Wow, hard to believe it’s been a month. But it’s been a horrible month, mostly spent in the capital waiting for a place to live. I’m quitting, OK I won’t quit, I’m quitting, OK I won’t quit. Oh well, Friday they finally found place for me—in a batey! I’ve attached some photos. Can’t complain—there’s water and electricity and my phone kind of works. I’m living with a 60 year old widow in a three bedroom house that, somehow or other, the batey owners have let her remain in. So the money I pay her is “secret.” Poor thing works constantly. Gets up at the crack of dawn to make those little popsicles and bottles of juice that people come all day to buy for 2 or 3 pesos. Then she sells breakfast, lunch, and dinner to the single men. So she’s working all the time, and her legs ache, and she’s a diabetic. Count your blessings, ladies. I’m sure she finds the 3,300 pesos I’ll be paying a gift from heaven. I just hope she spends some of it on me. For example, I don’t think she’s used to toilet paper cause there was none. I had to ask her to buy some. Truthfully, I’d rather live by myself so I could maintain a level of cleanliness I’m comfortable with, but I have a pretty tough stomach so we’ll see how it goes.
My counterpart, Berkis, in Los Llanos doesn’t want me to live here; she thinks it’s dangerous. The rest of us think she’s nuts. However, it’s ironic. After all the trouble in Los Llanos with the Vicini’s versus the padre, here I am living in a Vicini batey right next to a factory of some kind. This is why there’s always light and water here. There’s even a vigilante (guard) that patrols at night. It’s very “tranquilo” (calm and quiet) here.
Work plans. I got a bicycle from the Peace Corps so I can ride the 15 minutes to La Paloma to teach English, and here in Copeyito I will teach computer stuff to the kids and teachers. Between the two communities there’s over 300 kids that want computer knowledge and English. Should keep me busy. Then on the weekends I’ll take the bus the 5 kilometers to Los Llanos to spend the day in the high school. Hopefully, I can maintain some progress there. We’ll see.
Went at 9:00 to teach a computer class in the church school. No power. Supposedly there’s an inversor, but as no teacher showed up I had no idea how to set it up. So I held an impromptu English class. Neither were there regular classes in the public school across the street—the teacher didn’t show up. However, someone showed up to give the kids their “comida escolar”—school food—of chocolate milk and a roll.
March 4, 2006 I’ve never “shucked peas”—except accidentally with peapods—so yesterday when Chichita was preparing the “guandoolays” I sat down to help. Wow, appreciate your frozen peas, ladies! Takes forEVER to get those peas out and fill up the bowl. My back was killing me after about 30 minutes and I quit.
This morning I’d finally had enough sleep to get up at my normal time, sixish, so I watched all the men come in to get breakfast. They were served different stuff, depending, I guess, on what they paid. Some got Johnnycakes (remember, that’s fried dough) with spaghetti (that’s Dominican spaghetti which looks disgusting—overcooked noodles with grease and tomato paste. Some got a couple pieces of fried bologna with it. Some got some kind of boiled, banana-shaped dough with their spaghetti. I think there was also a pot of potatoes with maybe bacalau (dried fish), and for the very rich (?) a pan of real meat (probably the leftover pork from the other day). One “don” (Mister) showed up and he was served a ton of fried bologna with his banana-shaped boiled dough. How these poor men could work all day without protein is beyond me.
I had gotten a bicycle from the Peace Corps, but, unfortunately, it has a problem with the front tire so the first morning I went to ride it, it was flat. A little boy took it away to get fixed and it worked long enough for him to ride it about for a couple hours, but of course the next day when I wanted to go to Paloma, it was flat again. Of course it’s the front tire so I can’t take it away for repair. There’s no bike shop down the street and I’ve no car to take it somewhere. I’ll probably end up taking the bus to Paloma every time.
A high school girl volunteered
to buy me a bicycle tube in Los Llanos where she goes to high school, and little
Efran installed it for me. They said that today they’d pump it up good. So maybe
I’ll be able to ride to Paloma after all. Which reminds me, I saw a man trying
to inflate the flat tire on a CAR with a hand pump! How long do you think THAT
will take? 
