cock fighting and dulces

This was our last week at the training center here in Santo Domingo before we split up for technical training in different regions around the country. My group of information technology is going to El Seybo in the east of the country, which is full of sugarcane fields. It looks like my host family there is going to have a lot of people living in the house, including a six month old baby. FYI my address will stay the same.

I’m curious what it will be like to be in a school type of setting. After visiting a couple schools here and talking with volunteers about schools, the word frustrating arises most often. It really is amazing to see how different the schools are here from the US: school tandas, or sessions, only last four hours. The schools offer a morning and afternoon tanda, and some offer a night one as well (but each kid only goes to one). Oh, and each public school class can have 50 or 60 kids in it. The tandas never start on time, they have a recess that is at least 20 minutes in the middle, and everyone almost always gets out early -- it just depends how much. So kids here are looking at around 3 contact hours of class a day, and so far I have yet to see how they learn everything with the teacher writing something on the board for them to copy or the kids just running around. Also, if the teachers have a meeting during the school day or need to run out and get groceries or anything, they just leave their class to go wild. It looks like permanent summer vacation. The teachers have little motivation because they almost can’t ever get fired (until after elections when power changes hands in the government), and only get hired because of their political affiliations anyway. Obviously, there are good and bad teachers everywhere, but this is on a completely different level.

This week we had a potluck lunch where each language class was assigned a couple dishes to bring that are typical here, and my partner and I ended up with dulce de coco con batata. It sounded a little sketch, since it’s supposed to be a dessert and it’s primary two ingredients are coconut and batata, which is sort of similar to a sweet potato. My partner Adam and I took longer than 3 hours to make this dessert, it was so labor-intensive! My host dad helped by machete-ing the coconut shell off, but then we still had to grate them, cook the batatas and coco forever, and make a caramel mixture to coat them. My neighbor Ariani ended up saving us by helping out on the complicated parts, and it turned out pretty well in the end, receiving the most compliments from the Dominicans that work at the training center. It was amazing to see how much sugar went into this dish: I think by the end we had added two whole pounds. It was good that we made more than we needed, though, because as the word spread, a steady trickle of extended family that lives around here came to have some!

When we went together to the market to shop for our ingredients, our language teacher Danny took us to his house, where he showed us all his 17 cocks that he raises and fights occasionally. His little 5 year old son helped show us, and we all held one of them that was missing an eye from a fight a few weeks ago. He let a couple people swing two back and forth at each other and let them fight a little bit, which was wild! Their neck feathers ruffle up like dinosaurs in Jurassic Park, and they don’t just sit around; they go at each other viciously! Earlier in the week, he had been robbed of one of his hens that produces good fighters, along with her two chicks. By some sort of coincidence, his friend is a police officer and bought them back from some guy in the street for only 60 pesos. When their stories coincided, Danny got his missing hens back! Apparently the criminal didn’t know the hen was worth a lot of money. . .

Last night I threw a party for everyone in our training group, since it was the last time we’ll be together for a long time. We have the perfect patio in back, surrounded by a bunch of our families houses, and plastic chairs appeared like magic as people showed up. By the end of the party later, the ratio had changed from mostly Americans to mostly Dominicans, and there was much more merengue dancing than earlier! The 50 something year old in our group, Ed, was voted most likely to become a tigre and marry a Dominican woman -- tigre being either somebody really good at something, like “He’s a tigre at playing the guitar” or tigre referring to good-for-nothings who like to steal and hang out on corners drinking. I was voted most likely to become Peace Corps Volunteer Leader (the person from the group that stays for a third year to be in charge of a program or two) -- which I have no desire to do; I think it came about after I made the comment over lunch that I was born to be a camp counselor :)

Stay tuned for new adventures from the east side!