To the Batcave

Last weekend I made a quick trip into the mountains here in the eastern region to scout out a site where we would like to hold a boy’s camp. While I live in the sugar cane-covered plains, the mountains are but a bus ride away. Just ninety minutes on the guagua brought me to the beautiful mountain pueblo of Pedro Sanchez.

Pedro Sanchez from the Loma

My primary objective of the trip was to scout out the sight for the camp but I had the good fortune of tagging along on a bit of an excursion as well. The local guides group was climbing up a loma to some caves in order to clean up the trails and clean up garbage in the caves themselves. The guides group has had a Peace Corps volunteer working with them for the past few years and currently have a new volunteer as they try to attract tourists to their beautiful mountain setting.

I gladly tagged along on the trip and quickly learned how out of shape I am after a lazy holiday season and some time spent stuffing my face in the US of A. After struggling to the top of the loma, and a nice long descanso, it was time to dive into some caves.

We went into three caves in total and each subsequent cave was deeper, darker and home to more murciélagos, or bats. In America, if you are visiting caves as a tourist you will most likely be walking along carefully manicured and well-lit walkways ensuring one’s safety. In the DR there is none of the above. We climbed down rocks and boulders in the dark with only a few headlamps to lead the way. The deeper we got, the darker it got. The darker it got, the more bats there were. The more bats there were, the more guano there was to trudge through.

It was fascinating to watch the young Dominicans who had been visiting these caves since their childhood run and jump through the dark with ease without a single misstep. It is akin to the Dominican children who live near the beach that have the ability to climb a palm tree, knock down a coconut and climb back down in 8 seconds flat or the kids from my site who can cut down a stalk of sugar cane and tear it apart with their bare teeth without a second thought. Dominican kids develop some fun abilities.

The bats were at both times cool and eerie. They could be heard but not seen, without the flash of a camera that is. They would begin to stir each time we approached and the entire cave would echo with their movements. The third and final cave we visited is home to an estimated half million bats.

Entering the 3rd Cave

The ground in the cave was covered with guano that locals collect to use as fertilizer and that gringos like me inadvertently slip-n-slide through. All the Dominicans had huge rubber boots with great traction and I was roller-skating around with sad excuses for hiking shoes.

By the time we had gotten in and out of the second cave most everyone was completely covered in bat poo. The guides and locals were covered because they had a bat poo fight the way Iowans would have a snowball fight. I was covered because I slipped and fell a dozen times. So it goes. Thankfully Dominican doñas can rid of any stain and have no problems with poop.

It was a fun excursion and succeeded in physically kicking my ass. I learned that I will need to work out a bit before finally deciding to tackle Pico Duarte, the tallest mountain in the DR and all of the Caribbean, which is a volunteer rite of passage to climb during their service.

Murciélagos

Las Estrellas Orientales

The Dominican Winter Baseball League takes place each year between October and January, when the Major Leagues are in off-season. The league consists of just 6 teams. A number of Major League players and up-and-coming farm team prospects participate in the Winter League to hone their skills for the upcoming MLB season.

The team nearest to my site is the Estrellas Orientales, the Eastern Stars. As I live nearby (about 15 miles), I have deemed myself an Estrellas fan based solely on proximity. They play in San Pedro de Macoris, the mecca of Dominican baseball, where many of the great Dominican peloteros call home. This year marked the 100^th anniversary of the franchise. In all of those 100 years, the Estrellas have won just 3 titles. In a league of just 6 teams.

The Estrellas are the (not so) lovable losers of the DR league. The Dominican equivalent of the Chicago Cubs. Due again to proximity and a lack of a professional team in Iowa, I regard myself as a Cubs fan. Both teams have a tendency experience long spells of losing seasons followed by teams with great promise who choke and leave their fans again disappointed. The Estrellas last title was in 1968.

One difference between the Cubs and Estrellas is that the Cubs inability to win the big game has become somewhat of an endearing trait. They have one of the country’s largest fan bases. Many, myself included, can’t help but fall for the lovable losers from the North side. Fans stay loyal and each October dutifully utter the words, “maybe next year.” The Estrellas fans don’t find the losing reputation to be quite so endearing. Many have given up entirely and taken to cheering for one of the other 5 teams that win from time to time.

This year the Estrellas made it to the league championship against the fellow team from the eastern region, the Toros of La Romana. It would have been fitting for the Estrellas to end their 42-year title drought in the 100^th year of the franchise. But in true Estrellas form they lost a best-of-9 series 5 games to zero. The whole San Pedro area was abuzz only to see their team break their hearts once again in a rather embarrassing 5 games to 0 fashion. I’ve yet to hear anyone suggest “maybe next year.”

The Estrellas playing Escogido in the Capital

For more on the Eastern Stars and an interesting read check out this book, Eastern Stars, that is making the rounds amongst volunteers living in and around San Pedro.

