Farewell to the beard

Scroll for the progression (the second one is my favorite)

Today I shaved my beard! Well actually my friend, and friend of the mission, Alberto did it for me! it feels super good to be rid of it. This was the longest I've grown a beard by almost a full month, and honestly, it was terrible. All sorts of gnarly stuff fell out of it as he was shaving it too, which I thought was awesome. Everyone's reaction as I saw them was super funny, with, "who's that guy, can't be Mikey," topping the list. Riding the motorcycle home and actually feeling the wind on my face was pretty nice too. I think for the rest of my time here, I'll probably just try to maintain a constant scruff, as opposed to growing another ridiculous mountain man beard. 

La escualita

Sorry the picture is too big for the blog, but it's awesome so I wanted to make it as big as possible

      I love this picture because almost everyone in it is in motion. So much so that if you look at it for too long, too closely it seems like it could be posed. This is school. For all of August and a good part of September, I primarily stayed on the property and tended to it, but then in September after Colin arrived, schools opened and I really wanted to be a part of it because it's super fun to hang out with little kids, and also it was a way to get off of the property. So every Tuesday and Thursday afternoon I would go with Colin and Megan into El Canal and we would have class with 3-5 year olds from 2-5:30. At first I assumed more of a support role because Colin and Megan are here working with VMM for the sole purpose of teaching. It was fun to get to know the kids while not having to do any of the lesson planning, which was nice. When school started, I was told that I would eventually be tutoring older kids who need help in their schools, which I was very excited about! Then when the former coordinator of our school program, Loryn, was down here for a visit in October, she informed me that I would have my own class of 6-10 year olds! She rattled off a bunch of things that I need to teach them, and told me I'd be starting the next week! Teaching the 3-5 year olds was easy, it was colors, numbers, days of the week, but teaching the 6-10 year olds meant I needed to teach them things like the alphabet, how to read, and reading comprehension. I feel like people go to college to learn how to properly teach that kind of stuff, so in the beginning I was completely lost. I didn't know what to do for lesson plans, or how to properly teach them to read. Three weeks in, I still don't really know what I'm doing, but the kids at least seem to be having a good time! I think this coming weekend I'm going to sit down, call Loryn, and really start learning how to teach these kids what they need to learn! My class started at 4 kids, and as of next Tuesday I will be up to 7! After this post I'm gonna get pictures of each of my kids individually and blog about them, so you can get to know them too!

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.

Hiking, Dominican style

I haven't written a blog post in a while, so I'm going all the way back to the last very interesting thing (at least in my opinion) that I did. Driving down the road, have you ever looked over to a far off mountain (or hill) and thought, "it would be cool to walk to the top of that?" That happens to me here all the time. There are rolling hills around me here wherever I go, and I want to be on the top of all of them. That was random, now background. So far, while there haven't been groups here, I have spent most of my time on the property, therefore I haven't had the chance to meet many different Dominicans (however, that will soon change, but that's a different post). Colin, however, has been working in the school and had the chance to meet a bunch of people, one of whom is Angelo. Angelo lives near our school in La Sabana, and also right in front of some very cool geography. One day Colin asked Angelo if he would take him on a hike through the hills behind his house, and of course Angelo said yes because Dominicans are awesome. Colin mentioned to us all that he was doing this with Angelo and I was all about going as well. So when the day came (Saturday, September 6th in case you're quite curious) Colin and I each rode a motorcycle into La Sabana and set out on out adventure with Angelo and his two boys. We walked down this dirt road that Angelo informed us gets very muddy during the rainy season (just like all the roads) for about 15 minutes until we ducked under a barbed wire fence (all the fences are barbed wire here) and entered an open field with lots of grazing cows, and a mountain in front of us waiting to be climbed. We walked through the field up to the base of the mountain and Angelo made sure that we definitely wanted to continue because as he informed us at that moment, there would be no path to the summit, we would have to make it ourselves. We firmly said yes because we were both very excited, so with Angelo and his machete leading the way, we set off into the dense brush that lined the side of the mountain. At the outset, the hike wasn't challenging, but soon enough the grade got very steep, and it was completely necessary to hold any small tree or bunch of vines you could get your hands on just to keep from sliding back down the mountain. Eventually as we progressed (slowly) up the side of the mountain, we came to this low wall of jagged rocks that fit perfectly into each other like you might find in the ruins of some sort of Central of South American tribe. It had clearly been there for a very long time undisturbed, but as soon as we reached it Angelo was convinced that the indigenous Dominican people had buried their gold under this rock formation, and started to tear down the wall. He didn't find any gold, but he was so convinced that he asked me to bring back gold mining materials when I come back to the DR, it was very funny. After about an hour struggling up the pathless side of the mountain, we finally made it to the summit, which was rather disheartening because we knew there was an incredible view to be had, but it was blocked by the thick layer of trees we had just struggled all the way through. Colin decided the best way to solve this problem was to simply climb a tree, but I thought otherwise and while Colin was climbing, I decided to walk around to hopefully find a clearing. After little searching, I came to a wall of a certain type of cactus that grows here, and could see that beyond it, was the opening I was hoping for. So I tucked myself into a little ball, and sort of waddled through the only opening I could find in the 20 foot tall, wall of cacti, being as careful as possible not to make a wrong move and find my arm or butt all cut up. It was certainly worth risking my butt, because when I came out the other side (unscathed I may add), the view was as I said, worth it (check the picture). Just as any picture of beautiful scenery, it doesn't do the rolling mountains justice, I also really like that there was a storm rolling in in the picture as well. That's a scene we see quite often here.

