This past weekend marked my first excursion out of the capital, Santo Domingo. With the help of a great friend, we rented an SUV and set off for some two-tracking, off-roading greatness. We pulled out of town on Friday around 2:00 and hit the road, destination Miches. This remote, virgin beach paradise is located on the northeast of the country and involves traversing many pueblos, climbing multiple hills and mountains, and a killer driver to get there. We managed all of those and arrived to a destination Lonely Planet told us not to even bother trying to get to...hah!
The drive was a gorgeous thing, including coastline and highways that eventually led us to small towns with broken pavement and dirt roads We passed through pueblos en los campos full of corrugated metal homes the size of a standard bedroom, laundry blowing in the breeze, bare-bottomed babies running after older siblings, working men and women, colmados blaring merengue and bachata rhythms, comedors and chimi stands preparing Dominican foods, burros lugging a day's work on their backs, gallos running and squawking, probably amping themselves up for the night's approaching cock fight, and the happiest vacas I have ever seen with floppy rabbit ears quietly pacing, grazing and standing the day away! As we drove by homes and towns, waving at every person we passed, I was quickly overwhelmed with the absolute human kindness present. Everyone we greeted, waved back to us and lit up with a smile saying money, resources, and power are not the only keys that unlock happiness. Thus, this week's verb is mostly definitely saludar. To greet is to make the acquaintance of a stranger, if even for a moment, thus opening a line of communication with someone with whom you have no previous connection.
Now, I don't give this description to romanticize the Dominican country-side and blur out the affect abject poverty has on the lives of so many of this country's people. Poverty is a reality here. It is an injustice and a struggle that way too many Dominicans share as a lived experience. Those with more resources in this country and people from abroad should be learning about the plight many face here and lend an appropriately helpful hand that will help empower communities. However, all too often I hear Westerners say things like, "Well, it's a beautiful place, but the people are just so poor...it's so sad." And when I hear this line and listen to this pity, I am reminded of places like Miches and the countryside I drove through to get there. Places where people have very little resources, yet they hand you mangos, chinolas, or limoncillos picked fresh from the trees behind their homes. Places where education, health care, a bed to sleep on, and, in some cases, a daily meal are unsure, yet many people have light in their eyes and greet you with genuine smiles. Beams that hold within them a true joy for life. I'm not talking about the medicated happiness too often sought after in my country. I'm describing a deep sense of place and peace. This condition of contentment is something that exists a lot outside of my country, in areas we deem "third world", areas we are trying to save. Sometimes I think they need to be saving us, too. Perhaps an exchange of salvation.
Back to the story at hand...after a three hour trip (which involved stopping for the BEST natural juice batida of my LIFE) we landed at Cocoloco Beach Club, just in time for a birthday party extravaganza that night! This little spot, tucked away and relatively untraveled, is owned by a Swiss woman who, like many Europeans I have met here, came one year and never went home. She has been running these cabañas for sometime now and has no plan of ever returning to the cold of Geneva. We stayed there for two nights eating wonderful seafood and walking the sandy beaches the encircled us. On Saturday, we trekked out to a pristine, blow-your-mind beautiful beach that was accompanied by a palm tree forest that stretched as far as the eye could see. It was worthy of a Dr. Seuss book. Even the cows, horses, and birds were laying around together! I kept searching for unicorns. After leaving the beach, we grabbed some lunch before heading up a HUGE mountain, la montaña redonda, where we screamed at the top of our lungs and stared with awe at the lagunas, forest, and ocean that surrounded us. It was perfect, every single second.
A lot opens up when we greet people and our world with a smile, respect, and a wave of the hand.
Tuesday, July 12, 2011
k8elisa2011's photostream
k8elisa2011's photostream on Flickr.
This is the collection of photos I have taken so far (besides one shot by Jay Shepley) during my travels. ¡Que les disfrutan!
Tuesday, July 5, 2011
to share/compartir
It's been several days since I have set down long enough at a computer to write a blog post, which is and of itself is a beautiful thing--a bit of disconnection from my techno-reality has been welcomed. The last ten days have been magical...meeting new people, being exposed to new situations, sharing new realities and moments. I continue to feel guided in this journey.
