'Mountains, rivers, beaches and thieves': my final blog in the Dominican Republic.

With a week left the panic of leaving has well and truly set in and I get a little twist of dread in my stomach when I think about leaving this amazing wonderful place that has been my home for the past year. Its not that I don't want to, or am not exited about going home because I definitely am; it’s more the thought of saying goodbye and leaving my life, the people and things that I love here.

Here are just a few things that I will miss (bear in mind that this list just scratches the surface!)

I will miss:

- Swimming with the boys in the river then making tostones next door.
-warm evenings sitting outside on the pavement on plastic chairs chatting and watching the world go by.
- Fires on the beach, snorkelling and lying on the warm stones a the sun sets.

- I will definitely miss the crazy guaguas where big women in curlers shout at each other, complain about their husbands and gossip while their tiny children perched too close to the open door stare in awe at the Americanas pulling funny faces at them

- I’ll miss mental things on motorbikes (best so far: 4 live goats)

- wearing flip flops all day everyday and not worrying about taking a rain coat or a million layers... 'Just in case'
- Shooting stars and lightening bugs

- Riding in the back of the truck in the sun

- I'll miss hanging out with the boys next door, cooking, playing cards, making juice and just laughing with them.

- My mosquito net tent over my bed

- Picking bananas and mangoes for breakfast

- Watching the sun set from the roof.

- Knowing everyone I pass in the street and knowing that they are brother of so and so who owns that colmado or platano field and who has two kids in school etc.

- I'm going to miss kids yelling 'Aleeex' where ever I go and their cheeky smiles like they have always just done something really naughty!

- I will definitely miss my secret midnight tostone snacks on the roof

- I will miss Cristina’s cooking and amazing chat

- I will miss watching awful (but amazing) tele novelas next door with Mota and paying dominoes with Jesus

- Crazy loud music blasting from every corner

- Sneaky past curfew trips to the juice stand
-Dominican sayings, weird words, heated arguments and indecipherable accents.

- I’ll miss the creepy hissing, marriage proposals and declarations of love from gorgeous Dominican men

- Being rescued from barking dogs by one of my first graders

- I'll miss the crazy hot, busy, beautiful Haitian market in Barahona.
-lying on the roof in the hot night listening to the music from the bar.

- I’ll miss sitting chatting and playing cards under the mango tree in Mota's yard

- I will miss speaking Spanish everyday. I love the feeling of being able to laugh and communicate with people in a different language.

- I'll miss cute little Daniel next door and the night guard’s crazy children
-la Hoya clothes market every Tuesday

- Antertainment (Ruth understands)

- Jorge and Altagracia at the colmado

- Lizards (even the ones that you discover in your bed)
-feeling like your part of one big crazy, disfunctional family
- I will miss our little house underneath the mango tree

- I will miss living with the best PT partner ever

I will miss falling in love with something different everyday. The more I think about it the more things I think of that I will miss. I don't know how to describe or convey how I feel and what I've learnt from this year. I have made so many amazing friends, learnt a whole new language and been a teacher. I have survived the sun, learnt how to make pretty dammed good Dominican spaghetti and gained another sister as well as half a dozen brothers. I’ve been a translator, fallen in love, sung in assemblies, and met people with some pretty amazing stories to tell. I can tell the difference between platano trees and banana trees and can wield a machete fairly aptly. I've seen bits of dead animals that I never want to see again and milked cows with Luis at six am. I’ve managed to avoid Dengue fever, malaria, parasites and chikenguña, climbed the highest mountain in the Caribbean, and perfected the mosquito slap. I have learnt that life is better without the internet and when you can shout down the street or through the fence instead of sending a text. I have been neighbours with Hatian refugees and families who survive on fifty pesos a day and I will never stop being amazed by people’s generosity and kindness.

However it hasn’t all been sunshine and rainbows. There are a few things that I am not going to miss about living here including: anti-malarials, sweat, mosquitoes, 'ppppssssttttt', sweat...again, sun cream, 'Dame un...', Flip flop blisters, giant spiders (especialy the ones you find in yoir bed when you get back at 10.30 and have to extract in the dark because there is no power) and cockroaches, lack of power and lack of rain, yappy dogs, raw chicken smell in the market...

