Looking through American eyes

I'm going to have a housemate! We need lots of help at the deaf school, and she is coming to be a volunteer this year. She will do work for which it is very difficult to find qualified Dominicans.

But where will she stay? I looked through the two bedrooms which are possibilities. One is my office, and full of office stuff, of course. The second is basically a warehouse for school materials that we cannot keep at the school all the time for space reasons. So they go back and forth as needed.

The more I look at them through American eyes, the more I'm afraid she will be horrified and immediately want to find another place. Both rooms have water damage and peeling paint. And the color of paint is a sort of royal blue. It's a very inexpensive paint, and basically makes the rooms look like a cheap bar. There is not a lot of point to repainting, because as soon as the apt. above, currently vacant, gets rented again, the water damage will continue. Oh, and the mold that appears on all the wooden doors, and various other surfaces in the house...I forgot about that. In a word, it's all pretty ugly. It's not a healthy place to live because of the vermin.

There's a rat--yes, a rat---that runs around here at night. Correction: it's probably a family, or maybe even a tribe of rats. But I've never seen more than one at a time, at least. There are cockroaches, although not huge amounts. With no screens on the window, it is easy for rats and roaches to get in.

The electricity is off about fifty percent of the time, though we do have car batteries and an inverter that will at least power the lights and other things that aren't heavy users of electricity.

But what can I do? This is the way I live, and this is the way my neighbors live. Peeling paint, leaky roofs, rats, and roaches are not such a big deal. We take it all in stride, as a normal part of this Dominican Life.

Do tell!

Where I grew up, you don't ask people certain questions. Now I'm sure that there are forbidden questions here too--they just aren't the same ones I'm used to. I'm not in Kansas anymore.

Today, I was on my way home in a taxi. The driver asked me why I was here, how long I had lived in my apt., where I was born, who lives with me, am I married?, what about children?, how much does my apt. cost? What was I doing at the place he picked me up? Where do I work?--and a bunch of other stuff. Some things I answered, sometimes vaguely, and other questions I avoided.

As an American, I've been taught from a young age not to tell strangers--especially strange men, certain info. It can put me in danger. But here, no one thinks twice about asking very personal questions the very first time they meet you, even though they aren't meeting you through friends, but in an un-introduced context like a taxi ride.

This isn't the first time this has happened. It is a frequent occurrence. Dominican men will rarely converse with you without one of their first questions being about your marital status and the number of children you have. After that, they know better which tactic to use in their flirtations. I cannot even tell you how many taxi and public car drivers have proposed to me directly or hinted that they were interested in marrying me, two minutes after getting into their car! (They didn't say it was so they could get a visa to the US or share my dollar tree, but that was obvious.)

Usually I respond that I really only got in the car to get somewhere, not to find a husband, thanks anyway. And age doesn't matter. I've had 20 year olds doing this! These aren't the "sankies" of the resorts and hotels--professionals who spend their time wooing foreigners to try to divest them of some of their cash, and if they "get lucky" marry them and move to the Promised Land. These are just regular guys, working for a living. But I don't take it too seriously. I've learned that it is the custom,. Would a man really be macho if he didn't flirt with a woman? It's nothing to get upset about, just part of this Dominican Life.

When you think you've seen it all...

You haven't. Now I'm very used to seeing people throw trash on the street. It is the norm here. When you are done with that bottle of water, chuck it out the window. Candy wrappers? No problem, throw them on the ground. Then it rains. And all the drains get stopped up from the trash, and it's the government's fault.

But the other day...well that one took the cake. First see this video

Now the next thing that happened was a young girl dragged a 50 gallon drum full of garbage over to the street, and started dumping it into our little flash flood. She wasn't the only one. Even though the trash truck does make regular stops in this barrio, and had been there only the day before, the people are accustomed to waiting for the flood, then dumping their garbage in it.

The garbage runs downward two more blocks, and then empties into a sort of canal. I don't know where it goes from there.

Once the rain stops, the water finishes running off in just five or ten minutes, and you can see the street again--now littered with garbage. The lady down the street told me that she's been living there for 16 years, and that is the way it's always been done since she's been there.

While I really think the barrio's problems with drainage are more serious than just some clogged drains, I'm sure that the trash doesn't help matters.

We have two tropical storms heading our way, and lots of rain coming up. This means flooding all over the city,at many intersections, the homes by the river and probably the same flooding over most of the nation, with some deaths as a result. Some of the flooding is self-inflicted, by people who thoughtlessly throw trash on the ground. Some is due to horrendously inadequate drainage systems. And sometimes it's just because the rain is so intense that no drainage system could handle it. But flooding is not anything unusual, just part of this Dominican Life.

Kind of depressing

Sometimes I use the politically correct term "developing country," and sometimes I just have to say "third world"--or at least think it.

Today it was third world. Imagine sending your children to a school that has toilets that flush with a bucket, and no sink to wash their hands. Their classroom has no doors or windows, but does have openings where the doors and windows would be, if they did have them. Some of the classrooms have a zinc roof which leaks when it rains, and heats up the room like an oven when the sun shines. All have cement floors, one of which has tree roots pushing up the floor and breaking through the cement.

All the classroom furniture is a modgepodge of purchases from various places and various years, some new, some very beat up, with a variety of shapes and sizes. Desks aren't always the appropriate size for the ones sitting in them.

Despite all this, teaching will go on. Children will learn. Children will be glad they are at school with their friends.

Because the most important thing of all, is not the building, it is the teacher.

Poverty isn't fun at home, but it is no surprise at school. It's just part of this Dominican LIfe.

Refreshingly honest

I explained before about the issue of corruption here. It's very hard on a public official to be honest, because he has a lot of cultural pressure on him to take care of his friends and family. I heard it explained once, very accurately I think, that it isn't so much that Dominicans are dishonest, as that they are extremely loyal. And that means loyalty is first, and honesty second. So if it comes down to backing up your friend by telling a lie, or telling the truth, which causes problems for your friend, the lie usually prevails.

Recently I was near the Haitian border, visiting a family who lives there. As it happens, the husband is a public official. The first thing I noticed was that he was not living in an elegant house. Instead, he had built his own cement block house...or at least enough to live with. It still has a corrugated zinc roof, and is missing some essentials like inside doors and paint.

I mention the house, because immediately I thought of two possibities: either he is honest, and isn't accepting/demanding bribes, or his position isn't as important as I believed.

But then, we were driving around with the family, near the border, as they wanted to show me the road to Haiti. Suddenly, his alert eyes saw something amiss. He stopped to check it out. He dealt with the problem briefly. He made a couple of phone calls, but never did money come into the picture.

Then a second time, I saw him in action when he gave me a lift to the bus stop for my trip back home. A friend stopped him, and said, "You know, that was my land, yesterday..." the implication being, that if he had known, he would have overlooked the legal requirements. The official responded, "So because it just so happened that the land belonged to a friend of mine, I wasn't going to do my job?"

I have to tell you, the Dominican political sistem is overrun with corrupt officials. I've met them at every turn. But everyone is not corrupt. Now and then, you find an honest man or woman, just doing the job they are supposed to be doing, and not trying to get rich on bribes in the process. These refreshing people are also a part of this Dominican Life.