Leaving El Seibo

We leave El Seibo this week. It’s insane. Although I know so much has happened in the five weeks since we’ve been here, I feel like it’s been no time at all. Each day is a week, each week a day. We accomplished the task of putting together a documentary with youth of El Seibo, many of whom showed a genuine interest and dedication. We learned to cook empanadas and taught how to cook quesadillas. We’ve given two classroom presentations – in Spanish – and we learn at least a couple of new words every day. We’ve had dinner on the rooftops of El Seibo and traveled to its campo. We’ve been lectured and chastised about the appropriateness of our dress, how to not sit with our legs propped up, and to take at least a bucket bath in the evenings so they won’t think you’re heathen (although I don’t think anyone thinks that’s a problem since you have to take a couple showers a day just to cool off). We’ve learned to set up computer labs and how nothing we’ve learned will probably work, since nothing works in this country the way it’s supposed to. For the most part, we know what we want now, what we’d be the best at, whether its teaching teachers or teaching youth or teaching English. And now we wait, the painful last week, before they tell us where we’ll be spending the next two years.

Wednesday is our project presentation / bon voyage party in the Auntamiento (City Hall) of El Seibo. It’s a chance for our youth to be recognized for their accomplishments in a way that they rarely ever are here, as well as a time for us to say thank you to the pueblo for accommodating us. We are the first volunteer group to do this, apparently, so we’re all eagerly awaiting the outcome. Ann, our facilitator, anticipates half the town and people looking through the windows.

I’ll be a bit sad to leave my host family here. I really have grown quite attached to them. In fact, the only thing I’ll be happy to get away from is the rooster pen under my window. I think the next Nobel Prize should go to the person who genetically engineers roosters without vocal chords. Roosters and small yippy-yappy dogs. And speaking of noteworthy achievements, I’d just like to give a shout out to one of my best friends for getting into and going to Columbia’s Graduate Nursing School and her boyfriend for getting into and going to Stanford for a graduate degree in business. Amazing, guys. Of course, this means I’ll have to get a PhD to compete – but I got time

I haven’t been much in the frame of mind to write lately, which I hope will explain the rather random assortment of topics for this entry. Every time I thought of or experienced something worth noting, I told myself I’d remember it for later. Of course, I’ve forgotten most all. So those jewels of commentary have disappeared forever into the void of my mind. But never fear, I still have a small portion of that wealth of words to come.

Today I returned to a market we had once visited as a class. Last time, I must have been so preoccupied with the hisses and advances being made that I didn’t really notice the surroundings. This time, I was by myself instead of with a large group, so I’m sure that made a difference, and I found myself in a much more amicable mood. The thing that struck me the most about this market wasn’t that the tables were pilled high with an assortment of clothes, uncategorized or without any sort of order, but that those tables were situated amidst tired, rusting carnival rides. Ropes to hold up the canopies were tied to the carrousel and bamboo support poles leaned against the Farris wheel. A string of shoes hung across a line strung from the once high speed swings.

Though I returned from the market empty handed (as I’m running low on cash, could not find sandals for 100 pesos, and am too stubborn to cambiar my dollars or withdraw funds) I felt as though I left with a newfound sense of wonderment. I cannot place it. I cannot explain how I really saw those abandoned rides in the middle of piles of clothes and shoes, how I really felt being one of those people milling around, browsing, ducking under ropes and climbing over poles . But it left me with an odd sensation, like I’d been through a time warp or a Steven King novel. It wasn’t uncomfortable or unsettling, it was merely another sense of the Dominican world, a strange mix of times and technologies that I had only ever seen as obnoxiously inefficient before.

I’m sure I will remember more of my final days in El Seibo as memory is triggered by other occurrences, but for now I must seize the opportunity for a nap. The roosters seem relatively subdued. I shall return to write after the end and before the beginning. Our time in limbo, in Santo Domingo where the next step will be revealed.