It’s kind of depressing here. The light in the computer room barely lasts an hour so I can’t really teach anything. I’m running out of books to read. It’s depressing to watch Chita (the doña) with her diabetes. She’s sick, but what can I do? Meanwhile I feel uncomfortable in the dirty house. I’m paying her a lot of money but she doesn’t seem willing to spend some of it to pay someone to help her. I kind of wish the Peace Corps would move me. My counterparts in Los Llanos told me Sunday they wanted to resign as my counterparts because they don’t want to be responsible for me living her. They think it’s dangerous (I don’t agree and neither do the Evangelicals. I think the Catholics are too wrapped up in the Vicini/padre conflict.) I told this to my boss, and he said he would talk to them and he would send someone out here to check it out.
I actually spoke some French the other day! Heard someone say “hui” and, sure enough, there were two Haitians with whom I could exchange a few words.
I sleep with the persianas all open because I like the fresh air. This morning I awakened at 4:00. It was very quiet, and the gentle, cool breeze felt lovely on my skin. Then, in the distance, a gallo announced the morning with his cock-a-doodle-doo. Of course he was answered by the gallo outside my window. So much for quiet. But I slept again to await the dawn. Then, wanting coffee, I threw on some clothes and went into the kitchen which was, as usual, full of men standing around with their bowls of Johnnycake and spaghetti. The protein of the day was little black stringy stuff. I tasted one, and it was familiar (if icky); maybe it was dried fish? I made my coffee, added milk from the freezer (this morning, happily, it wasn’t frozen), and sat down on the front porch to watch the men coming by in their rubber boots. I greet them all, and they always seem thrilled to return a smile, a wave, or a hello. I’m trying to get them to refer to me as Camila instead of “the Americana” which is so impersonal. This morning I, too, picked up a Johnnycake, which, redolent of anis, went well with my coffee.
A siren sounded at quarter to seven and again at seven. Break time? It didn’t seem to have any effect on the stream of men coming for food. In the distance I could hear the coughs and rumbles of the giant tractors whose rear tires are taller than a man. About 7:30 the children start replacing the men. Sky blue school shirts replace rubber boots and soon childish chatter is added to the rumble of distant tractors.
March 12, 2006 Sunday, and the men still come for food. So I asked Chita if they ever get a day off. She said, yes, in the “dead time.” Seems that when it’s cane harvesting time, 6 months of the year, they work seven days a week. During the other 6 months they only work til noon on Saturday and have Sunday off. She said they also get one day off for Easter.
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I have made a special page to show the growing and harvesting of the sugar cane. Click here to see the pictures.
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My schedule continues to be confusing. I have yet to teach an English class in Paloma because, although I’ve gone three times, no one’s ever there. First they told me Monday and Thursday. Then Sandy told me, no it should be Monday and Friday. Then I received a written schedule saying Monday and Thursday so I bicycled down there last Thursday, but no one was there. So on Friday Homero came by and said I should go now, so I bicycled down again. No one there. I thought about telling them to forget it but realize that I can use the exercise. It’s only a 15 minute ride. EXCEPT that the bicycle has problems. I got the new tube but now it seems that there’s a problem with the gears, and it sticks sometimes. Obviously there’s no bicycle shop, so what to do? I will try to look up on the internet how to maintain a bicycle. I bought some oil and had a kid clean (WD40) and oil the chain, but it didn’t do any good.
The founders day celebration (10 days) started yesterday in Los Llanos, but I didn’t feel like going. Will try to go this afternoon, but I expect it’s nothing more than booths selling food and beer. It’s just an excuse to not work and get drunk.
Just returned from three days in the Capital where the medicos tried, unsuccessfully, to deal with the horrible pain I’m having in my shoulder. Bursitis probably. So I lie in bed and take a zillion medicines and use an ice pad. Again I think how spoiled we Americans are—no tolerance for pain and discomfort. I keep saying, “in the US I wouldn’t have to tolerate this pain…” Oh well. The nurse and I decided that this was brought on by riding the bicycle so I’m going to give it back.
