Ridin' in Style...Dominican Style

My second year in the DR has increased my independence, so I'm learning all about ways to get out and about. Not many people own vehicles, so public transport is the option of the day! You can always call a taxi, but you don't have to as long as you've got a handle on the cars.

Ohhh G cars. And M cars. And CJ cars-- public transportation options known as carros públicos, or conchos, which run on routes like buses for cheap rates, will pick you up at any point along their route, and have no limitations on the number of passengers they carry. Literally. If you can still see an empty lap, the car's not full yet!  

Where these:

Get you this:

Possibly with them:

And maybe with them:

Hopefully with her!

But most importantly, they get you where you're going.The best part of this mode of transportation is that it's cheap ($20 DOP = $.44 US) and gets you from point A to point B and you don't have to walk. Upon further consideration, I must also point out that these are also the only good parts about it unless you include "it's always an adventure" on your list of assets.

The first question: Is it safe? There are stories of crazy drivers (but every driver here is crazy) and pickpockets riding a little too close to unsuspecting passengers, and you will end up having to walk a bit (possibly through doubtful territory) to connect the car route with your destination. However, if you follow proper Public Car Protocol (ie, don't pull out your cell phone, don't keep money in your pocket, avoid using the cars after dark) chances are good you'll avoid incident and be just fine.


To give credit where it's due, I have to say that the best photos here came from a Google search of "Dominican conchos"-- which I highly recommend you look up yourself because some of those pics are just mindblowing. It's kinda awesome... and one of those thing's that's pretty darn Dominican.

And however squished your concho ride might be today, just remember: it could always be worse!

                                                 

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Antagony

By all rights, we should not have allowed John Boy Walton to live.

Ants like John Boy have this obnoxious tendency to call in the rest of the Walton family to do their best impression of Hugh Jackman as Jimmy Fallon's Aussie houseguest. So I reiterate, John Boy's laborious trek across Kristan's pockmarked concrete floor should have been curtailed the moment we spotted him trying to cart off remnants of our apartment-christening picnic.



Ants in the DR generally have overactive lifestyles, anyway... Hundreds (literally) of the little toilers have taken up residence in the walls and under the floor of my room, until drinking ants in my coffee is a pretty unshocking event, and I've even tried a peanut butter and honey with ant sandwich, which was quite delicious. Standing at my dresser feels like a visit to a peculiar kind of arcade, where "Whack-an-Ant" is the main attraction... as my friend Jay so accurately depicts here:

Ah, a life overseas.

Kristan's thoughts on ants and cohabiting with them generally resemble my own... This is, of course, why she and I have found a remarkably solid friendship. That plus a bunch of other things. Ant-hatred is an important detail in life and relationships.

But instead of conspiring to assassinate this wee invader, we turned into the paparantzzi, getting down on his level to try to get a selfie with the crumb-bearing celebrity.

"I GOT HIS GOOD SIDE!" Kristan hollered.

She did, too. Entertainment is hard to come by here, what can I say?

So we snapped some photos, then sat back to finish our picnic and watch as Walton struggled across the pitted and peeling concrete floor with a burdensome crumb as big as he was, and it almost looked like he was traversing a map of the world, continent by continent, canyon by canyon.

Like us.

I think we all feel like John Boy Walton from time to time, weighed down by a load heavier than we can bear, trying to make our goal and get our stash from point A to point B, a journey that probably only matters to us ourselves, though we might get surprised by the occasional paparazzi squad of onlookers who don't help so much as provide irritation or maybe entertainment. Because our journey isn't the same as anybody else's and giants might lurk somewhere out there, ready to squash us at their slightest whim. A journey like that, in a big, big world like that, where we feel so small and insignificant, makes it easy to cower in fear and never even get our crumb from point A to point B.

The Israelites felt that way as they were looking at the Promised Land. Great produce, fertile country... but they were just one nation... plus, GIANTS!!!

They rebelled against their journey, and it took 40 years in the desert for them to realize that the giants didn't matter because God fought for them. He fought for them, and he won them a home. They were only responsible for carrying their crumb and trusting.

I am responsible to carry my crumb of my purpose and trust that in his greater, bigger plan he will guide my steps to fulfill his goals and get all the glory. If I am truly his daughter... that's all I need.

