Christmas and Religion

You might think that Christmas in a country as religious as the Dominican Republic would be a huge thing, and you would be right. However, you would be right for the wrong reasons.
Now that I've spent my first Christmas in this country, I can tell you for a fact that there is almost nothing religious about it.

Christmas is a reason to party. The already loud music is even louder. The drinking, which is already excessive, is even more excessive.
It's more like Super Bowl Sunday than a religious holiday. Plus, it goes on for at least a solid week.

This was a surprise to me because all my experiences up to this point led me to believe that Dominicans would be spending their days and nights in religious services.
Let me give you a couple examples from just my trip to Santo Domingo two weeks before Christmas.

On the trip down the mountain from my pueblo there is a small Catholic shrine to the Virgin Mary. It was built alongside the main road and there is nothing within at least 5 kilometers of it. Not even a campo.
By Dominican standards it is pretty nice. I'm sure it costs more than most of the houses here. Why it exists there? I have no idea.

On the morning GuaGua down the mountain, the driver stopped at the shrine. He got out, along with two other passengers, and spent 10 minutes praying at the shrine while the other twenty of so passengers waited for him to finish.
There was nothing special about the day. The driver gave no reason to the passengers why he had to stop there. No one complained. It is just part of living in the Dominican Republic.

A few days later I was leaving Santo Domingo. It is a 7 hour bus trip back to my pueblo, which is exhausting. So I got on the bus early, grabbed two seats for myself and tried to nod off.
As the bus started to leave the station I heard some woman in the front of the bus saying something about "somos nada" (i.e. we are nothing). This caught my attention so I looked up.
The woman was giving a fire-and-brimstone speech about how we were all damned if we didn't embrace Jesus. It went on for about 20 minutes. No one complained. It is just part of living here.

This isn't unusual in the slightest. Dominicans get VERY excited about their religion, especially the evangelicals. What's more, they like to amplify themselves. So going to an evangelical church means your ears will be ringing for hours later.
A Pentacostal service I went to in El Seibo involved some woman screaming at the crowd for over an hour (she was amplified, of course). Since the woman never stopped screaming long enough to take a breath, I kept waiting for her to pass out from lack of oxygen. Unfortunately, only the church members were doing the passing out.
This was followed by a concert that was, amazingly, even louder.

So you don't want to go to an evangelical service? No problem. They take their messages into the street too. This involves the renting a truck stacked 5 and 8 foot tall with speakers, and a preacher screaming at the entire city for two or three hours.

So what do they scream? Bible verses? Nope. Some moving message of hope and redemption? Nope. Perhaps some social commentary? Please.
I've heard a preacher scream "nombre de Jesus" over and over again for 10 solid minutes. MLK he was not. It seemed to get the crowd excited, but it didn't convince me of joining his church. His "sermon" is fairly typical here.

While the content quality is lacking, Dominicans certainly make up for it in volume and enthusiasm.
As with everything in this culture, their religion experience involves music and dancing. So its hard to criticize it.

The glory of a health care system free from government

I was visiting one of my project partners today.
She has two daughters, the youngest of them 6 years old. While we were talking the girl from next door, about the same age, came over to play with the daughter.
I couldn't help but notice the fresh dime-sized scabs and scars all over her lower legs. It was some sort of skin disease.

What is it from? No one knows. Has the mother seen a doctor about it? No. Why not? No tiene dinero.

It's as simple as that. This is the Dominican Republic. This is a third-world country. There is no real public health care system. It is almost totally private, and thus inaccessible to most of the population.

A short while later, my project partner pulled out a box and showed me what was inside. It was bandages and sanitary napkins.
They are for her brother. Last year he was a security guard at a bank when it was robbed. He was shot twice and nearly died. He was taken to a hospital who told them that there was no hope.
Then the hospital found out that he was injured on the job, and thus had health insurance.
Suddenly there was hope.

