pancakes and creole

At night, since I don't really have anything to do with my host family, besides watching hannah montana in espanol with my host brother, i write my diary entries. So, pretty much expect that anything you read, happened yesterday...


Today was a good day. Tess, my faithful translator took me to a group loan meeting. They held it in an abandoned poolhall. We interviewd two women who owned a colmado which is a food store and a used clothing business. Lots of people in the Domincan buy used clothes, that look like stuff people give to good will. Today I saw someone wearing a Needham softball league shirt, go Boston suburbs. Another man at the ice cream shop was wearing family reunion shirt that said Robertson Family Reunion, Alberta Canada 2005. Kind of silly. Any way, those interviews were great, and they gave us a great dry run so that we could tweak certain questions and eliminate some all together. It was cool to see a real live group loan meeting in action too. They begin each meeting with a prayer and a devotional where they sing songs. Everyone must be present before any money can be handed in or any money can be given out. Today was not a good day for this group. Most dominicans run on dominican time, which similar to mormon standard time, and african time, is about 30 mins behind schedule. Today, they were missing one woman for an hour and a half. Tess told me this was extremely unusual. The meeting place is infested with hornets and one of the little boys who came with his mama got stung. We all thought he had broken an arm or something by the way he was screaming. Eventually, the woman came and they paid, received money and their booklets, closed with a prayer and were on their way.
We went back to the office and ate lunch. Today was my first day trying pico pollo, which is a big dominican food. It is fried chicken, but it comes with tostadas which are fried plantain slices. With a little salt, they are pretty tasty, and almost taste like potatoes, or something in the starch family. There was another meeting in the afternoon and we interviewed 3 more women, bringing our grand total to 5 women interviewed today, which is magnifico! The 30 interviewee goal may in fact be very attainable. I really liked these women, they were very vivacious and confident. One woman, who was a little shy was a Haitian immigrant, and she was very proud of her Dominican citizenship and showed us her id. She spoke in Haitian creole, which was a dream for me, because my brain has been thinking in french non stop since I arrived. So that was cool to hear. These three women all ran used clothing stores and two of them also ran colmados at the same time. All of the interviewees have to sign a consent form per northeastern human subjects committee board rules. One of the women today was very proud to sign her name, I think she recently learned how to spell her own name when she joined the loan group. To watch her carefully and deliberately write (in very neat penmanship I might add) out her own name and to see her face when she looked at it and saw that she had spelled it correctly, was incredible. It was one of those small and quiet moments that just kind of leave you speechless. I don't think I'll ever throw her consent form away.
Tonight was so fun. Sofia, mi mami espanol, sent the only other white girl in the city, a german girl on vacation to our house where she brought her domincan sister (she was an exchange student last year) and they brought me oranges as a welcome gift. Very sweet. Tess and Millie (her host brothers and sisters cousin) came and picked me up and we walked to the market, because tonight we cooked her family an american meal, which, based on what was available at the store, turned out to be chocolate chip bannana pancakes. Millie is my absolute favorite. Shes a hilarious, sassy and outrageous 14 yr old. She is learning English at school, and I'm trying my best to learn spanish, so we are students of each other. She laughs and laughs when I speak Spanish like an American, which means adding way too much enthusiasm and sincerity to Como estas? Us three girls had a great time dancing around the kitchen to merengue music making pancakes (Millie mocked up by calling us los especiales pancakes, “the pancake specialists” and making fun of my nickname dobby) She made us mango smoothies from fresh mangoes, milk and ice. It was a very fun evening. To top it off, we rode home on a motorcycle (there are more motorcycles than cars out here) on empty street and the (finally!) cooled off air. I am really starting to love this place.