a creek of consciousness

Waaa!!

2009-05-19T17:02:00.000-07:00

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

2009-04-27T10:32:00.000-07:00

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

2009-04-27T08:37:00.000-07:00

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...

2009-04-22T17:41:00.000-07:00

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

2009-04-01T17:12:00.000-07:00

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.

2009-03-25T08:19:00.000-07:00

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.

2009-02-27T07:40:00.002-08:00

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.

2009-02-27T07:40:00.001-08:00

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...

2009-02-27T06:13:00.000-08:00

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

2009-02-27T04:54:00.000-08:00

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?

2009-02-22T12:54:00.000-08:00

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!

2009-02-19T17:07:00.000-08:00

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.

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. )
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.
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.
I am going to travel around the country and possibly Haiti, visiting contacts of grandma and others.
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.

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?)
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.
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?

2009-02-16T11:07:00.000-08:00

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)

2009-02-14T13:08:00.000-08:00

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.

Umm...

2009-01-29T17:26:00.000-08:00

First time on the internet in over 10 days. Record. Probably the least important piece of information I could put here.

I was thinking what kind of post to do. I couldn´t come up with much. I decided to do my own version of a lonely planet guide book, from my perspective, with some asides and a little more color. It´s called the ¨Crazy Planet¨ (This keyboard is hard to type on) I want to stress that all of this is based on actual experiences.

Hi! It looks like you´re thinking of traveling to the village of Los Toros in the Dominican Republic. Here are some things you might like to know before you leave!

1. Learn how to dance bachata. This cannot be overstressed.

2. Do not forget sunscreen and do not be surprised if all you can find is SPF 2. (I found 50 in the capital later on)

3. Ipods are redundant. If you choose to bring one you will be unable to listen to it. Musice is everywhere. It is my experience that this trip is more of a musical immersion than a language immersion.

4. Practice the names of Dominican baseball players, they will come in handy when making friends. On a similar note, if lacking in baseball skills, expose this fact with caution, for this is regarded with apprehension.

5. Do not expect to speak spanish in the DR. The language here is actually more accurately termed ghsdksdalsdigglgsdg hahahah entiendes? Going along with that, don´t worry about packing the letter S in your bags. Nobody uses it here, not even sesame street. Think of the spanish word mismo. Here it is mimo.

Glad you´ve decide to come! While you´re here....

1. Mismo does not equal mejor. Smack yourself if you tell a taxi driver skillfully weaving through traffic that he is el mismo, and pantimime using a steering wheel.

2. Wait until you can speak in complete sentences before trying to justify your state of agnosticism. (Note, creepy eevangelists are just as easily identified here as anywhere.)

3. Tome is not a mispronounciation of the name Tommy and if responded to with si? can result in a cerveza being handed to you.

4. Do not try to understand Bolivio. No one can.

5. Saying Soy el nieto de Elisa almost always rewarded with a chair and a cup of coffee. When in need of caffiene this is particularly useful.

6. Americano! Americano! can change to Tomas! Tomas! very quickly if you´re willing to display your jump roping skills to the neighborhood muchachitas.

7. When teenage boys, after bragging about how many girlfriends they have, ask you how many you have, do not respond buscando por el amor unless you are okay with several minutes worth of laughter.

8.Get used to sweat stains.

9. When electricity stops, the novellas do not necessarily follow suit. It seems that some houses are rigged with generators so that sin cesos no hay paraiso can continue playing.

10. Learning creole from Haitians named Roberto is neither fast nor easy.

11. Wash your feet.

12. No matter how nice and sad a dog chained to a stake behind your house looks, do not pet it. You may soon need medical attention. (I hope he wasn´t rabid)

13. Do not eat Naranuja dulce. You will experience a sugar high followed by a stomach ache.

14. Bathing in a river is both amazing and humbling. The stereotype of increased size of male genital organs with darker shades of skin was enhanced in my head. I now know that I am outclassed by 10 year old Dominicanos.

15. If awoken by the sound of a squealing pig, do not go outside unless you want to see death for breakfast.

16. Guaguas. A nice and innocent sounding name for a sweaty, cramped, and loud form of informal transportation.

17. You may find trouble if you admit to the wrong person that you prefer one of Brahmia or Presidente beer over the other.

18. As for teaching english, do not expect a class of teenagers to easily understand idioms such as she is a fly honey. Explaining that is a gangster way to say ella es muy linda may or may not help.

