I have to admit that the past two weeks haven’t been quite as productive (at least, research-wise) as I’d hoped upon my enthusiastic return to the DR. Firstly, I arrived back in the country sick, although the generous efforts of a close friend helped me to feel much better in a hurry – including breakfasts in bed and mandatory naptimes. Once I kicked most of my illness, the oppressive (capitalist) spirit of Navidad, or Christmas, had taken over. With people clamoring to return to the countryside for holiday family gatherings I deemed it futile to attempt to plan any meetings until after the New Year.
Christmas was a bit anticlimactic – or perhaps I had unrealistically high expectations for the DR, since it is an historically Catholic country. Last night I headed out to the community where I’ve worked for the past three years with SOMOS. In the Dominican Republic, la Noche Buena (Christmas Eve) is the most important part of the festivities, which are marked by alcohol, alcohol, and more alcohol. I spent the night with the family of a good friend in Paraíso, where I happily tucked into a huge array of food: spaghetti, various pastelones (basically lasagna-like layered concoctions of eggplant, meat, and veggies), bread, and about three different types of meat.
Dinner was very laid back; everyone simply got a plate at some point and ate either inside the house or, more likely, outside on plastic chairs positioned in front of two different sources of deafening music. For hours bachata and Dominican hip-hop competed while I screamed into the ears of assembled friends and family to explain what a gringa in hiking shoes was doing at a Christmas gathering in the low-income outskirts of Santo Domingo.
Across the street at the colmado (small general store) on the corner teenage boys gulped cups of rum and beer, eventually joined by their female counterparts, at which point a very graphic form of dancing began (think high school Homecoming). Besides the ubiquitous presence of alcohol (even a very small twelve-year-old girl at the house where I was kept grabbing unfinished cups of wine and liquor, which didn’t seem to bother anyone), I noticed an unusual number of motoconchistas (motorcycle drivers) revving their engines up and down the dirt roads, and more than one fight broke out. Every woman I saw was wearing skin-tight, low-cut, very short dresses, and all the adolescent females insisted on picture after picture, posing scandalously in front of the Christmas tree.
The night ended with a car ride to drop off one of the girls who had come over for dinner (this was around 1am), at which point the drivers (the oldest daughter in the family with whom I stayed and her husband) allowed the squealing, scantily-clad teenage girls in the back (and me, in my jeans and hiking shoes) to spend fifteen minutes parading through the crowd of people spilling out a local nightclub. Interspersed were an astonishing number of motorcycles and more liberally-flowing alcohol. The girls giggled with excitement, while I was half-afraid that someone might try to snatch one of them away. They seemed oblivious to my concern and kept talking to very sketchy-looking strangers, which also freaked me out.
No matter the cultural context, I think that holidays are a time when you see the best and worst of a society. There are the beautiful cultural traditions that are finally given time to flourish and be appreciated. There is a sense of generosity, of high spirits, of love. Then there is the alcoholism and the resulting (intentional and unintentional) violence that often follows. There are the interactions of family members long separated. And there is a sort of magnification of tensions between and among people. The expression of disgust at some of the obviously (to me, at least) problematic issues in Dominican society/culture (or at least a particular subset of it) is a sentiment that I often criticize in others, but, infrequently, I feel it as well. This is not to say that many of these things aren’t present in North American society – but perhaps I am more comfortable criticizing my own culture than others.
I’m talking about things like the abundance of alcohol, the risk-taking behaviors of youth – particularly male youth – and the way women participate in their own objectification. Sometimes I have had to physically stop myself from laughing at the way I have seen women – of all ages, which can be disturbing on a variety of levels – dress, because in more than a few instances I have mistaken what someone intended to be a sexy outfit for some sort of ill-timed Halloween costume. At the same time, it saddens me, though I know that my conceptions of what is and is not appropriate are hardly applicable to people in a very different context.
Here again is the old battle I’ve had with many a friend over the past few years: where does one draw the line between cultural relativism and universal standards? Are there universal standards? How can we really understand others’ choices without knowing everything about their personal strengths and constraints? That is, how do we know when people have true agency? Choices are only free insofar as they are accompanied by a number of reasonable alternatives.
Upon returning to the Zona Colonial today, I noticed something else about Dominican holidays: the silence. I looked up several times in complete shock, and it took a few seconds to register that it was the lack of noise that was so mind-blowing. I cherished the planes of sunlight that dart on and off of old, colonial façades that rise up from the stone streets, broken only by barred windows with their bright flowerboxes. For once, the light was not filtered by clouds of exhaust and fewer frantic shouts interrupted my admiration of the scenery.
Now I eagerly await the arrival of many of my close friends – members of SOMOS who will be arriving in a few days and with whom I hope to celebrate the New Year here in the capital. After that I promise I’ll get back to my research!
12.25.2009
12.15.2009
home sweet home
By “home,” I mean the Dominican Republic. After four weeks in the cold continent to the north, I am finally back in the place where I now feel the most comfortable – my lovely Santo Domingo apartment by the sea. :)
My month back in the US was a whirlwind medical school tour plus a bit of family time at Thanksgiving. As nice as it was to have a break and see many of my friends and family in Virginia, I felt increasingly distant from my research and other work/life in the DR. Plus it is freezing up there.
Now back in the Dominican Republic, I realize that I’ve gained a better perspective about my life here. Firstly, the rapid passage of time and the fact that – as much lit review as I honestly intended to complete – I really didn’t get a whole lot done on my research while in the US, have made me realize how quickly and efficiently I need to move. Secondly, I’ve become more aware of the transience of this experience (like all experiences). Having toured several medical school campuses and learning about exciting curricula and potential new places to live for the next four years has made the future a bit more concrete for me. When I first arrived and settled into life in the DR, it was easy to pretend that this experience would be long term. In reality, though, three-fourths of a year is the blink of an eye. And if you saw my first entry, there is a lot that I hope to do and produce in that time. I am also more excited about medical school because of its tangibility, and I am thinking about my research in the broader scope of my career. Learning about future research opportunities in med school and beyond has helped me to better conceptualize the long-term import of my work here and how I might build on it or use it as a starting point to explore entirely new issues in global/public health and community development.
So now, with less than seven months before me, it’s time to crank out one of my long-term strategy plans, refine my to-do lists, and get the ball rolling again. Community-level tuberculosis intervention programs of the Dominican Republic, prepare to be evaluated on your gender incorporation strategies!!!
All the above is what I will call my gifts, thanks to Mayda del Valle. Since the holidays are fast-approaching, it's time to give them back to myself.
My month back in the US was a whirlwind medical school tour plus a bit of family time at Thanksgiving. As nice as it was to have a break and see many of my friends and family in Virginia, I felt increasingly distant from my research and other work/life in the DR. Plus it is freezing up there.
Now back in the Dominican Republic, I realize that I’ve gained a better perspective about my life here. Firstly, the rapid passage of time and the fact that – as much lit review as I honestly intended to complete – I really didn’t get a whole lot done on my research while in the US, have made me realize how quickly and efficiently I need to move. Secondly, I’ve become more aware of the transience of this experience (like all experiences). Having toured several medical school campuses and learning about exciting curricula and potential new places to live for the next four years has made the future a bit more concrete for me. When I first arrived and settled into life in the DR, it was easy to pretend that this experience would be long term. In reality, though, three-fourths of a year is the blink of an eye. And if you saw my first entry, there is a lot that I hope to do and produce in that time. I am also more excited about medical school because of its tangibility, and I am thinking about my research in the broader scope of my career. Learning about future research opportunities in med school and beyond has helped me to better conceptualize the long-term import of my work here and how I might build on it or use it as a starting point to explore entirely new issues in global/public health and community development.
So now, with less than seven months before me, it’s time to crank out one of my long-term strategy plans, refine my to-do lists, and get the ball rolling again. Community-level tuberculosis intervention programs of the Dominican Republic, prepare to be evaluated on your gender incorporation strategies!!!
...As for everything else - poetry, painting, transnational feminism, photography, traveling - I feel an acute sense of disorganization. I need to figure out again how I will prioritize everything that I want to do before I find myself engrossed in mountains of pharmacology and anatomy next year. By the way, if anyone out there has tips for publishing poetry - i.e., finding appropriate venues for first-time publication and contacting editors - it would be much appreciated!
All the above is what I will call my gifts, thanks to Mayda del Valle. Since the holidays are fast-approaching, it's time to give them back to myself.
11.07.2009
november smiles hello
It feels like it's been a while since I've touched this blog. Life here gets busy pretty quickly, especially for someone with such an undefined schedule. And this month is starting out beautifully, for a variety of reasons. I'll put some of them down here.
Firstly, I got to spend time with the fourth Fulbright student here, who is living out in the northern part of the country in a batey. She came to the capital last weekend with a friend for some meetings related to the group with which they are working, an innovative organization that uses sports to teach HIV prevention to youth in the community. I had so much fun while they were here, and I really got close to her friend as well. It was great to finally see her after having been in the country for two months without crossing paths yet. That weekend also included Halloween. In our uncreative spirit, we went out as confused gringas, which meant that we pretty much just wore regular clothes. Actually, I decided retroactively that we were confused gringas. But lots of Dominicans wore costumes.
Anyway, after not sleeping (much) for several nights that weekend, I came down with a flu-like cold. I'd assumed that the sinus infection that I typically get when summer fades into fall in the States would not crop up in a country where winter practically doesn't exist. But I was very wrong. My flu-like cold quickly became an angry sinusitis. Only the antibiotics I recently started seem to be making any sort of difference.
It actually has been getting cold of late (okay, by "cold" I mean that it drops to 75 instead of 85 degrees at night). Anyway, it's cold to me. I am starting to notice that there are actually moments in the day in which I am not sweating profusely, and I sort of crave warm showers at times (if it's possible to make my shower warm, I haven't figured it out yet...but something tells me that it's just not possible). To me, it's now pretty much freezing. I'm returning to the U.S. next week for medical school interviews, and I'm already wincing at the thought of the 40-degree weather my parents have described. Oh, Virginia, and her tundra-like climate! If it hasn't become abundantly clear, my body is taking on a Caribbean physiology - not to mention my speech, though that's old news (word to the wise: do not practice your Spanish with me). As if people here don't already (both jokingly and seriously) claim that I'm Dominican.
