As Good as it Gets

A sobering thought today: what if I am never this happy again? It's not as if I am bubbling over with joy every minute of every day, but I am completely and utterly content and I will ache for this place when I leave next Tuesday. What if this is As Good as it Gets? I know I could not be content if I stayed. I cannot live as a tourist the rest of my life, but I can't help but dread minus fifty in Winnipeg next winter. There is so much I want to take, with me but these are things that cannot be transplanted. The way I live is about to change and I'm not sure if I'm ready yet.

From one perspective this country is a grid locked, noisy, smelly, polluted, exploited, and often corrupted place. I have perhaps shown too much of that. It is its breathless beauty that impacts me most often. There is no shyness about it. This island's opulence and melodramatic side is embraced at every turn. Some may say that I'm a cynical person, who loves no literary devise more than irony, so, why will I miss this place?: Because they play the Chariots of Fire theme at graduation and everyone takes it very seriously. Because the students come with extravagant and useless gifts for the teachers. Because everyone is snapping photos and signing each others' shirts on the last day of school. Because the students' laughter, curiosity, and boldness is irrepressible. Because frozen Chinola fruit bars on an unbelievably hot day are the truth. Because I cry every time I hear Bob Marley playing at a Colmado, partly because the people dancing do not understand the words. Because they cannot deny their unfiltered happiness, their desire to dance. Because rum is cheap and good. Because absolute strangers are saying thank-you to me and I don't know why. Because everyone says hello to you in the street. Because handshakes, hugs, kisses, and fist bumps really do make you feel human. Because Roberto reads his bible in the teacher's room. Because everything is redeemed. Because I'm starting to differentiate between bachatas. Because Dominicans put their hands over their hearts, unironically, for the national anthem. Because they play baseball in the streets. Because boys on 100cc bikes pop-a-wheely through intersections. Because the street dogs seem reasonably happy. Because it is a 1985 Corolla with holes in the floor and he still drives it like he stole it. Because each day is a holy litany of horns. Because they call their live in maids "Doña" and they are useless without her. Because mangoes are miracles. Because I must dance each time I go into a grocery store. Because the sun. Because the rain can fall so hard that the city is under water in a matter of minutes. Because it "makes me want to be a better person." Because it lets me be sentimental enough to believe that if I think positively I will be a better person.

Goodbye DR! I will try to miss you with the sentimental fervor you deserve. I hope I can bring some of your joy with me. I hope I will cry in the streets without shame. I hope I will yell if I feel like yelling - bah humbug to peace and quiet: "Chofer, turn up the music this is my last ride".

Colmados

They are a part of everyday life. It is impossible to imagine this as a North American, you need to experience it. There is the occasional trip to the grocery store, but every meal, party or day begins with a call to the Colmado. The 50cc motorcycles with milk crates attached in back and in front bring food and drink to every corner of the city: beer, ice, water, "refre[s]co", fruit, rice, eggs. If the beer isn't cold enough, send it back. They will reach into the freezer and pull up a Presidente, "dressed like a bride", put it in a paper bag and rush it to your door.

I don't call our Colmado. It is only half a block away so it is always faster to go there myself. Plus I don't have to pay the minutes on my phone if I walk. They still have soft drinks in glass bottles here. I have never liked drinking out of a plastic bottle, but since living here, I've developed a taste for pop. For RD$15 (about 40 cents) you can buy a 10oz bottle. It costs an extra five pesos if you want to take the bottle with you, so I always sit out in the sun on a plastic chair and put the bottle back on the counter when I'm done. This is what I will miss most about this country when I leave. It is a micro-managing community center that imagines the community as a block on a residential street. It is a never ending block party. It is a familiar face that asks if the white lady is your wife (when she walks by on her own they ask her to marry them, say that she needs to have a Dominican husband because they are better). It is the place to get ice when your fridge breaks for the third time in a month. (They reach for the cooler of ice as soon as they see you coming.) It is the first place you go when the power goes out, while the beer is still cold. It is a place to play Dominoes, dance, eat potato chips, be. It is the type of space that North Americans have abandoned for Wal-Mart and Costco. There are no made up names for Colmados, at least not many, because they are real places. It is a constant reminder to me that capitalism does not have to be completely inhuman, inhumane.

I remember when Simonite's Grocery closed when I was growing up in Thunder Bay. I didn't realize it then, but that was like a colmado. It was a place where neighbours bumped into each other, it defined our neighbourhood. There is something missing in a culture without corner stores. I want to be somewhere where no-one bats an eye when the favourite song comes on and the world stops spinning, to dance.

It Won't Change for Anyone

After eight months here I am believing more than ever, that there is nothing I can do to "fix it". The best I can do is to bear witness to "it" and enjoy the sunshine.

