Saturday, November 27, 2010

Starting Over


Adjusting to my new town has not been super-suave, but then again, I have only spent 2 full days there. My biggest challenge thus far has to do with the fact that I am pretty much on my own after 7:30 AM when Josefa leaves for her full work day as a school administrator. Unlike a typical Dominican household, where there is always a Doña willing and able to fix meals and the like, living with a woman who has a career outside of the home has made fitting in a little hard. Her husband tends to his rice fields throughout the day and pretty much only makes short stops in the house in order to fry cheese, fry chicken, or to make a chocolaty oatmeal drink. He thinks I am weird and do not understand Spanish when I turn down all of the aforementioned foods. That being said, I found myself walking down the dirt road the first day hoping to be invited in to people’s homes in order to chat and explain why I was living in town. This was easier said than done. Most scowled at me and did not invite me in. The local hairdresser (a woman with a large blow dryer in her house) did take one look at my unacceptable hair and invited me to let her fix my mane as soon as I deemed it necessary. Basically, she was embarrassed that I was showing my face in public with my unkempt nest and was politely offering me a way to remedy the situation. I thanked her and ended up spending most of the day with her and her husband. We watched CNN Español, ate white rice and fried chicken for lunch, of course drank some afternoon Tang, and had a long conversation about the banana export industry in Monte Christi. All in all it was a great first day.
On Monday I made my way down to the grammar school. Because my new town has never had a volunteer they assumed the only thing I could offer them would be English classes. Talk to any other volunteer and they will tell you that teaching English is a bit of a sticky situation. Most Dominican children want to learn English, but they also believe that this knowledge will spread through osmosis simply by standing near an American for a long enough period of time. Studying, practice, and effort will not be requisite parts of the process. Now, I understand that that is an unfair generalization; there are many Dominicans that do in fact learn English. However, teaching middle schoolers English is not how I want to spend the majority of my Peace Corps service. Visiting with the principle on Monday morning, I was informed that the primary school, grades fifth through eighth, was expecting me to teach their English classes because the “teachers did not know English” and were therefore not currently teaching English. It is a very similar situation to one from my own grammar school when my sixth grade teacher would teach double religion class instead of science because she did not know any science. In order to remedy this situation and walk the fine line of appeasing my new town and not becoming a babysitter at the grammar school, I have decided to offer the school my services in the form of a teacher training class after school hours. Also, I have decided to teach several English classes outside of school that will be open to all community members. I might upset the Principal with my unwillingness to work as an unpaid slave at the school, but hopefully, with time, the community will understand. As of now, I want to save my energy to work on projects that I deem more sustainable and more necessary for the community than teaching an eight year old how to say “Derek Jeter is my favorite baseball player.” Be it latrines, a community garden, a nursery, or environmental education classes, I definitely will have ample projects to keep me busy in my new home.
On the first Tuesday of November, I received a call from the Peace Corps informing me that all volunteers in my region were being consolidated in a hotel in Santiago to wait out the arrival of Tropical Storm Tomas. Having just arrived in my new community it was uncomfortable explaining that I was taking off so soon. For me, it also drove home the reality that no matter how hard I try to live at the level of my community, I will always be different. If an emergency comes up, Peace Corps and the United States government can intervene on my behalf to ensure my safety. This is a luxury that the average campesino will never enjoy. The principal asked if she too was supposed to come with me…I politely said she was welcome to accompany me to Santiago but Peace Corps would not be paying for her hotel room.
That being said, staying at a fairly-fancy hotel with hot water and air conditioning and buffet food was a luxurious change from my vida diaria. However, by day four of consolidation, I was ready to get off the cruise ship. Too much heavy-saucy foods, mixed with too little exercise, mixed with too much free internet and contact with the outside world is a recipe for disaster. We made the most of our experience by venturing out infrequently to play some hoops with some local youngsters who had obviously all been watching the AND 1 video series because I recognized more than one of “Hot Sauces” dance moves. Also, a bunch of volunteers and I played some pick-up soccer on the basketball court. We also kept busy by frequenting the casino at our lovely hotel in order to try and increase our measly wages, which ended for all but one volunteer, in less money than we had before. The Peace Corps budget does not really factor in a gambling cushion in our monthly salary, but at least the cocktails and sandwiches were free at the casino. It was not a total loss.
When we were finally released on Sunday, I headed to the capital to attend a week- long in-service language training. Basically if you left training in May as anything but an advanced speaker, Peace Corps wants to make sure we receive some more help in the language department to avoid offending our communities any more than we do already by wearing Chaco sandals and unbedazzled jeans (a girl asked me if I could even call my jeans jeans because there was no butt bling.) I don’t think I know the answer to that question anymore, at least not in the Republica Dominicana. I found myself meeting and living with yet another host family (I have now lived with five in the DR) in Pantoja, the barrio near our training center on the edge of Santo Domingo. It was a pretty typical meet and greet, I ate dinner while the six year old showed me his break dance moves to club-level blaring raggaeton courtesy of Daddy Yankee while the mother proudly expressed her approval of her son’s dance prowess and even made him rap for me. After dinner she made sure I was content by letting me watch Bad Boys II with her son in the downstairs bedroom. Because it was in English we fast forwarded a lot to watch and re-watch all the action scenes.
I left the capital a day early on Thursday afternoon to meet Laura at the airport in Santiago. I was entertaining my very first visitor!

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