Bad Dream or Bad Timing?: A Christmas Carol Nightmare

It´s 3:30am. I´ve been asleep for hours now. In my head I hear a faint rhythm, a distant beat thumpedy-thumping its way into my dreams. It is gradually getting louder, getting...closer? Am I dreaming? I am not sure. I feel it in my stomach now. And screaming? What is going on? Is there some sort of political uprising taking place? Or perhaps a tidal wave is heading our way to cover the town and drag us all out to sea? I pull my thin sheet tight against my chin and brace myself for imminent death. “Wake up Joan!” I try to snap out of it, though I find I already am awake. The rhythmic beats are real, actual little drummer boys drumming in the streets, and the people I heard were not so much screaming but CHANTING. I check my clock, still not fully believing that I am awake – 3:31am, confirmed. What on earth are these crazy people doing at this hour? Is this some kind of protest? Please shut up and go away! I roll my eyes and heave a deep, frustrated sigh. These noisy Dominicans, it never ends. I surrender my sleep, get out of bed and go to the bathroom.

It turns out I had discovered a Christmas tradition – a Dominican version of Christmas Caroling. Different church groups will go around throughout the month of December singing, drumming, and playing instruments in the middle of the night. Around the 3-4 o´clock hour are the groups wanting money. They will sing outside your house until you pay them to go away. Then there are the groups that just do it for fun. These groups usually come out at around 6 o´clock, early enough to wake you up but late enough so that you can´t fall back asleep afterwards. Luckily, there hasn´t been more than one group per night. To my dismay, I discovered that the youth group I´ve been meeting with is one of the culprits. When they asked me if I wanted to join them I replied (something like), “Are you kidding me? I´ll be lying in bed with my earplugs in.” I was clear that this was very annoying, but they assured me that this is a fun tradition practiced throughout the country. Yeah, real fun, thanks. Just call me Ms. Scrooge.

So that´s my little Christmas story/cultural tidbit for this holiday season. Other than that, the holiday celebrations here are much more subdued than I´d expected, given that there are so many devout Catholics and Christians living here. Many of the different neighborhoods are decorated, though it is not like what you and I are used to. Because so many people are living in poverty, they make decorations with whatever they can find. Different colored plastic bags are tied around wire and arranged into different shapes and patterns. They do quite a lot with this, I give them an A plus on creativity. Take a look (notice the big manger on the right side of the road):

The standard juicebox ornaments hanging from trees is actually maintained year-round: Also, they put a lot of work into their nativity scenes. They weave palm leaves and take siding off of the houses to make the manger, then collect whatever they can to represent those famous figures, such as Ken dolls, various kid toys, and those big deer lawn ornaments woven together from straw (scenes are rarely to scale). Here we have a nativity scene with baby Jesus in a bathtub, Mary and Joseph, as well as the fairy horse and of course the dinosaur (that was in the Bible, right?). Its too cute, really: In general, Christmas is celebrated with a few dinners – with family, friends, and any group you are associated with. There is not much gift-giving, but I hear there will be a lot of dancing (no surprise there!). It should be pretty low-key. I´ll leave you with this shot of me and Jose Miguel, I´m having a ton of fun with him lately:

I hope you all have a wonderful holiday, I miss you all terribly! Do me a favor and eat lots of pie on my behalf, thanks!
Love, Joan

Life Update and Obscene Video!

So I´m starting to settle in and I´m realizing that life here is not all that different from home. Once again I´m living in the Northeast, in a region where they don´t pronounce their “R”´s. When they say “Por favor” (please), it ends up sounding more like, “Poi favoi”. Ah, just like home. It almost brings a tear to my eye! They also drop their “S”´s and “L”´s, and parts of whole words (hey, we do that too!). Instead of para (for), you´ve got pa´, está (he/she/it is) is simplified to ´ta, and todo (all) becomes to´.

I´ve hardly even mentioned some of the differences from Dominican Spanish to, well, almost all other Spanish. Some of the most simple words have been changed, anyone who has studied Spanish will find this atrocious:

English; Spanish (normal); Spanish (Dominican):
Banana; Banana; Guineo (huh???)
Papaya; Papaya; Lechoza
Tree; Árbol; Mata
Orange(color); Anaranjado; Mamey
Orange(fruit); Naranja; China (I can´t make this stuff up)

Anyway, I´m here and doing pretty well so far. It turned out that the anticipation of coming here and getting started was worse than the action itself. I´m meeting people and attending events, etc., and everyone has been very friendly and welcoming. I generally spend my days getting a good night sleep, eating CEREAL for breakfast (!!! I made a deal with my host family, I buy my breakfast and pay less rent), then either studying spanish or for my upcoming project, taking walks around the neighborhood, meeting more people and socializing, or if I´m in an anti-social mood, hiding however possible (which is hard to do here, privacy is close to impossible to get). The beach has been a good place for solitud, believe it or not, though typical me, I go in pants and sit in the shade and read. I try to study but often find myself staring off into the sky or at the waves making lines in the sand. Also, I bought a guitar. FINALLY! I´ve been planning on it since I arrived here, now I can shut up about it. Here it is, its pretty, huh?: Its a little hard trying to figure out just how to manage my time with work, though. I felt I was off to a good start my first few days, going to meetings of local clubs and starting to assemble some information, but then things stalled and I procrastinated for the rest of the weekend. I´m only now starting to get back into the swing of things, trying to focus on assembling the questions I want to ask when I start interviewing people in the community. I feel some pressure from people involved to see some tangible work already, I think those few down days I had showed and they´re trying to keep me on my toes. Its hard though, I started off with one plan and now I think another would be better, so I´m still just trying to figure out how I´m going to go about my project. It will all fall into place soon, once I get my strategy in place.

I´ve got a video to show you. I´m not sure if I mentioned, but people here are very much into Reggaeton music, which is all about sex and dancing dirty. The kids are not sheilded from this and learn at a very young age how to dance like the people they see on TV (or better yet their parents!). I was shocked to see my host sister in Santo Domingo, 6-years-old, dancing in the kitchen, bumping and grinding like a bad rap video. It alternates between hilarious and extremely disturbing. I feel like an old lady sometimes complaining about this.... “In my day, kids were at LEAST 14 before they were dancing like that!”.... though I can´t help but still feel shocked by it when I see it.

My new host brother, José Miguel, 5 yrs, knows all of the words to the most inappropriate songs, and has all of the hand movements to go along with it. I taped him singing along one day, check it out (it ends with a nice butt scratch):



Also, I want to show you more views of my town. There are some really nice houses and many not-so-nice homes. This is one of the main roads: Here is a view from in front of my house:

At the end of this road where the Palm trees are is the beach:

While my family has a bathroom with running water and even a shower (hello!!!), the people next door use this latrine and get their water from a well (my house is behind, there had been a lot of rain the day before this picture):

Here is the park and to the right the café/bar/nightclub, where last night was karaoke night and I sang Bob Marley´s "Is this love". I felt sorry for those that had to listen but my host family and their friends really wanted to hear me sing in English!:

That´s all for now, until next time!