Cultural Integration in La Culata

So how do you feel about bread with ketchup and a milky-white substance with no flavor in a glass for breakfast? Yeah, those are my thoughts exactly.

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I’m going to start with the punch line of this story first because it’s just too good. “We decided to raffle off a chicken in order to earn money for our Sex Ed. Group.”

Okay, so it’s not exactly a “Sex Ed.” Group, it’s the Escojo Mi Vida group here in La Culata, but Sexual Education is a key component of the curriculum, and it really spices up the punch line if you say it like that.

Anyway, it all started last week when our Escojo group was invited to a Halloween Party in Rodeo, a neighboring community. The Halloween Party had a haunted house and a costume party, a fellow PCV named Melissa organized it alongside her Escojo Group and the party would serve as a fundraiser. Sadly, the night of the party, it rained and so no one from La Culata was able to go since the only way to travel was by Motorcycle and it’s neither safe nor comfortable to travel by motorcycle at night in the rain.

The next day we had our weekly Escojo Mi Vida meeting. After the President and I led a Charla on the reproductive organs (I am getting really good at presenting these by the way, if you’re ever interested in learning about them!), the discussion turned into a planning session for a party. I quickly realized that the group was intending to plan a party that was quite contrary to the wholesome values of both the Peace Corps and Escojo Mi Vida. I interjected quickly, reminding the group that at a function sponsored by Escojo Mi Vida, we could not have any alcohol, we had to maintain control of who was allowed in, and all proceeds had to be used for Escojo Mi Vida initiatives like buying materials or paying for activities rather than to repair the basketball court in Partido or for personal gain.

The idea to have a party died quickly. I felt like the Grinch, stealing away these kids’ hopes and dreams. So I proposed we brainstorm new ideas to fundraise for our group to create a “fondo” or a savings for the group with which we could plan future activities like a graduation party or field trips to various places in the country to learn more. The two ideas we came up with were to host a dinner for the community and sell tickets and to have a raffle. I tried to secretively steer the group away from a community dinner, as we don’t quite have the money or the means to purchase a small pig, care for it for 6 months and then kill/roast it as they were hoping to do.  Maybe someday we’ll get to that level of organization.

Instead, they decided to host a raffle. A raffle for what? Well obviously the easiest, cheapest but most desirable item would be a chicken. You can feed a family with that. So we can buy a chicken for RD$200, sell tickets for RD$15. If each member of the group sells 10 tickets, that’s an income of RD$1,500 minus our chicken, we profit RD$1,300. With that kind of money we can do lots of cool activities, buy plenty of supplies and maybe have ‘brindis’ or treats during our meetings. Moral of the story, we decided to raffle off a chicken in order to earn money for our Sex Ed. Group.

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This morning was one of those cultural learning experiences straight out of a movie, or a Peace Corps recruitment pamphlet. It was layered with lots of those touchy feely teachable moments, and chock-full of sweaty, dirty, multi-generational manual labor. My words probably won’t do it justice, and I didn’t bring my camera…thankfully.

It started last night when I almost didn’t agree to go with my brother, Juan de Dios, to go milking cows at 6am. I selfishly wanted to sleep in, and was on the verge of saying no. I thought, however, that since my Community Diagnostic work begins on Monday (which involves interviewing every household on EVERY detail of their family’s health), that I shouldn’t waste an opportunity to do something new. Gotta make the most out of Every Day right?

So I get out of bed at 5:30am, and to my surprise, I find out that I’m already late. Thanks Juan de Dios. Not only did I make him wait, but I also made a 60-year old man wait, who I had only ever seen at Junta de Vecinos meetings, but never talked to. His name is Cacao (which is the name of a strange yet delicious fruit here). Juan de Dios hopped on his horse and said, “James, start walking!”

The path that he intended for me to walk on was some of the rockiest, most rugged hiking terrain that I’ve ever seen, and remember that it was 5:30am? No light at all, a horse nipping at my heels and what I assumed to be a disgruntled and forcibly tardy old man behind that. Luckily, Juan de Dios was nice enough to hand me a single Christmas light, you know those ones that are on strings that people put on their house. He gave me a single bulb that was wired to a battery as a flashlight. That’s how we hiked a mile and a half to the pasture of cows. Up hills, down hills (mountains really…I live in a mountain range), over a river, through other pastures. I bet it was beautiful, but I couldn’t be sure because it was pitch black.

Just as the sun began to peak over the mountains surrounding us, we arrived at the pasture and set up shop. Two stools, to tires cut in half that acted as feeding buckets for the cows, and five huge empty jugs, waiting for milk. Juan de Dios showed me how to set the cow up, tie it’s legs together to keep it from running away, suckling the calf to start the flow of milk and then how to keep the udder nicely lubricated for easy milking.