Experimentation

After spending Christmas in the States, I arrived back in the DR with gifts in tow. I could not possibly have come back empty handed to a chorus of Dominicans asking, ¿Que me trajiste? (What did you bring me?). This is a phrase we volunteers hear more often than we would like. Sometimes after just a quick trip to the Capital for a meeting the local children will ask what we’ve brought back for them. A trip to the giant mall of a country that is the US would surely attract much ¿Que me trajiste?.

I obviously couldn’t bring something for everyone and focused my give-giving solely on my host family. I found many trinkets and toys in the US that would be perfect to momentarily peak the interest of local children with short attention spans while also buying things with few parts and little monetary value for when they were inevitably broken. I found crayons, kaleidoscopes, baseballs, candy, etc. And I bought some Christmas stockings for my host family in hopes of sharing some American customs and culture.

Since Dominicans do not traditionally exchange gifts on Christmas but on Three Kings or Epiphany Day (January 6^th), I was able to partake in the gift giving in both the US and the DR.

My most daring purchase was something I planned to buy long before heading back Stateside. Quite often groups of American missionaries pass through my community and other area bateyes and almost literally dump gifts into the hands of Dominican children. (This creates a dependency and makes our job harder - but that rant is for another time.) The most prevalent of these gifts are knock-off Barbie dolls that little girls cling to. They spend hours on end combing Barbie’s bleach blonde locks until the have removed each and every hair on the doll’s head and lose interest. Not even batey children want a bald Barbie. The doll is always the same: white skinned with blonde hair and impossible measurements.

The gift I planned to buy each of my 3 young host nieces (ages 8, 6 and 5) was meant to be somewhat of a social experiment. I bought each of them their very own Barbie or baby doll, but each of the dolls had black skin, just like my nieces themselves. I knew that one of two things would occur.

1) The girls would love their dolls and relish the fact that the dolls ‘looked like them’ in some way.

2) The girls would be quick to label the dolls as ‘ugly’ or in some way inferior to the cheap white Barbies they have grown accustomed to.

I once watched a video in a college class dealing with this exact issue. When given a choice between white and black dolls, both white American and African American children overwhelming choose the white doll. They say it’s better, it’s prettier, it's nicer and generally preferable to the other. I was interested to know that while this may hold true in a multi-racial United States of America, would it also ring true in a developing nation of dark-skinned people?

While I had obviously hoped for scenario 1 to take place, I knew that the more likely reaction was that of scenario 2. And, lamentably, scenario 2 is exactly what unfolded. The 8 and 6 year-old nieces feigned interest in their Disney Princess Barbie for a moment before quickly moving on to the white Barbie knock-off their parents had gifted them. The 5 year-old wasted not a second to label her doll as fea (ugly) and has never touched it since. Experiment failed.

Unwanted dolls aside, my host family generally enjoyed their gifts and a successful holiday was had by all.

Un Año Nuevo

How it can possibly be the year 2011 right now I really don’t know. Upon joining Peace Corps many future volunteers, myself included, look ahead thinking two years is such a long time and here I am with 10 months left to go not knowing where the time went. This experience is passing by at warp speed.

The past month has only accelerated the feeling that life is passing by too quickly. I spent some time in the US for the holidays. I just couldn’t go one more year without a White Christmas or knowing what it felt like to be cold. It was great to see the snow and feel the cold and even greater to leave knowing I wouldn’t have to drive in it and deal with it for the next 3 months.

After some very welcome R&R in the States, my younger sister came and visited me here in the DR for a couple weeks. We traveled around the entire country, jumped off waterfalls, hung out in bateyes, hit the beach, camped in the clouds, celebrated a New Year and her 20^th birthday. It was a whirlwind of a trip and a great way to kick off 2011.

Now it’s back to the grind and trying to get as much as possible accomplished before these last 10 months disappear as quickly as the first 17 did.

I'm usually not one to make New Year's Resolutions, but this year it seems almost necessary as my time here ticks away.

One thing I really hope to do is the write and blog more often so as to better document this experience and share my life here with people back home. This is a resolution I am pretty confident I can do.

Another is to start weaning myself off of meat. I am far too weak to become a full-fledged vegetarian, but I would certainly like to start eating less meat before my impending arrival back in the US of A. I'll start out as a weekday (okay, maybe 4 days a week) vegetarian and go from there. This resolution may be harder to uphold.

I would resolve (as most everyone does) to exercise more but I know myself too well for that. Playing basketball and volleyball in the batey will just have to be enough.

And lastly I intend to spend more time in my site and focus on the community and the things we are trying to achieve. I've had some great fun in this country and traveled a lot. In the next 10 months I want to focus more on work and less on play.

Happy New Year - Feliz Año Nuevo - Welcome 2011