Food, Part Three

Here are a few more of the interesting things I've eaten lately...

Concón

This is concón, an extremely popular part of any rice-based meal.  When they cook rice, Dominicans always cook it a little bit longer than people in the rest of the world, so that the bottom layer gets crispy but the top is still white and fluffy.  They scoop the top part off and put it in a big bowl, then scrape the crispy stuff off the bottom and put it in a smaller bowl, where everyone shares it or fights over it, like the skin of a Thanksgiving turkey.  It's actually quite tasty - crunchy and flavorful, since the seasonings that were cooked along with the rice tend to get especially concentrated in the bottom and cooked into it.

Albóndigas 

This one is for Dad...Even though I don't think you'd have appreciated the avocado or lentils or rice, you would have liked the meatballs we sometimes have first as a side for lunch (left) and then inside toasted sandwiches for dinner (right).  The sauce looks a little weirdly colored in the picture, but it's actually a pretty good one with tomatoes and spices.  Not quite marinara sauce, but closer than what people use on pasta most of the time.

Comida China

This is the Dominican version of Chinese food, which, as far as I can tell, consists entirely of mixed vegetables and chicken stir-fried with soy sauce.  Sometimes it's pretty good - not quite the Chinese food I'm used to, but good enough salty vegetables.  The other day, though, we had mixed vegetables, soy sauce, and raisins stir-fried together.  Not so good.  In this picture, we have another, distinctly Dominican choice: deep-fried bananas as a side dish.

Batata

"Batata" translates to "sweet potato," and, while these are indeed things that resemble potatoes and are sweet, they're very different from the sweet potatoes in the Midwest.  They actually have a pretty similar taste - maybe a little less sweet - but, texture-wise, they're almost exactly like regular potatoes.  Also, they're a weird blueish-gray color.

Sancocho

This, along with mangú, is one of the staple foods of the DR.  It's somewhere between a soup and a stew, made up of plenty of broth with huge pieces of meat and roots.  The best kind of sancocho is the kind that's made out in the country over an open fire, with some combination of 7 different kinds of meats (such as pig, chicken, and goat) and 6 different kinds of potato-like plants (such as potatoes, yucca, and plantains), depending on what you happen to have on hand.  While I'm a little wary that I still haven't found out which seven animals, exactly, are the options for the soup, it is admittedly very tasty.

Mi Noche en la Clínica

I apologize for the delay in putting up new blog posts...the past week has been especially busy with getting ready for midterms, applying for a scholarship, and looking for an apartment for next year (and, to a lesser but much more enjoyable extent, swimming under waterfalls, lying on the beach, and dancing merengue).  And the week before that, I got so sick I ended up going to the hospital.  While that entire day involved far too much vomit and too many needles for my liking, I am feeling much better now and, at the very least, can add "spent the night in a hospital" to the list of aspects of Dominican life that I've experienced.

Consistent with my tendency to only get weird, short-lived, miserable illnesses like swine flu instead of normal ones like colds, until last week I hadn't had a single major stomach issue in the DR.  Then, quite suddenly one night, my stomach started to feel really weird.  Like I'd just eaten a meal so big I wanted to throw up.  As I hadn't just eaten for two hours, this seemed a little strange, but I just went to bed and hoped it'd be gone in the morning.

Nope.  The next day I threw up four times until finally, around two in the afternoon, my host mom said we should probably go to the hospital.  (In the DR, there are no clinics or urgent care centers, just two kinds of hospitals: hospitales, which are public and generally under-supplied and over-crowded, and clínicas, which are private and have much better conditions, as well as doctors who have studied in Europe or the U.S.)  Although I suspected it was just food poisoning, I decided it wouldn't hurt to go and rule out anything more serious, expecting that the process would only take a few hours (ha!).  My host mom called a taxi, and we went to the emergency room at Homs, the best-ranked clínica in Santiago.

