Adding pics to several older posts.

Nueva York

Called Doña Tuesday night. First thing she said to me was she thought I'd forgotten them! Their internet at the house hasn't been working. She got the Visa! She said she made good eye contact and they were able to bring photos and letters and so forth. They did get my letter. Now it's a matter of finding an apartment in NY and getting things arranged before the Visa expires. She's going to look for work in NY. I wish she spoke english. I told her to keep me updated--I was 'sposed to chat onlin with her today but I couldn't connect. I'll call soon.

On another note, I start at the oncology institute tomorrow! Basically I'm going to be rotating through all the services they offer, observing and helping out. 2 weeks each rotation, 2 days a week. I'll let you know more soon.

Dengue

Tuesday at Pequeños Pasitos turned out to be the dengue campaign. I was super-stoked. I couldn't figure out why everyone else wasn't bouncing off the walls excited--I mean, they seemed to be interested but not all hyped up the way I felt. Diego was stressed. I think he's one of those people who functions best under pressure.

Anyway, the point is I had a blast. It was hot and sweaty and exhausting and fabulous. We went out to los pinos to cover all the water tanks of the community with mesh, give each house chlorine to clean the water with, and educate about dengue. The consejera I was working with seemed to want to hurry the process as much as possible, so she didn't want to talk much at each house. But I gave my spiel about dengue at each house anyway. I figured, this is people's health--possible lives-- we were dealing with; no way I was going to skip steps. Plus I walked faster than she anyway so it evened out. At the houses up the hill--a good 15 min. walk up a dirt path--she stayed and talked a while longer about other health issues going on. Makes sense; those people would have to make quite an effort to get to the clinic.

One of them was the poorest family I think I've ever seen. Ok, that's not actually true. Poorest family I've ever sat and talked with in this country, how about that. I took some mental notes, because it was an interesting scene! 2-room wood house, zinc roof, dirt floor. Water tank on the side. Heavy vegetation and palm trees up the hill. Corn drying on a cloth in the yard. A naked toddler (uncircumcized, by the way) brings a cob to me. His dad is shirtless and very fit. He brings me a plastic chair to sit on in the yard. The young mother is cross-eyed, shoeless, pregnant, and wearing a faded floral print dress. They smile a lot. The man seems concerned when I only talk about dengue, and don't have anything to say to his concerns about his wife (because I don't know what he's saying). They cheer up when the consejera they know well comes up the hill, breathing heavily. She steps by the wood and wire fence to catch her breath. There are fuschia rosebushes and rose moss in bloom. The young mother picks up some ajis off a bush and sends them with the consejera when we have finished.

The consejera adn I talked about education--the environment at PUCMM and how it feels like high school, how generally only rich kids can go there, why there isn't financial aid. Her daughter will be headed to college in a few years--she names some public universities where she might be able to send her. Apparently some families who send their kids to places like PUCMM end up losing their homes if their kids don't do well enough in school.

I talked with her and Diego about the health care situation in the region. Apparently a lot of people from the next campo over come to Pequeños Pasitos, even though there is a public clinic there. Some differences at the public clinic:

- no steady supply of meds - most meds aren't free - most clinic visits not free - no consejeras - no community campaigns

The consejera, by the way, is a community member who goes out into the community like we did my first week. There are 4 of them, and they hit each house in the community at least once every 3 months. Partners in Health has them too. I wonder if there are any differences in the way the consejeras work there.

Solidarity

2 a.m.

Can’t sleep.

So this is a really old journal. Apparently my desire not to use it up too quickly went too far. I’m seven years older now, and still in the same habits.

Like the one where my brain goes in circles late at night until I give up all hope of sleep and start writing.

Just less than two weeks ago I sent Doña a letter of support for her cita in the capital. I also gave her firm advice about eye contact that was passed on to me from the C.I.E.E. director. I’ve been so nervous about it. I don’t know for sure if she was able to open or print the letter, although I sent it about 5 different ways to 2 addresses. I don’t know if she made good eye contact at the consulate. I don’t know if everything went ok with her husband. I don’t know if she was granted the visa.

I’m terrified.

It’s a very difficult feeling to describe, but a familiar one. Because it’s the same feeling of dread I had those two weeks after getting back from the rez before I bawled my eyes out alone in the living room in Argyle late one night. It’s the deep fear of failing someone. It’s so deep it’s paralyzing, you see. Because for months after getting back to Minnesota that summer, I did nothing. I didn’t call; I didn’t write. I’m sure I seemed fine, indifferent even, when that woman cried on my shoulder my last day at Cangleska—cried because I was leaving. I’m sure I though I was fine. But the truth is I was terrified that once I left, I could never be to her what she needed me to be. And when by the time I’d gotten up the courage to write the Cangleska folks, and I tried to contact her and couldn’t find her, that dread ran so deep that I stopped trying to stay in touch.

