Happy Thanksgiving!

Hola!

Que lo que? Como tu ta?

Wishing everyone a very Happy Thanksgiving!

I had a plan to write less each time, but to post more often, so that I would not have to subject you to such exhaustingly long posts. Obviously, I failed. In fact I may have succeeded in writing an even longer post. You will probably need to take breaks.. it’s going to be a long one. ;) (I’m sorry!)

I’ve wanted to write about all the little, random things that make the DR so great/ridiculous/Dominican… but haven’t done so thus far. So I will share some of these things in this post. Most are funny – or at least interesting, I hope – while others are more ‘informational’, if you will.

For starters, the DR is a very friendly country. Everyone says Hola to everyone else as they pass in the street and people are generally very helpful. Did you know… the DR was ranked the 2nd happiest country in the world? I definitely believe it.

So, the animals. I am used to seeing animals everywhere – and as I am in the habit of saying hola to everyone I see - I often find myself saying ‘hola’ to the horse outside my apartment or to the donkey as I pass it on the street on the way to work. It sounds a little looney, I know, but you would be doing the same after only a couple months here.

While some people do have pets, they are not treated like we treat our pets at home. And I can count with two fingers the number of times I have seen animals tied up or fenced in (both of these occasions have been the pets of two of my co-workers). The animals I run into the most here are dogs, and most of them are strays. It may sound weird, but the dogs here have many human-like mannerisms. They are actually pretty good companions, walking with you wherever you may be going. One time, I was accompanied by two dogs (we have named them Bonnie and Clyde) all the way across town – about a 25 minute walk. They even waited outside the supermercado while I ran inside to grab some dinner.

I mentioned horses and donkeys above; they are both always hanging around in the Callejon. Some days on the way to work, I have to make room on the sidewalk for a donkey passing in the opposite direction. And it is not uncommon for horses to be eating out of the Center’s trashcans out front. In fact, earlier this week Roeli (a morning student) did not come to class. In the middle of our early literacy class period, he rode by the window, shirtless, shoeless, and on horseback. Chickens wander the streets as well.

There is a donkey that belongs to a family living behind the center, who makes the most absurd donkey sound.. approximately every 30 minutes or so. There is nothing to do but pause and wait for him to finish before continuing with class. I’m not sure that it will ever stop being funny. Also, there is a parrot who sits on the center’s fence right outside the library during our afternoon class. The first day I was very annoyed at the domino guys outside who kept “cat-call whistling” every 30 seconds, until I realized that it was the parrot. Without fail, every afternoon it is there talking and whistling at us. The center is also home to a very large turkey. No one knows whose turkey it is or where it came from, but it lives at DREAM.

As far as animals/bugs in our housing.. there are mostly cockroaches, tree frogs, and lizard/salamanders/geckos (I am not quite sure exactly which they are). I thought I had seen some scary cockroaches in the US, but the ones here are HUGE and just as hard to kill. My worst encounter thus far happened one night as I was heading to bed... I walked into my room to find one waiting for me on my pillow. Needless to say, I didn’t sleep very well that night. I have another trapped under a bowl in the corner of my kitchen right now, and am building up the courage to deal with it. Tree frogs, while they are completely harmless, are surprisingly scary given their amazing jumping abilities. It also makes them very difficult to capture and remove from the apartment. The lizard-like animals are nothing to worry about, and pretty much keep to themselves.

As in any culture, Dominican’s have their own special mannerisms. For example, the ‘finger wag’. It can be compared to our head shake, but you must execute it without moving your hand; only your index finger. Also, more often than not Dominicans point with their mouths instead of their pointer finger. You purse your lips and then push them in the direction you wish to indicate. But, like the finger wag, you must point your lips without moving your head. My personal favorite is the way Dominicans scrunch up their face to ask “What?”. Think of how we would raise our eyebrows if we did not understand something that was said to us. To communicate the same thing, Dominicans scrunch their face - well, their nose to be more exact. It is exactly what you would do if you were pretending to be a mouse. I was thrown off the first time I saw it. While I have adopted the finger wag and lip-point, I have not yet picked up the face-scrunch.