Homs looks very much like a hospital in the U.S.: shiny white linoleum floors, pastel painted walls, nurses in scrubs, and doctors in lab coats.  We walked through the waiting room to the check-in counter, where my host mom explained what had been happening to the receptionist.  I showed them a copy of my passport and they sent us to the next room, filled with curtains hiding cots and metal chairs, and a nurse pointed us to the little stall where I should wait.  Overall, the process worked like a slower, slightly less organized version of an American doctor's office, except...

1.  Mercury thermometers.  To take my temperature, the nurse used a mercury thermometer, smacking it against her wrist, then sticking it under my armpit, something I can't remember ever seeing before in real life.  Even better, they gave me one to take home with me in case I started feeling sick again.  Here it is, to the right (since I didn't have my camera in the hospital, I have to stretch a little for pictures for this entry...)

2.  The doctor's questions.  Most of these weren't that strange - What did you eat last night?  Have you taken any medicine today? - but at one point, the doctor asked me, "Have you ever been sick before?"

"You mean with something like this?" I asked.

"With anything."

"You mean serious illness?"

"Any kind."

"Like, in my life?"

The doctor started to get impatient.  "Yes.  What have you been sick with before?"

I was still confused - did she expect me to remember every illness I've ever had?  How were things like the chicken pox at age three at all relevant to this? - so I shot a questioning look at my host mom, who nodded and told me to start listing all of the illness I've had. 

"If it helps, you can say them in English," the doctor offered.

I ended up just listing off a few - chicken pox, colds, the flu - thinking it would take far too long to explain things like "Well...to start with, last summer, one morning my cheek just started swelling up and hurting, and we're not quite sure, but it was probably an infected spit glad one day and, a few weeks before that, there was one day where I randomly felt so weak that all I did was sleep from Saturday night to Monday morning..." and being fairly certain that such illnesses had nothing to do with the bacteria that was almost certainly giving me food poisoning right then.

(Although, afterward, I started to worry that maybe my life is like one very long episode of House, with dozens of seemingly unrelated illness actually all being symptoms of some sort of rare virus or a bad reaction to laundry detergent that has been steadily building that only this doctor, seeing them written all together on a white board, would be able to understand).

3.  Patient privacy regulations.  In the US, I once asked my doctor if she could explain something to my mom over the phone, but she told me that, because I was over 18, she wasn't allowed to talk about my health with my parents on the phone, even if I was there with her and asking her to do it.  For my dad to tell his insurance company about a mistake in coding in a visit I'd had, we had to do a three-way call because the insurance company couldn't talk about it without my presence.

Here, my host mom did everything for me except sign a credit card receipt.  She checked me into the hospital, jumped in and answered half of the doctor's questions before I got the chance to, wandered around asking nurses what my lab results were, told the front desk I was going to stay the night and gave them my check card for the deposit, and talked over treatment options with my doctor when I was asleep.  It was very helpful, and I really appreciated it, especially after the medicine kicked in and made me so tired I could hardly stay awake, but it was certainly much different from the US.  (I am proud to report, however, that even under groggy, sick, weak conditions, I could understand everything the people around me were saying.)

4. Uses of gloves.  At Homs, plastic gloves were all over the place, serving a remarkable number of purposes - storing cotton balls, tying arms about to get blood drawn, acting as a mini garbage bag for band-aid wrappers and used iodine wipes.  I never, however, saw them protecting anyone's hands.  Even when drawing my blood, the nurses used their bare (hopefully clean) hands.

5. Lack of communication with the patient.  At no point after examining me did the doctor come back to explain that she thought I had a stomach bacteria and explain the different things she thought I should do.  After she left, I waited around for awhile, and eventually a nurse stopped by with a box of test tubes and needles (safely individually sealed in little glass-and-plastic containers), set it down on my bed, and started cleaning off my inner elbow.  No "We'd like to test your blood for x," no "Have you had blood drawn before?" just walking in and getting to work.  When my host mom asked, she wasn't even sure what they wanted to test it for.

