There appears to be a theme in my life. It is, “What will James find in his mosquitero today?” Honestly, I don’t understand my luck. Mosquiteros are made to keep animals and monsters out of your bed while you sleep. Every night I check to make sure it’s properly tucked in, and every morning I properly tuck it back in when I leave my bed.
It started off small. A cockroach. No biggie. Then I made the leap to a rat, and honestly I don’t think anything will be as bad as that one. This afternoon, however, as I was cleaning my room, I looked at my bed and to my surprise I did find a tarantula scurrying across the inside of my mosquitero netting. That means I probably slept with that little guy last night (the most action I’ve gotten since getting to this country, just a little more than the previously mentioned Dona Side Hug).
Now it wasn’t the biggest one, so that’s good, and I wasn’t actually in my bed when I found it, which is awesome. But seriously, I don’t think other volunteers are finding creatures in their mosquiteros as regularly as I am. What the what?!
So yesterday was the day that I knew would eventually arrive during my Peace Corps service here in the Dominican Republic. I was brought to a cock-fight. I knew that it was going to happen some day, and that when that day arrived, I would have to just accept it for the culturally important event that it is. Let me tell you about it, because it was honestly fascinating. A kind of fascinating that I hope to never endure again.
I traveled to a nearby town with a group of twenty-somethings from La Culata. We planned to leave at 9am, but with the whole “Dominican Time” we didn’t leave until 12, just after eating lunch. We arrived at a colmado with a Cock-Fighting ring behind it. There were probably about 75 men all walking around, drinking beer and rum, about a third of them carrying roosters in their arms as though they were carrying a baby. Stroking the plumage, keeping the rooster calm and clean.
My friends and I found a table to steak out as our own, bought a few beers and surveyed the land. There were a few tables of a strange, casino-like gambling game played with 6 dice and a lot of money. We watched that for a while. I believe that it was called “Mesa de Dedos” (Table of Fingers) but honestly, the music was too loud for me to fully understand what was said.
I wandered around and watched as the mean prepared their roosters to fight. What I saw was honestly a form of art…a horribly carnal form of animal brutality-art. I watched men shave off the talon on each of the rooster’s legs, cauterize the open wound, before wrapping the leg with medical tape and using a strange wax-like seal to attach an extremely sharp plastic claw to each leg. There was already blood everywhere and the fights hadn’t even started.
We all shared a plate of empanadas before heading into the ring. The ring was a circular hut with a diameter of probably 25 feet. In the center was a cement ring with saw-dust spread around the bottom. While a few women were seen walking around outside the ring selling rum and food, inside the ring were only men. About 30 could fit in the ring at a time.
The first fight began as the two opponents held their roosters face to face, thrusting their fighter’s towards each other to rile them up. In a whorlwind of shouting, everyone in the ring placed bets on either ‘el blanco’ or ‘el rojo’ (the roosters had been marked with white or black tape on each leg). Without warning, the fight had begun. The roosters knew what to do as they circled each other, jumped into the air and used their enhanced appendages to attack.
These roosters are brutal. Within a minute there is blood everywhere, the roosters sway like nearly knocked out boxers at the end of a boxing match. Their eyes barely function, they struggle to hold themselves up having endured massive trauma, blood loss and occasionally loss of eyes. Eventually, one manages to throw a fatal blow to the other one, and once a fighter is down (either dead or unable to stand up for a full minute) the fight is over.
I sort of expected all of this, but what I didn’t expect was for the day to consist of 30 fights. That’s thirty dead roosters (which get eaten afterwards, so at least they aren’t wasted). I was lucky enough to have arrived late and so only had to watch about 10 of them. I also quickly realized that the easiest ones to watch are when one rooster manages to break another one’s neck right at the beginning because the loser dies immediately and without any bloodshed.
Everyone in my community was very excited for me that I got to see my first “Pelea de Gallos”. Little do they know that I will coincidentally be busy every time I get invited to another one.
Sometimes I have moments where I feel that I’m less of a guest in the house and more of a family member. Today, Mantula forgot to make me breakfast, she had me paint the bathroom and I cut my brother’s hair. Days like this I don’t feel like a burden and it’s lovely.
Okay, so I did some more hair cutting. We have lots of family in town for Navidad/Ano Nuevo. It seems that Mantula did some heavy advertising for me, and my ability to cut hair. I brought clippers with attachments to this country, and my kit came with some nice hair cutting shears and some combs.
It appears that I opened up my own little barber’s shop. What no one seems to care is that I only have ever cut my own hair with simple clipper attachments, and one time cut another PCV’s hair. That’s ALL of my barber experience. I cut my nephew’s hair, I cut my cousin’s hair, I cut Yunior’s (the two year old) hair, and I cut my host father’s hair.
Easiest? Apolinar, he’s almost bald, and he just wanted everything shaved really short.
Hardest? Yunior, he’s two and little did I know, is deathly afraid of getting his hair cut. No one told me. We literally had Yanelys holding his head still while he kicked and screamed so that I could as quickly as possible attempt a fade.
Most Awkard? Juan de Dios, because he wouldn’t stop moving and then one time whipped his head around to look at a motorcycle driving by, causing me to shave a large strip into his head. This meant that I then had shave all of his hair really short (which honestly wasn’t that much of a difference because his hair was already super short). I felt bad. He felt bad. Yanelys couldn’t stop laughing. It was an experience.
