Laughter is just one of the best medicines

March was one of the most physically and emotionally intense months of my service in the DR, and it funneled me into the end of my service, which funneled me into readjusting to life in the United States...which is why my blog has been so lame…

So in March, I spent the most time away from my casita, I painted murals, was given medical clearance to finalize my service and I started to decide what I really want to be when I grow up.

Each year, many American medical professionals go to the DR to do weeklong medical missions for underserved rural populations. For many of the Dominicans, it is the only time they see a doctor in their lives, or at the very least in a year. For others, it is just a routine check up from the hands of God. Many of the doctors and nurses that participate are among the best in the world at what they do, and they pay for their airfare, lodging and equipment from their own pockets. Medical professionals from all disciplines participate and the miraculous work that they do ranges from basic health checks to reconstructing the faces of young women burned with acid.

In March I had the opportunity to interpret for a team of these wonderfully talented and generous people. For a week, I helped a team of New York City ophthalmologists improve the vision of more than 1,000 patients through vision testing, glasses, and surgery. It was absolutely astounding to see their care and passion converted into about 90 surgeries a day. My role was to interpret, but as I became emotionally involved I began greeting patients, listening to their stories, learning about medical care and procedures, emotionally supporting families through surgery, and coaching patients' recovery long after the doctors had gone home (I had a local cell phone number). I made many friends on both sides of the stethoscope. Below are some of the lives that were changed because of the generous work of Volunteer Health Program.
Patients came at six in the morning and waited all day in the heat for the chance to be seen. Many were scheduled for surgery in the following days. However, priority had to be given to those with the greatest need and many will have to wait until next March to be seen again.
My tocaya - namesake - and I had a special bond, as she returned throughout the week for consultation, surgery and post operational check up. This is a post operation picture of her with her new left (prosthetic) eye.
With brand new plastic toys laying around, these children didn't even notice they were in scrubs, prepared for surgery that would straighten their eyes, and their vision.
These four young people could not wait to put in their new prosthetic eyes after surgery, but I had to first explain to them how to care for and remove it when necessary.
This strong and intelligent young women is just four years older than I am. She has two adolescent children and a wonderfully supportive husband. The removal of a brain tumor (by her previous doctor) damaged some of the nerves around her eye, so the priority now is raising her eye and eyelid to a normal height. We became friends throughout the week and I stayed late by her bedside after her surgery.

Marine love in Monte Cristi

I have learned a little more of what it must be like to be a mother. The feeling of your heart dropping into your shoes when a child is missing and nearly swelling out of your chest with pride is his intelligence and talent.
For the third time in my service I took two of my boys, hours from home, to enjoy a weekend of workshops, discussions, and games with other young men and women. But this time it also included camping and snorkeling in one of the most beautiful places in this country.
My boys had never seen the inside of goggles, the animal that lives in a conch shell or a lobster in it’s habitat. Before the conference they couldn’t tell you what sea grass is, why it’s important, or how the people living all the way up in the mountains affect it. They didn’t know that coral reefs make and protect sandy beaches. They had never slept in a tent, learned on a beach or wore their bathing suits to class. No one had ever told them not to throw their trash on the ground.

Eighteen Peace Corps Volunteers changed all of that.

We taught them about rivers, coral reefs, sea grass, plate tectonics, threats to the DR’s natural environment, and inter tidal pools. We also taught them that they are smart, there are cool people with Bachelor’s degrees and that real women don’t want to marry chauvinists.
As Peace Corps Volunteers we cannot escape working with youth. They are our first friends, the ones that invite us into the community, and teach us a new language. They are the future of whatever cultural change we are hoping to impact in our two years of service. We have a 24-hour job as mentors and as the only Americans most of them will ever know. Like everyone in the United States, we make a huge impact whether we’re trying to or not.
On the final night of the conference, we took the 26 youth and set them on driftwood logs two meters from the high tide. By firelight, and above the roar of the surf, we reviewed all we had taught them with a rousing game of marine ecosystem jeopardy. The salty mist was at their faces, but we were the ones blown away…
Time after time they stood up to give detailed answers to questions we had asked blank faces three days before. The older of the two boys I had brought to the conference has never done well in school, and as I watched him carry on about the intricate relationships between us, rivers and oceans, my heart felt as if it might leave my chest.
Later, in a quiet moment, he asked me how long I would be in the United States for during my vacation in May and when the color left his face at my answer it was all I could do not to cry.