The i.v. was the same thing.  My host mom understood what was going on and recognized the medicines they were giving me, so she didn't seem to think this was strange, but no one had told me they thought I should get and i.v. or asked if I wanted it or told me how much it would cost or if it was covered by insurance.  I was just lying there, half asleep, when another nurse bustled in with a pouch of a saline solution, hung it on a hook above my head, grabbed my hand, wiped it with alcohol, and drew some more blood out of it before connecting it to the i.v. line.  (Side note: When my host mom asked why they were drawing more blood, she was surprised and said, "Oh?  Someone already did that?" so I we can add lack of communication between nurses to this section, too.)

6. Getting yelled at by a doctor.  Continuing the theme of lack of communication, as the evening went on, someone told my host mom (not me) that the doctor wanted me to stay the night, so I didn't get dehydrated (since I hadn't drunk anything in over 24 hours and, even after taking the anti-nausea medicine they gave me, had thrown up juice).  My host mom thought it was a good idea, especially since it was already quite late.  I was concerned, wondering why I'd have to stay overnight for something as little as food poisoning, so I called my program's director, who reassured me that overnight stays at the hospital are more common in the DR than the US, and especially now, given all the worry about dehydration caused by cholera, doctors are being especially careful about preventing dehydration caused by other things, as well.  Reassured slightly, I agreed, and my host mom told the front desk before heading home to get the things she would need to stay the night with me.

There was some miscommunication, however, and the doctor still needed to talk to my mom about me staying there.  She came into my room to talk to her about ten minutes after my host parents had left, and when I explained they'd gone home to get a few things, she left.  When she came back about twenty minutes later, however, and found that my host parents still hadn't come back, she started yelling at me to call them because she needed to talk to them.  Actually yelling.  At a poor, sick, groggy girl alone in a foreign hospital, about to stay the night for the first time in her life.

Eww.  Just looking at it makes me feel sick.

7. The various theories about why I was sick.  One of the doctor's questions was what I'd eaten the night before.  It had been yucca, avocado, eggs with tomatoes, and a papaya smoothie - a meal so typical that I actually took a pictures of it as the perfect summary of Dominican dinners.

Of all of these things, the doctor did not suspect, as I did, that one of the eggs been bad or maybe not quite cooked enough...or that the avocado or tomatoes or papaya maybe weren't washed quite as thoroughly as usual...or that the eggs had been sitting out on the counter a little too long before I ate them.  The one that stuck out to her as the most likely suspect was yucca, a completely bland, tasteless, inoffensive plant that had been peeled and cooked through in boiling water that I have had about three times a weeks since I got here.  My host mom reassured her that I've eaten yucca many times before without problems.  Later, my host mom told me that the doctor thought it was probably a stomach bacteria, and I got a handful of medicines designed to kill what must be every bacteria, amoeba, and parasite in the country, just to cover my bases.

My host mom, however, didn't seem convinced.  She asked if I thought maybe it was the rice and beans I'd eaten at the preschool I volunteer at on Mondays.  I told her probably not, as I've been eating that for weeks without problems and had been completely fine for three days afterward.  She then thought about what I'd eaten that day again, and decided that it was probably not one food in particular, but just that I'd eaten too much, since I'd had two slices of cornbread in the afternoon and a larger-than-normal dinner.  The first time she mentioned this theory, I politely mentioned that thought it was probably just a bacteria since I was still throwing up things like a sip of water a good twelve hours after everything from dinner had left my system.

Days later, however, she was still musing at least twice a day, "You know, when I think about it, I really think you just ate too much on Wednesday night.  Remember?  You had all that rice for lunch, then that cornbread, and a big dinner.  I think it was just too much."  I started just starting nodding and saying, "Yep, that might have been it."  Even today, she keeps reminding me not to eat too much at night so I don't throw up again.  On the one hand, hearing at that at every meal, I can't help but think of goldfish and their inability to tell when they're full.  On the other hand, it does mean, instead of giving me large, Dominican-sized servings of everything, she's been letting me serve myself, which has been nice.

Designed to kill every amoeba known to man.

8. The pharmacy.  Before we left the hospital, the doctor gave us a list of the medicines I should take and how often I should take them.  To get them, my host mom just called up our neighborhood pharmacy and read off their names and how many pills we needed.  A few minutes later, one of the pharmacy workers brought them right to our door, two of them in little boxes and one of them just as a few sheets of pills with the name stamped on the back, no list of precautions or ingredients or anything.