Like any country the DR is far from scraping the surface of perfect and during this year I have been confronted by a lot of problems, uncomfortablenesses and frustrations.

Mota's grandson said it best, when I asked him what he thinks of when I say 'the Dominican Republic' he replied 'I think of mountains, rivers, beaches and thieves'. This is a beautiful, amazing country with so much potential but issues such as corruption and insurmountable economic inequality stop people from living the lives they deserve, and stops this country from becoming what it should be.  There is so much money thrown at tourist resorts, stolen by politicians and business owners that there isn’t much left for the majority of the population. Its frustrating to see a country where there is the economic capacity to develop yet those in power are allowed to steal from and bend the system at the cost of those at the bottom. 

So, as well as having some fantastic, amazing, wonderful experiences this year has also hammered home some hard truths. By living in a community I have started to build a picture of how corruption not just at the top but through every layer of government means that people aren't getting what they need. I know that the public health care system could have paid for a boy in school to have eye tests done if the money from the health care budget hadn’t been spent on the last election. I know that the family next door who live in a wooden shack and who survive on fifty pesos (seventy five pence) a day don’t have to but the lack of money being channeled into social welfare means that they are trapped. At the same time every third car on the road is a brand new 4x4 and all over the country huge resorts and mansions hide behind tall guarded gates. The money is there but the majority don’t see it. The thing is, I know that it is the same in every country to some extent and all over the world the rich are getting richer while those at the bottom are kept firmly at the bottom.

People of African/ Hatian origin make up a huge proportion of the population of the DR. In fact 73% of people are mixed race, 16% are White European and 11% are Black (information published by the last census meaning that these statistics don't cover illegal immigrants the majority of whom are Haitian). Yet when you watch TV every single presenter (and I mean every single) guest or politician has light, almost white skin. At a recent talk we went to in Barahona the president showed up. On the top table out of about twenty people one man had darker skin and there was one woman. How can any government hope to provide a fair and representative service if it doesn’t reflect a fair cross section of the population? A government of middle aged white men is going to end up making policies that are wanted by wait for it... middle aged white men!

So yes, this year has been the best, most difficult, challenging and amazing year of my life. I have experienced things both good and bad that will stay with me forever and met people who I will never forget. I have realised how small we are in the world but how no matter how small you are or how much money you have you can still be happy and make a difference to peoples lives if you want to. I now know how lucky we are in the UK to have the opportunities that we have but I have also seen how 'development' has meant the loss of so many good things. The warmth, generosity and togetherness that I feel living here is like nothing I have experienced before. I know through experience that the world is a really, really difficult unfair and a very frustrating place but that there are good things and good people around every bend and if you haven’t learned and experienced that then you can’t change anything.

Cuba

The holiday to Cuba came in the middle of what feels like another holiday: school has finished and we are on holiday painting murals, sorting out things for the next PT volunteers, helping out with groups, hanging out with friends, making cakes, and swimming in the river.

And so, the six of us DR Project Trust volunteers set off to Cuba for a holiday…

‘Socialism o Muerte’ was the message that greeted us painted onto the side of an old warehouse as we drove out of Havana airport on Thursday morning . This is going to be a good holiday.

Cuba really does feel like the land that time forgot. We spent the first few days of our two week stay in Cuba surrounded by crumbling colonial buildings, hectic cobbled streets, cigars, beautiful old cars, peso pizzas and live music coming from every café.

