Dear Friends,
I got sick and tired of the way Blogger makes it difficult to format your blog. I'm moving the operations to what I hope will be a much better place: WordPress. Capitalena is now at http://desireeindr.wordpress.com. Blogger has a friendlier-looking Dashboard, but I hated how things started to look cluttered on my blog. Damn the people who wrote the horrible directions for making expandable posts on Blogger Help. At WordPress, things will be different. Yeah.
Check things out and tell me what you think. Thanks to the 9 1/2 people who take the time to read about my adventures.
Love,
Desiree
Friday, March 27, 2009
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Batey Lecheria
My class, Social and Ethnocultural Identity in the Contemporary Caribbean (there's a mouthful for you), takes field trips every so often. Yesterday, our teacher took us to a batey, which is basically a dumping ground for illegal Haitian immigrants to the Dominican Republic. During the height of the DR's reign as king of the sugar industry, tons of Haitians crossed the border to work on the sugar plantations cutting cane (a craptastic job). The price of sugar dropped and big sugar importers (i.e. the U.S.) took their business elsewhere and started using high fructose corn syrup to sweeten Coca-Cola and other tasty delights. The business left but the bateys stayed. Haitians and their children, who may or may not be of Dominican descent too, live in limbo; they have no papers, making them neither Dominican or Haitian, technically. No papers means no money.
Batey Lecheria is on the outskirts of Santo Domingo at the foot of beautiful mountains. During the sugar boom, other farmers jumped on the Haitian bandwagon and soon there were bateys on all types of farms and later in the cities. When we got there, we could see the smoke from a trash fire in the foothills. Bateys are the poorest areas you'll probably find in the Dominican Republic. Our van dropped us off on a 'street' looks like in those informercials you see late at night when that old guy holds up a starving/HIV-positive/worm-infested orphan, beginning you to send just a few dollars each month to give him food and medicine. From the window, we could see this old woman beating the living crap of a girl that couldn't have been more than 11 or 12 years old. There are little shacks made of tin in lots of different colors. There were chickens pecking in the dirt, trash piles burning in the streets and a strong stink.
We toured a Montessori school set up by an order of American nuns with the help of the Clinton Foundation. The school was the nicest place in the batey, which isn't very big. One of the teachers, named Luz, explained that while the school teaches the usual reading, writing and arithmetic, they also have to teach the children have to use a toilet and wash their hands, since they've never really had to do it before. The school works with children of all ages, but the older kids don't come until a bit later. We met the smaller children, who I think were only about 5 years old. They were so precious, and so excited when the blonder, whiter students from my program stooped down to say hello. The school also works to improve the health of the people living in the bateys. On the second floor, they have a doctor's office.
This girl from a small town in Connecticut signed up two years ago to work with this program. She was short and pale to the point of looking sickly and had a weird, high voice. Something was off about her. Her Spanish was crap, even though she said she majored in Spanish in college. She gave us a tour of the batey. She showed us these wood and tin buildings where families lived in single rooms. We passed a cheerful fat woman sitting in a rocking chair on the porch of a wooden shack. The girl knew a lot about the batey and it was nice to be able to ask her questions. She told us about how at night people from outside the batey come to sell drugs, how women in the batey sell drugs themselves, how the men do construction in an illegal sandmine and the women work in rich houses for a living, how sometimes mothers accept money from neighbors in exchange for sleeping with their daughters, how there's a lot of prostitution and teenage pregnancy and yet the clinic at the school only gives out condoms if you have a prescription--they're Catholics, after all--and how the people in the community are her friends.
On the ride back, we talked about how horrible all of this is and why the hell would the government pump hundreds of millions of U.S. dollars into building a metro line with maybe 6 stops while people are living in unbelievably bad conditions. It was weird, too, though to walk through as a group and peeking into houses. I felt like such an intruder. I can't believe our teacher asked us to bring cameras.
Batey Lecheria is on the outskirts of Santo Domingo at the foot of beautiful mountains. During the sugar boom, other farmers jumped on the Haitian bandwagon and soon there were bateys on all types of farms and later in the cities. When we got there, we could see the smoke from a trash fire in the foothills. Bateys are the poorest areas you'll probably find in the Dominican Republic. Our van dropped us off on a 'street' looks like in those informercials you see late at night when that old guy holds up a starving/HIV-positive/worm-infested orphan, beginning you to send just a few dollars each month to give him food and medicine. From the window, we could see this old woman beating the living crap of a girl that couldn't have been more than 11 or 12 years old. There are little shacks made of tin in lots of different colors. There were chickens pecking in the dirt, trash piles burning in the streets and a strong stink.
We toured a Montessori school set up by an order of American nuns with the help of the Clinton Foundation. The school was the nicest place in the batey, which isn't very big. One of the teachers, named Luz, explained that while the school teaches the usual reading, writing and arithmetic, they also have to teach the children have to use a toilet and wash their hands, since they've never really had to do it before. The school works with children of all ages, but the older kids don't come until a bit later. We met the smaller children, who I think were only about 5 years old. They were so precious, and so excited when the blonder, whiter students from my program stooped down to say hello. The school also works to improve the health of the people living in the bateys. On the second floor, they have a doctor's office.