With respect to my research, the changes that I described in my last post on the topic have further evolved. I'm now planning to focus only on tuberculosis, comparing tuberculosis interventions implemented by several different NGOs here. I'm looking for methods of gender integration and then comparing these strategies with the lived experiences of community members. By "lived experiences," I mean the perceptions, beliefs, experiences, and stigmas felt and expressed by women and men in the target communities. I may also interview patients with tuberculosis in order to obtain qualitative data on the group of epidemiological interest. I also want to explore the links between TB and HIV/AIDS, since tuberculosis is the number one cause of death for AIDS patients around the world. Lately I've been having meetings right and left - with doctors, public health workers, and people in the NGO sector. Each meeting seems to generate at least three new contacts, another novel aspect of my research to consider, and several offers of food, research help, and general Dominican hospitality. One woman I met with the other day (during one of the oppressive black-outs that hit the Colonial Zone recently) sat with me in the heat of her darkened home, explaining everything she knew from her 40-year career in public health here. At the conclusion of our formal conversation, she invited me to use her house as a second home, to browse her extensive health-related library at any time, use her computers and home office space, and stop by for dinner, a chat, or anything else I might need. When I finally left in the pitch blackness, I felt like I had yet another host mom here.
Part of the reason I've been so feverishly making contacts and arranging meetings for my research is that these last few days before I depart for my hiatus up North will be spent mostly doing clinical work. A group of doctors from the States arrived to run a 10-day clinic in the community where SOMOS works. As the only SOMOS alumna on Dominican soil at the moment, I have stepped in to organize interpreters for the physicians (who don't speak Spanish) and also help out however I can. This type of thing - long clinic days and rapid Spanish descriptions of how to take medicine after medicine - is my original DR experience. It's what introduced me to this place, what made me ultimately decide to pursue a medical career, and what now feels like habit to me. The doctors remarked how tiring it must be to translate for 8 hours while sick children continuously coughed, cried, and sneezed on me. Tiring? I thought, I guess it could be. But I felt as though I could honestly say, "I'm just getting started. You all don't understand tired until after you've finished a week of clinical days interspersed with late, late nights in plazas and other random places that we won't talk about here. Until you've danced for hours at colmados or with Dominican pop stars, had life chats in la Zona Colonial at hours when only the dogs are left on the streets, talked about love till 3am at the taco place with the taco guys until they kicked you out, and returned to the hostel at 4am only to jot down a few notes from community interviews before you forget it all. Try getting up for the clinic at 6am after that. Five days in a row." Now it feels like nothing for me.
I truly do feel like the community is, in part, my home. When I walk down the street, people call my name and ask about my family, my studies, my SOMOS familia back at William & Mary. There are children whom I first met as newborns who are now two or three years old, who are now walking and talking. Having seen them grow up over time solidifies this feeling of belonging. While taking measurements on toddlers to gauge malnutrition in the community, several people told the doctors with me, "she knows this community well; she's practically one of us!" I realized that people I used to struggle to understand now make perfect sense, and communication - in all senses of the word - with community members seems clear and easy.
I find myself getting defensive about the least offense to anyone in the community or in the Dominican Republic as a whole. For this reason, I can barely even read travel guides to the DR anymore without bristling at what I think are inaccurate or demeaning descriptions of this country and its people. My Fodor's guide claims that this is an "emerging country." According to whom, I wonder, and when, pray tell, will this place finally have fully emerged? Do they think that part of the island is still underwater and that maybe one day the rest of it will appear? "Perhaps you've heard about the city's Zona Colonial [...] and want the ambience and romanticism of such an old-world setting." Yes, "ambiance" was spelled incorrectly. The really old world was destroyed when the Spanish arrived, but should we even bother to acknowledge the Tainos? They got rid of them all, anyway. Shall we even discuss what happened in the romantic "ambience" of this old-world setting? Yes, slavery is very romantic. Let's all remember it as we happily stroll past the beggars that are left behind because the global economy hasn't changed much in the past 500 years - now we just have better euphemisms for human rights abuses. Not to burst anyone's bubble, but if you wanted to come here for the old-world ambiance or perhaps one of the all-inclusive resorts in which you can completely avoid speaking to or even seeing any actual Dominicans, please don't tell me about it. Thanks. I don't mean that I think tourism is completely useless or that no foreigners should come here. If you come here, though, please come with an understanding of the history, with an open mind, and with a willingness to get to know Dominicans and their beautiful and diverse country. It's not an amazing place in spite of its status as a "developing" country; it's amazing because it is what it is, whatever you want to call it, and that should be both accurately understood and fully appreciated.
Anyway, that's my life at the moment! Tomorrow is another 8am clinic day. I'll use the few days that the doctors are taking off to get as much in-country research work done as possible before I have to endure the culture/climate shock of the Philadelphia airport.
Firstly, I got to spend time with the fourth Fulbright student here, who is living out in the northern part of the country in a batey. She came to the capital last weekend with a friend for some meetings related to the group with which they are working, an innovative organization that uses sports to teach HIV prevention to youth in the community. I had so much fun while they were here, and I really got close to her friend as well. It was great to finally see her after having been in the country for two months without crossing paths yet. That weekend also included Halloween. In our uncreative spirit, we went out as confused gringas, which meant that we pretty much just wore regular clothes. Actually, I decided retroactively that we were confused gringas. But lots of Dominicans wore costumes.
Anyway, after not sleeping (much) for several nights that weekend, I came down with a flu-like cold. I'd assumed that the sinus infection that I typically get when summer fades into fall in the States would not crop up in a country where winter practically doesn't exist. But I was very wrong. My flu-like cold quickly became an angry sinusitis. Only the antibiotics I recently started seem to be making any sort of difference.
It actually has been getting cold of late (okay, by "cold" I mean that it drops to 75 instead of 85 degrees at night). Anyway, it's cold to me. I am starting to notice that there are actually moments in the day in which I am not sweating profusely, and I sort of crave warm showers at times (if it's possible to make my shower warm, I haven't figured it out yet...but something tells me that it's just not possible). To me, it's now pretty much freezing. I'm returning to the U.S. next week for medical school interviews, and I'm already wincing at the thought of the 40-degree weather my parents have described. Oh, Virginia, and her tundra-like climate! If it hasn't become abundantly clear, my body is taking on a Caribbean physiology - not to mention my speech, though that's old news (word to the wise: do not practice your Spanish with me). As if people here don't already (both jokingly and seriously) claim that I'm Dominican.
With respect to my research, the changes that I described in my last post on the topic have further evolved. I'm now planning to focus only on tuberculosis, comparing tuberculosis interventions implemented by several different NGOs here. I'm looking for methods of gender integration and then comparing these strategies with the lived experiences of community members. By "lived experiences," I mean the perceptions, beliefs, experiences, and stigmas felt and expressed by women and men in the target communities. I may also interview patients with tuberculosis in order to obtain qualitative data on the group of epidemiological interest. I also want to explore the links between TB and HIV/AIDS, since tuberculosis is the number one cause of death for AIDS patients around the world. Lately I've been having meetings right and left - with doctors, public health workers, and people in the NGO sector. Each meeting seems to generate at least three new contacts, another novel aspect of my research to consider, and several offers of food, research help, and general Dominican hospitality. One woman I met with the other day (during one of the oppressive black-outs that hit the Colonial Zone recently) sat with me in the heat of her darkened home, explaining everything she knew from her 40-year career in public health here. At the conclusion of our formal conversation, she invited me to use her house as a second home, to browse her extensive health-related library at any time, use her computers and home office space, and stop by for dinner, a chat, or anything else I might need. When I finally left in the pitch blackness, I felt like I had yet another host mom here.
Part of the reason I've been so feverishly making contacts and arranging meetings for my research is that these last few days before I depart for my hiatus up North will be spent mostly doing clinical work. A group of doctors from the States arrived to run a 10-day clinic in the community where SOMOS works. As the only SOMOS alumna on Dominican soil at the moment, I have stepped in to organize interpreters for the physicians (who don't speak Spanish) and also help out however I can. This type of thing - long clinic days and rapid Spanish descriptions of how to take medicine after medicine - is my original DR experience. It's what introduced me to this place, what made me ultimately decide to pursue a medical career, and what now feels like habit to me. The doctors remarked how tiring it must be to translate for 8 hours while sick children continuously coughed, cried, and sneezed on me. Tiring? I thought, I guess it could be. But I felt as though I could honestly say, "I'm just getting started. You all don't understand tired until after you've finished a week of clinical days interspersed with late, late nights in plazas and other random places that we won't talk about here. Until you've danced for hours at colmados or with Dominican pop stars, had life chats in la Zona Colonial at hours when only the dogs are left on the streets, talked about love till 3am at the taco place with the taco guys until they kicked you out, and returned to the hostel at 4am only to jot down a few notes from community interviews before you forget it all. Try getting up for the clinic at 6am after that. Five days in a row." Now it feels like nothing for me.
I truly do feel like the community is, in part, my home. When I walk down the street, people call my name and ask about my family, my studies, my SOMOS familia back at William & Mary. There are children whom I first met as newborns who are now two or three years old, who are now walking and talking. Having seen them grow up over time solidifies this feeling of belonging. While taking measurements on toddlers to gauge malnutrition in the community, several people told the doctors with me, "she knows this community well; she's practically one of us!" I realized that people I used to struggle to understand now make perfect sense, and communication - in all senses of the word - with community members seems clear and easy.
I find myself getting defensive about the least offense to anyone in the community or in the Dominican Republic as a whole. For this reason, I can barely even read travel guides to the DR anymore without bristling at what I think are inaccurate or demeaning descriptions of this country and its people. My Fodor's guide claims that this is an "emerging country." According to whom, I wonder, and when, pray tell, will this place finally have fully emerged? Do they think that part of the island is still underwater and that maybe one day the rest of it will appear? "Perhaps you've heard about the city's Zona Colonial [...] and want the ambience and romanticism of such an old-world setting." Yes, "ambiance" was spelled incorrectly. The really old world was destroyed when the Spanish arrived, but should we even bother to acknowledge the Tainos? They got rid of them all, anyway. Shall we even discuss what happened in the romantic "ambience" of this old-world setting? Yes, slavery is very romantic. Let's all remember it as we happily stroll past the beggars that are left behind because the global economy hasn't changed much in the past 500 years - now we just have better euphemisms for human rights abuses. Not to burst anyone's bubble, but if you wanted to come here for the old-world ambiance or perhaps one of the all-inclusive resorts in which you can completely avoid speaking to or even seeing any actual Dominicans, please don't tell me about it. Thanks. I don't mean that I think tourism is completely useless or that no foreigners should come here. If you come here, though, please come with an understanding of the history, with an open mind, and with a willingness to get to know Dominicans and their beautiful and diverse country. It's not an amazing place in spite of its status as a "developing" country; it's amazing because it is what it is, whatever you want to call it, and that should be both accurately understood and fully appreciated.
