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.

P.S.

To my friends from Mahtomedi. On my way through the village yesterday I saw a guy wearing a class of 2003 Mahtomedi Zephyrs shirt. I had a little laugh to myself. One of the funny things is to see people walking around with second hand shirts from the US. Commemorative shirts, charity soccer games, family reunions, work outings etc, and my favorite was an old lady wearing a shirt that said. ¨Britney´s Sister.¨ I don´t think she knows what either word means, and if she knew who Britney Spears was, might not wear it, no matter how cheap it was.

Also, I highly encourage you to check out kevin´s blog. His more than rivals those of people traveling around, and he is doing it from Madison. You won´t regret taking 5 minutes to read some of it, but you will regret not reading it. http://kdoran.wordpress.com/

Library...sigh...

I´ve just realized that assuming I head back to the states on June 3rd, I have exactly 100 days left here. I´ve lived to see the possibilities of one month (40 days) played out here. What does more than double that time offer?

Every day I am speaking more, better, and faster. Is that going to continue, or will I soon hit the rumored plateau where it feels like you stop learning?

Every day I am building stronger bonds with the people around me. Will that too continue? I certainly hope so.

These 3 months ahead of me will be different, and challenging. I believe I am going to accept a full time teaching job in the high school (giving the University job to a friend who needs it more.) and I will be planting my one terea (600 m2) garden next week, as well as helping with the corn and yucca crops in the main plot. I´ll be traveling more, (I´m going to visit the AIESECERs in the capital soon.) and the mosquitos are going to multiply along with the rains.

Along with the challenges, which are oftentimes a pleasure within themselves, I can look forward to moments of instant and guilt-free gratification. The month of May stands out in this regard. This is the month when the fruit trees bear full force. I am told that the land is covered in ripe mangoes, bananas, guanabanas, coconuts, avocadoes, cherries, grapefruits, and oranges. This will also be the time when both Kevin Doran, and fingers crossed, my garden produce, will arrive on the scene.

So, I´m happy today. I love knowing the waiting and the anxiety are behind me. I have 3 months packed full of adventure ahead of me. I don´t doubt that by the end I may wish it moved slower. As I´ve already told some of you, I am going to turn this island into ¨Camp Friendship.¨

I´m writing this on a benchlike desk in the municipal library, also set up by the foundation, as I´ve been finding writing and studying to be increasingly challenging in my house. The kids do not give me the time or space to write, and the constant sound of novellas and music pervades my thoughts. For awhile, which I still do from time to time, I was crossing the river to sit in a natural chair formed into a log. This idyllic setting, complete with the sights and sounds of bubbling water, platanoes being rustled in the wind, and the company of goats, has 2 weaknesses. The sun can be brutal, and the traffic of farmers walking by and puzzling over ¨that white thing doing something with a pen and a book¨is a bit too heavy.

That´s why I´ve started coming here. To the Madison students, at school or abroad, if you´re wondering how this library is, let me assure you, coastie count 0, bro count 1 (me). The tables and noise level are reminiscent of second floor Memorial past the computers. The atmosphere, complete with the natural lighting, the bright blue paint, warm breeze, and exotic bird calls, is all its own.

Thinking and reading back, I see that I´ve neglected to talk about my family here. This is especially important to me now, as I had a pretty awful experience yesterday that made me realize what I have here.

I hopped on the bus to Azua at 7 am to teach class at the colegio as usual. Things were going smoothly and I was thinking about how I was going to keep the kids on task as I tought them grammar. Coming out of the mountains and down to the highway for Azua, the route passes a checkpoint of sorts, full of national police and traffic officials. I´ve often thought about how I never see them do anything. Well yesterday happened to be the first day I saw some action. For no apparent reason, a big guy hopped on the bus and slowly walked down the aisle staring at me. I didn´t do anything, and was relieved when he passed me by, thinking he just had somewhere to go. Then I felt a hand on my shoulder and a voice saying, ¨give me your papers.¨ It took me a second to process this. ¨I don´t have any papers.¨¨Give me your identification.¨ ¨I don´t have any identification. I´m just going into the city to teach at the school.¨ ¨If you don´t have any identification, I can arrest you.¨ ¨I´m sorry I just don´t have anything on me.¨ So he stood there and looked down at me for another minute, speaking so fast I had no idea what was being said. Then he got off the bus. As soon as he was gone, every one else started yelling at me. ¨Do you know what would happen to me if I were in the US? I´d be in jail. You´re here in our country, and you think you can walk around like you belong here?¨¨You Americans are so arrogant. You think you own the world.¨ On and on for 10 minutes from all directions. I couldn´t get a word in, nor did I try to. I just stared out the window, focusing all of my strength on not breaking down, on not crying. I wanted to tell them that I don´t think I own the world. That I´m constantly wishing everyone was so lucky as I have been, and even more, actively trying to realize that wish. That I am saddened by the racism and hatred some people in my country show towards immigrants. That I am here to understand the struggles people are trying to escape. But instead I was in silence, being hit with words that hurt like rocks. Staring out the window didn´t really help though. It felt like being in jail and having a giant bay window in your cell that overlooks another jail. Through the window I saw more places where I didn´t feel that ever so important feeling. Belonging. I thought, this is something you can never have when you are traveling, the feeling that this is where you are supposed to be.

So I stumbled through the day at school with the conviction that I did not have belonging growing on me, and on my way back to Los Toros my head was swimming with thoughts. I need to go home. I need to stay away from that city. Then I realized something beautiful as I left the bus and walked down the road into my neighborhood. It felt like coming home. I was moving towards a place where I would be greeted with smiles and attention and conversation. Cups of coffee and plates of food. Offers to play baseball and questions about my wellbeing. If this isn´t belonging, then I don´t know what is. The hurt from the morning was slow to go away, but the friendliness of my family worked its magic. It also helped that my host mother´s brother, who is a judge, assured me that I cannot be arrested and that those people are wrong for having assumed all of those things about me.