Given the lapse in blogging, I have many moments to choose from. I am going to focus on some really wonderful instants of compartiendo I have experienced these past days.
Last week my classmates and I started talking a lot with our teacher, Beatzida, about la comida dominicana. We found out through our conversations that her grandmother used to run a cafeteria here in Santo Domingo, and throughout her childhood she was trained by her abuela in the restaurant. As we discussed tostones, habichuelas, arroz con guandules, pescado del coco, jugos frescos, it became obvious that Beatzida knows how to prepare basically every Dominican dish and cooks with a lot of love! After class last Monday, I asked her if she would be willing to teach me how to cook a meal and allow me to document it for my project.
Well, this conversation led to an afternoon-long adventure with my classmates, Beatzida, her cousin and boyfriend, an afternoon of sharing and learning about one another's food histories. I shared my love for cooking, which comes from my father and grandmothers, while she talked about her abuela's restaurant and her aunt, who currently is training to be a chef and inspires her to learn new recipes and try different foods. After school last Wednesday, we went to the open air markets and purchased fish and produce for our meal, including fish, shrimp, avocados, peppers, cucumbers, tomatoes, carrots, ginger, onions, garlic, lettuce, beets, leeks, oregano, limes, and plantains. We ran by a supermarket to pick up several canned ingredients we needed and got stuck in an afternoon tropical storm. The storms here are quite magical and don't have to stop life; I'm learning that being stuck in the rain can be a beautiful thing. We arrived back to the apartment, nine-deep in a tiny taxi, drenched, and ready to begin preparing this feast! The menu included the following dishes:
~ mero de coco
~camarones con salsa de queso y hongos
~arroz moro con guandules
~tostones
~ensalada de vegetal
~ensalda rusa
~jugo de limon
~ postres frances
For the next three hours, I worked alongside Beatzida learning how to prepare each dish, and with the help of several other students we made food magic! Jay recorded the process and captured some really great footage of Beatzida's love for Dominican cooking. The end product was beyond description, perfectly prepared dishes that were devoured in silence by the 12 friends present for our feast. This meal, from market to plate, was prepared with intention and love.
When the house cleared around 9:00 and I had a moment to reflect, I realized how nice it felt to share this beautiful apartment with Beatzida, her loved ones, and my classmates. When we take a moment out of our days to truly share time and space with other people, new worlds and experiences can open up to us. This is at the core of why I love to travel. These moments of sharing inevitably evolve my perspective and understanding of the world. I leave each moment richer for the intercambio.
Moving along with the theme of sharing....almost two weeks ago I shared a random, yet fated conversation at a bar called la espirral (the spiral) a fitting name for the connection I made. As I ordered my caipirinha, a conversation was struck about the United States. I found out that Dante, a Dominican now living in New Jersey, comes down to the Dominican Republic each summer to work with students in a summer film program--what a serendipity! This program, sponsored by Vin Diesel's One Race Global Flim Foundation, Fundación Global Democracia y Desarollo, Wyclef Jean's Yelé Háiti, and other groups I am now forgetting, brings students from various countries to DR each summer to study screenplay writing and film production. Dante went through the program as a student in 2006 and now serves as a teaching assistant each year.
As we talked, I explained to him a bit about my work as an educator in the United States and my deep interest in the development of 21st century linguistics curriculum that is based in the advancement of technology products--public service announcements, poster projects, music videos, short documentaries, etc. We discussed the video project I am currently working on about my experience in the Dominican Republic, and he offered to let me tour the Fundación Global Democracia y Desarollo to see the students' at work. I was blown away by what I found and returned a couple times last week to help with translations.
In its inception, the program was designed to help build the Dominican film industry through teaching script writing and technical skills to young Dominicans trying to get into the industry.