Cuba is rapidly turning into a land of visual contrasts; new mixing with old where ever you look. Shiny new imported cars cross ancient train tracks where rusty carriages from the ‘60s squeak and grumble from one side of the city to the other; teenagers in flashy sunglasses and edgy hair styles sit at the wheels of ancient classic cars; and bijou privately run cafes nestle between old state-run businesses. With trade restrictions beginning to be lifted and the tight-fisted embargos loosening their grip Cuba is slowly coming out of the 50s. The thing is that despite the ancient technology and crumbling buildings that have been part of life for the past 60 years Cuba can confidently compete on the world stage in terms of its health care system and education. From talking to people in shops, restaurants and in the street the result of the focus put on education by the government is marked.  Unlike in the Dominican Republic most people can hold a fairly comprehensive conversation with you in English, and when you attempt to talk about something that is happening outside of Cuba they tended to know more than you do. One of the first things that Castro did when he took power was to promote education across the country. Wherever you lived be it in Central Havana or deep in the mountains there would be a school that you could get to. Moreover the concept of private education is alien in Cuba meaning that the child of the bank manager learns alongside the child of the mechanic. The message that this sends out is that just because someone (or more accurately someone’s parents) has money does not mean that they deserve a better start in life and instead of being cushioned and sheltered, children meet other children from a range of backgrounds.  By channelling a large proportion of (frankly, compared to countries such as the UK, fairly limited) state funds into education the government has created schools that provide some of the best education in the world regardless of social class. Maybe an example that the notoriously elitist education system in UK should take on board. By prioritising areas such as education when Fidel Castro took power it now means that the literacy rate in Cuba rose from between 60-76% in 1959 to 99.8%. The idea that the first thing that a government does when it takes power is to build schools, train teachers, invest in health and establish a social welfare system that can rival any in the developed world puts my faith back into humanity. They weren’t interested in pleasing private enterprise to enhance the wealth of the wealthiest or waffle about being there for ordinary people while behind the scenes filling their own pockets they just did what any government should do and looked after the people. They invested in people and in the future. Today Cuba trains 20,000 more doctors than the whole of Africa and has one of the highest number of doctors per head of the population of any country in the world.

Our trip started in Havana where, after a couple of crazy music filled nights and hot days we travelled to the resting place of Che Guevara in Santa Clara and from there down to the film set-like streets of Trinidad. With a week left we headed to Cien Fuegos, the town liberated by Che, then out to the campo in Viñales where we watched cigar production and walked around the incredible valley before travelling back to Havana to finish our trip in style. Throughout the whole trip we stayed in ‘casas particulares’ which are people’s houses which they have opened up to travellers. People tend to earn more catering to tourists than they do in their day jobs and as a result there are ‘casas’ everywhere you look in Cuba. It’s a fantastic way to get a taste of Cuban life and means that you can actually talk and spend some time with real people. We met some great characters while we were staying in Casas, like Miguel in Santa Cara who whore trilby hats 24/7, our hostess in Cien Fuegos who is a lecturer in industrial engineering during the day, and Surama in Havana who is a doctor as her day job, who said that she drank rum in the morning ‘to help her varicose veins’ and looked after us like we were her children. All of the Casas that we stayed in were beautiful (other than the seemingly obligatory collection of creepy china dolls which stare at you from every side table); you start to wonder how people come to live in these amazing palaces. When we put the question to Miguel in Santa Cara he explained that until now buying and selling houses in Cuba was nearly impossible which meant that all of the houses that we stayed hat had been passed down through the generations. 

Speaking to real Cubans you start to realise the challenges of living in Cuba. The most obvious difficulty is the dual currency; Nationals (the local currency) and kooks (the tourist currency). Nationals are practically worthless compared to Kooks which means that a doctor (who is paid in Nationals) can earn just as much by driving a cab round Havana for a night as they would from working a 24hr shift at the hospital. However the flip side to this is that getting an education and a good job becomes less about the money and material wealth that you will gain by the end of it and more about doing what you actually want to do. From talking to people there seems to be less of a greed for money and position. People genuinely seem to want to help each other and the community in which they live. However, with the changing economic infrastructure, abolishment of Nationals, the rise of private enterprise and the easing of trade barriers the question remains as to how people will react. The abolishment of Nationals could sign a better future for Cuba with people earning more for the work that they do; however the question remains whether  people will retain the community spirit that has been fostered since the revolution or will the greed that rules us in the West slowly seep into communities and people’s attitudes.

One of the most interesting people who we talked to was our hostess in Havana. She said that by running the Casa for tourists she earns more than she does at the hospital and from talking to her and her family we learned that the general opinion is that the changes that are taking place in Cuba are having a positive effect on society and are opening up people’s horizons and opportunities. 

