The action of extrañar The Brigada Mojada departed on the morning guaga out of Mancebo, leaving behind concrete tanks, Doña tears, and a CD of “anything but” bachata tunes.
No me olvides mi hija…Va a volver…
No preoccupes Doña voy a volver para la Navidad. Siempre, tu eres familia de mi…
After five weeks in a campo house you realize you become attached.
To the early morning sounds of the Haitian workers heading to the fields. To the guagua rumbling up the road.
Your Doña chastising you to Come Come…eat eat…Happy Happy. Fuerte! Squeezing her biceps to convince you that all those carbohydrates build muscle. And then, of course, she checks to see that your tummy has grown a watermelon worth of viveres.
Those mornings you make the trek to the river to bath alone, protected by the rush of water and the shadows. Before the first hot rim of sunshine catches you sin verguenza.
The afternoon cafe…layered in various mixes of concrete, carefully sipping from tiny porcelain cups.
Parading down to the river like gringo Pide Pipers, all the kids of Mancebo in tow…down, down, down the dirt track and up the riverbed to the waterfall.
You become vecina, amiga, trabajadora, familia, mi hija…mami.
A little less extranjera a little more compañera everyday.
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I arrived in Mancebo with a little bit of home…some maple syrup and a pancake dinner. Dried cranberries. An album of my family and photos of lobsters and puffins and moose. I showed the kids how to walk my slack line.
I left my Doña with a shell-adorned tap stand, a card of thanks, and many abrazos.
...
We left pizza cooked over an open fire. Our first attempt with the pizza stone ending in an explosion when the rock overheated and shattered, throwing pizza everywhere. The kids still ate it.
We left a night of heavy dancing in the neighboring town of Los Palmaritos’…a night with the famous mellizas.
I left a Mancebo novio. Yes, I went dar a vuelta and kissed a boy with a blue shirt. His name was Alex. A guapo tomato picker that I fell for on my Cumpleaño. Him in his sweet smelling, clean blue shirt and I reeking of cerveza, my clothing drenched…in keeping with the birthday tradition in Mancebo. On the week of my departure, I told him we had to be friends. He still promises he’ll wait faithfully for my return.
We left with photos of a journey to find Savana Abajo, a pilgrimage arriba 5 hours…beyond the noria (the village’s spring source), beyond the tilled habichuela fields, over the dry cactus lined hillsides, through the mist-sheltered pine forests. A trek for the farmers, passable only by foot or mule or horse. An amazing journey that took us to, well, a little campo town smaller than Mancebo. A place where the Colmado music played softly enough for conversation, and the town’s water source for cleaning, bathing, watering, drinking, was nothing but a trickle of river too shallow even to cool our tired bones. After a Doña packed lunch of sardines, yucca and mashed potatoes, washed down with a strong cup of campo cafe, we made for home, crawling the last three hours along a dusty carretera (roadway).
And we left the soundtrack of Mancebo, wishing farewell to our musical friend Benedicto. A little old man with a big smile and an even bigger beaded cruz hanging down his belly. The self-appointed town cantador, a broken record of heart-strung love songs about loving women who already have novios… “voy a demonstrar, yo soy un macho de hombre”…Benedicto joined us on our work brigades, our evening fiestas, or just in passing. Always ready to sing the three songs in his repertoire…and the only songs the Brigada Mojada now know by heart, for life.
So now I'm back in the city...a sweet breeze of dusty fumes ushering me back to the life of horns, cat calls and overloaded stereo systems. I thought I had adjusted to the Caribbean climate. Hells no. Its just tha Mancebo appreciates a bit of fresca.
Days in the campo blur together. Many days layered in various types of concrete mix, many meals of viveres and aguactae and many afternoons marching down the giant hill to the rio to swim in the charco and scale the cliffs along the waterfall.
It was a time of mixed emotions...our CBT instructor became very ill during the second week of CBT...we thought it was dengue. He was shipped to the states and promptly diagnosed with Leukemia. All we heard throughout training was that he was receiving treatment and the recovery process would take months. His absence certainly shook the morale of the group.
Thankfully a nearby second year water volunteer, Bailey, was able to step in to work with us on theory and support our technical training. Our local mason, Felix "the Gato", and our local project liason, Raphael, took up the slack. All incredibly giving, wonderful people. With their help we built a sedimentation tank atop the community"s water storage tank, a river crossing for the pipeline close to the spring source, and in our final project, we installed three piletas (tap stands) at the beginning of the village water distribution system. My Doña was one of the homes to receive a tap and I capped it with a white snail shell I had found on a hiking trip the previous week. I felt like it was my going away gift, a thank you for being my Dominican mama for five weeks.
And then there was the anticipated day when we all received word of our site assignments. The country water project coordinator drove up from the city to give us each our little red dot on the map. My red dot was a no name town on the map, closest to Yasica Abajo, a little town enroute to Puerto Plato. I was told the community had mujeres lidres, aligning with my initial request to be stationed in a pueblo where I could engage in secondary health promotion projects with women.
After the site assignment, I didn't really think a whole lot about my little red dot, my future home. But as I left the campo, left my Doña in tears and waved goodbye to the kids and the families lined along the roadside, I realized how much I'm going to miss Mancebo and how scared I am that my project site might not invite me with the same warm amistad.
And yes I found a Dominican novio...escondido that is. It was a little crush. A trial run. Its a bit hard not to find a crush when the young men are all guapo, available and dying to find an American chica. Whether for the thrill or the green card, were in high demand. And this is no small statement...in the last four years about 50 women volunteers have married Dominican men compared with about 4 men in the same period of time. Yeah, the hombres are toastie. Jen's been fighting off a fifteen year old who sent her no less than three love notes flowered in prose about how he cares for her more than his own mother. She repeatedly told him she was not interested and would not speak to him and that a relationship was, in fact, illegal. He retorted that in three years they'd be legal and she should keep his number, he'd be waiting. He continued to walk her to class and around the village, in his words, to keep the Hatians at bay.
I suppose with that type of behavior I shouldn't have been surprised when I invited a boy to take a walk that in reality hed been waiting for me to drop the question even before a gringita ever stepped foot in Mancebo.
His name is Alex.
So basically campo love consists of dancing, taking walks in the dark, talking, besitas. He'd give me little gifts of halls cough drops.
He went on a hike with our group to a neighboring town of Savana Abajo and submitted himself to about 9 miles of hiking on his day off from harvesting tomatoes on his father's conuco.
He continually and emphatically told me that he would wait for me for always and that I was the one and only girl in his life.
And I did my part, stumbling through unrehearsed spanish, to explain how the future was uncertain and that my promise to serve in Peace Corps cripled any opportunity for us to share a sustainable relationship. That we should embrace friendship and aprovechar the few moments together.
Basically, as I look back, I created my own telenovela, a “real world” Mancebo. As with all campo romances...the escondido front meant nada. My Doña knew, the neighbors knew, Justin's seven little brothers all knew (and frequently spied on us). Oh, and I kept up my end of the bargain, providing a daily live journal for my agua compañeros. The jokes and comments were endless.
I guess I'm writing this because, well, driving back to Santo Domingo in Saturday's early morning light, I couldn't help but feel like I had torn a little piece out of a campo boy's heart. And I think I learned a lesson about lovin' in the campo and the truth about men and women in the DR.