However, this year marked the development of global consciousness in the program. Focusing on the issue of of border conflicts, they brought students from Haiti and the Dominican Republic together along with students from Israel and Palestine. This added a whole new element to their project work, an aspect that fascinates and inspires me. I see so much potential in where they are moving with this work...the interweaving of screenplay writing and critical issues facing our world today, a beautiful, powerful combination of forces. I was invited to attend the graduation ceremony for the program last Saturday, and sat behind the president of the Dominican Republic...yes, in this country the president sits in the audience with his body guards. :)
It was an unforgettable night, a night that was also documented for my project so I won't say too much more.
I am learning, sharing, listening, discussing, and just taking in all I can right now. This, sometimes, gets in the way of regular blogging, but I am sure you can understand. I will do my best to keep up with the posts in these remaining 18 days of travel. This has been a journey that has already taken me much farther than I am able to communicate via the internet. Lilly, I must say thank you for the renewal.
Given the lapse in blogging, I have many moments to choose from. I am going to focus on some really wonderful instants of compartiendo I have experienced these past days.
Last week my classmates and I started talking a lot with our teacher, Beatzida, about la comida dominicana. We found out through our conversations that her grandmother used to run a cafeteria here in Santo Domingo, and throughout her childhood she was trained by her abuela in the restaurant. As we discussed tostones, habichuelas, arroz con guandules, pescado del coco, jugos frescos, it became obvious that Beatzida knows how to prepare basically every Dominican dish and cooks with a lot of love! After class last Monday, I asked her if she would be willing to teach me how to cook a meal and allow me to document it for my project.
Well, this conversation led to an afternoon-long adventure with my classmates, Beatzida, her cousin and boyfriend, an afternoon of sharing and learning about one another's food histories. I shared my love for cooking, which comes from my father and grandmothers, while she talked about her abuela's restaurant and her aunt, who currently is training to be a chef and inspires her to learn new recipes and try different foods. After school last Wednesday, we went to the open air markets and purchased fish and produce for our meal, including fish, shrimp, avocados, peppers, cucumbers, tomatoes, carrots, ginger, onions, garlic, lettuce, beets, leeks, oregano, limes, and plantains. We ran by a supermarket to pick up several canned ingredients we needed and got stuck in an afternoon tropical storm. The storms here are quite magical and don't have to stop life; I'm learning that being stuck in the rain can be a beautiful thing. We arrived back to the apartment, nine-deep in a tiny taxi, drenched, and ready to begin preparing this feast! The menu included the following dishes:
~ mero de coco
~camarones con salsa de queso y hongos
~arroz moro con guandules
~tostones
~ensalada de vegetal
~ensalda rusa
~jugo de limon
~ postres frances
For the next three hours, I worked alongside Beatzida learning how to prepare each dish, and with the help of several other students we made food magic! Jay recorded the process and captured some really great footage of Beatzida's love for Dominican cooking. The end product was beyond description, perfectly prepared dishes that were devoured in silence by the 12 friends present for our feast. This meal, from market to plate, was prepared with intention and love.
When the house cleared around 9:00 and I had a moment to reflect, I realized how nice it felt to share this beautiful apartment with Beatzida, her loved ones, and my classmates. When we take a moment out of our days to truly share time and space with other people, new worlds and experiences can open up to us. This is at the core of why I love to travel. These moments of sharing inevitably evolve my perspective and understanding of the world. I leave each moment richer for the intercambio.
Moving along with the theme of sharing....almost two weeks ago I shared a random, yet fated conversation at a bar called la espirral (the spiral) a fitting name for the connection I made. As I ordered my caipirinha, a conversation was struck about the United States. I found out that Dante, a Dominican now living in New Jersey, comes down to the Dominican Republic each summer to work with students in a summer film program--what a serendipity! This program, sponsored by Vin Diesel's One Race Global Flim Foundation, Fundación Global Democracia y Desarollo, Wyclef Jean's Yelé Háiti, and other groups I am now forgetting, brings students from various countries to DR each summer to study screenplay writing and film production. Dante went through the program as a student in 2006 and now serves as a teaching assistant each year.
