The DR: Adios, Dominicana

Amigas, amigos. The last installment from La Dominicana. I have been traveling a bit, to the mountains and to the beach. I’ve finally gotten the requisite sunburn. Silvana (amiga mía preciosa—¡voy a extrañar verte en tu natural habitat aquí!) has been driving me around the Capital, too.  

Through my travels I have come to appreciate the Dominican usage of the horn. We Americans have an extremely limited sense of what the beep of a car horn can communicate. For us it means ‘Danger!’ or ‘Hurry up.’ Here in the DR it is like ‘Aloha’ in Hawaiian. It means ‘Hello,’ it means ‘Goodbye,’ it means ‘Watch out I’m about to crush you like a bug,’ and it means ‘I’m here, please don’t crush me like a bug!’ It means ‘I’m passing you on this dangerous road.’ Beep beep. It means ‘I’m coming around this blind curve on the wrong side of the road.’ Beeeeeep. It means ‘I am a guagua [bus], need a ride?’ It means, ‘Hey cutie’ and it means ‘Move it or lose it.’ Very communicative. Beep beep.

Since I came here to learn to speak like a Dominican, I suppose I’ll end with a little taste of what I’ve learned in the streets:

La Lengua Callejera Dominicana

[Dominican Street Talk]

Amigo: ¡Hola rubia!

Friend: [Hi white girl!]

Yo: ¡Hola moreno!

Me: [Hi brown guy!]

Amigo: Dime a ve' ¿que lo que?

[somewhere between ‘what’s up’ and ‘how’s it hanging’]

Yo: Cogiendo lucha, mi hermano

[grinning Life’s a struggle, bro.]

Amigo: ¿Ya comiste?

[Did you eat yet?]

Yo: ¡Tu ‘ta mofle! Ya son la 10

[You’re way behind! Literally, ‘You’re a muffler!’ It’s already 10]

Amigo: ¡Coño, pero tengo hambre!

[Damn, but I’m hungry!]

Yo: Bueno, vamo a comel, amigo.

[ok, let’s go eat, buddy]

Scene.

I am going to miss it here. I am going to miss the bachata and merengue, and the fried food, and the open hearts.

The DR: On dancing, Adolescence, and Breasts

¡Hola otra vez!

 

*On dancing

Dominicans are completely confused when you tell them that a lot of Americans don’t dance. ”Especially the men,” I explained once. “But what do they do?” was the bemused response. “What do they do at night? What do they do at parties?” Dancing here is like walking; if you can’t do it, you must have a sprained ankle. And music is everywhere. Even when we went out to the countryside, the riverside bungalow was equipped with a dance floor and a set of giant vocinas. Speakers. We blasted merengue and bachata out over the river. Loida and her boyfriend danced.

Daniel is teaching me bachata and merengue. I like dancing with him because I don’t have to worry about what it means. When we’re dancing together it means we’re dancing together, na’ma’ (which is Dominican for ‘nada más’ which is Spanish for ‘nothing more’). When I’m dancing with Dominicans, dancing too close seems to have sketchy significance, keeping distance is stiff and uptight, blah blah blah. Anyway, even a rhythmically challenged white girl can manage these dance steps. I can’t do anything fancy, and I certainly don’t look native, but I can get by. Still, poor Dan. His girlfriend works most nights at a pharmacy and he’s stuck on the dance floor with an amateur.

*On Lisbeth y Santa

I am getting to be friends with Lisbeth and Santa. They are both 12, but on opposite ends of the growth spectrum. Santica is tiny, Lisbeth looks like she’s 15. Santa moves like a cat and is learning the fine art of butt shaking; Lisbeth doesn’t quite know what to do with her limbs yet. They are both in the house day in and day out. Sometimes they do chores, but mostly they just chill.

It’s strange to think they could be my students. I can hardly imagine hanging out so much with my students without going crazy, but of course, I am not their teacher. In fact they are the ones doing the teaching most of the time. How to cook, how to do laundry, how to pronounce things in Spanish…. Today Lisbeth brought out Santa’s diary and read me one of the stories. Díos mio. It was about a girl named Camila whose father let her go on a cruise for her 15^th birthday, her quinseañera. On the cruise she met a very cute boy named Raúl. He gave her cards and flowers and their romance developed until the last night of the cruise, when she gave him the most important thing in her life: her virginity. The next day, he gave her one last gift before they parted: a box and a card that said, “Do not open until you get home.” She obeyed. When she got home she opened the box and inside was a black flower and a note that said, “Welcome to the world of AIDS.”

