The Capital

A couple of weekends ago we all went to Santo Domingo. Most people don’t actually refer to it as Santo Domingo however, preferring to call it 'The Capital' which does somewhat make you feel like an extra in the Hunger Games. On Friday afternoon we embarked on the three hour bus journey to 'The Capital'. 

The hotel that we stayed in is located right in the centre of the colonial district which has a slightly strange atmosphere: it feels very European, with big grand buildings, cafes dotted around tree-lined plazas and winding cobbled streets. 

However you soon realise that this isn’t Paris or Barcelona when you look along the street and see hundreds of electrical wires strung haphazardly on spindly wooden poles, or when you are almost run over by a motorbike which is carrying about 5 people plus a few crates of bananas. We did a lot of exploring in the colonial district, drank coffee opposite the oldest church in the Americas, wandered down winding streets, stumbled across the odd 15th century monastery and watched  life in the city.

 

On Saturday night we went to a shopping centre to watch a film. I found this a very strange experience, after living in a rural Dominican village for just over a month it was bizarre to wander into a place that was so incredibly Western. The centre was very plush: white shiny floors, expensive bakeries, air conditioning and potted palm trees. However, as soon as you step outside you are back to sticky reality where there are people selling goods on the side of the road, children sleeping under bridges between carriageways, people pushing shopping trolleys or tattered prams piled with cardboard boxes. You are back in the real Dominican Republic. On one side of the wall there are people following the path that capitalism has laid out for us: buying fast food, shopping for nothing in particular, killing people on bleeping screens. On the other side of the glass there are people on the opposite end of the scale, who can’t afford to buy their next meal let alone go to the cinema or buy new clothes. Opposite lives, side by side, separated by the smooth, impenetrable glass wall of a shopping centre.  

By the end of the trip it really did feel like an extract from The Hunger Games. Leaving behind the wealth of the capital, we traveled home through slums (‘bateys’), sun-baked dusty villages and sprawling towns. We passed lorries piled high with green bananas, sacks of sugar cane and buses full of people. We arrived in Barahona district in the late afternoon and wandered home through the village, past brightly painted houses with skinny dogs basking outside them in the dust and along the path by the drainage ditch where children splashed in the afternoon heat.

         

School

So, we have been teaching at COPA, La Hoya for three weeks. So far it has been a little... challenging but very interesting and rewarding. We are called by our first names in class and so my Spanish name is Alex or Ali and the variations on Ruth include Rue, Rud, Brue and Grue which is highly amusing. When they have forgotten our names its 'teeeacher', alternatively just a clicking of the fingers.

I teach grade 1-8 once a week, most classes have between 20 and 30 pupils but they all have one common denominator, they all like to talk! I teach Monday through to Thursday, and Friday is reserved for lesson planning, doing the school mural and watching the fairly lively school assemblies. At the moment we have about 3-4 classes per day but once we are a little more settled we will be helping students with reading and writing skills, translating letters sent by their sponsors and helping out in classes during our free hours.

 It is a fairly daunting task, being thrown in front of a class of fairly loco Dominican children with just a few days of teacher training under my belt and not a huge amount of Spanish. There are few slightly mental classes (6th grade for example prefer to eat the glue and tissue paper rather than do their work) but at the end of the day most of them do what they were supposed to do and the classroom isn't usually a total bomb site. It is difficult keeping everyone quiet, especially when you don't speak amazing Spanish but so far I have kept the lessons fairly simple so there isn't much explaining to do.
 My classroom is nice. In the first week we had an interesting battle with mural paper and attracted the attention of a few well meaning but a little confused small boys who... assisted us in stapling up the brightly coloured mural paper and there is now some work up on the display boards.

 Boats by 7th and 8th grades

 

At break time, when we are not being force-fed empanadas and fizzy juice by children who wander into my classroom, we sometimes head out to the school gates where people sell food. You can buy oranges and various strange fruits that we haven't yet learned the names of, empanadas (not enchilada... that is something different) and weird sweeties which cost one peso (one peso!) which I add to the sweetie stash in my classroom which is reserved for when a sugar boost is needed.

 

We had an assembly on Monday the other week. The lady who washes our clothes lives right next to the school and from the assembly area you can see her house very easily. As we give her our washing on a Monday, on this particular afternoon you could also see all of our clothes gently swaying in the breeze. We were the only ones who knew they were ours but it was still very amusing to see our freshly cleaned bras drying as children sang religious songs and talked about the coming school year.

After fairly exhausting days of teaching we definitely have learned the value of relaxation. In the evening we cook, talk with friends in the village or walk to the river along roads which are surrounded on either side by banana fields.