When it was my turn, Cacao (our supposedly disgruntled old man friend) let me take over on his cow. It turns out Cacao is just quiet in the morning, and he is actually one of the nicest men I’ve met in La Culata. He directed me from over my shoulder and was laughing heartily as he told me that I was a natural at milking cows. I felt good, and then realized that milking a cow is hard work. My arms got so tired. Thankfully, as I had learned, Cacao is a wonderfully nice man, realized my forearms were not accustomed to squeezing cow-teats for extended periods of time. He assured me that after a few more times I’d be able to do it for hours if I wanted to.

As Cacao worked on the last cow, Juan de Dios and I went on a mini hike to look around and see the sights of the area. We played I-Spy in the mountains. It was adorable I assure you.

We had one final task with the cows, cleaning them. I was handed a long stick, Juan de Dios picked up a whip and Cacao put on one of the pesticide spraying backpacks full of ‘cow-cleaner’. Juan de Dios and I were swinging and shouting at cows to corral them into corners while Cacao rinsed them off. It was terrifying and thrilling all at the same time. Then, we cleaned ourselves up, I hopped on the horse loaded with containers of fresh milk, and we began the hike back.

I am forever grateful for the fact that I knew how to ride a horse. That ability gained me so much street-cred this morning. They were laughing and excited that the Americano could handle a horse through some rugged terrain. Now I have definitely not ridden a horse on such difficult paths and hills full of rocks and steep inclines, but I pretended that I was a pro, and made it through the experience quite successfully.

We ended up going all the way to the other end of town to Dona Nuris’ house to give her the milk to boil and prepare. While she did that, we shucked some corn and fed the chickens. Waiting for us were steaming bowls of boiled plantains, avocado and freshly squeezed juice. That was one of the most delicious breakfasts I’ve had in this country (even though it’s the same thing everyone eats almost everyday).

Then it started to rain, so Juan de Dios and I sat at Dona Nuris’ house until almost 11 chatting and watching the rain roll over the mountains. She served us some of the freshly boiled milk, and we ate some oranges from her orange tree. All the while, they were loving how the American kept saying that he wanted to learn everything about life in La Culata, including how to work like a member of the community. It was a great morning.

And to think, I never would have gotten to know two people like that, I never would have realized how much work gets done while I sleep until 7am, and I never would have gained all of that extra confianza if I hadn’t begrudgingly agreed to get my butt out of bed at 5:30am to milk a cow. I’d like to think I can call myself a cowboy now as I rode a horse through the mountains to tie up cows, milk them, wrangle them and then set them free to roam in the pasture all before breakfast.

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Let me set the scene: it’s 9:30pm, you just spent a full day visiting, milking cows, playing dominos, eating way too much food, explaining for the 100^th time why you can’t attend church and avoiding the rain. You get to your room and all you want to do is sit down at your desk, get a little bit of reading done and then go to sleep. There’s no electricity, so you pick up the five cent lighter that you bought at a colmado to light the candle that permanently sits on your desk for moments such as these. As the spark of the flint brings the lighter to life, your previously empty sight bursts into life with light. In the split second that the light turns on, you see a giant tarantula sitting on the desk right by your hand. Surprised, you accidentally let the lighter turn off and you jump from your seat. When you regain enough sense to light the lighter again, there’s nothing on the desk.

…try doing anything.

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I had a great conversation with my host father, Apolinar. He and I haven’t really had any quality conversations until now, mostly because he is nearly impossible to understand. But my Spanish has gotten a little bit better, and I’ve gotten more used to the types of conversations that happen around here, so we got a chance to talk. I asked him about how he learned to work with agriculture (as that’s what he does all-day everyday).  We then had a conversation about where people make money and why he thinks that people can’t make money on farming anymore (he blames technology).

Our conversation was very circuitous, and we continually came back to the fact that in the United States we don’t eat dense-starch roots for every meal (i.e. yucca, batatas, name, plantains, etc.). Then we got into a very heated discussion about how he felt that the lacking work ethic of youth is going to be extremely detrimental to the future of agriculture. He told me how it’s extremely difficult to find young people who are not afraid to work hard rather than to go to school. I don’t know how much I agreed with the whole work v. school argument (I will definitely have to do some more thinking on that topic). I did, however, say that I agreed that a lot of people, even in the United States, are afraid or not willing to work really hard and put in the time that’s required for tasks (such as manual labor).

We talked about how it takes courage to work a lot in a conuco (think larger than a home garden but not a farm), because you don’t see the results for a long time. You have to have courage to be willing to put in weeks of work without fruits of your labor before you’ll be able to get anything out of it, but when you DO get the reward, it feels great.

I told him that I feel similarly when I look at my work to come with the Peace Corps. I know that I need to sort of ‘leap of faith’ it for a few months with no results, work really hard without any tangible success before I’ll hopefully be able to see any results (if I even do get to see any).

He smiled at me, nodded, and then said, “So they really don’t grow yucca over there?”

My glamorous metaphor for my Peace Corps service might have been lost on Apolinar, but I was glad to have the conversation regardless.