Staying in Havana was a beautiful, surreal and overwhelming way to be thrown into Cuba. The buzz of Cuban life hummed from every back street and pulsed through the air like electricity (which is, by the way, available 24/7 unlike some neighbouring countries…) Kids kicked footballs through car-less streets. The main pedestrian street however was packed with hundreds of tourists, souvenir shops, peso pizza stands and restaurants. In the mid-day heat (35 degrees plus) this close hot environment felt fairly oppressive and so we stuck mainly to the winding back streets, dodging bicycle taxis, while people shouted to each other from top floor windows overhead. Between wandering, site-seeing and taking rides around the city in taxies from the 60s we had plenty to keep us occupied.

In search of food one night we ended up in a restaurant situated in a guy’s front room. To get to the small living room which had balconies looking over the main street we walked through the kitchen where his sister prepared food and drinks. The Virgin Mary watched us from the wall as we drank and family photographs were stuck to the fridge. Private enterprise is just starting in Cuba and small privately owned cafes and restaurants are starting to spring up next to state run businesses as people take advantage of the changing economy. One evening in Havana we found ourselves wandering along the Malecon (a long promenade which snakes long the coast and separates Havana from the sea). People sat, chatted, played music and sang. We were joined by a group of guys and their guitar and we danced and talked until the early hours of the morning. When we asked them about life in Cuba they didn’t give much away, ‘it’s ok’, and ‘it’s good’. We discovered that Cubans can’t have Facebook and that internet access is limited. Censorship is another issue that dictates people’s freedom of speech. There is no real opposition to the government which controls the press and television channels meaning that freedom of speech in compromised and guys like the ones we met on the Malecon are restricted in what they can even say to us let alone publish publicly. Our stay in Havana left a lot for us to think about but our trip had hardly begun.

The coach journeys between all the cities were some of the strangest of my life. As you roll out of the city the numbers of cars on the roads become fewer and fewer and the pot holes became closer and closer together. We drove along deserted highways dotted with wooden farm buildings, palm trees and sugar cane plantations. The only other traffic other than the occasional old car coughing along were old men in straw hats riding ancient push bikes cigars firmly gripped between their lips and sugar cane strapped to the rack on the back of their bike. We also saw lots of horse drawn carts transporting people and produce between towns. We were informed later in the trip that most people can’t afford the new cars that are slowly being imported from the west and that the passed down classics can’t make the three hours from one city to the next. The result of this is eerie highways filled with the sound of the clopping of hooves and the creaking of old bicycle frames bouncing along the potholed tarmac.

After the ghost ride from Havana we arrived hot and tired in Santa Clara where we were picked up from the bus station by a horse drawn taxi! My heart sank, I thought it was just a touristy gimmick that the casa owner thought we would enjoy. However, as we clopped through the main streets I quickly realised that cars were few and far between. The streets were busy with horse drawn carts, people giving each other lifts on rusty bicycles, and ancient buses from the 60s which creaked and puffed to a stop at bus stops outside low rise apartment buildings where horses grazed on the front greens and kids bounced footballs off the walls. In both Santa Clara and Cien Fuegos bicycles were everywhere, boyfriends gave girlfriends backies and long legged school children raced each other down along the streets. Everywhere you looked felt like a scene from a 50s movie.

From the Cuban-ness of Santa Clara we were transported to the film set-like winding streets of Trinidad. Trinidad was possibly the quaintest place that we visited: with its brightly coloured buildings and classic cars it felt like something out of a story book. During our stay we took a trip out to a valley just outside of the city where, during the slave trade, huge sugar plantations had been worked by saves brought from Africa. A watch tower soared above the town where men in straw hats smoking cigars sat outside wooden-slatted buildings and cowboys on horseback rode down the hot streets. Even in small rural towns like this just standing next to people and listening to conversations was surprising.  We passed a group of stall holders sewing together lace table cloths and taking about the variation in education levels between their town and the neighbouring Trinidad and how that affects their children. No discussion of rice and beans or the latest tele novela here!

Next on the itinerary was Cien Fuegos. Cien Fuegos felt very Cuban and wandering down the back streets of the town there was a lot of ‘I love you baby’, ‘like your body’, ‘pssst marry me’ etc. etc. which somewhat shattered the illusion that Cuban men are less creepy than Dominicans - was it too much to hope for!? It provided (as it always does) a lot of hilarity and made us feel like we were back in the DR.