It’s not that Doña’s cita is my responsibility. The C.I.E.E. director even told me my letter wouldn’t matter very much. Probably nothing I did had a significant impact. But I talked with her about it, worried with her about it, thought about it, prayed about it. Some part of that anxiety she had about it grew inside me too. So when I went on MSN to see if José was on and they weren’t there, I felt a little relieved. I haven’t called. I’m terrified of hearing the wrong answer, terrified of how disappointed I’ll be, and terrified of how heartbroken I’ll be at her disappointment. I went so far as to be vulnerable in this relationship, and I’ve gone as far as carrying her feelings inside of me. I’ve gone as far as trying to take some kind of imaginary responsibility by trying to help. And now I’m afraid to fail.

Somewhere in the back of my mind I saw this coming. I didn’t see it coming when I left the rez two years ago. I remember preparing for a sweatlodge cermony (inipi), and Norma asking me as we stood by the fire what I wanted healing for. And I said, “But all the things I can think of, I’ve already had healing for.” It wasn’t true, though I did believe it. I’m not sure you ever heal all the way from these kinds of things.

And that’s why I’ve decided to share a moment with you I don’t think I’ve ever discussed with anyone. It occurs in high school just after a series of catastrophic events that I and all my friends have gotten wrapped up in. I am walking down the brick hallway toward the exit, leaving from class or cheerleading practice in the late afternoon. I stop and talk with one of my friends about the events of the past week. And that’s when she says the thing I’ve never forgotten: “ I can’t believe people knew about this and didn’t do anything! I mean, if it had been me, I would have been like, ‘you, me, we’re going to the hospital right now.’”

I’m one of those people who knew. One of a few. The only one who knew about some of it. But I don’t say that. I just say, “Yeah.” And it’s not that I didn’t do anything. The point is that I didn’t do enough. That’s what the girl is saying, though she doesn’t know it. And it isn’t so much what she says that’s so devastating, but that I believe it.

I tried for years to convince myself otherwise. That’s what I thought, standing by that fire outside the sweatlodge—that the guilt was gone. But the truth was that I’d always believed it, still do, and I imagine, always will.

I said in that reflection essay we wrote at the end of the summer program that I felt I’d found a method, in the homestay, of seeing myself through “the other’s” eyes, and wanted to find a method of seeing suffering through their eyes. But really that’s what happened two years ago. I cared so deeply about those women that their pain was tangible to me. The bruised faces, broken backs, ruined families, the children wearing nothing but diapers and sleeping outside: I took all these things into me and carried them with me when I left. Their suffering became a part of me. And when those relationships changed at the end of the summer and I had the chance to run from that suffering, I did. Because I was afraid I would fail as a friend. I was afraid I could not maintain such solidarity. And the irony is that in that paralyzing fear, I did fail.

Something has been stirring in me the past month, bringing about these realizations. That’s why I’ve been working so hard on my journal and blog. Because it means very much to me to keep up with all of you. Because I want you to know where I’m at, and I want to hear from you. I know I say it’s hard to keep up because I’m so busy. But that’s not true, because I think about you all the time. I think about that woman who cried on my shoulder almost every day. The real reason I haven’t kept in contact is that I’m afraid—afraid to fail you. If you’re wondering if this message is aimed at you, the answer is yes. If I know you, I’ve thought about you. I want to know how you are.

I’ll call Doña tomorrow.

Excerpts from my reflection essay from the summer

I was coming back from the rez two years ago when I started thinking about the importance of questions. I didn’t really think about it purposefully, it was just something that started milling around in the back of my mind. I’d spent an intense, emotional summer on my own as a volunteer at a shelter for abused women. I’d been there before, but as a missionary. A kid on a short-term church trip which was great fun, of course, but barely engaged with the people we were ministering to, and certainly not in terms of their suffering. As a long term volunteer, I began build relationships with women and children suffering in all sorts of ways. And to watch the mission trips come and go all summer without engaging the people I had come to love stirred something up in me.

Several months ago I attempted to analyze the issues surrounding these thoughts in earnest. And the more I studied and wrote, the more I realized that what I came up with was full of anger. My role as a white missionary didn’t happen by chance, you see. Over the years I learned that from my ancestors and predecessors, I had inherited a culture of colonization, westernizing, and “fixing” the undeveloped world. The lives and work of these people—which a large part of my life, my identity was built upon—had been driven by a sense of superior responsibility, the “white man’s burden” as Kipling called it. I looked at what had gone wrong in the work of these people, and focused increasingly on the refusal of missionaries and government officials to give the opinion of Native Americans highest priority regarding their own suffering. I was angry because I had become convinced that this mentality was still prevalent today. I posited all kinds of solutions, but the more I developed them, the more I got the sense there was something wrong. After some time I realized what that was: all these ideas were themselves based on my own opinions, not directly on the opinions of my friends on the rez. I had fallen into the trap of my ancestors.

That is the struggle I brought with me to the Dominican Republic: the search for the ability to place the opinions of others about their own lives above my own. They don’t teach this kind of thing at universities; Kipling’s arrogance still permeates much of the culture I come from. So I looked for it here wherever I could.

