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.