August 12, 2002 "More Vaina About Dave..."

I will never complain about the tarantulas again. Another volunteer showed me a picture he took of a bat hanging upside down in his shower.

I'm still here, but just like the volunteer handbook predicted, now that training is over and we've hit the three-month mark of our service, people are starting to have second thoughts about saving the world and heading for home, or as we call it here in the Corps, "Early Termination." So far we've lost five members of our original group of 39, with a sixth in Washington DC right now who may or may not come back to the DR. Some people have had good reasons to leave. The first guy we lost couldn't take the malaria medication. Then a girl went home because her mother was diagnosed with terminal cancer. Guy number three swore in, left his stuff at his site, went surfing and scuba diving at a resort up north for three weeks, then went back to his site and told them he didn't want to be in the Peace Corps anymore. Then we had an older woman who had a skin cancer scare and decided that maybe living this close to the equator wasn't such a good idea for her. Number five was in the IT group and decided he'd rather be back home doing computer programming. And no one is really sure what happened to guy number six. He was sent to Washington this week and left a note on his locker that said something like "Be back soon. Maybe." It turns out that the early termination rate for the Dominican Republic is way above the Peace Corps average. Personally I think it's the merengue.

I just spent a week in the capital learning to speak Kreyol, the official language of Haiti. It's a lot easier than Spanish, which as you may or may not already know is the most insanely complicated, messed-up and twisted language on earth. It's a fact. Look it up. The most interesting thing about the Kreyol class, though, was the textbook itself. If you've ever studied another language, you've seen the kinds of sample conversations that are usually used for practice exercises and to provide a little insight into another culture at the same time. "How are you," "Can you tell me how to find the Louvre," "I'd like a first-class ticket to Barcelona," that kind of stuff. Here's a sample conversation from "Ann aprann pale Kreyol" ("Let's Speak Kreyol!") translated into English:

Clotild: Good morning madamwazel, how are you today?

Fifi: Every day is a grim struggle for survival. How are you?

Clotild: My children have no shoes for school and my youngest boy has polio. My husband was kidnaped from our home by soldiers this morning. Are you waiting for the bus?

Fifi: Although I know it is a sin to have such thoughts, I sometimes pray that God will see fit to bring death swiftly to me and end my suffering. Yes, the bus is very late this morning.

Clotild: You must keep fighting, my sister, one day we will find a way to escape the wretched curse that our land has labored under for so very long. Did you bring your umbrella? It looks like rain.

I swear to god on the bible I'm quoting this verbatim. Mostly. I have tried out my Kreyol on a few of the Haitians at the market, and once they're able to stop laughing at me, they seem to at least appreciate the effort. Diogenes and I are going to hike across the border next week to look for some more victims.

There's been a lot of unrest on the other side of the border lately, which you in the States have probably gotten better news about than I have, and some weird things have been happening. I got stopped on the street while I was in the capital by a Haitian who begged me to help him get inside the American Embassy and get a visa in the United States. He said he was afraid to go back to Haiti but the Dominican goverment was forcing him to leave. I had to explain to him that I don't exactly have a lot of influence at the US embassy. I was pretty sure the US government was not about to reverse its policy on Haitian immigrants just because I knocked on the gate and asked them to. But how bad must it suck to be afraid to go back to your own country? And to not be welcome in anyone else's either? It sucks pretty bad, I'm guessing, and it made me feel more than a little guilty for going to the embassy just to hang out by the swimming pool.

Things have been bad on the Dominican side, too. There was a nationwide transportation strike going on for a week or so. Bus drivers were setting up roadblocks made of flaming piles of tires in the streets and one was killed in the riots. I wound up stuck in Santo Domingo for a few days until I could get a ride home. I stayed in Dona Roma's house for a while and she fed me rice and beans and yuca and I gained back some of the weight I've been losing in the campo.

Yesterday was my 33rd birthday. I spent the day swimming in the river and playing a game with some Haitian kids where you try to crack open these big flat tree seeds that are floating in the water by throwing other seeds at them. It's called "Yoyo" or something like that. Josh and Chrisie made me dinner (partly with food they took from my house while I was at the river) and stuck a candle in a stack of cookies for me. Josh even went to the store to buy us each a beer but then he fell off his bike on the way back and broke them. But the owner of the grocery gave me a free bottle of rum. Then we watched a lightning storm and a bat flew through the window and out the back door. I was in bed by 10:30. It was the most excitement I've had in a while.

I start teaching my computer classes on Saturday. I hope people actually show up. I spent a lot of time making a poster explaining "How the Internet Works." Right. Like I really know. Teaching here is an uphill battle. I went to a meeting of the Youth Group that Chrisie has been working with a few weeks ago. Chrisie, if you rememebr, is an Environmental Education volunteer. At the meeting, the group decided that it would be a really good idea for them to focus on environmental issues, and that one of the first things they wanted to do was to start cleaning up the river. So with this settled, we decided to go to the river and have a picnic, after which every last one of these environmentally-conscious kids started tossing all their garbage right into the water. I thought Chrisie was going to cry. They didn't seem to understand what the problem was or why she made them wade out into the water to pick everything up.

Sad news. I had to get rid of Escubi. She was making me sick. I'm not sure why I thought I would be less allergic to cats here than I was back home. Don't worry. I put a good heavy rock in the burlap bag and she barely suffered at all. Kidding. I'm only kidding. She's living with Chrisie and Josh now and they take better care of her than I ever did. They even bought some real cat food in the capital. And Chrisie has renamed her "Meeshi." I'm not sure how I feel about that. But I'm pretty sure the cat doesn't really give a good god damn.

So... that's the latest episode of the MacGyver-like action series my life has become. Stay tuned. Dave