Day Three: Education in the Classroom and out of It

Kerry, again.  We’re home now, but I still need to record what happened while we were in the DR.  Every single day was so huge.  The third day was Wednesday.  After our big night with Marilu, Erin and I began the day with another delicious breakfast.  Mangú is a delicious concoction of mashed plantains (platanos) with sautéed onions topped with a couple of slices of yellow cheese.  It was terrific.  There were boiled eggs as well, but I passed those over to Erin.  I wasn't the biggest boiled egg fan.  We also had fresh pineapple (piña), honeydew (melón), and some orangey-red sweet melon that I don’t recognize.  It was delicious.  Finally, Marilu gave us this deliciously sticky-sweet fruit juice that combined apricots, peaches, pears, and apples.  It was tasty but room temperature.  There was not a lot of cold beverages being consumed there because we couldn't eat the ice.  Oh, well.

UCNE Director of Student Exchange and Rector

After our yummy breakfast, we went to La Universidad Católica Nordestana for a meeting with the rector of the college and a guy who was in charge of student exchange.  He was very kind to us, but seemed a lot more Italian than Dominican.  We had a fantastic discussion with them.  They asked us what kinds of projects/exchanges we were interested in, and then they revealed to us that they were building their own community college based on the American model, but it was clear that they did not have a strong partner helping them with the project.  There were some folks there from the University of Florida (someone will correct me if I’m wrong) at the same time, but it felt almost like we fell into each other’s laps.  We’d love to be able to help them out, but we’ll see how that goes.  That’s Peter’s venue!

UCNE Library

After our meeting, the rector and the exchange director gave us a tour of their gorgeous campus as well as the construction site of the community college.  The campus was fascinating.

UCNE Classroom Building

The buildings seemed very airy and open in order to increase air movement within the rooms.  Beautiful flowering trees grew along walkways and hung down from above.  It was so lovely.  It became clear to me while we were touring that people really don’t smoke in the DR.

There were a few cute little thatched huts far away from the buildings that provided smokers with shelter from the sun and rain.








We saw a building or two that were dedicated to health technologies, including a funny mural sponsored by Colgate (col-GAH-tay) that told kids about the importance of good dental hygiene. 

The construction site was interesting insofar as it seemed slightly abandoned to me.  The buildings are all cement painted in bright colors.  We even found this little courtyard that had individually painted cement blocks on the ground.  Very cool.

After our brief tour, the exchange director treated us to a round of cafecitos, which are a delightful tiny concoction of sugar and coffee that I have fallen in love with.  If only it came in Starbucks-sized cups.

When we left the college, we headed to a giant grocery store to change money.  We found this crazy place that was like a Wal-Mart on steroids.  It had about 35 checkout lanes and even had its own dry cleaners inside.  There were also MANY cash machines there—one for each of the local banks.  Peter, unfortunately, had his card consumed by the machine because he had used it too many times in that one machine.  Whoops!  That became a bit of humor for the rest of the trip.  If we couldn’t find something, it must have been eaten by the machine.

From there, we traveled to the Museo Hermanas Mirabal in Salcedo.  There, we saw the home in which Las Hermanas Mirabal lived for the months leading up to their murders.   Las Hermanas Mirabal are the three Mirabal sisters murdered by Trujillo’s thugs during his regime in 1960.  The story is recounted in the book In the Time of the Butterflies by Julia Alvarez.  The sisters were referred to in the Dominican brand of rebel code as “Las Mariposas”—the butterflies.  As a result, a lot of Dominican art contains images of butterflies.

Mirabal cacao racks

Crooked pic of the Mirabal home

After a short wait, we were actually able to meet with the surviving sister, Dede Mirabal.  She graciously spoke with us for over a half hour explaining the importance of social justice and speaking up as well as the significance of what happened in her family in 1960.  She was so beautiful and kind to us.  I felt so comfortable sitting there listening to the wisdom she shared with us.  Even at 85 years old, she was still very spunky and firey about her purpose in life and the importance of education.  It was a fascinating experience.  I’m so thrilled that I actually have the interview on video.   As we spoke, school children would walk behind us on their field trips to the museum.  Dedé kept yelling at them to run along because we were all having a private conversation.  They often just looked at her blankly, wondering why this old lady was scolding them.

After our meeting with Dedé, we were escorted through the house where she and her family lived, which is now a fabulous museum displaying the sisters’ favorite belongings and some of the things we had read about in the book, like the black towel that the sisters would hang out the windows of their jail cells to indicate to their family outside that they were still alive.  We also saw the handbag that Mate bought the day she was killed.  It was stunning and just made my stomach hurt so terribly to think that these girls were younger than me when they made the choices to stand up against the dictatorial regime that ended up destroying them.  However, it was their sacrifice that helped change the DR forever.  It might be in a very different place now had they not been murdered.  I don’t know.