Also, when you meet someone new or run into someone you know, you always address them by kissing them on the cheek. Just like many Europeans give a kiss on each cheek to greet someone, we do the same here, but only on one cheek. So when I return home and see you, don’t be alarmed if I lean in for a quick beso. ;)

A very important thing to know about communicating in the DR is that when someone hisses at you, it is not rude or derogatory. It is simply their way of getting your attention. (By hiss I mean a sound like, ‘pssst’.) Obviously, in the US, this is considered a very rude sound to make at someone. But here it is completely normal – actually, if you do not respond you could be deemed “primavona”, or rude. This took a long time to get used to as well, but now I find myself responding to the hisses as I would a “hello” or “excuse me” in the US. I am slightly ashamed to say that last week I even hissed at a student from across the street to get his attention. I will have to be careful to leave this habit in the DR when I return home.

Another habit that will be hard to ‘kick’ is throwing the toilet paper into the trashcan. The plumbing systems in the DR cannot handle toilet paper in the pipes, so in every bathroom there is a waste can to throw your used TP. I know it sounds gross, and Dad refused to believe that the bathrooms don’t smell horrible, but you get used to it after awhile (especially after one or two times of fishing the TP out of the toilet bowl). In fact, last year after only being in the country for one month, It took me way too long to figure out what to do with my toilet paper the first time I used the bathroom back in the US airport – there was no trashcan in my stall.

As yall already know, we speak Spanish here. I knew only a little Spanish before I got here, and I have been improving with each passing day (although, I am still not fluent). But the Spanish I am learning is Dominican Spanish. As it turns out, it is very different from the proper Spanish we learn in school that is spoken in places like Spain (in that Dominican Spanish is ‘uneducated’ in comparison – that is the nicest way I can think of to describe it). There are some letters that Dominicans use interchangeably (ie. “b” and “v”; “s” and “c”). Even educated Dominicans switch these letters up all of the time, treating them as though they are exactly the same letter. The hardest thing to get used to, though, is the fact that Dominicans rarely ever pronounce the letter “s”, especially when it is on the end of a word. For example, I no longer say “adios” or gracias”. I say “adio” and “gracia”. I no longer say “estoy bien” (I am well) when asked how I am. Instead I respond with “toy bien”. I have gotten so used to this that I dropped the “s” off of the beginning of an English word the other day while talking with a friend. (Yikes!) They also may choose to leave out the “r” in any given word. In addition, if a syllable at the end of one word is remotely similar to the first syllable of the following word, Dominicans join these two words into one new word. For example, the phrase ‘over there’, para alla, becomes palla. And combine all of this with the fact that Dominicans talk a million miles a minute without really acknowledging spaces between words – understanding what they are saying is difficult and exhausting.

Here are some standard Dominican phrases/sayings:

Que lo que – Wuddd up?! (Or, What’s up? Dominicans write this out as “k l k”).

Guacheman (pronounced ‘watch-ey man’) – security guard/night watchman. Spanglish, anyone?

Guapo - as far as I know, in nearly every other place that speaks Spanish this word means handsome. Here it means angry.

Funda – bag. In school we were taught that ‘bolsa’ was Spanish for ‘bag’. Here, bolsa does NOT mean bag, but instead means something rather inappropriate. I found this out the hard way.

A little more spanglish for you: Halo (pronounced ‘ah-low’) – this is how Dominicans answer the phone, and is a cross between ‘hola’ and ‘hello’.

Se fue la luz – not directly translated, it basically means ‘there goes the power’. This is, sadly, one of the first things you will learn here because the power is always going out. (This is actually a big political issue in the DR. A few weeks ago, while traveling back to Cabarete one night in a guagua, we passed a protest in Sosua – a town about 15 minutes from Cabarete. People were burning giant tires in the street and they had broken what looked like hundreds of glass bottles in the street as well. We were just able to squeeze by on the edge of the road and pass safely. They were protesting the power shortage.)


Now for some random tid-bits about the DR that do not fit into any sort of ‘category’ (not to imply that this post has very much organization to it. Sorry about that..)

-Dominoes: THE game of the Dominican Republic. And if you think dominoes is just matching up numbers of dots, you are way off. It is actually a pretty intense game and Dominicans have no mercy.