That is why I will now give the family some blog attention, in recognition of the wonderful home they have provided me.

The head of the house is Idania. She is a short lady who walks around with a somber look on her face. This makes her intimidating, but I´ve come to know that this is just her relaxed face, and that she has a wonderful smile and laugh that she uses often enough. She is a science and spanish teacher at the school here and likes to read tiny romance novels at night while the tv plays novellas. She also has shown to be a skillful dancer and coffee drinker, easily outperforming me in both disciplines.

The owner of the house is Adela, Idiania´s mother. Her working name is ¨La vieja¨(the old one). She has an eye problem that means she wears giant sunglasses. She also has a lot of jewelry, and sports two platinum teeth. Her top speed is about 2 miles per hour and she is bad around corners. She is nearly impossible for me to understand. We have a daily cup of coffee, where through bits and pieces I´ve come to understand that, among other things, she has 5-8 children, a lot of cousins, is the aunt of Polibio the crazy guy, her husband died 28 years ago, and her mother 50 years ago, electricity first came to the village in 1977, and that she prefers horses to the horribly loud motorcycles. She also has a nice laugh that usually results in her having a coughing attack.

Domingo is Idania´s husband. He has no kids and loves baseball. It is rumored that he would have gone pro had he not hurt his shoulder. (I´ve heard this about 20 different guys. Funny thing is they never say it about themselves. There is one pro from the village, Pedro Feliz. Right now I can see the back of his Mother´s house, which looks something like a Tuscan Villa surrounded by prison walls topped with curled barbed wire. It´s about the size of 20 normal houses here, and has the only shower that is not a river or a bucket of water.) Back to Domingo, he has a lot of brothers, one of whom owns a drinking establishment that Domingo faithfully frequents. He is hardworking by day, and cleans up nicely. He and Idania are far from lovey-dovey, but sometimes I can hear them laughing at night. Also, Domingo is very hard to understand due to his raspy and rapid voice. I have gathered from him that he likes Alex Rodriguez and was an army sniper, recieving training in the US while learning no English.

Josi is my roomate. He is 15 years old and is more commonly referred to as Gordo (fatty). He and I have good conversations at nught, and I´ve come to know that he likes motorcycles, Hummers, women, guns, and the music of Omega, who is a street merengue artist. Also, he is going to ask Stefanue on a date soon. He is the household goofball and lightens up every moment with jokes and his smile. Sadly he has no idea who his father is, and instead refers to Idania´s brother (the judge, landowner, and very smart guy) as his Papi.

Leonasi is Josi´s cousin. I do not know how old she is, but I would guess 16 or 17. She is very beautiful and very narcissitic. (She along with her sister Priscilla are responsible for draining my camera with self portraits.) I believe she has asked me to be her boyfriend around 3 times. A nice girl.

Rocio is also a niece of Idania´s. She works harder than anyone I have ever met, cooking and cleaning all day, every day, except when she is in school. She makes wonderful meals for me, yet hardly speaks. The family refers to her as Meme, and I had been doing the same until one day she told me she would prefer that I call her Rocio. When cleaning she loves to put on Enrique Iglesias and other similar artists. I hope to get to know her better.

Priscilla is Leonasi´s younger sister. Her real name is Radhaisa. She is about 11 years old and is constantly with her best friend Ivanna. (I thought Ivanna was a part of the family for 2 weeks.) Her mother lives in the capital, coming home every now and then to visit her family, which includes another daughter down the street who has a baby and no boyfriend at age 21. She is like Idania but without the smiles or the niceness, and showed no interest in talking to me.

Lastly there are the animals. A cat and a dog, both flea ridden and unfixed males. There are a number of chickens and cocks, (Josi´s fighting cocks) as well as a few goats, a sow, and 3 piglets. The livestock are tied up along the path down to the river, and everytime I pass by I am greeted with their calls for food. I´ve taken to petting one piglet in particular, and have discovered a remarkable thing. She enjoys scratching in general, but if I take it to a new level and scratch her along his side just above her soft underbelly, she will flop over and fall asleep in a matter of 10 seconds without fail. I am yet to try this on the sow. (Can someone explain this to me? I was thinking it might be some mechanism related to nursing. As the spot where I scratch is near the nipples, and nursing sows usually serve dinner laying on their sides.)

I forgot one person, Idania´s brother who lives in one half of the stand alone kitchen. He has never spoken to me, or smiled in my presence, which made the part where everyone hugs at mass particularly awkward when I went with the family.

As to the house itself, I would put it at around 20 feet by 30 feet. It is a single story constructed of cement walls on a cement platform. There is one long room with the table, tv, fridge, and plastic chairs, and 3 small bedrooms. The cieling is peaked, so each bedroom is really just a partitioned part of one room. In one of the bedrooms la vieja and Priscilla share a bed, in another Idania and Domingo, and in the middle Josi and I. Normally Priscilla and Leonasi share my bed, and Leo, Idanias oldest girl who is studying medicine in the capital, sleeps with la vieja. Leonasi and Rocio are now sharing a bed in a relatives house down the street.

The set apart kitchen is really just a tiny room with pots, pans, and a camp stove. Food is not refridgerated here (the fridge is for water and juice) instead being kept under a cloth on the table. Behind the kitchen is the outhouse, which is exactly what an outhouse is supposed to be, only that sometimes the dog feels the need to prevent me from accessing it by threatening to bite me if I come near his territory. This also doubles as the shower for the women, who are left out of bathing in the river.

We are lucky in that we have a car battery energy storage device that takes in energy when the grid is up and running and supplies it when the power is cut. Even so, we live in the alledgedly poorer part of the village, which is termed Haiti, in reference to the poverty in that country.

I don´t see poverty as being too bad here. I for one, am eating more food than I ever have, and may be gaining weight. Rocio stack those plates of rice and beans high, and throws in extra pork and tomatoes too.

In fact, two of the biggest problems I percieve here are not what you would expect. Novellas and cockfighting. I´ll tell you more another time, as this blog is far too long.

