Thursday, September 3, 2009

Movements

This poor, poor blog. Sometimes I hear it calling out to me at night, begging for a little attention, a few witty remarks, a good yarn involving bodily functions. And I tell it, “Sorry baby, times have changed, I’m kind of busy now. But don’t worry, I’ll hit you up soon.”

And things are different, ain’t that the truth. For starters, I now live alone, for the first time, in my own apartment, in a foreign country; been living here about 1.5 months. The place has two bedrooms, each bigger than my freshman dorm room, plus a cramped, smelly bathroom with leaking pipes and an adequate kitchen space. I pay 2,500 pesos a month, about $70, with running water and electricity—the 10 or so hours of it we get a day—included.

In other words, it’s paradise. Things had long gone sour with the host family. Turns out, “commendably curious” Oliver was especially curious about my belongings, using them without asking and abusing them and then lying to me about it. I, and his mother, told him not to touch my stuff, but he continued to.

I see two aspects of Dominican culture at work here. One, that the average Dominican sees your property as theirs too, unless you’ve firmly demarcated it. For example, you leave your bar of soap in the shower. Well, you left it there, so it’s para el pueblo—you’re okay with letting others use it. Since I shared a closet with Oliver, he felt free to use what was mine. And sometimes I’d let him, say, spray a little bit of my cologne if he was heading out. Which set a bad precedent, because then he thought he could get fragrant whenever he wanted to, which wasn’t the intention. So I hid the stuff in my shoes, you know, because they could use a little cologne.

Second aspect: Dominican childrearing is very authoritarian. Doña Mercedes is always telling Oliver to not do this, not do that, asking him why he did this or that; she fears giving him any independence. The result, that kid is largely desensitized to authority, complying only when he sees some incentive to, which is rare. He saw no incentive for leaving my stuff alone, so he didn’t.

Beyond the material insecurity I felt, I just knew that it was time to live alone. I was craving my independence, asserting it whenever I could, which was creating friction. One of the advantages of living in a more urban area, I was able to find a place with relative ease.


Second big change: I’m now the proud owner of a bicycle (mine's the boring blue one, not the super-sweet green one). I bought it from a friend, I don’t know his name—I wonder if even he knows his name. Everyone just calls him el mudo—the mute, because he’s deaf so he can’t talk. Why they don't call him el sordo, I'm not sure. Anyways, he mostly just yelps and gestures wildly. We seem to understand each other most of the time; our conversations don’t go much beyond the weather, but I could say the same for my convos with hearing Dominicans too. He’s very proud to have me riding his old bike, and whenever he sees me riding on la calle principal he points—and yelps. “Miren, el americano e’tá andando en mi bici,” I imagine him saying.

The bike is a blessing. I love bouncing around the barrio, around the city, weaving through cars and motorcycles, having pedestrians yield to me. In the walking days, motoconchistas—taxi drivers, only instead of cars they’re on motorcycles—would salivate when they saw me on foot, hissing incessantly, desperate to take me and my wallet for a ride. Now I just ride past.

Saturday I took off down the freeway to Jima Arriba, maybe a 15-mile trip, to see my girl Cameron. Huffing and puffing in the shoulder, watching traffic blow by at 60-100 MPH, made me feel something like vulnerable. On the other hand, it’s hard not to feel vulnerable on public transport here. Chances are, your driver’s either drunk, the vehicle has some crucial mechanical fault that will someday cause a gruesome accident, or there’s something inhuman crawling about your feet, but you’re pegged between two fat women and are therefore unable to make the necessary physical maneuvers to do anything about it. Give me a bike any day.

So there you go blog, no poop but plenty of juicy details about life here on this goofy island.