Mosquito-borne maladies (and other musings)

the ever-pesky mosquito...this time with a nasty payload

In spite of the fact that I was armed to the teeth with medication from my travel doctor before arriving in the Dominican Republic, I managed to contract a sexy new, cure-less tropical disease: chikungunya (pronounced CHEE-kuhn-GOON-yah). This lovely little illness brought with it aching bones, sore joints, a high fever and a nasty red rash. Needless to say I was bedridden for a couple of days. Thankfully I did not have to cancel classes; my body always seems to "time" its bouts of sickness for when we are on vacation. Many of my students were not so lucky: I saw the attendance numbers greatly reduced this week as the chikungunya virus ran its course through the town. One small bit of good that may be coming on the heels of this epidemic is increased consciousness about Dominican habits with regard to trash. The mosquitoes that carry the virus tend to favor warm, moist locales such as the discarded heaps of rotting garbage that are all-too-common around town. Hopefully the increased public awareness of this fact means that there will be more efficient garbage pick-up in Neyba...although I'm not holding my breath. Admittedly, being sick also has its personal advantages: I was able to make a lot of headway in a lovely little (*) novel called Don Quixote. Reading has always been a great pleasure of mine, and it was nice to have the time to do so without feeling guilty that I wasn't going for a run or writing lesson plans!

In other news: I was fortunate enough to meet three other Americans this week; one is a Peace Corps volunteer in a neighboring town and the others a married couple on medical mission at an orphanage in Neyba. At times I have found being the only "gringa" in town to be a lonely pursuit, so it is nice to know that I am not alone in my humble quest to change lives in this overlooked part of the world.

In other other news: there is a man in my life who makes me happy. That is all I am going to say about that.

Until next time, dear reader, watch out for those mosquitoes!

Saludos,
Kirsten

Nattering nabobs of negativism

Dear reader:

Like my title? Here's the source I robbed (erm, borrowed) it from! In this post I would like to highlight some of the challenges I've had so far as a teacher, including but not limited to:

(1) A messy classroom. I've come to realize that trash cans aren't really a big deal here in the Dominican Republic. Sometimes they seem to be forgotten accessories rather than waste receptacles. Instead of a full wastebasket in my classroom I often leave to find pencil shavings, discarded candy wrappers and water bottles on the floor. It has surprised me the extent to which I have had to provide a social as well as traditional education to my students. I never read the term "garbage police" in my job description!

(2) Chatty Cathys. The number one rule in the English Immersion program is ENGLISH ONLY. As expected with students who arrived with zilch of an English background, it has been difficult for me to tamp down the use of Spanish in the classroom. Who wouldn't revert to their native language when confused? I can hardly blame the students for their slip-ups, but the program dictates that I must. The "punishment" that I have instituted for students who speak Spanish is to write 50 sentences of "I will only speak English in class." This has seemed to deter most but not all of my students. It is amazing to hear the difference in speaking rhythm when the students are speaking English during class (bumbling, tentative and mouse-quiet) versus when they are speaking Spanish outside the classroom (rapid-fire, animated, and loud). I can only hope that by the end of the year they will speak with as much confidence and animation in English as their native Spanish...

(3) Procrastination Station. Before moving on, I need to fess up as a master procrastinator myself. Rare is the case that I plan my classes more than one day in advance, which is to my disadvantage because worksheets and anything else that needs to be printed must be done a day ahead of time in order to be sent to the copier. But enough about me! My students have not yet gotten a grasp of the concept of homework, with emphasis on the first syllable. On days after I have assigned homework, I arrive as customary 15 minutes before class only to find students frantically finishing their exercises and, more often than I'd like to admit, copying from each other. This is another lesson I've tried (and, it seems, failed) to impart: that homework is only as useful as you make it. In other words, copying doesn't do anyone any good! (Hello, Captain Obvious) As my esteemed algebra teacher once said, "It all comes out in the wash." That is to say that students who have spent their days copying, an all-too-common learning "strategy" among Dominicans, will nonetheless fare poorly on their exams. Those who do not put in the time and effort will only get the grade they deserve.