They warned Steph before she left Canada that the pace of life would be much slower here and that she should expect to be bored. This is very true. Corruption, disorganization and lawlessness are a part of every day life and they mean that it can take all day to do nothing. Traffic jams mean that people run out of gas idling their engines. It is not uncommon to see cars and motorcycles on side walks. There is no emergency response. Most children go to school for only two or three hours a day. It takes three hours to have lunch. The poor are at risk of malnutrition and all sorts of horrible disease. The rich go for days without interacting with their children. The middle class is almost non-existent. Then there is Haiti: a gut-wrenching example of how different brands of colonialism can leave one country relatively rich and another completely without any infrastructure. One person here who has been to Haiti a couple of times told us that they should have just started a new city after the earthquake hit. Billions of dollars have been invested and almost nothing has happened. If I went to "help" I would just be in the way, one more mouth to feed, like everyone else. The greatest hope seems to be getting people out of there. There are 2 million Haitians in the DR. I often wonder how many people our Haitian fruit guy could get out of Haiti with a couple hundred dollars. I guess I should ask him. There is so much here that I wish I could change, but it won't change for anyone.

And who am I to think I know what is best? Dominicans are way happier than Canadians. Life expectancy, literacy, education, health care and wealth don't seem to be all they are cracked up to be. From what I've seen here, it is more important to have music to dance to, lots of sunshine and fresh fruit than any of the things I value as a Canadian. As my friend the Rabbi says: "Who is rich? He who is satisfied with his lot. Who is poor? He who is not satisfied with his lot." I have never been in a country as rich as this. Life is celebrated every day. The whole country shuts down for a month at Christmas, Carnaval and Easter. Then in the summer it is too hot to think about doing anything other than going to the beach or drinking a cold beer.

In Spanish a fairly common response to the question "how are you?" is "conformed". It basically means, "fine" or "content". Am I too tightly wound to "conform" to the party atmosphere of this country? Yes. But if anything is going to come out of the time I have spent here it will have to be a change in me.

*The power has just flashed off, but this is not a surprise. The responsibility is on me to make sure I am ready for any turn of events. If I am lucky the changes that the DR has made in me will stick. My dreams for this place are irrelevant.

Dogs

They serve no purpose whatsoever in this country. They bark and they stink and they make this city uglier. To be fair, I'm mostly talking about the dogs that live next to us and I don't count chihuahuas as dogs, but they do seem particularly useless.

I would pity them if they were not so annoying. Our landlords have three dogs: Momma/Grandma, Son/Father/Brother, and deranged puppy. They can get onto the roof of their house and bark at us from a mere 3 feet away. This seems to be their favourite pass-time. They also trip on the cable and knock the TV out daily. So... we have to climb from our balcony onto their roof and plug it back in. We are armed with a stick in case "Pookito", emphasis on the "Poo", gets any ideas. We have tried to train them: they get rocks if they bark, crackers if they are quiet. However, they are so inbred that they can't seem to figure it out. After a good tongue lashing and a couple of small rocks they will usually charge down the stairs and chew on each other for a bit, but that seems to make them smell worse. The only washing they get is rain washing. But they hate the rain. They hide under a rusty corrugated steel roof. Instead of getting a thorough soaking, they just get damp and end up smelling like wet, unwashed dog.

Steph is probably thinking that I am being unfair to these unfortunate animals and as usual, she is probably right. You can never really blame an animal for its behaviour, especially when they never get any walks and the only time anyone pays attention to them is when they scream: "CALLATE!!!" Originally, they must have been intended as some sort of guard dogs because they do seem intimidating until you realize that they are much more frightened of you than you are of them. They are a hideous mixture of pit-bull and stupid. Momma/Grandma ("Pooka", also emphasis on the "Poo") must have some sort of cow in her. She is not big, but when she had her nine puppies (yes, nine) she must have been giving a gallon of milk a day. The udder on her was truly a thing to behold. "Jefe" (the deranged puppy) is one of that litter (emphasis on the double entendre). Steph does a great impression of his deranged bark. Despite the fact that "Pookito" was locked in the front yard for the better part of a month while "Pooka" was in heat, it seems she is with spawn once again, judging by the swelling of her udder.

In the interest of balance, I should perhaps mention the moments of cuteness. When I first get up in the morning they are often sleeping in one gloriously incestuous heap and you can't tell one from the other. "Pookito", despite the fact that he is the meanest, cocks his head to the side and raises one ear. I think he does this because he is trying to count the forks in his family tree and he discovers that it is actually a family plate of spaghetti.

I once heard a girl talking about how disgusting it was to see a man kiss his dog. Dogs are not pets here. I'm really not sure what they are. I guess they are just another domino that makes up the set of Dominican culture.

