Originally Composed 11/15/2007
From now on, every time I overeat, or if somebody offers me more food, and I'm just not interested, that's going to be my new idiomatic comeback. I'll explain its significance later, after I've brought you all up to speed with regards to the goings-on in the province of Maria Trinidad Sanchez.
But first off, I'd like to apologize to those of you for whom this is the first email you've received from me since I've been gone. There are some email addresses that I have either just recently obtained, or that I have just added to my address book. So that you can be caught up, I've included a statistical recap of my DR experience so far, at
the end of this letter.
Last week was the visit of our circuit overseer (would y'all take a
listen at me? "Our" circuit, I say; and I don't even live here, not
yet, anyway), which was kind of like a "spirit week" for the brothers
here in Cabrera. Salvador De Luna, and his wife, Marilyn, were born in
this country and were special pioneers here before they entered the
traveling work twelve years ago. Brother de Luna is a friendly,
youthful man (literally, I mean, like he has braces and everything!)
with a gift for storytelling. And Marilyn is the perfect compliment-he
goes off on his tangents and she just kind of makes a face like, oh
no, here he goes again. Effortlessly hilarious, he immediately puts
people at ease when talks with them, no matter who they are. My mind
didn't wander once during any of the four talks he gave during his
visit. His illustrations are wonderfully simple and effective. In
Thursday night's service talk, on the subject of "running the race"
that we do in our life course, he mentioned the fact that in our
particular race, we run as team, so if we see somebody fall, we don't
just look down at them like, oh wow, that's a shame, and just keep on
running. Rather, we reach down to help them back up again, so that we
may keep on running, together. During the portion of the pioneer
meeting that included the auxiliary pioneers, he really encouraged the
young people to make full time service their goal, and how that would
really be their road to success. Now, we hear that all the time in the
United States, but the reason that makes such a difference here is
because there tends to be a lot of pressure on young people to be the
ones to get a secondary education and make money to get themselves and
their families out of the poor conditions that many of them are in.
And I see that…there are some beautiful, wonderful kids and preteens
in this congregation; all very friendly and eager to participate in
meetings and in the ministry. But when they get to be around 16, 17,
18…that light in them just, well, dies, I guess. I guess they become
more conscious of their world, the older they become, and they want
more, and with opportunities being few, especially in little country
towns like this one, there seems to be no way out other than (a)
moving to a big city for a university education (if you can afford it)
and/or more abundant job opportunities, or (b) marrying an American or
Canadian and getting out of the country. So he encouraged the young
people who were at that meeting, and at the meetings throughout the
week, to work with the pioneers, and vice versa, so that they could
see the rewards of such a course. At the Thursday talk, he told
parents, He also gave some sobering reminders to the regular pioneers
about their conduct, saying that in this country alone, in the last
year 500 have stopped pioneering, the majority having been removed
from the pioneer list because of unscriptural conduct. That number, he
said, has even come to include some special pioneers. Nobody is exempt
from falling-if we want to be successful at pleasing Jehovah, we all
have to be on our guard, all the time.
So yeah, I'm sure you want to know if I've fallen again since the last
installment. Basically…yeah. This time I was leaving the Kingdom Hall
after the pioneer meeting, and I'm talking to this sister as we walk
to one of her Bible students' houses, and y'all know I can't
multitask. Plus, there are no laws regulating maintenance of city
streets apparently, so a six-inch-wide crack in the sidewalk is as
common as morning coffee. As I go on and on about how much I love
being in the DR and how all the hardships and adjustments have been
worth it, my sandal gets wedged into one of said six-inch cracks, and
down I go. "I'm ok," I say to the sister, who at it this point was 10
seconds away from having a coronary. She's Canadian but has been here
for many years, and is known worrier who has already been on me since
I got here because I let it slip out that I have MS. In her presence
I'm not allowed to climb stairs, sit in certain chairs, ride in
certain vehicles, use public restrooms, breathe, etc. But I know she's
just being a mother and I love her for it. I just wish I hadn't
decided to have my confrontation with the sidewalk while she was
there. The second I hit the ground, here come the Secret Service, or
at least that's when it looked like when the mass of brothers ran to
help me up. I really tried to just act nonchalant and walk it off.
