Great Goings On

The last ten days have brought many exciting things! Last weekend was the national celebration of the 11oth year of Anglican presence in the DR. I attended Sunday's huge service in the capital - it was a wonderful gathering, with students from all the Episcopal schools, and priests/bishops from the DR, Haiti, Florida, and the Virgin Islands to help celebrate. I'm sorry to say I didn't have my camera, but I might be able to get my hands on some pictures in the near future.

Clinic work continues to be engaging and challenging. We returned to Batey Esperanza last week to deliver test results. Gracias a Dios, we only had two positives out of the 49 tests - a surprisingly low number. While our two counselors sat inside to give results, I was in charge of maintaining order outside. In other words, the afternoon was a crash course in Batey Spanish mixed with some Creole. Late afternoons are a time for socializing, and I made an intriguing spectacle for everyone in the Batey, not just people waiting for results. At the end of the day I had drawn stick-figures with toddlers in the dirt, been told I had "cat-eyes" several times, and garnered two declarations of love. All in a day's work....

This week, the community health team has been working on making teaching aids for breast exams for our Health Promoters. Old bras, backed with fabric and stuffed with cotton and a single rock "tumor," are great - and affordable - dummies for teaching self-breast exams. Promoters can teach without causing discomfort or embarrassment, and the experience is realistic enough to be a great help! Our sewing machine isn't working, so we spent most of one morning sewing the dummies together by hand. But we're not complaining; it was a chance to just hang out and chat!

Today, the team headed out to Villa Faro to continue training our newest Health Promoters there. With the help of the neighborhood school's faculty, we organized a practice session for assessing infant respiratory rate. Nearly twenty volunteer mothers and babies showed up to give our promoters a chance to practice taking respiratory rates on very young children, since that group is often the hardest to assess. Promoters had a chance to work with several babies - some crying, some with colds, some asleep - and compare their findings. As usual, we passed out crackers and juice. We also had a bottle of children's Tylenol and a bottle of Broncochem (similar to Dimetap) to give each mother as a 'thank you' for her participation. The school was noisy and chaotic with promoters, mothers, babies, and other children, but the event was a huge success. Here are some of my favorite shots of the afternoon:

One way to assess breathing is by touching the baby

Another is to put your ear to the baby's chest

Anita teaches

So that's a quick catch-up on work activities. I'm headed into the capital this weekend to visit friends, see the part of the city Christopher Columbus built, and perhaps go to a ballet performance! It's already Christmas here in the DR, as evidenced by the Christmas lights/decorations appearing everywhere, the carols playing in the buses, and (perhaps) the red and green fireworks visible through my window right now. Pretty funny. I guess that's what happens when there's no Halloween or Thanksgiving.... Hope everyone is having a wonderful week! xo

Operativo: Batey Esperanza

An exciting operativo afternoon last week! Some definitions before we get started:

Operativo - an event when our HIV team leaves the clinic to give a couple hours of free HIV-testing and counseling in poor and/or rural communities. Interested individuals go through a small-group charla (chat/discussion) about the test and HIV/AIDS before having their blood drawn. People under 18 must be accompanied by a parent/guardian. We give test-takers cookies and pop as an incentive to take the test and as a way to feed hungry people. We take the blood samples back for analysis at our lab, and then return the following week to deliver results.

Batey - a (usually rural) community associated with farming sugarcane. Most residents are Haitian or of Haitian descent, though most speak an accented Spanish. Some speak Creole, which I can't understand, despite years of French class. Bateys are usually very poor communities.

Esperanza - Spanish for 'hope'


Last Thursday, I went with our HIV team to do my first operativo in Batey Esperanza. We set up in the batey's clinic, using their waiting room as our charla space, and the vaccination room as the testing room. I was put in charge of dispensing cookies and pop, which turned out to be trickier than I thought, given the large amount of persuasive kids eying the cookies.