- I’m not sure if it is just a coincidence, but in my time here I have met several Dominicans (one of which I must admit I didn’t actually meet – he was listening to his music a little too loud on the bus and I heard the song from his headphones) who really enjoy the Celine Dion song, “My Heart Will Go On” from the movie, “Titanic”. (Please note that it is a song in English and is so incredibly different than any other type of music they listen to down here.) For any of you who find this rather odd – I do too.

- Braces: This is another thing that is more prevalent in rural communities, but braces are a sort of status symbol here. They are expensive and so if you have braces on your teeth (whether you need them or not), you will be recognized as ‘having money’. Some people will buy braces solely for this reason. It sounds absurd, but keep in mind we do the same in the US – with designer clothes or really expensive cars.

- If you want to be considered chulo, or ‘cool’, in Cabarete, you should be either a Kitesurfer, Windsurfer, or surfer. Here it is all about the water sports.

- There are pick-up trucks that drive around and sell food from the back – plantains, yucca, guineos/bananas, oranges, etc. They have speakers on the top of the truck and the person driving yells into a microphone in an attempt to sell his products. But when he passes a woman on the street, he often stops yelling to slowly and dramatically say, WOW. It goes a little something like this…. Guineosporcuatropesossolocuatropesosquieresunguineosolocuestan
cuatropesoscompraunquineoporsolocuatropesos…W.O.W. Unfortunately I am unable to display the dramatic effect through text..

- Concon: This is the rice that gets slightly burnt and crunchy on the bottom of the pot when Dominicans cook rice. It is sweet and served separately from the rest of the rice. Yummm.

- Guachemen (watch-ey men - mentioned above), are equipped with guns here. Depending on what facility they are ‘watching’, this gun may be a machine gun. I know this sounds scary and maybe even dangerous, but it’s actually okay. In any case, the guacheman where I live is very friendly. We are on a first name basis. His name is Polo. I’ve never felt uncomfortable. (That is meant to reassure a few people in particular… specifically my mother and grandmother.)

- Speaking of people walking around with ‘weapons’, you see people walking around with machetes as well. They are not carrying them for protection purposes, nor do they intend to use them as weapons. They are tools for these people’s work. Again, nothing to worry about.

- Rain: Especially in rural areas, life tends to stop when it rains. Why would you work? Why would you even consider leaving the house? Are you crazy? (Apparently we DREAMers are… nothing stops us from working. Not rain. Not American holidays. Not even Dominican holidays.)

I have mentioned motos before.. here are some crazy/ridiculous things I have seen riding around on motos (keep in mind, a moto is a lot like a moped and technically only seats two grown people. Also note that - DREAM volunteers not included - I have only seen a handful of people wearing helmets in this country):
o A family of 5.
o 3 grown men. The two not driving were holding several live chickens in each hand by the feet.
o A man drinking rum straight from the bottle… while driving. A – there are not a lot of police here. B – they wouldn’t pull him over anyway.
o 2 grown men and a grown hog.
o 2 grown men and two large dogs (one plopped right on top of the other).
o A man driving, pulling his horse along behind him with a rope.
o A huge tank of gas strapped loosely on the back seat (I see this all the time. I wonder what would happen should this giant tank of gas bounce off of the back seat? I don’t want to be around to find out.)
o 1 man and a ba-jillion fish balanced and hanging on either side from a pole by their tails.
o Women riding side-saddle style if they are wearing skirts or dresses.


Now, a little bit about Dominican family structure. Family is a central part of life in the Dominican Republic, but in a different way than I would have expected. While there is a much larger emphasis on extended family, there seems to be less of an emphasis on immediate family – fathers in particular. When I see a kid around town they are almost always running around with a couple of their cousins, and maybe another sibling or friend. Children typically spend plenty of time with their aunts, uncles, grandparents, and especially cousins. But their relationships with their immediate family members don’t always seem to be so intact. It is not uncommon here for men to have children from many women. Obviously this is not something unique to the Dominican Republic, but male/female relationships ARE very different here. Some couples are legally wed, however most of the time a woman is considered to be a man’s wife if she (and their children) move in with him. And when a man is living with his wife and children, it most certainly does not mean that he does not have more children, or even another family, elsewhere. In general in Dominican culture, men are considered to possess the privilege to ‘have’ many women and fatherhood is taken rather lightly. Please keep in mind, however, that this is not true of every family in the DR (obviously). I would say/guess that these trends are more common in rural and poor areas than in the couple of big cities in this country.