This girl from a small town in Connecticut signed up two years ago to work with this program. She was short and pale to the point of looking sickly and had a weird, high voice. Something was off about her. Her Spanish was crap, even though she said she majored in Spanish in college. She gave us a tour of the batey. She showed us these wood and tin buildings where families lived in single rooms. We passed a cheerful fat woman sitting in a rocking chair on the porch of a wooden shack. The girl knew a lot about the batey and it was nice to be able to ask her questions. She told us about how at night people from outside the batey come to sell drugs, how women in the batey sell drugs themselves, how the men do construction in an illegal sandmine and the women work in rich houses for a living, how sometimes mothers accept money from neighbors in exchange for sleeping with their daughters, how there's a lot of prostitution and teenage pregnancy and yet the clinic at the school only gives out condoms if you have a prescription--they're Catholics, after all--and how the people in the community are her friends.
On the ride back, we talked about how horrible all of this is and why the hell would the government pump hundreds of millions of U.S. dollars into building a metro line with maybe 6 stops while people are living in unbelievably bad conditions. It was weird, too, though to walk through as a group and peeking into houses. I felt like such an intruder. I can't believe our teacher asked us to bring cameras.
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Babes in Gringoland
Nick, The Boy, came to visit me with three of his/our friends from school and we all went to Bávaro and Punta Cana. That area, in the east of the country, has some of the most beautiful beaches in the Caribbean; Beyonce liked it so much, she bought a house somewhere out there. My time in Paradise was tainted a little bit by one of Bávaro's main tourist attractions. Saturday night was our first night there, and we rode around a bit until we found an outdoor bar called Steve's. It was the only interesting thing to do on a Saturday night in the Spring Break capital of the Dominican Republic, oddly enough. Steve's was an outdoor bar on a corner near one of the big all-inclusives. I got my Red Bull from the bar and looked at the clientele. White, late twenties to early thirties, sunburned. There was a cluster of 4 Dominican women behind me and it wasn't long before I realized they were all prostitutes. I took another look around and realized I was the only girl there with any hint of melanin that wasn't a prostitute and it made me so sad and so angry. There were all these Chad from Accounting types, guys pushing thirty that probably belonged to frats in college and were just starting to get the beer bellies to match, wearing flip flops and goofy t-shirts. I looked at the one to my left, drunkenly "dancing" with the fat prostitute in the yellow dress and white fishnets and thought, he's going to go home with her, and she'll probably be the first black woman he's ever slept with. I poked Nick and pointed out all the prostitutes. I don't know why I was surprised, though. We were in Gringolandia, a big tourist area, and prostitutes know that's where the money is. I don't think I'll ever get used to how common prostitution is and I can't help but notice how the women are generally my complexion and darker. It's insane to me, too, that people just fly all over the world looking for prostitutes. It's not as though we don't have them in the States; it's also not that hard to find someone to sleep with for free, though I guess getting her to do exactly what you want is the harder part.
Before finding Steve's, we'd passed what looked like a strip club with a lot of half-naked woman standing outside. My friend Luis dropped Nick and me off back home and Luis and the other two guys, Chris and Larry, circled back to where the strippers were. All the strippers were actually prostitutes. When they got back that night, Larry told us he'd wanted a lap dance, but not being able to speak Spanish, he pulled out some money. The stripper came up, grabbed 60USD and ran off. Poor Lar-bear. At least he has a story to tell.
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
La otra Dominicana
This past weekend, my host sister Ligia, worked at the Primera Feria del Libro Usado (The First Used Book Fair) at Cinema Cafe. She was volunteering, selling books, and working with children. The Book Fair had music from local rock acts at night, too. On Sunday, I dragged a friend from the program to the Feria. A bunch of chi-chi boutiques set up booths outside the Cinema Cafe and a DJ played really cool house music. My friend and I found at that the books were gone by the time we'd gotten there but that we could go to the rock concert for the small fee of 200 pesos. I heard a remix of All This Love by Patti LaBelle, so I figured I'd stay. I met with some other friends and we said we'd shell out the money if we promised to make cool, alternative friends because that's who was there; rich kids with tattoos, piercings,and patterned Chuck Taylors. Girls with expensive purses hung on their boyfriends' tatted-up arms. Most of the crowd was fairly white-looking and a lot knew the lyrics to the songs from these supposedly small, local rock groups. The place is beautiful; it's like a shed built into a little patch of palm trees. It has couches with red cushions, candles, surfboards as decorations...my friend said if she saw a picture of this place, she'd swear she was back home in California.
I'm really lucky to find a kind of counterculture to Dominican culture. It's not all merengue and mangoes. I love my rasta bartender friends, the ska-playing guys from Cabarete. I love that I got into a carro public last week and the driver was playing Boulevard of Broken Dreams by Green Day, and that a couple days later a different driver played Lovin' You by Minnie Riperton and You're Gonna Miss My Loving by Lou Rawls. My Dominican experience has the staples, the Brugal, the Presidente, Aventura, etc. but it's been more diverse than I thought. It's when I have days like these, like at the Feria, that I love being here and can't see myself being ready to leave in May.