Greysi and I waited for the first few people to show up. We got there at about 3:30 and were expecting 10-20 people before we closed at 5, but had come prepared with a few extra syringes. At first, it was slow-going, but as people left the clinic with cookies in hand, word spread and more and more people came for a charla and a test.

A charla - not all of the people who heard the talks chose to get tested

As time wore on and the news spread, more and more people showed up. We ran out of syringes twice and had to borrow from the clinic! We finally closed up shop around 6:45, after testing 49 people! As dusk fell on the batey, I was happy to finally be able to hand out the few left-over cookies we had.

We loaded up the car and headed home, all talking excitedly about the afternoon. The feeling on the ride home - five of us crammed in the Jeep, bachata music turned up loud, excited conversation in Spanish, night falling over San Pedro - was wonderful. We are all still excited about the number of people we reached through charlas and the number of tests we did.

Delivering results on Thursday will be harder. This diagnosis is life-changing. I am a little comforted to know that we can at least provide free treatment, free transportation, and some food to any people with positive results. And I'm hoping for many negative results. Please keep this vibrant community in your thoughts and prayers.



*all photos taken by our wonderful driver for use by our funding charity organization.

La Boda de Elena

Last weekend was the very exciting and long-awaited wedding of Elena. There's been a lot of questions about it, so here's a short description with some pictures:

I helped set-up the hall during the day, mopping, moving tables, slicing cake.... I even learned how to tie balloons! After all these years of thinking it was a secret talent of my mom's!

We used a reception hall upstairs in the clinic for the ceremony and reception

The cake - I was shocked when one of the girls pretended to eat some until everyone told me it was a fake cake used as a prop for pictures. They thought it was pretty funny that I had thought it was real....

Ada taught me to tie balloons.

The wedding was scheduled to start at 5:30. We were still decorating in our jeans at 5:50, and nobody had arrived. I rushed home to get ready and was back by 6:20, just in time to see Elena walk down the aisle (for the first time). A stereo blared out the wedding march as Elena went to meet her groom, and they both sat down at a table with a judge. While the three worked out the legal side of marriage, the "congregation" listened to music on the stereo and chatted. After about half an hour, the wedding march played again and Elena walked back down the aisle to a pastor waiting at the other side of the room. Here the bride and groom exchanged vows and had a religious blessing. The congregation tried to listen to music and continue chatting until the pastor glared at everyone to hush. After the final kiss, the congregation clapped and cheered, the wedding party gathered next to the cake for photos, and the reception began!

El novio y la novia

The clinic colleages wait for our photo with the bride and groom

Clinic girls! (None of us caught the bouquet)

A light fare of Dominican appetizers was served during the reception: empanadas, shish kabobs, dumplings... Mmm. The newly married couple socialized while background music played on the stereo. Surprisingly, there was no dancing, and most guests left soon after the food was finished. I had been looking forward to my first try at merengue and bachata, but it was not to be. Now I'm seriously looking into dance classes!

The wedding was one of the first social events here where I felt like I really belonged. I knew the bride and groom and was able to congratulate them, and I had all my colleagues to hang out with. Despite the lack of dancing, I had a great time and feel so fortunate to have been invited. Yay! Felicidades, Elena!

The Social Life

Saludos everyone! After weeks of settling in - and it's an ongoing process - I had a fun, social afternoon and thought I'd share it with you. I think it's a good glimpse of DR culture and my experience living in a different country. So, in terrible detail, here's the story:

Today, the house phone rang and it was for me, which never happens. I picked up and someone started speaking Spanish - it took me a few minutes to realize it was my new friend, Paola. We met at the retreat weekend in Jarabacoa and have run into each other a couple times since then, each time saying we needed to get together at some point. I warned Paola then that it is close to impossible for me to understand native Spanish speakers on the phone - much more difficult than face-to-face. In fact, the first time Paola called a couple weeks ago, she had to repeat everything twice at an incredibly slow pace, and I was still startled when the phone went dead and I realized the conversation had ended and she'd hung up!