One day in the Peace Corps office I was chatting with a couple of other volunteers about the various animal infestations we encounter. So one young lady described how she deals with the ubiquitous cockroaches. For one, she puts a candy wrapper into a mason jar and then smears, near the top of the jar, a ring of Vaseline. In the morning, she takes a full jar of cockroaches to feed her chicken!! She also said that she can poke a hole through a mason jar lid, pull a string through the hole, and hang a bag of whatever on the string, because the buggers can’t negotiate the lid. Another volunteer said that she was plagued with rats and tried everything to no avail when suddenly there weren’t anymore. Why? Then she looked up at the ceiling to see a very satisfied snake in residence!! So I told her my bat story from Honduras (bats in residence being a joy because they eat 10,000 mosquitoes a day!).
Chita's complaining that she misses her mother and would like to go visit her except that the men need to be fed. I started wondering what it would take to replace her for a day. What could I make? Certainly I have no clue how to make Johnnycakes, and being a Californian I think I’m constitutionally incapable of frying dough in Crisco. I suppose I could blow their minds with scrambled eggs and pancakes—except that she doesn’t have a frying pan, only big kettles. Poor guys don’t even get coffee in the morning. Some of them get juice. Except that juice here is not like fresh squeezed orange juice. No. First you take one of the local fruits, like guyaba (which is mostly seeds and not very sweet), then you cut it up and put in the blender with a pound of sugar. It ends up thick and sweet but no doubt has some vitamin C in it. They do this even with the wonderful mangos (the season for which I’m anxiously awaiting!)
Yesterday I asked a kid about peanut butter. I’d heard that the Haitian’s make a wonderful peanut butter, sometimes with spices added. So I sent her off to buy some. What I got back was a liquid peanut. Well it tasted peanutty but wasn’t quite what I’d hoped. Put it in the freezer and we’ll see.
God, I’m bored. How many times can I play Spider Solitaire? I’m still in bed because of the bursitis pain. It’s Sunday and the radio is blaring a sermon in Spanish (even if it wasn’t Sunday the radio would half the time be blaring a church service in Spanish although sometimes the TV would, at the same time, be blaring a soap opera in Spanish and next door a radio would be blaring salsa or machata musica). The persianas in the two windows in my room are open (persianas being sets of slats opened and shut with a lever, unless of course the lever is broken, in which case you simply open them manually) so a nice breeze comes in. The windows have garish (of course) red lacey curtains which I (always) tie in a knot so the breeze can enter. The door knob on my bedroom door doesn’t work so I prop open the door with a suitcase. Another suitcase serves as a table and holds my travel clock and Gina’s picture. I also have a little table on top of which sits an upside-down plastic Coca-Cola case (which adds height to the little table). Unfortunately, it has those zillion holes so whatever I place on it tends to fall through. Nevertheless, it’s here I put my glasses, medicines (all sixty trillion of them), pens, dental floss, a box of raisins, another picture of Gina and Zaheen. There’s a Christmas tree, still decorated, in the corner. Guess my doña had no place to store it. All my papers and books and stuff are on the floor. I really should look into finding some cement blocks and wood to build a shelf.
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Here some of the children are wearing masks made from cardboard, and the boy in front holds his "horsey." I thought the Copeyito childrlen were especially creative with their "horsies" because they generally made them from palm fronds so that the "horsies" had little manes and tales.
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Very tired of lying in bed. Yesterday ran out of pills and the Peace Corps told me to send someone to a pharmacy to buy more. Not that you need a prescription. Here a prescription is merely the name of a medicine (for the druggist) and the dosage (for you). It has its advantages. I guess America is really into protecting the people from themselves. Here, you’re on your own.
Decided to spend some time writing lesson plans. Plus, because Marta wants me to teach crafts (knitting, crocheting, embroidery, sewing), I spent some time working up some simple crochet examples—a headband, a simple doily, a drag (they wear these kind of nets on their head, don’t ask me why. Kind of like those things we used to wear on a bun except for the whole head.) My problem with all these crafts is that I don’t understand the Spanish instructions I’ve seen; I only understand English instructions. So I think I’ll just teach them to make their own designs. Just teach the basic stitches.