Prescriptions here are also used for totally different things.  They're required for lab tests of any kind - for example, if you want to get a blood test for AIDS (which I only know because it's required to use the pool at my university, don't worry!), you need to go to the doctor, tell her you want one, get a prescription authorizing it, and go to a lab.  To get any type of medicine, however, you just call up the pharmacy, tell them what you need, and get it delivered to your door.

So there you have it - that's the Dominican private emergency room experience in a nutshell.  Not horrible, but here's to hoping I can get through the next month and a half without needing to visit it again!

Gold, Ghosts, and Dysentery

Last weekend, I was lucky enough to see the (few remaining) ruins of the earliest European settlement in the Western Hemisphere.  While not much remains of them, so I don't have many pictures to show you, our program director gave us a fascinating tour that included a more detailed history of Columbus's first two voyages than I'd ever heard before...as well as many juicy details that are left out of most history books.  I will do my best to pass the most interesting parts of both onto you.

To give you a bit of background, when Columbus and his crew happened upon the New World, they first docked the Niña and the Santa María in what is now Haiti (the Pinta had somehow wandered off, and Columbus wouldn't rejoin it until he was back in Europe).  In that port, they met a friendly group of Tainos who welcomed them hospitably.  They spent a few days with them, feasting and trading, until one night Columbus's men got carried away partying.  The man who was supposed to be on watch that night on the Santa María was too drunk to stay awake, so he delegated the task to the next man, who delegated it to the next man, and so on until, finally, the 12-year-old cabin boy was left in charge of the entire ship.  Unfortunately, as the 12-year-old cabin boy had no idea what he was doing, that night the boat drifted out too far into the bay and crashed against the coral reefs below.  While the men got out okay, the ship sank. 

The next morning, the Tainos saw what had happened and immediately began to help.  They piled into their canoes and rowed out into the bay, diving down under the water and pulling everything valuable out of the wreck and back to shore.  Columbus's men were touched by their help - in his journal, Columbus wrote something along the lines of "What wonderful people!  They didn't stop fishing our things out of the water until they'd recovered every last nail." (You can even see one of the nails in the museum.)

Even so, the ship was beyond repair.  When Columbus was ready to head back to Europe, seeing as he couldn't fit all of his crew into the Niña, he left 39 of them behind with the promise that he'd be back within a year.  While Columbus did indeed make it back almost exactly a year later...the men he'd left behind didn't last that long.  In Taino culture, there were no limits on coupling up until marriage, but once a person was married, adultery was a serious offense.  Columbus's men, however, didn't catch on to that distinction fast enough.  They seduced one too many married women and, infuriated, the chief ordered that they be killed and left their bodies to rot on the beach as a warning.  When Columbus made it back, he saw the 37 decomposing bodies, realized what they meant, turned around, and started looking for another place to dock his fleet.

Picture borrowed from ericlp at Google Maps

About a hundred miles to the east, he came upon a beautiful bay, sheltered enough to protect ships from big waves and with easy access to the mountains where he believed abundant gold was be found.  The men landed, unloaded their ships, and began building.  (The picture on the right gives you an idea, but it doesn't quite do the area justice - the mountains in the background look much more impressive in person, and the colors of everything are much more vivid.) 

La Isabela, however, didn't turn out to be a great spot to live.  There was very little fresh water or good land for growing food.  Because of that, Columbus's men soon ate up more than their fair share of the neighboring Taino's stockpiles and still didn't have enough.  Men were getting dysentary rapidly and, without water to rehydrate themselves, often died.  At the same time, the groups of men who set out to explore the island quickly discovered many places with far more gold and far better access to land and food.  Within four years, the settlement was abandoned.

What followed was an archeological tragedy.  For centuries, the ruins were more or less left alone.  They began to crumble, and neighboring farmers sometimes came to use the rocks in their own houses, but the foundations and bottom parts of the walls of most of the buildings remained intact.  Then, in the 1950s, a group of German researchers sent the dictator, Trujillo, a telegram asking if they could come and excavate the site if they paid all of the costs and trained Dominicans to help them.  Trujillo sent them a note back, giving them permission, then turned to one of his generals and said, "Go clean it up."