19. On the subject of gangsters. There is an odd phenomenon here. The gangster clothing ad jewelery is in full swing here. However, their low riders lack the same intimidation effect when blasting bachata and merengue music. Do not be fooled, when inside the car, the cutom sound systems pack the same punch with Corazon Corazon as any gangster pumping 50 cent ever has.

20. Sometime nodding and saying si entiendo is an excellent way to have a conversation. Other times you may have agreed to something unknown to you, or have answered a question with I understand.

Come back later for more.

I'm back, just in time to leave.

2009-01-11T19:59:00.000-08:00

I could offer an apology for not blogging for awhile, but I won't for two reasons.

1. I'm not sorry.

2. Neither are you.

That being said, I thought I'd take advantage of the abundant internet access to get in a little update on my existence, and offer an excuse for a lack of future blogs.

As some of you may know I am about to leave for the Dominican Republic. I'll be living with Edonia and Domingo in the village of Los Toros de Azua. It is in the mountainous region of Azua in the Southwest of the country, which is the Eastern 2/3's of Hispaniola (Haiti claims the other 1/3 of the island.)

I'll be leaving in 6ish days (January 18th) to spend approximately 6 months there, dependent on hurricanes, malaria, regime changes, dengue fever, sunburn, or starvation (defined as a lack of nutrition or love). While there I will be helping Domingo farm a 5.5 acre plot that belongs to my grandmother. This plot was purchased during the 90's just after my Gma spent 2 years there in the Peace Corps. In theory the bounty of this land is being split between Domingo, another guy named Luis, and the poorer villagers. We'll be working with platenos, yuca, corn, avocados, oranges, grapefruits, mangos, guanabana, guayaba, and cherries.

I'd imagine you're wondering, if I know anything about this kind of farming, or if I know any spanish. The answer is that I know very little of either. I've done a fair amount of gardening and spent all last summer working with corn, and I took one year of spanish and I'm decent at french. What I do know, however, is that I have the ability and motivation to work at both of those. Yea it's going to be pretty tough at first, meaning for the first 4 months, but I expect I'll be all the better for it.

On the side I'm hoping to get in a lot of reading, and have gotten some help from one of my professors in doing a little personal research into third world conservation and environmental choices.

I am scared out of my mind. When I took my first malaria pill yesterday, I felt like I was choosing the pill that keeps you out of the matrix. If Wisconsin is the blissful ignorance of the matrix, then the Dominican is the freedom and hardship of the robot filled reality. I hope I'm doing my adventure ahead an injustice by making that comparison. I am excited by the possibilities though, and I'd prefer to emphasize that.

I am just as excited for returning to Madison. I'm constantly growing more fond of my friends and our time together. This past semester had its low points, but looking back now, I can't imagine why I ever had a reason to be down. My friends and family and animal friends are irreplaceable. Kevin and his ridiculous imagination spent 20 minutes painting a picture of fall semester that can still make me giddy weeks later. Not even a wedding to Rachel McAdams or Feist could give me the feeling it gave me. I'm going to use that dream to keep me cool in the hot sun, dry in the rainy season, and warm in the aching cold of Dengue fever. I will miss everyone dearly, but I know there is adventure at hand. There will be glory for some, and love for all.

As for further posting, do not expect many. From what I understand there is no internet in the village, so contact will depend on the frequency of my trips into Azua or Santo Domingo.

Just look at the big dipper, and know that I'm looking at it too. (Note to Dan and Chris, this does not work. No dipper. Pretend the Southern Cross is what I'm looking at.)

I leave you with these wonderful lyrics from the Flaming Lips - Do You Realize?

Do you realize you have the most beautiful face?

Do you realize we're floating in space?

Do you realize that happiness makes you cry?

Do you realize that everyone you know someday will die?

And instead of saying all your goodbyes,

let them know that you know that life goes fast.

It's hard to make the good things last.

You realize the sun doesn't go down.

It's just an illusion caused by the world spinning around.

Love,

Tommy

This goes out to all my friends recently returned from Malaysia. Wagwan

2008-10-27T20:35:00.000-07:00

Two things came to mind when I decided to blog today. I thought, I should talk about ladies, or the election. Well, I decided to write about both. Here's to you Sarah Palin.

I just got a phone call from the Green Bay Press Gazette asking me if it was okay for them to publish a letter to the editor that I had to submit for one of my classes. We had to keep them to 200 words, which is difficult. I was surprised it was being published, as the paper, and the letters to the editor, are well slanted to the right and well over 200 words. My letter...well here it is.

