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April 26, 2006
A young man reached the end of his first three months in the Dominican Republic and looked back on the trail of footprints he had left in the sand during this time.
The young man turned to God, quite puzzled, and said, "Lord, for most of these three months I see two sets of footprints. I understand the second set of footprints are yours, and I thank you for being with me during this time.
"But," he said, pausing, "there's one stretch where all of the footprints disappear. I don't understand, Lord! What happened?"
"Son," God said, "that was when I took off my shoes, rolled up my pantlegs, and carried you across a small stream."
This might be God, I'm not sure. His other name is Fran, and he's from San Cristóbal, southwest of Santo Domingo. A group of us from the capital went to participate in a fiesta de palos, a gathering of sorts with lots of drumming, singing and eating. This particular fiesta was held to mark the one year anniversary of the death of a respected woman in the community.
Fran took us capitaleños around for a tour of the area. That's where we encountered the above small stream. Here are some more fabulous fun photos of the trip.
April 13, 2006
Sometimes you don't notice cultural differences in a new place until you get a little jolt of US culture to wake you up. Case in point: the home visit.
Visiting friends or neighbors in the DR is at once a common occurance and a grand production. First of all, you don't have to call -- you just show up. There are the hugs and kisses and greetings by everybody to everybody else.
There's the gentle order to have a seat, the scurrying in the kitchen to put some coffee on, the slipping out the back door to buy Cokes down the street, or at least the serving of glasses of cold water, coasters, and napkins. (It's never been clear to me what the napkin is for if I'm just drinking water.) If it's close to mealtime, there's more scurrying in the kitchen to prepare extra rice, plantains or salad. It's assumed you'll stay to eat.
The guests' primary responsibility during this operation is to sit and be served. Secondary responsibilities are to compliment the cleanliness of the house, the deliciousness of the coffee, and the infinite beauty of the hostess's haircut, skirt, and/or children.
The guests should have at the ready a subsequent commitment -- legitimate or fabricated -- for which it would be acceptable to leave, because another one of the hostess's responsibilities is to tell the guests to stay longer no matter how long they've been there. All in all, a sometimes delicate but exceptionally pleasant occasion.
With that in mind, cue visit to home of North American acquaintances living in Santo Domingo. Anne, my housemate, had a package to pick up there, so we called and then went over.
The gate was locked, so we hollered for awhile until our friend came out to open it. Friendly hellos were exchanged, but there was no bodily touching.
Anne and I stood in the doorway chatting amiably with our hostess, all the while really wanting some water after a long trek across the city. We were, however, thwarted by a human blockade there at the front door. It was clear that there would be no beverage drinking on our part or scurrying in the kitchen on their part.
So after Anne got her package and we gossiped about some people we knew in common, we were shown back to the gate, hugged this time, and cheerfully invited to enjoy our evening.
By all accounts, Visit Number 2 was a much more efficient transaction. We got what we wanted (Anne's package), and our friends got what they wanted (to be rid of Anne's package). An equal exchange of goods and services enacted by two equal and independent entities. Adam Smith would have been proud.
At this point it would be easy to make value judgments about Dominican Culture vs. US Culture. For example, you're probably thinking, "No wonder the Dominican Republic hasn't moved into the ranks of the developed nations. They're all sitting around drinking coffee with the neighbors instead of working to increase their Gross Domestic Product."
Or maybe you weren't thinking that. Either way, I'll leave it at that.
Next time on The Cultural Exchange Hour, we'll be joined by natural medicine expert Mari Limoncillo, who will compare and contrast methods of combatting sickness in different parts of the world.
April 10, 2006
If you click here, you will be transported to a magical land where several more pictures of the garden will appear.
April 2, 2006
They told me dumpster diving didn't exist in the Dominican Republic.
Berenice and Mariela of Santo Domingo were in Goshen, Indiana for some events with Justicia Global in January. Read more and see photos! To show them a bit about the local culture, we took them to Shipshewana (Amish Country), the farmers' market and Kercher's apple orchard. And then we took them dumpstering.
Dumpstering, for the unenlightened souls among us, is the practice of going behind the grocery store instead of inside it to get food. There is usually no actual diving involved, although it is sometimes necessary to climb inside a waste receptacle to retrieve particularly delicious-looking morsels.