Lesson #1: Get Dirty

Lesson #2: Talk to Chocolate-Makers

Lesson #3: Eat Rice and Beans with a Spoon

I have to believe this is only the start. What I want, what I really want, is to understand suffering through the eyes of those who suffer, but this takes something I haven’t gotten to yet. At the dump, there was little chance for discussion with locals, and it was all too easy to overlook the people whose homes we walked through like tourists. I nearly overlooked a chance for discussion at the chocolate factory, but even in discussion I couldn’t separate my Kipling mentality from my understanding of the answers I got. But living with a family, a much-needed self-awareness began to grow in me, the awareness that I was out of place; I was the weird one. As the stay went on, this awareness began to permeate my thinking more and more, allowing me to connect with my family. And the more questions I asked, you see, the more deeply they were answered, and the more I began to think my preconceptions weren’t so useful after all. I began to believe in the value of those answers on their own merit.

I am hoping now that if I can see myself through someone else’s eyes, perhaps I can begin to see other things through their eyes as well. Perhaps I can understand someone else’s life through their own eyes. I’ve come to believe this is the heart of social justice. We start by getting out of our comfort zone, and the next step is asking good questions. But what I’ve realized now is that questions themselves are not enough—we have to allow a shift in perspective, allow ourselves to accept the validity of answers. If, for instance, we ask good questions of abused native women, understanding can begin. But if we can begin to place more importance on their opinions than on our own, relationships built on mutual respect can be cultivated. And perhaps then the good intentions of outsiders will not prove so unfruitful. This is one of the most important reasons I’m glad I’m doing the fall program. I was able to get through step 3—seeing myself through their eyes—this summer, but step 4—getting to a real shift in worldview—will take more time.

El Suroeste

We’re just getting back to Santiago now. Friday we left really early for the southwest. We stopped at some national parks—Las Caritas where the Taínos etched faces into the rock, Lago Enriquilo which is a really beautiful salty lake where a bunch of iguanas live. They all come crowding around like seagulls when people show up, and will almost come close enough to eat bread or crackers out of your hand.

We went to the Haitian border too. There’s not too much to tell about it. We walked through the bit of no-man’s land where people were selling fruit and trinkets and a bunch of the shacks had been flooded recently. We walked into the checkpoint area over the Haitian border too—apparently we looked harmless enough to get in. Canada seems to be helping them out with some of the infrastructure there. This area was beautiful, with salty lakes and steep verdant mountains. When we got back in the guagua, some kids were pounding on the windows asking for food or money. After a while I said I was going to cry, so Lily gave them a pack of Dinos (basically Oreos) with stern instructions to share.

In Vicente Noble, Kelly and I stayed with Marinita. Pardon the expression, but she’s the shit. She’s more than 80 years old, has a big black fro, and wears clothes from the 80’s. She adopted and raised 10 street kids, in addition to her own 2, made all the dresses for the Fiesta Patronales queens for many years, and was the president of the mom’s group and the first woman president of the neighborhood association. This was on her wall in the sewing room:

“Cada hombre debe decidirse una vez un su vida si se decide a triunfar arriesgandolo todo, o se queda a contemplar el paso de los triunfadores.”

(Amaury wrote this for me because I forgot to copy it down before we left. It’s not word for word, but pretty close.)

Amaury is one of the more than 150 people in Vicente Noble who’s godmother is Marinita. These days she goes to mass every day and watches the news every night, teaches sewing three times a week, teaches fixing houshold appliances three times a week, and makes wedding dresses. Her adopted kids are now in Santo Domingo, the States, Spain, etc. doing cool stuff. She showed us pictures of all this the first night we were there. I watched the news with her too—we watched the story about Article 30 being upheld. She’s mega-Catholic, so I think she was happy. When I found out later what Article 30 means, I was pretty pissed.

I really like the house she lives in—it’s wood with a zinc roof, bucket baths, all that. Flush toilet though! The lights only come on for an hour or so at a time. There are fabric flowers in the living room and pictures of family and religious stuff everywhere. Most of the walls are pink. Kelly and I shared a bed under one of those mosquiteros that hangs from the ceiling. She doesn’t eat sald because of amoebas, but otherwise the food was quite good.

Saturday morning after breakfast Marinita sat down at her sewing machine. Turned out she was making us sarongs! I wore mine—a shear teal thing that looks like a curtain—at the beach that day.

Then we walked through the fishing community there by the beach, and I felt like crap about goofing off all day. It was the good kind of feeling like crap though. The people there live in houses made of scraps—very much like those at the Santiago dump or in Ensenada. Some houses have cement block walls, but le me qualify that; the block houses don’t have roofs, because they’re built inside the cave. Some have cement floors, some dirt, all one room, and sloping rock for a roof. I have no idea what it would be like in the rain. There is a housing project going on--they look like YWAM houses, actually. But after talking with a woman who was sitting outside her house watching the tourists, I learned that the people who work on that project (for the government, by the way) get paid so little that they still live in scrap houses or in the cave.Las Aguilas is by far the best beach in the country, and one of the most relaxing places I’ve been. We had a late lunch of grilled fish just caught that day—they grill ‘em up with the head still on and everything. I ate two!