The journey to Viñales was the longest we had: six hours to Havana then another three to Viñales . During this time we had numerous opportunities to experience the terrifying toilet women. Now, I haven’t mentioned the banshees of the baños up to this point but I feel that the time is right. Pubic bathrooms (or baño in Spanish) in Cuba are all manned (or wommaned?) by very scary Cuban ladies. Imagine the situation; you have just leapt of the bus, battled your way through the crowed, hot service or bus station where there is a fair amount of ‘taxi lady, I give you good price’ing, you’re bursting for a wee, your reach the bathroom to find a fairly solid, middle aged Cuban lady planted firmly in the entrance of the bathroom. As you try to sneak past a hand flies out to block your path and you brace yourself for the inevitable ‘hay que pagar’ (‘you have to pay’) at the same time you get the sinking feeling as you realise… you have no change! When you try to challenge the fact that you are being asked to pay to use  bathroom which looks like it hasn’t been cleaned since the revolution and which NEVER has any toilet paper you are told (with the accompanying death stare) that ‘you have to pay in every country in the world’. With that you have options either risk certain death, defy scary baño woman and march confidently past. You could run back to the bus for change even though it may be gone by the time you get back from the bathroom or jut cross your legs for another couple of hours until the next terrifying encounter.

After a number of these scary encounters we arrived safely in Viñales, a beautiful valley where huge tables of rock jutted out of the flat floor. This is the land of cigar and coffee production and we took a trip to a tobacco farm where the owner showed us round the huge thatched drying shed and let us try some of his cigars. Being a national park the farms in Viñales are prohibited from using chemicals and machinery meaning that all the work has to be done by hand or animal. Huge oxen marched up the rutted tracks and pulled ancient ploughs through the fields. The landscape looked like somewhere in Asia rather than the Caribbean. Sitting on the roof of the Casa we watched thunder storms roll in every evening across the valley. Forked lightning and deafening thunder were regular sounds at about five in the afternoon.  Heads full of smoke and sun we travelled back to Havana from Viñales where we spent an excellent last couple of days soaking up the last drops of live Cuban music and rum before our flight home.

Now, onto the flight fiasco: we got to the airport for 6.30am ready to check in for our flight at 9.40 that morning. After not seeing the flight on the departures board we enquired at the Cubana airlines desk only to be told that it had been delayed until 7 that evening. We hadn’t been able to check the flight times due to the lack of internet access in Cuba meaning that twelve long hours stretched before us. However after a fair amount of faffing we, alongside the other passengers who had missed the memo, we were treated to an afternoon in a four star hotel where we circled the breakfast buffet an impressive thirteen times between us, had baths (first one in eleven months!) and relieved the hotel of all the free soap and shampoo that we could get our hands on. It was a very strange way to end our Cuban holiday. Although it was a hilarious experience I’m glad we weren’t paying guests. Looking out of the window over the crumbling houses on the edge of Havana it was hard to imagine any of the amazing people that we had met staying in a place like that. In the gift shop they sold huge posters of Che Guevara and you couldn’t help thinking about what he would make of this: a huge plush private hotel catering to rich tourists on the outskirts of Havana. I get the feeling that he wouldn’t have been very impressed.

As we were driving back to the airport after our strange, surreal afternoon we passed the same sign that had greeted us as we entered the country; ‘Socialism ó Muerte’. On the pavement outside an old car was parked, bonnet up, its oily-handed owner prodding around its ancient innards as his passengers stared on with expressions that indicated that maybe this wasn’t the first time that the family car had given up the ghost. Looking at the broken down car under a relic from the revolution I couldn’t help wondering how long this amazing, difficult and complicated country has left before it changes for ever. For better or for worse the old Cuba, like the classic cars which have been iconic symbols for so many years is reaching the end of the road, and the path it takes will be watched by the whole world.

Inequalities

'Now, there are certain things that women should do that men shouldn’t….’ Oh dear, here we go... again...!