Even though they were middle class, the Mirabals did their cooking in a separate building from the house.  This is common historically since homes were generally made of wood and it was a lot cheaper the rebuild a kitchen if it caught fire than to rebuild an entire house, so lots of homes have a separate building for the cooking.  In this kitchen, there is a clay “stove” on which small wood fires were set and pots were set above for cooking.




We also saw the giant mortar and pestle style tools used for grinding the cacao in order to make chocolate. 

After the house, we toured the impeccably manicured grounds.








I suspect they were equally beautiful 50 years ago, but now they also house monuments to the three sisters (Patria, Minerva, and Mate) as well as Minerva’s husband, Manolo.  The remains of the four are also buried on the grounds.  They had been buried in a cemetery elsewhere, but after 40 years, the government allows people to move buried remains to their own property.  I assume that at that point there has been enough decomposition that the remains no longer pose a public health risk.  So they are buried there on the grounds of the family home/museum.

When Erin and I returned home to Marilu’s house, the kids were sitting around the TV watching it avidly.  We realized that ONCE AGAIN Marilu was on television.  It all started to come together for us.  She was on a program presenting awards to local women for their civic service in the community on behalf of ASOJUVET (Asociación de Juntas de Vecinos en Tenares--the neighborhood association of Tenares). She is a BIG DEAL in Tenares. She is the president of all kinds of associations and organizations. What a powerful lady to know, and there we were!  Erin and I went into the kitchen for dinner when the show was starting to wrap up, and Marilu came walking in the door.  She looked so lovely!  I guess they taped the show earlier.  I told Marilu that I loved her pink blouse, and she told me she was going to give it to me.  How generous!  This picture is from that evening.   Marilu is in the hot pink blouse third from the right. (Marilu gave me this blouse the next day as a gift.)

http://cuestiondedos.blogspot.com/2011/03/la-otra-cara-de-la-noticia-y-asojuvet.html

After Erin and I finished our delicious dinner of beans and rice, salad (lechuga y cucumber), roasted chicken, and the fruit from earlier, Marilu invited us out to the front porch to talk.  We had a great conversation.  Erin and I, at Ileana’s recommendation, had brought small scrapbooks of our own lives to share with our host families, so we each showed Marilu and the kids (Grismaldy, Juleidy, Jeferson, and Sheila) our scrapbooks out there on the porch so they could see where we are from and what our lives are like.  It helped us practice our Spanish as well.  Right in the middle of going through Erin’s book, Marilu saw the picture of a Tarheel basketball game, and she jumped up from her chair and invited us all for a walk through the neighborhood.  Unfortunately, neither of us took a camera with us.  I wish we had because we had a fantastic time walking the streets of Tenares.  Marilu took us to the local gymnasium to see a community basketball game.  I know there’s a word for that, but I can’t think of it right now.  It wasn’t a pick-up game because it was too organized.  Her brother was on one of the teams, and they had their own jerseys and everything.  The score was sad: 92-60 or something like that.  Inside the gym was one of the murals done by Caraballo, whom I think we had met with Hector Blanco the day before.  This one was of a baseball with a hypodermic needle stuck into, representing the problem in the DR with steroids in baseball. 

We went back to walking the neighborhood and found a little parquet that had a big cement stage where Jeferson and Sheila did little dances and routines for us.  I wish I had videotaped it.  It was fabulous.  Erin and I quickly found ourselves playing games with the kids, scaring them, chasing them, tickling them, and generally goofing off.  We really connected with them even though our languages were so different.  I struggled to communicate with them, but Juleidy, the neighbor who is Grismaldy's best friend, helped out because she knows just enough English to be dangerous.  It was a hoot. 

When we got back to the house, we continued to talk with Marilu about what it means to live in the DR and in Tenares in 2011. Marilu, being the amazing woman she is, talked with us, as Dedé had about the importance of speaking up even in your own neighborhood.  She said that even though she’s middle class, she still can’t get all of the services from the government that she should.  She can’t get the city to come repair the road, but she keeps trying because no one else will.  When there are problems with the municipal water service, she speaks up on behalf of her own family and her neighbors because no one else will.  I asked how much the kids learn about Trujillo, and Grismaldy said they do learn about Trujillo and how important the history of the nation is to today’s kids.  However, they also live in the Province named after the Mirabal sisters (Provincia Hermanas Mirabal), so I guess it might mean more to them than elsewhere in the nation.

I also asked Grismaldy and Jeferson about their goals.  Grismaldy wants to be a lawyer and I think Jeferson said he wanted to be in business or something like that.  He said that he wants to go to the US because that's where you can get a lot of stuff.  Marilu and I rolled our eyes at each other and explained to the kid that things aren't everything.  At 11 years old, he wasn't hearing any of it.  The kids seemed to have high goals, though.  They thought that they'd be able to get out into the world and succeed.  It was a truly fantastic discussion from which we learned a lot.

After that, we had our baths again, and headed to bed with our heads swimming from all that had happened in just one single day.  ONE DAY!  We packed up some of our stuff before going to bed since on Thursday morning, we’d be heading to Sonador for two days.  And so ended Day Three.