(4) A narrowing field of vision. In one of my classes I have a student who is congenitally near-blind. It has been a challenge for me to be fair to him in terms of assigning homework and taking exams, taking into account his disability while not oversimplifying the work. There is a standing agreement with my afternoon class that they will go without a break in order to leave half an hour early (at 5:30 instead of 6pm). I use this time to work with Antonio using his voice recorder to go over the concepts we learned in class that day. But I have run into several pitfalls. How to teach colors or prepositions, for example, to someone with no spatial perception? I find myself having to gloss over some themes, and continue to wonder if I am doing right by this particular student. However, I am a firm believer that "disabled" is a malapropism and that we should instead use "differently abled." This particular student proves that maxim to me every day with his impressive pronunciation and word recall.

Stumbling blocks!

In spite of these stumbling blocks and challenges, I continue to enjoy the day-to-day reality of my job. Teaching a foreign language to young adults who in many other ways are deprived of opportunity has been both a humbling and rewarding experience. It is true, as they say, that the teacher learns as much or more from her students as the students do from the teacher. Time and again my students have opened my eyes to the challenges of life in a developing country, the joys and vagaries of parenting, the nuances of language, and the joie de vivre that is particularly Dominican. I look eagerly forward to all I have yet to learn.

Milestones

Dear reader:

It's been a while. My apologies. When I think about the advances in technology that make this blog possible I also tend to think about the tension that technology makes us wrestle with: the tension between documenting one's life and living it. I tend to favor the latter, which means that I'm guilty of not snapping enough pictures. These past few weeks have seen me playing "catch-up" with my camera, and today I treat you to a blog in pictures (with captions, of course!)...

My morning class at Las Marias, a natural spring pool. On the agenda for class that day were not irregular verbs but rather sunshine, camaraderie, chicken and beer!

An attempt at an underwater picture...

Me with one of my students, Scarling.

The streets in Santo Domingo are very narrow.

Two spoons and I didn't share with anybody!!

A friend, Cornelio, and I in Santo Domingo

My afternoon class surprised me with an American-flag birthday cake, speeches and song. They also painted my face with frosting!!

Well there you have it. A blog in pictures, so I can say that I posted something without too much of the time and thought that goes into my other posts.

Saludos until next time, dear reader.

~Kirsten

On Again, Off Again

Dear reader:

As I sit here drinking a papaya batido (fruit juice smoothie) and pondering what to write, the Great Easter Fiasco comes to mind. Let me explain:

Epic fail!!

Semana Santa, or Holy Week, is one of the year's biggest  celebrations here in the Dominican Republic. Ironically given the religious nature of the holiday the majority of people, at least from what I observed, choose to get rip-roaring drunk and dance in the middle of the street (passing cars be damned). While I did not take place in these particular activities, I did enjoy a short yet extended weekend. Why short, you ask? I told my students on the Friday before that there would be no classes on Holy Week under the assumption that the NGO where my class takes place would be closed, and because everyone and their mother had the week off, and also because no one communicated to me otherwise. On the Monday of Holy Week I very enthusiastically participated as an interpreter at a day-long clinic hosted by a group of chiropractors on mission from Canada. It was wonderful to go back to my roots (I was a volunteer medical interpreter and nurse's aide at a free clinic for Hispanic immigrants during college) and to feel that I was lending a helping hand--or voice, to be more accurate. As I was mid-sentence in translating for a particularly thorny case of rheumatoid arthritis, lo and behold I get a call from my Ministry of Education supervisor asking how class was going. I told her my present location was not, indeed, the classroom and ella

cogió cuerdas (literal translation: seized the rope, colloquial translation: got angry) with me. I apologized profusely for the miscommunication and promised to call my students (all 60 of them) to say that class was in session for the next day. Surprise, surprise: out of the few students that responded to my phone calls, only three showed up for "class" the next day. I did my due diligence in planning a lesson, donning my teacher clothes, and marching off to class the next day (Tuesday) as well only to be greeted by, you guessed it: no one! As disheartening as it was to sit twiddling my thumbs in an empty classroom, I did get some good quality reading done, something I have not had time to do in the past few weeks. Chalk it all up to inexperience and severely plugged channels of communication--my Easter week did not go as expected. Unfortunately there are no other long breaks on the horizon; I am going to have to put my nose to the grindstone (to borrow a colloquialism from my native English) in order to survive the rest of the school year!