Night Momma. Night Daddy. Night Mary Ellen. Night John Boy.

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Dominican Cuisine!

Caution! Don't read this if you're hungry! For... probably a couple reasons. ;D

I think one of the first questions we ask when we start thinking about another culture or country is "What do they eat?"-- maybe because our time spent around the table defines us. Maybe because foods that we like in common give us shared experiences. Maybe because our foods describe our culture more concisely than a sentence ever could.

So in the Dominican Republic, what do people eat?

Well, let's start out with some semi-familiar ground... Betcha can´t guess what these are!

  

All cereal, regardless of the presence of Tony the Tiger or that weird-looking rooster, is referred to as cornflé, cornflakes. (I once asked a girl what they call froot loops. "Cornflé!" she answered. Well okay then! Also, I got made fun of for eating that chicken and vegetable platter at the bottom. I could have been eating traditional Dominican fare that day! Even if that's what they eat at home all the time, Dominicans love their traditional foods. And to be fair, peanut butter is not your average Dominican fare. Most have never tried peanut butter and jelly; in fact, if they eat it at all, they usually eat it with the national casabe bread, which has been made here since before Columbus made his gallant entrance on this island. It's made from ground up yuca root (which is also frequently served boiled, as pictured below right) and many times casabe is flavored with garlic. With peanut butter? That's an interesting combo.

 

This meal is a pretty typical Dominican lunch. Lunch is the big meal of the day, the one the housewives or their household helpers actually cook for. If a Dominican hasn't eaten rice? He hasn't eaten. Also, Dominicans generally do not eat leftovers. If there's food remaining from lunch at the end of the day, it might get eaten for supper, but it doesn't usually see the table again. They cook what they need for a given meal or a given day, a habit that's probably based on not having an excess of food to prepare, as well as not having a refrigerator or predictable electricity for a fridge if they did have one.

It's easy to see the rice and beans on this table. The casserole pan to the left was mashed potatoes, if I remember correctly (although it could have been mashed plantains, too) and the one at the very top was arepa, a corn and coconut milk cake that's very traditional, and loved by most Dominicans. The poor burnt offering on the bottom... well, that was my attempt to show one of the daughters of the family I stayed with how to bake banana bread from a box mix (don't ask me whose fault that was!). Dominicans don't bake; even if they have a super nice oven, it gets used for storage and they buy their breads and pastries from a panadería, a bread store.

Rice is so important, it gets served a variety of ways. With beans over the top, with pigeon peas cooked inside, with a tomato-based cooking liquid, or even with milk, cinnamon, and sugar-- arroz con dulce.

Despite the fact that lots of fruits and vegetables are grown here in the country, very few actually get eaten regularly. The biggest exception are the viveres, or root vegetables, like potatoes, sweet potatoes, yuca root, and plantains.You saw the yuca above, and you've prooobably seen the plátanos in the grocery store at one point or another.

Here are a few other fruits... Avocados here are huge, too. Literally.

Cereza cherries, a tropical variety with strange seeds inside that tastes like a delightfully citrusy cherry.

Coconuts are the big green ones, and limoncillos are the little green ones that grow in bunches like grapes.

These are chinola, or passionfruit. This is one of my favorite discoveries down here... their juice is delicious, if a little tart.

This is pineapple and mango. Papaya is also really common here, but I didn't have a picture of that one! Our mangos got huge last year, though.

And we can't forget coffee! So traditional Dominican coffee is made in a greca, or a Greek style coffeepot, and since it's super strong, it gets served by the ounce in small cups. Or maybe plastic Solo cups, depending on the occasion. They usually add a tablespoon of sugar, and maybe some milk.

 

And here below we have my buddy Conrado, displaying the traditional Dominican soup sancocho.

This one's breakfast: fried cheese slices with a heaping helping of mashed plantain, known as mangu.

 Not gonna fib, though... sometimes they eat stuff I think is weird. Like... pig innards.

 

Or smoked fish that makes the whole house... smell. Actually, the bacalao isn't bad (salted codfish). It's the smoked arrenque that is pretty, well, rank.

But if you go to the beach, you might get to sip some coconut water... or munch on a candied coconut/cinnamon confection I don't have a name for.