Anyway, that's my life at the moment! Tomorrow is another 8am clinic day. I'll use the few days that the doctors are taking off to get as much in-country research work done as possible before I have to endure the culture/climate shock of the Philadelphia airport.
10.27.2009
and the music didn't stop till 6am
Or possibly later, to be honest. But I think 6am was about the time that I fell asleep on Sunday morning, in a sleeping bag full of sand and still wearing my jeans.
On Friday night, I went to a poetry reading here in la Zona Colonial that was part of the Dominican Republic's second annual International Poetry Festival. It began with a very well-coordinated, ridiculously cute musical/dance act by students of the public schools in Guachupita and Capotillo (two particularly marginalized barrios in Santo Domingo). After the fanfare of eight-year-olds dancing in colorful colonial garb and some incredible drumming, noted poets from Brazil, the DR, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Cuba read selections of their work. I'm glad I was able to catch part of the festival, thanks to a tip-off from a friend here, which featured events from October 20-25. After that, I stopped for some chocolate/vanilla/mango/guava goodness and a chat with the nice Cuban lady who, with her Italian husband, co-owns the homemade ice-cream place by my house. I made it home just in time to avoid a 20-minute downpour. When the rain ended, my roommate and I went out to La Espiral for una noche de palos, where some of the Spaniards (of the commune in our previous apartment building) had congregated. They invited us to come to Juan Dolio, a beach about an hour from the capital, on Saturday for an overnight fiesta. I agreed to go, though my roommate declined (she had a cold and lots of work to catch up on).
What I thought was going to be a small gathering of the Spaniards and a quiet night on the beach turned out to be one of the most amazing parties I've ever been to. There were about 30-40 people whom I had never met in my life, though most of them were from what I'll refer to as the "International 20-Somethings NGO Crew." By "international," I mean that I met people from the DR, Spain, France, Guadeloupe, Honduras, Italy, and the U.S. By "20-Somethings," I mean people that were old enough to have meaningful conversations about feminism, machismo, public health, music, research, and culture, all while tearing up the dance floor until dawn. By "NGO," I mean that if you ask most of them what they are doing here, the answers range from working for UNICEF and the Red Cross to installing irrigation systems in remote mountainous communities in the country's interior and environmental work.
We swam in the Caribbean, had a cook-out (a girl from Texas and I marveled at the first hot dogs we'd seen in a while), sang and danced to live music, merengue, bachata, reggae, salsa, reggaeton, and techno, lay on the sand and counted the shooting stars that seem to be remarkably common in this part of the hemisphere, talked (in Spanish, English, and the tiny bit of Italian I was able to muster) on the beach at who knows what hours of the morning, and found patches of floorspace on which to catch a few hours of sleep in the completely unfurnished beach house that we were renting for the night. Good thing I brought my sleeping bag and yoga mat. When I woke up, I went swimming and then fell asleep again on the beach until several of the Spaniards decide to pack up around 2pm. We went to an oceanfront seafood restaurant before heading back to Santo Domingo.
Saturday night/Sunday morning highlighted one of the main reasons that I love traveling - the people you meet. While it is a wonderful experience getting to know the people of the country where you are, I have come to appreciate getting to know other travelers as much or more so. I've found that those who choose to travel, live, and/or work abroad are predisposed to be much more open-minded, mature (in some cases), and cultured than the general population (of any country). People who set out to know the world in which they live from other perspectives - geographically and mentally - are a select group. Admittedly, there's an inherent privilege in being a part of this contingency, but not all those who are privileged necessarily choose to explore, challenge themselves, and expose themselves to new places and cultures. Those who do, as was demonstrated this weekend and in numerous late-night conversations in hostels and clubs throughout South America during my semester in Peru, are some of the most amazing people I've ever met. Perhaps the fleeting nature of such acquaintances adds to this. If you have a life-changing conversation with a complete stranger at 2am in a hostel in Bolivia, somehow the knowledge that you may or may not ever see that person again makes the interaction all the more meaningful. And even if you do (which, in our increasingly small, globalized world, is not entirely unfathomable), the transient feel of traveling makes you somehow appreciate it more in the moment. Of course, the good thing about hanging out with people who are living here in the DR, as opposed to just visiting, means that there is more time to hang out with such an awesome bunch. :)
On Friday night, I went to a poetry reading here in la Zona Colonial that was part of the Dominican Republic's second annual International Poetry Festival. It began with a very well-coordinated, ridiculously cute musical/dance act by students of the public schools in Guachupita and Capotillo (two particularly marginalized barrios in Santo Domingo). After the fanfare of eight-year-olds dancing in colorful colonial garb and some incredible drumming, noted poets from Brazil, the DR, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Cuba read selections of their work. I'm glad I was able to catch part of the festival, thanks to a tip-off from a friend here, which featured events from October 20-25. After that, I stopped for some chocolate/vanilla/mango/guava goodness and a chat with the nice Cuban lady who, with her Italian husband, co-owns the homemade ice-cream place by my house. I made it home just in time to avoid a 20-minute downpour. When the rain ended, my roommate and I went out to La Espiral for una noche de palos, where some of the Spaniards (of the commune in our previous apartment building) had congregated. They invited us to come to Juan Dolio, a beach about an hour from the capital, on Saturday for an overnight fiesta. I agreed to go, though my roommate declined (she had a cold and lots of work to catch up on).
What I thought was going to be a small gathering of the Spaniards and a quiet night on the beach turned out to be one of the most amazing parties I've ever been to. There were about 30-40 people whom I had never met in my life, though most of them were from what I'll refer to as the "International 20-Somethings NGO Crew." By "international," I mean that I met people from the DR, Spain, France, Guadeloupe, Honduras, Italy, and the U.S. By "20-Somethings," I mean people that were old enough to have meaningful conversations about feminism, machismo, public health, music, research, and culture, all while tearing up the dance floor until dawn. By "NGO," I mean that if you ask most of them what they are doing here, the answers range from working for UNICEF and the Red Cross to installing irrigation systems in remote mountainous communities in the country's interior and environmental work.
We swam in the Caribbean, had a cook-out (a girl from Texas and I marveled at the first hot dogs we'd seen in a while), sang and danced to live music, merengue, bachata, reggae, salsa, reggaeton, and techno, lay on the sand and counted the shooting stars that seem to be remarkably common in this part of the hemisphere, talked (in Spanish, English, and the tiny bit of Italian I was able to muster) on the beach at who knows what hours of the morning, and found patches of floorspace on which to catch a few hours of sleep in the completely unfurnished beach house that we were renting for the night. Good thing I brought my sleeping bag and yoga mat. When I woke up, I went swimming and then fell asleep again on the beach until several of the Spaniards decide to pack up around 2pm. We went to an oceanfront seafood restaurant before heading back to Santo Domingo.
Saturday night/Sunday morning highlighted one of the main reasons that I love traveling - the people you meet. While it is a wonderful experience getting to know the people of the country where you are, I have come to appreciate getting to know other travelers as much or more so. I've found that those who choose to travel, live, and/or work abroad are predisposed to be much more open-minded, mature (in some cases), and cultured than the general population (of any country). People who set out to know the world in which they live from other perspectives - geographically and mentally - are a select group. Admittedly, there's an inherent privilege in being a part of this contingency, but not all those who are privileged necessarily choose to explore, challenge themselves, and expose themselves to new places and cultures. Those who do, as was demonstrated this weekend and in numerous late-night conversations in hostels and clubs throughout South America during my semester in Peru, are some of the most amazing people I've ever met. Perhaps the fleeting nature of such acquaintances adds to this. If you have a life-changing conversation with a complete stranger at 2am in a hostel in Bolivia, somehow the knowledge that you may or may not ever see that person again makes the interaction all the more meaningful. And even if you do (which, in our increasingly small, globalized world, is not entirely unfathomable), the transient feel of traveling makes you somehow appreciate it more in the moment. Of course, the good thing about hanging out with people who are living here in the DR, as opposed to just visiting, means that there is more time to hang out with such an awesome bunch. :)
10.23.2009
on research
Maybe it was the fasting earlier this week, but I’ve gotten a significant amount of work done in the past few days. I’m not sure if it was a function of the fast itself or if I simply had more focus because of not having to think about what to eat every day, but my thoughts were particularly lucid this week and I’ve been reading, writing, and reading for hours each day (which is awesome, because it was basically one of my life’s dreams to get paid to read and write all day, preferably in another country). Also, I was trying to avoid going out too much this week, in part so that I wouldn’t black out from hypoglycemia on the streets of Santo Domingo and in part to avoid seeing any hint of food. Irrespective of its root cause(s), I am getting a lot done, and to tell the truth, it began the moment I got here. I stepped off the plane and hit the ground running.
The sheer amount of literature review I have been doing since I arrived here (and well before that) has had the effect I’d hoped for; I now look at everything with a gender perspective. I have, effectively, gender mainstreamed my own brain.
What I mean is that in looking over USAID materials, reading articles about health issues, and learning more about gender and health here in the Dominican Republic, I have noticed that I now view things from a gender perspective automatically. When I read about the major problem of what is termed “patient noncompliance” in the extensive treatment regimen required to cure tuberculosis, I immediately wondered, “Do the rates of compliance for female and male patients differ? If so, what characteristics of their lives create this disparity?” Noncompliance is a serious issue when it comes to tuberculosis, since not finishing a course of antibiotics can cause resistance and lead to multiple-drug resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB), an intimidating demon with which Dr. Paul Farmer (of Partners in Health, Mountains Beyond Mountains, the Harvard School of Public Health) has relentlessly waged war in the slums of Lima, Peru and the prisons of Russia. So whether or not gender – more specifically, the expectations, duties, and social roles assigned to men and women based on their sex – plays a part in rates of noncompliance is an important question from both a public health and a social justice perspective.