Moral of the story: NEVER. ASSUME. ANYTHING.

Until next time, dear reader.

Saludos,

Kirsten

On the corner of Stinky and Sick

Dear reader,

After a few weeks of going incommunicado I feel I owe you a blog entry, so here’s a brief rundown of what has happened in my life lately…

Cultural differences can be messy and awkward, as I have experienced in all my travels. I would like to specifically discuss Dominicans’ relationship to something truly messy: their trash. It is not an uncommon sight to witness someone do a drive-by “dumping off” of garbage in an abandoned lot or fling an empty beer bottle into the river.  In the United States I didn’t think too much about my trash; sure, I tried to recycle whenever possible and knew in the back of my mind that all of our twenty-first century detritus goes to a landfill to rot, but the waste removal system in the U.S. is efficient enough that the average person is not confronted with the stark, putrid reality of their own garbage. In the Dominican Republic my experience has been different.  Many people wait until there is enough garbage accumulated to start a fire; others do the aforementioned dumping. I pass an abandoned lot every morning on my way to class and without fail each day there are emaciated dogs and hungry chickens poking through a new bag of trash in search of anything edible. I write this not to fault Dominicans completely for their actions; when there is no public waste removal system in place and little to no education on the subject it is easy to see why people do what they do. But I have come to conclude that respect for one’s homeland includes respecting the environment and that it is not ethnocentric, or culturally arrogant, to question the actions of a friend, in my case, who was about to toss a plastic cup on the side of the road. (By the way, my friend later thanked me for the conversation we had, saying “eso no se hace”, Spanish for “[we] shouldn’t do that”).

Last week I gave my students a national standardized exam. Based on student feedback and correcting the exams themselves I learned what happens when pedagogies collide. The methodology used by the Dominican Ministry of Higher Education in their test is a lot different than what I use in my day-to-day teaching. Because we had two days to review for the exam my students did fairly well, but on the day of the exam I saw lots of befuddled faces and wrinkled eyebrows; they told me “Profe, eso fue una finca de maíz tostado” (“teacher, that test was a field’s worth of roasted corn,” meaning it was very difficult). The comments gave me pause and caused me to reflect on my teaching style. Is it correct or even preferable to “teach to the exam,” as many teachers in the United States might feel compelled to do with high-stakes testing? If my students do not do well on their exams they will leave the course without a diploma, regardless of their attendance, participation, homework grades, or scores on my quizzes and tests. That is the definition of high stakes. I’m still not sure what to do about this dilemma, so any advice from those in education would be much appreciated!

Last week I found myself particularly homesick and run down. I went to bed earlier and earlier each night out of sheer exhaustion and didn’t adequately plan for my classes. My symptoms came to a head on Thursday and Friday with nausea, vomiting, fever and a rash. I stupidly decided to give class on Friday anyways (it was the day designated by my supervisor for the standardized test) even though I had to leave the room several times to throw up. Like I said, stubborn and stupid! Thankfully my host father is a doctor, so he took me to a nearby hospital for treatment. In my fevered state I don’t remember all that happened, only that I was injected with something, that something else was squirted in my mouth, and that they took my temperature where the sun doesn’t shine. I was diagnosed with an allergic reaction to nobody-knows-what. All in all it was an unpleasant experience. My souvenir from this week is a blooming bruise at the sight where they drew my blood. It looks like my left arm, and only my left arm, has been in a fight club. The bruises don’t hurt and I was told by my doctor/father that they will fade away on their own. For now I am suffering through the weather in long sleeves. There’s no sense in getting questioned by people about my purple arm!

That’s enough story and adventure for one blog entry. I’ll be back after Easter Break to tell you more! Until then, dear reader, saludos.