As we talked, I explained to him a bit about my work as an educator in the United States and my deep interest in the development of 21st century linguistics curriculum that is based in the advancement of technology products--public service announcements, poster projects, music videos, short documentaries, etc. We discussed the video project I am currently working on about my experience in the Dominican Republic, and he offered to let me tour the Fundación Global Democracia y Desarollo to see the students' at work. I was blown away by what I found and returned a couple times last week to help with translations.
In its inception, the program was designed to help build the Dominican film industry through teaching script writing and technical skills to young Dominicans trying to get into the industry.
However, this year marked the development of global consciousness in the program. Focusing on the issue of of border conflicts, they brought students from Haiti and the Dominican Republic together along with students from Israel and Palestine. This added a whole new element to their project work, an aspect that fascinates and inspires me. I see so much potential in where they are moving with this work...the interweaving of screenplay writing and critical issues facing our world today, a beautiful, powerful combination of forces. I was invited to attend the graduation ceremony for the program last Saturday, and sat behind the president of the Dominican Republic...yes, in this country the president sits in the audience with his body guards. :)
It was an unforgettable night, a night that was also documented for my project so I won't say too much more.
I am learning, sharing, listening, discussing, and just taking in all I can right now. This, sometimes, gets in the way of regular blogging, but I am sure you can understand. I will do my best to keep up with the posts in these remaining 18 days of travel. This has been a journey that has already taken me much farther than I am able to communicate via the internet. Lilly, I must say thank you for the renewal.
Saturday, June 25, 2011
to absorb/absorber
It's a slow morning here on calle 19 marzo; it seems like the whole pace of my life has slowed down a bit here in this Caribbean capital. The heat, the language, and the project work take their tolls, and I have been guarding my afternoon naps with ferocity. While my pace has become more like a meandering walk than the sprint I usually live, the days do seem to be disappearing. There is so much to take in, so much to absorb, so many experiences to be had in the next four weeks.
School is moving along, though my favorite classmate, Chris, is leaving tomorrow. Good news is there is a revolving door of students, and I hope we add new faces to class next week. A friend and fellow teacher, Kristy, will be joining me here next week and beginning Spanish classes as well. I'm looking forward to having another partner in crime! I have one more week of grammar and conversation classes, and then I add an afternoon class in Dominican culture and history to the mix for my third and fourth weeks of school. I will be interested to see what kind of teacher they bring in for this cultural studies course, as he or she is coming from one of the local universities to teach me.
So far most political or cultural discussions we have gotten into in my classes have been a bit truncated as my teachers are very conservative evangelical Christians whose religious perspectives define most aspects of their lives. Both women are lovely people, but they most definitely find me to be a bit out there, which to an extremely conservative, evangelical Dominican woman, I most certainly am! I have simply been trying to take in their points of view and beliefs about life, their country, and their people--absorb what they have to teach me. Chris and I both love to talk about race, so we have been bringing those issues up in class a lot (who will be a rabble-rouser with me now?!), and it has been really fascinating to compare how African-Americans relate to their black identity as compared to most Dominicans. Chris, who is black, pointed out to me that for Americans of color, one drop of black blood proudly allows you to claim your African heritage. Here every word in the world is used to describe people who are all of color; every word, that is, but black.
Indio, indio claro, morena/o, morenita/o, mulatta/o. To be called negro/a here is an offense, an offense that usually comes along with being called haitiana/o, as the darker one's skin is the more closely one is related to the other part of the island--the part of voodoo, creole, inexplicable natural disasters, and abject poverty. In one of my interviews yesterday, a former Dominican high school teacher and his lovely wife discussed the relationship Dominicans have with their African heritage as one of refusal and rejection. Yet, as Candi explained to me, it is a rejection that can only go so far. A woman of very light-skin and mixed background (French, Italian, Spanish, and African), she said that since childhood, she has felt her African roots through music and dance. When she hears the beat of a tambour, she feels it in her blood. Her husband, a non-dancing dominicano (a rare breed here!) elaborated on this refusal of blackness and the general quest Dominicans have always been on to set themselves apart from their brother country, Haiti, and find some sort of pure Dominican identity. This search, it seems, has led the culture to see itself as more white, more Spanish, more Catholic, and less black, less African, less connected to the cultural practices brought to the island with slavery.