Which brings me to today! Hah! I made it! We went to the batey today near Vicente Noble. We got there just as mass was letting out, and sat and talked with a group of people from the community. Let me explain--the bateys are extremely poor communities on the border

which are almost entirely Haitian. I guess they were originally set up by Trujillo. So we talked with some of the church youth and other members, as well as the mission priests--one from the Congo and Canada. We sang some songs with them and then went on a walking tour through the batey. We stopped in a hut which was set aside for some kind of voodoo stuff, I think. The walls were brightly painted with crosses and ying-yangs and religious figures. There was a chicken tied up by the wall. We went in a little room where there was an altar, books, lots of virgins, and boxes and bottles of stuff for curing various diseases. Everything here was brightly colored too. Then when we went back out into the larger room, they got out some instruments--one large drum, and four horn-like things made of tin and painted in yellow and

blue stripes circling the long part. They had flutes at the end like tubas, and each one was a different size. Then they boys played us a few songs with the drum and these horns. I recorded a bunch of what happened that day, including those songs, and I'll see if I can find a way to post them online at some point.

Back at the church, we talked some more.

The community girls got one of the church staff to play his drum and they did some dances for us. They even got him to play Pepe! Then Lily got up and danced, and so did the woman in a 1950's style dress with a rainbow rosary and lots of teeth missing. These young girls are pretty amazing. Their faith clearly means everything to them, and they discuss faith and philosophy easily ("Que philosophía," Cherody said after one of the girls finished explaining what keeps her going day to day). One girl I talked with wants to grow up to be some kind of social worker to improve the lives of the poor in the bateys. She's 13. I wanted to be a pop singer when I was 13.

1. pepe in the batey

2.another song from the church

3. yet another song from the church

4. song from the voodoo hut thing

5. people talking in Marinita's house

6. people talking in Marinita's house 2

7. at the church in the batey

8. walking tour in the batey

9. here we arrived at the voodoo hut thing

Pequeños Pasitos

The first time we went to Pequeños Pasitos was in that orientation period. It’s up in the mountains by Santiago—a 40 min. or so guagua ride—in a campo called las Bajones (which means afros—it’s a reference to the shape of a type of grass that grows there).

The clinic is run by A Mother’s Wish Foundation, and it primarily serves women and children.

Diego told us the story of how the foundation came about. He and his wife Rita are from Kansas or somewhere around there. Their daughter was extremely ill several years ago and needed a transplant—kidney, liver, something like that. Anyway she was very close to death, and the doctors said they would take anything that remotely matched at that point to give her more time. Then at the last minute an organ turned up that was exactly right—a perfect match. Their daughter lived, and is now raising her kids somewhere in the states.

After experiencing this miracle, the couple felt they needed to do something drastic. Rita is originally from Santiago and has family there, so they moved to the DR and found the poorest area in the region of Santiago. They set up in las Bajones and after not too long opened Pequeños Pasitos for the first time.

The clinic has a large waiting room—which is good because there’s always a lot of people. There are two consultorios, a triage room for the nurse, and a small washroom/lab area. I think they have a microscope in there. I’m trying to see if we can get the blood analyzer up and running for them. Then there are a couple of other buildings—one, the most important one, Diego says, holds the generator and backup power supply. The other one has a living area for students who stay long-term, an office, and I think has a room for classes. Daniel and Micah the med student are teaching an English class and Mollie and Stacy help out the girl’s group. I can’t stay late to help out with that stuff as I have class Tuesday afternoons.

But we do get to spend all of Tuesday morning there. Two weeks ago I went out with Ana and a few other students in the community. It was too large of a group, really, for only one consejera (Ana, our teacher) and two stethoscopes. But it was super interesting nonetheless. At each house we gave a little spcheel about Dengue fever (I have it memorized now) and tood people’s blood p

ressures. I took the pressure of one guy who turned out to have pretty high blood pressure. Even though the clinic primarily treats pregnant women and children (the goal is to raise a generation of healthy children), they treat other people too if they live in the community. We noted names and addresses of all the people we checked for the clinic records, and referred the ones with hypertension there. Then we went by the school just as they were getting out of recess, so we stopped in and gave a talk about Dengue. Throwing something like that together isn’t quite as fun when you’re with too many type A’s. But it was pretty cool, and more importantly, I think those kids actually learned the most important bits of information. The school, by the way, was in some kind of old warehouse building.

The kids were separated by ages and each group was set up in one corner or another with chairs, sometimes desks (the wooden kind attached to benches, painted in garish pink or teal), and if I remember

right, a blackboard. I would guess there were a hundred or so kids. It was probably the saddest setup for a school I’ve ever seen. And the kicker was that every kid was dressed in a pristine black and blue school uniform. I really had trouble understanding that one.

Last week I spent the morning with the doctor and Micah. One of the more significant things I learned was that I shouldn’t go into primary care. After about 10 or 15 diagnoses of gripe I was ready to bang my head against the wall from boredom. But other than that it was awesome. We listened to a lot of kid’s chests and I learned the basic list of questions the doctor runs through with every sick kid. With one patient, I figured out the had run our or spilled the antibiotics the kid was supposed to have been taking,

and the doctor gave them another bottle before they left. So I felt kind of special about that. They buy the drugs they use most commonly in bulk and repackage them so they can give them out for free.

I’m not sure which type of work I liked more. It was exciting to

deal with actual diseases in the clinic, but at the same time, out in the community there is a sense of actually preventing diseases, not just fixing them. I’m sure I’ll have a better idea after I’ve gone through all the rotations.

