Slovember

It´s low season, and town is quiet. There´s been a lot of rain - all the Carribean hurricanes seem to bypass us but make it really really wet. Rain is good, there´s been drought and the beautiful waterfall in El Limón is dry. Meaning all the people who live from the tourism there are screwed. On the downside, there´s not much to do here when it´s raining, except for go to a bar and drink. In the interests of my liver, especially with Christmas in Ireland coming, I am trying to not do that. Much.

One big downside of the rain is that the river swells and carries lots of trash into the sea. After a storm, the beaches are disgusting with washed-up rubbish. But because it´s low season, nobody cleans it. It breaks your heart to see so many plastic bottles. I pick them up as I walk along, but there are no bins either, so I really need to start bringing bags to collect them in.

Where the river washes into the sea.

This is the mouth of the river, right on the beach.

Another downside: with lots of rain come lots of mosquitoes. One day I got bit 53 times! These days I´ve given up on the natural stuff and am spraying myself with copious amounts of poison/DEET daily. There´s a lot of dengue in the country at the moment, several people I know have gotten it, so I guess DEET is a lesser evil right now. It´s so strong it strips my toenail polish :/

I hate goddamn mosquitoes,

Work is good, school is good, and we´re halfway through the first term. I have 14 kids in my 3rd/4th grade class, a mix of Dominican, Haitian, American, British, Italian, Swedish and Slovenian. 4 of them speak English fluently, 2 to a high level and the rest are beginners. I teach one day in English and one day in Spanish and it´s going pretty well.

I did a Dominican cookery class with Rosa, a woman who cooks in my boss´s house. She showed us how to make pork, beans, pigeon peas with coconut, tayota, aubergine and rice (apparently not just boiling in water!). I love Dominican food and I´m determined to bring this cheap, healthy eating to Ireland. Or at least attempt to cook it once. They put a seasoning with MSG and sopita, a stock cube, on everything it seems but it tastes so damn good. My version will have no MSG.

To be honest, things are kind of boring here for me, which means I have to shake up my life and make it more interesting. It´s this small town living I guess - there´s nothing to do after sunset except go out to bars. I´m working 7 days a week at the moment, 5 in the school and 2 in a bar/restaurant called Lazy Dog. The great thing about working in a bar is that you meet people, it´s so social. I´d be even more bored without it. I´m going to the capital, Santo Domingo, next weekend and CAN´T WAIT. Shops! Cinema! Shops!

A strange run-down little residence. It´s like the owners abandoned ship but the tenants kept on living there.

The lack of activity has had me thinking a lot, about this country, how I feel about it and how that has changed. When I first came, as open as I thought I was to a new culture, I now realise that I was only seeing the Dominican culture through the lens of my own ideology, my European culture. My reactions were based on everything I know as a European, and sometimes misinformed. Which is to be expected, and a good reminder to always be aware of my own ignorance.

Some examples:

Resting bitch face.
A large amount of Dominican women (and I would go so far as to say half of them) have a severe case of resting bitch face. I would love to know why, and it is a topic I need to delve into in the future, but it´s definitely true. It put me off at first, but now I know that the bitch mask does not define the person.

Freebies/favours.
I was always so suspicious of freebies and favours, like a unknown shopkeeper telling you to pay him another day when you´re a few pesos short, someone offering you a lift, or help with something. There´s no such thing as a free lunch, everyone wants something. But business and friendship here are inextricably tied, there are many links in the chain of one transaction, and the more "friends" you have, the better. Sometimes they´re real friends, sometimes they´re acquaintances, but you can still scratch each other´s backs.

The hisses.
When someone hisses at me, I now realise it might be a friend just wanting to get my attention to say hello. It´s not agressive. It´s like shouting out "hey!". But, it is mostly guys just wanting to blow me a kiss.

Which brings us on to my biggest culture clash so far, the hardest thing for me to accept - the men. It´s impossible to draw a line between cultural difference and misogyny, because what is culture but the behaviours and beliefs that characterise a society? And if misogny is inherent in that society (OK, misogyny is inherent in ALL societies, but here it´s stronger than in most of Europe), does one have to accept the misogny, or a certain amount of it, to accept the culture? How much do you fight it? When do you take offense and when do you dismiss it as not important?

I still ignore the hisses. I mostly say "hola" back to any random guy who says "Hola linda" to me on the street (linda=beautiful), but I don´t look at him and I keep on walking. I´ve got better at disengaging myself from interactions I don´t want to be in, and better at spotting them. But then I wonder, do I compromise my beliefs, my feminism and my sense of self by not reacting the way I would if men in Ireland talked to me like that? I don´t know, and I don´t know will I ever know what to accept and what to fight. I think maybe the line moves as I learn and adapt and accept.

My iPhone keeps breaking and being revived by a rice nap, so I want to post the photos that were on it when it went the last time:

This old man has incredible knees. He´s always crouched down planting and weeding, I don´t know how he does it.

Dominican scaffolding.

This little girl was found on the beach and lived with me and my housemate for a few days until we found her a new home.

Gaeilge! On a mural here! I investigated, and turns out nobody knew what language it was, they just found it online...