In our (mostly Fulbright) writing group, it was my turn this week to turn in a “chapter” – well, for those writing dissertations or books, it’s a chapter, but for me, it was a disorganized, half-beefed-up, somewhat distracted, glorified outline, with enough introductory information to define the essentials of my research question without promising too many answers as yet. It was like a sulking teenager who is starting to resemble the adult he will become but doesn’t yet know how to be comfortable in his own rapidly growing skin. After my writing groupies applied their pens and glorious brains to my halfway Thing, I found myself shoved headlong into another set of thoughts like an underwater tunnel. When I came up for air, I was in an entirely different body of water.
What if I focus only on infectious diseases – specifically, tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS, since the two often interact to create significant health challenges here and in many “developing” countries? What if I don’t begin with gender mainstreaming as a framework? What if my framework is simply how gender affects the diagnosis, treatment, and experiences of these diseases for marginalized people in the Dominican Republic? What if I expand the sample population of marginalized people from impoverished communities where USAID-funded organizations work to prostitutes, Haitian immigrants and Haitian-Dominicans (who experience incredible, systematized discrimination and racism here), and adolescents (though that brings me back to the drawing board for IRB)? What if I identify possibilities besides gender mainstreaming as sustainable, comprehensive ways to address TB and HIV/AIDS in these marginalized populations? …And suddenly I have an entirely new Thing on my hands.
It’s a process – is always a process – and most of the good stuff comes from the process, not from the end.
The sheer amount of literature review I have been doing since I arrived here (and well before that) has had the effect I’d hoped for; I now look at everything with a gender perspective. I have, effectively, gender mainstreamed my own brain.
What I mean is that in looking over USAID materials, reading articles about health issues, and learning more about gender and health here in the Dominican Republic, I have noticed that I now view things from a gender perspective automatically. When I read about the major problem of what is termed “patient noncompliance” in the extensive treatment regimen required to cure tuberculosis, I immediately wondered, “Do the rates of compliance for female and male patients differ? If so, what characteristics of their lives create this disparity?” Noncompliance is a serious issue when it comes to tuberculosis, since not finishing a course of antibiotics can cause resistance and lead to multiple-drug resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB), an intimidating demon with which Dr. Paul Farmer (of Partners in Health, Mountains Beyond Mountains, the Harvard School of Public Health) has relentlessly waged war in the slums of Lima, Peru and the prisons of Russia. So whether or not gender – more specifically, the expectations, duties, and social roles assigned to men and women based on their sex – plays a part in rates of noncompliance is an important question from both a public health and a social justice perspective.
In our (mostly Fulbright) writing group, it was my turn this week to turn in a “chapter” – well, for those writing dissertations or books, it’s a chapter, but for me, it was a disorganized, half-beefed-up, somewhat distracted, glorified outline, with enough introductory information to define the essentials of my research question without promising too many answers as yet. It was like a sulking teenager who is starting to resemble the adult he will become but doesn’t yet know how to be comfortable in his own rapidly growing skin. After my writing groupies applied their pens and glorious brains to my halfway Thing, I found myself shoved headlong into another set of thoughts like an underwater tunnel. When I came up for air, I was in an entirely different body of water.
What if I focus only on infectious diseases – specifically, tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS, since the two often interact to create significant health challenges here and in many “developing” countries? What if I don’t begin with gender mainstreaming as a framework? What if my framework is simply how gender affects the diagnosis, treatment, and experiences of these diseases for marginalized people in the Dominican Republic? What if I expand the sample population of marginalized people from impoverished communities where USAID-funded organizations work to prostitutes, Haitian immigrants and Haitian-Dominicans (who experience incredible, systematized discrimination and racism here), and adolescents (though that brings me back to the drawing board for IRB)? What if I identify possibilities besides gender mainstreaming as sustainable, comprehensive ways to address TB and HIV/AIDS in these marginalized populations? …And suddenly I have an entirely new Thing on my hands.
It’s a process – is always a process – and most of the good stuff comes from the process, not from the end.
10.20.2009
eating, not eating
It’s the end of Day 2 of my (more or less) week-long fast. As my third day of ingesting only natural fruit juices, water, and tea approaches, I find that fasting – so far – is not as difficult as it sounded when I began. As long as I avoid looking at food and don’t go up the stairs too quickly, I haven’t noticed much change.
Not having to think about what I will eat and when – and then not eating – also frees up a considerable amount of time, and for the most part I have found this to be a benefit to my work. I haven’t felt much less energetic than usual, and after cutting out a significant portion of my daily time expenditure, I find it easier to concentrate on my research. I am also even more appreciative of food than I normally am; if you know me well, you know that’s a tall order. Yesterday I had to stop myself from getting distracted multiple times with thoughts of chicken, sushi, peanut butter, biryani, pasta, chocolate, tofu, yuca chips, salad, beans and rice, stir fry, sancocho…
Of course I am hungry, but it’s a comfortable hunger; it’s the hunger of a well-nourished body with very little to lose from a few days without food. I am increasingly aware of the privilege that is inherent in my very decision to fast. I am so privileged that I can choose to fast. I enjoy the health benefits of fasting because I am ordinarily over-nourished. For me, this is a fun frolic into the realm of alternative preventive health and an outlet for my social justice tendencies (if I told her about my fast, imagine the reaction of the elderly homeless woman on El Conde with whom I shared my excessively large, home-cooked dinner a few weeks ago). For me, not eating is a deliberate choice; for others, not eating is a result of global disparities that widen annually. When the top 1% of the world’s wealthiest people shares the same amount of wealth as the bottom 57%, more than one child will go to bed without dinner. And that’s already one too many.
In a world of increasing disparity, it is hardly surprising that human beings of the twenty-first century typically face two distant extremes. If you’re an elite member of the upper-middle-class in “developed nations,” you’re faced with the corporate conglomerations that control mainstream food production – that’s Big Farm AND Big Pharm. Don’t forget that the latter counts on your body to start malfunctioning after decades of consuming trans-fatty acids, partially hydrogenated oils, and pesticides. If you’re in that 1.02 billion I cited in my previous entry, then you face the other extreme. On a daily basis, you may have no idea where your next meal will come from. Most likely your income is less than a dollar a day – if you’re in Nicaragua, for instance, that’s just enough to buy this much, according to Women Thrive Worldwide director Ritu Sharma Fox. If you’re a child, you might be significantly small for your age because of chronic malnutrition, which affects not only your stature and weight, but also, it has been shown, your brain’s development and by extension your very human potential.
2. Appreciate. We all need food to survive, but there’s food and then there’s food. Learn to appreciate truly fresh produce. Learn what it takes to make a really good meal. Learn to appreciate the work that goes into producing delicious, nutritious food. And support those processes – not the ones that deliver empty calories, artificial taste, minimal nutritional benefits, and food insecurity and small farm bankruptcy to the rest of the world.
3. Act locally. In The Boston Globe Will Allen called it The Good Food Revolution (I would especially like to emphasize Allen's point that in the U.S. access to good food must expand from the rich suburbs to the inner cities, where many marginalized citizens may have access only to Food Lion or Kroger - a farmer's market is a fairy tale in downtown Detroit or Southeast DC). If you’ve completed Step 1, you should know a thing or two about how food is produced and what sorts of resources are required (the U.S. beef industry alone uses one-fourth of all water consumed in the country). You should also know about the alternatives to the often wasteful, unhealthy, and environmentally destructive mainstream means of producing food. Support small, responsible restaurants, co-ops, and local farmers’ markets. Read the label. Choose organic foods. Lower or end your consumption of meat.
4. Act globally. We live in a theoretically free market economy – at least, supply and demand work to some extent. So vote with your dollars. Make conscious choices about whom to support and how based on their global conduct. If you’ve done your homework, then maybe you’ll hesitate before buying a can of Coca-Cola (do your homework), a box of Kraft macaroni and cheese, or a not-so-happy meal from McDonald’s. These choices affect more than your personal health; they are a means of consumer resistance towards the global structure of food production. If that isn’t activist enough for you, call your local Representative to demand change.
Not having to think about what I will eat and when – and then not eating – also frees up a considerable amount of time, and for the most part I have found this to be a benefit to my work. I haven’t felt much less energetic than usual, and after cutting out a significant portion of my daily time expenditure, I find it easier to concentrate on my research. I am also even more appreciative of food than I normally am; if you know me well, you know that’s a tall order. Yesterday I had to stop myself from getting distracted multiple times with thoughts of chicken, sushi, peanut butter, biryani, pasta, chocolate, tofu, yuca chips, salad, beans and rice, stir fry, sancocho…
Of course I am hungry, but it’s a comfortable hunger; it’s the hunger of a well-nourished body with very little to lose from a few days without food. I am increasingly aware of the privilege that is inherent in my very decision to fast. I am so privileged that I can choose to fast. I enjoy the health benefits of fasting because I am ordinarily over-nourished. For me, this is a fun frolic into the realm of alternative preventive health and an outlet for my social justice tendencies (if I told her about my fast, imagine the reaction of the elderly homeless woman on El Conde with whom I shared my excessively large, home-cooked dinner a few weeks ago). For me, not eating is a deliberate choice; for others, not eating is a result of global disparities that widen annually. When the top 1% of the world’s wealthiest people shares the same amount of wealth as the bottom 57%, more than one child will go to bed without dinner. And that’s already one too many.
In a world of increasing disparity, it is hardly surprising that human beings of the twenty-first century typically face two distant extremes. If you’re an elite member of the upper-middle-class in “developed nations,” you’re faced with the corporate conglomerations that control mainstream food production – that’s Big Farm AND Big Pharm. Don’t forget that the latter counts on your body to start malfunctioning after decades of consuming trans-fatty acids, partially hydrogenated oils, and pesticides. If you’re in that 1.02 billion I cited in my previous entry, then you face the other extreme. On a daily basis, you may have no idea where your next meal will come from. Most likely your income is less than a dollar a day – if you’re in Nicaragua, for instance, that’s just enough to buy this much, according to Women Thrive Worldwide director Ritu Sharma Fox. If you’re a child, you might be significantly small for your age because of chronic malnutrition, which affects not only your stature and weight, but also, it has been shown, your brain’s development and by extension your very human potential.
