Subtropically yours

It’s hot here. Daily highs are in the mid-80s, with some serious humidity to boot. Our tin roof transfers solar heat straight into the house, making the place insufferable during a cloudless afternoon. There has been, gracias a Dios, rain almost every afternoon and night. But it’s the season for that. Soon summer shall arrive and the rain shall, for the most part, desist. I fear what sort of climatological brutality the dog days of June, July and August might bring, though I’m certain it will result in lethargy. The neighbors are already talking about it, about how Mr. Gringo is going to hate summer life.

This ungodly climate has already resulted in much stinky sweat. Not the drenching, Patrick Ewing sort of sweat, but enough to leave a shirt ready for the washtub by noon. Take that shirt and give it a vigorous hand wash at least once a week, and within a month or two it’s looking pretty ratty. As a light packer, I might have only 10 shirts, which means I’ll be rummaging through used clothes at the mercado de pulga soon enough. To make matters worse, for both my clothes and my social standing: Since I’m allergic to antiperspirant—it leaves a fiery rash and small but sensitive welts in the armpits—I’m stuck with some Trader Joe’s unscented cotton-infused, yuppie-approved “deodorant”, only a tiny step above nothing. The best remedy would seem to be frequent showers, at least two a day, which Dominicans wouldn’t consider strange. That or spraying cologne in my armpits, which they might not find strange either.

Dominicans, in contrast, don’t seem to sweat. I’ve seen a few of them leaking before, but it seems that with most Dominicans their minimal fluid intake leaves their pores perpetually dry. They then interpret our sweating as a symptom of sickness, and ask us if we’re ok, if we have the famous gripe (cold, flu, general bad-being). We then say no, we’re fine, it’s just that it’s hot. And they nod in seeming comprehension.

In conclusion, I predict that dealing with the heat, with all its nefarious consequences, will be my most serious challenge as a Peace Corps Volunteer. Just edging out the appalling state of electricity in this country—think long blackouts, and lots of them—which I’ll discuss later on.

VIPs

First of all, I’d like to apologize to anyone (i.e., my parents) who was expecting frecuentes updates to the blog. Though internet access and electricity have been relatively plentiful, especially in El Seibo, where we just finished a month of training, I just haven’t been able to summon the energy to write about the extraordinary experiencia I’ve had here in la RD, except for the obligatory bathroom post. Hopefully now that the hectocity that was training is close to over, I’ll find the time to contribute here on a more regular basis. It’s a frustrating predicament: when you have so much to write about, you usually don’t have time to write about it, ¿no?

So Wednesday I finally made it to my community, Las Maras, a sort of suburb a few kilómetros outside La Vega (220,000 personas). The place has a campo feel—there are cows in the pasture and roosters romping around the street—but it’s just a short motorcycle ride from the country’s third-largest city, which is a big plus. I’m on a five-day visit which concludes tomorrow, an orientation before they officially swear us as Peace Corps Volunteers the 13th. I’ll be working with an NGO, Confenaca, la Confederación Nacional Campesina, headquartered here. How they managed to derive that acronym from that name, I have yet to find out. What I do know is that la Confenaca represents around 9,000 smalltime farmers, mostly here in El Cibao, the breadbasket dominicano. I shall repair and make awesome the 20 or so computers at their headquarters, and conduct software classes, probably on Microsoft Office. PowerPoint tends to be a crowd-pleaser—anyone who counts Latinos among their digital friends has no doubt received more than a few presentations about Jesús, world hunger, or what Jesús thinks about world hunger. Word is also popular. Access and Excel, not so much. We’ll see, I just arrived so there’s still very much unclear and uncertain. I’ll also be doing some teacher computer training and other biz at the elementary school in nearby Villa Palmarito. Friday was teachers’ in-service day, so I won’t get a chance to scope that out until next week, when I return from Santo Domingo to settle down for realz.

Now it’s impossible to talk about Confenaca without talking about el presidente, Don Luís Ureña, pictured below.

From Protest in Bonao

The man is everything you’d expect from a prominent líder campesino: charismatic, impassioned, and thoroughly dedicated to his leftist dogma. Certain nouns—change, justice and struggle, for example—seem to have set up a permanent encampment on the tip of his tongue; social, united and solidario are hanging out in the adjective section. That’s not to say the man is some hardened revolutionary, too caught up in la causa to enjoy life. He has a radiance and a sense of humor that you might not expect from someone in his position—it seems like he’s been at this gig long enough to see how frivolous it can all be. At any rate, I very much look forward to working with the man. He seems willing to charge me with some serious autoridad over Confenaca IT, something I very much wanted from my project site.

The other personality that will now be an integral part of my life, my host mom, goes by the name of Mercedes Santos.

From Una Vida Social Vegana

I’m not sure I’ve seen a woman so defy age. When she asked me to guess, I threw out 33, thinking it’s always better to cut off a few years, that maybe she was in her late 30s instead. Nope, 45 or so she says. And not an ounce of silicon on her. I’ll attribute a lot of her youthful appearance to good eating habits: she’s very into fresh and natural food, and tries to avoid the super-sweet soda pop so popular with most familias dominicanas.

She works full-time as a nurse at a retirement home, either the afternoon or the graveyard shift. It sounds like my hell, having to care for hundreds of enfeebled elders hours at a time in a facility that can only be inadequate; she’s not passionate about it either, but like most all Dominicans she recognizes that work is work, and better to have it than not. One of these days I’ll accompany her to the job, see if it’s as miserable as it seems.

Peace Corps told us that, unlike our families in El Seibo or Santo Domingo, most of our site families would be hosting a foreigner for the first time. That’s the case with Mercedes, and it shows. She does her best to make me feel at home, but sometimes it’s just overwhelming, like when she keeps asking me if I like my food, or insisting that I keep all my belongings arranged in a certain way. So it’ll be a process, staking out my independence. On the other hand, after three months we can move out, and since I’m in a relatively populated area, it should be easy to find a decent residence.

Her only son is 15-year-old Oliver, part-time mechanic, part-time student. Like most youth I’ve meet, he’s commendably curious. I’ve spent serious time showing him my photos and the Encarta map, and he’s full of questions. He also isn’t bursting with bravado, throwing catcalls at any half-decent looking girl that passes by, like many hombres dominicanos, young and old, the so-called tiguere, or hustler. All signs point to him being a good kid, with a lot of potential.