Many months later he's still in bad shape, but alive. However, the insurance doesn't cover everything. That's why my project partner is taking clean bandages and sanity napkins to his hospital.

Hospital care in this country varies entirely on the ability to pay.

I live about 100 yards away from a small, local hospital. I hadn't gone into it until two weeks ago, when the father of my host family contracted influenza.
He would up in the hospital, hooked up to an IV.

The day after he was admitted, his wife showed up at my door. She needed a bucket of water. Why? Because the hospital didn't have any water to bath him with.
Needless to say, the hospital also doesn't provide food. Families do that too.

My host family doesn't have health insurance.

As a Peace Corps volunteer, I have health insurance. Fortunately, I haven't had to use it so far (knock on wood).
One part of the training was a tour of a hospital in Santo Domingo that the Peace Corps uses. It was as clean and modern as any private hospital in the United States.
The Peace Corps uses this hospital (and one in Santiago) exclusively. I've been told that no matter how sick I am, they will not let me be admitted to any other hospital.

I have health insurance and Devil take the hindmost.

Little Haiti

I was talking with my brother the other day about the pathetic state of the local campo dog that wants me to be its owner. It has a badly injured foot that is beyond treatment. It needs to be put to sleep, but there is no vet within two hours of my Dominican pueblo.
He asked me what the locals do in such cases. Generally the dogs are poisoned or simply left to slowly die. Then I responded with my blackest humor: "Dogs here are treated almost as badly as Haitians."

You can always tell when you are in a Haitian neighbourhood in the Dominican Republic. Dirt floor shacks, naked children, and worst of all, the sense of hopelessness. Unlike Dominican children, Haitian children are typically shy and very cautious. It's Mississippi in the 1950's times 1,000.
It's not like the Dominicans are rich in comparison. They also live in houses with tin roofs and eat the same food. However, almost every Dominican I've talked to has warned me not to go into the Haitian neighbourhoods. Why? Because there are Haitians there. I've been told that Haitian have no concept of hygiene or respect for the environment.
But that is merely the start. A fellow Peace Corps volunteer and friend in the southern part of the country told me that when a Haitian tried to board a GuaGua he was on, all the Dominican in the bus demanded that he be kicked off. Several said the Haitian "fouled the air".

Dominicans have had an issue with Haiti for nearly two centuries. Independence Day wasn't the day that the Dominican Republic cast off the oppression of Spain (twice). It's when it drove the Haitians out in 1844. The hatred of Haitian immigrants was best exemplified by the insanity of The Parsley Massacre.
No nation is more hostile to Haiti and Haitian immigrants. What's more, things are getting worse.

I just got back from Dajabon today. It's a town on the Dominican/Haitian border. Every Monday and Friday there is a huge mercado.
I cannot describe the Haitian market and still do it justice. It has to be experienced, but I will try anyway.

Imagine, if you will, a blazing, hot sun and dusty, dirt roads. As far as the eye can see there are stalls where people are hawking their wares. There is no real pattern to how the stalls are arranged. Sometimes their goods are on tables. Sometimes just spread out on tarps on the ground. Sometimes tarps have been strung up to give a little bit of shade, but the ropes are so low that you have to be careful or they will hit you in the face as you walk.
The whole market is crowded beyond capacity. Every hundred feet or so you will need to physically push the people around you, or get pushed in the back. Every third person is someone hawking goods, traditionally by shoving them in your face. Just saying "no, gracias" or "no quiero" won't convince them to get the boxer shorts out of your face. Some of the stalls have people yelling prices into megaphones.
Meanwhile, there are motorcycles with faulty mufflers running through the crowds, often with huge bags of goods on the back. With only between five to ten feet between the stalls, that means the motorcycles literally have to knock people out of the way.
The smell of exhaust and pollution in the hot, dusty air is sickening and the sound is deafening.

So why would anyone go there? Because of the dirt, cheap prices on clothes. I'm currently wearing a pair of jeans that I bought for less than $3 and a t-shirt for about 70 cents. I don't know where the Haitians get their goods from, but they must get them for next to nothing.