So last night I was crocheting. We Americans certainly take our electricity for granted. Either it’s on, as usual, or it’s not. Here, it can be KINDA on. Like last night. The light would dim til I could barely see, then brighten up, then fade, brighten up. Wow. Wish I understood more about electricity. Does this mean they don’t have transformers to regulate the wattage? Or what? Anyway, I guess this is why it’s so important to have that powerful surge protector. I keep hearing stories about people whose electrical appliances have “blown up.”
The computer classes
were going well before I got sick. Most of the kids have completed the mouse
exercises, those who can’t read (incredibly many 11 year olds can’t read! Many
can’t even recognize their own name! One kid told me he didn’t HAVE a last name!)
I have doing a neat set of matching and logic programs. Those who can read go
on to a more complicated mouse manipulation exercise, then they start learning
to type. I’ve started one or two on a wonderful Learning English program I’ve
encountered. 
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This little boy volunteered to climb up the coconut palm to get me a coconut. He made it look awfully easy!!
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It was cold when I woke up this morning so I shut a couple of the persianas. But then it was too dark so I opened them again. They’re not glass, you know. I got to thinking, AGAIN, how lucky we are with our glass windows. Light!!!! I guess humans haven’t had glass that long. Certainly our American pioneers, only a couple hundred years ago, didn’t have it. So, if it’s raining or cold you have a choice of living in the dark or getting cold and wet. Here I think the people also like to keep the persianas closed for a sense of security. I guess our pioneers also closed their shutters when the Indians came… But personally I don’t “get” why closed persianas are secure—it’s not as though anyone could climb through those little slats…Oh, yes, I forgot the insects. I suppose humans also liked to shut out the insects and the animals…
Still can’t sit up without pain, and this is getting really OLD.
Yesterday, Chita was complaining that their was no charcoal in town and all the burners on the stove but one didn’t work. Charcoal, she says, cost 80 pesos a day which is ridiculous considering it only costs 40 pesos to fill a tank with gas. Of course she has no money. I offered an advance on the rent so she could go to Los Llanos and buy the oven parts, so today the oven is back in operation and she doesn’t need to buy charcoal. I guess people are so poor here that they can’t save up for stuff. I’ve been bugging Chita to take the more important steps for the diabetes—like eating regularly and taking the medicine. She doesn’t do it of course. Today she says she has no more pills. So why didn’t you buy some when you were in Los Llanos yesterday? I guess I still haven’t figured out why Latin Americans have such difficulty dealing with the inevitable “cause and effect.” I’m sure it has something to do with money, and they probably learn early to not even try to control their destiny, but Jesus!!!!
The latest thing in America is the Swifer for cleaning floors, yes? Before that the sponge mop, yes? Here, the well off use the string mop, and they wring it out by hand (ick!!). However, in MY house Ramona uses a wet rag that she pushes around with a stick. She doesn’t even sweep first. Jeese, why bother?
Yesterday, in desperation,
I decided to try exercising my arm every half hour. Well, as long as I was taking
the Motrin I could stay upright for awhile so I went to the computer center.
The kids clamored in as usual. The electricity didn’t last long, thank God,
cause it was k
illing
me.
Some of the girls have been coming to the house and I let them use the computer. I have two programs they love—Socrates has all kinds of mouse manipulation things, move shapes, numbers, etc., and it has cute sounds. They especially love the telephone. The program gives you a set of 5 numbers and you enter them into the telephone, and then the telephone answers and talks to you. Anyway, they love it. I also have a math program that they can practice adding, subtraction, etc., and when they get the answer right a bowling pin is set up. When they get 10 answers right, the cartoon figure knocks down the pins to great applause. God, I wish I knew more about elementary education because these poor kids are amazingly ignorant. I had to teach one girl how to subtract using her fingers, for God’s sake, and she’s 9 or 12 or something. Then I had to tell her that for multiplication you simply must memorize. I made her some flash cards, but doubt that she’ll use them.