Every time we go I think about the rez more. Something about the goals and values of the clinic clicked with me the first time I went, and now I keep thinking to myself about how badly I want to be doing this work on the rez. It’s starting to get to me—I think I’m homesick. But it’s also good, because I feel like I’m on the right track; I can actually see myself doing this in the future.

Salcedo

Two weeks ago.

The first thing you see at the Mirabal house in Salcedo is the gardens. You could lose yourself in those gardens, given the chance—they are at once impecible and mysterious. The lawn is well kept and garnished with pebble paths and a giant deciduous tree. There is a fountain made of a white sand-colored stone with a koi living in the bright blue pool. The three sisters and Manolo are buried there under stones of the same color. And the sub-tropical flowers and grasses of all colors which surround the lawn and the little brown house attract butterflies of all kinds.

Dedé loves to garden. I imagine the yard around that house is something of a passion for her.

And I imagine that if I was dubbed the official caretaker of a legend—make that three legends—which started with my family, I’d want everything to be just right too.

The house is a museum. There’s a little office with a gift shop. The inside of the house is all set up to show how the girls and their family lived in the last months of their lives—it reminded me of how the Mayo house is arranged. Collections of knicknacks in the

living room. China sets in the dining room. Furniture in the bedrooms behind velvet ropes. Patria’s rosary. Minerva’s law school books on a shelf. Maria Teresa’s favorite dress in a glass case. Pictures of the women hanging in the hall. Where they made their meals, where they went to the bathroom, how they washed up for dinner. But it’s eerier and more mystical than any museum I’ve ever been in. It’s hard to put my finger on why—because they changed the course of history of this country, because it all happened relatively recently, because their sister is still here to tell the tale.

Dedé wasn’t quite who I’d pictured in In the Time of the Butterflies. She was wearing a loose colorful pantsuit and make-up, and a shock of white in her thick black hair fell near her eyes. She threw out her arms when she introduced herself, crying, “I’m

Dedé, the surviving sister.” She sat in a wooden rocking chair on the porch of the house, and we crowded around her on the floor like little children. She told us the story of the 14^th of July movement, the involvement of her sisters, their relations with Trujillo, the doings of Trujillo, and the assassination of her sisters. We had trouble following it because she talked so fast, but I can’t imagine anything she said isn’t in the books. She was the perfect combination of animated and solemn. It didn’t seem real somehow, as if she had adopted a personality perfectly suited to tell this story. I watched her carefully for signs of something outside that persona—some sign she really was a unique person—but they only thing I could see was in the crinkles around her eyes, a deep exhaustion.

She never broke character, so to speak. I asked about what her sisters were like. Yes, they really were pretty similar to the characters in the novel. I listened hard when she talked about Minerva and her fearless dedication to human rights. Some of the students bought her book about the sisters, and I think I will learn more when I read that later.

So I’ve got a ton on my mind right now. We’re on this trip in the southwest right now, and something about it brought all these things I’ve been unconciously working through since volunteering at Cangleska to light. I just had a long conversation with Lily about a ton of stuff—the rez, research, how I’m going to save the world, all that. I have a lot of writing to do on these identity issues and all the hurt I carried with me from that summer on the rez. But first I want to write about some more things from here in the DR.

Atención en Salud

I think I’ll write about the health care class first, even though we started Pequeños Pasitos first. The health care system here has three levels, and so far we’ve been working at a clinic on the first level—primary care. I got paired with David last week. We shadowed the family physician pretty much the whole morning. We got to listen to people’s lungs and take blood pressures—I took the blood pressureof a woman who was very hypertensive—it turned out she had high blood pressure and hadn’t been taking her medication. We saw some pregnant woman. They don’t have an ultrasound, so they take a measurement of the belly and listen to the baby’s heartbeat with a stethoscope. We saw an infected penis—David and I were shy at first about watching this examination, but it seems if you’re wearing a white coat people will pretty much let you do anything. I think they doctor gave him antibiotics and a basic lab workup--I don’t think they have the capability for gram stains and stuff like that in these little clinics. Oh yeah, we observed a female genital exam too. Then yesterday we went to that clinic again when we got there someone was giving a presentation (charlas) about pregnancy. It seemed like the women had come specifically for the charlas because there were several pregnant women sitting in the first couple rows (this was in the waiting room). Then David and I gave a presentation we’d put together about hypertension. We handed out brochures and talked then through it and then gave a little quiz and handed out mints as prizes. Some of the people were bored, but a surprizing number were really interested and participated. We left some brochures for the clinic to use too. Who knows, maybe we prevented some chronic diseases!

The rest of the time, David and I gave out vaccines and learned how to draw blood. Unfortunately there was only one vaccine patient there, so only I got to give a vaccine. Then we drew each other’s blood—it was relatively easy for me because David’s veins are easy, but he wasn’t able to get blood from me because it really hurt—apparently my veins are good for learning on.