~Kirsten

Aggravations

Dear reader:

I was blessed enough to host my parents this week in Neyba. As promised, you will be treated with my mother's impressions of the country on my next post. I would like to dedicate this post to the distractions, frustrations, and aggravations of living and teaching abroad. This may sound like a bevy of complaints but I promise there will be wisdom and reflection at the end...

Aggravation!

It is never silent. As a self-professed introvert, I crave silence and solitude, but both of these have been hard to come by in the Dominican Republic. Life is definitely slower-paced than in the United States (read: nine o'clock "Dominican time" for an engagement means that people will begin to show up around 10 or 11). However, I feel accosted at all hours by barking dogs, bleating goats, revving motorcycles, and blaring music. Dominicans "saben gozar" (know how to enjoy themselves), which translates to loud conversations in rapid-fire Spanish and a different radio station blasting from every street corner. There are no such thing as noise ordinances in this country!

The day I can keep pace with the tirades of my feisty and passionate host mother is the day I will call myself fluent in a second language. It is immensely frustrating for me sometimes to look back at the twelve years I have been studying Spanish only to find in real time that I continue to bumble awkwardly through conversations. Part of this is my inner self-critic, who is loathe to give credit for mere effort. For some reason I expect myself to perform linguistic gymnastics and to sound exactly like a native. Neither of these things is going to happen, but a girl can dream :)

In terms of teaching, I have begun to bump into the problem of classroom management. My students have an overwhelming amount of energy and enthusiasm, but I find it difficult to rein them in and channel the energy into productive learning. The fact that I am the lone teacher in Neyba has been both a blessing and a curse; a blessing in that I have a lot of autonomy and control over my teaching methodology and a curse in that I have little to no external feedback as to the job I am doing. My supervisor did make the long trip from Santo Domingo to observe my class once, and her comments were informative. Other than that, I  have been on my own. It is no small task to capture the attention of 30 young adults at a time, especially in a classroom that boasts only a whiteboard, chairs, and the inimitable me--and especially when said adults are also burdened with jobs, other college courses, and children! (A fair number of my students are young parents already). There are some days when I feel prepared to tackle the challenges of foreign language teaching and some days when I struggle with the mere basics: discipline, keeping the students engaged and on task, and reining in the tendency to speak Spanish. It is my fervent hope that these problems dissipate as I gain experience in the classroom and learn to match my personality to my pedagogy.

The food is a lot of bananas. And rice. And beans. And plantains, cooked every way imaginable (just think of all the ways one can prepare a potato and you'll have a close equivalent). Not that I was the most adventurous of cooks in the United States, but I do enjoy experimenting with spices and international cuisine. The most interesting (and repulsive) thing I have eaten here so far is, hands down, intestine soup. For breakfast. I tried and failed to keep a politely disengaged face while eating, so I doubt this is a dish that my host family will repeat!

All of my waking hours are dedicated to my job. In this respect, for better or worse, I am no different than most Americans. While I do have a leisurely lunch break (2 hours), I am in the classroom for four hours at a stretch, twice a day. And, like all teachers, I am not paid for the time I dedicate outside of the school day to lesson planning and grading. This leaves little time for me to exercise, read, or enjoy life with my host family. Hopefully as I gain perspective I will come to achieve a healthier work-life balance. Seeing as the only vacation time I get is Holy Week (Easter), I need to have techniques in place to prevent the eventuality of burnout. Any suggestions would  be appreciated!

I am currently on Stage 2...

I am no longer in the honeymoon stage of culture shock. Things that were once new have become trying or mundane. But in spite of the raucous on the street, the classroom challenges, and the barrage of bananas, I am truly having a wonderful time here. I have been adopted into two loving families, the other people I have met are as warm as the climate here, and I have the opportunity to speak in Spanish (outside the classroom, of course) on a daily basis. Language is always something that has invigorated me and I am lucky to  be able to share this passion with my students. I count on my inherent  stubbornness, resilience, and chameleon-like ability to ingratiate myself with people of all stripes to carry me through the stumbling blocks that arise with new experiences.