Probably the overall favorite is helado from the local ice cream shop-- Bon. This one's a frozen yogurt blended with frozen fruits. And it's tasty!

 There you have it... a few things Dominicans like to eat... and a few I prefer. Which ones look tasty to you?

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Rebel Respect

Picturing Poverty

Sometimes being a missionary takes you to oases where being a photographer is almost a natural happenstance...

 

 Because let's face it, we missionaries like taking selfies just as much as the next millennial. (If slideshows are no longer scrolling, just hover over them and click the little arrow "play" button that appears.)

Photo Gallery by QuickGallery.com And it so happens that as a missionary, I have the privilege of living in a country that could easily be the most beautiful on earth (if you shove the poverty, lack of education, and the streetside trash under the rug, if you've got one).

And that's the Dominican Republic that everyone wants to believe in. When I say this is where I live, the first images that pop into people's minds are the resorts and beaches... turquoise pools like jewels rimmed by swaying windblown palms and white sand beaches. Coconuts with little umbrellas and straws, beachside vendors selling jewelry and tasty treats.


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Reality is, that's reality for remarkably few people on this island. If you go to those places, you usually don't see Dominicans. Most families live on the primary breadwinner's earnings of less than $1/hr, and despite what most folks would like to tell you, living here is not actually cheaper than living in the USA. Food and anything produced (furniture, cars, dishes, paper products, etc.) are just as expensive, if not more so, due to import costs.

Statistics indicate that most of the "real people" on Facebook and social media dress up their lives by choosing what they post, so that it makes things look better, richer, more comfortable, and more fun than they actually are, on average. For the most part, we make posts when we're happy, when we have something we want to make others envious of, when we want to share a pretty photo we took.

Because the unhappy things in life aren't beautiful.
The unexciting things in life aren't sharable.
The unlovely things in life aren't worth "liking."

Enter my little rant's sarcasm here: Unless, of course, you're a missionary in a foreign country. Then the poverty, the discomfort, the hardship, is expected, romanticized, and becomes our cover photos, profile photos, and memes, accompanied by little heart shapes and smilies. We intentionally trade the "happies" for evoking emotion.

I guess that I do fall too often into the trap of wanting to share only the beautiful. The things we want to believe in. But... I want to tell the whole truth, with my words or with my camera lens. Just in a way that truly respects who people are, what they do, and how they live... without exploiting it to gain emotional responses from others.

Last week when we had our Operation Christmas Child shoebox distribution event, one of the mothers practically begged me to take a picture of her twin sons. "¡Mellizos! ¡Mellizos!" she told me, pointing and pulling their little brown faces together. "¡Una foto de mis mellizos!" So I smiled and pointed my Rebel their way, wondering why that was so important to her, or why she was so sure I would need a photo of her two adorable little boys. But... sometimes snapping a photo is a way to make a person feel important, like they matter, like someone wants to remember them. Snapping pictures can actually be ministry.

Regardless... I got a cute picture of a couple adorable kids out of the deal!

I just wonder how often the subjects of our photography recognize our boldfaced, wide-eyed, ethno-centric, point-and-shoot reactions as the pity it is for a lifestyle they've worked hard to be proud of. They sweep their dirt floors, shower several times a day, and almost always dress their best-- with more conscientiousness than most USA-ians, to be truthful.


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Somehow we feel justified sticking our camera lenses into their everyday reality because "Everyone wants to see the little naked babies!"

Do we see the sanctity to their poverty? The singularity to their struggle to make life work, that their determination merits our respect? Don't get me wrong. As this post exemplifies, I love photography. I love the art of composition and showing people things they wouldn't otherwise see. I just wonder... are we extending others the same respect and courtesy we would expect of them were the shoe on the other foot?

I don't mean to be abrasive... this is just food for thought: If it were my naked baby, would I want his picture plastered on National Geographic?

That's why I had a hard time photographing anything outside our outreaches or moments of tourism for the first several months of living here. I lived with a Dominican family, and traveled with a couple of my Dominican friends. There was an indescribable richness to those experiences, and pulling out my camera to photograph the differences in lifestyle felt like a demonstration of disrespect tantamount to "slumming" in a Hooverville of the Great Depression. It's just how they live, what they do. Why do I get to take its picture?

