ex-pat life.

i've been on the island for eight years now. EIGHT years. it's not always easy, it's not always fun - but i always live in a place so physically beautiful it hurts. and mostly, i love this little piece of planet earth.

it's been an up and down journey - and just when i think i've finally settled into something, i get smacked in the face with something new. sometimes that something new is great - a new job, a new friend, a visit to somewhere amazing. but mostly, it's not. 

and though i genuinely love our dominican community, i need to be connected somehow to my own culture, my own community - to be with people who speak our same heart language. (don't get me wrong, it's great to chatter away in english, but it's different to think in english with someone - if you're bilingual you'll get it). 

i've reached out numerous times to the ex-pat community and have made a few very lasting friendships. there is a dear friend i met on an online forum and now work with, another who has two precious girls around samil and amely's ages and we share motherhood trials,  another incredible woman who i met at the uni and just had lunch with today. 

but it doesn't always work out.

if you're looking to become an ex-pat, to pick up life and move somewhere new, people will advise you to "meet all the (insert your nationality here), they are the ones to keep you sane." and there is even the idea that you can't live without compatriots, because the locals just don't hack it. you can't, obviously, choose the country-mates who live in your newfound home, so you'll have to accept them for who and what they are. like it or not - they're who you've got.

all of that was part of my training when i first moved down here. and i blatantly ignored it and lived for seven months without real contact with other americans. i learned spanish, i learned to dance, and i learned to love the people around me. no, i didn't need other yankees to get me through. but at times it was lonely. 

i reached out, found people, made a huge social effort - and if you know me, i'm no social butterfly - to be with other americans. it was disastrous. first, i met up with a bunch of super rich factory manager wives who drove super-sized suvs and ate in posh cafes where a sandwich costs more than my rent. obviously that one wasn't going to work out. i chalked it up to experience and let it roll. 

then i met a group of missionaries who wanted a moms group. it was weird that children weren't really welcome at the moms group, but we made it work for awhile until amely did a little biting and i was chewed out in an email about how i just didn't react "correctly." how dare i let my child bite and not cry about it? 

and when i met some short-term teachers, i realized i am just too old and too family to fit in with 23 year olds anymore. 

 you know what? i stressed about it for a long time, and i beat myself up over "losing" those potential compatriots that most ex-pat philosophy insisted i need. who would my kids speak english with? where would i go to complain about my dominican community? who else could i hate everything and everyone with?

when i stopped searching for a "group" to belong to i realized i didn't need one. i'm not rich and maintained - and i don't want to pretend that i am. i don't want my kids around the superior mindset, that us north americans are right and these damn natives are wrong. and i don't really need to relive my all-night drinking binges. 

once i stopped searching for those "heart language" friends - i realized that i have plenty. yesterday, we played with a baby and while amely didn't bite her, the baby's brother hit amely every chance he got - because that's what kids do. and we corrected him and talked to him and at the end we gave everyone kisses and hugs. no snarky comments or threats to no longer remain friends. and this weekend, we'll have visitors who will probably sit around drinking coffee and doing crafts and enjoying each other.

i've recently gotten a lot of emails asking for advice about moving to the dr. i don't have a lot. but there it is: make friends with quality people, who you like to be around - not because you share the same homeland, but because you share the same values, interests. make friends with your dominican community. you'll be surprised. 

De'Jonnae

we have this really awesome teacher here this year - her name is jewel and she is an amazing blessing from above. we met through this blog when she was looking for a way to return to the island to do some mission work. i gave her a list of other ngos and people she might be able to help better than she could help us - the woman is a nurse practitioner, afterall. but, in the end, she felt called here and picked up her life and moved to the dominican republic. amazing, right?

 

the school year is almost over and jewel will be moving on - she's got a few options, some of them even have her staying closeby! but, she's leaving futuro lleno de esperanza and while that's really sad for me, i'm excited to see where her journey goes from here.

 

to be completely honest, i've been dreading this. it means i have to find someone to replace her, and that's not going to be easy, at all.
and i'm funny about spending too much time with foreigners (i know, i know!)

so, in march, i put out some ads looking for volunteer teachers, i even put one here on the blog. i got a generous response and this summer we'll have one definite volunteer coming to spend a few weeks with us, another who is waiting for a visa and a few short-term visitors (and FIVE mission teams!) for the next school year, we have three interns coming. i'm excited.

 

i'm turning to you all, faithful blog-readers, to help our volunteers out. i know, i've been asking you all to do all sorts of things lately - pay for a library, pick up some jewelry, buy me some pizza (no seriously, i love pizza. see the side bar where you can make a donation to get me pizza?)

 

de'jonnae (who we have taken to referring to as "petit dejeuner" - french for breakfast) is coming this summer and she is raising some funds to help get her here. if you have a few bucks you wanted to give away, give them to her. she's awesome. and we are so ready to have her getting her hands dirty!!!

 

 

where to give the moneys??? HERE

this kid.

when it rains, it pours.

