Celebrations

I was invited to a party this past weekend in my old community of Tres Palmas. My closest friend Lucia and I have stayed in touch despite our separation and she called me a month ahead of time to tell me that she really wanted me to come to the fiesta. I was super excited to go back and see everyone as I have always felt extremely close and comfortable around the campesinos in this small mountain community, not to mention loved. Although I have visited three times in the last year, I am given flack for not visiting enough and am constantly told I have forgotten my Dominican family. However, I feel blessed that I did not move far away and am able to visit whenever I like. In private transport, it is only about an hour trip; however, due to the slow guaguas, it usually takes me about three hours, I have to take two different small buses and then a motorcycle taxi the final half hour. Although close in kilometers, it is a world apart from my current community. The homes in Tres Palmas are organized like a typical campo in the Dominican Republic: they proudly stand or jauntily lean in their garishly bright paint along a winding dirt road. They are spaced apart so that yelling between families is possible but not so close that one cannot plant a sizeable garden around their home. Where I live now in Judea Nueva, there are around 500 homes, in comparison to the much smaller 40 that comprised the campo of Tres Palmas. Judea Nueva was set up like a housing complex for the workers of the rice fields. It is ten feet from a large two-lane highway and sees lots of traffic. The homes are huddled together as if for warmth and one has the privilege of hearing domestic disputes, dinner conversation, and the neighbors television without leaving home.
Riding up the winding dirt road with an old motoconcha driver that remembered my name despite a year of not seeing him, I felt extremely relaxed in my old familiar surroundings. The pace of life is extremely simple and I get the feeling that if I come back to visit in ten years much will be the same, new chickens, new grandkids, but same crops being planted, some complaints about the heat, same sharing of fruit bounty with all. There is a comforting peace that pervades people’s struggle to cultivate the land and to feed their families. There is a small river in town, the area receives high amounts of rainfall, and the soil is extremely fertile. However, if you look around the farmers are not young. They are in their fifties and sixties, working alongside hired Haitian help. The twenty something’s move to Santiago or Dajabon or the capital in search of a job less physically intensive and more lucrative. This campo is filled with the very old and the very young grandkids. Life there has a definite structure and tempo. What brought tears of boredom and frustration to my eyes a year ago now brings reassurance when I go home to visit my neighbors and friends. I know exactly what they will say before they say it: I have gained weight, the mosquitoes are eating me alive, I have forgotten my roots, etc.
Rolling into town on the back of the motoconcho I stopped off at Lucia’s house overjoyed to see my closest friend in the DR. Her mother stopped struggling with the woodstove and came to greet me looking more stoic than usual. She informed me that we wouldn’t be having the fiesta because a close neighbor had passed away two days before and we would be going to the wake. I was invited to the velorio or wake and it was assumed I was going because every person in town was going. I found myself feeling at peace with the fact that I would be able to see everyone in one place whereas my normal visits are usually spent running around the dirt roads trying to say hi to all forty families which then leaves everyone thinking I’m insane because I’m walking around in the sun and as soon as I come to their house, I am leaving again. Not to mention my tolerance for fresh-fruit juice is usually about a three cup per two hour limit making it uncomfortable for me to visit and not partake of the offered gift.
The woman who had passed away was middle aged, no more than forty and had left a strong impression on me. She had down’s syndrome and our weekly interaction was at Catholic Mass when she would collect money from the parishioners. She always made me laugh because despite being mute, she would make guttural noises shaming everyone into giving a donation despite some people’s obvious embarrassment that they had nothing that week to give. Her innocence and persistence combined beautifully to wheedle money out of the poorest hands. I couldn’t help but laugh my first day at Catholic Mass, I had walked from home with my host family and didn’t think to bring any money. When the collection time came I put my head down and closed my eyes in prayer. I underestimated the wonderful Beatra. She stood in front of me tapping me and putting her hand out and groaning at me for coins she knew I had if only because I was a rubia, blanca, Americana. After what seemed like an eternity, my host father finally politely shoved her down the aisle much to the amusement of the entire congregation, all 20 of my neighbors. From that Sunday forward, I made sure to have several coins with me at mass to avoid the embarrassment of another public flogging from Beatra. I like to think of her as the Lord’s vanguard, taking money from people even if they did not want to give.
The body was lain out in the family’s house in an open casket, about 200 people were sitting under trees in the dirt yard or crowded into the small house or out back cooking mountains of chicken and yucca to serve to everyone present. Most people were crying and wailing when I walked in, but they would all pause give me a big hug and smile, tell me I was mas gorda, ask how my family was, and then continue crying. I could not help but imagine how this scene would have played out in the US. If there was an unknown foreigner I doubt everyone would be ecstatic that said person had shown up at the wake, because in my limited experience, death is something fairly closed and personal for American families. But, like most things Dominican, even a death was an event that was loud, fun, crowded, chaotic, and ended with eating chicken, gossiping about the neighbors, laughing, and drinking soda in plastic chairs. Nothing was cheapened or less genuine because people were crying sincerely and at the next moment, laughing with just as much emotion and earnestness. I continue to learn so many things about different cultures by living here on the island and feel so lucky to be serving in a country that is willing to share everything with me: their lives, their funerals, their time, and their root vegetables.