Monday, March 9, 2009
Saturday, February 28, 2009
El mes de la patria: Carnaval vegano
<<<diablo cojüelo. that yellow thing he's holding? he whacks you with it and it hurts.February is 'el mes de la patria'. The whole month is dedicated to celebrating the Dominican Republic's proud history and, if you happen to own a grocery store, getting people to buy more food for discounted prices. Because Independence Day is February 27th and Lent also begins in February, the Church found it convenient to steer the meaning of Carnaval away from its traditional association with Lent--days and days of debauchery before we start denying ourselves in the name of our Lord--to celebrating Independence. Heaven forbid revelry have anything to do with the Church.
La Vega, about an hour and a half outside of Santo Domingo, is where the most famous Carnaval celebrations happen each year, on every Sunday in February. La Vega's best known for its diablos cojüelos. Groups of people picked by committee dress in flashy, terrifying devil costumes beat the crap out of people. Last Sunday, I went on a tour with a friend's friends. For the small fee of 1,100 pesos (about USD35), we got a bus ride in a comfy coach, open bar on the bus, a quick dip in an ice cold river, lunch at a cute restaurant, a few hours in La Vega at Carnval, and a ride back. Even though we left the capital at about 8:30, they were playing loud reggaeton, and dancing and talking (shouting) in the aisle. Dominicans are nonstop. I was tipsy by 11 and mildly hungover by 2.
Carnval itself was fun but a little bit scary. The night before, one of the bartenders at our favorite spot said the diablos are more likely to hit you if you have a big butt. Actually, they target women, especially any woman who's scantily clad. Being as narrow as I am, I mostly escaped the wrath of the diablos, but one of my friends got hit really hard because she has thick hips. Never thought I'd be grateful for my small butt. Aside from the diablos, there were tons and tons of people, most of whom are drunk and dancing to the competing sound systems from the company tents.
We had to fight our way back through the crowd to get to the bus. I was absolutely exhausted and managed to sleep some of the way back, even though the kid sitting next to me was singing along to cheesy ballads. The people on the tour were all really cool though, and we've started hanging out with them.
Friday, February 20, 2009
'Ella no habla español muy bien.' (Coño, pt. 2)
February is 'mes de la patria' in the Dominican Republic. The entire month is dedicated to celebrating the history of the country. Unbeknownst to me, yesterday was Dia de la bandera, or Flag Day. I'd had a meeting with the head of the organization I'm volunteering with, and 5 minutes from where I was supposed to be, traffic ground to a halt. I was sitting in a carro publico that was stuck behind a bus for about 15 minutes before the driver said, 'The Park is closed'. Parque Independencia is more or less where the Zona Colonial, the part of Santo Domingo that dates back to the 16th century, begins. Parque Independencia was beautiful in its prime, but now it's a pick-up place for prostitutes once it gets dark.
After going through the tiny side streets in the Zona, my driver dropped me off in the middle of El Conde, the main street and shopping district of the Zona Colonial. I arrived at the Parque after a few blocks, only to be stopped by a gathering of about a hundred people, middle school and high school students. A few vendors handed out flags and in the distance, I heard some sort of marching band. I stepped carefully down the ruined sidewalks to the otherside of the parade--in 4 inch heels, mind you--and then realized I wasn't quite sure where I needed to go. I asked a man in some sort of uniform that led me to believe he would know what the hell he was talking about. As soon as he realized I wasn't Dominican, he stopped listening. I said, very clearly, I thought, that I was looking for the street 16 de Agosto. He didn't seem to understand me, so I just handed him the address. He asked a fruit vendor next to him, and the woman began explaining to me where the street was and the officer jumped right in and said, 'Ella no habla español muy bien'. That is infuriating. No, I don't speak the best Spanish, but I sure as hell know enough to know that you're being rude in front of my face. I'm American but I'm not stupid. Just have some patience! This wasn't the first time that a Dominican decided to just write me off just because I speak Spanish with an accent (wow, it's weird to think of myself as having an accent). If I take a half a second to respond, it's not that I'm stupid, it's only that it takes me a bit to process what you've said. Also, Dominican men mumble like no one's business, so half the time I just haven't heard you.
Between the two officers and the fruit lady, it's decided that it would be best for the officer to lead the poor stupid girl to where she needs to go. The man took me in the very same direction I came from (back through the parade) until he stopped at another vendor to ask him where the address was. The vendor turned to me to explain at which point the officer again said, 'Ella no habla español muy bien'. I was so ready to tell him where to go but I decided it was best to keep my mouth shut. Imagine how I felt when he pointed me down the street, only to for me to find out that I was going in the right direction by myself and was originally only a block or so from where I needed to be. I was absolutely furious when I finally (finally!) arrived to the office, pouring sweat and out of breath. Once things got moving, I calmed down, but I still get mad when I think about it. I'm having one of those weeks where I'm sick of being a foreigner.
Links
Dia de la Bandera from a local newspaper (in Spanish, but can be translated)
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