How do we combat these extremes? Here’s my recipe for global food security:
1. Read. If you’ve already made it this far, chances are you’ve already been doing this crucial first step, which is to educate ourselves. Being aware of what is happening in our world is the first step to understanding what needs to change.2. Appreciate. We all need food to survive, but there’s food and then there’s food. Learn to appreciate truly fresh produce. Learn what it takes to make a really good meal. Learn to appreciate the work that goes into producing delicious, nutritious food. And support those processes – not the ones that deliver empty calories, artificial taste, minimal nutritional benefits, and food insecurity and small farm bankruptcy to the rest of the world.
3. Act locally. In The Boston Globe Will Allen called it The Good Food Revolution (I would especially like to emphasize Allen's point that in the U.S. access to good food must expand from the rich suburbs to the inner cities, where many marginalized citizens may have access only to Food Lion or Kroger - a farmer's market is a fairy tale in downtown Detroit or Southeast DC). If you’ve completed Step 1, you should know a thing or two about how food is produced and what sorts of resources are required (the U.S. beef industry alone uses one-fourth of all water consumed in the country). You should also know about the alternatives to the often wasteful, unhealthy, and environmentally destructive mainstream means of producing food. Support small, responsible restaurants, co-ops, and local farmers’ markets. Read the label. Choose organic foods. Lower or end your consumption of meat.
4. Act globally. We live in a theoretically free market economy – at least, supply and demand work to some extent. So vote with your dollars. Make conscious choices about whom to support and how based on their global conduct. If you’ve done your homework, then maybe you’ll hesitate before buying a can of Coca-Cola (do your homework), a box of Kraft macaroni and cheese, or a not-so-happy meal from McDonald’s. These choices affect more than your personal health; they are a means of consumer resistance towards the global structure of food production. If that isn’t activist enough for you, call your local Representative to demand change.
And that’s only Day 2.
10.16.2009
world food day
According the World Food Programme, there are 1.02 billion undernourished people in the world today. Hunger and malnutrition cause more health problems than AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis combined. Conflicts, natural disasters, poverty, environmental devastation, and poor agricultural practices combine to create food insecurity, which is an increasing cause of violence and disputes. For example, in April 2008, violent riots in Haiti
Hunger has increased as a result of the worldwide recession, and the international political economy that favors high-cost input farming practices has decreased the viability of agriculture and food production in many developing countries. But many people are hungry all over the world, from the US Dominican Republic Asia to Africa , from toddlers to the elderly.
Today is World Food Day, and this weekend marks the beginning of a week-long fast that my roommate and I are undertaking. It’s something she’s done in the past as a means of detoxifying and renewing her system, and it consists of ingesting only water, natural juices, and tea for the duration of the fast. Aside from the health benefits of fasting, we are giving ourselves more motivation by pledging to donate all the money we would have spent on food next week to an (as yet unknown) non-governmental organization that works with hunger and poverty issues.
Here's more information from the World Food Programme: 10 things you can do on World Food Day. In addition, we are challenging our friends and family to match our pledge, either in full or in smaller sponsorships of one meal's worth of money or one day's worth.
I *love* food, so this will be a challenge for me. Wish me luck!
Here's more information from the World Food Programme: 10 things you can do on World Food Day. In addition, we are challenging our friends and family to match our pledge, either in full or in smaller sponsorships of one meal's worth of money or one day's worth.
I *love* food, so this will be a challenge for me. Wish me luck!
10.14.2009
beyond Santo Domingo
On Saturday I went with some friends to Guayacanes, a beach about 35 minutes outside the capital. It was nice, but my standards for beaches are impossibly high after spending time on the Samaná peninsula in the north and on the southwestern coast of the country on previous trips. The best part about Guayacanes was hanging out with some buena gente and getting to know the cousins of one my friends here. We mostly played football/dunking and jumped around yelling every time one of those 10-minute
I thought I was too exhausted to go out on Saturday night, but as usual I was wrong. My roommate, her visiting friend, and I went to see a live merengue band playing (and dancing) furiously in a plaza in the Colonial Zone. When that ended, we headed to La Espiral, a club/bar a few blocks away. La Espiral was definitely one of the coolest places I’ve been to in
On Sunday we started The Grand Move into our new apartment. We’re already planning the obligatory housewarming party, though we haven’t actually finished moving everything into the new place. Previously undiscovered perks are that I can see the ocean from my bedroom windows and that there is a little shop a block away where a couple makes all-natural, homemade ice-cream. Good thing there is also a gym a few blocks down! Sunday night found us once again at the outdoor son concert, which is always a lot of fun. Imagine a huge crowd with people of various ages, complexions, and nationalities all dancing and singing along with the band, which has its own memorable personality. There is nothing like this in the
On Monday, my roommate, her friend, and I left
But the campo is indeed tranquilo, for the
The next day we set out for la Ciénaga, a small town along the southwestern coast. A couple of guagua rides through the gorgeous coastal mountains, and we finally arrived. A fellow passenger asked us, “who do you know in la Ciénaga?” We confessed that we knew no one, and she replied “well, now you know me. It’s better to walk around with someone you know.” Our amazing new friend then let us keep our backpacks in her house while she accompanied us to a beautiful nearby river, to lunch at a little restaurant on the side of the road, and to the beach. The beaches of the DR’s southwestern coast are incredible. My first experience with the region was on a trip to Paraíso, another small town outside Barahona, almost three years ago. The coast was even nicer than I remembered, and the area is virtually untouched by tourism. I have trouble understanding why, when the water is so blue that I could have sworn I’d walked into a painting. Rivers leap out of the mountains and trickle down between palm forests until they reach the sea, whose waves are significantly more commanding than the calm, languid waters of Guayacanes and Boca Chica, near the capital. Accompanied by our friend and her daughter and nieces, we swam in the river and in the ocean, and tried not to trip over the many small pebbles that line the coast instead of sand. Thanks to the didactic demonstration of my young hosts, I learned how to recognize the wild almonds that were strewn across the beach and how to pound them open with rocks to reveal the freshest, most delicious almonds I’ve ever eaten. I tried in vain to capture everything from behind my camera lens, but as usual I found this a futile exercise. Words are scarcely better to describe the incredible generosity of our new friend, who made us feel so at home, and her adorable daughter and nieces, who demanded photo after photo (again, my little Canon point-and-shoot is incapable of capturing the essence of their beautiful smiles). Our new friends have extended to us an open invitation to return whenever we want, at which point we’ll get to see the larimar mines (larimar is a light blue precious stone that is found only in the DR) and be fed a large amount of fish.
We were loathe to leave, but we wanted to return to
Now it’s back to the Santo Domingo routine…which is not really a routine, but more like this quote from Che Guevara’s character in The Motorcycle Diaries: “the method: improvisation.”
10.10.2009
a letter
In light of my being a mad-as-hell pre-med student, I want to share this letter to President Obama from the Mad as Hell Doctors of Oregon. Let's hope our Nobel prize-winning President finds in his selection for the award the strength to continue the fight against private insurance and our broken "health care" system.
I'll comment only on the following aspect of the letter: where Dr. Hochfeld contrasts the agendas of those on the "right" and the "left," I must point something out. The partisan framing of the health care debate has distracted us from the basic question at stake. Once again, I refer to T.R. Reid, who states in his book that the first question a country must answer in seeking to reform its health care system is a moral question. Do we value human life or private profits more? Do we believe that the right to health care access trumps the right to private property?
The answer is not a function of siding with the red or the blue; the answer is a function of what we as a nation believe is our ethical imperative towards our fellow citizens, neighbors, families, and friends. Once we start framing the debate thusly perhaps our national values will shine through a bit more clearly; only then will we be able to reach a reasonable conclusion that should reflect what the majority believes. And after all, isn't that the whole point of democracy?
I'll comment only on the following aspect of the letter: where Dr. Hochfeld contrasts the agendas of those on the "right" and the "left," I must point something out. The partisan framing of the health care debate has distracted us from the basic question at stake. Once again, I refer to T.R. Reid, who states in his book that the first question a country must answer in seeking to reform its health care system is a moral question. Do we value human life or private profits more? Do we believe that the right to health care access trumps the right to private property?
The answer is not a function of siding with the red or the blue; the answer is a function of what we as a nation believe is our ethical imperative towards our fellow citizens, neighbors, families, and friends. Once we start framing the debate thusly perhaps our national values will shine through a bit more clearly; only then will we be able to reach a reasonable conclusion that should reflect what the majority believes. And after all, isn't that the whole point of democracy?
10.07.2009
transnational feminism
So this gender policy/feminism thing has me thinking. I’ve been contemplating the difference in what defines feminism and women’s movements in a variety of countries, cultures, and socio-economic settings – how one person’s feminism can be another’s source of oppression when skin color or income level is changed. Criticisms abound of so-called "first wave feminism," the women’s suffrage movements of the early twentieth century and "second wave feminism," the continuing exploration of women’s sexual, reproductive and labor rights through the 1970s. Many critics point out that these notions of feminism are distinctly circumscribed by an assumption of whiteness and upper-middle-class status.
If being a feminist, for instance, means avoiding housework and pursuing one’s own career, then who will clean the house? Certainly not the husband, who’s off on his own personal vendetta to make sure his wife doesn’t end up out-earning him. So a maid is hired, and the structure of oppression shifts the weight from upper-middle-class housewife to a lower-income, (most likely) woman of color. Can the maid still be a feminist, even though all she does is cook and clean in someone else’s home before returning to her own to do the same thing?
Here’s another example: most "Western" feminists consider prostitution the antithesis of women’s empowerment. But what about a woman who has no alternative economic choices, children to feed, parents to take care of, and no prospects of getting an education? By doing what she can to make sure she can take care of herself and those around her, and by using the objectifying and patriarchal culture around her to her own advantage, is she automatically doomed to the non-feminist contingency?
Feminism, then, like most things, is a function of many cross-cutting factors, including race, socio-economic class, nationality, age, etc. This is why it is so challenging to create what I term “transnational feminism.” But there has to be a way to translate ideas about women’s empowerment, women’s rights as human rights, personal responsibility and love for self and others across the bounds of these cross-cutting factors. I’ve been thinking about getting involved in an organization centered on women’s (especially young women’s and girls’) empowerment. Empowerment enables people to create more choices even in limited situations. Empowerment would help to combat those ridiculous men on the street who somehow think yelling or whispering weird things to women is an acceptable way to address them (I’m considering trying a tactic passed on by a friend – when someone yells at you, pretend to be one of the really obnoxious fruit vendors that pound the pavement and start yelling indiscriminately "plátano! tres peso’ lo’ plátanos! aguacate bien rico! bien grande el aguacate! a diez peso’! diez pesito’!"). Problem is that I haven’t found such an organization yet. If anyone knows of one here in Santo Domingo, please let me know! If not, I might just start my own.