The reason why I am talking about the trip is both because the Dajabon Haitian mercado is a fascinating place for the study of the third world, but also because of what happened while I was returning to my pueblo.
The GuaGua ride from Dajabon to Loma de Cabrerra is about 21 km. The thing is, Dajabon is a major human trafficking location, so the Dominican military has set up multiple check points on any road leaving Dajabon.

At the first military check point, the soldier looked in side door and openly threatened anyone who looked Haitian that they better have their passport with them, or else. There were about 12 people in the minivan (crowded by American standards, but not by Dominican standards). The Haitian-looking woman next to me didn't have her passport, and so got pulled off the GuaGua.
At the next military checkpoint only one person got asked for identification - me. The whitest, most American-looking person in the minivan (which means I'm the one most likely to have dinero). Obviously the soldier was hoping that I didn't have identification, because then I would have to bribe him (the bribe is widely known to be 100 pesos). Unfortunately for him, I remembered to bring it. As we drove away I loudly said, "Solo me" and all the Dominicans on the GuaGua burst out laughing.

A big problem in the Dominican Republic is people not being registered. The Peace Corps encourages every volunteer to help people get their birth certificate. Most people don't have them simply because getting one at birth costs money, and there isn't a lot of that around.
By not having a birth certificate a Dominican cannot vote, get a passport, or open a bank account. It is a huge hindrance.
But that is nothing compared to what Haitians face in the Dominican Republic.
As far the Dominican government is concerned if your parents were born in Haiti, then you are Haitian. This applies to people who have never been to Haiti. Thus the hundreds of thousands of children of people who fled oppression or violence in Haiti and were born in the Dominican Republic are children without a country.

Sonia Pierre, a Dominican human rights activist, says the changes in Dominican citizenship laws have made hundreds of thousands of Dominicans of Haitian descent, in effect, stateless. She points to a landmark international court decision in 2005 calling on the Dominican government to end its discrimination against this population. But the government did the opposite - it hardened its policies and began retroactively withdrawing citizenship from Dominicans of Haitian descent.
Claiming that it is only trying to "clean up" its civil registry rolls, the government now systematically refuses to issue identity documents to Dominicans of Haitian descent. Officials often deny these documents because someone has a Haitian-sounding last name or "looks" Haitian.
Sonia Pierre's organisation, the Movement of Dominican-Haitian Women (MUDHA), has documented thousands of cases where the government is systematically denying rights to Dominicans of Haitian ancestry. Those affected come from all walks of life - schoolteachers, lawyers, community organisers, doctors, entertainers, caregivers, students, and military officers. Now these people are in danger of becoming stateless in the country of their birth and residency.
Many are facing deportation to Haiti or a life outside the law. "If I don't have my ID and I'm walking down the street, immigration may grab and deport me like they do with many Haitians," says Daniela Siri Yan, a vivacious 18-year-old who studied computer science at the local high school.

I've already made the decision that this isn't a battle that I'm going to fight, because I can't win it. If I fight for the Haitians then I will lose the Dominicans in my community, and they already need more help than I can give.
At the same time, it's hard to see the discrimination every day and not have it tear at your heart.

Sin Agua

I woke up in the middle of the night. Something was different.
It wasn't different in the same way last week was different - when I felt a 3-inch long cockroach crawling across my neck (lesson learned: ALWAYS tuck in your mosquito net). No, this time it was different because it was the sound of running water.

It had been 10 days since I had running water. So when water started coming out of the faucet I jumped out of bed, ran to the bathroom and opened the taps wide. I was suddenly wide awake and happy beyond measure.
The first thing I did was fill the back of the toilet with water and flushed it. The smell improved immediately. I then did it again, even though it no longer needed it. Then I did it a third time just because I was getting giddy.

