Espuma and Fevers

Since the last time I wrote I have gone to Noche, Noche, Noche de Espuma, had a fever and vomiting, rode in the back of a pick-up around a mountain side on pretty sketchy roads, and gone to the Hermanas Maribel museum.

Noche de Espuma should have been called Noche sin Espuma. The foam machine barely worked. We got the 200 peso entry fee down to 100 pesos and Marissa and I scored some free drinks by looking American (I was told by a family I looked like Barbie), so all was not completely lost. At the end of the night Amy and Kelly got hot dogs from a street vendor and we got in a taxi to go home. They played American dance music the whole time, from “Jump Around” (think 1994ish) to “Get Low.” While Dominicans don’t know the words to “Get Low” they sure know how to. I have never seen so much “sex on a dance floor” in my life... even in American clubs.

The combination of staying out late at Noche de Espuma and walking to all the barrios that day (probably about 6 miles or so in the Caribbean sun) made me an exhausted and dehydrated person the next day. I threw up my breakfast and spent the rest of the day in bed with a fever. It wasn’t all the bad because it passed that night and I felt a lot better the next day, but you feel like an animal in the zoo when you get sick. Your Dona tells everyone (even people that call from far away) that the American is sick. Then they discuss why you are sick and how you can get better. One thing that was sweet (and a weird) was my Dona blessed my stomach by saying prayers to it and making a cross symbol over it.

We went to a couple other neighboring campos farther up the mountain and saw some agro-forestry projects. They were very interesting and I definitely wouldn’t mind working in that field. The most fun part, though, was riding around to these farms (not like you’re thinking, when I say farm, I mean a patch of land with a TON of different kinds of plants on it, not like corn fields you see in the US.) We rode in the back of pick-ups (normal enough if you’re from South Dakota), but through really rocky roads that were steep and windy. It was a lot of fun.

Then we went to the house/museum of the Hermanas Maribel (the Maribel sisters that were assasinated by the dictator Trujillo.) It was really cool to see that kind of history. The sisters were incredible and we got to meet the one surviving sister. The story is (if you don't know) that when Trujillo (a pretty evil dictator here from 1930s-1960s) was getting really bad, these sisters started getting into a resistance movement. They were jailed and an international protest got them out, but not their husbands. They went to see their husbands in prison and on the way home Trujillo's men stopped them, killed them, and then sent the car over a cliff to make it look like an accident. People realized it wasn't and that was the unifying factor that got the resistance to finally kill Trujillo. International Women's Day (March 8th) is set on that day in memory of the day these sisters were killed. One sister, Dede, did not go on the trip and survived and turned their house into a memorial museum, and we met her today.

Saturday I leave to spend the weekend in a pueblo near Santiago with another volunteer. Should be interesting because she didn't give me the greatest directions....wish me luck!