I am completely unharmed

As the title of this posts suggests, I am completely unharmed. But, as I'm sure you can surmise from the title of the post, there was an incident. Also, sorry there is no picture, but I didn't think to take one until we were out of there.

So, I'll start from the top. Today Colin and I decided we were going to explore a village out in the boonies called El Burro. El Burro means the donkey, and the road is named that because when it rains, the road gets so bad that the only way to access the village is via a donkey. But I'll write about our adventure in detail in my next post, this one is about something else. So El Burro is on the way to Imbert, so after our adventure we decided we would start heading to Imbert on our motorcycles and stop at a random place to eat on the way. We drove and drove and there wasn't even one place to eat on the way, so we decided to continue all the way into Imbert. We got to the entrance of Imbert and Colin saw a man he met the night before in Luperon, so we parked our bikes and went walked back to Colin's new friend Carlos to ask where a good place to eat is. He told us to go to the park in town and there was a good place to eat right next to the park.

We headed out and got some delicious chicken and plantains for dinner (what else is new). While we were eating we talked with the woman who owned the barber shop next door, and she pointed out the ice cream shop right down the road. I love ice cream and that is something they definitely don't have here, so Colin and I were definitely all over that. So we got our ice cream, which was surprisingly delicious, and now we're ready to head back home because by this time it's dark out. So, Colin takes off on his bike and I still have some napkins in my hand that I used to wipe the water off of my seat because it had been raining, so I stopped and threw them in the garbage. By this time, Colin is pretty far ahead of me, but he stopped at the intersection to make sure I was on my way, and when he saw that I was, he continued on. So I'm driving and come to the intersection. I want to try to paint the best word picture possible so you can fully understand how much this was not my fault. It's your standard four way intersection, but only one side has a stop sign. The one side with a stop sign was the side directly across from me, with the other three stop-sign-less.

I slowed down coming up to the intersection, looked both ways and saw that there was no one coming, and continued through the intersection. As I'm three quarters of the way through the intersection, a man in his car who should be stopped at the stop sign (which is one of two stop signs in all of the campesino so you think he might actually obey it) decides the stop sign is unimportant, runs through it starting to make a left turn and BAM! hits me with his car. I saw him starting to go so I swerved to the right in an attempt to not be hit by his car, which I think was a good move because as a result of it, he hit me perfectly perpendicularly and I fell directly to the right. After he hit me I laid on the ground for like two second thinking, "are you freakin' kidding me?" By the time I opened my eyes and got up off the ground, there were three or four Dominican's helping me pick up my bike and bring it to the side of the road and making sure that I was ok. The car was perhaps going 5 miles an hour and I was going even slower, so I truly am completely fine, which is awesome. I literally got one minuscule cut on my ankle that didn't even bleed. So I'm sure you're wondering about the person who hit me. Before I can even get my motorcycle to the side of the road, a big fat Dominican man (who I'll refer to as the angry fat man, AFM for short) comes out of the car yelling at me immediately that it was my fault that he ran the stop sign and hit me with his car. He was yelling, so I started yelling at him too! (In spanish, which I'm actually pretty proud of). I yelled at him that he ran the stop sign and hit me with his car so it was his fault! Meanwhile he's pointing to a tiny area where the paint on his bumper got chipped telling me that I need to pay him for it. I'm telling him no way because it was his fault and he needs to pay me if my motorcycle is damaged! By now Colin realized something is up so he turned around and finally joined the party. And I call it a party because within two minutes of this guy hitting me, there are 20 to 25 Dominicans on their motorcycles taking up the whole street trying to find out what's going on, and I'm the guest of honor.

Now Colin rolls up on his motorcycle trying to find out what's going on and basically takes over the argument for me, so he starts to argue with this man who's now trying to get me to go to the police station with him, which was not about to happen because the law here is extremely racist against anyone who isn't Dominican. As Colin arrives and takes over the argument for me, another man tells me that I need to move my motorcycle because it was blocking traffic, even though it was parked correctly on the side of the road and the AFM parked his "damaged" car right in the middle of it. I go to move my motorcycle to the sidewalk, and some random guy says to me that he was there when the guy hit me, and it wasn't my fault as he was walking past me. I pleaded with him to stay and tell that to the man who hit me, but his response was unexpected, and probably the best advice I've ever received, particularly in a tense situation. His advice was, "it wasn't your fault, leave." I couldn't understand why I didn't think of that myself. It hits me all at once that the AFM doesn't know my name, where I work, or that I even live in the Dominican Republic. He probably just assumed I'm some gringo on vacation. So I get on my bike, and yell once, "Colin!" but he didn't hear me over the AFM. So I yelled his name again, much louder this time, and we made eye contact and I took off. I think it was the adrenaline's fault that I didn't communicate anything else to him and just bolted, assuming for some reason that he knew what I was saying just from my look.