A big issue, and source of sadness on my part, in this country is the racial tension between Dominicans and Haitians. Although I see it first hand in my own community and have learnt much about it since I got here, I do not feel comfortable laying out this situation in its entirety for you until I know more and have a better handle on the facts. Although, I will say that it is a very visible tension, even among young kids.

As you know I am teaching, and therefore involved in education. So part of my work is to understand the Dominican education system – its design, its flaws, its strengths – and use this information to work with my students and fill in the gaps. Unfortunately, there are many flaws and many gaps. You have already heard some about the public school system in the DR in previous posts. Now, I want to throw some powerful statistics your way – they pretty much speak for themselves. The World Economic Forum recently published a Global Competitiveness Report with data from the year 2008. This report contains many statistics, but there are 4 specific stats I want to share with you:
- In the category of “Quality of the Education System (overall)”, the Dominican Republic ranked 129 of 133 countries.
- In the category of “Quality of Primary Education”, the DR ranked 132 of 133 countries.
- In the category of “Wastefulness of Government Spending”, the DR ranked 132 of 133 countries.
- In the category of “Favoritism in Decisions of Government Officials”, the DR ranked 133 of 133 countries.

I wasn’t even sure what to say when I first saw these numbers. I was dumbfounded. I mean, I knew the education system was bad here, but I thought for sure there had to be many more countries with worse. I was also aware of the corruption in the Dominican political system, but like education, had no idea that it is literally one of the very worst.

Again, I am not sure how to elaborate on the stats for education – they speak pretty strongly for themselves, and I have spent some time in past posts describing the public schools. However, I do feel that a few comments on the political stats might be helpful. When considering the “wastefulness of government spending” category, we can relate this to education (and, of course, other topics as well). The Dominican government invests hardly any of its money into education; most often I have heard/read only 2%. Where does the rest of it go? In reality, a gross amount of money goes into the pockets of powerful people. Recently a subway system was built in the capital city, Santo Domingo– it is meant to mimic the underground transportation systems of New York or London or any other large city. It is completely unnecessary and not even very convenient to have in this city. However, the government decided to spend massive amounts of money on this subway, in hopes that it could somehow put the DR on ‘the map’ in terms of development. This goal of ‘development and advancement’ seems to be a top priority and main focus, while the fact that many school teachers are under-trained and the education system is failing its students left and right is of little concern.

Moving on to the “Favoritism in Decisions of Government Officials” (almost done, I promise!).. did you notice that the DR falls dead last in this category? This just speaks to the amount of corruption that plagues the Dominican political system.

A quick story to provide a concrete example… I did not actually witness this myself, but was told this story by a Peace Corps. volunteer who did witness it. She lives in a small, rural, poor village and was around for the Presidential campaigns and elections. I cannot recall which candidate it was, but he came to ‘campaign’ in this small village. His campaign here consisted of throwing salami from a car into the throngs of villagers crowded around. They literally just threw salami at people. Keep in mind that these are uneducated, poor people. This political figure was knowingly and purposely exploiting the vulnerability and naivety of these people. I would be hard-pressed to draw a comparison to the US, but the best I could think up would be if a candidate went to a desperately poor community and threw dollar bills from his vehicle. Or perhaps you could draw a comparison to an election for class president in a high school – “If you vote for me I will be your friend”. Either, or… they are both appalling.

I do feel bad speaking ill of the education and political systems of the DR, because I love this country. But they are things that need to be fixed before things can change on a large scale here. The good news is that I have met so many great people (locals, foreigners, volunteers, professionals..) who are doing just that – working to change these systems. And that is what it is going to take.

I hope you all get your fill of turkey and football tomorrow (actually, by the time you get to this part of the post - if you make it this far at all - Thanksgiving may have been a few weeks ago). I know this Thanksgiving I am especially thankful for the education I am blessed to have received; I will never take it for granted again.

Gobble gobble.

Lindsey