I then emptied every bucket of water in the house and cleaned the buckets thoroughly before filling them with fresh water. Next came the counters in the kitchen and bathroom, and finally the floors of the apartment. It was 3 a.m. and I had never enjoyed cleaning so much in my life. It's amazing how the little things in life can suddenly mean so much when you don't have them for a while. Getting some perspective on life was one of the primary reasons I joined the Peace Corps.

Now if I only had some electricity...

When I talk to my friends and family in the States, they always ask me the same thing: "How do you manage without running water?"
Well, for starters, you catch rainwater. Fortunately it is the rainy season here in the Dominican Republic, so it rains about every other day. Everyone here has large buckets and barrels in their homes. When it starts raining, people run out of their homes, buckets in hand, to whatever storm-drain is available. The only problem is that the rain also washes off whatever filth was on top of the building, so you usually end up with a bunch of clean water and a layer of dirt in the bottom.

You don't drink this water. It's for bathing and cleaning only, just like whatever comes out of the tap. You buy bottled water to drink because the tap water can't be trusted.
This is typical for 3rd world countries. Undependable water is a way of life for 3/4 of the people on this planet.

It would probably surprise a lot of people in the Unites States that you can get by without running water for several days without any real problems. It would probably also surprise people in the United States that civilisation doesn't end when the power goes out. You simply have to spend more time talking to your family and neighbours.
People in the 1st world have convinced themselves that they absolutely must have access to their electronic toys all the time or something terrible will happen. It's a false scenario. Those electronic toys are separating us from what really matters in life.

Before I joined the Peace Corps I used to hear the term "3rd World Hell Hole". As if anyone not living in the 1st world was living a life of absolute misery.
The thing I discovered is that people in poorer, more isolated nations are slightly happier than people in America. They don't worry about the news because there is no power for the TV most of the time. They don't worry about crime because they know all their neighbours. They don't worry about protecting their "stuff" because they have little worth stealing.

One of the most surprising things I discovered when I got to the Dominican Republic was the almost complete lack of homeless people. Many of the houses may be shacks, but almost no one sleeps without a roof over their heads, and very few go hungry. Family and friends look out for each other.
Why is this true in a 3rd world nation, but not in a the United States? Well, everyone here talks to their family and friends when the power goes out (which is every day). So is it a blessing or a burden to have electricity all the time? Is it a blessing or a burden to have so much junk that you need to rent storage to put it all somewhere?

It really is an amazing concept to consider - that stuff does not constitute real wealth, and does not lead to happiness.
Sure the people of the D.R. want stuff. Sure they envy what they see on American TV shows, but then so do Americans. Maybe there is more value in the fantasy than in the reality.

Dominican Roulette

I was sitting in the back of a Daihatsu pickup truck with Damian, another Peace Corps volunteer, when I realized the absurdity of my situation.
We were coming back from spending the night in Rio Limpio, a beautiful mountain community with spectacular views. However, there was only one road and it wasn't paved. The recent rains had created more washouts and ravines than road. Even at 15 kmh we were getting tossed around the back of the truck like rag dolls. My wrist was sprained from a failed attempt at trying to hold onto the side of the truck. I had bruises all over my back and arms, and we had another 30 minutes to go before we reached the main road.
But that wasn't the crazy part.

There was another 10 Dominicans jammed into the back of that truck. Shortly before leaving Rio Limpio one of them had bought a couple bottles of claren, Haitian moonshine, and was passing it around. It was 11am and everyone was already drunk.
Two of the Dominicans were from the national guard. If you've never been to the Dominican Republic then you wouldn't know that national guardsmen, and even private security, walk around with shotguns loaded and not holstered. One of of the guardsmen had laid the shotgun on the bed of the truck so that he could text a message on his cell. Amazingly he seemed to be nodding off while he was doing this. Meanwhile the loaded shotgun was bouncing around, periodically pointing at everyone in the truck. Damian called it "Dominican Roulette". No one seemed to care about the shotgun but us.