That's kind of hard when your clothes have tread marks on them (I fell
into the street), and you're bleeding from your knees, elbow, and
hand. But I did attempt it. Matter of fact, I went straight to the
bible study, even though the sister I was with insisted I go home. I
looked like World War III, but I was there, and I was proud of every
scrape. But I will have to watch it from here on out. With the weather
as pretty as it's been, I can't be all scratched up going to the
beach. Band-Aids are not hot.
I'm going to have to get you some pictures soon, because you really do
need to see how we roll in service. Sometimes the territory in which
we work is in walking distance from the Kingdom Hall, so like a little
parade, you see us with our umbrellas and bags walking through the
town streets…whereas at other times, like last Saturday, when
everybody and their mom showed up because of the special week of
activity we had with the circuit overseer, we go out to work the rural
territory, which may be as far away as a half hour. Most of us don't
have vehicles, so we often find ourselves in situations like the
following: Last week, there were at least 40 people in service and we
had three jeeps that each seat five, that belong to the North American
elders that serve in the congregation, and two small flatbed trucks
that each have two-seater cabs. Technically, we had 19 seats for 40
people. Now, the same traffic and passenger regulations that apply in
the U.S. don't apply here, so with that in mind, I'll tell you, we all
got to the territory at the same time, with 19 seats for 40 people.
You do the math. But that's the norm-which also relates back to my
subject line. Hold on, hold on…I'll get to that.
It had been super hot this last week, but I love it, because it's so
ridiculously humid that you break a sweat just by blinking, so when
there is a bit of a breeze, it feels absolutely delicious. So by the
weekend, all Natalie and I were up to doing was sitting on our porch.
Plus, our power went out on Friday afternoon and still hadn't come
back on again by Saturday night, and who feels like doing anything
when there's no light? So we just hung out. Dominicans love to just
drop in on each other, so three young guys from the congregation,
Angelito, Alberty and Junior, and Junior's sister Pamela, came by and
sat around with us. The boys asked us if we could cook (Brothers: Why
is that all y'all care about? Do YOU know how to cook? Come make ME
something!). Anyway, I told them that my new specialty was plantains.
They told me to prove it, so I said they could come over for dinner
the following night, which was Sunday. So Sunday rolls around and we
still have no power, so by the light of the sun and some candles
Natalie and I cooked dinner for 5. They were supposed to come at 7pm
(or 7 "Dominican time", which is more like 7:30 or 8) By 7:30 nobody
had showed, and I was just going to call it a night until we get a
knock at the door at 7:45, and it's everybody except the boys. There
were four sisters, Vanessa, Ismeira, Diana, and Dulce, who came with a
package of uncooked spaghetti. Apparently, somebody heard from
somebody who heard from somebody else who heard from Alberty that we
were having a pasarato (party). Then at like, 8 pm, the power came
back on. The streets went bananas. People we hollering, banging on
pots, singing…it was crazy. Just then the boys, plus Diana's brother
Vitico, moseyed on in with their appetites and some CDs. The girls
left and went to the store to get more food, then when they returned
Diana kicked me out of my kitchen and made some delicious Dominican
spaghetti. We ate and danced and hung out on the porch until we got
sleepy. It was the best party that I was not even trying to have.