PUCMM

It took more than two weeks to get my classes straightened out, coordinating between the U of M and PUCMM. In the end I got really lucky. I’m taking community medicine—that’s the one where we go to Pequeños Pasitos, topics in community medicine which deals with public health issues in this country (a great class, but I’m afraid I gave the professor the impression that I’m bored by it the other day, because I was having one of my morning Hashimoto’s-induced I-can’t-think-to-save-my-life episodes), introduction to health care where we basically get to pretend we’re doctors, immunology with the med students, thermodynamics with the engineering boys, and the class for our research projects. I had to dance too, but I dropped that so I’d have Wednesdays free for volunteering. It was a little sad, but dance in dance class is disappointing compared to discotecs anyway. All of my classes are great, except the research project class, which is boring and frustration. And I basically get treated like a med student—yep, I own my own stethocope and wear a lab coat to class! It’s pretty great because it’s almost like a trial run for med school. The other great thing about this arrangement, and the reason I spent two weeks trying to make it work, is that I can use thermodynamics and immunology toward my degrees, which means I can definitely graduate this May with both majors and both minors, and I won’t have to take any classes next summer if I don’t want to! Which is cool with all the other stuff I’ll have—you know, getting married, MCAT, finding a job…of course, everyone still thinks I’m crazy. When I told Mani, one of the guys from thermodynamics, that I’m also in immunology, he couldn’t believe it. But it’s nice to have classes that are with Dominicans—everything expect those two classes is with extranjeros—foreigners. At first in immunology, no one would talk to me and the girls sort of blew me off. Then creepy boy started talking to me in class—but by the time I figured out that he’s younger than my little brother and was flirting with me, he’d already gotten my phone number. He called me five times that week—I ignored all of them. I kind of rudely ignored him in the last lecture we had, but I’ve started being polite again now that I think he’s gotten the hint. Then yesterday girls finally started talking to me! I would really like to have some Dominicana amigas, so that was exciting. They were sharing notes with me and starting up conversations about the quiz—I’d been confused about what we were supposed to study and totally bombed it. And the girls in my lab section are really nice. I’m hoping I can find a few people I can study with before the first exam.
Thermodynamics is another story. It’s a small class, and people started talking to me right away—which is probably because they’re all boys. One of the first guys who started talking to me—Mani—has a girlfriend in Canada, so when he started talking to me all the other boys were joking that he was going to switch from Canada to the U.S. Anyway they’re all very friendly and not creepy at all, which is nice. It seems I’m a bit of a novelty—I don’t think there are any girls in their whole matriculating class. Everyone seems a little surprised that I’m actually taking this class for credit—I’m guessing no one expected me to still be there past the drop deadline. Mani told me the other day that when I walked into class the first day, they all thought I was either crazy or lost, and no one expected me to stay. I’m going to have to really work on this class now, as I figure I owe it to feminism to do well.

Salto

One of the first things we did here was spend a day in Jarabacoa. Stacy and I were pretty excited! We stopped at Campus Club first, which was pretty boring. I guess it’s some kind of a resort. We just hung out by the pool for a while and had lunch. I wasn’t feeling well that morning, so I was pretty quiet. I had started being able to feel the low thyroid that had shown up in my labs when I was home. Anyway I felt better after lunch and then we went on to Jarabacoa. We went to the park first because Stacy and I wanted to walk from the park to Medina so the rest of the group could get a feel for Jarabacoa. We went to my house first—we got there earlier than I’d thought we would so they were in the middle of lunch. But Doña got out some juice and I helped distribute it to people sitting around the house and porch. I gave a little tour of the house too. José disappeared onto the computer and Smil was kind of quiet—it seemed like they were a little baffled at having so many people in the house. We talked for a little while and then walked to Stacy’s house—which was basically the same thing with her family. I’d told Ari we’d be stopping by my house but he didn’t make it in time, so when we left for Salto de Jimenoa I texted him that he could meet us there if he wanted. Somehow George magically figured out that Stacy was in town and called her. So she told him he could meet us at Salto as well. Ari was already there when we got there,and it was really nice to see him. The other students were taking pictures when we started discussing what to do—I insisted that we could go swimming in the ‘restricted’ area and jump off the high part, but I guess they didn’t want to break rules with so many people around. So we decided to climb up to the second waterfall.

We started out with all of us, but people started to turn back as it got really tough. We found out later we’d missed a turn, a turn that if you take it, makes the hike

short and easy. But the trail soon disappeared, and we found ourselves scrambling up an incline steeper than the one on Mogote.

Not long after this, we started to get worried about the time.

But after we’d been sitting for a quite a while, I decided as long as we were sitting there discussing it,

I could go on ahead to see what it was like and then come back. But then people followed anyway. We tore our way through the brush until we reached a clearing where there was some kind of large apparatus, presumably part of the hydroelectric plant. We wondered around a bit, but then Ari found someone to ask about where we were.

The guy instructed us up to the road, and we ended up going all the way to the actual entrance to the second waterfall—an ecotourism project of the local community.

So we went all the way back down from there to the second waterfall, and man was it worth it! It’s absolutely quiet and secluded and gorgeous.