 I wonder sometimes if we do more damage to the people we photograph than anything else, invading their privacy, capitalizing on their inconvenience, and discounting their lives as "quaint" or "picturesque" when the reality is... that kid is naked because he doesn't have clothes, the currency is worth nothing, and there are very few jobs. I've even heard stories of tourists having the local kids volunteer to be in photos with them...then turn around and expect to be paid for the job. Even their image is valued in pesos.

So if I post all pretty pictures, I seem like a pretty awful missionary. And if I post all poverty pictures, I'm a pretty awful Christian. So how do I balance that--share stories without soliciting censure of well-meaning individuals who don't understand why some of that beauty they equate with "vacation" is just a small sliver of my workday--ten minutes we carved out between outreaches, or an afternoon after running an errand to the beachside city? Or without becoming a cultural voyeur who exploits poverty for another "like" on Facebook just because it is somehow a romantic concept for those who have never seen it firsthand? Maybe I would be better off never to post at all.

But there is so much joy and so much enjoyment here, too! So much color in the culture I feel I would be selfish not to share that richness with others, even if it's just through that singular eye of my Rebel. When I share pictures, it's because I want to share the story. It's an attempt at portraying a perspective; a lens through which we almost never view the world. And it's a balance I'm constantly reckoning: to rebel against the tendency to unintentionally exploit, and instead portray beauty and Story in a different light.

Sometimes a picture's worth a thousand words...sometimes even words fall flat. But there's a depth to the beauty that goes beyond color and contrast. If you truly want to experience that wealth, a photo's never going to do it. You've got to see for yourself, smell for yourself, taste it and know that it's good.

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Picky, Picky: A Culture of Contentment

Culture clash in my head today, combined with a little guilt.

Our electricity has been out more than usual lately. Now, down here it's unreliable at best on a good day... largely due to the fact that a big chunk of the population illegally taps into the community power supply and doesn't pay for power. So the company shuts off the service intermittently to offset those costs and keep prices a little lower for those of us who DO pay (since we are actually therefore paying for all of the tagalongs, too). The downside: People who actually pay for uninterrupted electricity often go without any for several hours a day. Not to mention that people whose jobs depend on having electricity (factory work, computer work, etc.) get a smaller paycheck and couldn't afford to pay their electric bill even if they had any inclination to do so.

In any case. We think maybe they switched up our schedule or the circuit we're on, because the outages have changed, and we're going on battery inverters or turning on the generator for several hours a day, several times a day, just to keep work moving around here. Which is expensive...not to mention kind of disruptive and irritating.

But the truth of the matter is, those alternative power sources are a huge blessing! We have it pretty good, and where I sit I hardly feel the outages. Nope, I've got no fan for a few hours, no functional outlets in my bedroom. But...I still have internet, of all things.

However... I'm catching myself complaining a lot lately, if only internally. Ugh, I have to move ALL THE WAY out to the other room to find an outlet to charge my computer (or whatever other electronic device my life happens to depend on at the moment)?  Whyyy am I roasting to death without a breeze? Biggest complaint: It's just not convenient!

Lyndi, take a chill pill. What would you do if we didn't have the inverter at all?

Heh! Proof provided: I, my friends, am an American who is WAY too used to having things exactly how she wants them. I'm also a missionary living in a third-world country, but among other Americans... so our lifestyle is by far not USA standard, but it's also waaaaay better than the majority of the people around us. My little grumblefests are actually only doing me damage.

In US culture we have the right to be picky.

• We can be picky about what we eat. (This one's been a big deal for me here since I trained myself for several years to be super picky for health reasons. Here, I pretty much never get  a choice because I pretty much don't do any of my own shopping. And US grocery stores may be one of the things I miss most!)
• We can be picky about standards at our jobs, and communication systems there. (Down here, it takes three attempts with the local services to actually get something fixed. At least. Because you can guarantee it won't be done right the first time. Email is not effective. Everyone is always late.)
• We can be picky about our cars. (Welp, got rid of that concern when I left Maizie in the US!)
• We have the right to complain if the electricity doesn't work. (Already kinda demonstrated how that one looks!)