Love,

T

A winter cold in paradise. From my journal 2-24

This cold has been persistently annoying in more ways than one. It is bad enough to be constantly blowing my nose and struggling to breath at full capacity. The thing that is bothering me the most is having to fend off the women telling me I should take some medicine or go to the doctor, and the men in the field telling me I should take a break and go home. It is a pretty wicked cold, but it is nothing time and water won´t take care of.



It is particularly jarring to know that so many actual medical problems go untreated. There are people limping around their entire life and here I am all but being forced to the doctor.



I was thinking about how my $50 dollar donation helped one woman have a healthy child. How many people walking around and struggling with serious problems were at one point $50 dollars (or less) away from a crucial treatment?



I´ve never in my life seen so many cross eyed people or people with severe limps or badly healed broken bones. There are quite a few mentally ill people around too. Whenever I ask, ¨what illness does he have?¨or ¨What happened to her?¨I am met with the same simple answers, ¨She´s crazy¨or ¨He has a problem with his leg.¨



Why such simple answers? It´s not because they don´t care to tell me. It´s because nobody really knows. If they´ve never been to a doctor or recieved help, then how would they know?



This is in sharp contrast to Wisconsin where everyone knows that ¨She had a slipped disk between the 5th and 6th vertebrae. It was a 5 hour surgery and took 2 years of physical therapy for her to be normal.¨(I apologize for medical inaccuracy or impossibility in this example.) or ¨he has essential tremors and he really likes to talk about it. Ask him!¨



The idea that glasses, dental treatment, and a regular physician could literally change the face of this village is frustrating. As of right now there is a 2 or 3 day a week (not sure) dental clinic set up with frunds from the Los Toros Foundation, which is run by a group of people from a catholic parish in Grafton, WI and another group of Dominicans. This dental clinic is still very much finding its feet, and I´ve been told it isn´t very popular. Hopefully it will pick up speed, yet for an astounding number of toothless, or nearly toothless people, it is far too late.



And as for all the others, how many of the cross-eyed or lazy-eyed people could have gotten some help early on and turned out to be drivers, technicians, mechanics, electricians, or talented painters? Besides, what about all of the beautiful and simple scenes in their lives that have gone by unseen or distorted by their gaze? (I don´t know exactly what they can and can´t see or how it looks, but I´m sure it can´t beat normal vision.)



One of the crazy people lived just behind me, and I´ve mentioned him before. His name is Polibio and he looks to be in his 50´s. Everyone neglected to inform me of his condition and on my second day I spent a few minutes trying to have a conversation with him. Only when I noticed that he was looking through me did I realize he hadn´t heard a word. Now that I know, it´s impossible to ignore him, or avoid thinking about him. He lives in a shack all by himself, and spends the day wandering about talking to himself in low tones, and sometimes he pulls out a desk and writes furiously on old pieces of paper, loudly reciting numbers. I secretly believe he is actually a genius discovering something brilliant, but for the day to day, he is crazy until proven intelligent. I was first told that he went crazy when his family left with his wife´s lover for Spain, though this has since been corrected. His family left after he fell into insanity. At what point, if at all, did he see a doctor or a counselor? I´ll never know the monetary difference between the crazy guy I see now and the father and husband that was. (I am so interested in him that I am writing a story loosely based on Polibio. It is especially chilling to write about him when he is standing near to me, pointing at some far off place in the sky and talking loudly, as if it is an answer to an earth shattering question or riddle, the key to discovering the fountain of youth, Cortez´s gold, or the meaning of life. As they say here, ¨eso es heavy!¨(This is heavy or deep.))



I don´t know enough about microfinancing to go out and say that it could work wonders here, but I do think it´s worth a shot. There aren´t banks here in the village, and if there were, would they give out loans like the one´s needed in these situations? If you want to be technical, there are about 50 banks here. However, this is a misnomer and a poor place to put your money. These banks are where you enter the national lottery and nothing more.



I´ve heard that in some places in the developing world, micro-lenders experience wonderful pay back rates on loans to poorer people. I can´t remember his name, but a recent nobel proze winner was a micro-lending pioneer from India I believe.



What kind of good could that do here? There is only one way to find out. (I am not running an experiment, yet I am involved in a bit of it, mostly involuntarily, and it is not going well. It´s an experience that I may blog about in the future.)



Sometime later on I will be going to the clinic here in the village, to get an idea of what options people have, how much it costs, and when it was started, not to get my cold checked out.



(I was right. My cold is gone! This post is a few days old...)

You lived in Spain? Have a spanish speaker in your house?

No, I knew next to nothing when I arrived. ¨I just don´t believe you.¨

A guy from another village complemented my spanish in that fashion today. It was a nice moral booster.

Today has been beautiful. As I write this (in my journal) I am drinking coffee on the porch. There is a strong breeze carrying the sweet sounds of the mexican singer vincente fernandez from down the road and taking the edge off the mid afternoon sun. We spent the morning harvesting tomatoes, starting early and finishing just after noon. It´s hard work, and it took two days, but I love it. I watched the sun rise, out in the fiels, and as the 7 am sky exploded into color, I could hear the Haitian crew in another field singing their enchanting songs. When the wind shifted just right, it felt like I was surrounded by a tribal chorus of Africans. In a way, that´s who they are. Both Dominicans and Haitians can be very african in appearance, though their are a lot of the more latino looking Dominicans as well. The creole language spoken by Haitians is a mix of French, English, Spanish, and several African Idioms. Lastly Haitian music and songs are heavily influenced by their African roots, and some of the work songs go back to the early African slaves brought to the island.

Agriculture here is...simifferent compared to that of the United States. In a lot of ways it is much like our modern forms of production, with pesticide drenched mono crops and large agro'industrial companies buying and selling the livelihoods of family farmers. Yet for every big operation there are tons of small ones cultivated by hardworking, machete weilding, Dominicans. For the few farms with access to gas or electric equipment, there are thousands of men with horse drawn plows. Not to mention even the big farms rely on meticulous hand driven harvesting. They do not bale hay here, but I´ve never seen a Wisconsin farmer hunched over all day every day, filling sack after sack of produce, or hand weeding a 10 acre field.