If being a feminist, for instance, means avoiding housework and pursuing one’s own career, then who will clean the house? Certainly not the husband, who’s off on his own personal vendetta to make sure his wife doesn’t end up out-earning him. So a maid is hired, and the structure of oppression shifts the weight from upper-middle-class housewife to a lower-income, (most likely) woman of color. Can the maid still be a feminist, even though all she does is cook and clean in someone else’s home before returning to her own to do the same thing?
Here’s another example: most "Western" feminists consider prostitution the antithesis of women’s empowerment. But what about a woman who has no alternative economic choices, children to feed, parents to take care of, and no prospects of getting an education? By doing what she can to make sure she can take care of herself and those around her, and by using the objectifying and patriarchal culture around her to her own advantage, is she automatically doomed to the non-feminist contingency?
Feminism, then, like most things, is a function of many cross-cutting factors, including race, socio-economic class, nationality, age, etc. This is why it is so challenging to create what I term “transnational feminism.” But there has to be a way to translate ideas about women’s empowerment, women’s rights as human rights, personal responsibility and love for self and others across the bounds of these cross-cutting factors. I’ve been thinking about getting involved in an organization centered on women’s (especially young women’s and girls’) empowerment. Empowerment enables people to create more choices even in limited situations. Empowerment would help to combat those ridiculous men on the street who somehow think yelling or whispering weird things to women is an acceptable way to address them (I’m considering trying a tactic passed on by a friend – when someone yells at you, pretend to be one of the really obnoxious fruit vendors that pound the pavement and start yelling indiscriminately "plátano! tres peso’ lo’ plátanos! aguacate bien rico! bien grande el aguacate! a diez peso’! diez pesito’!"). Problem is that I haven’t found such an organization yet. If anyone knows of one here in Santo Domingo, please let me know! If not, I might just start my own.
10.06.2009
movin' on up!
We are! Moving, that is – and moving up. Thanks to a tip-off from another Fulbrighter and close friend, yesterday my roommate and I went to check out the most gorgeous apartment we have ever seen. We’d been looking for a new place because the owner of the apartment where we live now is CRAZY.
It’s on the third floor of a building located on a quiet, pretty street in la Zona Colonial, a few blocks away from where we currently live. For $850 a month, we’re getting this newly built, completely furnished space including 2 *huge* bedrooms with private bathrooms and a third, much smaller bedroom, also with an adjoining bathroom, a big kitchen with lots of counter space for all the gourmet Dominican meals I cook on a regular basis ;), a large living/dining area with a big table and comfy couches, a spacious outdoor terrace (with a wrought iron table and chairs) that seems to have been made for wine-and-tapas, intellectual, late-night parties, a private roof accessible via a spiral staircase from which you can see the ocean (located a block away), yellow painted walls that glow from the substantial sunshine that floods each room, a washing machine, high-speed Internet, cable (though we don’t even own a TV), light/gas/water, and some very amicable landlords living below, who also operate a bakery/candy shop and thus are constantly making amazing-looking delicacies (a partnership for the aforementioned intellectual terrace parties seems inevitable).
It’s on the third floor of a building located on a quiet, pretty street in la Zona Colonial, a few blocks away from where we currently live. For $850 a month, we’re getting this newly built, completely furnished space including 2 *huge* bedrooms with private bathrooms and a third, much smaller bedroom, also with an adjoining bathroom, a big kitchen with lots of counter space for all the gourmet Dominican meals I cook on a regular basis ;), a large living/dining area with a big table and comfy couches, a spacious outdoor terrace (with a wrought iron table and chairs) that seems to have been made for wine-and-tapas, intellectual, late-night parties, a private roof accessible via a spiral staircase from which you can see the ocean (located a block away), yellow painted walls that glow from the substantial sunshine that floods each room, a washing machine, high-speed Internet, cable (though we don’t even own a TV), light/gas/water, and some very amicable landlords living below, who also operate a bakery/candy shop and thus are constantly making amazing-looking delicacies (a partnership for the aforementioned intellectual terrace parties seems inevitable).
Obviously, this place was simultaneously being sought after by several other groups of people. However, my roommate and I, being the Santo Domingo tíguere hustlers that we are, took immediate action and made a down-payment for the apartment the very next day (much to the anger, apparently, of our many contenders). My roommate and I have been giggling nonstop since we saw the place, and both of us are considering lengthening our Fulbright grants just to stay in the apartment for longer than 9 months… Even though the lease at our current place doesn’t terminate till the end of this month, we couldn’t risk losing this haven, this sweet suite, this penthouse of ballericity. We’re moving early next week, and I can’t wait!
In other news, the (ridiculously crowded) concert on Saturday night was fun. Daddy Yankee was suspended on a rope above the crowd for much of his performance, where he freestyled in midair and girls tried to touch his shoes. I had a really good time, even though I was missing a lot of people that night…especially my SOMOS familia. Felt incomplete without y’all. But there’s always the roncierto in January!
On Sunday night, my roommate and I hung out with some of the Spaniards from “the commune,” as my roommate has dubbed our neighbors’ apartment (because although only three people are supposedly living there, between 10 and 20 Spaniards can be found smoking cigarettes and straight chillin’ at any given time in the apartment). One of them has a sister who happens to be the award-winning documentary director who created the film
After what felt like a little break from work, it’s time to buckle down with my research again. I’m slightly frustrated by the fact that ProFamilia has randomly shut down their library because they are digitizing all their files. Thus the gold mine of resources I’d been enjoying there is now inaccessible for an unspecified amount of time. Good thing I’ll be here till June. I’m trying to stay focused by writing out manageable weekly goals (also a mandate of our mostly-Fulbright writing/working group), otherwise the breadth and depth of information available about gender in the DR, gender mainstreaming, and foreign aid is overwhelming. Wish me luck!
10.01.2009
US health care reform
Millions are being spent by the US insurance industry to squash Obama's proposed reforms? I mean, who's really surprised? Ours is the only wealthy country where insurance is not provided by non-profit insurance firms - including nations that rely on private insurance.
Check out T.R. Reid's book The Healing of America: A Quest for Better, Cheaper, and Fairer Health Care for details on the wide variety of health care systems employed by other countries around the world. What they have in common, however, is the underlying belief that health care is a fundamental human right. What is the point of millions spent in biomedical research and development when its fruits are inaccessible to so many? What is the purpose of the advancement of human knowledge if it isn't applied to improve the lives of all?
Read the full story on insurance companies' lobbying tactics here.
Check out T.R. Reid's book The Healing of America: A Quest for Better, Cheaper, and Fairer Health Care for details on the wide variety of health care systems employed by other countries around the world. What they have in common, however, is the underlying belief that health care is a fundamental human right. What is the point of millions spent in biomedical research and development when its fruits are inaccessible to so many? What is the purpose of the advancement of human knowledge if it isn't applied to improve the lives of all?
Read the full story on insurance companies' lobbying tactics here.
9.29.2009
all the above
As of today, it’s definitely time for an update.
Let’s work backwards.
Last Thursday was a holiday here – Día de Mercedes (it’s a Catholic thing). I was annoyed with myself for once again staying up late and failing to get up before noon. The whole lack of a structured schedule is the most challenging “culture shock” I’ve encountered yet. So my plans for the morning were foiled and we spent the afternoon watching people carry a huge statue of the Virgin Mary out of a church and down the street, singing and throwing flowers. (I was reminded of the semana santa festivities that I saw in Cusco last year.) Below are some of the pictures. From the top, you're looking at the incredible traffic that resulted from the mob following the Virgin Mary, the statue as the procession left the church, and part of the crowd.
On Saturday I went to Paraíso, Villa Mella, the community where SOMOS works. It was so great to be among, well, family, once again. People kept telling me how they had asked about me all summer; I lamented that I had to spend May-August on MCAT lockdown in the library. “But we’re so proud that you graduated, mi’ija!” they replied. Paraíso truly feels like home; it feels like returning to my community. While of course I’ve never actually lived there, the connections with community members are at a familial level. There are certain people that are my brothers, sisters, grandparents there. And of course they all inquired about the rest of the SOMOS familia. It’s crazy because being in Paraíso feels so much like home, but then there are moments that drive home the geographic and economic gap. When these moments involve close friends whom I address as “mi hermano” (“my brother”), I am particularly heartbroken by the global system that both depends on and perpetuates such disparities.
Slowly I have been expanding my circle here in Santo Domingo. I’ve got my family in Paraíso, but there are also the other Fulbrighters to whom I alluded in previous posts. Through friends of friends, I’ve been meeting more people (mostly North Americans) who are here doing other work. Consequently, I have met some really great people so far. Last Saturday I went to a hip-hop event with some of them, and it was really neat to see the underground, alternative/youth resistance scene of Sto. Domingo. This Saturday I am going to what might possibly be the most ballin’ concert of my life: Daddy Yankee, Don Omar, Victor Manuelle, Frank Reyes, y Los Ilegales. Got the good tickets, too. :)
Then there are the people who are far away – those few who know me better than I know myself, who have been by my side through everything and anything…and I miss you all so much. You are all in my heart and I think about you every day, but nothing replaces “dil-to-dil” chats in the dorms, at the docks, in Colonial Williamsburg, on the first floor of Bettye’s bouch hostel, on the streets of la Zona Colonial, and many other random places. I just got my MCAT score (I’m happy with it!), and all of those people who have been holding me down through thick and thin, especially this past year, come to mind. THANKS to all of you…you know who you are.
As for my research, that’s also picking up speed. Today I did my first interview with some people at USAID. The security there is intense! It was like trying to board an airplane. But I felt right at home when I saw a picture of my President on the wall. :) Love you, Obama, boo! I was reminded yet again what a small world it is when the Deputy Director I was interviewing told me he went to UVA. I took the opportunity to remind him of the first football game of this season, in which W&M – ahem! – OWNED UVA. He was reluctant to discuss this, but he was more than helpful on issues related to USAID’s programming, gender policy, etc. I was also able to meet several other people at the office, all of whom were equally warm, welcoming, and helpful. The information I gained in my first hour-and-a-half visit is an excellent start to the data collection portion of my research. I’ve also been spending time at the library of ProFamilia, which works with health and family issues in the DR and is one of the country’s largest NGOs. The people who work there have also been extremely welcoming and helpful as I pore over their publications (which are rather haphazardly arranged among several stacks in the tiny library; you tell this guy what you want to learn about and he goes around pulling out things that may be relevant and brings them to you). I’m getting more and more pumped about my research the more I learn and the more contacts I make. Furthermore, USAID is in a transition in terms of their gender policy, and they see my research as a potential resource for updating their policies and programming. Which is SUPER exciting, because it means that maybe my work will actually have an impact on the operation of development programs in the DR!
