Waaa!!

Sorry I´ve been quiet for awhile. I´m too busy to blog.

I´ve conquered Pico Duarte, eaten more than 200 mangos this month (I was counting), have worked the skin off of my hands weeding the platanos and yuca, and have enjoyed myself.

I have too much to write about, so I won´t write it. I am happy and healthy and excited to come home (after exploring more places with my best friend kevin.)

I miss you all and will see you incredibly soon.

Thanks for reading.

que se vayan bien

Tommy

p.s. Add to my list of accomplishments the fact that I now have a tummy. Yes, I have been eating well, 25 mangos a day plus 4 meals will do that.

Adventure

I forgot to mention I´ve been adventuring a bit, and it has been awesome. I saw some beaches, lakes, mountains, new towns, the capital, crazy things, and enjoyed myself. This weekend I´m going to climb Pico Duarte, the carribean´s highest peak. Take care.

Death

The shouting only increases as time passes. I can hardly see what´s happening. There is a flurry of feathers working its way around in a whirling circle.



I can see faces, all of them male, full of emotion, passion, and desire. Surely something important is happening. Freedom or liberty must be being won. Lives must be being protected or enhanced somehow. Nothing short of a historic even could possibly be occuring.



Then a voice rises above them all, ¨ES PORQUE SOY MACHO!¨and repeats this over and over. I catch sight of the face screaming these words. It is gleeful and excited, and attached to a small and weak body dressed in a pink polo shirt and slacks.



The voices reach a fever pitch, screams and rìpped vocal cords from all directions. Nations are freed from slavery with this much excitement.



Then, completely unexpectedly, the shouts and screams turn to howls of laughter. Loud and unsubsiding chuckles, cackles, and wheezes. Something has changed, and looking around at the faces, ranging in color from white to red to black, and in age from toddler to great-grandfather, I can see that the seriousness has gone from the moment. The Berlin Wall has fallen, and now it´s okay to make jokes about it.



Leandro gives me a playful shove and makes a throat slitting motion while opening up his lips into a wide smile that displays his schockingly whit teeth. ¨What do you think? I told you I know what I´m doing!¨



I´m still looking into the crowd. There, in the small space surrounded by laughter and masculinity, are two birds, and half a life.



One cock, barely alive, is walking in circles, while the other, fully dead, is dragged behind him. The winner has just embedded the blade, attached to his claws with tape, into the head of the other. Wearily he stumbles around trying to dislodge his foot from the corpse that follows him, not appearing to enjoy the victory.



What do I say to Leandro when he asks me for my opinion about the two clumps of feathers covered in blood? I say ¨yea.¨ A non-commital commital that neither supports nor debases his pastime. The question I probably should have asked is, ¨You were right, Bird X did win, but do you really know what you´re doing? Or is it me who´s confused?¨ The laughing continues.



We´ve come to Biafara, a small mountain town to the north, just to have a look around. Leandro has been asking me to go with him on the back of his motorcycle. So, I finally came.



This is a pretty little place tucked into the hills surrounding it. Like most small villages it runs on agriculture. There are barely enough kids for a school, and yet this town is the area´s capital for nightlife, women, and cock fighting.



Leandro doesn´t ¨play¨ cocks much. He´s too busy working in the field and as a ¨cobrador¨ for the guaguas that run through. At age 25 he has 3 children, one 10 year old girl, and two young boys. The mother of his girl now lives in spain and his daughter lives in San Juan with her maternal grandmother. The two boys live in Lost Toros with their mother, who is Leandro´s only ¨serious¨ girl. He has introduced me to several other young women he terms ¨mi novia.¨



On our way here we talked alot about agriculture, but mostly about money and women. I´ve learned how to force conversations into wider topics pretty well, but it is impossible to avoid talking about those two. Leandro is a straight-forward guy, and I like that about him. I know exactly what I´m in for when I´m with him, and can therefor prepare for, or avoid, what´s coming.



Today is an exception. ´We stumbled across this scene, and when Leandro asked me if I wanted to have a look, I figured I should do so at least once. Alot of the male Dominicans I know raise ¨gallos¨ (cocks), but until now, I hadn´t seen a fight.



Normally I don´t like to condem things before I experience them or am sufficiently informed somehow. That being said, I walked into this crowd fairly sure I wouldn´t being opened up to the enlightenments of cock-fighting.



¨Gringo!¨they had shouted as we entered into this backyard ring made of stretched out tin cans. They weren´t shouting at me though. Here I´m invisible because the action takes priority. ¨Gringo¨was the name being used for a white bird being sized up. They were declaring that he would be a winner, though Leandro disagreed.



