Fiesta February

Recently we celebrated Dominican Independence Day. You might, as my brother did, presume they are celebrating independence from Spain, who ruled the DR from "discovery" in 1492, until when they ceded it to France in 1795, then again from 1809 to 1821. But no, they are celebrating independence from Haitian rule, which was a disastrous 22 year period (1822-1844) that created almost 2 centuries of animosity towards Haiti. Long story short, Haiti was prosperous and heavily populated, the DR was poor, Haiti appropriated land and drafted young men into their army, stole food, killed many and basically were jerks. A group of educated nationalists created a secret society and overthrew Haiti in 1844 and formed a government. The main players were called Duarte, Mella and Sánchez, and there are murals, statues and roads named after them in every little town. 

So, how did we celebrate Independence Day? Why, with a caminata, a kind of parade with no floats, as Dominicans do for EVERYTHING (political campaigns, church gatherings, memorials, funerals etc). Down the street we paraded with the other schools in town, while a herd of motos and pickups inched along behind us, just itching to get a moment to zip around the crowd.

Our wonderful teaching assistant Ginette getting into the spirit of things.

Seriously, how gorgeous are my kids???

The parade led us to the multiuso, a kind of aircraft hangar-style basketball court which is used for literally every purpose imaginable. 1,000 children and teachers sat on stone bleachers for hours. Yet it wasn´t quite as hellish as I expected.

First, some very important man with a very important job gave the longest and most boring speech about Dominican Independence while everyone ignored him and chatted away. I tuned right out but apparently it was very Haiti-hating. Then, each school did a different performance. There were traditional dances by a college dance group (below) and a couple of "baton ballet" performances. This particular dance style is a Latin phenomenon, and consists of young girls in cheerleader type outfits with batons. What differentiates baton ballet from your standard St. Patrick´s Day parade baton-twirlers is the dance moves, namely the twerking. These girls kept it pretty tame, with just a few pelvic thrusts, but other groups have been known to feature 7-year olds shaking their moneymaker on all fours like a Nicki Minaj robotic dog.

Not the baton ballet.

 Our school is kind of the odd one out in Las Terrenas. We operate differently, our students are a mix of Dominican, Haitian, Latin American, North American, European, well-off and poor. So, being thrown into a mix of all the other private schools was interesting. Some teenage girls were fascinated with our whiter kids, and pulled them onto their laps. They kept stroking poor William the Swede´s hair and talking about how they want a baby like that. I tried to throw out the "you don´t need a baby now, go to university first" spiel but they were too busy taking selfies with the blond Swede and cute norteamericana to listen.

Like all of Latin America, the DR celebrates Carnival, with the main party being in La Vega, in the centre of the country. Basically, it´s like St. Patrick´s Day, only instead of drunk lads strolling around hitting each other, they stroll around and hit everyone else. With inflated cow bladders. Dressed as diablos cojuelos (limping devils).

Never let this guy get a good aim at your ass.

People dress up, but not as much as they would for say, Halloween in Ireland or Carnival in Spain. Mainly, people stroll around drinking beer and trying to avoid vejigazos (wallops from the cow bladders).

Whiteface.

I went with a Colombian, a Basque, a Korean and two Dominicans and returned late that night tired and oh so sore. With a massive shiner on my arse.

Poor Minerva was not having fun...

Little but lethal.

After the madness of Carnival and Independence Day, I jumped on board straight away when I heard there was a trip to a remote beach being planned. My colleague Carmen and her boyfriend Javi are great for exploring the peninsula we live on with their scooter and a surfboard. They found a beach called La Lanza del Norte, which is about 40 minutes from where we live. So one Saturday, 5 adults (including myself) and 3 kids piled into a car, Carmen and Javi took their scooter and 5 more went on two motorbikes to check out this beach. We went past a load of film crews where Vin Diesel was filming his new movie, totally disinterested in seeing the bald bulk that is Vin, and found this little paradise. A guy who owns a villa off the beach had built 3 huts, one of which had a traditional wood-fired oven in it, and so we gathered firewood and got that going, as well as a grill. One of our group climbed a coconut tree and cut down a dozen cocos with his machete. We bought pan de coco or coconut bread, fresh off the fire on the way, and had rum with fresh passionfruit juice while Javi got cooking. He did sausages, baked potatoes and steak. Jesus, it was gorgeous.

Thank you, unidentified rich man who built this kitchen for us.

Having a crap time.

Ukrainian child + meat + plantain.

Hammock for one - good idea.

Hammock for two - bad idea.

Right now, it´s Semana Santa, Easter week, so Las Terrenas is packed with visitors from all over the country. And my wonderful cousin Cliona is here visiting, and we have been having lots of fun. So once it all dies down and Cliona goes, I´ll write about it. For today, I´ll leave you with photos.

