Day Six: Back to Tenares

Domenga's family

Our last morning in Tenares, I woke up to the sounds of Saturday morning mass getting started across the road before 7 am.  As I started packing up my things, Domenga heard me rustling around and asked me if we could take pictures now before her son went off to work in the cacao fields.  I changed my clothes faster than I ever have and pushed a washcloth across my face so I didn’t look like such a mess.  

Erin's room at Dorita's

After the photo session, I took my bucket shower in el baño and packed up the rest of my belongings.  Domenga and Rosairis disappeared into mass.  Before going to see what everyone else was up to, I made a quick video of Domenga’s house (the video posted two posts ago).  I headed over to Erin’s and loaned her my camera so she could get some quick snaps of her room at Dorita’s house. 

I then walked back to my house to get a nice picture of Domenga under her cacao tree.  

Domenga

She is such a sweet lady!  I miss her.  I asked her to take a picture of me.  It quickly became clear that she had never done that before.  As a result, the picture of me under the cacao tree in the front yard does not include my entire head.  It’s so funny that I love the photo anyway!

Most of Kerry

After everyone got out of mass, we said some very tearful goodbyes to our hosts and hostesses.  OK, Rosa and I were the only ones crying.  Chide offered to drive us back to the head of the trail to meet Yolcy again, so we all piled into Chide’s truck for the trip down the road and across the river.  We stopped on the way out of Sonador to see Yolanda.  We girls all bought some of Yolanda’s rag rugs.  (My rug is now on the floor in my family room where it lives as a new cat bed.)

We also stopped off to meet with another friend of Ileana’s, a woman named Angelica.  In order to get to her house, we had to climb high up a mountain path through the woods.  When we arrived, Ileana’s friend was so happy to see us.  She had heard that we were in Sonador and would have been very upset if we had left without seeing her.  She had been waiting for us for two days.  Her mother was with her, but she couldn’t see very well.  Her kids came in a sat with us for a few minutes as we visited.  The kids had brought in a huge sack of fruits that they gave us to taste.  They were quite delicious and sweet.  Ileana says that they were some type of "buen pan" fruit, a little slimy, but very sweet.  She also said that "most people don't like it. It's really hard to get because it grows on really, really tall trees and is at the very top of the tree. It has a very short season."   Thus, when the kids returned with a big bag of them, they had either bought them at a market or been climbing some trees.  Heehee.


After taking a few pictures with the family, we headed back down the mountain to Chide’s truck.  Chide took us back to the top of the path where we met up with Yolcy again and her ex-husband who drove the van for us in Tenares.  After we drove back toward Tenares for a while, it suddenly dawned on me that I didn’t have my camera and that it wasn’t anywhere in my stuff.  I am such a loser.  I was perfectly ready to just let go of it and consider it a loss, but Yolcy made Pedro stop the van so Ileana could rent a motoconcho (motorcycle for hire) to ride all the way back to Sonador and look for it.  This was extremely upsetting to me, so I had a tiny breakdown, but everyone else was EXTREMELY kind and understanding about it.  This is just another testament to the awesomeness of my traveling companions.  I felt awful for holding everyone up, but no one cared.  Thank God. 

As we drove, we discussed a little bit about what the rest of the day would look like.  We were going to meet back up with Hector Blanco, our muralist from earlier in the week.  He would take us shopping, and then we’d go to a place called Rancho Típico Tenares to go dancing.  Hooray!  The Típico was kind of like an open air covered dancing pavilion with tables all around the dancefloor.  Ileana told us that it used to be surrounded by palm trees, but now it has columns surrounding it, like this:

This was going to be very exciting!  Erin and I were looking forward to it!

When we finally got back to Tenares, Marilu and the kids were waiting for us.  It was so great to see them!  We didn’t realize how luxurious Marilu’s house was with its toilets and solid walls.  The kids wanted to hear all about Sonador and how different it was.  We had a little bit of lunch at Marilu’s and then prepared to go out again.  Erin and I were under the impression that when we left in the afternoon, we wouldn’t be returning until after the night of dancing at the Típico.  We were wrong, so we did our best to dress down a smidgen.