"It has surfaced that Sarah Palin, as Governor of Alaska, is suing the US government to remove the Beluga Whales of Alaska's Cook Inlet from the Endangered Species List on the grounds that the science is "premature." The numbers speak for themselves: beluga whales in Cook Inlet went from 653 in 1994 to an estimated 278 in 2005! Similarly, Palin has sued to remove Polar Bears from the list, in spite of their diminishing numbers and habitats. In the past, Palin has pointed to visibility as a valuable means of assessment, and Alaskans can "see" that the polar bears and beluga whales are in danger.
The problem is that her state stands to profit greatly from more oil drilling. If these animals remain listed as endangered, their habitats must be protected from drilling, so she is questioning the facts and the science to prevent that. It helps that the scientists she has worked with are global warming deniers and have received funding from oil companies. No surprise then, that their reports confirm the arguments of the pro-drilling camp. Is this the kind of ethical behavior we want from our leaders? Can Palin be touted as a maverick, uncorrupted by politics and big business? It isn't "premature" to say no. "

Needless to say, I am horrified at the thought of this lady being our VP, and an ailing war hero away from the presidency. I am not necessarily saying I think Obama is entirely honest or uncorrupted, but Palin has made that judgement easy in her case.

A day or two after the RNC, almost hall that she had said in her fiery speech had been discredited by that pesky institution called TRUTH. It became well known, and documented, that Palin was a poor and oftentimes devious mayor and governor. Further developments, like Troopergate, have unearthed more abuses of power and disregard for basic rights of certain people/animals. You all know these things, and I hope you are considering them in your decision making.

What we really need to consider, though, is the implications of her "electrifying" candidacy. Even after these truths came out, she is still a darling to much of the nation! What does that say about our, and our neighbors', expectations for our leaders? Do we really care more about looks, personality, and hobbies, than policy, education (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KyoafptEm5c) , and integrity?

Regretfully, I have to admit that I see the same behavior in a lot of Obama supporters, who have bought into his slick delivery, without adequately checking up on him. A lot of young people have been caught up by Andy Warhol style portraits and Will.I.Am. videos, just as much as Palin fans are sold by seeing a small town lady with guns and kids. Obviously, a lot of us have gone out and done some research, some debating, and some thinking before choosing our candidates, but many others haven't.

Is this because we don't care about the future of our country or the world? A lot of people have some questionable priorities, but no, I don't think so. I think it has a lot to do with distance, real and perceived. Washington, and decision making, seems far away from the average US citizen. Maybe we don't expect much of our leaders, because we expect that Washington is going to do what Washington is going to do, regardless of who is in office. Is this that true? Maybe, but not trying to exercise the power you do have certainly isn't going to help. For the pessimists out there, think along the "lesser of two evils" line.

So what to take from this? Choose your candidate carefully and knowledgeably, knowing that even if you don't believe you're making a difference, you've got nothing to lose by having a little hope for one of them. Read, talk to people, think, and then vote.

p.s. As a geography and environmental studies guy, it was hard for me not to go into the environmental implications of the election. If you want to talk about it, hit me up, I'd love to. Also read this awesome op/ed by Michael Pollan, a very good environmental/agricultural journalist... http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/12/magazine/12policy-t.html?em

Save the Whales, Polar Bears, and Ourselves

Tommy

a correction sparked by Williams, followed by library passion.

2008-06-26T18:46:00.001-07:00

In my last post I mused that a lot of energy was lost through heating and AC being on when unused. Williams alerted me to the fact that it uses a lot of energy to re-heat or re-cool. I looked it up and not surprisingly he is right. But in looking up that I came across a couple of other things... like this http://www.lbl.gov/Science-Articles/Archive/energy-myths3.html

thanks Williams.

I am at work again, and I'm reading the book "Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee." It has to be one of the most horrifying and heartbreaking things I have EVER read. I thought I knew a lot about what the US government has done to the Indians, and compared to a lot of people, I do, which is sad. My ex-step dad is Menominee as is my half-sister. Mommy got a degree in Native American studies and teaches at the Oneida Tribal School. We've been talking/learning about issues and wrongdoings my whole life and this book is still TEARING MY VENTRICLES.

Every chapter is a new adventure into the lies, trickery, and brutality of the US (government, army, and citizens) and blind hope, courage, and massacre of the tribes. Hopefully just about everybody knows about the massacre at Wounded Knee, but I'm halfway through the book and I count about 12 massacres already.