"Have it your way" isn't just a slogan... It's a lifestyle. It's an expectation and even an entitlement complex we should think a little bit more about living without.

I'm living on the grace of those around me. I'm on a support budget, but I have plenty of space and live here with nice people who work super hard to keep it in shape, and moving forward. We're actually pretty progressive, given the resources at our disposal.

It's me and my expectations that need to change.

I'm not saying it's bad to have an opinion, desire to make improvements... or want to be comfortable. If things are broken, we should fix them-- it's part of that stewardship thing in Scripture. So where do I draw the line between "finding myself content in whatever situation" and falling into a lapse of desire to actually make things better? How is contentment different from stagnation and apathy... which actually can lead to depression? How can I lose my "right" to have things "new and improved"... but maintain a healthy desire and interest in developing an environment or system that supports creativity, given the resources I do have available to me? I'm still working on the answers to those questions. What I do know is that I don't want to demand to have things "my way" at the expense of "the narrow way." We don't need to depend on creature comforts for our contentment.

I didn't move to the tropical mission field to have everything convenient, just for me. Jesus didn't say that "going" was going to be comfortable all the time. If I complain, I'm really only doing myself damage.

And I guess that's why I'm writing this...to remind myself and maybe you in the process that on the days when the lights go out, the drain gets plugged, you get a flat tire, the city hasn't repaired that pothole yet, your favorite shirt is at the cleaners', you can't find the other shoe, you got stuck at that red light again, and you're all out running late... the opposite of that miserable grumbling complaint is gratitude.

Stop for a second, take a deep breath, and tell God thank you. Ask him to replace your complaint with an attitude of gratitude. There is a sun in the sky, even if it's behind clouds. You have a car. You've got freedom to travel (and numerous other freedoms not celebrated often enough until they're lost). There are people who care about you. You're not hungry and starving somewhere else. You are alive and kicking and it is a new day, without (m)any mistakes in it yet. His mercies are new every morning, and that new song of joy He's promised is throbbing with its gentle hum, just waiting for your thankfulness to awaken it to play in your ears.

If you want, comment below: What are you thankful for today?

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Tropical Trimmings: The Holidays, DR Style

As an American in a foreign culture, home traditions suddenly become a cushion of comfort to cling to-- something we, as the international population of the DR, can gather around and celebrate regardless of the fact that we're as far from family and familiarity as could be imaginable. That's the power of tradition, I suppose. Customs carry a certain amount of "home" with them, so turkey and mashed potatoes (pavo y pure de papas) prepared on November 27 this year went a long way to unite us and remind us of how thankful we are that we can do that.

The Walker family and the Casa Grande staff-- our Thanksgiving family this year. I'm thankful for all of them!

Pumpkin dump cake deliciousness, anyone? As maybe you can tell, we had some good desserts!

Darren makes fantastic apple pie.

This is Mark. Mark has a knife. That turkey didn't have a chance.

Dominicans make a lot smaller deal out of Halloween than the US does, and they don't celebrate Thanksgiving (although Black Friday is becoming a traffic-stopping event). So down here? Christmas decorations have been going up since mid-October. Little lights and fake evergreenery adorn the wood-slat or cinder-block houses, arousing the holiday spirit.

Or pop bottles in the shape of an evergreen work, too! We saw it lit up at night, and it was kinda pretty.

Stores and truck beds both are making the most of the season. I even saw a guy wandering through traffic selling blinky Santa hats at a stoplight, but it was dark, so unfortunately I didn't have the best photo op for that.

The airport is also expecting the arrival of baby Jesus.

Although they're having a hard time predicting if His arrival is on time or delayed. Also, I keep thinking that snow belongs in this picture somehow. But I guess weather delays don't affect Him much.

To the weather's credit, it's actually been cooling off to upper 60s at night. Though maybe that isn't quite freezing, a blizzard did blow into the Casa Grande dining room with the arrival of December... Pictures of that didn't quite turn out, but it looked kinda like this:

As fun as it's been to watch the holiday spirit unfold down here, I confess I'm really looking forward to family and friend time in Michigan, Arizona, and Colorado at the end of this month. If you're in any of those areas, I'd love to see you! Just give me a holler and we'll see what we can figure out!

In the meantime... merry Christmas!

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