He slept on my shoulder all the way home.

After the earthquake

In 2005, Peace Corps headquarters in Washington, DC. determined that the political and social unrest in Haiti was making it unsafe for the Peace Corps Volunteers then residing there. After spending two years under the mother-hen-like care of the PC Dominican Republic administration and medical care staff, I trust that headquarters will take its careful time in deciding when and if volunteers can assist Haiti again in the near future. For now, some of us are helping Haitians through organizations, communities and people on this side of the border.
In the two months following the earthquake, many of my colleagues who had learned some Creole went to translate and organize at a Dominican clinic overflowing with Haitian refugees. Their stories are powerful and hard to listen to. Nearly all of them describe walking through the crowds of people sitting on the ground outside the clinic, doctors and organizers looking out for the people who were most in need of care. Patients with compound fractures were taken first, and for fear of the infections that would inevitably take their lives, were ordered amputations without the luxury of further consideration.

As I typically don’t go a day without hearing a racist comment, I was surprised that my community’s initial reaction to the earthquake was a unanimous outreach to their Haitian ‘brothers and sisters.’ In the days following the quake I was instructed to go across the border and pick up some orphans for them to raise as their own. One woman had recently received a huge box of clothing from the United States to sell, but instead she decided to donate it to the Haitians and so I took it to Santiago for her.

Now, although they are sympathetic still, my family is tired of hearing news about Haiti and is wondering what they did with all of the aid that has been sent there. They didn’t understand the severity of the previous economic situation and cannot comprehend the resulting hardship the earthquake has caused. Facing increasing pressure from citizens, the Dominican government soon had to send all Haitians patients at the border clinic back into Haiti, healthy or not. And this from the country who, a couple weeks before, was boasting that it provided the first aid into Haiti…well I hope so, we do share an island!

Papa

With grandsons, waiting roadside to sell his peas.

Juan Rafael is in his eighties. When Trujillo was President, he marched 20 kilometers every morning before breakfast so he wouldn’t be executed. He remembers when the highway was just a mule trail and when plastic bags didn’t exist. He made it through the 3rd grade, never learning how to read, before he began working the field.

When he walks into the room he is given the respect that all elders here deserve, “Blessings, Papa.” In return he asks God to bless us and, like his wife, has prayed the rosary every single evening of his life. He is half blind now, without the money to operate on the cataracts that whitens his right eye, but that doesn’t stop him from beating me at dominoes every afternoon.

As I am sitting here typing, Papa is sitting at my side, looking out at the land he has worked his entire life. Every once in a while he glances in my direction, examining my shiny silver laptop and matching external hard drive.

P: What’s that light? The battery?
D: Yes.
P: So if you shut it, it turns off?
D: Yep. Like this. (demonstration)
P: How many batteries does that thing take?
D: Just one. It recharges with the light (the word commonly used for electricity).
P: Wow.

This Marines hat is his work hat. His dress cap is a Yankees one.