It is in a way sad to see the traditonal agriculture being slowly moved away from. I´m sure Dominicans and Haitians are looking forward to a future devoid of such grueling tasks, but I can already see the side affects of advanced technology being applied in an unprepared (is any situation ever really prepared for modern agriculture?) setting. An example would be the use of pesticides. They are using top of the line, toxic stuff, shipped from American producers, and men, women, and children are applying it without any kind of protective equipment. Breathing in countless carcinogens and other wonderful potions. They´re increasing production today, while decreasing their health for tomorrow.

As always there are positives to the changes. Some habits would be better off getting lost in transition. THe more traditional farmers here are so superstitious that women are not allowed in the fields because it is believed that menstrating women bring curses with them. If only they could be so suspicious of the companies they produce for.

The most prevalent form of production here in the village is contract farming for the two big agriculture companies ¨Linda¨and ¨Famosa. ¨ If I haven´t already made it clear, contract production seems to be a pretty shady thing. Personally, I don´t like it, here is why...

A typical contract is simply a legal deal between at best semi-illiterate farmers and the companies that specify a price for the produce, on a loose quality scale. THe contract is signed before planting, and the payout is delivered months later, post-harvest. In returen for signing, the farmer is given up front loans for tilling, seeds, fertilizers, and pesticides. Sometimes an expert agronomer is sent in once or twice too. When the crop is ready, the farmer and the crew he hires harvest the crop into sacks, and the company sends its trucks to take the produce to its plants to be weighed.

Sounds okay right? Well just in this last part of the process the company holds three powerful playing cards against the farmers.

One - It decides how many trucks to send. If a farmer has produced more than the company desires the company can send an insufficient number of trucks in order to avoid paying for the produce it doesn´t want. In our field, Linda sent 3 trucks for the first harvest when there should have been 4. Each truck was loaded far past capacity, which meant hundreds of pounds were lost en route. (When tomatoe trucks come by, caution is necessary, as it is easy to be hit by the stream of tomatoes falling out.) I asked one of the farmers why they didn´t just send another truck, and was told that the company didn´t have any more trucks. RIIIIIGHHHHTTTTT. A giant company doesn´t have any more trucks?

Two- Measure of quality is loosely specified and selection is not in the hands of the farmer. Once the truck gets to its destination, the company sorts through and gets rid of under quality produce. If in a particular harvest, the company has more produce than it requires, it can simply slide the quality scale to reject more, and the farmer can have nothing to say about it. Besides, this all happens far away at the plant, where the farmer has most likely never been.

Three- The market price of produce fluctuates, but the contract does not. After the first two forms of screening I just mentioned, the company has exerted some control over domestic market price by controlling scarcity. Scarcity means a rise in price generally. Yet the contract that ¨Jose Farmer¨signed, taking the market predictions of ¨Mr. Ag Company Economic Expert¨to heart months earlier, stays put. Rarely, I´d imagine is this an advantage for the farmer. The farmer will get the same low price for tomatoes, regardless of actual value, and still has to pay back all of the loans for the inputs.

This all means there is an extremely small margin of profit for the farmers. From observation, conversation, and reading in two separate books on the topic, I´ve gathered this is an unbalanced relationship. The funny thing is that the farmers are very defensive of the companies. I have a feeling they know about most of what is happening, but since they are all but powerless to do anything about it, prefer to pretend like they have made a choice, and that they are happy with it. In actuality, the upfront costs of all the inputs mean that production of any sizeable crop is nearly impossible without a contract or loans. These farmers don´t have much for capital, and don´t recieve much profit for any form of production.

I think this helps to explain one other bothersome thing. The exploitation of Haitian labor. Because the farmers are exploited by the company, often hardly turning a profit, passing on the hardship seems only natural. THe Haitians are strong and hardworking, and most importantly, illegal and devoid of any labor rights. (I don´t know what rights those would be here in the first place.) The farmer sees this as an opportunity to make up for some of the pie the company ran off with. I´m not justifying this behavior on the part of the Dominicans, but it helps to understand the process.

As boring as spending all day harvesting something sounds, it really isn´t for me here, where I have all of this to think about. Where I can listen to the Haitian choirs, laugh at the banter of the Dominican guys, and enjoy the warm (sometimes way too hot) sunshine. And then to top it off with a walk back into town to strip down and laze in the river, totally naked and completely relaxed is indescribable.

The river has allowed me to rediscover the pleasure of walking around, swimming, and hanging out, all in the nude. The warmth of the sun seems to penetrate my inner care and massage the fatigue out of my muscles. If it weren´t for this persistent cold, I would say that today, this place is the island paradis it is rumored to be, at least for me, the Ag-companies, and the pigs in their muck baths.


p.s. Story time. Yesterday one of the little girls from the neighborhood more than annoyed be. She must be about 4, yet I found out that she has the jaws of a 12 year old. Out of nowhere she sank her teeth into my upper arm while I was writing. This put me in an impossibly tough position as she continued to hold tight despite my orders to let go. I couldn´t pish her off or pull away, as my skin would be torn off like Evander Holleyfield´s ear. Nor could I smack, pinch, or bite her back, as that would inevitably result in her crying and running to her mother, who would then either directly confront me or spread rumors through the incredibly fast grapevine that I abused her child. So I stuck to my only choice, which was to tough out the pain until she finally loosened her chompets. I was left with deep marks, and she even managed to draw blood. Kids.

A Hurricane!

Of emotions.



I am sick. I´ve been wondering when this would happen and it finally has, but it wasn´t what I expected. I don´t have dengue fever, malaria, rabies, typhoid, TB, or food poisening. I have a cold. How? you may ask. Well, I have to expose a secret that will ruin your imaginations of this place.