So we took our time appreciating the scene and eating some of the carrots we packed, then I figured we'd head back down the mountain and return to where we came from then head home, but as Colin and I turned to head back, we realized that Angelo was on the next mountain over, and that our adventure was in fact not finished. After realizing Angelo was so far ahead of us, Colin, Angelo's two son's and I took off in his direction in an attempt to catch up, while also stopping along the way to appreciate where we were and what we were looking at. After ducking under many more barbed wire fences and traversing many a hill, we finally came to the best part of the afternoon. We hit another opening in the mountain and the scene that was before us was amazing. From the vantage point we were at, we had a bird's eye view of 1) Luperon (a near by town we frequent) and the ocean it sits next to, 2) La Sabana (where Angelo lives) 3) the road to and part of Cambiaso, as well as 4) the summit of the first mountain we climbed. The scene was spectacular, so we all sat, talked, and finished off the bag of carrots. By this time, the storm was really closing in on us, so we started again for Angelo's house, and after about 15 minutes more of walking, we stepped onto his front porch just as it started to downpour. We hung out for a while, talked, watched some guys play marbles, and shared some coke Colin brought because Dominicans love them some Coca Cola, even if it doesn't have rum in it. Then the storm broke and we decided it would be a good time to go because we were both riding motorcycles and it would be nice not to have to ride in the downpour.

About half way home, it started raining hard again, so we decided to stop at this little "restaurant" (I put it in air quotes cause it is literally a woman's house that she happens to sell food out of). It was great because the food was delicious, of course, but even better was that her family sat with us so we were able to talk with them while we ate. We each got a fat plate of food and the whole meal for two people costed us 90 pesos (that's just over $2 US... yeah, it's awesome). By now the sun had set and it's completely dark, and still raining, so we just had to suck it up and ride home in the rain. It was the first time I road a motorcycle in both the dark and the rain, and it is terrible. The dark actually isn't so bad, but the rain feels like little needles hitting your skin. We finally made it back to the property around 8 o'clock and were happy to be off the streets and able to change our soaking wet clothes. It was a very, very cool day and an awesome experience to be able to have. I'm sure we'll have more in the future, and I am most certainly looking forward to them.