Hispanola (January guests)

Part 1: Adventure Getting There
“It’s the middle of the night, we are in a foreign country, we don’t speak the language, we are in the wrong city, we don’t have our luggage and I’m exhilarated” is what I said to Anna on the first night of our vacation. It didn’t take much convincing to get us on a plane out of the snowy Midwest to a tropical paradise in January. Take your pick: Anna and I had been looking forward to taking a trip to visit my old pal Danielle and see the great work she is doing with the Peace Corps, so we booked some tickets and made a plan. As it turns out, things aren’t as simple as hopping on a plane and finding yourself in a subtropical paradise, but I wasn’t about to let anything ruin my vacation, not: airline delays, missed connections, lost luggage, earthquakes, motorcycle accidents, or even manslaughter charges or kidnappings (Anna’s clarification: The Dominican Republic is actually quite safe, and we are not, nor have we ever been, accused of either of the latter two examples). No, a kidnapping is really just an opportunity meet new friends. We had intended to fly into Santiago, but ended up flying into Santo Domingo, instead. But, we thought, no big deal, we’d spend a night in a hotel in Santo Domingo, rent a car and a GPS and point it toward San Jose de las Matas, where we thought Danielle lived. We didn’t know exactly how to contact her—so far phone and email weren’t doing the trick—so we printed off a brochure of the cabana we had rented, and a picture of Danielle, figuring we would ask around (you know, using those language skills I never got around to learning) and that we would find her in no time.

The trip to San Jose de las Matas required us to drive from Santo Domingo to Santiago (about 90 miles) and then head into the countryside from there. The road to Santiago is a divided highway that appears pretty similar to a freeway in its construction, but is different in use. Many people have small motorcycles (roughly 100cc), and they are everywhere—including going the wrong way down the right-hand shoulder of the freeway. There are guaguas, usually minivans, that shuttle between two cities without set schedules or stops, and because of this there are a lot of pedestrians on the highway; when someone wants to get off they just yell. When they are en route they often have the side door open with a guy hanging out yelling to pedestrians, carnival-barker style, to inform them of their destination, should they want a ride. In addition to the pedestrians and motorcycles, the roadside and shoulder are an ever-changing scene of grazing horses and donkeys tied to trees and vendors selling everything from roadside open-pit cooking, to hand-made hooked rugs and massive sweet potatoes. And yes, those are two guys riding on the back of a flatbed truck—on the freeway!I have been an avid reader of Danielle’s blog for her entire Peace Corps assignment, so I knew that the town Danielle lives in is a very small one, where many people are related to one another, and most certainly know each other. When we got to San Jose de las Matas, we could see in the post-dusk “golden hour” that this town was slightly larger than the home base Danielle had described in her blog, so after driving around a little bit we decided to stop at a small bar and inquire. After some very rudimentary Spanish on Anna’s part—enough to establish that none of us were truly bilingual—the proprietor motioned for us to follow her. She picked up her toddling son, stood him in front of her on the running board of her motor scooter and took off, with us in hot pursuit. This unbelievably helpful woman paused to ask directions from some of the many people hanging out on their front porches enjoying the comfortable evening air, and eventually led us to the home of the landlord of the rental house. She knocked on the door and explained to the woman who answered that there were a couple of lost Americanos looking for her rental house. The Doña got her cell phone and called Danielle, and in a few short moments handed the phone to me, whereupon I heard “Nathan, I’m so glad you are alive. Now I’m going to kill you.” Danielle spoke with the Doña and asked her to call a taxi and explain to the taxi driver how to get to the cabana. The taxi soon arrived, and we followed it to the cabana. I had read on Danielle’s blog shortly before our trip that her road was “impassable” so we had opted for the midsize rental car, and we were really happy to have it when we went to Danielle’s village and found that it was riddled not only with potholes, but also the occasional mudpit capable of drowning a woolly mammoth.