Making hot hotter

It may have been the slowest 10km race I have ever run in my life (by 10 minutes), but I was proud coming across that line.

There are four thousand people crowded into coral. It is well over 50 degrees Celsius with the humidity and the gun is half an hour late. Nobody knows when it will start, but we have heard the theme from "Chariots of Fire" three times. Here comes the anthem and, finally, the gun goes off. we shuffle across the line, anxious to get some sort of breeze.

After a couple of minutes I pass the man who is hopping 10km. He has one leg and one arm. If this guy can do it in the heat, so can I. It is one long circuit along the Atlantic Ocean, but at this time of year and at 4:30 in the afternoon, the breeze offers little relief from the heat. Luckily there is water or Gatorade at every kilometer mark. I'm only able to skip one or two.

You would think running slower is less painful . I've run 10km in thirty-five minutes, but that was in late fall in Canada when I was much fitter. This race is like running in a sauna. Why didn't they start this race at 7am like every other race in the world and avoid some of the heat? I decide it is because the race organizers hate me. Then I stop thinking entirely and focus on sweating as hard as I can. I do this extremely well. At about the 5o minute mark I see the finish line. The guy beside me starts to sprint and something clicks. "O yeah, this is a race". "Vamanos", I yell. We sprint across the line together and almost vomit at the end. My body thinks better of it and decides that it is more in need of retaining fluids than losing any more. Hi five to my competitor and into the lineup to get out of there.

I am now rethinking what I said about being proud crossing the line. It occurs to me that I may have an addiction. Perhaps I should seek counseling.

Getting Through

We all have our strategies. The ones who find the best strategies are the ones who get through.

Minimum wage in the DR is a little over a dollar an hour (about $200 a month). How can you reconcile that with the mansions, Land Rovers, Porsches and Louis Vuitton that abounds around Santo Domingo? Roberto told me yesterday: there is a lot of money in this country. Yet, for every rich man, there are many who live as de facto slaves. They earn enough to feed themselves and have some sort of shelter. Judging by the observable level of happiness even among these poor people (or perhaps especially), they must be doing something right.

The school where I work is far from being among the poor people, the teachers who work here are rare examples of the middle class in the DR or are international teachers. The families that send their children here are decidedly in the upper class (or international). Nevertheless I see many examples of strategies to get through being employed.

He arrives early with a newspaper under his arm and sits in the shade of a tree to drink his coffee. Throughout the day he will be in the middle of every laughing, screaming conversation, but now he is alone and still.

When she leaves, you notice that her service smock has been traded in for jeans and a canary yellow polo. She has painted her face. The limp is gone, her head is thrown back and she is laughing.

It is something approaching discipline. Every morning he plays guitar in the court yard. He isn't good but he could be.

"Your haircut is gorgeous", "You've lost weight" and "is that a new shirt". The booming economy of compliments nearly bankrupts the gossip (at least on the public market).

Summer vacation.

Habichuelas, rice and chicken (collectively known as "the flag") take you far. Lunch time means mounds of food. They may not eat supper and breakfast was probably a piece of toast, but lunch can get you through. All the supermarkets are lined with people waiting for the food that speaks louder than any rehearsed greetings. Motorcycles are laden with Styrofoam containers full of the stuff as they make their way to the places they are supposed to be. Their roaring two stroke engines belch: "eat and live" as they choke you with black smoke.

Getting through isn't easier here but people are determined to do it. They plan a way to make it happen. The best plans let spring catch you by surprise.

How did we get here?

I know it is about 10 years after I was supposed to, but I am reading Guns, Germs and Steel. It presents a very enticing method of understanding how things are the way they are. Jared Diamond explains how plants became domesticated and manipulated. First a wild plant is identified as edible and someone gets the idea to plant it and continues to gather the seeds. By selecting the plants with the nicest fruit or biggest grains to be replanted, the plant begins to change from its original form in the wild. It becomes domesticated. Eventually corn that had cobs as thick my pinky, starts growing cobs as thick as my wrist.

In class, I find myself continually surprised when a student complains about having to imagine something or tell me why. They say: "I hate it when the question asks me "why" because it is never in the book". I always liked when I got to think outside the parameters of some stupid textbook. I loved making things up. If I recall, I was not the only one in grade seven who liked to think creatively. Yet, I hardly ever encounter them here.

The culture and the education system seem to encourage uncritical thinking, regurgitation and memorization. This is, after all, a country in which the study and teaching of philosophy was illegal for an extended period of time. Those who questioned authority where imprisoned, forced to leave the country or killed. The history of of the oldest University in the Americas is one of martyrdom. The campus is filled with tributes to academics who where killed for their belief that they should be able to speak out against the government. Doesn't it follow that this extended exposure to domination would lead to a population that is made up of people that have thrived because they do not ask questions and they do not challenge authority?