Anyway, I’m extremely over-excited right now for all the above reasons, which means that I will probably spend the next hour blasting my favorite music and jumping up and down while I cook dinner.
Let’s work backwards.
Last Thursday was a holiday here – Día de Mercedes (it’s a Catholic thing). I was annoyed with myself for once again staying up late and failing to get up before noon. The whole lack of a structured schedule is the most challenging “culture shock” I’ve encountered yet. So my plans for the morning were foiled and we spent the afternoon watching people carry a huge statue of the Virgin Mary out of a church and down the street, singing and throwing flowers. (I was reminded of the semana santa festivities that I saw in Cusco last year.) Below are some of the pictures. From the top, you're looking at the incredible traffic that resulted from the mob following the Virgin Mary, the statue as the procession left the church, and part of the crowd.
On Saturday I went to Paraíso, Villa Mella, the community where SOMOS works. It was so great to be among, well, family, once again. People kept telling me how they had asked about me all summer; I lamented that I had to spend May-August on MCAT lockdown in the library. “But we’re so proud that you graduated, mi’ija!” they replied. Paraíso truly feels like home; it feels like returning to my community. While of course I’ve never actually lived there, the connections with community members are at a familial level. There are certain people that are my brothers, sisters, grandparents there. And of course they all inquired about the rest of the SOMOS familia. It’s crazy because being in Paraíso feels so much like home, but then there are moments that drive home the geographic and economic gap. When these moments involve close friends whom I address as “mi hermano” (“my brother”), I am particularly heartbroken by the global system that both depends on and perpetuates such disparities.
Slowly I have been expanding my circle here in Santo Domingo. I’ve got my family in Paraíso, but there are also the other Fulbrighters to whom I alluded in previous posts. Through friends of friends, I’ve been meeting more people (mostly North Americans) who are here doing other work. Consequently, I have met some really great people so far. Last Saturday I went to a hip-hop event with some of them, and it was really neat to see the underground, alternative/youth resistance scene of Sto. Domingo. This Saturday I am going to what might possibly be the most ballin’ concert of my life: Daddy Yankee, Don Omar, Victor Manuelle, Frank Reyes, y Los Ilegales. Got the good tickets, too. :)
Then there are the people who are far away – those few who know me better than I know myself, who have been by my side through everything and anything…and I miss you all so much. You are all in my heart and I think about you every day, but nothing replaces “dil-to-dil” chats in the dorms, at the docks, in Colonial Williamsburg, on the first floor of Bettye’s bouch hostel, on the streets of la Zona Colonial, and many other random places. I just got my MCAT score (I’m happy with it!), and all of those people who have been holding me down through thick and thin, especially this past year, come to mind. THANKS to all of you…you know who you are.
As for my research, that’s also picking up speed. Today I did my first interview with some people at USAID. The security there is intense! It was like trying to board an airplane. But I felt right at home when I saw a picture of my President on the wall. :) Love you, Obama, boo! I was reminded yet again what a small world it is when the Deputy Director I was interviewing told me he went to UVA. I took the opportunity to remind him of the first football game of this season, in which W&M – ahem! – OWNED UVA. He was reluctant to discuss this, but he was more than helpful on issues related to USAID’s programming, gender policy, etc. I was also able to meet several other people at the office, all of whom were equally warm, welcoming, and helpful. The information I gained in my first hour-and-a-half visit is an excellent start to the data collection portion of my research. I’ve also been spending time at the library of ProFamilia, which works with health and family issues in the DR and is one of the country’s largest NGOs. The people who work there have also been extremely welcoming and helpful as I pore over their publications (which are rather haphazardly arranged among several stacks in the tiny library; you tell this guy what you want to learn about and he goes around pulling out things that may be relevant and brings them to you). I’m getting more and more pumped about my research the more I learn and the more contacts I make. Furthermore, USAID is in a transition in terms of their gender policy, and they see my research as a potential resource for updating their policies and programming. Which is SUPER exciting, because it means that maybe my work will actually have an impact on the operation of development programs in the DR!
Anyway, I’m extremely over-excited right now for all the above reasons, which means that I will probably spend the next hour blasting my favorite music and jumping up and down while I cook dinner.
9.23.2009
global health care aid?!
In light of my interest in global health care, human rights, and international aid/policy, I wanted to share this article about a new aid deal aimed at securing free health care for 10 million people in developing countries. Kudos to the UK and other collaborators for taking this first step toward bringing more members of our human family in from the margins. I'll be interested to see how this pans out.
Check it out here!
Check it out here!
9.19.2009
things i miss, things i see
Things I miss:
- My family, house, and my adorable Raja and Sheba.
- W&M SASA (William & Mary’s South Asian Student Association). Nothing takes me back to freshman year like “Bole Chudiyan.” Nothing takes me back to sophomore year like “Kajra Re.”
- Cusco. Nothing takes me back to South America like “Jiya Jale” (lol don’t ask).
- My hair cooperating.
- My SOMOS familia – I miss the seminar, gin buckets (especially when accompanied by a fine cinematic selection such as Talento de Barrio, featuring DY, everyone’s favorite wannabe tíguere), Lico’s FML stories, everyone else’s FML stories; I even miss reading dozens upon dozens of newbie applications and late, late-night meetings in J-town lounges.
- Iftaars (Eid Mubarak, everyone!).
- Mere didi.
- Thursday Murray lunches and Murray Eastern Shore weekend.
- Yoga. Ashtanga yoga.
- Late-night freestyle sessions with my brother from another mother.
- The Crim Dell.
- Juggling 20 credits and at least 6 different major extracurricular commitments.
- Being able to drink green tea whenever I want and not break into a sweat.
- Not Facebook.
- The Wren building.
- Organic food.
- Being able to call Celeste whenever I want.
- Swimming.
- Beliranza! Judge away; I don’t care.
- My Hayao Miyazaki movies, my Bollywood movies, and strange French and Italian movies (but I brought Casablanca here, obviously. That’s the one movie I simply cannot live without).
- My piano; playing Brahms, Mozart, and Chopin.
Things I see:
Below are, respectively, the inside courtyard of my apartment complex and the barrio of Capotillo, where I went on Friday with my roommate. It reminded me of movies I've seen depicting the favelas of Rio de Janeiro.
- My family, house, and my adorable Raja and Sheba.
- W&M SASA (William & Mary’s South Asian Student Association). Nothing takes me back to freshman year like “Bole Chudiyan.” Nothing takes me back to sophomore year like “Kajra Re.”
- Cusco. Nothing takes me back to South America like “Jiya Jale” (lol don’t ask).
- My hair cooperating.
- My SOMOS familia – I miss the seminar, gin buckets (especially when accompanied by a fine cinematic selection such as Talento de Barrio, featuring DY, everyone’s favorite wannabe tíguere), Lico’s FML stories, everyone else’s FML stories; I even miss reading dozens upon dozens of newbie applications and late, late-night meetings in J-town lounges.
- Iftaars (Eid Mubarak, everyone!).
- Mere didi.
- Thursday Murray lunches and Murray Eastern Shore weekend.
- Yoga. Ashtanga yoga.
- Late-night freestyle sessions with my brother from another mother.
- The Crim Dell.
- Juggling 20 credits and at least 6 different major extracurricular commitments.
- Being able to drink green tea whenever I want and not break into a sweat.
- Not Facebook.
- The Wren building.
- Organic food.
- Being able to call Celeste whenever I want.
- Swimming.
- Beliranza! Judge away; I don’t care.
- My Hayao Miyazaki movies, my Bollywood movies, and strange French and Italian movies (but I brought Casablanca here, obviously. That’s the one movie I simply cannot live without).
- My piano; playing Brahms, Mozart, and Chopin.
Things I see:
Below are, respectively, the inside courtyard of my apartment complex and the barrio of Capotillo, where I went on Friday with my roommate. It reminded me of movies I've seen depicting the favelas of Rio de Janeiro.
9.17.2009
sentipensante
In the past few days, I’ve felt constantly inspired and emotionally stimulated. From meeting amazing new people to further reading, writing, and exploring of Santo Domingo and my own thoughts and ideas – academic and otherwise – a lot of things are brewing in my mind and heart. I don’t know how I fall asleep at night at the rate I’ve been sentipensando (“The fishermen of the Colombian coast must be learned doctors of ethics and morality, for they invented the word sentipensante, or ‘feeling-thinking,’ to define language that speaks the truth.” —Eduardo Galeano, from The Book of Embraces).
One thing I’ve been contemplating is an issue to which I briefly referred in my previous post – that of negotiating what it means to be a feminist in a city where I can’t go a block without being made obnoxiously aware of my gender. How to handle this without getting sent to Dominican jail for attacking men on the street? I’ve decided to turn the irony of being a woman in Santo Domingo while doing research on gender mainstreaming, health programming and foreign aid policy into creative production. Now I’m adding a personal component to my academic exploration of gender, which I hope will ultimately take the form of a long reflection of some sort. How do I translate my feminism across the North-South divide, simultaneously surviving and thriving in this culture and remaining true to myself? What form will my resistance to oppressive power structures take in a society where my values (i.e., the worth of a woman as measured in units of mental fortitude rather than in inches of a waistline) no longer have external meaning? Thus I have yet another project that I am excited to tackle.
The academic and personal freedom afforded by Fulbright (especially having recently come from the rigid structure of full college course loads and dozens of extracurricular obligations) is delicious and daunting. A recently initiated, weekly writing/working group of fellow Fulbrighters (and one non-Fulbrighter) (all of whom are leagues ahead of me in terms of their careers) isn’t helping; hanging out with such brilliant minds only intensifies my mental hyperactivity. In a spurt of academic ADD, I’m reading five different books right now (and they are The Cairo Trilogy, by Naguib Mahfouz; Colonize This! Young Women of Color on Today’s Feminism, edited by Daisy Hernández and Bushra Rehman; The Healing of America: A Quest for Better, Cheaper, and Fairer Health Care, by T. R. Reid; Krik? Krak! by Edwidge Dandicat; and Imagining Ourselves: Global Voices from a New Generation of Women, edited by Paula Goldman).
