La Lucha

La Lucha – the fight...like fighting for freedom, liberty, justice, rights and five more pesos.

Danno here: Phoebes and I are in Santo Domingo once again, had been staying with our first host mom, Dona Julia (pronounced with the squiggly line over the n which I don’t know how to make on the computer). We just finished a week of taking Creole classes seven hours a day at the training center, called Entrena, where we had been for our first three weeks in country and the last five days leading up to our swearing in ceremony last Wednesday. We are psyched to have been here again and learning yet another language! We’re learning Creole because the language is widely spoken in our community, so we’ll at least have a beginning knowledge of how to communicate. However we are a bit disappointed that the Creole class wasn’t able to move ahead as originally planned.

The Creole class was supposed to be held in a Batey in the southern part of the country where a large number of Haitian Creole speakers live and we would have had the opportunity to speak Creole in the evenings and engage in a variety of activities with the other volunteers and Creole speakers. (It was decided not to have the Creole class in the south b/c at the time Tropical Storm Thomas was forecasted to hit the southern part of the D.R. As of the moment, we have been consolidated to a hotel in Santo Domingo to wait out the storm and we wouldn’t want to be in the area due to the potential of heavy rains on dirt roads and flooding). We’re fortunate the class didn’t get cancelled, so we’ll take what we can from it and begin communicating as much as possible in Creole with Creole speakers in our community when we return.

I recently realized something that I had already known, but just as quickly had forgotten. I can get in my own way. I get wrapped up in the outcome of a situation and forget to enjoy the moment, observe what’s going on around me and focus on the finished product (which hasn’t even happened yet). For example, if I want to take a taxi from one place to another here in Santo Domingo, I call one up and ask how much it costs. I’m thinking that I’m being a good, thrifty, industrious middle class American and want to know how much it’s going to impact my wallet (mistake/lesson number one). I’ve just opened the door for the taxi driver to pull a random number out of the air and expect me to pay it. I now have begun to engage in a “lucha” or fight with the taxista over how much it should cost for me to get from point a to point b. He and I and sometimes the other people in the car argue over the price, negotiate, haggle and get it to a price that we are willing to pay for the ride. On a side note, there are no meters in the taxis like you would find in the states. I like the meter because it gives me a sense of what I can expect to pay per minute or per mile, my middle class self doesn’t always like the ultimate outcome of the price of the taxi ride. I’m in no way advocating for meters over here at all, I’m trying to make an observation about the cultural differences and coming from my middle class American culture, I have a set of expectations of which I may not always be completely conscious.

A few days ago, after engaging in a hefty lucha with one of the taxistas over the price of the ride based on how far we were going, he got to talking with one of the other passengers in the car. The passenger was another PCV and friend who has a more advanced capacity at using the Spanish language. My friend was able to explain our role as PCV’s in a clear manner to the taxista and they had a really nice conversation, which I probably understood about 70% of (and that’s a generous estimate). My friend was dropped off before Phoebe and I (we were his last stop). By the time we were being let out of the car, the taxista and my interaction had changed to sharing what we could about our families, Phoebe and I’s desire to have a family in the future, and learning that the taxi driver has three children at home. To boot, when we went to pay him the price for which we had fought so hard to get and ultimately mutually agreed to pay, he gave us back $$. We ended up paying the price for which we had originally asked. I was shocked and in a state of disbelief. Phoebe wanted to tip the guy, but I was psyched to have some money left over for my newfound addiction to skim ice.

Since this interaction my mentality continues to shift about the cabby and public transport experience in this country. I’ve also continued the conversation with current volunteers who have been in country and the lesson has been reinforced; if we ask the drivers ahead of time how much the ride costs, they will lucha and we will appear as though we have no idea what is going on with the public transport. However, if we get in the cab and begin to go to our destination, we can give him a price that is reasonable based on the distance and time of day. Remember my barometer that I was so worried about before? Well, it seems to be coming into focus.

Distinctly Dominican? Maybe. The beauty that I’m finding in all of my taxi and motoconcho rides is that people want to share themselves with me. If I ask about their families, people want to share and are open to it.

In love, Dan