Until next time, dear reader, I leave you with this quote: "Just when the caterpillar thought the world was over, she became a butterfly" (Barbara Haines Howett). Here's my short, stubby thumb up to you in your own life being open to experience, confronting challenges with vigor, and relishing the new!

Vignettes

This week I am hard-pressed to come up with a theme for my blog so I've decided to share a series of  anecdotes with you, dear reader. Here goes:

(1) In the Dominican Republic it is customary to shower three times daily. I got this memo a little late in the game and thus have been walking around as a "stinkpot" for several weeks!
(2) I have awoken several times to find a cockroach scuttling around my room (and once, across my face)!
(3) I have taken precisely zero pictures of my time here in Neyba since my camera battery and charger have both died :(
(4) In the process of making "fritos" or fried plantains with my 8-year-old host brother we almost burned the kitchen down. There is a definite learning curve for Dominican cooking.
(5) I have grown accustomed to the wind-whipped hair that results from speeding along on the back of a dilapidated motorcycle, and have lost a sandal in the process.
(6) Everything--and I mean EVERYTHING--here is cooked in coconut oil. I find it delicious.
(7) The diet here is starch-based: plantains, rice and beans or lentils are the stars of every meal.
(8) The coffee is espresso-strong and from experience I find it advisable to drink in small doses only!
(9) The worst part of teaching by far is the tedious process of grading homework and exams. I once had a professor tell me that she was not paid to teach but rather to grade. I would agree.
(10) I had an unfortunate event of two students I caught sacando chivos (translated as "getting goats")--in other words, cheating--on their most recent exam. I found it necessary to give these students a zero on their exam as well as a stern talking-to about academic honor and integrity.
(11) Apart from the instance described in number (10), I continue to enjoy teaching but sometimes find it to be a lonely pursuit. Since my direct supervisor and coordinator are the same person, and since she is located four hours away in the capital, I do not have regular feedback on how I am doing. (12) In other news, my parents are coming to visit this week. I am beyond excited...and you will probably be graced with the words of a "guest writer" on my next blog post.

Until next time, dear reader, take care!

~Kirsten

El Renacer/New Beginnings

Dear faithful reader:

Thanks for checking back in on my Dominican adventures. I feel the need to apologize for leaving you hanging so long without a word on my whereabouts. So here's the promised update...

Last weekend I was privileged enough to travel to Pedernales and Bahía de las Águilas with my second host family. (An aside: I have two lives here in the Dominican Republic. On weekdays I live in Neyba with a host family and their three children--Georgina (16), Manrique (14) and Jorge Miguel (8). On the weekends I travel to Villa Jaragua, a town over, to spend time with the local congressman and his wife who originally hosted me after my move from Higüey.) We joined up with a motley crew of journalists from all over the country for a tour of the South. The idea was to highlight under-explored parts of the country. Pedernales fits the bill. My camera chose a bad time to die, so my

words will have to suffice to describe the beauty. Imagine cerulean and marine blues competing with each other on an endless horizon. Imagine 10 miles of unsullied white-sand beach ensconced far away from the nearest tourist trap. Then imagine 100 rowdy, soaked, and slightly inebriated journalists descending on said beach for an afternoon of relaxation and camaraderie. Thus I passed a Saturday afternoon, rejecting marriage proposals (seriously) and contemplating the beauty of the natural world. A word on men: if the first polite question to ask a person is "What's your name?" the inevitable second, in my experience with Latinos, is "Are you married?" The male attention I receive here for being "americana" and "rubia" (or blonde, by Dominican standards) borders on the excessive. Although I must admit that in Neyba I have received  a lot more respect from men than in Higüey, perhaps because a small town affords so little anonymity for the would-be cat-caller.