I freeze every night. Some of you may have pictured me falling asleep on a sandy beach wearing little more than palm leaves, letting my rum punch in a cocunut slip out of my hand as the sound of the ocean tides coming in and out, the inhale and exhale of the planet, lull me into a deep and restful dreamland. In actuality I am huddled in a bedsheet shivering because the family does not have any more blankets. It is probably around 50 degrees at night, but in a cement house with cement floors, it can be quite cold, especially compared to the blazing hot days. Throw in the fact that there is a fan blowing icy blasts over me to keep away mosquitos, and I´m downright frozen. So much so that I am now sick with a sore throat and a runny nose. Inconsistent with the setting I know, but preferred to any of the above examples of exotic illnesses.



I think the fact that I hardly slept the night before last made my body particularly vulnerable. Why I couldn´t sleep was a combination of things. For one thing, I had been given espresso at 10 o´clock (I am yet to refuse coffee). The other thing is that my one month mark and first bout of homesickness coincided in that day, along with mounting frustration in my inability to work things out with the guys in the field. I was on a caffiene high, missing my family and friends, and feeling like I´m wasting my time here. The first two problems are normal, and it is the third that is most troubling.



So I took those three enemies to bed with me, and emerged with the following sunrise, tired and victorious. I´ll give you a play by play.



Caffiene was a long fight, but easy. I just needed to wait.



Missing my family and friends, and my current frustrations teamed up like one of those super enemies in Power Rangers or Transformers and it took all night. In going through homesickness I´ve realized something important and obvious about life, which is this.


There are three different responses you can have when something leaves your life (or your life leaves it.) One response is that you need something less and less the longer it´s gone. Examples would be tv, doughnuts, or for me here, formal bathrooms. The second response is that you need something more and more the longer you go without it. Examples include showers, money, or in my case new (not smelly) shoes. The third, and most rare response, is that you need something exactly the same amount at all times, with or without it. It is in this third and exlusive category that Family, Friendship, and Love fall into.



Sometimes we can convince ourselves that we can do without these things, but in actuality, we always need them. Everybody needs them, and some of the worst off people in the world are those without them. I too have moments of folly where I think I can survive without the daily support of my friends and family. Those are the moments when I´m riding high on my luck or my good fortune, and when something fails and I fall short I know exactly where to turn.



The problem with traveling it´s hard to turn to your family or friends if they´re miles and a time warp of a culture gap away. I have been able to keep in fairly regular contact with them, and that helps, but it´s never the same without hugs and smiles and eye contact. So, no problem, if eye contact is what you need, why not spill your guts to someone where you are? But you can´t really express yourself fully to people you´ve known for a month in a language you´ve known for less than the same. And there you have it. Traveling can be beautiful, but it can also trap you in an emotional no man´s land between your support group and your surroundings.

That being said, I conquered my homesickness for the time being. I wan´t able to hug it out, but a little determination and rationalization did the trick. I´ve been through this before, and when it´s all over, I will be fine. I haven´t lost my support, I just can´t see it for the time being.

As to my frustrations. They are still bothersome. Here is the problem. I´m here as a relative of the revered Elisa. (I feel a bit like Grandma was like the guy in Apocolypse now who establishes a cultish following among the people and completely rid himself of his former identity. I´ve learned that Grandma changed her name to Elisa, liked to smoke cigars, and drank more coffee than anyone this village has ever seen.) Everyone loves her here, with a couple of exceptions. I´ve come to realize that the guys I am supposed to be helping are of the latter distinction. I get the feeling they don´t want anything to do with me or Grandma. Trouble is, I´ve come all this way and been through all this trouble to do everything with them.

Grandma owns the land, and Domingo and Luis do the growing, each recieving one quarter of the proceeds. Grandma´s half is supposed to go to charity. For whatever reason the guys here rarely go along with her wishes. In july they told grandma that Platenos were going to be planted the week after she left, and that the plants had already been ordered. There never where platenos, and instead the guys chose to sign a contract with a giant agricultural conglomerate to produce tomatoes and get their faces ripped off by corporate power. It makes things easier for them, but they get the short end of the deal.

Because Domingo and Luis want to do their own thing and don´t want to co-operate with the esteemed Elisa, they try to exclude me as much as they can. Somehow, they would rather reject free and able labor than to include me. I´ve tried a lot of things. I´ve tried waking up at the crack of dawn to erase the excuse of ¨I didn´t want to wake you up. Tomorrow I will!¨I´ve tried walking to the field at random times, happening to be dressed for working. and I even wrote a letter explaining that I am not, in fact a spy sent from Elisa the great, but rather a healthy and hardworking young man who would like to learn about the agricultural practices of a developing country, and help when possible. No avail. Most of the days I have been working have been by cold calling farmers walking by, ¨Quieres ayuda?¨ or asking the Haitians ¨ou allez vous? Desirez de l´aide?¨

Yes, I do in fact want to work and do something worthwhile so badly that I volunteer to go out into a field for nine hours and hoe for free.

For the time being I am frustrated by this, but I still harbor hopes of forcing my way into grandma´s field. So, in my nightime battle I came up with a plan, which I have begun to enact.

1. I have demanded a small plot out there, and will be planting a garden fairly soon. (I first need to figure out what plants and how much, as this growing season ends in mid may when the rains start hitting harder. This means I need to calculate how fast they will bear produce, and which will face trouble from pests. Then I´ll need to head into Azua to hunt down some seeds, and somehow make sure I´m not getting gringo priced or sold dead seeds. )
2. I am trying to learn about other aspects of life here, each of which will be blogged about, through reading, research, and conversation. They include, contract farming, dominican history, Haitian immigration, and medical conditions and resources.
3. I am going to continue my teaching job, only more regularly. It has it´s ups and downs, but I feel it is worthwhile. I am also going to continue with my nightly english classes. It is my hope that I will help everyone that has asked me for english lessons, which is actually a lot of people.
4. I am going to travel around the country and possibly Haiti, visiting contacts of grandma and others.
5. I will figure out how to get coffee in the morning. I am drinking coffee all day, but it never seems to be around early in the morning when I need it the most. This may be cultural, and therefore the hardest part of my plan to enact.

