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.