It was at this point that Damian turned to me and said with a straight face, "I just realised that we aren't wearing seat belts." That's when the absurdity of the situation hit me and I started howling with laughter. Unfortunately I let go of the truck and the next bounce threw me against the side of it, nearly knocking the wind out of me.

The trip to Rio Limpio was part of an Ecoclub trip. There was supposed to be charlas about deforestation, but the moment we got there the Dominicans broke out a set of dominoes and a couple bottles of Brugal. Preventing deforestation would have to wait for another day.
That night the Dominicans broke out some huge, hand drums and played some music that I had not heard in the four months that I have been here. It had unmistakable African roots, and must have been some sort of blending of Haitian and Dominican cultures. Combined with some traditional dancing that wasn't barchata or merengue, it was easily the best night of music I had heard to date.

Later on, I was talking to one of the locals who told me that someone in the village had been arrested for "stopping the rain". I had to ask him to tell that to me several times before I realised that I had heard it right. He also mentioned a woman getting arrested for "flying and eating children."

On the way back we stopped to pick up a couple bolas (i.e. hitchhiker). It was an old man, so old that he had to be physically lifted in and out of the truck, and a young boy carrying a chicken. They didn't appear to be related.
Despite a general atmosphere of intoxication, we stopped the truck at a colmado and bought some food for our hitchhikers and waited for them to eat. I don't think they had eaten in a few days.

Peace, Life, and Cholera

I was riding in the back of a pickup truck two days ago when it occurred to me that things weren't all that bad.

It's costs about 100 pesos, and about 45 minutes of time, for the GuaGua ride from Loma de Cabrera to my little mountain pueblo. Since gas costs so much in the Dominican Republic, drivers typically stop their engines at the tops of hills and roll to the bottom before starting the engine again. Even motorcycles do this.
I was about 20 minutes outside of Loma when the GuaGua driver did this. The sudden silence of riding in an open cab on an empty road, while rolling through a wet cloud in the mountains, forced me to recognize the beauty of the moment. The pine trees were mixed with palm and mango trees. None of the other Dominicans in the back of the truck with me said a word. None of us wanted to disturb the moment.

I've been at my permanent site, about 20 minutes from the Haitian border, for about two weeks now. I feel safer here than any other place in the Dominican Republic. For example, the other night the electricity gave out, like it does at some point every day.
In America this would be a BIG PROBLEM. People would complain about it for weeks later. They would ask politicians "what are you doing about it?" Criminals would take advantage of the situation.
However, in my pueblo people went for walks with flashlights and talked to their neighbors. It was no big deal. When you don't have electricity then you also don't have distractions, thus you wind up getting to know the people in your community.

For instance, right now I'm watching some teenage kids playing basketball in the street, all wearing sandals. They nailed together a basketball hoop out of wood and a metal hoop, and planted it alongside the road. Then drew the outlines of a court in chalk. When someone rides through on a pack mule the game doesn't stop. They just play around the mule and its rider.
It's hard to tell if their are teams. It appears to be every man for himself.

Everyone goes out of their way to be friendly here.
If you stop by someone's house they will inevitably offer you cafe and food. Even the poorest people in this country want to share their food with you, and they will be honestly hurt if you don't eat more than your fill.
For instance, one of my neighbors invited me and a couple friends in for dinner last week. Well, I had already eaten dinner at another house so I wasn't really hungry. Nevertheless, completely turning down food was not an option. I was going to eat whether I wanted to or not.
As you can imagine, I tried to get by eating small portions. The dona of the house, when she saw me not eating much, told me that, "If you do not get rid of your shame I will hit you." The following day she cleaned my apartment from top to bottom without my asking, or even suggesting my house was dirty, because men in this country aren't supposed know much about stuff like that.
The Dominican's obsession with food is a subject in itself. No conversation is complete unless it include the topic of food. Yet, you would think that a people so obsessed with food would not cook such bland meals. Everything is rice, beans, and chicken with a side of fruit. Spices are kept to a minimum.