Part 2: El campo
We spent two nights in a beautiful cabana in the lush countryside. There is a broad divide between rich and poor in the Dominican Republic. In Santo Domingo there had been signs of affluence, including a Mercedes-Benz dealership, high-end boutiques and various other trappings of wealth. In the countryside, a wealthy person lives like your average middle-class person in the States (newer SUV, 3-bedroom home with 24-hour electricity, glass windows, etc.) and the poor live a strange mix of current technology and old-world subsistence agriculture. Having money, we had the privilege of living like wealthy Dominicans. Here you see the view of the patio, pool and sitting area.
Anna and I, Danielle and her host brother, spent time at the cabana chilling out, telling tall tales, cooking Dominican-style oatmeal and Danielle’s fantastic stir-fry, and generally having an awesome time.
Danielle lives more like a poor Dominican, without an inverter/car battery system—which would provide consistent electricity—and with metal louver frame windows instead of glass. Danielle’s cinder block dwelling is situated at the top of a hill and fairly close to the road (I guess you could call it a road). The view is amazing, and we have a camera with a panoramic function.
We spent some time hanging out in San Jose de las Matas, (nickname: Sajoma) where we visited an art studio and checked out some very cool original art and high-design coffee tables. We also ran some errands like food shopping and using the ATM. We had planned to buy some clothing in Sajoma, as our luggage had been lost and we had been wearing the same clothing for days at this point—some of it still damp from earlier attempts at hand-washing. When Danielle’s cell phone rang and the person on the other end said something to the effect of, “We have luggage for Mista Bragg, Americano, where are you?” we could hardly believe it. Moments later, two airline employees in a van arrived at the corner and, after a quick ID check, we had our luggage back. We had honestly thought it was gone forever, and I was just hoping that whatever airline executive was wearing my bathing suit was doing it justice. Upon closer inspection, it turns out our bags were just missing in action.
While in Sajoma, Danielle and Anna enjoyed some of the economic advantages of coming from a wealthy country and got their hair washed and dried for a mere pittance. The economic disparities are striking, and this trip has caused me to think a great deal about capitalism. Many things are really cheap in the Dominican Republic; even hard goods that are not so dependent on labor, like wood clothing hangers, for instance, are a lot cheaper than any price that we have been able to find in the states. Yes, we have shopped around for wood hanger prices. This has led me to believe that the free market only “works” when it is making someone money—and with money comes power, and with power comes more money. The hangers are cheaper in the D.R. because no one would be able to afford them or buy them if they cost what they do in the U.S. The means of production controls the price, and rather than selling at prices consistent with the costs of production, they are selling at “market price” which, as near as I can tell, is an arbitrary amount. This supports my belief that the free market should be constrained in the interest of the public. The D.R. is an example of capitalism in Latin America. The D.R. was never under a socialist regime, due to the various interventions of the U.S. and the personality cult regime of the former dictator, Trujillo, who ruled from 1931 to 1961. In some cases, the invisible hand of capitalism works—for example, of all things: food safety. Bottled water appears to be safe to drink, even though it is oftentimes produced by a Dominican bottler and most tap water in the D.R. is not potable. Government regulations appear to be nonexistent or irrelevant for many things—including stopping at red lights—and I don’t think that bottled water is regulated for safety; nonetheless, the water is safe without regulations. As near as I can tell, when a company sells bad water word gets around and they are put out of business. Take note TARP recipients, this is how capitalism is supposed to work; when someone F’s up, they go belly up (I’m talking about you, Bank of America, AIG Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan Chase). At the same time, the free market in the D.R. fails horribly at providing passable roads, real opportunities for the people to change their economic status, and reliable electric power. But, I digress; this is supposed to be about my vacation, not my political rant. (Joanna’s interjection: This is where Nathan normally segues into a discussion of R-value legislation.)
The weather was warm, and we had a little rain. We didn’t mind the rain so much, except when it kept Nathan from going to 27 Waterfalls to go canyoning, which is jumping off a waterfall with a life jacket and helmet. The weather was wonderful, and very mild, despite Danielle’s insistence that it was “cold and rainy.” It was a balmy 68 degrees most of the time, but I guess comfort is relative, depending on what you are used to. A lot of cool things grow in the D.R. that we don’t have in the Midwest: palm trees, coconut trees, bananas, sugar cane and coffee.
I am reminded that a sub-tropical paradise isn’t always a paradise without safe drinking water and hot water, but still, can you say “all-you-can-eat banana buffet”?
La Bandera translates to “the flag,” and is what they call the national dish that every Dominican who is able to eat lunch eats for lunch. It typically includes rice, beans, chicken, casabe (a flatbread made from yuca root—commonly known in the States as cassava, and not to be confused with yucca), salad (shredded cabbage, head lettuce and green tomatoes) and anything else that they wish to add in, such as seasonal fruits like mangos or avocados. We ate lunch one day at Danielle’s host family’s house. Danielle explained to us that the embellished version of La Bandera that we were served was akin to their Christmas dinner. Potato salad is a special treat and this was served to us because we were guests. The orange juice was quite good, however somewhat different from what I am accustomed to; with the pulp strained out, and not made from concentrate, it tastes much more complex—like it was made from actual oranges. There were actually two serving bowls of rice on the table: one was white rice prepared as you would expect, and the other, smaller bowl was concón, the slightly-burnt, crunchy rice left at the bottom of the pan after cooking, which is really good, especially when mixed with the saucy beans. We had recently watched the documentary Food, Inc. —which is a fascinating movie, you should rent it—and have since given a lot more thought to the origins of our food. The chicken we were served came from actual free-range—not “free-range” —birds, and much more closely resembled what chickens naturally grow to look like, rather than the scientifically-grown breasts with incidental beaks and claws that we are served in the U.S.