Yet, there are very few species of wild plants or animals that can be domesticated and it is the wildness of this place that is truly fascinating. Yes, people have learned not to ask too many questions, but life is in overdrive here. Eventually all things revert to some sort of natural law and equilibrium. The traffic for instance. It is an enormous living creature that is all id. It is a daily struggle to keep a small apartment clean even in the quietest, cleanest parts of the city. Elephantine leaves continually fall off of trees and hit you in the head; fruit trees grow compulsively without any nurturing. It seems every second woman you see is pregnant and every dog is in heat. Things are metabolized so quickly here that a building left empty for a month looks like it has been that way for a year.

Many, or perhaps most, of the twenty million people that live on this small (by Canadian standards) island live in serious poverty. Yet there is far more than enough to go around. The wealth is just as opulent and affecting as the poverty you see here. Try as I might to understand why things are the way they are, it always comes back to wildness. "All is vanity" says Solomon. Good people starve to death every day and evil people often live in palaces. It's fun to play around with notions of how Hispaniola got to be the way it is, but its wildness will always elude you. There will always be a motorcycle heading the wrong way in a traffic jam on a one way street. I laugh with joy each time I see squash so big it would take both of us just to carry it home and a chainsaw to hack it up.

From the Archives

Waiting is a recurring theme here. I know that when you are told what time to show up you need to do some pretty fantastic math (likely involving imaginary numbers) to figure out what time you should actually show up. Somehow I still have not figured it out, yet every Dominican has an instinct for knowing exactly when things will start. This is such a strong instinct that posters very rarely include times, just dates.

Priorities

Mercedes' office
has clocks
that don't work.
So, it is always
11:20 and 1:29.
Morning or night?
there is a calendar too
(the kind where you arrange
plaques to give you the month and the day).
For weeks
it has read
"Monday November 2".

I know these things
because I spend time
in her office
waiting for the clocks
to be right.
If I wait long enough
the calendar will be right too.

But that will take
a very long time.

Incense and Mangoes

I had a friend in grade 9 who loved apples...erotically. Each day he would lay his brief-case (yes, he had a brief-case) on the table. He would open the snaps, take out two apples and set them on the table. He would put his brief-case back on the floor and proceed to "make love" to his apples. With big slobbering bites he would devour them. The whole time he would make groaning noises and say: "this is a better-than-sex-apple"! I doubt he knew what he was talking about, but I certainly did believe that they were good apples. Perhaps even sinfully good. The apple is, after-all, portrayed as the forbidden fruit that Adam and Eve ate.

Personally, I feel that it was a mango that "opened their eyes". Apples are certainly more versatile and keep longer, but a mango is unadulterated pleasure. Opulence. Sex.

I bought a mango for twenty-five pesos from a fruit vendor who had set up along the side of Nunez. I carried it in my hand, feeling the weight of its buttery orange flesh (warmed by the sun) against my skin. I left it in my fruit bowl over night and put it in the fridge the next morning to eat cool after work.

I went for a run to work up my appetite, lit some incense I had bought in China-town and peeled the mango's redyellow skin with my pocket knife. The skin revealed the flesh, brilliant orange, darker at the bottom. This is where the sugar had settled as it ripened on the tree. I sliced the darkest nub off and placed it on my tongue. Waves of flavor and coolness coursed through me. Piece by piece I took the mango apart, until only the slimy sweetness around the pit was left. I picked it up and and sucked off the nectar. Covered in sweat and sweet I think it is time for a cigarette and a shower.

Daily Things

Today a colleague who is fast becoming a friend asked me: "what is it like in Minneapolis, I might be going there for some training?" "Huh?", I said.

Despite the fact that my home town is closer to Minneapolis than any other major American city, I have never been. I guess it's because I've never had any reason to go and the city has never given me a reason. I get enough Norse settlers and cold weather at home. He wanted to know what kind of weather they had. I could help him out there: Hot in the summer, cold in the winter, bring a jacket because it could change any time. He was also interested in the culture. I was a little bit puzzled. I've never considered cities like Minneapolis or Calgary or Milwauke to have any culture to speak of. But I proved myself wrong when I started thinking about what people would eat or do in their spare time: "Well, I guess there are a lot of Germans and Scandinavians. From what I know of them (and myself), they're pretty quiet and eat meat and potatoes. Like folksy, rock or country music and would most likely spend their Friday nights in poorly lit bars." Then he asked if he would see any Indians. This one really had me stumped, because this colleague is from Pakistan, has lived in many countries around the world and runs an Indian restaurant here in Santo Domingo when he is not teaching English. I figured he was talking about American Indians, because that's what everyone here calls them, swallowed my Canadian political correctness and dove in to the conversation: "Yes, I'm sure you would, in fact one of my favourite authors lives there, Louise Erdrich. She is half Ojibwe, I believe. You could visit her bookstore. I'm sure you'll be able to see some East Indians too."

