I showed up at the airport with a flat 12"x12" suitcase. It was blue with hippie daisies on it, an authentic remnant from the 60s or 70s. Everyone else, men included, had huge suitcases on wheels with them. I had pared things down to 1 sundress, a pair of shorts and a shirt, swimsuit, and undergarments. I just alternated what I wore. I took 2 pairs of shoes--flip flops and tennis shoes. I had my first passport. Several people told me I looked like a "Russian spy", or "a spy" in my passport photo. I don't know why they thought this and what they thought a spy should look like. for the photo I had lined my eyes in black and wore an almost flourescent red turtleneck.
When I was that age, I reminded some people of Oksana Baiul, including a 3 year old I was a nanny for who shouted my name out loud excitedly when she saw Oksana at the Icescapades in Oregon.
The DR was an incredible place. We all got very sick, even having had a whole panel of vaccinations. We lived in a poor bario and worked there, and also took breaks to climb the Jarabacoa mountains and visit the beaches. My favorite beach, I can't recall the name, was a small and remote cove with cliffs behind us and a shelf of sand. Absolutely beautiful. One of the more dramatic things I remember about the Jarabacoa mountains was the enormous flying bugs and dragonflies which could get caught in your hair. They were as large as my hand. On the mountain trail to the top of the mountain, I got out in front of the group. I didn't like walking at a slower pace. I wanted to get to the top and THEN look around.
At the top was a small village of people. I remember someone asking me if I thought I could be a missionary up there. "All by myself?" I wondered. I felt drawn to doing it, and contemplated the idea. I thought, "Maybe if I have a computer..."
During this trip the man I was interested in, who was by then engaged, was often looking my way. I felt the chemistry but said nothing. One evening, I walked down an isolated trail, in the dark, to get away. He was coming down from the opposite direction. We stopped and the tension was almost as thick as the air. For a moment, we simply stopped and looked at eachother. I was on the side of the narrow path and he stood in the middle, not moving out of the way. I then broke the mood, saying something funny and slight, asking where the path went, indicating I wanted to get by, and he answered and we passed eachother. I found out later, as he said publicly, in a group, he hadn't been able to sleep at all, and he looked directly at me when he said this and wouldn't look away. I looked away. I said, "Oh! I've been sleeping like a rock! As soon as I'm in bed, I'm out!" He searched my face and then said, "Really..." and I think that answered his questions. In this environment, if you become engaged, this is serious and one doesn't simply "date". If one dated, it was with the intention of finding that person to be a potential partner. He was already engaged, and I wasn't going to let on that I cared for him at all, unless he had figured out, on his own, that something wasn't right with his engagement. I always believed a man should know what he wants before coming to me, to see whether I would "fit the bill"--it was too close to rebounding. I was attracted to him, and wanted to get to know him more, but I wouldn't give any sign as to my feelings, and I believe I was convincing that I didn't care at all. We later had a sort of closure before he was married, which I'll write about soon.
At the Dominican Republic we built houses and worked on getting electricity in their bario. I remember touring the village town and seeing a man hunched over a metal scrap, melting something over an open fire. It was blazing hot, so hot we Americans had to sleep through the afternoon, lying as still as possible, and looking high and low for the coolest spot. We didn't have air conditioning, and we washed our clothing out by hand. Some of the women took pride in getting their clothes especially white. I thought it was the worst chore of my life and as long as my clothes didn't stink, that was good enough. My knuckles hurt from trying to scrub clothers over a grate. I thanked God for washing machines. When I got home, I felt rich, having a bathtub.
The houses in the barrio were planks and flattened coffee cans. The poorest barrio sat alongside huge stucco mansions and estates. The contrast of rich and poor was distinct--there was no "middle class" aside from the tourists.
We performed our skits and people became christians, responding by wanting to accept Jesus and christianity. I enjoyed working on my Spanish there, but after awhile, hearing this fast hispanic music that seemed to be played everywhere, at all hours, and with the same tempo, got on my nerves. I realized how immigrants felt, in their need to speak their own language. It is mentally exhausting to try to communicate 24 hours in another language, in a foreign environment.
The men there were not my type, but the women were stunning. Half of them were model-beautiful. The guys in our group, and I think probably any tourist, noticed.
One of my favorite things about DR was the mangos that were all over the ground. I picked up mangos and ate them fresh all the time.
At the market, I purchased a tortoise shell headband which was very thick. I didn't know the tortoise was an endangered species and wore that headband on the plane home.
At one point, we tried to cross over from DR to Haiti. I really wanted to see Haiti. Groups from our church had been there before, but everything depended on the guards and their mood. Sometimes they let you pass and other times, no. They wouldn't let us pass. We hung out while they decided, for hours. There was a large sugarcane field separating the countries. On one side, you could look back and see lush green trees. Looking forward, to Haiti, it was dirt and barren landscape. Even the people were different. In DR people were poor, but they were social and seemed to be happy, at least outwardly. The people in Haiti did not have this carefree appearance. The women were carrying large and heavy pots on their heads and looked at us with vacant and sometimes hardened eyes. No one was smiling.
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