So yeah…the gua-gua thing. For those of you who don't know, a gua-gua
is a minibus, kind of like the little Volkswagen vans that were big in
the 70's and 80's. Technically, they seat nine. But as we discussed
previously, that means absolutely nothing to a Dominican with places
to go and people to see (or in the case of our brothers, disciples to
make). Last Monday, which was a Dominican work holiday, Natalie and I
went to Playa Grande, an absolutely stunning beach about 20 minutes
from us, with transparent blue water and miles of lush greenery on its
shores. After swimming and relaxing for a bit (I fell asleep on the
beach and had sand on me for a week afterward), we waited for a
gua-gua to bring us back to town. When it stopped for us, I kid you
not: there were 17 people already on board. I told the driver to keep
going because I wasn't going to fit, and everybody on the gua-gua
laughed "Cabes aquí, mami," said some man who was looking me at me
like I was a smoked turkey, pointing to a space like, two inches wide
next to him ("Cabes aquí means "you fit here," and unfortunately, I
think we get what "mami" means in this context.) I hesitated and
looked over to my left to see what Natalie'd say, but she wasn't
there; she'd already squeezed herself in. Then the driver says,
"¡Apúrese, señora! ¡Súbese!" ("Hurry up, lady, get in!") Natalie
nodded to a tiny-fold out seat across from Casanova, so I sighed and
squeezed myself in. I rode the whole way with my head out the window,
partially because I didn't want to watch that weird guy ogle me, but
mostly because there wasn't room to do much else. The worst part? The
driver stopped once more before dropping us off to pick up three more
people, so we were 22. We couldn't even close the door completely
Getting out was basically like playing Twister. But they get you where
you need to go-we took a gua-gua to go find the young man from the
Peace Corps that I wrote about last time (sadly, he had gone back to
the States the day before we went, we later learned. But maybe he'll
remember that he talked to some Witnesses, and that we were making a
dent here). So that's the gua-gua, and that's why I can appropriately
say "I'm stuffed like a gua-gua on a holiday," or "stuffed like a
flatbed during the CO visit."
I have a few people I'm calling on here who definitely appear to be
turning into bible students, and two actual bible students who are
doing really well. Their names are Cindy and Rosalva, and they are
both young, single moms. You find quite a few here. The student of
one sister is 19 with three kids ranging from ages 4 to 10 months.
Some of these girls are as young as 13…and it crushes you to see it.
What hurts worse is seeing so many young girls headed that
way-overdeveloped and provocatively dressed, and the way older guys
look at them…once they find themselves in that situation, they need
help. Rosalva accepted a study on the first visit, and Cindy agreed to
study after I brought her a Learning from the Great Teacher book for
her son. I read her Deuteronomy 6:6,7 and explained that before she
could teach her 2-year-old, Justin, anything, it all had to be on her
heart first. So I had her pick one of the questions in the opening of
the Bible Teach book, and she wanted to know why God permits
suffering. She apparently reads the bible on her own, because when we
went over the corresponding chapter, she flipped to the scriptures
with no problem. Rosalva is more of a challenge, not because she is
less interested, but because she lives about a 30-minute gua-gua ride
away. But to make it easier to get to our rural students, Natalie is
going to rent a motoconcho and knows how to drive it, and I, I'm proud
to say, have ridden on the back of one twice at this point! I've even
got the burn-mark on my ankle to prove it, which is very Dominican.
This trip is making a real woman out of me.
Recap:
1) Times I've ridden a motoconcho (small motorcycle commonly ridden here): 2
2) Spiders of at least 2 inches in diameter that I've seen in the apartment: 3
3) Parties that other people have thrown in our apartment without
telling us first: 1
4) Haitian Creoles I've been able to witness to: 2
5) Times I have slipped or fallen flat on my face: 3
6) Times I've been bitten by mosquitoes: countless (I'm buying a net
because I'm not trying to get dengue fever
7) Times I've cooked a whole meal with the light of just one candle: 2
8) Times I've played (and won) dominoes, the Dominicans' second
favorite pastime next to baseball: 3
9) Times I've witnessed (and partaken at) the outdoor roasting of an
entire pig: 1
10) Times I've wished I were home: 0
Not that I don't love all y'all, but this is beginning to feel like it is home…
Love,
April
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