It is a shameful thing for me to read. I know it's foolish to wish that you could go back in time, but I wish I had been a president or general back then. The only white people who cared or thought the ongoing genocide wasn't cool just quit and went home. I find myself thinking, what would I have done if I was in the army? Would I have bought into the public perspective that "the only good Indian is a dead Indian?" Would I have joined vigilante groups to force Indians out of their homelands by stealing their horses, burning their villages, and killing buffalo so they had nothing to eat, all so I could pan for gold? Would I have handed out blankets infected with smallpox to freezing women and children, or shot Black Kettle in the head as walked towards me with a truce flag, then proceed?

To all of those questions I think I can answer no. But that's asking if I would or wouldn't have been as EVIL as most of the whites were out west. What about asking if I would have been GOOD? Could I have had the courage to say "Uhh guys... who the fuck are we calling savages? Are we even human anymore?" Could I have tried to defend the tribes and their rights (lives) out West or in Washington by any means necessary?

And that's when I find the most chilling answer, "You're going to find out." I'm going to find out if I would have been able to/had the balls to do something then, because all those fucked up things are still happening TODAY all over the world. Genocide, Starvation, Corrupt Governments, Massacre, Disease, Environmental Destruction , and PEOPLE WHO DON'T GIVE A DAMN. I've got my whole life to test if I'd have been different than our forefathers. To see if I'd have stopped the killing of Natives, of Jews, of Tutsis, or the enslavement of Africans, or if I'd just sit and feel bad about it. That's what I'm doing right now, feeling bad about the problems in the world.

This book is sad simply because it happened, but even sadder because people still let this shit happen. Let's be different. Let's be gangster and bust up some fools. Let's be real humans, because anyone that let's all the horrible things go on unchecked should have their membership in the human race revoked.

Even though there are hundreds of bloody and gut-wrenching quotations I could pull from the book, I think I'll leave you with this one from Chief Joseph. This his speech upon surrendering after he led his people on a 1700 mile flight to escape the horrible reservation his Nez Perce people his people were forced onto.

"I have heard talk and talk, but nothing is done. Good words do not last long unless they amount to something. Words do not pay for my dead people. They do not pay for my country, now overrun by white men. Good words will not give my people good health and stop them from dying. Good words will not get my people a home where they can live in peace and take care of themselves. I am tired of talk that comes to nothing. It makes my heart sick when I remember all the good words and broken promises.

You might as well expect the rivers to run backward as that any man who was born a free man should be contented when penned up and denied liberty to go where he pleases. I have asked some of the great white chiefs where they get their authority to say to the Indian that he shall stay in one place, while he sees the white men going where they please. They cannot tell me.

If the white man wants to live in peace with the Indian, he can live in peace. Treat all men alike. Give them all the same law. Give them all an even chance to live and grow. All men were made by the same Great Spirit Chief. They are all brothers. The Earth is the mother of all people, and all people should have equal rights upon it. Let me be a free man, free to travel, free to stop, free to work, free to trade where I choose, free to choose my own teachers, free to follow the religion of my fathers, free to think and talk and act for myself, and I will obey every law, or submit to the penalty."

Chief Joseph and his people were immediately sent back to the reservation where they continued to starve. Chief Joseph died on the reservation at a relatively young age. The physician reported the cause of death to be a broken heart.

The people that did these things and let them happen didn't really have a heart.

Do we have one?

Show it.

(Although I didn't go into the whole heap of ways in which the US is still being a dick to Native Americans, I hope we all are aware of the fucked up things still going on. Maybe I'll write about it later.)

Sort of a follow up

2008-06-19T19:03:00.000-07:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cdrCalO5BDs

Song isn't my favorite radiohead, but a great video. Thanks Jason.

I'm at work right now at Memorial Library. I am THE only person on the entire 4th floor right now. Trust me, I checked. Guess how many lights are on? 5,000ish? Why can't all lights be motion sensored? I know they can get annoying, but so are energy crises!

Think of all of the places that are lit up when they don't need to be, or have AC or heat on when no one is there. Next time you are out at night, especially when you're driving on a highway, look at all of the empty buildings and parking lots lit up in industrial parks and suburbs! They say it's for security reasons... but having lights on all the time can't honestly repel robbers or whatehaveyou... I would think if anything, lights all of the sudden switching on would help more...

If all those lights could be motion sensored...that would save a lot of energy. I don't know how much it would cost to switch over, but what about all the lower energy bills from then on? I don't know if it could work for streetlights... but maybe! It's worth a look no?

Books are letters, words, pages, covers, and mind-fucks.