Before the fight had started money was flying around. The ¨trainers,¨ about 6 of them, were walking around the ring and testing their birds on one another to find the matches with the most chemistry. They would pet their birds slowly and carefully, pulling the long shimmering tailfeathers softly to their ends, as if caressing a lover´s hair in a honeymoon suite.



Then they would jut their bird out like a torpedo at another bird, ramming its face into that of the other, to provoke a fight. Some birds seemed to show no interest in the scene, whereas others, such as Gringo, seemed inclined to be gladiators.



The first pair was selected, and the cocks were brought over to the official. This man is serious, and I feel inclined to respect him on account of this. He sits on the only chair present, wearing and old cowboy style shirt and a facial expression of that of a priest performing a rite, or a doctor in surgery. His job is to weigh the birds to ensure they are more or less equal in size. Then he tapes on the blades, his hands nimble and concentrated as he turns the birds´natural form of protection into weapons of agression. He is a doctor of sorts I suppose, performing an operation, but one that hastens death rather than prevents it.



Once armed, Gringo and his opponent were held up. More money had seemed to fly around. Countless hours of field work were put down on these birds by men whose families lack decent water and live in houses with dirt floors. The calmest beings present were me and the birds, who seemed oblivious to the attention.



Then the ring was cleared, and silence was almost achieved. The owners of the two combatants moved closer, and began thrusting their birds at each other once again. The birds took to it, and as they were let loose the quiet was buried by the voices.



I am at the back, and had craned my neck to see, even though I didn´t really want to. They fought like ninjas, half flying and half running, pecking and slashing and pinning each other down. I couldn´t tell who was winning, though Gringo was already covered in blood. A few minutes passed and then I could see an end approaching. Gringo stopped fighting. He stood there as the other bird buffeted him around. He had lost the will to fight and the desire to live.



That was when ¨machö,¨the winning owner, had started to shout. Just before Gringo recieved his final blow and the laughter began. I don´t understand why it was that the time of death, the second a life stopped, was the moment that laughter began. I guess I really don´t understand much of any of this, and that´s why I just struggled to answer Leandro.



Gringo´s owner stoops down and disconnect the bird. He too laughs when, as he removes the blades and tosses the bird outside the ring, someone shouts ¨Make a stew!¨ That person has offered me something to latch onto, that maybe there is a hint of a purpose to all of this. Yet I doubt he´ll make a meal out of the tattered flesh he´s thrown aside.



Another fight begins, and I don´t put much effort into watching. I´m lost in my thoughts, searching around inside of me for answers to questions about life, humanity, and culture.



The fight ends quickly. This bird has died from a punctured lung. His body too, a splash of colors and patterns more beautiful than any human creation, is tossed out of the ring.



I think Leandro senses my feelings, and he asks me if I want to go. I say yes. Back on his motorcycle, we head out of the hills and down to our valley as the sun begins to set.



I don´t say anything. My mind is still inside of itself.



Why does this sport exist, and why do they enjoy it? Who is they? Doesn´t the history of mankind turn up examples like this and worse? A history of fascination with pain and death. War, gladiators, dog-fighting, cock-fighting, wrestling, boxing, sport hunting, and domestic abuse. What do we enjoy about it? Is it a sensation of power? Is it that in seeing another life end we feel like we ensure ours continues, having satisfied the grim reaper for a day?



I don´t find the answers, but I do come across more questions to ask and some that I shouldn´t.



I shouldn´t wonder, ¨What is it about these Dominicans that makes them like this?¨ That would be narrowsighted for two reasons. One, because Dominicans are human and I could simply ask why would I like this, and two, because cock-fighting is just one example of a global and historical trend.



In realizing this I do find one answer. That is that I can´t expect to figure this out on the way back from Biafara if it´s something that has developed and embedded itself in reality over the course of mankind´s existence.



Not despairing, but still feeling a bit overwhelmed, I try to refocus on my surroundings. The fields zip by us in flashes of brilliant green and yellow, and the warm breeze from the ocean buffets our bodies and fills our shirts with air from far away places. Palm trees and coconuts throw shadows across the landscape dotted with grazing animals and tiny houses. The sun, further down in the west, is starting to sink down behind the mountains, casting the sky into a splash of orange, yellow, and red, as if it is exploding on impact somewhere in Haiti. I think to myself, ¨Pure beauty. Life is full of this.¨



It forces me to ask one final question. ¨How does anyone not living in the most horrible of conditions ever get this wrong, revelling in the ugliness of death when life hits them with beauty every second?¨ I smile.



¨Do you want to go again sometime?¨Leandro asks, turning his head to the side so I can hear him over the wind.



¨No thanks!¨I half shout back, without turning my head away from nature´s nightly fireworks, ¨Death isn´t my thing.¨







P.S. I don´t consider hunting and killing for food a part of this, as that isn´t an obsession with pain or death. It´s a pre-occupation with nutrition, a means to an end that can be carried out with respect and minimalized suffering.