Part 3: An earthquake felt as far as Santiago After our time spent in the cabana, we went to Santiago, the second largest city in the D.R. with a population of 1.3 million people. We drove to Santiago in our rental car, and driving in the D.R., particularly the big city, is quite an experience. In the countryside, the speed limits and red lights are, for all intents and purposes, meaningless. In Santiago, the rule of law appears to be slightly more meaningful, however the volume of cars and small motorcycles combined with narrow streets makes for insanity. There is a language of car horns that has developed, which is quite interesting: one beep means “I’m about to do something crazy” or “don’t hit me,” two beeps mean “look out” or “I’m about to merge—you had better yield.”
We went into a souvenir bazaar in Santiago to buy some things, and to find out what it feels like when you are the gazelle who trips, and is then surrounded by lions. I was bent down looking at something when Danielle said, “I think that was an earthquake,” and then I noticed an aftershock. Anna noticed nothing, working as she does in a turn-of-the-century building that reverberates with every loading dock delivery. There was a little commotion, with people shouting and being generally excited, but otherwise our vacation plans were uninterrupted. As you can see, the building we were in appears to be open-span construction. Without an engineering degree I am not really qualified to guess whether or not this building would have withstood a magnitude 7 earthquake—but this is the internet, so credentials are meaningless, and I’m guessing that my life would have been much different had the epicenter been 130 miles northeast. It got me to thinking about how precious life is. I have also been reflecting on what my life is and how it has changed. I left a pressure-cooker of a job a year ago, and I guess this trip was partly to celebrate the anniversary of having my life back. I’m feeling very lucky that I have been able to live a life every day that is fulfilling and enjoyable, because before you know it, it could all be gone.
We visited the Monument to the Heroes of the Restoration, which was originally constructed by the dictator Trujillo in the 1940s as a monument to himself (Freud would have so much to say about this); because of it’s placement and size, it told residents “I’m watching you.” The name was changed following the assassination of Trujillo, orchestrated by the CIA (the Agency’s level of involvement varies, depending on the source) in 1961, and subsequent end of his regime.

We stayed at an awesome place in Santiago, called the Camp David Ranch Hotel. The exact history is somewhat unclear, but it is generally understood that it is in some way associated with Trujillo. One guidebook claimed that Camp David was Trujillo’s mountain palace, but a member of the staff told us that it had belonged to a friend of the Trujillo family. In any event, they have a bunch of his old cars there, including the one in which he was assassinated. I have decided that we stayed in Trujillo’s bed. Anna thinks that’s kind of morbid.
Camp David also has a gourmet restaurant and, at 2500 feet above sea level, an amazing view of all of Santiago. We gorged ourselves on amazing food, and found out a little more about the name “Camp David.” It turns out that when the current owners bought the property they named it for their son, David, who we think was our waiter—he had a proprietary air about him.

