man on the run - got a sucker and some rum

I am sitting in a pink house. It’s my friend Gabe’s house. In his town, “La Descubierta” = ‘The Discovery’, people call him GRabRiel. And we though Gabriel was a pretty standard latino name. Of course, they call me BRAYAN, or at least that’s what the court orders say that came from the big town of Altamira, asking Señor Brayan and others to come talk about some problems with “a Property and some Water Pipes”. So, I’ve been counseled by Peace Corps that I shouldn’t get envolved with legal matters pertaining to the water Project – that’s the communities’ responsibility- even though my name is sort of on the court papers and I’m pretty much involved with everything in the project. So, my friend GRabRiel asked me to come up and help build the intake works for ‘Water System Discovery’ today. Really though, I know that he just knew that his pink house made of a palm tree or two is just a good place for me to hide out in the woods like a fugitive. And it is, to get here I had to take two motorcycle rides to a town called Pescado Bobo (“Dumb Fish”). In DumbFish, I rendezvoused with a Dominican named ‘Cha’li’ like Charley without the ‘R’ . Cha’li and I walked an hour and a half up and down mountains and across rivers to discover La Descubierta. You can tell your really getting to the real ‘campo’ (Kuntry wit a K) because the kids stop wearing clothing. Not because of poverty, just because it is unnecessary.

When we got here, I ate a bunch of Yucca mush (really delicious) for dinner, and settled down to enjoy Gabe’s (is it broadband?) internet card. Today I got up early, ate a bunch more, and spent the day throwing around concrete mortar in a tiny, wet cave. This turned me into a large, wet, grey, smelly man. I was almost as disgusting as an American or European backpacker in Latin America living for three weeks without deodorant – but not quite that bad. So after we finished the work of art, called a work of take for some silly reason in Spanish (Obra de Toma), we stumbled down the mountain to the pink house again, washed up and ate a whole ton of starch in the form of fried plantains and bread, with some fried cheese. They sell ‘cheese for frying’ here, and I would have never thought to fry cheese in oil.

So I felt sort of guilty about having all that fun in the tiny-wet cave and not sharing the fun with anyone back home, so I called my family to tell them I will probably end up in a Dominican jail. They say they are a lot like a Mexican jail, but the food is worse – however you can still dance and drink rum; so it’s a toss up.

GRabe, as he likes to be called, has paid me for my hard work with a small bottle of rum and a cherry sucker. So then I felt bad about not sharing the cherry sucker with anyone (Dominicans always share their suckers), so I thought I’d share my story with you.

Tomorrow I will leave the pink house, eat a bunch of startch and tumble, slide, and roll my way back down the mountains and over the rivers home to Rio Grande. Although no one really gives me suckers at home in Big River like they do here in The (spaceship) Discovery, I still like it. We have a lot of fun -- cooking spaghetti and bananas on the riverside (Italian style boiled bananas), going to funerals, and drinking Wiki (try to figure out what that means) at merengue parties. Life is simple because the only cool colors to wear are purple and yellow and it’s OK to leave the tags on your clothing. AND – life is about to get even better, because my life’s greatest work, the Rio Grande al Medio Water system will be finished in May. That will let me catch up on more important tasks like buying more purple shirts and new jeans with ugly holes in them.

My sucker is finished and I don’t want more rum, so I think I’m done. Happy Easter, and good night. I’ll finish with a classic Dominican Blessing: “May your overcooked eSpaghetti always be accompanied by boiled, unripe bananas and cherry suckers.” Amen