P.P.S. Commenting on the amazing sincerity shown by fanatics and trainers also raises questions about all of the ¨Sports¨ out there. Why do we, whether Packer, Badger, Red Sox, or Arsenal fans, treat these games with such importance, to the point of neglecting necesities of ourselves, families, and others?



We get mad or sad when a team loses. We won´t remember that for long, but we will remember forever the times we were seriously injured, lost family members, and other such things. What will we think about at the end of this wonderful life? Not a 30-17 final score.

Because it´s been too long, this blog is too long...

Words are extremely powerful. They can do just about anything, start wars, build friendships, make money, and fill silences. You all know this, but you probably wouldn´t be able to guess correctly if I asked you to identify my current selection for most powerful words. Money? no. Family? no. Jesus? no. Love? no.


BANANA! Yes. These six letters are borderline magical, because they manage to conjure the image of a nice fruit, good with breakfast or in milkshakes, while burying the dirty, sweaty, slimy, machete-wielding truth.



I have encountered this truth, and am lucky to have the opportunity to expose it. Having been through so much to bring you this ¨boots on the ground¨coverage, I ask only that you listen. (There will be no opportunity for laughter.)


The Spanish word for bananas is chiefly platano, though here there are three names, plateno, guineo, and rulo, to denote the three varieties grown here. (Platanos are longer, guineos shorter and fatter, and rulos, my favorite, are by far the most suave, and are rumored to help diabetes.)



I find these names to be 1000 times more accurate than banana, not only due to the existence of more than one variety, but also because they are strong and intimidating, like the plant itself.


Calling this plant, which has been responsible for, among other things, WTO free-trade lawsuits, rainforest destruction, the overthrow of Guatemalan President Daniel Arbenz, a Gwen Stefani song, the soreness in my shoulders, and the domination of the lives of millions of tropical farmers, bananas, is like calling Antartica ¨Cabo San Lucas¨or re-naming racism ¨color-shyness.¨


For starters, there is the actual process of plantings and growing platenos, which I have been experiencing (suffering) first hand. There is no tossing of seeds into machine prepared earth involved in this. Instead there are sepas. These are the trunks of secondary and tertiary offshoots from a mature plant. (Just to give you a picture, the platano ¨tree¨is anywhere from 8 to 12 ft tall, witha soft, water filled trunk topped by wide and long leaves.) The offshoots can be anywhere from 2 to 8 feet tall at the time of sepa harvesting.


To obtain sepas, a farmer talks to another who happens to have a field already planted with mature platanos, and negotiates a per sepa price. As an example, our price was 1.5 pesos per sepa, which is around 4 cents US. He then gathers a crew of workers and an innocent and unsuspecting American kid who´s excited to ¨play with bananas¨and heads to said field so early in the morning that God is still asleep. The jopb starts with going around and digging up the trunks with a tool I would describe as a pick-shovel. This is particularily challenging considering the constant muddy star of the ground between the rows of the ¨banana forest¨.



Once uprooted, the work is divided into two parts, cleaning and carrying. Cleaning involves chopping the sepas down to size and removing chunks of worm-infested flesh with a machete. (Note, ¨to-size¨is very general, as some sepas are fist-sized and others are double Jon Atwell head size.)


Hauling involves going around and filling plastic rice sacks with sepas, shouldering them, and stumbling out through the swampish field complete with giant unseen spider webs and leaves that seems to intentionally slap people. The sacks, about 3 to 4 ft tall and weighing more than 100 lbs, are then dumped at the corner of the field closest to the path.


As my time machete in hand is restricted, on the (correct) assumption that sooner or later I will chop a finger, or hand, off, I was assigned to hauling. I don´t know how many sacks we filled, but time passed, and soon it was lunch. Platenos with spaghetti, 100% energy, but heavy on the stomach. We struggled onwards, and finished the first step of the process, so tired that we only had energy to hunt mangos for 10 mins.


Then came the next part, more hauling. Some farmers spring for trucks, others borrow horses, and some combine the two. Because we had collected sepas from 2 separate fields, one miles away from ours, and the other half a mile, we used a truck for one and a horse for the other. Filling the sacks and dumping them out at the edge of our field.


I was assigned to horse duty, which meant loading Gringo (which I named him for his white color) down with saddle bags first and two or three sacks on top, walking alongside to catch anything that fell. Just for kicks sometimes we´d shoulder a sack ourselves, showing solidarity with the Dominican stallion.


The sepas, after sitting out overnight, become slimy and slippery, and the fluids unexplicadly sting one´s cuticles. Thankfully this step is short, lasting only a half day. I had enough energy to find a more standard 8ish mangos and triumphantly rode Gringo back into town, finding the straw saddle surprisingly comfortable.


