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.