Our reasoning for embarking on this late-night venture with Berenice and Mariela was two-fold:
- We wanted our Dominican friends to see first-hand how ridiculously wasteful our society is, and that excessive waste and poverty go hand-in-hand in the "developed" world; and
- We were hungry.
Berenice and Mariela were blown away. That night the dumpsters were good to us: we pulled out everything from pizzas to oranges, fried chicken to chocolate cake, Ritz crackers to roses. All still in their packaging, all very tasty. (Except for the roses, which were a little prickly going down.)
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Here we are with several goodies plundered from the refuse of local establishments. |
We went to Goshen College and shared the bounty all up and down the halls of the dorms. Our Dominican guests agreed this was amazing, but they warned me not to try it in Santo Domingo.
All of this food thrown out in the U.S. would be sold without shame in any market in their country. After it's too rotten to sell, the employees take it home. Whatever ends up in dumpsters, then, has probably been already picked over by quite a number of hungry people.
Well, you all know what's coming. This is the part in the story where I tell you that I go dumpster diving in Santo Domingo. It's not the same, I admit. They're not exactly dumpsters, and I have yet to score a large meatlovers' pizza or a bag of fresh shrimp. But I think it's a similar concept.
I mostly go to get compostable material for my garden. There is a fruit stand several blocks from the Justicia Global community house where I live, and I regularly walk or bike over and pick up all the mango peelings and melon rinds I can tote back.
The workers there are friendly and curious, and they're nice enough stop peeling long enough to let the wacky americano fill up his plastic bags with garbage.
Sometimes when I get home, I find a banana that has been bruised on one end and not on the other. I munch these with gusto and remember the good old days when we would pull out whole boxes of this slightly bruised fruit and hurry home, dreaming of loaves upon loaves of warm banana bread.
April 1, 2006
"Thou shalt not dance" is probably still on the books somewhere as one of the Mennonites' Ninety-One Thousand Commandments. Well, whoever came up with that rule has never been to El Secreto Musical, the most precious little dance club ever.
El Secreto Musical is a place tucked away in Villa Consuelo, one of the oldest residential neighborhoods in Santo Domingo. Here they dance son, the traditional Cuban dance that involves a lot of fancy footwork and a wee bit of hip-wiggling.
You might go there if a) you're over 60 years old, b) you're a member of the National Association of Soneros, or c) you're lost.
Yes, there's a National Association of Soneros -- that is, people who dance son. We were greeted with this fact when we stepped in the door. All of the tables facing the dance floor had little signs on them: Reservado: Asociación Nacional de Soneros.
We young whippersnappers were led to some tables nearer the back, where we sat for most of the evening except when Julie was asked to dance by Morgan Freeman's dad. Really, they all look like I imagine Morgan Freeman's dad looking. Regal, red polyester pants hiked up with suspenders, hats like you see in photos from the 1940s, and the slightest hint of a grin pulling at the corner of the mouth.
The aforementioned Julie is Julie McClure, a dear friend and classmate from Earlham, who was visiting last week. Julie, thanks for making the effort to visit, though we've all agreed that it was much too short a trip.
There were a few other young people in the crowd, one of whom I couldn't keep my eyes off of. He moved with an ease and grace on the dance floor that I've rarely seen -- it's as if he didn't have seven generations of non-dancing Mennonites in his past robbing him of rythym and style.
I haven't been this jealous of another man since ... well, since the last time I saw men who knew how to dance. I did eventually make my way out to the dance floor, thanks to the DJ who mercifully put on a couple of merengue tunes.
Anyway, El Secreto Musical is a real gem. The dim blue florescent lights, the oscillating fans on the ceiling, the waitress who brings you ice but doesn't listen to you unless you have gray hair, the couples who look old and tired until the music starts.
At midnight everyone pulls out colorful scarves and waves them, dancing in a circle, in a joyful invocation of the mother goddess Yemayá, from the Afro-Cuban religion of Santería. Someone pours whiskey on the floor and lights it on fire, which I'm sure is another affront to the Mennonite Church, and then everyone dances around and through it and hugs and laughs and moves their hips in the way only the National Association of Soneros can.
It's too good to be kept a secret any longer. |