Step three, more hauling, though this time is is ¨al hombre¨whihc means Gringo got a day off. Maddeningly, we once aghain re-filled the sacks, begging the question ¨why not find more sacs and leave them filled?¨Yet such logic can not be applied to such an illogically powerful plant, so we loaded and hauled, this time dumping the sacks at intervals along the edge of the field.


Finally comes the big day, planting. The workers leave early, waking the roosters up on their way out, pocketing tiny flasks of coffee and carrying old liter soda bottles of water. The morning chill calls for long sleeves, but those are soon shed. Planting involves a horse and plow to dig furrows. The horseman pushes down hard on the plow while the horse pulls slowly, obeying the whip and the three principal ¨commands¨of ¨Diablo!¨Cono!¨and ¨Haitiano!¨ Behind them follow the rest, carrying the sepas and dumping one into the furrow at an interval of 4 feet. After covering the whole field, the workers go through and position the sepas in the best way possible, so they grow upwards. Then the horse and plow come through again to cover the sepas in dirt, and where needed hoes are used to patch up. Then they wait, and weed, until the plants gorw tall enough to sustain themselves and shade out weeds. It takes more than a year for them to produce fruit, and they can be left in production for almost three years at times. Harvesting involves chopping off the bunches, which are about the same size as a sack of sepas, and hauling them off to market.


Platanos are not eaten as a fruit here. They are a staple food, eaten unripened and plain. Producing them seems to be popular in the village right now, which means soon it won´t be. The farmers seems to follow each other, and in doing so flood the local market with the same commodity, sending the prices down and forcing them to plant something else. (at least it causes crop rotation, a positive side-effect.)



One thing that doesn´t change is the nature of the work. This living is made and maintained by hand and sweat. You can´t imagine the intensity of the labor. I´m slowly getting accustomed to what I´ve privately termed ¨bacon labor.¨ (Bacon because a day in the field is like being a piece of bacon. You enter the frying pan, not yet heated up, happy to get out of the package and slide around a bit. Then the surface starts reaching higher temperatures and you start to lose fluids. You turn around a bit, drink water, have lunch, but you can´t avoid the inevitable result of being a shriveled and sad version of your morning self. The main flaw in this analogy is that bacon is tasty at the end. The workers, dirty, grimy, and weak, are not!)



This, from what I can see, can have two different effects, A lifetime of this work either leaves people older looking than normal, or as uincredibly sprightly ancients. The work either defeats their backs, or they grow stronger. A test of Darwinian fitness perhaps. One that few of the villagers have chosen but nearly all experience. The concept of retirement must have been introduced to the local dialect by the tv, as I know of at least three 90 year olds still working in the field. With my ¨retirement¨ approaching fast, I can´t imagine having to look forward to 1000s more days of ¨playing with bananas.¨



Then there are the wider impacts of this fruit. Although the bananas we eat in the US don´t come from this village, they do come at a great impact on the lives of similar people. Our giant transnationals such as Dole and Chiquita (which in Latin America is at times has been referred to as ¨the octopus¨due to its tenticles reaching offices of power and tiny villages alike.) wield incredible power over happenings. They own huge tracts of land, often times letting it sit unused, while pushing landless peasants further into to the rainforests at the expense of the world´s health, and not to sound conspiracy theorist, meddling in governmental affairs.

Tiny nations such as St. Vincent and the Grenadines are based on economies almost entirely dependent on banana exports to Europe. Yet, a US lawsuit filed in the WTO and backed by several large US fruit companies, complained that the favoritism the countries of the SEM (Single European Market) had been showing towards their former colonies in Latin America and Africa were in violation of internation free trade policies. Even though no US jobs were at stake, the US argued that protecting banana imports from tiny countries such as St Vincent discriminates unfairly against US companies. While they were meant to hold back US transnational dominance, the policies of lower tariffs and quotas were primarily meant as a form of aid and support to these impoverished countries.

This suit happened in the late 90´s and ruled in favor of the US, but I do not know the current state of affairs in the affected areas. That being said, the effect on the economies of the Windward Islands (St Vincent etc), whose 1992 total exports were over 50% bananas, and coming from small farmers (40% of land holdings of 10 acres or less), of direct and ¨fair¨competition with the economies of scale and deep pockets of ¨the Octopus¨, is obvious. (figures from Grossman, 1998)

These small farmers, just like those here in Los Toros, work by hand and earn very little money. I can´t imagine the scene there when the ruling came through. Hauling and digging and frying. A lifetime of this, to try and scratch together a living, only to have your tiny economy squashed by the Trade Liberalization Gospel, is sad. It is a well sung gospel that promises a lot, but the invisible hand seems to bring little in terms of equality. Maybe the non'existent hand is a better name. It is all very deflating to think about, especially knowing what it´s like to work so hard on the edge of poverty.