Jesenia (a Colombian volunteer for the foundation I work for) and Samary, my friend Awdy´s mom. Samary made a sancocho, a traditional stew of root vegetables and meat, to celebrate the opening of  Awdy´s bar. She cooked it up over a gas burner on the street and fed everyone at midnight. It was amazing.

Watching the world go by in El Limón.

Hanging out by the river in El Limón.

My Slovenian student Klara in our new, beautiful playground.

He´s not wrong.

Girl, going places.

Small town life

I am becoming a small town girl. I sat at a table sharing a sandwich with my roomie/buddy/wifey Rebecca on the side of a busy road in Las Terrenas. We started counting how many people we knew, and knew by name. For close to an hour I was happily entertained watching the comings and goings of neighbours, familiar faces and strangers. This is what people do here all day long, every day, and I get it. All plugged in to this little hive of activity and inactivity, a theatre in which the actors and the audience are one and the same.

It´s been a long time since I´ve written a blog entry, and so much has happened since then. I went home, for one, for the first time in almost a year. I had never been so long away from Ireland and I was a nervous wreck of anticipation for the 2 weeks prior to my joyful Christmas trip. The trip itself started out not so joyful when I realised I had messed up my booking and had no ticket (while in the check-in line) but I eventually got on a plane and got home to my beloved home in Howth, Co. Dublin. This blog is not to talk about my time at home, so all I´ll say is it was truly wonderful.

Beach trip with my class

On the way back I had to fly through Frankfurt (thanks to my booking disaster) and got on a Thomas Cook plane going to Puerto Plata with lots of resort-goers. Much like the first time I flew to the DR, I was squeezed beside a very fat woman who was taking up a fair amount of my seat´s space. That first flight was such a positive experience, with my lovely chubby neighbour being such a dote, that I knew this time would be good too. And it was. She was called Felicia, and across the aisle was her sister Marisa. They have been living in Italy for almost 30 years, their brothers live there too, they have kids and Marisa has a grandchild. They live a very Dominican life there in Italy, eating rice, beans and meat every day and speaking Spanish at home. They used to come home every 3 or 4 years until 14 years ago when their mother died and they came home for her funeral, after that they couldn´t face returning to their motherland without their mother. Then, a couple of weeks before the flight, Marisa convinced Felicia to go and so there they were, nervously anticipating their return home.  We chatted on and off throughout the 8 ½ hour flight and when I got to Puerto Plata their family insisted on giving me a lift to my hotel and invited me to the family reunion that evening. I love fat ladies on planes.

School trip to Cayo Levantado aka Bacardi Island

Anyway, the next day I get the guagua to Las Terrenas and there are two girls on it, maybe about 18. One of them is wearing a bellytop, and you can tell she´s had a baby. The other one´s skin-tight leggings stretch over her enormous arse like clingfilm wrapped around a pumpkin. They have takeout fried chicken and it smells good. They screech and holler as they chat a fair bit but that´s normal enough, so so far I´m only paying attention because of that delicious chicken smell. I have tried to think of a way to describe these girls in Irish terms, but alas, a comparison that won´t offend anyone escapes me.

My lovely kiddos on Valentine´s Day. I got so many cards.

Then, Leggings decides to climb over the seats into the seat beside the driver, and starts yelling at her friend to join her. She seems to be flirting with the driver and the other men at the front of the minibus. She keeps yelling back at her friend to join her. Her friend, rolling her eyes and a little embarrassed, eventually does. After a while, Leggings falls asleep. We travel on for a couple of hours. She wakes up and starts whining about being hungry. Then she needs to pee, and says she is gonna jump out of the guagua to do so, but the driver and her friend convince her to hold on. Soon after we stop in a comedor, a small restaurant/cafe, and everyone gets off the guagua to stretch their legs, pee and get food. The driver eats and gives the rest of his meal to Leggings. When we get back on the guagua, she is still sat down in the comedor, on the side of the road. The driver tells her to get on the guagua, and she just throws a tantrum. Refuses to come. It transpires (because everyone on the bus is chatting about it) that she has no money to pay the guagua. The driver is willing to take her for for free if she´ll just get back on the bleedin´ bus, but she digs her heels in and cry-eats the rest of his lunch. Friend of Leggings doesn´t know what to do. The guagua inches away, stops, beeps, inches away again, stops, beeps, repeats the cycle until eventually, Friend gets back on the bus, leaving Leggings sat at the side of the road, stubbornly refusing to look at anyone. We leave. Everyone starts asking Friend of Leggings questions: Why are they going to Las Terrenas? (Unclear) How are they travelling with no money? (They were going to stay with friends) Is Leggings always crazy? (Friend doesn´t know, she barely knows her). What is Leggings going to do? (Friend has no idea. Leggings has no money and no phone and is in a random town hours away from home). Why are you both travelling with no bags? "What about your panties?", shouts one concerened passenger. Friend is getting visibly more upset. Everyone is sharing their opinions. Friend asks driver to stop the bus and gets off in the middle of nowhere, on the side of the highway with the intention of hitchhiking back to get Leggings. Someone gives her 50 pesos (€1). We drive off. I turn back and get a glimpse of Friend standing between a field and a busy highway, looking lost and think WHAT THE HELL JUST HAPPENED THERE? 