The falls gushed down into a deep crystal blue pool, and then went bubbling through

smaller pools off down the slope. The bare rocks and cliffs were various shades

of rose pink, tan, and a lonely gray color. We went swimming and wandered around a bit. We started back up down the trail then to

look for where the unofficial trail down to the first waterfall splits off

when George and a friend of his showed up! They walked around with us a bit but we really had to leave. George looked pretty upset when Stacy told him she wasn’t staying in town

that night. The two boys gave Ari tips on how to find the trail back down,

and it was actually really short and easy, and even bipassed the part where you feel like you’re scaling a wall. We’d gotten a hold of Lily earlier and she gave us some extra time, but even then we still got back late. I felt bad that the rest of the group was waiting for us, but honestly the climb was totally worth it.

Música

Our first week and a half or so here was lots of orientation stuff. I’m probably not going to write about everything we did—and certainly not in order. One cool thing we did was go to a Jazz concert in a fancy bar at a concert hall by the monument. It was a little strange in that it felt more like the states than anything I’d been to yet. But the band was really good, and I especially liked it when they brought in an accordian to give it a more Latin feel!

We chose classes, had some tours, and had some dinners together. One Saturday we went to Pequeños Pasitos—the rural clinic we work at for our Medicina Comunitaria class. I’ll say more about that later. We went out to a couple of discotecs, which were fine, but kind of disappointing compared to Jarabacoa. No bachata whatsoever, only a little merengue, and way too much reggaeton/grinding. But one evening I went with my family to a bar near the monument—that was fun! It was a live merengue band, and a lot of people were there. I danced merengue with Papi and Carlos José, and my parents were thoroughly impressed. I couldn’t dance much though, being there with my family and all. Oh, one night we went to a rock concert of a college band from PUCMM—friends of Laura, our Lily’s daughter. They were good! It really reminded me of going out to see Sliver or Sasquatch, and I got kind of nostalgic when the drummer had to take down his drums by himself.

Once more musical even worth mentioning. There was a big summer concert here at the monument—and it was free! A bunch of us when on a Saturday night. When we got there some band I don’t know was playing. We stood kind of towards the back for awhile. But as the music got better and more people came in, David and I decided we wanted to make our way to the front. We snuck our way through the crowd until we were pretty close to the stage. We watched Tito Swing, an excellent performer! He had facepaint on and a funny costume, and he was a really good dancer. It was a little sad when he went around playing all the instruments on one of the songs though, because he can’t play only instruments well. Kiko el Presidente was good. Then there were others I don’t remember. Sexappeal was very suave. Then Jeffery came on, and David and I were utterly blown away at the ridiculousness of his performance! Every song it was a different outfit—one of them was a tight gold suit—different dancers, like girls wearing scanty camoflauge, ballet dancing men dressed all in white, lots of girls in gigantic red and white Spanish dresses with poofy skirts—and a ton of lights and smoke. One song he actually stood on a lighted moving pedestal with smoke flowing up around him.

Finally Omega came on—awesome! It was kind of a rush to see him live. I think that’s how everyone in the crown felt. You could tell Omega knew it though, because he wasn’t putting all that much effort in. Still, he seemed like he was relaxed and just having a good time performing. Oh, and the best part was the backup singer guys—they’re hilarious, and all they really do is dance around and yell “El Fuerte” every so often.

Santiago

Finally, I get to write about what’s going on this fall! In two days it will have been a full month. We’ll be headed to the southwest that day—Friday. Just bought this journal at Farmacia Normal last night—thought it would be nice to start fresh. Right now I’m waiting at Puerta Dos—one of the entry points to campus—for Brinia, our Estudio Independiente teacher. No idea when she’s going to show up, so I thought I’d do something to pass the time.

Well people have been asking how my family is, so I guess I’ll start with that. I live with a mom, dad, and an 11-year-old brother. My host parents’ names are Ina and Carlos, but they said they prefer Mami and Papi so that’s what I call them. I’m glad it worked out that I don’t call both my host moms the same thing—that would have been weird to me. My brother goes by Carlos José. I first met my hose parents at a sort of meeting/ceremony thing we had in the library on campus. I met Carlos José when he came home from the colegio that evening. This was the 19^th of August, by the way. We live in an apartment in the same neighborhood as the other 7 students in CIC, and most of the CIEE students, it seems. It’s sort of an upper-middle class neighborhood and has a very different feel that Jarabacoa. No fountains though—the people I talked with may have exaggerated a bit! Most students live in houses, but we live on the third floor of an apartment building. I have my own room, and an awesome view of the monument!

And there aren’t any mosquitoes up here, so I don’t even need a mosquitero. We even have flush toilets and hot showers! But you have to turn on the water heater when you want to use it, so we take cold showers—which is great considering how damn hot it is!

My mom is talkative and busy. She sells clothes that a woman in New York buys. She sells out of the apartment so there isn’t any taxi, but it’s still pretty expensive. She’s talked about how other students have bought clothes fromher, but I’m not going to buy any. I fel kind of weird about it, but I know it’s not an obligation to buy stuff from her.

My dad works a lot, at least 6 days a week, and long days. Apparently right now is furniture season so he’s working quite a bit. That’s what he does, builds furniture in a couple of different workshops in Santiago. I guess now is the season to be buying stuff—people are fixing up their houses and buying new clothes to get ready for the Christmas season. So my parents have been pretty busy!