Earlier I referenced the 1954 overthrow of Arbenz in Guatemala. Like many things in history, I cannot be 100% positive that this is how it played out. I´ll tell you what I know, and let you decide whether or not BANANAS had anything to do with it. When Arbenz came to power in 1950 by fair elections on a platform of Agrarian reform, United Fruit Company (later renamed Chiquits Brands) was the largest landowner in Guatemala, with 565,000 acres and only 9 percent of that in use. With 75% of peasant families landless, Arbenz set about expropriating land and paid $6,000,000 US to UFC for 413,000 acres, paying the value UFC had stated. Soon 100,000 peasants had title to land and Arbenz was extremely popular. Similar movements began picking up in Costa Rica and Honduras, both UFC strongholds.

The then US secretary of State John Dulles, was a senior partner in Sullivan and Cromwell Law Firm, UFC´s legal agent, and his brother Allen was the CIA chief. At the same time, the Cold Wat fever and suspicion being spurred on by the Eisenhower Administration (VP Nixon) was wary of any type of movement for the opressed, something that is a theoretical part of communist ideals. Throw in the fact that Arbenz, not a communist, has several members of the communist party in his government, and this all spelled trouble.

The CIA either believed, or was simply able to justify, that Arbenz and his reforms at the expense of UFC were communist attacks on US capitalism. In 1954, the CIA backed Guatemalan colonel Castillo Armas and his 300 man army, with propaganda and pledged US miliotary support against Arbenz. To top it off, CIA planes bombed the capital city, causing a panic. Arbenz, in spite of popular support, stepped down out of fear of a bloody coup. Bananas? You tell me!

To this day the large plantations of Chiquita and others continue to mass produce bananas and other fruits, while drenching the land in pesticides and pushing the small subsistence farmers to cut out plots in the the rainforests. This is why there is a book on the subject called ¨Breakfast of Biodiversity¨ To eat bananas from these companies is to eat the rainforest.

To sum it all up, this is a plant so powerful that it is responsible for international conflict, backbreaking work, and threats to the survival of planet earth. More powerful yet, is the word that disguises that power, BANANAS.

So there you have it. An explanation for my lawsuit to the High Court of the English Language, ATWELL V. BANANA, on the grounds of deception.

Bananas, in reality, are not as sweet as they sound.

Ahh April

This morning I was out in the field of Maria´s father, hoeing and weeding at 7 am. It was good to get in a decent days work, as the past few days there hasn´t been a lot of work.

On the way back in we passed a group of Haitian roadworkers, hammering away at the cement with pick axes. I couldn´t help but think about the American equivalent, a guy in reflective gear and a helmet, using a high powered jack hammer. These guys have been at this for weeks, digging a canal or drain of some sort all the way from Azua, about 30 kms. Every day they are out there in the sun, in street clothes, using their muscle bound bodies to break through a material only slightly stronger than themselves. I don´t even what to know what hourly wage they get, especially in comparison to our road crews. If the pay scale for a days work in the fields is anywhere close, then they pull in less tyhat 300 pesos daily. Care to know what that equates to?

Less than 9 dollars a day.

Keep in mind that these people have come here to escape from poverty and send money back to their families in Haiti. What does that say about conditions there, if backbreaking work for 9 dollars a day is an improvement?

One must remember, however, that the pricing scale here is different. To me everything seems cheap, a meal for under 3 dollars, a giant beer for 2, but to them the prices are high. Exchange rates are tricky things, and I can´t really tell how high or low the prices actually are in comparison to home. I don´t have the information to figure out the prices of staple products as a percentage of average income, which could then be compared to the same at home.

(Note post blogging. In my blog I have failed to emphasize that I am speaking of what I know about Los Toros, and cannot say for certain that things I see here hold true for the cities or even other small towns. Please keep that in your mind as you form a picture of things here. You may well go to another part of the DR one day and not find anything to uphold what I am saying. Then again...maybe you will...)

Continued....

In any case, especially for the Haitians, food seems to be their main expense, and it´s mainly rice and plateno. They don´t have electricity or water billes to speak of, and I´m not sure if they own their shacks or the land they stand on. I am sure of one thing, they´re extremely welcoming and generous towards me, inviting me over to eat or have coffee, yelling to me from across the fiels in french or creole, and giving me a smile on their way back from yet another days work. Maybe it´s just because I´m a novelty, but I think it´s genuine. The Dominicans, while many are nice to the Haitians, tend to disagree.

