Happiness Is

My freshman year, I was in You’re a Good Man Charlie Brown, the musical.  According to Peanuts, “Happiness is two kinds of ice-cream, knowing a secret, climbing a tree ...”  Sadly enough, I can still sing most of the song.  I would like to add a cute orange rechargeable vacuum and a QVC-special Shark steam mop to that list.

I have literally spent hours upon hours sweeping, mopping, and scrubbing my floors.  I have repeatedly removed every toy and book and rug from my floors so the buckets of soapy water could work their magic before being “gomo”ed down the drains with a big rubber squeegee.  The result? ... black feet and pernicious dust the very next day.  Argh.

With no windows, the pollution walks right into our apartment, especially November through June during la zafra or sugar cane harvesting season.  To harvest sugar cane they burn the fields causing black ash to float miles and land on my floor.

However, I have won.  No more pushing the same dust around via old-fashioned mop and broom.  Ha ha ha ha.  My little vacuum eats dust for dinner and my Shark steam mop leaves the floors sparkling clean, germ-free, and chemical-free.  Booyah.  Our feet actually stay clean for at least a few days now.  Hooray.  And it takes about 10% of the effort.  I am free!  We’ll see how the system holds up come November.

Frostsicles

Shortly after moving into our new apartment, I noticed this small red button next to our freezer.  “Push every other day to defrost,” it explains beneath.  Pardon?  Even my parent’s basement fridge, which they’ve had since their wedding in 1956, automatically defrosts.  True enough.  My freezer soon produced snow, which became enormous icy frostsicles.  Thankfully, I can just push a little button.  Right.  

Every time it manually “defrosts,” a significant amount of water manages to cleverly avoid the catch tray, pool on the top shelf of our fridge, and make a puddle on the floor.  Moreover, you need to manually pull out the frost chunks while they’re partially melted otherwise they re-freeze and consume all of your freezer space.  At least I can usually avoid hacking the freezer’s ice shell with a knife if I time the removal correctly with the “defrosting” button.  

One of our friends joked that the frequent electricity outages in the DR are sufficient to defrost your freezer, so there’s no need for the automatic option here.  I am now belatedly super grateful for my previous refrigerators.  I’m amazed at the number of things I should be grateful for but didn’t/don’t even notice as blessings.

Cheese? Puhlease.

A rat ate my banana.  Honest.  We’ve been finding interesting droppings in our house lately.  In my mind they were mice.  After requesting dropping detail, our friend assured us they were not.  Ack.

Since moving here, I have acquired a fear of leptospirosis.  I’d never even heard of it, but apparently people here do in fact contract it - and die.  Rats and mice are carriers.  If your kid pops a dropping, watch out.  Joselyn’s son’s neighbor found a mouse nest in his shoe.  He dumped it out.  Whacked the baby mice.  Shook out the dust.  And put his shoe on.  The next weekend he died.  Leptospirosis.  This all sounds a bit urban legend to me, but supposedly it really happened.

Anyhow, we are now in rat-prevention mode, which is hard since the zone we live in is overrun.  You can’t even set a normal trap.  Cheese, peanut butter, puhlease.  They have to use meat as bait here.  Seriously.

We broke off the tree branch touching our balcony.  Rats here live in the trees.  Who knew?  I set a huge chlorine bottle on top of the only un-covered floor drain.  We take all the garbage out every night.  However, our apartment is still fairly open.  Then Andy read online that mice and rat hate peppermint.  Supposedly peppermint oil (not extract) is the magic natural rat remedy.  Hooray!  Far better than cat urine pellets or similar.  So we procured a bottle from the U.S. and are placing it around our balcony doors.  We’ll let you know if it works!     

Mamajuana

No, not marijuana, mamajuana.  It all started with my cell phone.  The charger was lost.  Nowhere to be found.  Maybe the rats took it.  The cell phone stores I went to sold phones, plans, but no chargers.  Shoot.  Ahhh, but I live in Santo Domingo, where every possible (used) gadget can be located on the street.  I headed to a guy who I had seen selling various chargers.  We tested the used charger in a nearby outlet and he assured me all was fine.  