At some points living in a society, with what may be considered fairly outdated views on gender equality, can take its toll. Among the things that I have been advised not to do are: climb the mango tree to get over the fence into our neighbours’ garden because I might 'fall and hurt myself' despite the fact that the boys next door do it on a regular basis (I climb it anyway). In fact, I’m advised not really to climb anything more than a chair in case I do something weak and womanly and hurt myself. We have to be found chairs if Ruth and I are standing around, as one or both of us might be overcome with a sudden dizzy spell or fainting fit (as we women often are) . I was told the workshop next door is ‘very dangerous you know, there is lots of powerful machinery’. Not a place for a woman. After a few conversations where I was told all of the things I couldn’t do I  started to feel a bit restricted but thankfully I have since discovered that there are a whole host of things that are socially acceptable for me, as woman, to do. I am allowed to cook all of my families’ meals. I am allowed to do the washing up, to clean the house, look after the children and to make the beds. As well as this, we woman have to be careful about what we eat. I can eat as much salad as I want (a woman’s food) but if I want another helping of spaghetti I’m warned that I might get fat despite the fact that the men I’m eating with are already on their third portion without anyone blinking an eye. Dominicans are very honest about your appearance and I have been told on a number of occasions that I’m getting fat. I’m often told this while being pinched and prodded by various probing hands. However on the same day we have also been told that we are too thin to work and that we should eat more platanos. There is no winning.

Despite my moaning I know that in just under a month I can go home and climb trees, jump fences, fix bikes and chop wood to my heart’s content but for women here these gender stereotypes are a daily reality.  After a day at work the last thing that I want to do is cook dinner for my extended family and neighbours in a stifling kitchen or over a coal fire while the male members of my family sit outside, joke and play dominoes or lounge around and watch television (often with the volume on maximum). When you ask a boy  “what can you cook?” the answers usually hover around the  arroz blanco (white rice) or  huevos (eggs) zone. However, it is unfair to say that men here can’t cook. We have been cooked (albeit with a bit of gentle direction) a range of things from mangu (mashed plantains with onion) to spaghetti, by men (usually as a forfeit for a bet which they invariably lose). So, it’s not that Dominican men don’t have the capacity to cook, its down to social conditioning with maybe a good dose of laziness thrown in.

As well as general social norms and boundaries there often rules imposed by religion. In a number of churches in the village, for example, women are prohibited from wearing trousers. When asked why, the only answer we were given was that ‘God wrote in the Bible that women should only wear skirts’. The subject was not raised again. In school, there are a number of girls who are very good at volley ball but who are not on the team. When asked why, they told us that to play on the team you have to wear the uniform which, of course, consists of a vest top and shorts and because these girls are Christians they are not allowed to wear shorts. Whilst these parts of life pose daily challenges, both to the women here and to my self composure, they don’t come anywhere close to addressing more complex issues that are engrained in people’s lives.

I have mentioned in previous posts about the prevalence of infidelity in society and its general social acceptance as a part of people’s lives. When I talk about infidelity I am referring mostly to male infidelity; whilst I’m sure it happens, female infidelity isn’t something that I have come across or heard about. The general social acceptance of male infidelity is something that I have found really challenging. It is a very complex issue and I think I am just on the brink of understanding how it affects the social structure and opinions of people in the community around me. I can’t judge something that I don’t understand and I have come to accept the fact that men have more than one family, that wives share their husband with other women and that children,whose mothers have the same husband, sit and work together in class. This is just a part of life here. Unsurprisingly this does cause some confusion and leads to some surprising discoveries. For example we have discovered that if you are with a child in any part of the village he / she can name at least three family members within a twenty meter radius. It certainly caused confusion when I asked children to draw their family. The first learning curve was just to keep it to your immediate family after one girl told me that she had over thirty cousins. Even after the task was simplified I was still asked questions like:  all my brothers and sisters or just with my mum and dad?  The thing is, this is not a sob story about how unhappy people are: whilst I might find it difficult to swallow, the fact is that people are contented. It is just part of life here and people accept it and get on with it whether I think it’s right or not.

Anyway, lecture over. It’s time for dinner and then I’m off to climb a mango tree!