Just last night, while talking about my haitian frien Roberto, (who is in the hospital in Haiti after being attacked or in an accident, I can´t be sure.), a Dominican said ¨I hope he´s okay. There are a lot of bad Haitians, but he is one of the good ones.¨

To me, I can´t see where they base their prejudices, or what the Haitians are doing wrong. When I point out this out, I can´t believe some of the things I hear. ¨

One guy said, ¨One Haitian took a Dominican baby and threw it into the air and impaling it with his machete.¨

¨Wow. When?¨

¨I don´t know. My grandfather told me when I was younger.¨

Sounds like, if it happened at all, it was a long time ago. Also a long time ago, in 1937, Trujillo, the then Dominican dictator, ordered the massacre of around 20,000 Haitians in the matter of a few days, but the Dominicans don´t tell that story too often. To distinguish beteern the Haitian and Dominicans, the police walked around with a plant I can´t remember the name for, asking people to name it in Spanish. The Haitians, unaccustomed to Spanish, were unable to pronounce the R correctly. For lack of a sufficiently trained tongue, they were killed by machete.

My point in telling these stories is that for every crime one or another has suffered, there´s a story for one they´ve comitted.

I´m sure that, given my different perspective, what I see in the Haitians is different than what the Dominicans see. The outsider perspective is always based on a different set of experiences. It´s possible that I may never understand, just like a Somalian may never understand American racism towards Mexicans, just like Jon may never understand the relationships between Germans and Turks (or maybe he already does because he´s that smart.) That being said, there is always a truth to be had, irrespective of vioewpoint. Once reached, it holds its value no matter if you are Dominican, Haitian, or American.

The truth is that we´re all people and wer´re all flawed. Racism and xenophobia hold many forms in our societies, governments, and cultures, and are based one an infinite number of historical trends and national psyches and experiences, but at the bottom of it all, can we avoid the fact that we´re all just humans?

In our lives we encounter many stories and ideas that attempt to justify racism and xenophobia, some of them very compelling. However convincing these arguments may be, the conscience, when listened to, points to the conclusion that across boundries and up and down the social scale, we are all equal in value and in what we deserve.

Here, in the village, I´m being reminded of some of the problems in the world that I am sometimes shielded from in the US. Yet some of the things I´m seeing, I am seeing because I´m being more attentive. If you look around you in the US, or elsewhere, you´ll likely encounter the same problems of racism, xenophobia, poverty etc. It´s funny that outside the states I think about it more thoroughly sometimes than when I´m there. Sometimes we get caught up in our schedules and normalities that we only live them, and cease to analyze them.

Anyway, all is good here. Our yuca crop was nearly drowned by 3 days of rain, and we considered planting corn, but it has seemed to pull through.

Be like our yuca, and fight the flood.

Internet is scarce.

So I went into the city of Azua to find some. It seems like to find something functioning here, you have to find 2 to 3 broken ones. Hence, I had to find 4 internet centers to find this one.

I´m never going to inhale tobacco ever again, if I can help it. (Okay, I may have a caigar at the end of this trip.) I say this because I´ve expereience a kind of sickness I´ve never thought possible.

The process of tobacco harvesting and preparation is something that should be done with safety gear. This plant is serious business, toxic and sticky even when it is young and green. In the process of de'leaving, which means going through the rows and snapping off the leaves at incredible speed and karate type skills, a worker becomes covered in tar. Then spending more hours weaving them into bundles means that a guy doing this inhales a lot of fumes.

Whereas the guys here are used to this, and even smoke while doing it, I am not. Spending all day doing it was like smoking countless packs, unfiltered.

I walked home in the afternoon, tired and tar covered to have some coffee and wash up. We washed ourselves using the leaves of a plant I have no name for, lemons we picked from the tree, and a scrub brush which in the past would have hurt, but does not phase my now calloused hands. Semi clean, I spent a few minutes playing with a new puppy, already covered in parasites and insects, and jumped in the river, scrubbing of the rest of the tar by covering myself in the gritty river sand.

Walking back to the house I was hit by the consequences of my desire to learn all about Dominican agriculture. In that instant nauseau and fever hit me hard, to the point of me almost failing to make it to the house. About half an hour later I started vomiting and didn´t stop until late that night.

I was almost forced to go to the hospital in Azua. Some of the old ladies even assumed, that because I´m American I had most likely never thrown up. That gave me a moment of humor in my misery.

The next day I was fine, though everywhere I went I was met with jokes and concern. ¨How are you? All better?¨ ¨Looks like you learned too much about tobacco... Don´t touch it again.

Naturally, I didn´t listen. I figured, 2 days later, I could handle a few hours of it, as I had done before I got sick. I hopped on to a truck heading out to collect finished bundles. This meant throwing a big bunch of tobacco over one´s shoulders, nearly covering one´s entire torso and head, and trudging across the acres to the truck waiting at the muddy entrance.