So this time, I listened very carefully and she spoke very clearly and we had an entire conversation making plans for the late afternoon. Thrilled that I actually knew when the conversation was over, I hung up and ran upstairs before I stopped to think about what I'd said. As far as I could tell, I had agreed to meet Paola at an ice cream shop an hour later to....watch people dance salsa together on top of a wooden table while on bicycles. What? I figured there was nothing for it but to go, so I asked my family how to get to this ice cream shop and changed clothes.

Then I started to get nervous. I was going to be walking by myself (granted, only about five blocks) to a busy ice cream store on the ocean-front boulevard, which is famous for loud music, large crowds, and general confusion. And it was getting closer to dusk. I asked my family if it seemed safe to walk there and they said it was. Even though I trust their judgment and know they care a lot about me, I was hesitant. And then there was the question of time: If Paola said 5pm, did she mean right at 5 or did she mean a more Dominican 5 a la 5:20? I didn't want to be waiting at the ice cream shop alone for 20 minutes.... The more time passed, the more nervous I got, until even I could recognize that it was probably out of proportion to the event at hand.

Knowing that in all likelihood this was going to be fun and I would be fine, I got ready and decided to leave the house at 5, hoping Paola would already be there. Even though the day was cloudy, I donned my big sunglasses (I find I get less attention on the street this way - I think because people can't see where I'm looking and can't tell that my eyes are blue) and struck out with a confident walk. I reached the ice cream shop with no problem and looked around for Paola.

She was nowhere to be seen. Still nervous, I leaned against a column and tried to blend in. A little girl, about five, stood on a chair to be eye-level with me, leaned in to my face, and started chatting in pristine Spanish. Between scampers over to her grandparents, she pointed out all her family members, including a description of how unimpressed she was by her five-year-old boy cousin. Then she proudly counted to five in English. I hadn't wanted to attract any attention, but I was so grateful to have this uninhibited little girl for company. Sure enough, at about 5:20, Paola walked in and we did the Dominican cheek-kiss greeting.

This was the first time Paola and I had successfully met up, so our conversation was of the basic get-to-know-you type, which, thankfully, is usually in present tense. Paola asked if I wanted ice cream and I said, sure. Dominican ice cream is served in really squat waffle cones and, regardless of the flavor, covered in a thick strawberry syrup and often sprinkled with that Fruity Pebbles cereal from the States. There was a little confusion when I ordered only a single scoop of sherbet (chinola - my favorite Dominican flavor) without any of the toppings. (Hey, if I saw a girl walk in at 5:30 on a cloudy day wearing sunglasses and then proceed to refuse the strawberry syrup, I'd be confused too.) Paola insisted on paying, since she had invited me - another cultural custom.

Finally, with ice in hand, we headed out to see the salsa-ing bicyclists. It turns out it was a performance of bicycle tricks on a huge wooden ramp in the middle of the street. (So I had correctly caught the words bicycle, wooden, and tricks, though I still don't know how I got salsa...) As it turned out, Paola and I were both too short to see over the crowd, so we ended up sitting by the water's edge and chatting. She was very patient with my Spanish and we had a great conversation. Paola has also just moved to this city, and we shared our feelings of bewilderment in how to get around, what it was like looking for friends, and how we missed an active social life. It turns out she is really interested in learning to salsa, so we might take classes together once I've learned merengue and bachata. Exciting!

After about an hour, while it was still light, we said good-bye and I walked back to the house, nerves replaced by confidence. Even now, I am still absurdly proud of executing my first "friend-date" by myself - phone call, plan, walk, conversation, return... all of it! It's funny to me how things so simple in the US become such a challenge for me here, and then such an achievement! And now I have wonderful friends in the clinic, someone outside the clinic, and a lovely Dominican family to spend time with.

As Vonnegut writes, "Do one thing everyday that scares you." ....no matter how small! xoxo