Fun things to do in PUEBLO!

Yefrey here. We finished the Garden. Here are some photos of the finished product-all inspired by Jake. Betsy planted yesterday and now we just have to pray that they grow. We loaded up with lots of dung, so it should be as fertile as....nevermind. Its fertile.

BATTLESTAR GALLISTICA!!!!!!!
I thought that the word “Gallistica” printed professionally upon my ticket stub may be indicating something sci-fi, something pseudo STAR WARS even. I was wrong. It turned out to be something even better: Cockfights.
My friend Alberto “El Fuerte,” ran by the house early in the afternoon to take me to the local ring for the Tuesday night chicken fights. Here, in short, is a synopsis of the highlights of the process of the evening.
We showed up just as the owner’s were handing off their roosters for weigh-in. The people can get one brought out to them in order to look over beak, claw and whatever you look at to decide if a rooster is “listo” or ready to fight, and to be bet upon. The best fighting roosters are surprisingly small weighing in under four pounds. A portly fellow informed me that over four and “those fatties just get lazy.” During this time I discovered that my friend Guillermo, from a neighboring city, had come to fight one of his roosters. The day before, he had told me that he had discovered that his rooster was “ready.” I asked to see, and knew at first glance that the rooster was, in fact, ready. It was running laps around the cage and appeared to be on the meanest cocktail of drugs imaginable.
After everyone eats dried corn-on-the-cob, the competitors (owners) all meet under a tin awning and challenge one-another to fight. If your rooster is of noble lineage, it is harder to get a fight, and if you were to win you would have to agree to less money than if the other wins. A rooster showing scars of past fighting is hard to get a fight for unless you are looking for big money. There is a second scale apparatus (with two flannel bags) in the awning so that you can literally weigh your rooster against another’s. If you are too drunk to know that you are also an idiot, apparently no one will agree to fight your chicken. I am pretty sure that this is also where the “ladies of the evening” strut around wearing only mesh, looking for the big spenders and the out-of towners. Our town is really small, so we only had two. One was way bigger than me, and her bulldike friend looked surly, so I was unable to get a photo for the blog.
Next, most everyone eats viveres, which are some kind of roots.
After viveres, the competitors go into a cage and get some guys to cut off the real claws of the rooster, and using a combination of tape, and some kind of melty-goop, they replace them with artificial ones that are about the exact same size as the originals. They are about two and a half inches long and about as thick as an eight-penny nail. My friend Guillermo is on the left side of the picture holding his rooster during this process.
Note the photo of Alberto. The gentleman over his shoulder was my favorite competitor. He had two roosters in the fights and ironically, mowed-down on chicken for the majority of the evening.
Finally you enter the ring. There, a couple of handlers swing the roosters around and fake-charge them with an innocent by-stander-rooster to make sure that they are ready to “bring it.” Once the riling ritual is completed, they let them go and get-the-hell-out-of-the-way.
Chicken fights look pretty much like they do in the photo. In addition to pecking, they try and bite the other rooster in the face while simultaneously completing a double-crescent-kick directed toward the same feature of the opponent. It is hard to tell which rooster is winning, until their ankle tape starts getting bloody, or unless they are white.
This was also the season for fighting sans-plumage on the legs. I am still not sure how to say this in Spanish, and am constantly resented for my questions as to why the chickens “have no pants.” Since I can’t get an explanation, I am assuming this is for the way that it seems to emphasize kick-speed.
So my two favorite fights of the night:
-Fight #4 The Indio chicken quickly had both eyes pecked out and was blind, but, though some miracle, was able to kick the white rooster so hard in the head, that it had no equilibrium. After an epic back-and-fourth dictated by the white one getting the courage to take a peck, Helen Keller was able to sever some artery in the gringo with a series of wild kicks into which whitey stumbled. The bloodbath was breathtaking.
-Fight #8 (was supposed to be #5, who knows what happened) This was between my friend Guillermo’s fly-weight indio and a local guy named Marino’s Blanquito (whitey). Now a little history about Marino-This guy calls me Matteo all the time in spite of the fact that I have explained to him that I am in fact, a different white guy and not the Peace Corps volunteer that lived here a while back.
Betting was crazy during this fight, additionally the white rooster was possibly the most beautiful rooster that I have ever seen. It had the ability to hover in the air and kick 10 times vs. the typical 2-kick of most competitors. It had a really long white tail that gave it amazing stability. Once these two features were observed in the ring, lots of gamblers tried to switch things up. The stands were in uproar. One guy even tried to jump in the ring. So whitey was really looking good for about 3 minutes, with Guillermo’s scrapper doing a lot of bobbing-and weaving. Then they both went up and, though it was kicking way over it’s head, the indie somehow came down with the white roosters head stuck to his foot. The announcer had to physically separate the indie from the dead white beauty because he had driven his spur straight through one side of the bird’s scull and out the other. Shit. Guillermo won at least 4 thousand pesos, which has got to be like a million dollars U.S.-but my math is not that great. Since Guillermo's chicken was El Mejor, I named it Sherry in honor of her bithday. Sherry, may you have similar success with all of your adversaries in the coming years (cuidado Sam) ;)
One might think that I would be affected by the carnage that I saw in the ring that night, or that I may find fault in the frivolity of the lives spent for our entertainment, but every time a looser folded up his shredded rooster and sulked past my perch on the cyclone-fence, I was left with one pervading thought…Delicious.