About halfway through the loading it started to rain, so we had to finish at a sprint. The fields, and the road (more of a path) were already swamped from rain the night before. We finished loading and hopped on top of the tobacco to head back. The truck struggled with the water and mud often more than 2 feet deeps, and we had to hop off and push , getting covered in mud, about 10 times. I finally stopped getting back on, and ran behind the truck, enjoying the fun we were having shouting and cheering the truck along, laughing when one of us fell face first into the swamp or slipped off the back of the truck.

It was all a game, but then got serious as the rain persisted. We got into town, and had to unload and hang the bundles under shelter before the rain ruined it. Hanging is hard enough, but at double speed in the rain, those knots are hard to tie, and the strings all seemed shorter than normal.

By the end I was tired, though I had had a lot of fun. The rain stopped and I went to wash up. Along the way one of the girls made a throat slitting motion and pointed at me, signifying that I was in for it. SHe was prophesizing a return of sickness, Tobacco Attack 2.0.

How right she was, and how dumb I am. Long story shortened, I am not allowed to touch it anymore, nor do I want to.

Life is getting more and more beautiful for me. I spend more time wandering around and talking to people and learning new things. Luis and his family (one of the farmers) are like my family now too. He and his wife call me their son, and even give me orders and tell me to fetch this or that. Maria, my mother, even forced me to shave yesterday. It makes me feel more of a part of here than I could have imagined. I´m even given normal coffee cups and not special ones, and am not forced into taking someone else´s seat when there aren´t enough. (Before, even if I walked into a room full of elders, someone would get up and stand against the wall so Don Tomas could have his throne.)

Sometimes strangers call me rubio instead of Americano or Gringo, because I´m tan enough and speak enough spanish for them to believe I am a Dominican of European descent.

I am sick of a few things. The same bachata tracks being overplayed, the afternoon sweatbath, the drunks that walk around the neighborhood at any given time, the eveangelicals in a competetion to save their first American, and the accusations of being gay because I´m not ¨plucking the ripe and abundant fruits available to me.´

Yet for the most part, my days are filled with things I´m not going to get sick of. I´ve eaten rice and beans literally every day, and will happily do so for the rest of my time. I still laugh everytime a produce truck rolls by with a loudspeaker and says in a funny, indescribable voice, ¨hay batata. Hay pina¨ and commenting on the people coming to buy from him, saying ¨you definitely want some,¨ to the large lady sprinting out to halt him. I could eat fresh fruit for eternity, and it seems like every week a fruit I´ve never seen or heard of comes into season. Similarily, I love learning this language and learning new meanings for words I though I knew. (The word to describe ripe fruit, maduro, was used by a 70 year old man I can hardly understand to describe a pimple on my face ready for removal. Lastly, I love noticing the changes (most of them) I´m going through the the percieved dependencies I´m shedding.

I´m comfortable with using a bed pan at night, chopping things with a machete, killing a tarantula, walking around in the pitch black during power outings, communicating in a new language, negotiating with farmers, and washing my clothes in the river.

I no longer feel the need for internet, television, 10 minute hot showers, mirrors, cellphones, and a whole host of things I used to do or have.

I find it hard to believe that I was afraid of this place as I was. In this moment, my only fear is tobacco.

It reminds me of the time this past summer that I fought a snake in grandma´s cabin. I was afraid of snakes, but I knew we had to get it out, so I went after it, letting my adrenaline go. It was big, more than 5 feet long, and managed to bite me and throw it´s muscle around pretty well. I finally got it by the tail and ran out of the cabin swinging it in circles and throwing it into the field. I went back to my sleeping bag and slept soundly, whereas the others were still afraid of another snake coming, in reality and in their dreams0. I had conquered reality, so therefor had no fear of it in my imnagination.

This relates because it taught me something. The best way to avoid fear is to conquer it. You may get bitten in the process, but on the other side is beauty and tranquility you never could have seen through the fear. Like I jumped on the snake, I hopped on the plane to this country, and the gua gua to this village. I´ve had my struggles, but here I am on the other side of fear, learning and experiencing so much that I can´t fully appreciate it.

Don´t worry. I miss you all terrible and think of you often. (Note to Betsy, my friends are in love with you. After telling them how cool you are , and showing them the family photo with you´re big smile, they instisted that Dona Elisa menor has to come here.)

Beauty.

I´ve just returned from a trip to Azua to buy a new pair of pants. The old ones were torn twice in two different soccer games. The new pair cost a bit too much, something like 30 dollars, ut they are nice. It seems like there are two choices for clothing, charity clothing sold at dirt cheap prices in back street markets, or really nice stuff at US prices.

People here are incredibly well dressed when not working in the field. I don´t know how they do it, yet a lot of the young people manage to maintain clothing-model-level classiness and cleanliness while feeding animals, using outhouses, and sleeping in houses with dirt floors and palm roofs.