Part 3: Fun and sun on the sand
For the final third of our trip, we drove to Cabarete, said so long to our rental car, and gave ourselves over to the beach. We chilled out, walked on the beach, ate good seafood and generally enjoyed the coastal subtropical paradise. We read, sea-kayaked, cooked and politely turned down sales of: seashells, pirated DVDs, shoe-shines (ostensibly for our suede Merrells) and more motorcycle taxis than you can shake a stick at. We thoroughly enjoyed our time on the beach for several days until we had to fly out. I’m not sure how to sum up the experiences we had in the D.R., and passing judgment on an entire country is all but impossible, not to mention presumptuous, so I will leave you with a list of things we are grateful for:

• Clean drinking water
• Three meals a day and good nutrition
• A roof over our heads
• Functioning government (all jokes aside)
• Twenty-four-hour-a-day electricity
• Hot water/indoor plumbing/washer and dryer
• The opportunities to be educated, work, eat and live a comfortable life available to us as Americans
• Reliably passable roads
• Animal welfare (Did we mention the entire island is filled with roaming feral dogs?)
• The privilege of international travel
• Planning for our next trip to the D.R.
  

A February Morning?

I woke to the sound of the waves crashing against the shore today. Our hotel is an aging oasis teetering out over the ocean on a foundation of ancient coral. This morning I feasted on melon, papaya and pineapple, stretched, and submitted what I will hope will be my last graduate school application. My Dominican life will soon come to a screeching halt (3 months left!) so I am trying to take advantage...but I find that I just want to be in the mountains with my friends and 'family.'

Back to Nueva York?!?

Tuesday February 2nd

9am I take my dog to her babysitter where a papaya milkshake and fresh squeezed orange juice are waiting for me.

Around 11am I leave my house knowing that I will arrive at the airport just an hour before my international flight…or rather, I suppose, because I’m so Dominican I don’t actually know what time it is. I even stop to take out money and buy souvenirs for my hosts.

12pm The Dominican official gives me the incorrect customs form, again! And I have to teach her to read (my green card) in order to understand that although I am white, I am indeed a resident of the Dominican Republic.

1230pm I pass the last security gate and get to the top of the escalator just in time to here the guard say, “Inform all of the passengers downstairs that we will be taking off. We can’t wait any longer.” I made it!

430pm We touch down at JFK International, NYC and a U.S customs official tries to get a young American man into the “Visitors” line. Note: As not all white people in the DR are tourists, not all young men in sideways caps and baggy pants were born south of the border… And on that same note, not all Latinos in the U.S. are Mexican.

530pm Leaving the wintery chill in my dust I am picked up at the airport by one of my fellow PC volunteers, home on leave. He takes me to his sister’s toasty little apartment in Harlem where I exclaim, “So where’s this cold weather you guys have been belly-aching about?!?” What would seemed like a cramped dwelling in a compound of old housing projects to anyone else, is a welcoming oasis to me. The apartment has books, Internet, heat and hot water! And it’s ant, cat and rat free! They fed me delicious Indian food, we watched an urban education documentary and I slept like I hadn’t in weeks.

Wednesday 3

The morning I spend preparing for my interview and planning my strategy for the subway system. Mission impossible is to find something to wear for my interview on Friday. I see Times Square, Grand Central Station, a ton of new clothes, an Egyptian temple (the Metropolitan Museum of Art), and walk half the length of Central Park before taking a train back to Harlem. My hosts are already cooking dinner (even though I had planned to take them out), which we inhale while watching an old Jacques Cousteau documentary on the Nile. Then they refuse to let me wash the dishes. I cannot believe this.

Thursday 4

I have a sort of relaxed morning, though I begin to get nervous about my interview the following day. At 10am I take a train to New Haven. Bopping up and down the east coast is so easy…why can’t we get our shit together in the Midwest!?! (That’s a rhetorical question.)