On a darker note, I talked with a fellow Peace Corps volunteer today.
He's stationed about 60 kilometers south of me, on the other side of the mountains. He told me about a truck ride he had just the other day. An old man was helped into the back of the pickup with him. The next day the old man had died of cholera.
Cholera is getting bad in the "dirty south" of the country, where Haitian immigration is most noticeable. Three days before I had talked to a different PCV also stationed in the south. She said that the hospital in her pueblo was putting tents outside for cholera patients because they had run out of room indoors.

So today I did a search for news stories about cholera in the D.R. They weren't hard to find: http://www.ntn24news.com/latinamericanews/52511-dominican-republic-gripped-cholera-outbreak

Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic (AP) - Health officials in the Dominican Republic are reporting hundreds of new cases of cholera as the outbreak spreads through most of the country.
The number of new cases reported is up about 50 percent since the middle of May.
Hospitals in the capital Santo Domingo are overflowing with people presenting symptoms of cholera and health centres are fast running out of room.
The director of a hospitals on the outskirts of Santo Domingo said that just treating the infection won't be enough to contain the outbreak and that people must "follow the measures set up by the ministry".
In the capital, everything points to the polluted Soco river, where mountains of rubbish line up its banks, as the epicentre of the cholera outbreak.
The Dominican Republic Minister of Health agreed that the river may be the source but also said that the start of the rainy season could also be the cause of the dramatic increase in the cholera cases.

I've found other news articles about people dying in San Cristóbal and San Pedro de Macorís. I've so far avoided telling my family about the cholera problem. I'm afraid that they would freak. I feel a little guilty about keeping this information from them. My friend that is stationed south of me posted a story about this on Facebook and his family in the United States were unanimous in telling him that 'it was time to come home'.
So far there is no cholera in these mountains that I am aware of. The hospital in town is quiet and the doctor I know doesn't seem worried about anything. But if rainy season really does make it worse, then I wonder if any place will be safe.

"You can't hear Christ"

The motorcycle with the PA system set a new standard. The guy had welded a 6 foot pole to the center of his motorcycle, and stuck three, full-sized PA speakers on the top. He could now create as much noise as some of the less noisy cars in the D.R.

His mother must be proud.

The Dominican Republic is considered one of the loudest nations on the planet. I heard that one preacher had lectured his flock that they are “too loud to hear Christ.”

Let me give you an example: A few nights ago several of my fellow PCV trainees decided to go to a local club. We discovered that it didn’t open until 10pm, so we went across the street to a colmado (i.e. local corner store).
Oops! Gotta stop to fill in a blank: people here don’t go to bars to drink – they go to the colmados. It’s the second biggest social gathering place in the D.R. after church.
The colmado in question had an 8-foot tower of speakers alongside it. It was blasting meringue music at ear-splitting levels into the street. You could feel the music in your chest. The only thing unusual about this was the number and quality of speakers. Other than that, this is pretty normal for the D.R.
Even on neighborhood side streets, the colmados will set up speaker system and blast music. Often they only have 4 or 5 songs in their music collection, and will play them over and over again every night.

After having a few Presidente’s and small bottles of really strong rum, some of the trainees decided to try the club (now open for business). I wanted to finish my drink. About half of them returned to the colmado 10 minutes later. Their complaint: the club was too loud.

Now here’s where the story gets amusing.

A little while later an SUV drove by the colmado playing some latin rap music. They decided to compete with the colmado’s music system. And you know what? They won! The SUV drowned out the colmado. The entire back of the SUV was nothing but modern speakers.
The noise was so deafening that I started to get physically ill and had to leave, but not before I saw several cute, young, Dominican girls gathering around the back of the SUV.
That’s when I realized why the Dominican guys invested so much of what little money they have in speakers.

There are no laws against noise. When you want to advertise an event you hire a guy with a huge sound system on the top of his car and he drives around the neighborhood, playing your message at deafening levels.