I've spent so much time trying to be normal here that I've forgotten how different the cultures I come from are. This is still a monolithic culture. The only difference between big cities and towns are the numbers of people and fast food chains. To be fair there are a couple museums and Universities, but not much else changes. Seeds of difference are beginning to sprout here. Far too often, though, they are killed before they get a chance to grow.

"Big Yellow Taxi"

To answer your question Joni, yes that's exactly the way it seems to go. But lately I've been thinking the questions should read: "don't it always seem to go that you don't know what you've got till you're gone?"

The truths about places and people I've left behind are haunting me. I've spent half a year now scratching at the surface. As always, I'm anxious to see what lies beneath this sunny veneer. I want to put a crack in it, "that's how the light gets in" after all. I find, though, that there is only more light and more noise on the other side. The country is swamped in sun, car horns and meaningless screaming. I crave a snow cave, or a sauna with a ticking stove and a frozen lake. I long for quiet aisles of books, a barrier between me and the outdoors. I think of libraries as lovers, the only differences is that you can't take them with you. An internet connection isn't a library, no matter what you read the computer still smells the same. I miss the smell of books. There are some things that vaguely resemble libraries here, but none of the real thing. They usually don't let you in or are closed or are actually book stores. It's not the same thing. Libraries need months every year of cold, rain or best of all fog to grow big and strong. I've left all that behind with a curse. People need the inside time to think and write and organize. The weather must drive you to it. Sunshine is not conducive to deep thinking. Missing that side of life I'm reduced to blubbering each time I encounter something more profound than dancing salsa, laughing, complaining about the power going out or electronics breaking. The sound of a bouzouki is enough to bring tears to my eyes. I'm thirsty for all the daily things I've left behind. Just one birthday party that doesn't stop traffic or one sad song, please. How about someone saying: "can I read you something". It doesn't even matter what it is, the idea of someone sharing ideas is enough to make me weepy. I wouldn't say no to a little irony every once in a while. I want a culture that consists of more than dancing and arguing. Being happy all the time is exhausting.

The worst thing is that when I leave this place I will miss it too. In my mind it will be brighter and clearer. If you are a romantic, you must never go back to places you have been, no reality can do a memory justice. Places aren't things.

Waiting on Mangoes

In Canada you call it
winter
because nothing grows
and you need to change your tires
turn on your furnace
seal your windows
put your garden to bed
and perhaps
buy a new winter coat.
The days are cold and dark
the sun is pale.

There is no such word for it here.
Without a calendar
there are few ways to tell
what season it is
Hurricane season is
more of a possibility
than a season.
The rain may dump
for a few days
and form puddles on your floor.
Some wind,
but nothing compared to other places.
If you want the weather kind of seasons
you're in the wrong place
there is only
hot and very hot.
But if you still demand seasons
look to the fruit.

There is orange season:
beautiful
black men
shave orange peels
in the streets.
This perfume
challenges the smell
and even the noise
of passing motorcycles.
The men stalk the streets
with bags of oranges
that look like
tennis balls
ready to eat.

Now that something like spring is coming
laughably large leaved trees
are dropping green fruit
before me as I walk
and the men
have small yellow fruit
beside the sometimes oranges
and year long bananas.
Spring is called out
by the mango
Messiah
royal fruit
that warns of summer's
unrelenting heat.
It turns the molten orange
glow of the sun
into a cool honey tear drop.
The mangoes fatten
so easily on the branch
without any effort
from anybody.

Carnaval Vegano

I know what you are thinking, but don't make the mistake I did the first time I saw Expreso Vegano written on the side of a bus. There are only a handful of people in this country that know what a vegan is. There is no way they would name a bus line after veganism and there is definitely no vegan carnival here. Vegano is the demonym for somebody from La Vega, a city that has existed in some shape or form since Christopher Columbus founded it in 1494. La Vega is the capital of Caribbean carnaval and a town that literally doubles in size each Sunday during February to celebrate carnaval. This is word that is synonymous with light beer, loud music, loud costumes, cow stomach beating implements and fights.

Before anyone coming from Santo Domingo can enjoy the light beer, they must first drive through the roadblocks. Pentecostals in the DR are just as opposed to carnaval as the rest of the country is crazy about it. There is about a kilometer of road as you enter La Vega lined with t-shirted proselytizers reminding the soon to be debauched travelers that prayer is free. These signs and t-shirts soon give way to beer stands. The streets are usually packed by 11 am and by 12 there is a carpet of yellow beer cans covering the ground. Why can't we all be like Belgian monks and admit that beer and prayer go very well together.

