Remembering Quisqueya

It's been two years since I've returned from living in Santiago, D.R., so I'll post some pics and try out the blogger-pic options of blogger. This is, of course, preparation for JoBurg.

This is a neat postcard of D.R. that might be hard to see. I stayed in Santiago, the second biggest city on the Mid West part of the island. As you can see, D.R. shares the island of Hispanola with Haiti. It is in the Caribbean. While in D.R. I was able to visit Haiti and Cuba. Those pics will come later if you all are nice to me.

I took a community service class and chose to work in Los Cirrulitos, a neighborhood in the northern section of Santiago where women were struggling with finding work, maintaing their homes and just being happy. Here, I ran workshops with the women of the community to talk about issues of survival, sexuality, body image, the media, etc. I loved spending Monday afternoons here I felt like I was home with friends.

I lived in La Zurza, on Calle 6. This is my American La Zurza crew, (minus Sandy, Annie, Rachel, Ramon, Camden...)I walked to school every day, unless I was too lazy and took a concho (sorta like $1 cabs in Bklyn), but that wasn't often. Along the way to school we dealt with rabid dogs (Audrey, the girl in the middle was bitten twice by a dog on my street), horses, construction workers, hills which broke shoes (Tulani - in pink, definitely broke her sandals going up the hill) and of course, the hot sun. I didn't appreciate it as much as I should've.

This is my host sister, Isabelle. She is from Haiti and is studying in Santiago more long term. She's been living with our host family for 3 years now and we bonded. Isabelle is fluent in four languages (Creole, French, Spanish and English), and is attemping to learn Italian. Suffice it to say, she was my idol and one of my key support systems. We talked about everything from politics, Dominican-Haitian relations, U.S. imperalism, the lastest music (she's in love with 50cent and Shaggy, I feel in love with T-Vice) and boy drama. Te falta muchisimo, Zou Zou!

Ingris was another amazing support system for me. Most families have daily or live in maids in pretty middle income to wealthy families. Ingris is from the countryside and she's been living with our family for a couple of years. This girl did everything in the house, cooking, cleaning laundry. Everything! And she did it all well. She also made fun of me a lot and I loved it! She reminded me of my best friend, Keilyn. Ingris mainly made fun of my really bad Spanish accent and grammer, and we swapped English lessons with Spanish lessons. She also got me addicted to soap-operas and arroz con leche (for dinner). I miss her a lot as well. I have to admit, most of my Spanish improved by spending time with Ingris, I would watch her cook, clean, etc. while we talked about life. Oh, and when I would go around the block to hang out with Jen at her house and wanted to come home, I would call Ingris and she would meet me up the block and walk with me cuz I was really scared of the dog on our block. She made fun of me for that, too, but you know what...I never got bit! (Although I was chased TWICE!)

This was my non-American crew. We hung out mostly at Alexandra's house (she's not pictured, but the girl in the white halter is her sister), and watched tv, cooked food, surfed the internet and chilled. Fun times!This is my family minus my host dad (who was never really around anyway). My host mom was really sweet, my host brother and sister were terrors. By the fourth month, I was ready to give them the spanking they deserved, especially because of the way they treated Ingris.

More to come later! I'm still trying to get the hang of this blog posting thing.