Garden Work mañana

I only have like 10 days left here in my new home, codenamed: Todd . I had quite a lot of work to get done with various projects that I had started in my 100 days here. Crunch time. I hired a local guy to help me out. He doesn't charge much, but man, is he bossy. Plus, I am pretty sure that he came to work drunk yesterday. He kept loosing his balance and falling into the hole, and this one time, when we were carring a huge sack of goat doody across this little stream, he slipped in the mud and left me to carry all of the load by myself.

My buddy Josh came and visited a while back and I took him on a burly hike through the jungle to some crazy waterfalls. It was so thick that we had to machete our way through for hours. When we got there, my dominican friend tried to get me to jump into what I would clasify as a "whirlpool on steroids." I thought that he was kidding me and then he went in-jeans and all. it ended up being awsome and I wan't sucked down another waterfall.
On the way back, where we had to hack our way again, I got bit by a tarantula. When they get on you, they just don't let go. I had to pull it off with my other hand. I swelled up douggie-style, but a benedryl and a good nap set me straight (one has little choice after taking that much benedryl.)

I talked to some of the locals, specifically the doctor (Girl about a year younger than me, dresses like a slizzle). They told me to rub some menthyl on it. Seriously, that is the cure for everything....except when one needs stiches, then the cure is "try and hitch-hike to El Seibo to go to the hospital. and pick up some needle and thread on your way, they won't have that there." I find all of this amazing, since I see little kids playing with machetes and big knives everywhere that I go.
laters,
jeffro

Sssssssssssssssssssst!

This past weekend, via three different guaguas, Betsy and YO ventured north to the city of Sabana de la Mar. The purpose of the trip was to attend an all-important Mini-VAC* meeting, our goal, rather: to have a lovely vacation from the home site.
The meeting was extremely well attended. I always make it clear that I am not a volunteer, and that I just came because I heard that ther`d be Americans. I also brought my favorite crackers, Club Social, which I distributed to all attendees at a preliminary staging point.

We ate at a lovely open-air-tiki-bar sort of place. I had my first local experience with fish. I assumed this was fairly safe because I could see the very water where the little guys were being harvested from my seat in the restaurant. My review: excellent.
After getting all of the business out of the way, a local volunteer wheeled and dealed until a group of us had a ride and a boat tour through Los Haitises Park. We rode out of town on the back of a pickup, and after completing some necessary errands (as is the norm here), we arrived at a lovely little river inlet-thingy. At first, they attempted to cram us into a boat with a bunch of hotel guests, but Colleen knew that something was

up, and they redistributed the guests to a different vessel.
The tour wound about through a “river” that somehow penetrated an expansive forest of Mangrove trees. We then hit open-water and motored out to and around some islands and to a few different docks where we exited and learned all about the usage of the islands`caves by the indigenous peoples. Our tour guide was a real hard ass on the rules (the first Dominican that I have seen this way), and wouldn’t allow us to take photos of the pictographs. Fortunately, through the miracle of Microsoft Paint, I have reproduced a few from memory in near perfect detail. Enjoy.
Also pictured is a cave relief carving (I believe of a Muppet eating his hand), our crazy bus that we took through Jurassic Park (door opened), an ever-so-holy Catholic rosary with the addition of a Spongebob, and……Our crazy pirate boat- Now this boat was delightful in many ways, especially when the motor quit in the middle of nowhere on the return trip. Fortunately, we had the guy that had driven us there in his pick-up to help our shifty guide re-start the damn thing. Four times. On a few of the longer “breaks” that we had, Travis, a fellow non-volunteer attempted to paddle us back with the broken kayak paddle that we had as backup. He might have made a little headway if the boat had not weighed about a ton, and if we had not been on the freaking ocean. Anyway, we eventually made it back. (I am pretty sure that we were just running out of gas.)
The weekend was topped off with a quality visit with several volunteers, and some good eating.