After walking a mile or so, I find the apartment of some peace corps friends of mine. She opens the door and I am instantly awestruck by the 11th floor view of Yale’s campus and downtown New Haven. I cannot believe my luck.

The take me to an amazing vegetarian dinner party and I meet lots of New Haven nurses- and engineers-to-be.

Friday 5

Tours, interviews, cucumber infused cocktails and quesadillas. Perfect.

I come home to tired friends who have been working hard all day at saving the world one patient at a time…so I make them granola for the morning and we all go to sleep.

Saturday 6

We eat the homemade almond milk and granola and then my super friends are off again! The world needs more people who get up on Saturday mornings to translate at the free clinic!

I take one of my last hot showers, a final look at the view and I head out to have tea and bagels with a friend. Train back to NYC, subway to Harlem. Its too cold outside…I’m not moving until I have to catch my plane back to the subtropics tomorrow.

My host makes me another excellent meal and I have to insist on doing the dishes. I learn to use HopStop.com to plan my public transportation route to the airport. I never want to live in NYC but its cool to know how!

Earthquake in Haiti

It was the first time I had ever felt an earthquake. It was felt as far East as Nagua, Dominican Republic. But we are safe and there was no damage here.

I have friends visiting and we were inside a large market plaza in Santiago. I was looking at a wall of souvenirs and it moved away from me, but I didn’t realize what was happening until I heard the men outside the store yelling, “The earth is trembling, the earth is trembling!” I still can't believe what some Haitian communities were going through at that same moment. I was in the middle of a giant old building. I certainly would have been trapped inside had the earthquake hit Santiago instead.

If you want to help I would recommend the Red Cross but if you prefer to send your money with a certain motive I will deliver it personally to Port au Prince in May when I am no longer serving in the Peace Corps.

Welcome 2010!

Happy New Year! As I will complete my Peace Corps service in May, the last few months of my life have been sacrificed to graduate school applications and the struggle that goes along with trying to research, communicate, complete, and send important documents without reliable Internet, phone or transportation. While I will bring that struggle into 2010, I will approach it with more tenacity! I am excited to spend time reflecting on this experience and also to begin something new. I am already though, feeling the painful loss that my move will bring to me and my friends here.

I was incredibly fortunate to have welcomed so many friends and couchsurfers into my home in 2009, to learn about Dominican culture and to teach me about being a hostess - mainly how incredibly rewarding and exhausting of an experience it is. This is also an awesome challenge I will bring into this year!

This new year has brought nothing but rain and cold to my corner of the Dominican Republic. Our dirt road is nearly impassable, but with a new baby to snuggle who could attest to a day spent indoors? And the entire day must be spent indoors because according to traditional Dominican wisdom no one that has been in the rain or cold can touch the baby. To stop his hiccups they pull a string off of his clothes and spit-paste it to his forehead!

My new 'nephew' Hendryk

The Moons’ Dominican Adventure

Thanksgiving Week 2009 - Before Danielle left for the PeaceCorps we promised that we would come to visit her while she was gone. Shortly after she left I became pregnant with our first child. This would have made some people cancel, but not us. We are adventurous people, we like to travel and see the world. We like to experience life directly rather than sit on the sidelines watching it go by. Having a child doesn’t have to change that right? We don’t think so…

As we slept in our cabana the sound of the roosters began at about 3:30am, calling out the approaching morning. Brian has a habit of waking up with the sun and making coffee. As he goes outside to explore our gorgeous surroundings, Carter and I like to have breakfast and take things slow. Suddenly Brian yells excitedly from the garden below. He has rescued a tarantula from the swimming pool and wanted to show off his prize. I was not nearly as excited about the find.