I happily returned home to charge my phone.  Ready to head out the door again, I grabbed my phone and it said, “Phone cannot accept charge.”  What?!?!  Why hadn’t I checked more closely before I purchased my used charger.  I just saw the phone light up when he plugged it in and trusted him.  Mistake.

I hunted down the street vender.  We argued.  He said he couldn’t return my money, but he could trade my bum charger for another ... charger?  The man sold chargers, blackberry covers, and roach bait.  I wasn’t in the market.  

Finally, he brought me to his friend’s table where I could choose from various herbs.  I decided against the lifetime supply of oregano and went the more adventurous route to purchase a bottle of mamajuana.  I’d seen it being sold on the streets for months and my curiosity got the best of me.   The vender assured me it wasn’t marijuana, but I couldn’t discern its intended use.  (Though in hindsight, the fact that it was sold in a dirty old rum bottle should’ve tipped me off.)

I proudly showed Joselyn my new mamajuana acquisition and asked her what I was supposed to do with it.  Apparently it’s a mixture of cinnamon, vanilla and other herbs which are used to flavor rum.  It’s the favorite drink of drunks and the Dominican cure-all for various ailments.  Oh.  I don’t really drink rum, but I figured I might as well give it a try.  So I bought my first bottle of Dominican rum and poured it over my mamajuana.  I haven’t had the courage to try it yet, but I feel decidedly more Dominican with it sitting on my counter.         

Blonde

So for the last four+ months I couldn’t figure out why every carro público and most taxis had huge metal tanks in their trunk.  As a mom with a stroller to stow away, this situation was less than convenient.  Were they building rockets?  Was it compressed air for flat tires? 

Turns out that all public cars and many taxis here run on propane.  I’m still not sure who converts all the cars from gasoline to propane, but supposedly it’s a LOT cheaper to run your car on propane.  Who knew?  I wonder why this hasn’t taken off in the U.S.?  Maybe we value our trunk space more than fuel efficiency.  I don’t know.  But, I’m glad to have the mysterious rocket caper solved.

Wooing the Inlaws

Andy’s parents visited us in February.  It was wonderful to have them here.  They got to experience more of the Dominican Republic than they might have wanted.  Torrential rain meant water through most of our windows and through the ceiling in at least two spots.  The electricity went out for hours.  I served them rice with weevils (usually they float to the top when you add water and can be skimmed off, but I wasn’t checking very carefully).  Then they bravely conceded to a beach excursion that involved public transportation.  

The way to Las Terrenas went fairly smoothly until we exited the Greyhound-comparable bus in the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it town of Sanchez.  I knew ahead of time that we’d have to negotiate our travel across the mountain to Las Terrenas, but we weren’t prepared for the feeding frenzy of taxi drivers who accosted us and had our suitcases, pack-n-play and children inside a van before you could say “gringo.”  Next they started (literally) stuffing Andy’s mom (Freddy) and dad (Terry) inside.  They misjudged the van opening and banged poor Freddy’s head.  Thankfully our stay in Las Terrenas went fairly smoothly.  Andy joined us the next morning after taking a motorcycle-taxi across the mountain in the pouring rain.  Hello.

For the trek home, we decided to try the gua-gua (bus) that went directly to Santo Domingo (hoping to avoid further stuffing incidents - ha!).  Air conditioned, leather seats, reasonably priced - it all looked so good.  After we were seated, they started loading the bus Dominican-style.  Out popped the padded boards that go across each aisle to make an extra seat.  They squished us in until all personal space was officially infiltrated.  Actually, by Dominican standards it wasn’t bad, but for Americans unaccustomed to 3rd world transport, it was a shock.  Andy’s parents were great sports, but quite glad to be off the gua gua after 3+ hours.  At least they didn’t blare the merengue too loudly. 

"Bank of Hope" Meeting

This gathering is of a “Bank of Hope” near Santiago in the DR.  The group consists of 15 associates or loan recipients who receive anywhere from $150 to $500 loans.  Some of the women are in their 5th loan cycle - more than two years of gathering together to encourage one another in business and life.  These meetings consist of devotions, prayer, worship and sharing of ideas and concerns...oh, and of course, loan payments.  The woman standing is the loan officer who leads the bi-weekly meetings.

This group had businesses ranging from selling clothes, spices, laundry supplies, lunch food, and small convenience stands.