 

we've been having some issues with the transmission in our car - we got it fixed awhile back, but it seems like we'll need to replace it. and of course, because when something important breaks, something else even more important goes. what is that, like murphy's law?

 

whatever can go wrong, will.

 

so, yesterday (or two days ago... i can't count) i came home for lunch to find that the refrigerator was turned off. i asked nelfy and she said she thought i had turned it off to defrost. so, we unplugged it and plugged it back in. nothing. turned the knobs. nothing.

 

luckily i hadn't food shopped this week and there wasn't much perishable food in there.
but, we did need to go to the store, and i wasn't really sure what to do. i was kind of hoping for a miracle refrigerator-repair. it didn't happen.

 

but, when we left the house, there was a flier for some appliance store stuck in the gate. samil was delighted as he loves mail. jewel quick grabbed the flier and wrote samil's name on it. you cannot even begin to imagine the happiness. he looked at it, talked about it, looked at it some more. and then showed it to people.

 

first, he showed it to our neighbor and told her that because our fridge is broken, he was going to save his money and buy a new one. i didn't really pay attention to his commentary until he told us that he was going to clean the backyard and the house and help papi and mami so he could get money. and once he has the money, he's going to buy a new nevera (which he pronounce NAH-vare-Ah instead of NAY-VARE-AH) because he really likes to drink cold water.

 

and if the fridge is broken, he can't drink cold water!

it isn't even so much that he wants to buy the fridge that tugs at my heart strings. it's that somewhere along the line, he's picked up that he needs to work pretty hard to get things. and that money doesn't just show up. of course, he has no concept of who does the paying, and that us giving him money for working isn't really helping to pay for a new fridge. but, he's told us a few times that he needs to work really hard so that he can earn money to buy the fridge.

 

this morning, he helped me to wash down the back sidewalk and to collect all of the dirty clothes. he filled up the dominican-style washing machine (the one in the picture) and was even really nice to his sister. and he'll say "i've got a lot more to do if i'm going to get enough for the nevera."

 

he was even a little disappointed when i told him that the repair guys were coming this morning. until i told him that the "repair guys" are his "friends" amaury and danny (who were amalio's students the very first year he was a teacher at his current school EIGHT YEARS AGO!) and now he's really excited to "help the guys."

 

white like mike... or sammy.

i can get really passionate about a lot of things, so i have to keep myself in check. i tend to over-extend because i really believe in something, and then end up not being helpful at all. so, over the past few years, i've really just focused on education and pregnancy and kind of supported others in their crusades for things that i feel are pretty important.

 

i really admire people who work with young girls, and while i have a special spot in my heart for the ladies - i am one, afterall - i actually feel more drawn to causes for young men. it's no surprise for most that my favorite students are often the under-dog boys - kids who come from messed up families, kids who have had the deck stacked against them but who really do have the potential to be really awesome adults. i also think that if we raise up quality boys, we'll have quality men and that in itself will help with all of the "girl issues" (please, that is a huge generalization, and before you judge me for it... i understand that "girl issues" are far more complex to solve than to "fix" boys)

 

here in the dominican republic, it's fairly common to see girls being raised to be little homemakers. girls often drop out of school at 13 or 14 to "get married" and play house. boys, however, are brain-washed into the baseball dream. they are sent to practice everyday, even to the detriment of their schooling. a game? miss class. a special practice? miss class. a really good game on tv? miss class.

 

paperwork is forged and stolen to meet age requirements and thousands and thousands of pesos are spent to "meet scouts" and play "in the big leagues." you can only imagine the impact this has on the culture and what it does to those dominicans who have made it to the big leagues. it's a star status usually reserved for hollywood celebrities. take kobe bryant, michael jordan and shaq, roll them all up in one, and multiply their celebrity by one million.

 

and so while this is a pain in the butt, it's not really the point of this post. the point is that this celebrity is doing wild things here. take sammy sosa. he may be, besides a-rod, one of the most famous dominican ball players. his celebrity-power is insane. and he is black. which here is even more powerful. people still pray for "white" babies with blonde hair, even though the genetic possibilities in the dominican republic are less than ideal for "white" babies.

imagine how shocked we all were when sammy sosa went and did this.

 

a few years ago, sammy showed up to an awards show noticeably whiter. and unlike michael jackson who claimed skin disease, sosa admitted to surgically lightening his skin, presumably to be "more attractive."

and so this guy shows up all white and while everyone made fun of him outloud, i had tons of conversations with people who expressed the idea that if they had enough money, they would do it to. after all, isn't he handsome-r now, all white and cute?

i had never noticed it before, mostly because i don't care enough to spend tons of money on special soap.... or rather, i didn't until i started seeing wrinkles next to my eyes (real or not, people, that needs to stop). last week, in the supermarket, i headed to the crèmes and lotions aisles and much to my surprise, i found stack upon stack of whitening cream. no lie.
with names like "michelle marie - whitening cream for the day," "blancoderma (white-skin) with oatmeal, hydrating, regenerating cream AND skin lighten-er", "white magic, whitening cream."