And that is how I won my nocturnal battle, with a rational and interesting plan and a bit of determination. I am fine, and will hopefully be healthy again soon. Once again I´ll leave you with two stories. Both of these are mistakes I recently made.

1. I decided to unpack my camera. Two days later, the battery is dead and I have not taken a single picture. Why is that you ask? Because I shared it with my family and friends. Pictures upon pictures of everything from the dog who bit me, to the food I was eating, to me sleeping, to the floor, to the power lines, and to dozens of people, dozens of times. Electronic equipment here is like a drug. I never thought anything would tear my host sisters away from the novellas (remind me to touch on novellas later), but while it lasted, my camera demanded constant attention. Coming back from teaching I was greeted with the following ¨Y la camera?¨ (And the camera?) Did you mean to say ¨Que lo que?¨(What´s up?)
2. I left for the library with my backpack. Considering only that I needed to carry my books, for the first time since I´ve been here I brought my backpack outside. I was immediately called to from all directions. ¨You´re going? Go with God! Come back and visit! When are you coming back? Will you forget about us?¨ It helped me to realize two things. One, a lot of people in my neighborhood like me, and two it isn´t normal for someone from abroad to stay very long, so it is natural for them to assume I´ve been here too long already. Both realizations were comforting.
3. Why not a third story that finally and fully puts to rest the concept of Karma? I had mentioned I have been avoiding littering even though it is more than customary. So much so that I was keeping a private garbage bag at the foot of my bed. (There is no garbage in the house) The night after I last blogged, I was met with an army of my little red and stingy friends forging their way through my bed to and from my garbage. I had the good fortune not to lay down before looking, and spent half an hour shaking out all of my belongins and sheets. Even so, I am still stung every now and then by the remaining ants. Avoiding direct pollution came back to bite me. I´m not sure how to respond. I still can´t muster the courage to blatantly litter, nor discreetly litter like the more classy folks here, who instead of throwing their plastic coffee cups in the street, gently set them down. This may be one of the biggest emotional and moral challenges I will face here!

I´ll be back soon. Note to English teachers and want to be, or actual, editors, I apologize for spelling and grammatical errors. In the interest in time, I do not proofread. Sometimes I think ahead of time, but this is mostly stream of consciousness. So, bear with me on the misuse of apostrophes, their, there, they´re, and other such simple mistakes. Gracias.

como tu ta?

That is how como tu estas? is pronounced here. I hope you can appreciate the struggles I am having in learning the language on the ground. I´m willing to bet all you spanish experts out there would struggle to understand the country folk here. Especially the old ladies without teeth with a cigar between their lips muttering something to you as they pass by on their way.

I have days where I go to bed after an extended conversation saying, I´ve done it. I´m halfway decent at the language. Then I´ll run into someone in the morning and struggle to remember the basics. I´ll spend an hour listening and talking to an agronimist and understand almost all of it, and then be unable to comprehend a little girl asking me if American girls are more pretty than her. (Bothersome question. All the little girls run around with white dolls and one of them told her mom she wishes she was white and pretty like me. Sad. Besides I´m not pretty. )

There are basically two kinds of receptions I get when I come across new people. The first, preferrable response, is welcoming, and usually consists of lots of smiles, laughter, and me recieving coffee. (Actually coffee here is espresso. On a day where I´m out and about house hopping and making visits I can have upwards of 8 espressos. Peligroso) Then there is the other, equally common response, which involves stares, glares, silence, and when possible, the telepathic transmission of the following message ¨You think you´re so cool with your straight hair, and your white skin, and your rich family, but you´re not cool, and I don´t like you. You´re on a vacation, but this is my life, and you´re not welcome here, and you can´t have any coffee.¨ No one has really articulated that message to me, but sometimes the eyes of the people make me interpret something similar to that. One girl has her own response, which is to run away screaming if I get within a hundred yards of her. It is clear to me that I´m viewed by most as being made of money. By the standards here, my personal wealth is above average, but I don´t appreciate the white skin tax applied to all of my purchases. I especially don´t like when, after calling someone out on overcharging me, become offended and hurt. I know they´re just trying to make a living, and I know I have more than I need, so I try to find the middle ground between Dominican price and ¨couple of fat old rich people from Indiana looking for souvenirs¨ price I could look at it as being knowingly ripped off, or I can, as I try to consider it being generous and giving a guy another days worth of food.

I know some of you have been worried about me giving into temptation here. I regret to say I have failed all of you. It was just too much pressure, and now that I´ve failed once, I have no power to reverse my path. I thought I could do it, but I can´t...

Yes. I have forced Dominicans to play soccer with me, thereby allowing myself the esteem booster of domination. They have almost no experience, and insist I am actually from england.

Did you think I was talking about Dominican women? While they are beautiful and easily accesible to me, I haven´t been tempted. One of the girls I teach english to tried to insist on me helping her on her english at her house ¨later on in the night¨ She is nice and pretty, but I said I was busy. It helps that I know their attraction to me is usually insincere and based on nationality, skin color, and money. Soccer, well, you all know I can´t go very long without playing. It was bound to happen.

I´m afraid I´ve been pushing my luck a bit too much, being a little too careless, and failing to learn from mistakes. I´ve lost track of the times I´ve been standing or walking somewhere and started to feel sharp stabbing pains on my feet and legs only to look down and see that I´m covered in a swarm of fire ants. One time I was carrying a log on my shoulder that turned out to be home to a colony. They were in my hair and down my shirt, digging in before I knew it. Fortunately the marks and stinging go away within an hour or so.

I´ve also forgotten to take my malaria pills on time more than once. I feel stupid knowing that Wren got malaria from following the instructions and here I am being dangerously forgetful. (Note, I have not yet seen a mosquito, but I am eaten alive every night at dusk. They must be both invisible and racist, because I am always the only one being attacked.)