After we picked everyone up, we headed to Hector’s studio to see his work and look at his paintings.  Marianne and Peter were going to be able to pick up the work they had commissioned from the muralists a few days before at Hector’s brother’s house.  In order to reach Hector’s studio, we had to go into the backyard of his one story apartment and climb up a tall ladder to his second-story studio.  I have no idea what he has against stairs, but that’ not my business.  However, I was wearing a dress, so I made sure to be the last one up.  We couldn’t get Yolcy to come up, though.  I think she was afraid of climbing up the ladder.

Hector’s art was stunning!  He had been commissioned to do a lot of religious paintings, though his real love was painting much more abstract figures.  He had one gigantic commissioned piece (about  8’x12’) of Jesus Christ in some intense chiaroscuro contrasts.  Peter said that it made him want to cry when he saw it, and I would have to second that.  It was phenomenal!  None of us was able to afford one of Hector’s paintings, though.  He is becoming quite a hot commodity in the DR and in New York.   Ileana is hoping to bring him to Durham for a few weeks, so we’ll see if we can get his brilliant hands painting some murals in Durham.

Peter picked up a painting that he had commissioned that day at Hector’s brother’s place.  He saw a young man painting the manzanas de agua that day and asked him to paint one of the roosters walking around the yard.  The painting of the rooster turned out to be wonderful!  The colors are really intense and the details are just overwhelming.  I loved it and wanted to grab it right out of his hands.  It was amazing!  I can’t wait to see what Peter does with his new rooster painting.  Marianne purchased a riverside sunset image that was quite lovely.  Her idea was to share it with some friends of hers: each would be able to hang it in her house for a few months at a time.  What a lovely idea! 

We spent a little more time looking at Hector’s paintings.  He pulled out about 20 of them for us to look at as well as a few pieces by his students.  Then, it was time to climb back down the ladder where Yolcy awaited us patiently.   From there, we all went shopping.  Hector took us to some little stores he knew of that might be able to sell us some dominos.  After everyone bought their dominos, DR flag stickers, and weird little knick knacks, Hector showed up with Dominican hologram dog-tags for each of us.  HILARIOUS!  That was really sweet.  Mine are now hanging from the bulletin board over my desk at work so I can see them every day. 

From there, we headed to a nice market where we all bought things we definitely declared at customs, yes, we did.  Everything.  DECLARED!  I was so happy to get my hands on the forty or so small bars of chocolate for drinking and the coconut candy and dried platanos for my sweet, sweet husband.  Dominican rum was also a must for me to give as gifts.  Everything was so inexpensive that I could have gotten very carried away.  The only thing that stopped me was that I knew I’d have to get this stuff home.  UGH!

After our shopping escapades, we headed back to Marilu’s for dinner and a little rest before going out dancing.  Marilu ordered out for us for dinner.  We had delicious mashed yucca con queso and something else, I’m sure, but my focus was wholly on the mashed yucca.  So delish!  We spent a long time playing dominoes with Jeferson and Yuleidy.  By the time, we were done, it was very clear that the one word Jeferson knew was “loser.”  I think he thinks that’s my name now.  He’s pretty close to right.  Nice kid.  Actually, he was a very sweet kid. Sheila, the five-year-old, also taught us to dance merengue.  The kid has MOVES!  Impressive! We were definitely prepared.

When Ileana returned, it was time to go dancing.  When we arrived at the típico, we were among the first people there.  Hector met us there with one of his artist friends, as well as Danny, the head of El Liceo Regino Camilo (the high school in Tenares).   He taught me to dance the Bachata.  Whew, that was hard.  I had to constantly be thinking, which I was much too exhausted to do.  Then, we learned to Merengue.  WHAT FUN!  What ridiculous fun.  I loved it.  A promise—unfulfilled—was then made by the group that we would find a place in Durham to go dancing together.  I, however, intend to hold them all to it.  By the time we finally got home—around 1 or so, Marilu was waiting for us to make sure we had everything we needed.  Ahhhhh, time for bed!