assigns its prices as it sees fit. Se fue la luz, indeed.

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At the elections last Sunday, two muchachos built a play videocamera out of cardboard boxes and wood. They used a big empty tomato paste cardboard box for the camera, attached a cylinder-shaped piece for the lens, and added a piece of wood to the side for the viewing screen. Then, they tied on half of an old jumprope to the “video camera” to be the cord and microphone. Kids here are always making toys and games from random stuff they find on the ground. (I don’t know if this is a trend amongst kids in other towns, but this is the second time I’ve seen kids around here build cardboard videocameras). Anyway, here comes the cutest part. Then these kids, both probably about 10 years old, took the camera and microphone around to people who had voted and asked questions like “What did you think of the voting this afternoon?” or ”Who do you think will win today?” They had everyone standing in line waiting to cast their ballots laughing and talking into the jumprope microphone to the muchacho reporters and their cardboard camera. Pretty creative and funny kids.

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Wow, this post feels so unorganized! If you made it this far, thanks for reading. A lot of words, no pictures - hopefully no one got too bored. ;)

Enjoy this day - it is the only one like it! Take care, all.

XO