Interpret at will, my friends.

*On boobs

I have never seen breasts like I´ve seen in this country. This is not necessarily because they have not been around, but because they have not been quite so…well displayed. Lovely wobbly breasts are absolutely everywhere. I find them very funny for some reason. In a country full of low cut shirts, there have been a few women whose shirts have been so exposing that I’ve been convinced the boobs would pop out at any moment. Bubble right out of their nests. One such woman was rather large. She was apparently not as concerned as I was that her boobies might get loose, so she danced a wiggly sort of dance, and I think I was not the only one wondering if they might just…might just…oops. They didn’t. But her show offered some real competition to the main attraction, which was the woman at the other end of the room who was channeling an African spirit named Ogún Balañó.

But that is a whole different story.

The DR: On Men, Food, and Beauty

Preamble: It is a great irony to lose one´s voice when one is trying to learn a language. At the same time it’s a bit of a reprieve—a sanctioned break from struggling through mutilated sentences. It’s a break for those who have to listen to me, too! I’m drinking lots of tea with honey and lime. All will be better soon.

And now on to what you've all be waiting for.

*On men

Darío! Ha! For the record, Darío is no tiguere. In Ecuador they were called ‘tiburones’—sharks. Here they are called ‘tigueres’—tigers. They are guys who hang out on corners and say enticing things like, ‘Hey girlfriend!’ or ‘Hey [insert person’s color]’ or, for my benefit, and this is one of my personal favorites, ‘American people! I love you baby!’ No, Darío is not a tiguere, he’s a guy who works with Loida in politics, managing a team of people who…and that’s where I stopped understanding what he was saying when he explained what he does.

It was an awkward situation to begin with. The two of us were swimming with mucha gente. Me, Darío, the people who had brought us together, and half the rest of the DR. We were in the mountains, escaping the heat of the city. 

 This was taken when the crowd had subsided considerably

The funny thing is, no one here has any tolerance for cold, so even though I thought the water was lovely (and we all know how wimpy I am), Darío, who is a great hunk of man, was shivering visibly. I asked if he wanted to go back to the table, gesturing toward the terrace above where other people from our party were hanging out with the our bags. He thought I had asked him to “dar una vuelta” which I guess in this case is go for a walk around the swimming hole. Whatever. I said yes to the question he thought I had posed. Vamo. So we’re chatting, me practically naked in my bikini, him fully clothed, having gone swimming in his shorts and T shirt. What do we do for a living? How do we know Loida? Nothing intimate whatsoever. Then the inevitable. He asks if I have a boyfriend. I pause, then say, “Vamos a decir que sí” Let’s say I do. Of course I immediately wished I’d just said, “Si” and left it at that, but his response? Not ‘What do you mean by that?’ or ‘How long have you been together?’ or anything like that. He says, “I like that you’re honest about it. It’s probably just as well. You’re only here for a month and I’m very sensitive. I get attached to people.” He took my blank stare of utter bewilderment to be a linguistic problem, and repeated what he'd said slowly and more clearly. It was all I could do to keep it together. I smiled and nodded and led the way back to our group. Awkward silence plagued us from that moment forth.

*On food

Ayayay the fried food.  It is a test of a person’s metabolism.

 Breakfast with Luz: eggs with yucca, or mangu, or tostones whatever strikes her fancy. 

Dinner with Maria: Empanadas

 Vacation food I: Coconut on Playa Rincón

 Vacation food II: Fish, Rice, and Beans on Playa Rincón

Playa Rincón

*On beauty

Obesity and beauty are most definitely not mutually exclusive categories here. There are plenty of flacos and flaquitas, but big boned boys and girls get down and dirty on the dance floor, too. And I mean dirty. And everyone and their mother gets…appreciated…by any audience. There always seem to be people watching. On the street, in the discotecas, in the park. They notice, they comment, the feedback is always good. I wonder why people devote so much time to preening, when they’re just as likely to get attention walking around with rollers in their hair as when they’re all made up, with straight and smooth and shiny locks. I love seeing people in rollers, incidentally. Cracks me up.

 

La Santica in Rollers

And that´s quite enough for now.

The DR: ¡Que calor!

´La Dominicana.´ It´s damn hot. 

*On luz.

