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.

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!

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.

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.

on contrasts

If you hadn’t gathered this from my last post, returning to Santo Domingo felt at first like coming home. But as much as this place is familiar to me, I am still experiencing culture shock. For instance, Santo Domingo is a very challenging place for a North American feminist. And my feminism has grown and evolved so that my reactions to various things are different now than they were in January, when I was last here, or other previous trips. Also, I am much more conscious of the fact that I am settling down here, that this is where I will live for almost a year. For that reason, I have found myself more on my guard and concerned about how I will establish myself here than I was on previous, shorter trips to the country.

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 Williamsburg. I mean the type of humidity that seals unsealed envelopes (it happened). I mean the type of humidity that renders showers completely pointless. I mean the type of heat that makes my clothes feel like they just came out of the dryer when I get dressed. I mean heat that makes my toothpaste hot when I squeeze it out of the tube. It’s disgusting.

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.

Santo Domingo is rife with economic contradictions as well. Here in the Colonial Zone, you see a lot of juxtapositions – a Lexus SUV with tinted windows cruising past old women who lie on the side of the street, begging. This is how Santo Domingo can play with your emotions. One minute I’m at a raging outdoor son (a style of music similar to salsa) concert, dancing along with the huge crowd before a live band. I feel so pumped, so connected, as everyone smiles at each other and these adorable little girls in front of me, who are barely old enough to have basic coordination, attempt to dance. The next minute, I’m seeing a ten-year-old boy digging in trash cans for bottles and I get this sickening feeling in my stomach.

All of the above are things I was aware of and had experienced on my other trips to the Dominican Republic, but no matter how many times you see it, you’ll still feel a jolt when you return to this place after being away. That’s what they call culture shock. I have to admit that I didn’t anticipate it, since this is, after all, the fifth time I’ve been here. That and my relentless Tribe work ethic have me already grinding when it’s only day 3 here. Which explains my exhaustion. I can’t help it, though! Ironic, isn’t it, that when I am finally doing something completely academically independent and am truly my own boss, I push myself even more than William & Mary professors do. Ironic, maybe, but certainly not surprising.

On that note, I’m taking the day off to do some much-needed grocery shopping and also RELAX.

arrival

the airport shines with the movement of feet.

I am driven out by the cold coming,

by Virginia’s crisp autumn toward 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. A few days ago I was listening to the Dave Matthews Band, and a song from one of their earlier albums filled my car. It sums up the reason I am here, the reason I have chosen to undertake this research, a career/life in medicine, health and human rights advocacy, social justice, art, scholarship, public health, global policy, and love:

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 Santo Domingo, la República Dominicana! So upon stepping off the plane, I went to buy the necessary $10 tourist card that non-citizens need to enter the DR. The first interaction I had with a Dominican went something like this:

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 Dominican Republic, however, if I had gotten to my apartment without some logistical mishap. I knew there would be trouble when the driver was forced to turn off the a/c in order to make it up a hill (which had an incline of maybe 5 degrees). I’m just happy that when the car finally died we were at the corner of the street where I needed to be. My roommate came down to help me carry my two 86-pound bags (plus my 2 carry-ons) up from the street, while the frustrated driver tweaked wires under the hood and the car smoked and hissed angrily.

Anyway, I am here. And thanks to some generous neighbors from Spain, I have free wireless (and also got a free drink upon arriving). :) The apartment complex is *absolutely* gorgeous. Picture a courtyard of yellow painted walls surrounded by winding spiral staircases and columns entwined with flowers and vines. The apartment itself (which belongs to a Dominican professor who teaches in NYC) is also incredible. I’m happy to report that my room has a fan and that we have a washing machine! – both excellent luxuries. As I write this, I’m sitting on a hammock on our balcony, to which the cacophony of the Santo Domingo streets below drifts, including, a few minutes ago, the song “Somos de Calle,” by Daddy Yankee and some other people. Obviously this made me think of SOMOS (the song is pretty much our anthem), which made me smile. I also smiled when passing by the familiar landmarks along the highway that leads from the airport to the center of the city, when we drove by the small taco shop where many a memorable evening has been spent (and sometimes far past closing hours for 2am discussions about love and other important things), and my favorite panadería (bakery). But this trip already feels very different from the other SOMOS-related voyages that have brought me to the DR. I’m so excited to really get going with my research and also with the other goals I mentioned in my previous post. The next few days will be full of unpacking, settling in, and reacquainting myself to life in Santo Domingo. Hasta luego!