Slow Start

Peace Corps reality is starting to set in as I’m finding out that things don’t always work out like they should. The owner of the land where our spring water source is located won’t let us trespass on his property, so basically I can’t even start my project. Furthermore, the senator, who is up for reelection, claims that he wants to do the project, which essentially makes my presence here completely unnecessary. However, politicians here always make false promises, so I’ve been told not to worry about it. I’m hoping these issues will work themselves out in the near future.


Meanwhile, I’ll just work on little side projects. For example, I recently worked as a translator at a medical mission. It was a great experience as I was exposed to some of the health issues that affect the DR. It’s pretty funny, however, to see how disillusioned some of these med mission people are in their overly romantic view of the DR. One night, after holding a rural clinic in a community way out in the back country, we were all discussing our experiences of the day. One lady stood up and said, “After working with these people for the past few days, I’m realizing that one of the best words to describe them is, sophisticated.” All the Peace Corps Volunteers could hardly hold in their laughter. The people whom this lady is referring to are the same people that insist that you should only plant yucca on Thursdays to make sure worms don’t eat the leaves. In the U.S., we refer to these country folk as hillbillies. They are a bit silly and we love them for it, but as far as sophisticated goes….not so much. Inventive, however, is a great word to describe them. One day at the clinic, we saw a woman sitting in a rocking chair, which, just like a queen, was elevated by 6 men who were holding her up by a couple of long thick branches that they had tied to the base of the rocking chair. This woman was too ill to walk, so the men carried her from her home, chair and all, half a kilometer uphill to the clinic site. Genius. Pure genius.

Today’s list of funny or peculiar things that most likely would never happen in the U.S.:
1. My host mom found a drawing that my 6 year old host brother had made of two horses humping. After scolding him and telling that what he did was very inappropriate, she proceeded to draw naked pictures of him and his brother and then laughed about the size of their penises.
2. There are practice cockfights every week in my front yard. The cocks wear little boxing gloves so that they don’t hurt eachother before the real fight.
3. Everybody has a nickname here. A lot of the time, the nicknames are very simple word that describe the person. The English translation of some of the nicknames of people I know include: Grape, Crazy, Deaf, Little Fatty, Blacky, Horse, and Monster. I also just found out that our cat, whom they always just call “The Cat” not only has a name, but also has a nickname.