Yet, my luck holds. The rains that flooded the northern regions and killed a lot of people last week were little more than an hour of sprinkles here. Last night some quick thinking, and movement, averted trouble.

I was at the party celebrating the foundation of the village when a guy walked up to me and started talking to me in perfect gangster English. He wanted some money, but started off my telling me all about himself. He claimed to be from Miami, and to have been temporarily deported after doing some time in jail there. I believed him. For one thing he had the black tear drops tattoed underneath his eye, which signify the number of lives taken. If accurate, my friend here had ended no less than 3 existences.

He talked to me like I was a judge or a manager of some sort. He told me that I can feel okay giving him money because his baby´s momma is white like me. I said it wasn´t cool to play that angle on me. He said ¨yea nigga I feel you. My baby momma killed a bitch that had a tattoo of that one symbol that you white people don´t like¨(Drawing a swastika in the air.)
I just didn´t know what to say to that, to I said
¨Unless I walk away right now, I am the dumb American being talked into emptying his wallet. So, if I´m going to keep talking to you, which I am going to, just tell me exactly what you want, and don´t feel the need to suck up to me or refer to our differences of skin color anymore.¨

Aight I feel you dawg. I need some fucking food. Me and my boys don´t have nothing.

Okay, well I´m hungry too. Let´s go eat something together.

Aight, but let´s go this way (pointing towards a dark alley) the crowd is real heavy over there¨.

Good thinking.

As we started to enter the alley, a flash of ¨you dumbass Tom¨ hit me in the cranium. I thought, alley plus tear drops plus money plus hungry guy plus deficient language skills and rather small biceps plus a lack of fighting experience plus shoes not good for running means... well it means not good. So I had to think of something other than turning around and showing my fear. Somehow I managed the following.

Hold up man I gotta swing by tent over there to tell the guy I live with where we´re going to meet after when we go home. We can go to the chicken stand over there.

Aight.

So I bought us some chicken, and listened to him talk for awhile. Here are some choice tidbits.

Yea my house and my money been freezed up in the bank. What bank? Bank of fucking America dawg.....Dominicans got some fine ass hoes! How many have you fucked?..... I love weed... You some kind of jesus dude aren´t you?

I couldn´t take it anymore so I said goodbye. Told him to stop thanking me, and to take care of himself and the others around him. At that moment I was thinking I need to take care of myself better, and walked into the crowd. Shortly thereafter, literally 10 feet from me, a fight broke out. It was an all out brawl. Bottles being smashed. I ran. The fight was between some people from the village visiting from their new home in New York, and other villagers who were mad that the others think they´re American. Knowing that, not only do I think I´m American, but actually am, I took off to the edge. Thinking I was pretty smart and quick footed, I found my friends and had a beer. Not more than ten minutes later a guy with a machete walked up and took a swing....at a guy near to us. I didn´t run so fast this time, thinking it would be over quickly, as the guy had been jumped on immediately. But he was a fighter, and that machete was swung within a foot of me shortly thereafter. I ran again, and upon turning around, saw the man getting a bottle smashed on his head.

Long story short, I am stupid and lucky, and here celebrating the foundation of the village is synonomous with destroying it.

So I´ll try to end on a positive note. Although I could talk about more racism, inadequate medical attention, teenage mothers, and drug addicts, I´ll tell you two separate stories.

1. My first week here I went to the village of Tabara Arriba and met a pregnant woman who was 22 years old. She has 2 boys already and was excited for her 3rd. A week later I visited them again, and she told me that her doctor was going to abort the child because she had a health problem that meant she had insufficient blood to have a child and survive. She said she was trying to figure out what to do. I visited her a third time, and was pleased to find out that she would be able to have the child if she got a blood transfusion, and was dismayed to find out that she didn´t have the money for the trip to Santo Domingo or for the blood. I walked away from the house saddened, and was down the street before I had another one of those ¨you dumbass Tom¨ I ran back to her house, asked her how much she needed, and said I´d be back tomorrow. I took the bus into Azua, hit up the atm and got her the grand total of 50 dollars she needed. Last week I went to her house to meet the baby. It´s a beautiful little girl, and I couldn´t go more than 5 feet without getting a hug from another family member.

2. Yesterday I went shopping. It went like this. I walked across the perilously old log lain across the rapids in the river with my friends Fabio, Yarvin, and Mauro, and started up the small dirt path. First we got some tomatoes, then some cucumbers, and then some platenos, all the while hiking up the long isles lain across the foothills of the mountains. (Ok I won´t be cryptic, we were cutting across farm fields and eating the produce.) We made our way to a ridge where a canal cuts through and winds its way downhill. After stripping down to our birthday suits, we ran up the path a mile and dove in. It´s like a really fast and wide lazy river ride, only so much better naked at mid day in the hot carribean sunshine. We got out, sundried, and headed back to the village, playing a game I will term rock bocce. On the way we stopped at a giant mango tree, throwing rocks to knock down the best specimens. They are so good it hurts. I spent the rest of the afternoon reading and playing baseball with some boys. I was happy.

This week I´ll be teaching in Azua as usual, but at the weekend I am going on an adventure. My manager at school is involved with a foundation that is bringing in an expert from the US to go around and work on the water supplies and filtration systems around the countryside for the weekend. He needs a translator and I´ve been assigned. I seriously doubt my abilities as a translator, but I´m selfishly excited to travel around and learn more about the critical issue of water supply and quality here.

Internet will be solid for awhile I think, but electricity is bound to be out at times, as it is a daily occurance here. You can expect more reasonably soon. I hope you enjoy this. Miss you all.