At the top of this photo you'll see the inversor. If you look really carefully, to the left you'll see two tiny lights. I have learned that the little green light is bad and the little red light is good. The red light means the electricity is on in the house where I rent a room, so we can bask in the luxury of fans and, at night, lights. It also means that la bomba can be started up, which is the contraption that coaxes water from the main into the pipes and, if all goes well, out of the faucet. For some reason la bomba is usually turned off, which means we flush toilets with buckets of water, and the sink sits impotently collecting dishes. When the green light is on, as Daniel—my americano DR contact and guardian angel—explained to me, it means ‘go generator!’ But there is a problem with the generator; its reserves are tapped easily. This means only electrical essentials are to be employed when the green light is on. No fans. No bomba. And, late in the night when people are going to bed anyway, no lights. When the electricity cuts, cries of ‘se fue la luz!’ echo through the cavernous casa. Equally, when the electricity comes back on, there is a flurry of activity, joyful cries of ‘hay luz!’ as Santa runs to start la bomba so Loida can do laundry, or fill the reserve tanks with water to flush the toilets and wash hands when la luz goes out again. 

Loida is the lawyer whose house I share, and Santa is her diminuative 12 year old...servant? The relationship is a bit unclear so far... but she certainly seems at everyone’s beck and call. I think she helps out in exchange for food, lodging, and the opportunity to go to school in the city. Anyway. What is surreal about turning on la bomba is that, just as when the electricity comes on it seems that all the lights in the house have been left on, when la bomba is turned on, it is not uncommon to wander into the bathroom or kitchen and find the faucet gushing. Whereas walking into a lit room feels more or less normal, walking in to a room with water gushing out of the faucet leaves one with the impression that there may be a resident ghost. ¡Hay aguacita!

*On showering. 

The first night I stood in the shower and squeezed a washcloth over myself, which felt divine after the long trip and the stifling heat. In the cool of the morning I was giddy over the prospect of finally rinsing off the dust of travel under a real shower. I made sure that la bomba was good to go. Then, joyfully, I turned on the shower head. I noticed with vague disappointment that it was a hand-held contraption, the kind that doesn’t leave a person both hands free to do the washing, but this was nothing major. It turns out my problem was much more grave. When I turned on the tap, only a few drops trickled out. Then nothing. I asked Loida how the shower functions, and she said, “ah, I don’t know.” 

Me: “You don’t know?” 

Her: “Vamo a ver” (I am learning to cut out my ´s´s) 

Together we went into the bathroom. She turned on the water, and again a tiny trickle and then nothing. “You’ll have to use the bucket,” she told me, shrugging. My heart sank. I was familiar with the bucket method because we had used it in Cameroon. What made the situation here in la Dominicana comical was the appearance of infrastructure. In Cameroon it made sense—when the toilet is a hole in the concrete, and the bathing space is a dark concrete room with a somewhat dingy drain, it comes as no surprise that one has to ladle out water to wash with, especially in a land where water is a precious commodity. But here I was, standing in a nice clean tub with a shower curtain, in a fully tiled bathroom, going through the same procedure. I get the impression that this disparity between appearance and functionality may be a common problem in la Dominicana.

The funny thing about the shower was, I didn’t mind. Maybe only because there was more water available to me than there was in Cameroon, for water shortage does not seem to be a Dominican problem. I don’t ever remember feeling completely clean in Cameroon, but after my cold Dominican shower, I felt like a new woman, ready to go out and learn some damn español. ¿No hay duche? No hay problema.

*On San Antonio

While the shower gives an idea of the problems that even wealthy Dominicanos deal with every day, it is by far not the most interesting thing that I´ve experienced in my first 3 days. Dan, who does research on traditional Afro-Carribean religious music, brought me to a fiesta for San Antonio in a poor barrio full of exuberant folks. When you don´t have electricity you don´t have to worry about it cutting out. There were prayers and incense and a splashing of water with flowers and herbs and drumming and then a processional, drumming all the way, carrying the image of San Antonio back to its owner´s place. Antonio had been on loan to a brujo (´witch´ is a bad translation but will have to suffice) who needed him. Belief in brujos and Catholicism are obviously not mutually exclusive, although the Church might beg to differ.... 

 Yeah that's right, I'm playing the guira, Rubia

Jean the brujo and the other músicos

 San Antonio is in the wood case

The ceremony was a load of fun, I was given a beer all for myself (which is a huge honor and speaks to how welcoming everyone was to a friend of Daniel). A ten year old girl named Esmerelda took me under wing and talked my ear off, simultaneously making sure we didn´t get hit by motos or cars as we all paraded through the streets. I understood maybe one word in 5, but we got along great.

Esmerelda

I´ve also been systematically breaking all the cautionary rules of what to avoid when traveling here. Except the water. Don´t drink the water. Eso.