The music is not so much heard as felt and seen. It beats on your eardrums so loud that you choose to ignore the pain and focus how the sound affects the rest of your body: vibration in the legs and thumping in the chest. The side street you enter is a sound tunnel. Waves pulse through the people as if they were water. Sound rushes through the green tent and masked partiers dance or try to force their way through the sweaty crowd. There are more minivans than I have ever seen in this country before, but not the kind you drive your kids to football practice in. Customized rear hatch doors complete with carbon fiber tweeters, woofers and subwoofers pump the pollution out quicker than the tail pipes. The hoods are open to allow the engines to cool as best they can as they run at capacity to power these van sized speakers. Two vans side by side pummeling the dancers mercilessly with sound.

The costumes are not so much seen as heard. They creep up behind you and something in the middle of your head tells you a googly eyed demon is coming down the street. Everything is fluorescent: pink, green and purple. Some of these costumes cost a months wages and all of them cause at least a days worth of sweat to pour out in just a few minutes. They have to get them drycleaned after each time they wear them so that they will be fit to wear the next week.

It is violence to all the senses. If the music feels like a beating the actual beatings are worse. Each costumed vigilante carries what looks like an under-inflated balloon on the end of a rope. Once upon a time these were cow stomachs, now they are plastic, but they still hurt. The vigilantes wear batting gloves and take running starts at the crowd. The next wave of costumes is always harolded by people running away from the whips. They leave large yellow bruises for weeks, but still, the crowd taunts them leaving their rear ends exposed to the whippers.

There is enough swinging of whips and beer drinking and crowding in of people that sooner or later the short fuses will burn out. A tall muscular young man with long curly hair is puffing up his chest and pointing ("tu y yo"). Maybe its over a girl, but nobody can really tell. All the crowd can do is sense the impending blows. The shorter, stockier man has finally had enough and cold cocks him in the face. The crowd bellies out around them and the scare crow looking youth is being tossed around by his hair and beaten in the face. After a minute or two, the bigger guys have made it to the fighters and pull them off each other. The winner runs off while the scare crow bubbles out words through a swollen face to anyone who will listen, but no-one can hear.

The senses are overloaded. A couple minutes in the heart of carnaval explains why Dominicans shout rather than talk, dance rather than walk, and devour rather than eat or drink. Calling this old tradition vibrant would be so inadequate that it would be ironic. Some parties go off like dynamite, this one goes off like an a-bomb.

Getting Better

Lately, I have been considering the U.S. The Dominican Republic tries to be America. They have adopted (and perfected) their "national pass-time", they worship the American dollar and a large percentage of their population lives in "Nueva Jork". Yet, more and more Dominicans are choosing to stay at home. Santo Domingo has a lot to offer. As I write, tunnels are being dug underneath the major traffic arteries for more traffic and trains. Babies are being born, puppies are popping out of dogs and people are celebrating... nothing in particular, just celebrating. Maybe it is that the mangoes are already falling off the tree, well before they are big enough to eat. Maybe it is because the sun shines so long and so hot, that the endorphin high of an average person cannot be spent in an average life time. Maybe, they just like to dance. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying everything's perfect, just that I don't envy anyone living in Michigan or Arizona right now. This is a country pressing forward in every way, not receding, despite their emulation of those United States.

I watch another sunset over the roofs of Santo Domingo. The wind is pushing the clouds into shapes I have not seen before. The sun glances off of them for a couple of minutes, in shades of orange and pink and then recedes into the grays and blues. Birds dart past me, as I sit on my balcony, much too quickly for me to be able to understand what they are. The city is pulsing. Though the heart was once exposed, it is being encased in concrete. "We may be poor, but we aren't that poor, our houses are not made of wood". They are making something that will last; the houses have pillars.

Every morning I wake up at five minutes to six and put on some shorts so I can step outside to turn on the water (a ninety degree turn to the right of a red valve). I should reiterate that things are not perfect. Our fridge does not work properly. The once green cilantro is turning into brown mush, but the ice is still ice. I would not even go so far as to say that things are good enough. If North America, or even history in general, has taught us anything, it is that things are never good enough. They are not good enough here. But they are getting better. I realize that I can be happy, if I learn to be satisfied with "getting better".

In solidarity with the Newfoundlanders

Bouzoukis in Winter

Clouds unloaded
their wet white luggage
covering cars
blocking in doors.

Black rum, Pepsi and Newfoundland lime.
We wore black pyjamas that winter
we tuned our Bouzoukis
- stretched strings
their sound
a shimmer
through the snow cave.

We drank and tuned until the snow
began to disappear
black spots (asphalt)
rising up through the snow.

a sunrise and a poem

Cafeteria Alta

She speaks to no-one
as she sits along the rail
watching the children eat
with a checked gaze
angled slightly down.