Weepa (A dominican whats up)

This blog is coming to you via my notebook. I´m sitting on a cement block in the shade listening to reggaeton and trying to stay out of the way of all of the ladies doing their daily cleaning. This is a mysterious ritual that starts off normal enough, with sweeping and mopping and laundry, that culminates in the throwing of buckets of water into the dirt street, and in doing so making a muddy mess. This is not simply the dumping of mop buckets, but the deliberate hauling of water to thoroughly soak the street. Like many things here that I don´t understand at first, I´m sure that it has a significant and useful purpose. For example, when eating tomates the people seemed to be using a piece of class to cut into the tomatoe before each bite. I thought to myself, that´s silly and unecessary as I chomped on my tomatoe wishing I had a salt shaker to top it off. It took me about two days to realize that the piece of glass is actually a hunk of salt being rubbed on the tomatoe before each delicious bite. Lesson learned.

This place is beautiful in so many ways. We are surrounded by mountains, and the sky is always pretty. Most days it is too hot, but oftentimes there is a wonderful breeze that rustles the palms and coconut trees scattered about, and temporarily removes the sweat beads from my forehead.

There are children everywhere. The little boys rolling tires and making motorcycle sounds and the little girls with braids in hunting parties of 3 to 5 warriors looking for victims like me to mob. (I´m being stared at and studied as I write this by no less than 4 dominicans.)

Then there are the animals. Roosters riding on the bus, chickens walking through the house, baby goats climbing on the porch, strange birds making strange noises, horses ridden by old men refusing to take a motor to their land, lizards and or geckos climging walls, dogs running about looking for food or chained by outhouses, and pigs grunting with pleasure in a shady mud bath, or screaming bloody murder as they are being bloodily murdered.

I tried to explain how great our puppy Hattie is, and how I cuddle with her, but they just laughed. I can´t blame them. I wouldn´t want to cuddle with their concept of dogs either. They aren´t treated well, probably because they can´t afford to, but I have seen men kicking dogs walking by. It´s sad, but I realize that priorities and values are subject to how you´re living.

In a similar way, dominicans do not recycle, because they do not trash. It is more than acceptable to drink a bottle of water and throw it in the yard, or eat a freezy pop and throw it out the window. I don´t know how to feel about it. I understand that environmental concerns are not at the top of the list in a place where they´ve never heard of studying the environment or global warming or carbon or anything I´m used to talking about. Some people here worry about eating every days, but for the most part, this village is safely above malnutrition. I need to investigate further, but I do know that the people take great pride in their appearance and the appearance of the land. In fact I am probably the worst dressed inhabitant of the household. THe idea of throwing trash and refuse everywhere is inconsistent with a policy of maximum beauty. Again, I´d like to stress my priorities and ideas about what should be done with trash are bound to be different, and my country is one of the worst polluters, but also the most discreet. I´m not condeming, I´m just trying to understand. In the meantime, I´ve been trying to find garbage cans, which are few and far inbetween.

As to education, I am appalled. Some people don´t know what language is spoken in Haiti, the country next door, even though their are more than 500 Haitians living in this community. I´m teaching english and french at a private school in Azua, which is 30 minutes by bus and has 80,000 inhabitants. It is schocking. The students don´t have textbooks, or bathrooms, and the teachers don´t seem to have educations. THat is how I got the job, because I met the guy teaching english and french there and he invited me to come with him one day. It turned out he can hardly speak anything in either language (he trys to learn things the night before and teach them to the class, but it doesn´t work) and in fact struggles to spell in spanish. So I found a french textbook to brush up and have been teaching his class by day and tutoring him by night. I was not surprised to leanr he earns only 150 US per month. You get what you pay for. If this is a private school, I am scared to see a public school. Probably the hardest part about teaching (surprisingly not translating into spanish) has been rejecting the advances of the girls. It is ridiculous how attractive the see me as because of my skin color and nationality. One girl gave me a dictionary so I could learn more spanish in order to to be her boyfriend. Another girl told me I look like tom cruise and brad pitt. All white people look the same!

I finally understand what it´s like to be different. In new zealand I was different by nationality only. Lifestyle and culture and color for the most part were the same. Here, I am an oddity and a magnet for eyeballs. I can do nothing without being watched, talked about, or laughed at. I´m constantly having to prove I can do things. For example I was made to go swimming with 2 boys in the canal, because they didn´t believe I could swim and were worried about me drowning. Afterwards it was the talk of the neighborhood that ¨el puede nadar!¨ In the fields if there are new guys out there I have to prove my worth as a worker all over again, being assigned the lightest tasks and constantly being asked if I need a break or some water. It is annoying, even if they are just looking out for me.

But after a few outings, I am known enough among the Haitian workers to feel satisfied. They know I´m always willing to help them in their incredibly hard and sweaty jobs and try to speak french and creole and spanish and laugh back at them when I apply sunscreen for the 5th time in an hour. They love it when my face turns red, but I think they really appreciate that I don´t call them Moreno, like the dominicans do. THe haitians are the poorest people here and do the hardest jobs for the least amount of money. In return, they are not called by name and are referred to as moreno. (I was mad when, after teaching english class to the neighborhood kids, which I do every weeknight, a student used his newly acquired knowledge of the word ugly, to describe Haitians. ) Haitians are ugly! WHy... Because they are negro. This coming from, by my standards, a black person. In my mind there is hardly a racial distinction, but somehow there is racism. I hope to understand this, like much else here, more.

Lastly, on a lighter note, I am beginning to figure out time of arrival here. If someone says, I´ll be there at 6 am, do not be ready at 6, be ready at no earlier than 730. I´ve been keeping track of these occurances, in the hopes that I can derive a formula or a line of best fit that allows me a minimum amount of time of waiting. There is a crazy man in the neighborhood who does nothing but speak and writie numbers. I often wonder if he is deep in a struggle to find the same formula I am searching for.

I apologize for the lengthiness, but internet is scarce. I hope to offer more insight and adventure later on. A lot of fun stories and mistakes on my part fall through the cracks because they are so frequent. Instead of trying to put them here, you can just think of a stupid thing I´ve done in your presence, then picture it in spanish and a warm climate, and resulting in me being emberassed or gawked at.

Until next time! Vayan bien.