The general, not daring to ask questions or displease Trujillo, took off.  He got to the site, looked around, saw a bunch of crumbling buildings....and cleaned them up by bulldozing them into the sea.  When the German researchers got there, there was almost nothing left.

A few decades later, another group came through and was able to recover some things, including the bottom of Columbus's house.  Here's what's there now...

The Warehouse

None of the little walls here are original, but the outer ones outline where the original walls were and those squares on the inside were built to protect the surviving parts of the foundations of the columns that once held up the roof.  This warehouse is mainly important for being the site of numerous revolts over the very few years it was used.  

Columbus's crew on his second voyage was made up almost entirely of young noblemen who were middle or youngest children hoping to make their fortunes in the New World.  In Spain, the oldest son of every family received the entire family fortune, so in order to maintain the level of luxury they'd been brought up in, younger sons of nobles had to find their own way to get rich.  When Columbus came back to Europe, telling tales of the bountiful gold he'd found in the New World, it seemed like the perfect opportunity for them to have an adventure and come back to Europe wealthy.  

The reality, however, was disappointing.  The men had been expecting huge piles of gold on the beach and natives bedecked in solid gold.  While there was gold on the island, there was not nearly as much of it as Columbus had promised and most of it was buried away in mines.  The Tainos did have gold jewelry, but they made it by stretching the tiny pieces of gold they found on the surface very thinly over other materials - they'd never done the kind of metalworking or mining that the Europeans were familiar with.

Also, since so many noblemen had wanted to go with Columbus that there had been no room for servants, the nobles found themselves being forced to do hard labor for the first time in their lives.  They were not at all happy about it, especially as they were in, you know, the Caribbean, where it is too hot and humid to even walk ten minutes to class comfortably.  To add insult to injury, Columbus - the one ordering them around - wasn't even a noble himself and, back in Spain, would have had no right to treat them that way.

Moreover, as I mentioned before, la Isabela is not a good site for finding water and food, so there were often shortages of those very basic necessities.  And, while most of the deadly cross-continental exchange of diseases didn't happen until later, there was a massive outbreak of dysentery among the crew (which was, of course, made even worse by the fact that there was very little food and water).  It was so bad that, within the first four months, one-third of the crew had died.

All in all, good conditions for a revolt.  Or five.

The Admiral's House

This was, for four years, Columbus's home.  Because it's farther away from the main section of buildings, it was also one of the few things to survive the bulldozing, and those low walls are actually originals.  (The roof, however, is just there to protect it from the elements - back in the day, it was a solid stone building.)

Here's a picture of me and some of our group instead.

Columbus had a wonderful view, and I'm really sorry I couldn't find of a picture of it.  The house was near the edge of a small cliff that dropped sharply about four feet onto a little strip of sandy beach.  While standing on the few feet of grass and shrubs between his house and the drop, Columbus could look straight to see the calm bay and the vast dark blue ocean beyond it...to his right to see lush green palm trees stretching for miles and fading into the distance...and to his left to see the hazy outlines of the mountains that he believed held the immense goldmines that would make him rich and, more importantly, make his family's name known and respected across all of Europe.  Standing there centuries later, you still imagine the sense of wonder and promise he must have felt...and then some, because you (unlike him) know how significant of a moment that was in the history of the world.

The Graveyard

As the bodies in the graveyard were, obviously, below ground, they avoided getting bulldozed into the sea.  In the 1990s, however, they were exhumed and taken to museums to be studied.  (Most of them are now, in fact, sitting in storage in Santo Domingo.)  But, as the researchers exhumed them, they took careful note of where they found them, and afterward, they put up these crosses and stone rings to mark where each one came from.