Most Dominicans have the ability to tune out the noise. It doesn’t matter whether they approve or disapprove of the noise. Their culture prevents them from protesting it.

For instance, no one leaves their doors closed during the day if they are home. When you want to visit a neighbor, you don’t call ahead of time. You simply walk right through their open front door and yell for them. Most interior rooms don’t have doors at all.

I’m willing to bet that you can get into any house in the Dominican Republic simply by standing before the front door. Within a few minutes you will be invited by the woman of the house to come in and take a seat, even if she’s never met you and doesn’t know who you are. Then she will serve you a small cup of coffee.
To do otherwise would be considered rude. I know because it happened to me when I accidently showed up at the wrong house once.

It’s a far different mentality than in America.

Let me give you an example: My host family and I were sitting around the table eating dinner one night, when some of the neighborhood kids climbed over the house and dropped into the backyard. They were only about 5-8 years old and were loudly playing.
The kids then ran through the open backdoor, right past all of us sitting around the table, and out the front door of the house. They then repeated the entire thing again.
My host family not only didn’t protest, they didn’t even appear to notice. They continued to eat and talk amongst themselves.

It seems the noise issue and the open-door issue are related. The Dominicans have traded their personal privacy for a sense of community and trust.
The children play in the street and no one fears for their safety because they are watched over by everyone, so no one would dare harm them. Everyone knows everyone because everyone visits everyone whenever they want.
On the other hand, everyone knows everyone else’s business. What you do in your own home is the subject of much speculation. You can’t expect even the smallest amount of privacy unless you take extra steps to ensure it…and that will get everyone talking.

The Grasshopper Culture

A retiring Peace Corps doctor (that reminded me a lot of Doctor Ruth) told me yesterday that the Dominican Republic was "grasshopperland". She was referring to Asop's Fable about the ant and the grasshopper.
This is the land of "manana manana". The people here live for the day and don't do a lot of thinking about tomorrow.

This thinking extends to the government, which likes to build things but never bothers to maintain it. A good example of this is the brand-spanking new subway in Santo Domingo that puts most subway systems in the United States to shame. Meanwhile the roads are falling apart to such a degree that many are practically impassible without an SUV. In fact, some roads in my Pantoja neighborhood are even a danger to pedestrians.

It doesn't stop there. Running water is spotty at best in almost the entire country, but walk down almost any road and you'll eventually run across water from a broken water-main leaking to the surface.
I've been told there is a lot of machismo involved in building something and putting your name on it, but none in fixing it when it breaks. This is why most of the money-making businesses in the D.R. are owned by foreigners.

You can see this thinking manifested, tragically, in the educational system.

The Dominican Republic constitution requires the government to spend 4% of GDP on the educational system. The government currently spends about 2%, and even that is mostly directed at the small university system, leaving the primary school system impoverished. The D.R. educational system ranks nearly last in every category in the world.
This means that the teachers have to purchase classroom supplies...when they get paid, which isn't often. The morale of public school teachers is abysmal.

One thing there isn't a lack of is computer labs. You can find them in the most remote campos where electricity is infrequent. Often NGO's will dump thousands of dollars in expensive equipment on the community with no training or instructions. The computers will find their way to some dusty office and sit there.
I was at one of these sites last week. A veteran PCV and myself went to set up the lab. We discovered that it had been running for two years. Huge framed pictures of the graduating classes graced the walls.
While rebuilding the computers and installing programs the local professor of this computer lab sat down to talk to us. After trying to convince us to attend his church and failing, he made a comment that I found very revealing. He said, "I would like to learn how to install a program."

It makes a person wonder what exactly he had been teaching all these kids for the last two years.

The Culture of the GuaGua's

My first real culture shock in the Dominican Republic came when I saw the young mother hand her baby to a perfect stranger. It was a "You're no longer in Kansas" moment.

Public transit in Santo Domingo is not for the faint of heart.

