March 3, 2002 "Don't cry for me, Autopista "

Everyone, Sorry for the mass email (again) but until I finish my three months of training I´m not going to have a lot of computer time. Right now I´m doing a site visit with another volunteer in a town called Jimani, on the Haitian border and I´m in a computer lab in the high school here. Today I took a motoconcho (motorcycle taxi) to the border and checked out the famous Haitian market, which is mostly the same stuff that you'd be able to buy at Wal-Mart. A lot has been going on since I got to the DR that I want to tell everyone about, but first I want to answer the two most frequently asked questions from those of you who have already sent me email:

1. Yes. Sometimes there are chickens on the bus.

2. A regular toilet, but you have to get a bucket of water from the well out front to flush it. Also, this has nothing to do with anything here but I just think it´s pretty funny.

The day before I left New Orleans, my 90-year-old Grandfather called me and we had the following conversation:
Grandpa: Yeah, Dave, Grandpa here. How you making out?
Me: Ok, thanks.
Grandpa: Yeah, good, listen. I bought me this pair of pajamas at the grocery and it says on the label there that they was made in the Do-minican Republic.
Me: Uh-huh.
Grandpa: Yeah, only listen, here´s the thing. The fly on the pants is so small, I can´t even get my damn pecker out to take a leak. What you think about that?
Me: Could you put Grandma on now?

Have you ever seen one of those classes where someone will take a group of mentally handicapped adults through a grocery store or a McDonald´s and teach them how to buy toilet paper and count their change? Then you have a pretty good idea of what the first few weeks of Peace Corps training have been like. In Spanish class we get assignments like, "take a bus to the market and buy a pineapple." Which sounds pretty easy until you try to figure out the public transportation in Santo Domingo. Downtown Santo Domingo is pretty Americanized in a lot of ways, but I don't have to go too far from the Centro see something that kind of slaps me in the face and reminds me that I'm in a Developing Country (Peace Corps euphemism for "The Third World"), like a guy on a bicycle dragging a dead dog on a rope down the street, or whole families taking their Saturday bath together in the drainage ditches on the sides of the road.

The house I live in is in the Pantoja Barrio of Santo Domingo, about a mile from the Peace Corps training center, so I can walk to my classes every day. My house is always full of people but I´m never really sure which of them actually live there and who just kind of wandered in. I do have my own room and the Doña of the house cooks for me and does my laundry in the front yard. If we have electricity that day (which isn´t often), she even irons my underpants. If there isn´t electricity when I get home we light candles and the neighbors come over and we play dominoes and drink beer on the front porch. If there is electricity I usually study while my Doña watches soap operas. There´s no running water here but we have cable TV. Sometimes. Doña Roma helps me with my Spanish by trying to explain what's happening on her soaps, like, "Ese mujer es MUY MALO." But I can usually figure out things like that just from the music. She also teaches me the names of things around the house, and the names of whatever animals happen to wander through the front door on any given evening; crickets, mice, centipedes, lizards, and the occasional stray chicken or goat. I´m learning a lot from Doña Roma. Seriously.

I got to go to the Carnaval in Santo Domingo last week. Here's the difference between Mardi Gras and Carnaval: during Mardi Gras, all of New Orleans turns into one big block party. During Carnaval, all of Santo Domingo turns into one giant mosh pit. People throw bottles, drive their motorcycles into the crowd, pop bullwhips at each other, knock each other down, and (I swear to god I´m not making this up) the big Carnaval tradition is to carry around inflated and hardened pig bladders and to whack other Carnaval goers in the ass with them. Hard. Those things leave bruises.

No word yet on if I´ll get my own horse (sorry Jenny) but I have been issued some pretty cool stuff, like Peace Corps dog tags (who knew?), a motorcycle helmet, a really hard-core medical kit that includes instructions for emergency self-surgery and a list of all the excrutiatingly painful diseases I can catch just by walking around barefoot here, and, uh, a Peace Corps keychain. But did I mention that the keychain glows in the dark? I think that's so when I'm assigned to my post I can trick the natives into worshipping me as their god or something. I've been vaccinated for rabies, typhoid, meningitis, polio, tetanus, and about ten other tropical diseases. They also make us take Aralen once a week, which is supposed to keep us from getting malaria. It also causes you to have really vivid, crazy dreams the night you take it. I've started to look forward to my Aralen nights.

Let's see, there's about a million other things I could talk about, like Doña Roma putting sugar in my orange juice, or the time I danced with a Dominican girl once at a party and the whole neighborhood decided that we were engaged, or how tired I am already of rice and beans, or Sister Ofelia who comes over and tries to take me to church and keeps wanting to know why I'm not married yet, or the livestock in the streets of my barrio that keep me up all night with their various livestock noises, or what it's like bathing every morning from a bucket of cold water, or how I've actually started to like bachata music, but I'll save some of that good stuff for the next time I can get in front of a computer. Also, for those of you who asked about sending packages, thanks, but please don't. I've been told the customs fees I'll have to pay to pick them up (if they ever make it here) are going to be way too high for a poor Peace Corps volunteer to afford. I'm just going to have to get by with what I can get here. Until someone comes and visits. I hope everyone is doing all right, and write to me a lot ok? Machuca, Dave