As children leave
she walks to their table
with a servile limp
(a slight turning in of her feet)
and wipes it clean.
Any wrapper, she will
sweep into her dust pan.

She wears a plain white frock
and a look of melancholy
or perhaps complacency,
acceptance?
But always (and definitely)
there is an easy smile
peeping from underneath
all else that she wears.

der

He's a witch!

Blindly, I walked into the teacher's room. I do this everyday...walk with purpose through the door, find a surface to place my things on and sit at a computer pretending to be awake, while I wait for my all too infrequent classes to begin. I had my earphones in, as I often do, listening to radio or music. I think on this occasion it was music, Jazz, Emilie-Claire Barlow. Keep in mind that it is 7:30 in the morning and it has been six years since I've made a habit out of rising early. Something seemed amiss this morning. A certain frantic milling about the computers just down the line from me, but I was too immersed in trying to look busy to pay it any mind. The other teachers often erupt into some frenzy that I do not understand. I blame the language and cultural barriers, but it is probably just my anti-social nature. I paid them no mind and was on my way to teach a class.

I returned about two hours later after I had done some supervision and taught the class. Now, slightly more awake, I notice that, despite the reduced population in the room, there is still an uneasy buzz and a general looking-around. Not seriously bothered, I continue my reclusive behaviour at a computer, this time without the earphones. I do some marking and pick away at a lesson plan. My ears are always busy, listening to the sounds around me, so work happens very slowly in this room where sounds are everywhere. To my right I pick up the Puerto Rican delegate asking one of the American teachers if he knew anything about the bag of candies and coins on the shelf. All the English-as-a-first-language folks had been left out so far, but Robert decided that it was time to widen the circle of interview.

"Everybody's freaking out", says my Puerto Rican friend, "they think it is some sort of curse, or something, you know the candied corn, money, and little beans. One of the ladies picked it up this morning and wanted to eat a candy, but there was all these coins mixed in with it, so she thought it was some sort of voodoo. Then we were searching online, because the plastic bag was green. Man, Dominicans are so superstitious."

I get a sinking feeling that only a new teacher in a foreign culture can get when there has been a strange misunderstanding. This was my bag of voodoo, only, it wasn't voodoo, it was the playing pieces for my own simplified version of Settlers of Catan, that I was playing in class to teach my kids about trading in the Ghana Empire. I told Robert what it was, in English, and he says: "watch this". He goes over to the shelf and picks it up (not afraid of the curse any more) and starts parading it around the room, threatening to drop it on the desks. He has his laugh and then announces what it is. In my broken Spanish, I confirm his tale as true and for the rest of the day everyone who walks into the staff room is greeted with "did you hear, we found the witch!"

Sundays

Traditions come slow when you are constantly pulling up roots and trying to plant them again. There has been little consistency in the traditions my little family has held over the past few years. Yet, they hold great value to me. In Newfoundland we would get together with our good friends the Sams to brew wine every couple of months. Events like this have always been good for me and kept the ground from spinning. After a couple months of the spinning sensation that is culture shock, Steph and I have been able to find some traditions that help us lay claim to our own culture here.

Sunday is my favourite day of the week. Once upon a time they consisted of CBC Radio and Church but recent events (moving to the DR) have forced a change. The appeal of CBC has always been, for me, the ease of flicking on a radio and having voices instantly populate the room. A computer playing a podcast is no comparison for a real radio. As for church, that has morphed into something called "Sunday time". A natural lack of like minded people here (at least when it comes to how church should be) has lead us to create our own time of reflection, music and reading. We sing only the songs we like, read long passages out loud and pray. This has become a new tradition and it has stopped the ground from spinning.

The other part of most Sundays is making the Sunday Dinner. Borrowing several pages from Lorna Goodison, we have begun making our own variation of rice and peas on Sundays. The ritual begins with the cracking of a coconut. We don't have a hammer. We have a cement step. After ten good wacks on the sharpest edge of the step you can drain the slightly milky fluid out and save it for the cooking the rice later. With more smashing and careful prying, the hard, fatty flesh of the coconut comes off the bone-like shell. One small piece at a time we grate the coconut and add it to a pot of rice bubbling over the gas. While we wait for the water to be absorbed, we dice onions, garlic and sweet peppers and caramelize them in our Dutch Oven adding hot peppers and other spices. We add the most important part, the guandules to the vegetable mixture. By this time the rice and coconut is ready and we add the rich steaming mixture to the vegetables. We heat and mix it all together adding some lime juice and cilantro to finish it off. The dish is served with a slice of avacado and a poached egg. We eat the leftovers for the rest of the week.