To me the Dominican people are beautiful, from the darkest to the lightest. The weird thing is that they can appreciate individual beauty between themselves and within their borders, but refuse to think of themselves as beautiful in a humanity-wide context.

I was talking to an older lady when she said a couple of disturbing things. ¨You Americans are beautiful, all of you, and you´re all tall too. Us Dominicans are very ugly. We´re all brutes too. You´re all intelligent!¨

Obviously I did my best to point out the inaccuracies of this statement, but I´m sure I did little to change a peception so deeply embedded.

Where does the idea come from that dark skin is ugly, Americans are beautiful, and that the US is a paradise? I hate to oversimplify, but I´m going to blame the tv, and novellas of course.

Due to the sheer amount of TV being watched, I´ve seen more than a few hours of Columbian, Mexican, and Brasilian novellas. Guess how many people of African descent I´ve seen? 1! Guess what his role was? Butler. As for the rest of the people, playing out their fictional lives on the tv, riding in cars that no one in this village will ever see, let alone drive, dining in fancy restaurants, getting breast implants, and sleeping in mansions, they all have more or less the same skin tone as I do. The only thing close to the reality of life here that is present in novellas, is infidelity. Wicked.

Thus the perception that to be white is to beautiful and rich. Since there aren´t black people in these beautiful and exclusive lives, then it must be something impossible for them. Thus little girls, wanting to be pretty and have money, telling me they wish they had my skin.

To me, this is a horrible message to be sending. Yet it is being sent, and recieved wholeheartedly, all day and night. If, during the evening hours, I stand in the middle of the street, I can here the same shows playing from all directions. I can look in each house and see everyone crammed in front of the tv, watching Catalina complain to Jessica abvout how her terrible husband refused to pay for the most expensive dress. (I love it when the power goes out, even though my house still has power. If I go outside into the total darkness I can almost escape the tv)

I understand that to them, it is a windo into a better life, and an escape from their problems. I just wish that they were seeing reality. There is a better life out there, in America and elsewhere, but it doesn´t look like a novella, and it doesn´t support the theory that skin color defines beauty and intelligence. Besides, I´d rather live here than in a novella. The music is so much better here.

As to the perception that the US is a paradise, I´m not exactly sure where it comes from. May be from family members raving about New York, tv shows, and music videos. Wherever it comes from, it is strong.

One guy, upon seeing a picture of the State Capitol building, asked me in all seriousness if it was my house. I couldn´t help but laugh, even though I was stunned. One day my friend Raul, who is an awesome guy, exposed that he had the dirt on America. ¨You know, America isn´t perfect. Not all of the buildings are tall, clean, and beautiful, and not all of the cars are either. There are even poor people.¨ I was so relieved that I smiled as he said it, throwing him off a bit. So I had to explain that I was glad he understands something closer to the reality of my country. (He still refused to let me sit on a rock, no doubt assuming that Americans are used to chairs and only chairs, and need their pants to be clean at all times.)

Even the Dominican economists have a similar view of the US. In watching a news show on the economy, I learned that the government is looking to do a bank bailout similiar to our own, in order to stabilize the economy to weather the storm. What did he say will bring an end to the storm? US policies of course! The Us, that giant country made of gold, criss-crossed by rivers of platinum and diamond, and inhabited by beautiful geniuses, will figure it out. They always do, and when they do so, they´ll fix it for us too.

I´m not to optomistic about this whole thing, though I do admit I´m out of touch with the details. The thing is that I don´t feel good about this country placing its fate in the hands of the US. (Cynics, or realists?, may say that it already was in our hands, whether they chose it or not.) Why wouldn´t you place your trust in the US, the home of beautiful, rich, white people? With time, it might even make our lives like novellas too!

Okay. Enough about that. As to myself, I am fine. I´ve been helping Idania´s brother in the Tobacco process, which is incredibly labor intensive. There is cutting, wrapping, hang drying, de stemming, smoothing, drying again, weighing, re'wrapping, packing, and storage. All of this done by hand, taking several months in total after the plant is ready to go. At the end, are the world famous cigars. I may just have to smoke one after taking part in all the other steps of the process.

I´ve also decided not to continue teaching at the school. Although, I want to help the kids learn english and french, which are importrant for getting high paying tourist jobs or immigrating, this is for the better. I´ve made a sort of break through as far as finding field work, and am really getting into researching agriculture. In the meantime I´m still teaching the neighborhood kids 5 nights a week. They, unlike the kids in Azua, actually want to learn, and I don´t need to spend half of my class time practicing my Spanish disciplining words. ex. Cierra la boca!!!!!!!

Nos vemos ahorita.