Today was pretty nice (tal vez chevere nays!). I got up at 6:20am, put on my cleanest pair of dirty pants and sombrero, went to the neighbor’s house for the ritual cafecito (morning shot of extremely sweetened coffee), called the dog and headed out to work. I figured the morning would go well as we all arrived around the same time and not I nor anyone else complained about being late, early, hung over, or otherwise incapable of digging.
After a few hours of uneventful trenching, my water committee president showed up to get me to go meet with the mayor. I was prepared as I had put on my cleanest dirty jeans – now dirtier and with new holes in the knees – and changed into a dry t-shirt. We strolled into the Ayuntamiento (Town Hall) side by side, the president in dress slacks and me sporting the best sweat and mud in town. Shortly after entering I had to run towards the door and give Loki a weak kick in the rump with my rubber boot. I don’t think she knew that dogs aren’t allowed to talk to the mayor. After coffee #2 of the day we were quickly shuffled in to Julio’s office. The new mayor confirmed the continued support of the project by the government. We agreed that he would buy the cement for our water tank construction coming up at the end of October and that he would also send the government work brigade as requested, starting Monday. We left with a victory against corrupt government and a bit closer to project completion.
I hiked back up the hill to the work site and dug some more, sweating through that second dry shirt. At mid day we had placed six 3” distribution pipes and the Tee for the connection to the first home in the distribution system.
At home I ate some predictably tasty rice, beans, and meat. Sitting on my porch, the day only got better, as the afternoon rain fizzled into a drizzle. The dry afternoon allowed us to have our monthly community water project meeting. It also went surprisingly well. We started on time and discussed, pondered, bickered, and decided on a number of topics. Afterwards I sat in the little park in front of the general stories and traded insults and jokes with the guys.
It is after ten o’clock and I am decidedly happy. Despite realizing how ridiculously over salted the eggs were for dinner today, I can’t complain – because I’m not complaining, I don’t think I even yelled at anyone today.
It’s hard to be unhappy when I have cookies and snow to look forward to at Christmas!
P.S. for any of you prone to assume that I must be suffering here in the Peace Corps in a ‘developing country’, don’t over think me looking forward to going home. I think I’m about as bummed about missing the holidays here, as I am excited to go home. I’ve decided to try getting some Dominican Christmas celebration in early December -- I will have to eat potato salad and roast pork and go out dancing and drinking rum ‘puro’ before my plane leaves. I’m sure some Dominicans will help me out as they understand that in the US people have no fun and can’t make noise and can’t break any rules. This happens to be entirely true – although I disagree entirely.