In the mid morning Rafael (Danielle’s Papi) came to pick us up to take us all to his family’s Sunday lunch. We stopped at Danielle’s casita, to see her modest accommodations and then took the very steep, very bumpy walk down the hill to the family’s house. We walked past Rafael and Teresa’s house on down to her parent’s place where all of the family was gathering. It was filled with people. The grandparents were sitting our front porch enjoying a game of dominoes, the teens were all huddled on the couch watching TV while they had electricity and the women were all busy in the kitchen. When we arrived we were warmly greeting by everyone and Carter was immediately swept away. She went bouncing along from one person to the next, loving every minute of it.We had an amazing lunch with fresh green salad, rice, beans, bananas, avocados and just killed in our honor; guinea fowl.

Around 1pm Carter is used to going to down for an afternoon nap. She is a very happy and laid back baby, but when she gets over tired, things get ugly quickly. Right around lunch time she began to get fussy. Danielle set up a stroller in a bedroom and I went to lay her down. All of the women of the house did not understand how I could do such a thing. “She’s awake, I’ll hold her” they would say. I tried to explain that she does much better if she is allowed to sleep on her own but they disagreed. For the next hour, there was a parade of people going to check on my fussy baby. She was too distracted and entertained to think about sleep, too tired to maintain her happy disposition any longer. We needed to escape somehow.

Danielle had planned on taking us on a hike to the local swimming hole after lunch so we decided, now was the time. I knew that once Carter was in the baby carrier and away from all this activity she would sleep so we had to go. We set off into the woods; two Dominicans, 4 Americans and a sleepy Carter. All of the women at the house thought we were crazy…”don’t take the baby into the forest, leave her with us.”

Just as I predicted, Carter fell asleep in the carrier on my chest almost immediately. Which posed quite a challenge when we came across our first of 7 barbed wire fences that we would cross on our hike. With everyone’s help, I was able to safely scamper over and under each of the fences and Carter never stirred. We climbed up and down the riverbank, walking on rocks and ducking under branches. We’re not crazy, just adventurous.


After about 45 minutes, we had arrived. Joel immediately stripped down to his swimming trunks, climbed up a tree and prepared to jump off of a branch. Everyone else entered the water from a more logical location, jumping off a large rock. Carter was still asleep so we sat down to watch. I kept her covered with a shirt because Danielle mentioned that there were biting magis. I learned later that I should have been more worried about myself. I ended up with more than 50 bites on my lower legs and upper arms and Carter had 2. Luckily I squeezed each of them as I was instructed to get the poison out and they never bothered me, only in appearance. Carter did wake up and I was able to swim too, before we started our hike back.


Since we had already had the adventure through the woods, we decided to take a slightly longer route home that was out on the road. There was just enough cloud cover that it wasn’t too hot. The road was pretty quiet, just an occasional motorcycle to kick up some dust. As we were walking along, Brian noticed a large bull that was on our side of the barbed wire fence. Unfortunately, Lucy didn’t see it and got close enough to startle the bull. Lucky for us we had Shanti, Danielle’s dog with us to chase the bull away before we could get into too much trouble.

As we got closer to town, the traffic picked up and we began to see more and more people along the side if the road; socializing, sitting in front of little stores and just relaxing on a Sunday afternoon. Then up ahead we heard a lot of commotion and saw that there was a group a Haitians fighting and armed with sticks. We stopped at a safe distance and waited for the situation to disperse before we moved on to our destination.
When we finally arrived at Danielle’s Casita we visited with her housemates and waited for Rafael. We returned to our little cabana to make dinner and relax, looking out over the mountains with the beautiful blue sky and a yard full of flowers in full bloom. And that was just day one.

We had an absolutely amazing time. At 10 months old, with her big blue eyes, blonde hair and fair skin, Carter was adored everywhere we went. She didn’t mind all of the attention one bit. She started crawling for the first time in the cabana. Her first real word was established while we were there also. She said “Hi!” to every new person we encountered, often 4-5 times in a row. When we were leaving she squeaked out “Hasta Luego!” Well..…….Maybe we just imagined that part.