sábado, 19 de septiembre de 2009

Injury

Over the past two days, I was witness to three types of unfortunately typical Dominican injury, and I thought it’d be interesting for me to share these with you.

The first happened a few minutes before I arrived home from a trip to the capital. My neighbor, a 15-year-old girl, had gotten into a motorcycle accident, hit her head, and was taken to the hospital unconscious. I arrived home to see a bunch of people at her house, nervously whispering, praying, or speaking animatedly about what went wrong. She had just begun her first year in high school, which is in town about 5km away. Her family purchased a small motorcycle so that she didn’t have to rely on others to get to school, and she was just learning how to drive. Motorcycle accidents are absurdly common here, as the lack of traffic laws, driving customs, and inattention to safety proves a dangers combination. A Volunteer friend recently was involved in a motorcycle accident as a passenger and had to be medically evacuated from the country. I hear of accidents on a weekly basis from my neighbors. This accident hit home especially hard, since the girl lives down the street and had just learned how to drive. All sorts of people opined that she shouldn’t have been driving in the first place – she is, after all, a girl, and the road is dangerous – and she should now stay off the roads. I found this pill bitter. Her motorcycle was not actually hit, but swerved to miss something, and so people claimed that she was just “asustada,” or frightened, which cased the bike to leave the road, lending credence to the girl-driving-motorcycle theory of the accident. Regardless, I found this piece insulting. She is a girl, sure, but this of course has nothing to do with the accident. My neighbors weren’t there, they just like to talk. It is fairly rare to see a woman driving motorcycles, so I was glad to see her family give her a vote of confidence. We shall see how she ends up getting to school in the future, or if she is even allowed to drive again at all. For now, she is fine, back at home after a night in the hospital.

That same night, relatives came to visit her house to comfort her family and hear news. I came upon one cousin who I hadn’t seen in a few months. I asked her how she was, and she told me that she was better. Well, better from what? She told me matter-of-factly that she had received a “balazo” – she was shot. Driving on her motorcycle (with a male passenger), returning home from university at 10PM, she was stopped by two males. The assaulters forced them off the motorcycle and in the ensuing chaos, shot both the girl and her friend in the leg. Without missing a beat, and as I wore what must have been an incredulous look on my face, she whipped out her cell phone to show me pictures she had taken of the wounds. She was all smiles and confidence – after all, she still goes to university, coming home a little earlier now, and drove to my neighbor’s house on her new pasola. Still, she said, she hardly goes out at night anymore. Here was a smart, driven, university student who refused to let depravity deprive her or her independence. She told me that if her attacker had seen her face, sweet and smiling, he wouldn’t have shot her. Either way, she was on her feet, with no visible limp. She lamented her cousin’s injury, and noted the difficulty of being a female on the road. When you fall off of a motorcycle…

The next day, I went a bit farther down the road to play dominos with some neighbors. It is one of my favorite places to be – community spirit, children running around, all sorts of people playing and watching under an enormous mango tree – and so I spend many an afternoon sheltered from the fierce Caribbean sun, whiling away these hours. At one point, a boy of about three wandered into the outdoor kitchen. His grandmother found him looking slightly suspicious, and he pointed to his nose. She looked up into it, and saw something inside of his nostril. She brought him outside and presented the situation to his mother, while the kid continued to stick his finger up into his nose. Another woman took him into his lap and held his head tight while someone else pinned down his arms. His mother almost instantly pulled out a bobby pin from her hair and put to work. At this point, the child began to scream one of those agony-ridden, high-pitched screams children have that uncanny ability to make. He squirmed and cried as the bobby pin scooped and scraped and came out with nothing. A few tense minutes passed, the women exchanged nervous glances, the mother poked and prodded, the kid wailed, I wondered if we’d have to leave the game I was winning and go to the hospital. A shriek from one of the women brought the boy’s nose back into focus – a bright yellow kernel of corn emerged, intact and soggy. Everyone sighed, the kid ceased his wailing, saw the kernel, and began crying again, and then the domino game continued. His mother gave him a light pop on the head and comforted him. All was good again in the world, minus my serious doubts about wanting children.

sábado, 12 de septiembre de 2009


Celebrando el Cibao 2009

If you remember from last year, I helped organize a diversity and leadership conference for youth in my region of the DR. This year, I was a co-coordinator, and the conference was a big success. Thank you for all who helped make it so by donating online at the Peace Corps website.

This year, we held the conference at a center in a mountain valley by the River Yaque, where we were able to take the participants one afternoon. We were lucky enough to have representatives from the synagogue and mosque in the capital, as well as a Haitian immigration activist, speak to the youth. Fellow international volunteers from Korea visited our conference, and we held an “around-the-world” fair with music and displays from over 20 countries designed by Volunteers and their youth. We also created an activity for the youth to understand a little more about America through the lens of the Volunteers – since after all, we are representatives of America, we are something of a microcosm of American society.

Although the conference lasted just three days, we managed to pack in as much as possible. The conference is an opportunity for us to talk to our youth about topics rarely discussed in school, at home, or in society – the existence of minority religious and cultural communities, the treatment of those with disability and disease, and the entrenched web of money and privilege which these youth can see, but are implicitly left out of.