The lowest level of public transit is the "motocoach". It's simply a motorcycle, and people ride on the back. When I say people, I mean multiple people. It's not unusual to see three people riding a motorcycle at once, and four is not unheard of.

The second lowest level of public transit are the "carro publicos", what you might call Gypsy Cabs in New York City.
Imagine a mid-90s Honda Civic or Toyota Carrola. It's side mirrors are missing, probably from sideswiping other cars. The interior door handles are broken, so if you need to get out of the car you have to reach through the window and use the door handle on the outside.
The backseat can comfortably handle two people, three adults can be wedged in, but every single one of them will insist on jamming four adults in, plus two more adults in the front, passenger seat. Can't fit the fourth person in the back seat? Then you'll have to pay for two people.
Of course "paying for two" means it will cost you about $1.40 rather than the normal $0.70 for a 2 kilometer ride.

The next level up in the public transit hierarchy is the GuaGua.
These are usually converted tourist buses, although they can be as large as full buses, or as small as a minivan. Their routes, stops, and schedules can vary depending on conditions and the temperament of the driver. The names of the GuaGua's (for instance, the 10-B bus) have no logical order.
The most notable feature of the GuaGua is the comprador. He literally hangs out of an open side door and yells at people standing on the sidewalk that there is room available on the GuaGua. He slaps the cab with his hand to tell the driver to stop for a customer. Often he jumps off the GuaGua while still moving in heavy traffic to help a customer on. He's also the one who collects the money.
Like the carro publico, they can always squeeze in one more person. If there are a row of seats - two on one side and one on the other - they have installed a folding seat that drops into the walking corridor between the seats. Think that's enough? Of course not! The next person on will sit, half-on, half-off of the folding seat and one of the other seats.
Hope you don't mind being jammed against strangers.

Not only are there no seat belt laws, there's no seat belts. There also doesn't seem to be any concern to drinking alcohol while driving. I've seen liter bottles of beer being drank and passed between motorcycles driving on crowded streets.
If that sounds a little crazy, then you should see the sober ones drive. Mad Max has nothing on these people. There are no lanes on the highways and streets. The lines in the road are simply ignored. The most aggressive driver is rewarded by being first.

I couldn't help but laugh when I saw one driver of a carro publico I was in reach out the window to "shove" away another car that came too close.
Another time a blaring horn made me notice that a GuaGua was getting too close to the GuaGua I was in. Then I realized that a carro publico had managed to get between the two GuaGua's and was trying to pass them.

And speaking of blaring horns, the traffic can be deafening. It's not just the blaring horns. All the engines sound as if they are about to explode. If there are mufflers on the motorcycles then none of them work.
And don't get me started about the exhaust. Having the window open on public transit is bad for your health. My friend said it best when he told me, "When I get back to the United States, if I hear someone try to tell me about air quality I'm going to slap them."

And yet the most culturally significant event that happened to me had nothing to do with this craziness.
It was right around 5pm on a weekday. The GuaGua was packed to the gills, as usual. I was trapped far in the back. One young mother was waiting on a corner with her baby in her arms. The comprador slapped on the side of the bus to get it to stop and he jumped off while it was still slowing down.
I couldn't hear what was said, but it was obvious that she was tired from a long day. Her shoulders sagged when she looked at the GuaGua and saw that there were no seats. Then something that I didn't expect happened.
The comprador said something and she handed him her baby. He took the baby onto the GuaGua, as she followed. He then handed the baby to another woman who was already seated. The women obviously did not know each other. The young mother looked at the woman and simply said, "gracias". Nothing more.
She handed her precious baby to a stranger, who handed it to another stranger, and was never concerned with its safety its enough to even look at the baby again until a seat opened up.

No one was surprised except me. No one commented. This was simply part of what was expected in the culture.
There is a lesson about community to be learned here.

[note: These are all my opinions alone and do not in any way reflect on the Peace Corps.]