Work problems? Need to dominate your man? We have a potion for that!

The Botanica, where you buy potions, voodoo dolls and candles.

I love the guagua drama of this place. I love the gossipy aul´ wan observation of everything, from huge drama to everyday traffic. The longer   I´m here, the more I get pulled in.

I love the bad art, but that is a whole other blog in itself. Along with Second Hand T-shirts of Las Terrenas, and Things You Can Fit On The Back Of A Moto.

I leave here in 4 months and have no plans to come back. I know it´s going to be an emotional 4 months. In that time, 3 people from home are coming to visit - first my cousin Cliona, then my dearest Rebecca, then my Spanish-Irish hermano Pablo. The way my head is at right now, totally in the pulse and flow of this place, it´s going to be insane having a part of home here. I can´t wait to show them this place and to feel the strangeness of it again through them.

The Capital

Recently I´ve had reason to go to The Capital a couple of times. People here in Las Terrenas call it that, much like The Big Smoke to culchies. Santo Domingo, to call it by its real name, never appealed to me much, and I had previously only used it as a way to get to another part of the country. Now that I´ve spent more time there, I understand it better and can see its strong points. I´d still never live there, though.

You never know, your Christmas clothes could be in there.

I had to get from one side of the city to the other, and the easiest way to do that is in taxi. However, that´s the most expensive way (200-300 pesos). The guagua (25 pesos), is generally a minivan (or shared taxi) doing the same route every day, so I set out, determined to do this the cheap way. I passed through busy squares and shopping areas and tried to take it all in. 

Preachers on street corners shouted into microphones while people gathered around them, nodding in agreement. Minivans, buses, motorcycles, cars - all presuming to be some form of public transport - weaved and honked and overtook on both sides. An impossible network of destinations. There are no maps of routes or ways to figure this out in advance. The only way to find out which one you need is to ask anyone and everyone. Some people look at you blankly, others are more helpful. Most are helpful. 

Once you figure out what guagua you want, the journey is an experience in itself. There is the chofer (driver) and the cobrador, who deals with the money and recruitment of passengers. Yep, recruitment of passengers is the only way I can put it because these guys actively hunt them down and practically haul them up. The more passengers that get on, the more money they make, so even when the guagua seems full, they make room. And, incredibly, nobody complains.

The cobrador on my guagua (going to Avenida Duarte) was hanging out of the door pointing at people and shouting DUARTE? DUARTE? YOU GOING TO DUARTE? HEY YOU! DUARTE? WOMAN! DUARTE? SKINNY GUY! DUARTE?  When we were stopped, he would jump out and look for customers, going off down side streets. One time he was gone for a good five minutes, and people were getting impatient. There was no traffic - we could have gone - and the driver kept inching slowly forward as if he just couldn´t wait to go. But he waited. And miraculously, the cobrador comes back with not one, not two, but three new customers, whether they wanted to or not. 

When I was waiting for a guagua, he jumped out and said DUARTE? I said yes, so he takes me by the elbow and starts corralling me and another woman into the guagua. A rival cobrador nearby also going to Duarte got pissed and a shouting argument starts between them as they somehow keep screaming DUARTE??? People just walking down the street, not looking like they´re waiting for a bus are possible customers. When people ignored him he kept repeating it until they said no, and he shrugged, somewhat offended. Like, you don´t wanna get on my guagua? What´s your problem? This guy loves his job, puts every ounce of his being into it, and he is good at it. I was pretty sure there were people on this bus that had no intention of getting on a bus. 

People wander through traffic selling things - water, ice-cream, potato chips. There was a man with a big tray of pork crackling wandering through the beeping, smoking mess of traffic, mostly stopped. They shout in the guagua  and ask you to buy their wares. A man shook a load of chewing-gum in the door of the guagua and when nobody wanted to buy it, he called us mujeres tacañas, stingy women.

The shops bulge out onto the pavement and form tunnels of knockoff baseball and basketball shirts. Any wall can be a display wall, indoor or outdoor, dirty or clean. Lots of t-shirts with numbers and slogans that make no sense but kind of look like they do. Everything is brightly coloured.