Las gallinas

         These are our chickens! I have to take care of chickens! Isn't that hilarious?? It's like I'm in Iowa or something. Two weeks ago Bill sent me an email with a list of things to do around the property, and to my bemusement, one of the items was to purchase and maintain chickens for a constant supply of eggs (we eat a lot of eggs). So I put the chicken chore far down the list figuring it would take some asking around to find out what kind of chickens to buy (who even knew there were different types of chickens), where I can buy them, how many to buy, and how to maintain them, cause before this I'm not even sure I'd ever even seen a live chicken. Then three or four days ago I was picking up lunch from Milania's (the woman who cooks for the groups when they are here), and thought to ask her about the chickens because I knew she had a bunch of her own. I usually pick up lunch around 12, and by 2 o'clock that same day when I went back to return her tupperware, she had like 15 chickens lined up for me to buy! We ended up settling on five gallinas (hens) and one gallo (rooster), and Milania gifted us two more chickens out of the goodness of her heart, one full sized hen and a little teenager one. Eight chickens in total. While I was still at her house she was showing me her chicken set up, where they lay their eggs, what to feed them, and that whole deal. When she was showing me were the chickens sleep, I got a little bit confused. Now, my spanish speaking and comprehending abilities have improved vastly over the last eight weeks, and I can almost always understand Milania now, but when she was explaining where the chickens sleep I was sure I was misunderstanding her, because what I understood was that the chickens sleep in a tree! I was cracking up and asked her three or four times to make sure I definitely understood her that at night, the chickens hop up a ladder (pictured above) into the branches of a tree and sleep for the night. My mind was blown. It makes sense if you think about it, they are up high securely away from predators, but before I was able to wrap my head around the fact, it was the funniest thing I had heard in weeks.
          Ok, so now I have the chickens in a cardboard box in the back of the pick up, I know how to take care of them, Milania's grandkids helped me set up their nests for egg laying, and Milania even lent me one of her chicken ladders so they could get up into a tree. The only problem now is that most Dominicans have their chickens running around their houses and their yards, but chickens smell awful and are quite noisy (particularly in the morning) so we weren't about to let our chickens run around the staff house. So I found a beautiful spot for them, far from the staff house, under a big shady mango tree perfect for sleeping in, but now the problem is that they were far away, so we couldn't monitor them and they could run away or get stolen pretty easily. As a solution to these problems Peter and I decided we would build them a fence out of chicken wire! So we got chicken wire, called our friend Meima to go out into the woods and cut us some posts (cause apparently you can't just buy them in a store) and after three days of the chickens roaming around randomly (thankfully they're all still around) we were building them a fence today. Digging individual holes for each post and dealing with the surprisingly rigid chicken wire was a bit tedious, but that was not, as we expected it to be, our most difficult task of the day. After we built the fence, we had to get the chickens into it. Trying to run down one chicken is hard enough (we found out), but eight seemed like a mountain we wouldn't be able to climb. Maybe if we were working out in an open field we would have had a chance, but we were by no means in an open field. We were surrounded by barbed wire fence on two sides, and lots and lots of thorny plants. So the first chicken we caught was the little teenager one cause we luckily ran it into one of the thorny bushes and it got stuck, but after that, it got much, much more difficult. Peter and I spend well over an hour army crawling under and jumping over the barbed wire fences all the while pulling thorns out of our feet. At the end of the hour and change, Peter had 10+ thorns stuck in his feet, and my right arm and leg were covered in blood from all the bushes and barbed wire I ran into, but let me tell you, it was all worth it. Each time we were able to catch another chicken and put it in it's new fenced in habitat, the feeling of satisfaction we felt rivaled that of pulling that piece of plastic off a new cell phone, or popping an entire roll of bubble wrap. So now as you can see, the chickens are happily in their shiny new enclosure living the chicken lifestyle. They eat a surprising amount of food and drink a surprising amount of water so I'm back there two or three separate times a day feeding and watering them. Now, after lots of hard work, we have a steady supply of fresh laid eggs (which are much better than ones that have been shipped all over, think fresh vs. frozen fish), and another chore to keep me busy. And *spoiler alert* I believe our next such venture on the property is going to be getting honey bees, so I'm going to learn how to be a bee keeper, how awesome would that be??? But until then, I have plenty of time to become a master chicken keeper.

Las motocicletas

Riding motorcycles is fun. No ins or outs about it. I never rode one until I arrived here, but now I find myself making up as many excuses as possible to ride them. Part of my job is to run them daily to ensure they don't die from lack of use, which is great because as I said, riding motorcycles is fun. As you can see, we have three motorcycles on the property, two road bikes, and one dirt bike. The dirt bike is by far the best one we have, especially for the terrain on which we have to ride. If there is a down side to it, it's that it's not terribly fast once you get it on the road, but that's a minute detail especially compared to how well it runs on the rocky dirt roads around here. The black Yamaha is a piece of crap. It's not its fault that it's a road bike, so even getting it out to the road is a pain (literally, I feel like I should be wearing an athletic cup). Because of this, no one rides anything but the dirt bike, hence the necessity to run them everyday. But, unlike the dirt bike, once you brave the pain and the bumps and get the Yamaha out on the road, it's super fast and very fun to drive, aside from the fact that it's a piece of crap and the whole thing rattles and vibrates while being driven and it's terrifying, but that just adds to the experience in my opinion. And the red bike on the end is a Suzuki, but the kick starter doesn't work so you can't even start it unless you get a push down the hill. Why don't we get it fixed you may ask, well, like I said before no one ever drives it so there really isn't a point. It would just be a waste of money, something we try really hard not to waste. Why don't you just sell the two road bikes that no one ever drives and buy a new dirt bike that people will drive you ask? Well Bill wants to "limp them out" for another year, and Bill is the boss and what he says goes. So until then, we stick to the dirt bike, which as I'm going to say for a third time now, not to be repetitive, but to emphasize a point, is quite fun to ride.