Back to my workaday life. I love my students! I am enlivened by the prospect of being able to mold 60 young minds in this coming year and am humbled to the task. Most of my students are true beginners, meaning that even the most basic things (alphabet, counting, etc) are new to them. This is an advantage in that I as a teacher will be the sole barometer of their progress; there will be no one else to credit or blame for what the students have and have not learned. It's a daunting task I've taken on, the idea that students will leave from under my wing after 8 months with a solid grasp of the English language. That I will be able to impart this knowledge using only markers, a whiteboard, and my incalculable creativity :) And that I will enjoy the process enough to last a year in the developing world with all its vicissitudes: power outages, no drinking laws to speak of, and potentially contaminated tap water. I am nothing if not honest: having spent just under two months in the Dominican so far, there are days when all I want is a hot shower and an over-priced latte. But then I realize I've traded some of the creature comforts of home for something much more important: the warmth and kindness of a people who've made me feel more welcome in a foreign country than I ever thought possible.

Until next time, dear reader. And please don't ponerse guapo conmigo (literally translated, don't "get pretty with me", colloquially translated as don't become angry with me) for waiting so long to write!

Settling In, Part Deux

Kirsten here, breaking radio silence to announce that...I have moved again! In a ploy I've come to think of as "bait and switch," a Ministry of Education official called me last Thursday (2/6) afternoon with the orders that I be packed and ready to go by Friday morning for the cross-country journey from Higüey to Neiba, a smaller town nestled in the foothills of the southwest. As if I would take that news lying down. I spent the better part of the day making phone calls to try and sort out the situation. As it turns out, the Ministry had planned to move me to Neiba all along. Funny how I wasn't made privy to that important bit of information. I could rant here for a few more paragraphs...but the fact of the matter is that I have already come to love my new home and the people I have met here. I am now staying with a host family in Neiba. This is the living situation I had wanted from the beginning: the opportunity to immerse myself in the culture, cuisine, and Spanish language that characterize the Dominican Republic. From the initial anger at the bait and switch I have arrived at a supreme contentment with my day-to-day life. I have so much to share but so little time in between preparing supper and my classes for tomorrow. Saludos for now, and more news to come!

~Kirsten

Settling in

Brandi and I finally have a home! After two weeks of hotel living it was a welcome sight to arrive at our new--scratch that, BRAND NEW--apartment. Here's a link to the pictures I have taken so far in Santo Domingo and of our new apartment. We are very fortunate in that it is situated close to campus and to the local supermarket. Since we will not be paid until late February, Brandi and I are subsisting on mostly rice and beans. We've recently become brave enough to use the gas stove; before we were making do with a hot plate. There are a handful of daily activities that make life in the Dominican Republic different from life in the States. For example, we are not supposed to drink the water as there is a risk (however slight) of cholera. Everyone here buys water in 5-gallon jugs for daily use. The other activity we have become accustomed to is washing our clothes in the bathtub. The washing machines here are TINY and the dryers even more so. We have reasoned that it is easier to do laundry in the tub and hang it out to dry than to try and deal with the machine we were provided. Another thing that was a little disillusioning: we were told by the Ministry of Education that we would be provided with a "fully furnished" apartment. What that meant in reality was that we arrived to see a refrigerator, stove, table, and one ancient bed. (The second bet arrived later). No curtains, dishes or utensils to speak of. In this respect--and to provide an awkward segue--our apartment situation has been a lot like teaching. The classrooms are very humble, just rows of desks and a whiteboard. We have had to provide our own markers and all other materials. That being said, I LOVE teaching! While every class has its clown and its handful of slackers, most of my students are genuinely motivated to learn English in order to improve their job prospects and station in life. The fact that all of the students are on scholarship provides further incentive for hard work in the classroom. So far I have laughed uproariously, cried tears of joy (when my students did well on their first quiz), and performed all manner of crazy theatrics so that my students will remember the present progressive verb tense, prepositions, and adjectives. I did not think I would enjoy teaching the basics this much, but so far it has been a joy to go to class each day and to see the befuddled faces of my students turn to dawns of comprehension as they begin to grasp concepts. This transformation is what continues to energize me through what might seem like a daunting set of two 4-hour classes each day. But more on teaching later. For now, suffice it to say that I am gradually settling in to Dominican life an and eagerly await for whatever the future has in store.