As I take off, the AFM sees and took two steps toward me then gave up trying to chase me realizing it would have been a futile effort. I'm speeding down the road, looking back every two seconds hoping that Colin will be following shortly after. After three or four look backs, I realize that he didn't get the message, so I turned around heading back to rescue him, trying to think of an excuse as to why I left. As I get halfway back to the scene, Colin whizzes past me and says, "that was crazy!" I whip around to follow him, and I catch up very fast because for some reason, Colin is slowing down to stop and as I zip past him I yell, "rapido, rapido, rapido," because I am not about to be chased down by this guy. We get out of town quickly, and ride side by side for a minute and decide that we'll get almost all the way back home before we stop to talk about it. We make it to the basketball court five minutes from home, pulled over to the side of the road, and sat in the bleachers to get the entire story straight. I told Colin my side of the story, then he filled me in on his side of the story after I bolted when that guy told me to leave.

Colin informed me that as he was talking, the AFM was so angry that he was all up in Colin's face with one hand balled into a fist, at which point Colin realized he needed to calm the situation way down. He was successful for a bit, but as I yelled Colin's name, took off, and the AFM gave up on chasing me, but then immediately turned his sights to Colin. As the man was distracted by me driving away, Colin caught my drift, slowly pulled his bike keys out of his pocket and put them in the ignition, but as he kicked the bike to start it, the man realized what he was trying to do and put his hands on Colin's handle bars to keep him from driving away. At this point Colin realizes that the man is going for his bike keys so he takes them out of the ignition and slips them into his pocket, but to no avail. The AFM is so angry at this point that he reaches into Colin's pocket and rips the keys away from him. Now the AFM has clearly over stepped his bounds, and the crowd of Dominicans know it, and thankfully intervene, shifting the attention of the AFM from Colin, to themselves. One Dominican guy said to Colin, just get out of here, and Colin responded he wants to, but doesn't have the keys. Colin says he doesn't even know how, but the keys ended up back in his hand thanks to the friendly Dominicans. Colin put the key in the ignition, very wisely put the bike in neutral to keep the AFM's attention off him and on the Dominicans now trying to reason with him, and when he was far enough away, kicked the bike on and made a clean get away.

There you have it. Colin and I agree that we are now officially Dominican having gotten in an argument with a Dominican man while surrounded by 20+ other Dominicans. I do feel bad that I left Colin hanging like that, but I truly didn't mean to (remember the adrenaline?), and I will point out that I definitely went back for him. All in all, now that we're both ok, along with the bike (aside from a broken front brake handle), it was kind of an awesome experience. Not one that I want to have again necessarily, but still kind of cool.

La Cirugía

September 11th, 2014

I can't believe it's taken me this long to blog about this, it was quite the experience. I'll start out describing the picture, then give you the story. So what you're looking at here is two doctors pulling a baby out of a woman's womb, or if you want to get technical, a c-section. Yes, I saw a real live c-section, it was awesome... and gross. The woman on the right was the surgeon, the woman on the left was the assisting nurse, and this is the moment where the surgeon reached into the woman's womb, and scooped the baby out.

Ok, now the story. In September two medical groups came to the mission, and when there is a medical group here, they go to the hospital in Imbert on Thursday, because on Thursdays, they do c-sections (does anyone else think it's funny they have a designated day for them?) The first group that was here was a group of 5 grumpy old ladies, who I drove around all week, so on Wednesday night I asked Sarah and Elissa, "if I wear some scrub pants, do you think I'll be able to go watch a c-section?" They said I might as well try, and I'm glad I did. Thursday morning I slipped on some scrub pants and declared with a fist pump, "I'm ready to commit so fraud!" We got to the hospital and I did my best to act like I belonged. We were all together when the doctor asked who wanted to go see a c-section, and trying not to seem to eager, I volunteered, and I was in. The next thing I know I'm in an OR and there is a woman lying on a surgery table ready to be cut open and have her baby yanked out of here. I'd like to make it known that the fact that they didn't even check if I was actually a medical professional or not wasn't even the most ridiculous part of this experience. To go into the operating room, I didn't even have to wash my hands, they let me take pictures (clearly), and when they cut something off the lady, they just threw it on the ground! They also don't have suction in the operating room so the blood (and there was LOTS of it) just runs onto the floor. I have another picture showing all the blood, but I thought it was a bit too graphic, but email or facebook me if you want to see it and I'll certainly sent it to you! The most surprising thing about watching the surgery for me was how rough the surgeon was! I don't know if that's how it is for all surgeries, but they were ripping this poor woman open, who was in fact awake the entire time. At one point the two women were gripping either side of the incision with both hands and hanging off of the woman to open her up, it was crazy! Then once they finally cut away all the muscle and fat and whatnot and finally made it to the womb, they couldn't pull the baby out, so they called in the director of the hospital who had just arrived and he came in in his yellow button down, put down the mail he was holding, and started pushing on the woman's stomach! He wasn't even wearing freakin gloves! The whole thing was absolutely ridiculous. When the doctor sewed up the last layer of skin I turned to her and said, "wow, thank you, that was incredible," then walked out of the room as nonchalantly as possible. Could you imagine in America trying to do something like this? I don't really know, but I feel like if this woman was in American her HUSBAND wouldn't have been allowed in the operating room, never mind a complete stranger with dirty hands who isn't even a medical professional! But I suppose this is a good representation of the Dominican health care system (at least out here in the campo).

I'll reiterate, it was super awesome, super gross, and I'm super happy I got to have the experience.