This is where my undergraduate lessons on self-organization come in handy. To-do lists, outlines of my ideas, and detailed breakdowns of all the projects I’m juggling have taken over my computer. Having a community of fellow scholars (including my *amazing* roommate!), most of whom are older and have therefore moved past the stage I’m currently in, is a great resource for navigating all of this. It would also be really nice to find a good yoga studio.
One thing I’ve been contemplating is an issue to which I briefly referred in my previous post – that of negotiating what it means to be a feminist in a city where I can’t go a block without being made obnoxiously aware of my gender. How to handle this without getting sent to Dominican jail for attacking men on the street? I’ve decided to turn the irony of being a woman in Santo Domingo while doing research on gender mainstreaming, health programming and foreign aid policy into creative production. Now I’m adding a personal component to my academic exploration of gender, which I hope will ultimately take the form of a long reflection of some sort. How do I translate my feminism across the North-South divide, simultaneously surviving and thriving in this culture and remaining true to myself? What form will my resistance to oppressive power structures take in a society where my values (i.e., the worth of a woman as measured in units of mental fortitude rather than in inches of a waistline) no longer have external meaning? Thus I have yet another project that I am excited to tackle.
The academic and personal freedom afforded by Fulbright (especially having recently come from the rigid structure of full college course loads and dozens of extracurricular obligations) is delicious and daunting. A recently initiated, weekly writing/working group of fellow Fulbrighters (and one non-Fulbrighter) (all of whom are leagues ahead of me in terms of their careers) isn’t helping; hanging out with such brilliant minds only intensifies my mental hyperactivity. In a spurt of academic ADD, I’m reading five different books right now (and they are The Cairo Trilogy, by Naguib Mahfouz; Colonize This! Young Women of Color on Today’s Feminism, edited by Daisy Hernández and Bushra Rehman; The Healing of America: A Quest for Better, Cheaper, and Fairer Health Care, by T. R. Reid; Krik? Krak! by Edwidge Dandicat; and Imagining Ourselves: Global Voices from a New Generation of Women, edited by Paula Goldman).
This is where my undergraduate lessons on self-organization come in handy. To-do lists, outlines of my ideas, and detailed breakdowns of all the projects I’m juggling have taken over my computer. Having a community of fellow scholars (including my *amazing* roommate!), most of whom are older and have therefore moved past the stage I’m currently in, is a great resource for navigating all of this. It would also be really nice to find a good yoga studio.
9.15.2009
on contrasts
If you hadn’t gathered this from my last post, returning to Santo Domingo Santo Domingo
I also don’t remember it being quite this hot and humid here. Maybe it has to do with the time of year, but I have never been so constantly sweaty in my life – and that includes all time spent inWilliamsburg
I also don’t remember it being quite this hot and humid here. Maybe it has to do with the time of year, but I have never been so constantly sweaty in my life – and that includes all time spent in
And then there’s the noise. Those of you who know me may chuckle at the thought that noise might bother me, of all people. Truthfully, it’s not so much that it bothers me (yet), and the blend of roosters crowing, dogs barking, trucks backfiring, motorcycles nearly crashing, people yelling in Spanish from ridiculous distances, and at least five different songs blasting out of doorways at any given moment has always been an endearing aspect of Santo Domingo. But whether or not it bothers you, you’re bound to be acutely aware of it. It makes the calm (already decorated!) space of my apartment – my room in particular – all the more like a welcome sanctuary after fighting my way through streets that can sometimes feel like, well, pure chaos. I’m reminded of the graffiti I saw scrawled on a wall in the city a couple of years ago: esta no es una ciudad; es una selva – this isn’t a city; it’s a jungle.
All of the above are things I was aware of and had experienced on my other trips to the
On that note, I’m taking the day off to do some much-needed grocery shopping and also RELAX.
9.12.2009
arrival
the airport shines with the movement of feet.
I am driven out by the cold coming,
by Virginia Caribbean heat.
it’s the business of sisters that sends me
across oceans and borders. it’s the voices
of women like me, brown-skinned and setting free
their songs to spread like syrup thick and sweet.
you cannot ignore us now that we have learned harmony,
have learned to recognize injustice,
have arrived with flashing eyes and paintbrushes,
laptops and degrees, pens and mirrors that we now respect
because we have learned to handle the truth of ourselves.
That’s the beginning of a poem I wrote on the plane from DC to Miami
how can I turn away?
brother, sister, go dancing
through my head,
human as to human.
the future is no place
to place your better days...
hands and feet are all alike
but gold between divide
hands and feet are all alike
but fear between divide us
all slip away...
I can’t say or sing it better than Dave.
Anyway, the past few weeks have been a whirlwind of visits, phone calls, emails, texts, and packing packing packing. It all felt mad epic, like I’m Aeneas in Book 1 of The Aeneid (anyone else who had to pore over that in high school Latin can relate). While graduation was somewhat of a rainy blur and felt less epic because it was immediately followed by weeks of studying and more classes, this departure has made up for graduation’s anticlimactic nature. Now I really feel as though I’m headed somewhere new, as though I’ve moved on to a different phase.
...And I am here, in
The airport guy: “Hi...how are you? You look Dominican.”
Me: “Yes, I know.”
Definitely not the first (or twentieth) time I’ve been told this and have had to explain that North America also has Creoles, people who comprise that post-colonial mezclado of African, Native American and European (in my case, mostly French and Spanish, plus Dutch and rumors of a Corsican, etc.). When I left the airport, I got a taxi and headed straight to the apartment where I’m staying (for at least the first few months) with a fellow Fulbrighter from NYC. The taxi driver and I had a nice little chat about families and Obama and public health – and it was so exciting to find out that he is from a small town near Barahona, near el Río de los Patos (literally, Duck River), because that’s exactly where we went after the SOMOS clinic in January 2007! So we both laughed and reminisced about that gorgeous land where the mountains meet the palms, which meet the beach, which meets the ocean, which meets the sky, and the lovely freshwater river that cuts through it all. It wouldn’t be the
Anyway, I am here. And thanks to some generous neighbors from
8.26.2009
first words
Motochaska es qué??? you’re asking yourself. You’re thinking of Ché, but not sure where the connection comes in, and if you don’t speak Quechua, then chaska is foreign on your tongue. It means “star,” but it’s also the name of the main character in a play I saw in Cusco, Peru (February 2008):
“Chaska is the story of a young girl from an Andean town called Kusillaqta, which for the last years has been branded with misfortune. Chaska is selected by the mayor to make an offering to the Apus (mountain gods). In her adventure she will travel across time, learn the real meaning of the divinities and will become a warrior. Chaska will understand that her journey has one mission: to save her town.”
So call Kusillaqta our World Town (credit to M.I.A. for the lingo), and yes, I’m here for the revolution, too. But I never travel alone; stars come in constellations. So I’d like to thank my supernovae for their support and undying brilliance – you know who you are.
And still you might be thinking, qué? Ok, so I graduated from the College of William & Mary in May. Now I’m headed to la República Dominicana for the next nine months, where I’ll be completing a research project courtesy of Senator J. William Fulbright. The answer to your question is, in brief, that I’m looking at gender integration strategies utilized by health-related programs and organizations funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). I’m comparing these strategies to the lived health care experiences of women and men in the target population in order to evaluate the effectiveness of USAID funding. A bit of breakdown: essentially, Part I is researching USAID’s gender policy and the ways in which it is actually implemented by USAID-funded health programs and organizations. Part II is finding out how gender impacts the health care experiences and perceptions of health among the economically disadvantaged in the country (the target population of USAID funding). Then I will compare how closely the findings of Part I line up with the findings of Part II in order to evaluate the effectiveness of USAID’s health funding for the Dominican Republic.
Besides research, I plan to (continue to) travel across time, learn the real meaning of the divinities and become a warrior. For instance,
paint [got some colors I need to put down, so I’m packing the acrylics]
write [read: breathe]
develop several dozen new Rennariginal delicious and nutritious recipes [involving mostly mangoes and breadfruit]
learn how to tear up the dance floor of a colmado [with merengue hips que no mienten]
hike Pico Duarte [the highest peak of the Antilles; they say you can see all coasts of the island from it on clear days]
read read read [read: breathe]
teach English [Dr. Ramón of Physicians for Peace has volunteered me to volunteer]
photography [got some light I need to capture, or try]
explore the rest of la tierra quisqueyana that I have yet to see [read: Punta Cana, Santiago, Salcedo, y más de Samaná, for starters]
These and other goings-on will be retold, translated, explicated, and extrapolated here, so stay tuned, bookmark it, or set it as your homepage; in short, do what you gotta do to stay on the moto. In the Dominican Republic (henceforth referred to as the DR, or possibly la RD, depending on my momentary linguistic leaning), there’s a concept known as movimiento. Literally, this means “movement,” but it’s often invoked to refer to the idea of moving ahead in life – socially, economically, personally, spiritually, proverbially, poetically, or otherwise. It’s a concept that I’ve often applied to my own life, since I am fascinated by the agency inherent in individuality. That is, I embrace the “doing” of my being over the mere “being.” As paraphrased by E.E. Cummings:
“[…] remember one thing only: that it’s you – nobody else – who determines your destiny and decides your fate. Nobody else can be alive for you; nor can you be alive for anyone else.”
Cummings, to be fair, is emphasizing the being over the doing that is the mandate of an artist’s calling, but I’m talking about doing, because it’s action that pushes us forward. [I do, you do, she/he/it does: decline it, rewind it, redefine it, recline with it, wake up, stretch, and dine with it, live life line by line with it.] Nothing’s enigmatic that wasn’t first a simple truth.
I’m excited to return to the DR, and from here Santo Domingo seems at once as familiar as my hometown and as novel as the circumstances that bear me southward to the island of Hispañola once again. Nine months?! It sounds like an eternity when I say it out loud, but I have a feeling that the time will pass with unbelievable speed, as it’s prone to do. Buen viaje, because I know you’re journeying as much as I am. Next entry will be from the Caribbean. I love you all!
Shine on.
One.
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