The Ouginal Brant

There is an entire block dedicated to toilets, an enamel mountain spilling out onto the street. One street just holds mattress shops, some new and in wrapping, others old and unappealing, and some burnt and blackened. Why are they all together?

Shoe, shoe, shoe, cat, shoe, shoe shoe.

They pile things so high they seem sure to topple, but I haven´t seen it happen yet. There is rubbish everywhere; empty milk crates filled with dirty styrofoam containers, while all around people buy more food to put in more styrofoam containers. They love their styrofoam. There are guys all over the place selling food fried in pots of boiling oil. It looks pretty good. I particularly like the quipes, meat in bulgur wheat, deep fried. They come from the Lebanese immigrants into the DR in the 19th century. The Dominican touch is to artistically dribble catchup (ketchup) up and down them. Hotdogs on a stick are similarly garnished. You can also get grilled corn on the cob, baked sweet potato, fried yuca balls filled with plastic cheese and empanadas.

Incongruously, there is a Chinatown in Santo Domingo. Not quite on par with New York´s Chinatown, this one was inaugurated in 2008 with the express intention of attracting tourists. Asians of all types were strongly encouraged to set up business, and a couple of blocks were enclosed in one of those arches that signify Chinatown like a big gold M signifies McDonalds. To add authenticity, the city erected some historically accurate statues, like The Chinese Immigrant, or the Chinese Princess, as seen below.

"Chinese princess"

The most famous area of the city is the Colonial Zone, which is steeped in history. It´s the oldest European settlement in the New World and was founded by Christopher Columbus´s younger brother Bartholomew. It was kind of the raping and pillaging base-point for the Spanish as they went about annihilating all Carribean cultures. There are lots of streets and squares named after these invaders and ruins or crumbling remains of 16th century buildings. In the Parque Colón, (Columbus Park) there is a bronze statue of the famous invader. Clambering up the statue is Anacaona, a Taíno (the native people of these islands) chief. She and her brothers negociated with the conquistadores when they arrived on the island, but she ended up being executed for refusing to be a concubine to the Spanish. Needless to say, I feel like she should me immortalised in bronze and have a square named after her rather than Columbus.

Columbus, presumably pointing the sun, which he also intends to claim for Spain.

The legendary Anacaona

What´s interesting about the Zona Colonial is the decay. You can walk among the ruins of a hospital or a monastery, 500 years old, with the constant background noise of bachata music and horns beeping. What might have been a nice building facade 200 years ago is now crumbling and lethal looking, but a woman is hanging her laundry out the upstairs window and you can buy fried chicken downstairs.

Lethal balconies.

While in Santo Domingo, I took a day trip out to Boca Chica, the nearest beach to the capital and possibly the crappiest stretch of sand ever. Astonishingly, people come from Europe to spend a week in beach hotels there. The most crowded, dirty beach in the south of Spain would be better than this. The views are of the port of Santo Domingo, industrial and ugly. The beach is crowded with restaurants all along it. But there were two things that made it unbearable for me - the beach vendors and the dogs. The beach vendors sell coconuts, sunglasses, phone covers, shrimp,  straw hats, towels, and a million other things I don´t want. A never-ending stream of hisses and sleaze and annoyance. They would try every single time they walked by, though we had said no the previous ten times. At least every 5 minutes somebody would try and sell us something. But the dogs were the worst. There were loads of beach dogs, just as there are in Las Terrenas, but these poor creatures were hungry and skinny and sad looking. It broke my heart. I ended up buying fried chicken for one little pup whose ribs were sticking out. Las Terrenas is possibly the best place to be a dog in this country, thanks to Amigos de Lucky, an association that spays, neuters and vaccinates dogs here.

I wanted to take this lil dude home.

This poor old girl was mangey and bony and saggy, scrounging around for food while fat Germans got massages.

As I get to know more people in Santo Domingo, I get to see how different people here live. Las Terrenas is a small town, 3 hours from the capital, and it feels like a small town. I went with my friend Vivi to a Thanksgiving dinner hosted by a group of bilingual, Latino/North American med students in a gorgeous apartment in a lovely area. A new friend Carlina and her friend took me out to a rock bar and a beautiful cocktail bar with an open courtyard. Both are well travelled and bilingual and doing interesting things. More people in the capital wear their hair natural, rather than braided or chemically straightened. There are other music options. There are museums and newspapers. People read. But, it is still a noisy, loud, poor, overcrowded, dirty city, and though it has its strong points, it made me appreciate my small town more.

This just about sums up this country. A little book stand in the bus station, with sex positions and prayers side by side.

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...