May 15, 2002 "Mission Accomplished: I've peed in the U.S. Embassy Pool"

I didn't want to take up any more space with this, but since the "Send A Peace Corps Volunteer A Mix Tape" contest seems to have stirred up a surprising amount of interest as well as controversy (thanks Steve), I want to clarify something really quickly: Having an unusually large number of friends with lame CD collections (you know who you are) does not make me a "music nazi." In fact, I think my musical tastes are really pretty broad. However, as I mentioned before, I will not be the only volunteer judging the contest, nor will I be the only recipient of said mix tapes. In the event of a tie, Dona Roma Antigua of Pantoja will make the final judgment. Now stop whining and start taping. The deadline is coming up.

Now, some acknowledgements: Thanks to Senor Drew Zeigler for archiving all my letters home on Blogspot.com. You can now go back and read anything you missed here: dominicandave.blogspot.com

Thanks to Sheila Rae "She-Ra" Burnham for featuring me on her "Extreme Hello Kitty" page, the address of which I have unfortunately misplaced but will look for. Go She-Ra!

A big shout out to Christy Bracken of "Creative Fat Cat" for her comprehensive website all about ME (her idea, not mine, I swear), for which she was kind enough to send a link to everyone on my list.

Special thanks also to Dr. Robert Dotson of Tulane University for researching and fully translating my Project Partner Eulalia Canela Vaquero's name from both the Greek AND Spanish to "Sweetly-speaking Cinnamon Cowboy." I wish I could play the guitar, because that would make a really killer song title. I thought since I'll be living in the Cowboy's house while I look for my own place that I might actually see him every now and then, but apparently he's pretty busy right now helping his wife run for mayor of Restauracion. But I did spot him earlier when he let himself into my room around 7 yesterday morning to officially welcome me to town. The Haitian housekeeper hadn't thought to make up the bed and since she doesn't speak Spanish or English, I ended up just taking off my pants and using them for a pillow and sleeping on the bare mattress. So this is how Don Eulalia found me: pantsless and with a zipper imprint up one side of my face. He just stopped in to tell me that he'd be hitting the campaign trail until election day (personally visiting all 2000 residents of Restauracion, I guess) so I'm pretty much on my own this week. The room they've put me in is really more of a storage area, crammed full of lumber, old clothes, junk, and a bunk bed. After I got out of bed I realized that one of Don Eulalia's adult children had come in during the night and crashed in the top bunk. I have to admit that bothered me a little bit until I discovered the housekeeper was actually sleeping on the floor under my bed. You heard me right. I need to find my own house fast. Still, it turns out that Selina, the Haitian housekeeper, is the coolest person in the house. She's teaching me some Kreyol words (She's already taught me to count to ten and say "I love Eddie Murphy") and I'm going to try to teach her some Spanish. She also tells me she wants to learn English, so we've had some pretty confusing conversations already. I've only met a few Haitians so far but they all seem a lot more laid back than the Dominicans, not that that's really saying all that much.

I guess I should back up and mention that training is finally over and my training group has been officially sworn in as Peace Corps Volunteers as of Friday. Some drinking may have been done that night, and there may or may not be a picture circulating on the web soon of me dancing merengue with a large dog. It was a special night. You weren't there. Don't judge me too harshly. I had to say goodbye to Dona Roma and drag two years' worth of my stuff to the bus station to go to Restauracion. I've gotten really attached to Dona Roma over the last few months. She cried a lot when I left, and I'm worried about her being alone. Whose underpants will she iron now? Her son Luis only wears polyester bikini briefs.

By the way, the fact that I've only just now become a real volunteer also means that my two years of service didn't officially start until Friday, which is a little daunting. The good news is that a few people in my group have an unofficial office pool going and I've been named Second Least Likely To Terminate Early, but I think that's only because they know I used to work in advertising so I already know what Hell really looks like.

There are going to be two other volunteers living in Restauracion with me. It's pretty unusual for Peace Corps to send more than one person to a community at a time, but apparently they have special plans for us which may or may not involve Haiti. I'm glad there are going to be other Americans in my community, but I'm also a little worried that it's going to be too easy to spend all my time with them instead of with the locals and I won't learn as much Spanish. Maybe things will be different once we all start to get busy with our projects. So far we've just all been hanging around the community center using the computers. I have already managed to impress Hilda, the director of the center, by fixing a scanner that wasn't actually broken and figuring out how to operate the video camera. The fact that the instructions were in English didn't hurt. This place is crammed full of stuff: digital camera, digital microscope, webcams, video camera, CD burner, scanner, color printer, fax, and super-fast satellite Internet connections. It also has solar panels and a room full of car batteries hooked up to act as backup power when there are blackouts. The problem is that no one here knows how to use half of these things. And once they do know, I have no idea what they're going to use them for. When I got the video camera working, Hilda went outside and shot some hilarious footage of a little naked girl whacking a calf in the face with her dirty diaper. Sadly, she erased it soon afterwards. But the fact that it's possible to step right outside of this super high-tech facility and see children assaulting livestock makes me think this is going to be an interesting two years.

I checked out a possible house this morning, which I'm told is the only vacant house in town, so chances are pretty good that I'll be moving in. The latrine has some pretty big holes in the walls and is missing a roof. The outdoor shower doesn't have any walls at all, but the owner said he will fix all that if I move in. There's no electricity either, but anything's got to be better than having a Haitian maid sleeping under my mattress. Wish me luck.

Hasta la proxima, Dave