Anyway, so when the electricity failed I said they could come to my house, and I let them each have a 15 minute turn with Socrates. After an hour and a half I was exhausted and sent them home.
This morning, out of pills, I went next door to the colmado to buy some Motrin (800mg of Ibuprofen) and was shocked to find 10 pills cost 120 pesos. Considering that breakfast of an egg and platano costs 20 pesos you can see why people here suffer their pain. All I can say, AGAIN, is that we are soooooo lucky.
I’ve included a picture of Efran and Delcia, two of the most delightful kids. Efran I trust to use my bicycle whenever he wants. He’ll happily go down to the highway to buy me a Coca Cola anytime. He’s so bright I count him as a “teacher in training” and he can teach any new child how to use the Mouseserciscio. Same with Delcia; she’s always the first to arrive whenever I head for the lab.
Hiya All,
Sadly, you will not be getting anymore diary entries from me cause my computer was stolen... long story.
Over a month ago, only a week or so after I settled in to Copeyito, I started riding a bicycle to the nearby town of La Paloma. Only a 15 minute trip, but after 4 trips I developed a horrible pain in my shoulder. The med folks thought it was bursitis, but after two weeks of excruciating pain when not lying down, they sent me to a doctor who said it was tendonitis. After another week of this they sent me to another doctor who prescribed a sonogram and x-rays wherein it was discovered that I had massive shoulder damage due to a torn something or other. Another week goes by and they do an MRI. Now we know it's multiple pinched nerves that caused the whole thing, and, although the pain is essentially gone after more weeks of medication and therapy, I still have numb fingers on my left hand. However, I can work standing up now so I'm happy.
The first week I was in the capital with this problem I got a call that my computer had been stolen. My dona "said" that 4 kids came through the window while she was sleeping. No one in the Peace Corps believes it, and neither do I because the physical evidence doesn't support her statement. ANYWAY... here the police need to be bribed to do their job, so I offered a large "reward" and they then pursued the case. They know who the computer was sold to and were very sure they could get it back. That was three weeks ago so I'm not feeling optimistic.
Going to the doctor here is interesting. A neurologist had to look at my x-rays and MRI by holding them up to the light because his viewer thingy didn't light up when he turned it on...I went to a dentist yesterday who had to stop in the middle of what she was doing so the assistant could refill the container of bottled water (I hadn't thought of it but was glad to hear they use bottled water). The electricity fails right in the middle of an electronic therapy; no problem, just reset it a moment later when the power comes back on.
A friend staying in the same "hotel" as me had to get another room when her electric shower head burst into flames...
Well, we've now passed the one year point. Actually, I'm very excited and have lots of plans for the next 11 months. I only await a return of health so that I can actually STAY in Copeyito for awhile.
I'll keep in touch and try to remember any interesting things that happen.
Love Camille
Hi Guys,
Well yesterday the Peace Corps told me I was being medically separated, and I'll be flying out on Saturday. Lots of notice. I really think I'm going to get the shaft but am trying not to anticipate. I'm pretty much back to normal but have a little numbness in the tips of two fingers that sometimes moves upwards; and the PC says they want to avoid a medavac so they'd rather medsep me so someone else pays for everything. Supposedly after doctors in the states decide what's what, they send their results to Washington who then decide if this problem was caused by my service or not. You KNOW they're going to decide that the newly discovered arthritis in my neck wasn't caused by my service, so...
So today they sent me with a truck to pick up my stuff from Copeyito, telling me to hurry, not giving me any time to say goodbye to anyone, not giving me time to deal with the still pending issue of the computer. I was really ticked off. Makes everyone look bad. As it is I think I was able to return all monies I was holding for people, but think I left behind my movies and music CDs. Oh well. The good news is that Homero STILL thinks I'm going to get my computer back. I'll leave THAT problem with a couple of PC friends.
Sooooo, I'll be back in the good ol' USA on Saturday. I was a bit depressed at first, and mad today, but by Sunday I'm sure I'll be enjoying that hot water and air conditioning!!!!!
Love to all, C
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