Traditions grow like house plants: slow and tenuously. But they keep our feet on the ground and give us tangible ways to practice our love for family and community, whatever size that may be.

Back to School

The city still sleeps. Sunrise is an hour off, but the roosters are anticipating it with preemptive crows. The only other people out are pedestrians or watchers sitting on plastic patio furniture. There is a man sorting through garbage to find bottles. We walk on the streets, for once able to claim the space as our own. Near the major streets the lights shine brightly, on the residential byways trees obscure the light, if there is any at all. Puddles from the night-time down-pour keep you on your toes, despite the early hour. Occasionally a motorcycle buzzes down the street. When the pedestrians pass we keep our heads down, not wanting to disturb this rare peace.

The school is a strange place in darkness. Teachers are eating breakfast, huddling against sleep on this first day back after the Christmas break. The humidity is rising from the courtyard stones, still a little wet from the rain the night before. The sun sneaks around the corner while you've ducked into a room for a minute to prepare the class for the morning's lesson. Soft yellow light warms off of the walls. In a couple hours the light will not be so much warm as hot, but now, in the grace of the sunrise, we are cheered to see the natural light. The day begins with a bell like a steam engine leaving the station.

The teachers continue to be associated with coffee: the smell and the idea. Nothing has changed except that it will be forty degrees today and it is January. The smell of bad coffee and perfume wafts out of the teacher's lounge. People find their small places to be when they are not teaching. Slowly taking over a carol until it is theirs or working on a computer until it adjusts to them. They add their labour, searching for the silver bullet activity.

The minutes add up to hours and the hours turn into a day. Teachers come and go into classrooms, tagging out their partners. Some talk loudly in the teacher's lounge, others are sleeping on the couch or in work stations. 3:30 comes sooner that you would expect and we head out into the heat of the day. We will sleep well tonight.

Happy New Year, baby

The sun revealed a beach: a long, thin, golden crescent of relief from a steadily pounding ocean. It is almost empty now, this first morning of the new year. It is families that occupy this margin today. There is a mother with her three children gathering the bottles from last night into two wheelbarrows. They are almost finished now and we will not see them again today; they live in the shadows of blond haired surfers and pasty white folks sunning themselves. This little family will wheel down the beach and disappear up a mountain road to resume their life in the shadow of Europe and North America. A smaller family still, walks beside us: parents and a young daughter who, like us, are wondering if breakfast is ready yet. The short answer is no. The beach and its restaurants need to breath. Cigar stubs and cigarette butts, plastic hats and cups need to be raked up. Stages need to be disassembled. We wonder in vain searching for something wholesome to fill the gaps we are feeling this morning. A firework that was somehow missed last night is found and impotently set off into the brilliant blue sky.

Cream-cheese and cool cucumber slices on fresh German rolls. There was still some cream-cheese left over from the night before and the whole sale vegetable market was open. We press in to the table, under the umbrella to avoid the sprinkle of rain. We are killing time as we wait to catch a guagua or public car to Sosua and be on the bus back to the capital. We peel the cucumber with a swiss army knife and cut thin slices. Then we cut into the rolls and spread cream-cheese generously on both sides, then layer the cucumber onto the buns. We are silent as we chew through the delicious (and durable) sandwiches. Between the two of us we polish off a litre of fresh yogurt that was cultured a couple of kilometres down the road. A curious feast followed by a game of cribbage, packing and a walk out to the road to make our way along the coast.

The guagau that picked us up was the first one that I truly believed could not hold another soul, this was a lack of faith on my part. The cobrador assured us that there was space and physically pushed us into our seats, bumping our heads on the door in the process. My leg was hanging out the door, but there was no way for the rest of me to move, so it seemed safe enough. The gentleman we had displaced was only riding another kilometre, so he stood on the running board and hung on like the cobrador. This van was about the size of a VW microbus and could comfortably seat twelve. There were no less then thirty-five people on board. My initial counts produced smaller numbers, but I kept discovering more children in he laps of parents. As my mind slowly grasped the situation it became clear that the majority of the people were together. Judging by the Bibles in the hands of the adults, the home tailored suits on the children and the amount of Criollo being spoken, a large Haitian family was making their New Year pilgrimage to a religious gathering. The cobrador (despite all odds) began collecting their fares, collecting their money and counting out change with one hand while the other arm held on to the roof. One by one the family members unfolded themselves and got out of the van. The sound of religious fervour blasting from a P.A. not too far away. Once we started again we only had a minute of road to enjoy breathing unrestricted before we came to the bus terminal and got out.

There is something melancholy about New Year's day. It's as if the country has taken a vow of silence to balance the noise of the night before. Adam Duritz sings “we can probably fix it if we clean it up all day”. Yeah, probably, but who's going to spend the holiday cleaning?