Also attached are some post-hoc photos of our visit to Jakes. I think that there are scenes from our many garden lessons, and also those from my work on Betsy’s garden here in her site, which is a secret.
Tally-ho
-Jeffro

*The Cuerpo de Paz is quite fond of abbreviating every

arbitrary title possible. This

is possibly

limited to
PCDR. In this country, there is not-so clever name and abbreviation for everything… for example: ASCHOSEYPEMI=Associated Chuauffers of Seibo/Pedro Sanchez/Mitches=crappy little van line running regular routs between Mitches and El Seibo, definitely not worthy of such a lengthy anything. So Learn your PCV lingo….ET, COS, IST, ISLT, PDT, MOs, APCD, VAC-and don’t mistake your PCV for a PCVL.

Dame Cinco peso

From last week

The Michera. Not just a person who hales from the coastal town in the north, but more specifically and importantly, the guagua (small bus) that runs betwixt the capital and Miches, passing through Betsy’s pueblo. The Michera is the Guagua that all other guaguas should aspire to become. With exception to a full-contact loading that takes place upon arrival of the bus at the two ends, traveling via this bus is an extremely tranquillo experience. The cobradors tend to be soft-spoken and light of build, winning their fares with respect and logic, rather than volume. As for the radio, my eardrums rarely drone on into the night following the 2+hours en route.
The Michera is typically on time. It also departs last from the capital, but magically gets one home over an hour before the Seibo Caliente and a "short bus" ride, and even quicker than an Expresso with the same tiny partner. And for less! Yes, it is ten to twenty pesos less to ride than all other options.
In this country, it is not so much a lowering of American standards as a redefinition of the word "standard" itself. "American" must first be discarded, as to come to a foreign land with the US as the primary point of reference is merely assenine. Then follows a closer look at the original definition: "a rule of measure." Possibly change this out for the more militant definition, "a banner of war." Because we are at war here! –They are, at least, the volunteers. Every day they are fighting the good fight against lethargy, el flojo, tardiness, unhealthiness, sense.
It is so that one finds themselves frequently embracing those few local items that are all that the locale is not. So when that beautiful Michera passes by, frequently overtaking one of the local "short buses" in the process, please forgive me if I swoon for just a moment. I am probably searching for an impromptu reason to go jetting off to the Capital, or San Pedro, at 3 in the afternoon. I dream of these justifications, if just to entertain that part of me that desires to ride to someplace that would be a little more like the Michera.
On a slightly unrelated note, Betsy figured out bread. The hole-pan thingy, the olla de horno turns out the greatest comfort. I doubt that a magical pan that produced Hershey bars would be more appreciated. Hassah!

Mom told me that Coke will kill off parasites, so we have been trying to drink as much as possible. the photo is of me doing just that.

-jeffro

Betsy was gone at a meeting. I am not sure how, but a chicken shat in the house without me noticing. Why?

In the United States, or Allá as it is known here, I have found circulating, many shirts and logos of foreign design. If I were the logo-wearing type, I might happily wear such an item without really questioning its meaning. To me it would simply read “FOREIGN,” or “SPANISH,” or “SOME ASIAN LETTERS.” -You get the picture.
Here, this is taken to the extreme. I’d say that nearly 90% of t-shirts are printed in English. When it comes to children, it is just quite common to get second hand clothing from the US. Yes, there are many members of “Oak Park Little League” and “Meadow Hills Glee Club” running rampant in the streets of the DR, usually sans pants.
When one encounters older girls, “I like BOYS” and “I didn’t know he was your boyfriend” are more common, due to size availability and the like. Shirts worn by muchachos are more likely to read “Don’s Choppers” and “Born to Ride.” Professionals frequently wear work shirts with the names of their former owners still lingering about the breast pocket. I doubt that this trend is continuous with popular fashions in the US.
My friends here have suggested that I start a business where people pay me a peso to impart upon them the meaning of their various printed attire. I think that I might like doing this for free. After all, I’m no capitalist.
Yesterday, the 50-something-year-old father of our friend Ascacia, a fairly stoic character, strode solemnly about town with a smart little number that read:

Don’t scare me.
I poop easily.

I was so excited that I pulled Betsy off the road in order to stand on this family’s porch to see the shirt. I had no game plan past getting her on the porch and some serious awkwardness ensued as we stared at the lettering. Perhaps next time, I will chuckle to myself. Perhaps not.

-Jeffrey.