it shouldn't be surprising, i know. but, for me it is. and sad. because us humans are just never happy. people with less pigment spend time in the sun to "get color" and people with color are trying to get rid of it. and so much money is spent trying to change who were are.

because someone has decided that white is beautiful. and then this famous guy buys in and whitens himself to the point of hilarity.... and we all think it's okay.

another hope.

in our section of the city, an area called cienfuegos, there are thousands of children who have never studied. some of it is parental irresponsibility, some of it is that teenagers drop out - but mostly, there just isn't enough space in the schools for the population.

as it stands, the classroom limit is 45 in elementary school and 60 in high school. because there are so few classrooms, classes are divided into three shifts - morning, 8-12:30; afternoon, 2-6 and evening 6:30-10. this scheduling is fairly common throughout latin america, but i'd bet that no other system allows for the amount of off days that are actually sanctioned here. teachers want a meeting? no school. the teachers savings and loan has a meeting? no school. teachers union has a meeting? no school. fancy government parade? no school. raining? no school. too hot? no school.

the new president made a lot of fancy promises - as politicians do - to change the school system. his first line of business was dedicating 4% of the GDP to education. check. with some of that money, he instated (through the board of ed.) budgets for schools to actually purchase the supplies they need like chalk and toilet paper. he ran into a fairly significant problem with teacher salaries - but for now, it's been taken care of.

but, his biggest promise was to construct school structures in the highest-populated areas to reduce the amount of children in the street. and to sweeten up that deal for working parents, he added that all schools would slowly phase into all-day schools. it seemed impossible. educators were skeptical - and they still are. where would the money come from to feed these kids? what about all of the extra materials they would need to enhance classes?

i was, and still am, a skeptic. for the past few months, the board of ed. has been fighting - literally - to get a school into our school's community. and while most people think we're nuts, we are some of the biggest supporters of the school. i'll spare you the (boring) details of a one-legged baseball coach asking for millions of pesos in recompense while he's been squatting on government land for years, collecting money from unsuspecting kids and their parents. (that'll be a post for another day).

after rumors and threats to take the project to another neighborhood, the bulldozers showed up on monday morning and started digging. it seems like we'll actually have a new neighbor come august. a new neighbor of the best and most hopeful kind - a school that will sit 800+ students from 8am-4pm. parents who work will no longer have to worry about what to do with their kids during work hours. teachers will be better compensated for their labors. and the community will grow and flourish.

because with education, everything is possible.

not sure.

but it's hard to top a witch story.


i'll be back soon!

that wicked witch again....

i'm not going to tell you all that the gossipy-gossips around these parts don't get annoying - they do. if you where a pink shirt and a yellow hair tie, people are talking about it. oh, what? she ate a carrot for snack? she is so obviously trying to get skinny to find a man. duh.

it gets old.

but man, this witch thing kills me. i'm not sure i'll ever get tired of it. you'll recall my first encounter with the local witch - where the neighbors assured me that she danced on their roofs at night. and then when we saw her day-dreaming, and she was definitely lejos, flying around in some sort of out-of-body experience.

just the other day, i was in the playground, probably avoiding any kind of real work, and a little girl came up to the gate and asked for our empty bottles. she and her mother troll the neighborhood, collecting plastics which they then sell forward to some of the recycling plants near the landfill. the pair stop by school at least once a week, and we usually have something to help them out with - especially since we've been getting juice in gallon-jugs lately. sometimes we have something, sometimes we don't.

that day, we didn't.

the girl walked away, kind of pouting. the mother then came to the gate and asked for the jugs. i informed her that we didn't have any - we are saving them for a gardening project with the students.

"but i see them over there! give them to me."
"lady, i just told you that are saving them for a project."
"but, there are a ton, you can give me half. i need them."
"yes, i understand, but we need them as well. if i give you these jugs, i'll have to buy something for our project and we prefer to recycle."
"this is how i make money."
"yeah, i get that. i just explained...."

and the conversation went on for a few minutes. me getting more and more exasperated and she looking for more reasons why i should just give her what i had. i think she thought that she was getting somewhere, but she wasn't. i was frustrated and ready to tell her that she wouldn't ever be able to get our plastics again if she didn't leave. as i turned to walk away, she "shhhhhhhh"ed me.

i turned to look, and she asked me if i knew luisa. luisa who lives in la bendicion, the neighborhood next to ours. i just looked at her. really? was this woman really invoking the witch?

"yes. i do. i know her well."
she looks at me, completely serious.

"you know that she eats babies, right?"

i'm not even going to lie. i laughed in her face. i did really well when i was first confronted with the witch - i think because i wasn't being told about her as a threat, but as like, a friendly aviso, notice, about the goings on in the community. but, i'm not really sure what plastic-jugs woman was trying to do - insinuate that she'd have her eat my babies, or just the babies in the community? or accepting her loss in the battle for the jugs, deciding to throw something so non-"christian" in my face? a last word of sorts?

i'm not sure.
but believe me, i got a good laugh out of it.