A Few Gripes

                This will likely be the first in a series of entries with this title. Never mind.

                Will someone please start a collection to help buy the colmado down the street a second CD? If I have to listen to this one for 5 weeks morning, noon and night (till midnight) I am either going to go nuts or learn all the words on the CD upon which time I will reflexively (and, yes, that is a play on the Spanish construction) inflict them on everyone around me. This puts those around me on notice. Though I have never been able to learn lyrics from any pop song—I am one of those people who, never having been taught the actual words to the Pledge of Allegiance and therefore still thinks it was written for some very important person in US history we don’t hear about in any other context named Richard Stand—I might just learn these. I’ve already pulled out “extrañar” and “corazon”  though it’s a very good bet that word first word which means “to miss” as in, “I miss you” and the second which means “heart” will be found somewhere in any pop song in Latin America. The other night I imagined accompanying harmonies for most of the songs I’ve been listening to. Now it’s time to move on. New music, please. Oo, I’m pretty sure I just heard “borracho”(drunk.)

                I’ve been listening to Dominican Republic music and eating D.R. food for three, going on four weeks and I am ready to offer an indicator of poverty. Keep in mind, this concept, poverty, is something that has been suggested to me and means, near as I can tell, “a lot less money than we have in the US.” It’s my bet that there is a lot more to poverty than that but that’s what we’ve been offered and left with. Given that we are in “development work,” I think this definition is insufficient and that leaving us with this to lead and inspire us for the next two years is perhaps irresponsible.

Clearly, BTW, it’s Sunday afternoon, our “day off,” and it’s been raining so I have time for reflection, that is, time to write.

Anyway, here it is: I think one poverty indicator just might be a lack of imagination as reflected in a lack of appreciation for/desire for variety. (Have I mentioned our collection to buy the colmado on the corner a second CD?) (Need I mention rice and habituelas…and r. and h. and r. and h. and…?) There’s nothing wrong with being easy going; that’s not what I am driving at. But it seems that places that one does not associate with the word, poverty, seem to have greater variety in food and music…architecture, too, and probably other aspects of everyday life I haven’t yet thought of. I’ve not been thinking about this for long. A friend of mine from Argentina said to me once that poverty was a state of mind rather than a lack of anything tangible.

We, my friends and myself, are still skidding across the hard surface of this culture. I have a feeling that this experience I have chosen to engage with Peace Corps is going to push me against these hard surfaces. I am not sinking in. Experts have been trying to define poverty so they can get under the corner of it and “do” something about it for a long time without success. We, here, will be implementing an approach to development—and I am working on a definition for that one, too, which, at the moment seems to be: to help others acquire the same stuff (roads, cars, desires, education, tastes, clothes, hair styles, electricity, health services and attitudes towards health and much more) we have in the US…clearly a definition I need to broaden—that we are being taught. It seems that a sound foundation of the underlying fundamentals as they are understood today and as under development as they, themselves, are, is not necessary for the troops implementing the techniques we’re being taught.

On the hike in the Cordierra Central

It was the lock that caught my eye

Micro Hydro: turns out this one is 18 kW

Close-up...but maybe I didn't have to say that...

Got the technology...in the tollota fields. These plants are a mat elevated 6' above the ground, the ground bare underneath with much and many chemicals applied...which washes into the streams when it rains...and which we bathe and swim in and often drink from.... Tollota: a tasteless, slippery and textureless fruit/vegetable used as food for some reason I haven't worked out that looks like something between a zuccini and a cucumber. Remind me to tell you about "vivires" sometime.

What exactly is poverty and what is development? When the US invaded the DR in 1916 (we have been taught a little DR history) the US did a number of things that are still considered good things to have such as building three good roads here. Apparently, US businesses benefited from the US presence and that that was intended. Given where the DR is now, on the verge of a collapse brought about by reaching the ends of its ability to feed a population that is about to explode (over 40% of Dominicans are under 18 years of age) one might look back and think what might have been done toward a better result. I am not the person to imagine what that might have been but I think it was there in the same sense as the notice that the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago, the next best time being now.

3/28/11

Another gripe:

My body is letting me down. I’ll have to find a way to work around it. I went for my first hike yesterday. The distance is in question. Either 10 km each way or 15 km. One on-line guide has it as 15 miles making my walk 30 miles. That’s unlikely, but 30 km is a possibility and another guide pegs it at just that. I’d think the first one just got the units wrong. The road is rough and my bad ankle (tobillo) played up. I could hardly walk today and it’s not that much better this evening. I am o.d.-ing on aspirin and hoping for the best.  Don’t want to miss anything in the training and there’s a lot of walking on rough roads. Part of the reason I went for such a long walk is that JoAnne had told me by phone that a friend killed himself last week…just a few days ago, it seems. He has suffered from depression. I’d known that. There was nothing I could have said to him to effect what he did about his problem. Perhaps I’ll learn more shortly…e-mail from Jo when she learns more.

But it’s hard being here and having any perspective on either what  am doing here, the DR itself, and/or anything that’s going on at home. I am adrift here. I’ve decided to float along making no assessments or judgments. One simply can’t. I haven’t enough information to do so and may never have. I can observe. Emily asked if I’d taken the MBTI and said she was a “perceiver.” So am I. She said she’d have bet that I was. We don’t judge quickly. We absorb information. We always have the feeling that we don’t have a critical piece of information needed to make a decision or judgment about a situation. We’d leave peoples alone rather than stick our big feet in. Who do we think we are, anyway, marching around thinking we have answers to others’ issues. It’s infuriating. And our group seems to have more than a share of knee-jerk do-ers. I see little desire to think things through. These guys are soldiers…of God, of the Peace Corps, of a military…whatever. They have some preconceived ideas and, otherwise, just want to be pointed in a direction and have their “on” buttons pressed. I’ve seen them before. It’s the “green is good” set. The “liberals are right, conservatives are wrong” set. Yesterday I was stopped by a Jehova’s Witness. He said, “You believe the Bible is right, don’t you?” with his neat shirt and tie on, hair combed, teeth brushed, shoes polished. Another soldier marching righteously (mindlessly, I think) beneath his banner. My family here went to church, Catholic Church, yesterday. It is expected that I might go, too. But we’re allowed an out…that we are of another faith. Fortunately these exist here. I declared myself a Quaker (I’ve been meaning to go to Quaker meeting for years) and, now, have invited myself into their camp. I’ll go if there’s a chance…but fat chance, I think. I think I’m safe for a while…at least until I get back to the States. So, and true enough, I worship by getting out into nature…my hike into the hills. I didn’t lie. I need the quiet. The last time I did a hike like that, among a simpler people (or so it appears from my remove) and in that shimmering heat at a higher altitude and in the sub-tropics, was in Bolivia. I remembered it like it was last week, all the smells and sounds and the way the earth looks (red) and smells (red.)