Rain, Rain, Go Away

Rain, rain, and more rain has dominated January. The only thing there is as much of as rain is lodo, or mud. I didn’t believe it was possible, but the nights actually require more than just a sheet: you know it’s chilly when the people here comment that it was a two-sheet night. Even Cajuil had the sniffles.

And if December was a wedding month, January has been a party month. New Year’s, followed by Three Kings Day on the 6th, and then here was our nine day long celebration of fiestas patronales. Every city or pueblo or campo has its patron saint, and celebrates the week leading up to its day with daily mass and lots of going out. It has made for a difficult restarting of – well, everything. Lots of rain combined with cooler weather and parties decreases everybody’s motivation and attendance in all non-social pursuits.

We managed to find a couple hours of sun on a very rainy New Year’s Eve to hit the beach, and a couple friends in Sosua took us in their little motorboat to a secluded and beautiful beach, lined with palm trees and surrounded by striking rock formations. The night was a very wet celebration in Cabarete with a big group of volunteers; either you were dripping from the rain pouring outside or from dancing in the overcrowded sweaty clubs right there on the beach.

From Sosua a group of us went straight to a campo several hours away to translate for a medical mission. This one was a teaching mission, where a large portion of the nurses were earning their master’s at a school in Maine. Every morning we set out to a different area around to set up shop in the church there, and did general health and dental checks. I hadn’t realized that my Spanish really had improved vastly until I had to translate and the Dominicans really gravitated toward us Peace Corps volunteers who not only have the language but even the accent and words they use daily in our speech.

For three of us volunteers, however, the trip came to a halt when one of the big trucks took a spill on the third day. It had been raining all week and was a drizzly morning. In spite of the sprinkling, I had made a running date with one of the nurses and another volunteer for early in the morning, and we ran in the wet and dark. The nurse, Laura, was afraid she wouldn’t be able to keep up, but it was her that was the fast one. After breakfast our half of the group, Team B, took off for our site and eventually reached a church atop a hill with a gorgeous view, overlooking even the ocean. Our truck that I was in back of was a normal pickup, and it had to attempt twice to get up one of the last steep hills before arriving. The other two trucks were big flatbeds, so with their weight could get up more easily. However, as the last truck was making its way up the slippery-rocked slope, it apparently got stuck in third gear and rolled right down, continuing into the heavy brush on the side of the hill, and rolling as it went down. All 12 passengers in back were thrown out. The three in the cab had a couple minor injuries, and the one Peace Corps volunteer in that truck had hurt her thumb. The worst of it all was that Laura, the nurse I’d run with, had such bad injuries that she passed away on the way to the hospital, never even regaining consciousness after the accident. Her poor family – having to get such horrible news about their daughter here for only two weeks to help out – I can’t imagine. It was a traumatic day for everyone involved. The mission apparently continued, but the three of us volunteers in that group were called to the capital and never made it back so far away.

Back in my site, we have started the next round of computer classes, and now have almost all 18 computers functioning. I had to go to the capital to pick up 5 new monitors, and upon their first use back at the lab, the first one we turned on promptly had a mini explosion and never could turn on again. Are exploding monitors common?

Our fiestas patronales have given me a new goal at my site: to change an archaic church rule in my campo. The priest asked me to do a reading in the last day's big mass, but when I showed up (looking wonderful, of course), he told me that I'd have to go home and change. Why? To read, it's a rule that females have to wear skirts. I protested, but to no avail.

The less holy celebrations continued each night at the corner with bands, drinking, and dancing. Once again, like in Semana Cultural, my presence on a couple of nights there was an excuse for multiple males between the ages of 15 and 50, regardless of marital status, to tell me how much they love me. This statement is usually combined with an attempt at convincing me to either stay in the country forever to get married and have kids, or to take my future husband (them) back to the US with them. Depending on the amount of rum they have drinken, it may or may not be accompanied by dancing. Now anybody who missed their chance to declare their crush will have to wait til August, the next time any sort of celebration happens in my campo.