And then there were none -- inversores, that is

News flash of the week! On Monday when I was on my way to the high school, some people hanging out at the nearby colmado (general store) told me that there had been a robbery in our school’s computer lab. Sure enough, when I arrived, the director was arriving at the same time with two members of the police department to accompany him. Some ladrones, or thieves, had cut through the fence surrounding the school sometime during Sunday night, we believe. They had wrenched the bars on the computer lab window open far enough for a skinny person to crawl through, and cut through and bent back the slats covering the windows. They took two CPUs and both of our inversores (those would be the battery backup generators that control when the batteries are charging and when they are working). The inversores are a big loss, because they are very expensive and critical to a computer lab here. There is not a whole lot of electricity in this community – maybe around four hours in the morning and a couple in the afternoon and then a few at night, and there is certainly no schedule for the electricity, making inversores a key member of any lab.

The police didn’t find any fingerprints after they looked halfheartedly. Our school had been the last in the area to be robbed; every other school surrounding us with a computer lab had been robbed at some point in the last couple of years. It’s fairly common here since you can sell any of those things for quite a bit of money on the street. So our current plan of action is to put more secure bars on the insides of the windows of the lab as well as install an alarm system, I believe. We’ll see how fast this can all get resolved, because without the inversores, I have very little reason to be here doing the information technology job I’m here to do. Luckily I’m still in the community diagnostic phase of my job. . . we haven’t started classes yet or anything of the sort, and high school classes are coming to an end, making the demands at this time of the year on the lab very few.

My bike arrived last week in a car sent by the Peace Corps, but unfortunately my helmet that I had attached to the bar of the bike did not make it into the car somehow. I thought that perhaps it was the office’s idea of a good joke on Becky, since we can’t ride without our helmets! After thinking about buying a helmet or going to the capital to get mine from the office, some friends down the street suggested the express bus service that can also deliver packages. It’s in the works; I believe the office is sending it today! I will have more freedom and a larger area to explore now.

This weekend I went out for the first time in the city of San Francisco with the girlfriends of my host brothers here as well as the closest volunteer to me, Ambrosia. The brothers all felt compelled to come out and make sure their girlfriends weren’t doing anything naughty. . . which was fine, but I was looking forward to a girls’ night out. Those don’t seem to exist here! Nubia and Anyolina had convinced me to let them paint my nails that afternoon, and I let them, ending up with French-tipped nails with a black little design on my ring finger nail. In the cities, all the women get their nails done at little neighborhood salons and the current fad is exactly what I had. When Ambrosia showed up later, she had matching toenails. We laughed nervously at the fact that our nails had become Dominicanized. What will come next? Perhaps next time I see friends from home I’ll be wearing skin-tight outfits, spending all Saturday straightening my hair with chemicals and rollers, and refusing to wear shorts!

Besides having the lab broken into, things are going better here now than the first couple of weeks. I know more people, am getting invited to eat lunch at different peoples’ houses, and am busier now that Ambrosia and I are planning our day camps for July. I have begun to cart my motor helmet with me whenever I walk anywhere, because so many people offer me bolas (free rides) that it’s only a question of minutes before I zip off on a moto.