Chris also turned me on to PBS's recent series, Black in Latin America, which shot an episode here in DR and Haiti. I have been consuming that series with intensity, taking in so much new information and many enlightening perspectives about the black experience across Latin America. In my own project, one question I am asking people is to identify experiences that unite all parts of the Americas...and our continental relationship with slavery and the African diaspora is one of the most important links we all share.
Well, the day stands before me, waiting to lead me to new places donde puedo absorber momentos nuevos. I am excited for this day, which includes shooting the second part of my interview with Candi and Eduardo, an afternoon of photography, and an art show tonight featuring Nathalie's collection of reportage here in Santo Domingo. I happily make myself into dry cloth ready to sponge up all the day has to give.
School is moving along, though my favorite classmate, Chris, is leaving tomorrow. Good news is there is a revolving door of students, and I hope we add new faces to class next week. A friend and fellow teacher, Kristy, will be joining me here next week and beginning Spanish classes as well. I'm looking forward to having another partner in crime! I have one more week of grammar and conversation classes, and then I add an afternoon class in Dominican culture and history to the mix for my third and fourth weeks of school. I will be interested to see what kind of teacher they bring in for this cultural studies course, as he or she is coming from one of the local universities to teach me.
So far most political or cultural discussions we have gotten into in my classes have been a bit truncated as my teachers are very conservative evangelical Christians whose religious perspectives define most aspects of their lives. Both women are lovely people, but they most definitely find me to be a bit out there, which to an extremely conservative, evangelical Dominican woman, I most certainly am! I have simply been trying to take in their points of view and beliefs about life, their country, and their people--absorb what they have to teach me. Chris and I both love to talk about race, so we have been bringing those issues up in class a lot (who will be a rabble-rouser with me now?!), and it has been really fascinating to compare how African-Americans relate to their black identity as compared to most Dominicans. Chris, who is black, pointed out to me that for Americans of color, one drop of black blood proudly allows you to claim your African heritage. Here every word in the world is used to describe people who are all of color; every word, that is, but black.
Indio, indio claro, morena/o, morenita/o, mulatta/o. To be called negro/a here is an offense, an offense that usually comes along with being called haitiana/o, as the darker one's skin is the more closely one is related to the other part of the island--the part of voodoo, creole, inexplicable natural disasters, and abject poverty. In one of my interviews yesterday, a former Dominican high school teacher and his lovely wife discussed the relationship Dominicans have with their African heritage as one of refusal and rejection. Yet, as Candi explained to me, it is a rejection that can only go so far. A woman of very light-skin and mixed background (French, Italian, Spanish, and African), she said that since childhood, she has felt her African roots through music and dance. When she hears the beat of a tambour, she feels it in her blood. Her husband, a non-dancing dominicano (a rare breed here!) elaborated on this refusal of blackness and the general quest Dominicans have always been on to set themselves apart from their brother country, Haiti, and find some sort of pure Dominican identity. This search, it seems, has led the culture to see itself as more white, more Spanish, more Catholic, and less black, less African, less connected to the cultural practices brought to the island with slavery.
Chris also turned me on to PBS's recent series, Black in Latin America, which shot an episode here in DR and Haiti. I have been consuming that series with intensity, taking in so much new information and many enlightening perspectives about the black experience across Latin America. In my own project, one question I am asking people is to identify experiences that unite all parts of the Americas...and our continental relationship with slavery and the African diaspora is one of the most important links we all share.
Well, the day stands before me, waiting to lead me to new places donde puedo absorber momentos nuevos. I am excited for this day, which includes shooting the second part of my interview with Candi and Eduardo, an afternoon of photography, and an art show tonight featuring Nathalie's collection of reportage here in Santo Domingo. I happily make myself into dry cloth ready to sponge up all the day has to give.
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