My mom’s very religious, and stops in the church almost every day. I’ve been to church twice with them, but lately I’ve been busy and they’ve been going to church on Saturdays so that makes it tougher. I stopped in the church one morning with my mom—she goes into that adoration of the host room—can’t remember what it’s called—and prays for a while. It may be the quietest place I’ve been in the country.

Sometimes I struggle with talking to my mom because she tends to sound like she’s lecturing when she talks to people. But for the most part she’s very affectionate and mom-like.

My dad is really chill. He’s always smiling, and he always seems relaxed and fine with whatever the world throws at him. He loves baseball and always tels me what’s going on when it comes on TV.

My little brother is sweet. He seems to get excited when I’m around—we started playing cards last night and he loved it. Trouble is, I don’t have as much time as I’d like with them, and Carlos José has way more free time than me, especially since he doesn’t have class till after lunch. But I’ve got three months yet.

Guaguas

I crashed for a couple of hours that night and got up to ride to La Vega that morning. She had to run some kind of errand there and had figured out a ride she wouldn’t have to pay for. I hadn’t gotten up early enough to see the boys off to school, but apparently Smil had been upset—I think he got it into his head that he was going to have to stay there, and insisted that if they didn’t have beds at school, he was coming home and not going back. Doña and I talked about the cita in the capital and they dropped me off at a guagua station in La Vega. The guagua dropped me off at my hotel in Santiago—they cheapest place in town, cockroaches and all. I didn’t do much that day except walk around enough to get phone cards and food. Mostly I slept and worked on stuff online. The next day I got a taxi to take me to Caribe Tours and left my suitcases there so I wouldn’t have to take them to Puerto Plata. When I got to Puerto Plata there were a few hours of hanging around because the hotel listed in the manual was wrong—it fact if was closed—yay for the University of Iowa, once again. But after a lot of calling around I finally got Lily on the phone. She came to pick me up, thus beginning my summer program experience.

Luna Grande

That night I went to Arismendy’s house for dinner. He had said originally that we were going to cook, but then we got distracted downloading music on his computer and his brother made it instead. It was really good, but I didn’t eat much—random stomach issues again. Anyway we listened to music for quite awhile—he gave me a bunch of Dominican music and then I downloaded some of my favorite stuff onto his computer. He wanted to listen to music in English, and he was planning to learn a song in English for his final project in that class. His teacher had suggested music from the 60’s and 70’s because the diction is better, so I said I’d help find some for him.

We had talked about going out that night, maybe going to Vista del Yaque to see if we could find Alberto. But Ari had had the flu for the past week and wasn’t feeling real hot. Some waited to see how he would feel. By the time we actually decided to go out, everyone was home and in bed—it was Sunday night after all. But went out to a few places on his motorcycle anyway just to see. It was a gorgeous night—clear, starry, and the moon was really big and bright. Since there weren’t any bars open and the confluencia was totally empty, Ari decided we should try to go up the mountain to get a view of the city. We sort of went wandering around on gravel backroads, up by the more country-like houses. At one point we actually wnet by the entrance to Mogote. We found a view eventually, and the lights of the city under that big moon was pretty cool. Then we went back, and I burned Ari a DVD of music I thought he should have while he fell asleep on the couch.

Dominoes y Rosarios

Sunday morning I headed to Limonal. I’d been calling Maridalia but we couldn’t seem to get in touch until that morning. She sent Juarez—her son—to come get me at the Caribe Tours station. I’m starting to warm up to Juarez. He doesn’t talk much, but he was really nice to me. Anyway I got there sometime bfore noon and first Juarez and I stopped at Milagro and Yunina’s houses so I could say hi. I think Wendy was at work or something.

Then Juarez dropped me at Mari’s house. I had lunch—I remember thinking, man, I forgot how good Maridalia’s cooking is!—and played dominoes for a good bit of the day with all the kids who came over, and Juarez too. People kept showing up throughout the afternoon and I eventually figured out there was some kind of prayer-hour event that day in Mari’s house. When I

went in the house, all the furniture was rearranged so people cold sit in a big circle. Mark and Andrew’s host mom’s were there—maybe some others, I don’t quite remember. Everyone wanted to know how all the Americans were doing! Yunina came too can I sat next to her. All the women sat in a circle in the main part of the house, and there was one man who was sittign in the kitchen just outside the circle.

Basically we stood up and said the rosary, interspersed with a few extra hymns and prayers. Each decat was said by a different woman, as wel as the extra prayers. I followed along in my head, but it was a little tough in Spanish since everyone spoke at a different rate and it sounded all jumbled up. At some point I’ll have to find the rosary in Spanish so I can learn the words.

I didn’t stay too long after this, as it was getting late. It was really a fascinating experience though—I couldn’t help thinking of the prayer group Patria Mirabal was part of in In the Time of the Butterflies, and wondered if that’s what it would have been like. Oh yeah, and when we finished praying, Yunina and someone else I don’t know came around with coke and biscuits, and we sat and talked a while. I left Maridalia a little bit of money for the food, and when we ran out of gas on the home on Juarez’s motorcycle, I insistend on paying for it. They both yelled at me for doing that, but were really sweet about it—they kept saying, “this is your family now!”