2008-06-18T17:05:00.000-07:00

"A modern economist is used to measuring the 'standard of living' by the amount of annual consumption, assuming all the time that a man who consumes more is 'better off' than a man who consumes less. A Buddhist economist would consider this approach excessively irrational: since consumption is merely a means to human well-being, the aim should be to obtain the maximum of well-being with the minimum of consumption. . . . The less toil there is, the more time and strength is left for artistic creativity. Modern economics, on the other hand, considers consumption to be the sole end and purpose of all economic activity." -E.F. Schumacher "Small Is Beautiful: Economics As If People Mattered"

I just finished reading an updated/adapted version of the book Small Is Beautiful, which was written in the 1970's sometime. The one I read is called Small Is Still Beautiful. It was absolutely mindblowing for me. The book speaks so much to so many of the problems in the world, specifically the Western world.

I think most of us are pretty good at pointing out problems, but it is something else to actually make the connections and try to provide solutions. So much of what I've taken to be harmless or only slightly excessive in our society now makes me sick after reading this book. One can get to thinking... "I'm being a good person if I'm not being mean to people too often, driving my car too much, and volunteering at such and such place. Plus, I think about how I can be a better person a lot too!" Well everyday we are screwing the environment, foreign markets, and the future generations by being good consumers. Unless you are growing your own food or buying strictly organic, most of what you eat has caused harm to animals and the land through habitat destruction, pesticide run-off, and cruel treatment of farm animals among other things. Even when you buy cage free or free range eggs that doesn't really mean much. To be termed free range, chickens just have to be outside of their cage for 10% of their day. (This is not exact, speaking from memory here, though I did read a WIKI about free-range yesterday) When you buy clothes or other products in this market, rarely does it come without having taken advantage of somebody in some way.

Those who have faith in the current direction of American society and economics may say... "What about free markets, or the invisible hand eventually bringing economic equality world wide? It's only a matter of time!" Well if the US is the pinnacle of global society, and our goal should be to make it so that the world can live and consume freely as we do here, we would consume 700% of the world's non-renewable resources per year. (Learned that in the book.) That sounds too good to be true. Can't wait.

This week the people of Ireland voted down the EU proposition to centralize power in Brussels. Though it was a small victory, I was pretty happy. Europe is moving ever closer to homogeny and ever further from democracy. Democracy has never truly been able to work for a large scale population, and they are trying to make it bigger? Democracy is supposed to be so intimate that YOU make decisions! It's so out of touch now that you can't even punch your representative on the nose when he/she is messing up. The treaty in the EU would have given the EU power to make changes to the whole system WITHOUT member country approval! Keep in mind how far that is from citizens approval, that's no approval from national governments!

For all the economic success the EU has thus far brought, it seems to have done a lot of harm. Moving back to environmental issues, the EU farm subsidies have caused a lot of problems. The EU started to pay farmers for producing more, so naturally farmers produced more and more and more. Farmers wanted to make as much money as possible, so they used more and more pesticides and opened up more and more fields at the cost of local wildlife. Eventually, the EU had to start stockpiles because of OVERPRODUCTION, which oftentimes were just DESTROYED to make room for more excess food. Give that food away to the needy maybe? Now the EU pays farmers NOT to produce. Also pretty crazy. Couldn't they do something better with the money? (Correct me if I'm wrong, but the US has had similar results with its subsidies experience.)

I'm not sure what needs to be done. I just know that the goal we are chasing is impossible and harmful. Some things that might help:

-More localized economies, meaning that we buy products produced locally with care by locals who care about the community. This means that the people procuding these things have a personal interest in the quality of their production methods, the product itself, and the way they treat their workers. If somebody isn't treating their workers right, the whole town will know. If you want to know if your eggs truly are free range, bike down the road and have a look. Also, that would lower shipping costs and environmental costs, as not as much gasoline and packaging is needed to do it all locally!

-More investment in research for greener technology, less investment in war and instruments of war.

-More small organic farming. Organically grown food is better for the environment and us, and having smaller farms means the animals are treated better and less natural wild-life is pushed away.

-Less suburbs. Choosing urban living has its benefits, so does the seclusion of rural/farm life. It's when one tries to have both by living in the suburbs that one burns more gasoline and cuts down more natural habitats.

-Taking the mentality that we aren't ABOVE the environment, rather that we are a PART OF it. This is pretty self-explanatory.

-One thousand other things.

The book and conversations with pretty knowledgable people helped me reach some of these conclusions, and until I'm convinced otherwise, I really believe in these ideas. It was a REALLY GOOD book, and you should read it. In fact, you can borrow my copy.

Keep reading, loving, and living (note: living is not = to consuming.)

Is this working?

2008-06-18T16:42:00.001-07:00

Here is a blog.