This graveyard has a creepy historical ghost story attached to it...About twenty years after la Isabela was abandoned, most of the Spainards were living down by Santo Domingo where they had found more gold, water, and food.  Different groups of men were still exploring the country, however, and one group was sent back to la Isabela to see what the site looked like, if there was anything useful still in it, that sort of thing.  This story comes from the diary of their leader, a lieutenant. 

The group, knowing the site had been abandoned years ago, expected it to be empty.  As they approached, however, they were surprised to see two lines of about ten soldiers standing on either side of the road leading up to the settlement.  They were at attention and dressed formally, although their uniforms looked strangely out-of-date.  The lieutenant called out to the men and asked them who they were.  They saluted, but said nothing.  The group got a little closer, and the lieutenant called out again.  This time, he noticed that the men's mouths were moving, but he still couldn't hear what they were saying.  He looked at his men, agreed with them that this was strange, and decided that as their leader, he should be the one to investigate.  So he got off his horse and walked on foot towards the men.

"Hello!" he greeted them.  "Who are you, and what are you doing here?"

Their mouths kept moving, but he still couldn't make out what they were saying.

"Speak up!" he demanded.  "Who are you?"

He began to hear whispers, but they were so quiet he couldn't understand them, so he asked again, "Speak up!"

Then, very gradually, the whispers grew louder...and louder...and louder, until finally the soldiers were shouting: "I am hungry!  I am hungry!  I am hungry!"  They chanted those same words at him over and over, getting louder each time.  

Finally, the lieutenant yelled back, "I can hear you!  You are hungry!"

The men stopped.  They saluted him.  And they vanished into thin air.

So, believing he had happened upon the ghosts of Columbus's crew who died of starvation and dysentery, the lieutenant ran back to his group and, I believe, left the site without even stopping to investigate it.

And, on that creepy note, I wish you all a nice weekend!

Carnaval de la Vega

Last Sunday, I went to the Carnaval in La Vega, a city about 30 minutes outside of Santiago that is widely recognized as having the best Carnaval in the DR.  To be honest, though, I personally prefer Santiago's, for two reasons.  First of all, there was very little music in La Vega's parade, which seemed to change the entire focus of it.  In Santiago, because there was music, all of the lechones and other characters in the parade went along dancing and showing off their costumes, while everyone watching them clapped and sang along.  Sure, there were a few lechones who ran around smacking people with the vejias, but most of them were too busy bopping along in the parade. 

Diablos, looking way more menacing than lechones.

In La Vega, on the other hand, there was almost no music or dancing, which meant that the parade consisted mostly of diablos running around, swinging their vejias, trying to whack as many people in the butt as possible.  (In Santiago, the Carnaval devils are called lechones; in la Vega, they're just diablos.)  It was kind of like playing tag on an elementary school playground, but more painful and with way more people being it.  To protect ourselves, we tried to keep our butts against a fence or a wall whenever possible.  Whenever we did want to move, we had to plan it out carefully - looking all around to make sure there were no diablos coming, then dashing to the next open stretch of wall or squeezing our way into the center of a moving crowd so we were protected on all sides by a layer of non-diablos.  Despite our precautions, however, we all still got whacked on multiple occasions. 

Pretty, but not Robalagallina strange

Also, while in Santiago there are dozens of different characters besides lechones, in la Vega 95% of the parade consisted of diablos.  And, while the diablos' costumes really were beautiful, they just weren't as creative as the lechones'.  It was like everyone in La Vega had gone to Target to buy their Spiderman Halloween costume with matching accessories, while everyone in Santiago, they had raided Goodwill for old shirts to turn into Simpsons costumes.  La Vega's diablos looked better and more polished, while Santiago's characters were shabbier but more interesting.

Still, all grumbling aside, La Vega's Carnaval was fun to see and did have some stunning costumes.  I'll now so you some pictures, so you can enjoy them in the best way possible - out of the heat and humidity and protected from the vejias - and you can decide for yourself which set of costumes were better.

Here is a pretty standard diablo costume.  Most of the parade looked more or less like this, although with different colors. 

Here was one of the more creative floats - a huge rolling scorpion followed by diablos that looked like Ancient Egyptian gods.

I like how there is one diablo looking creepily at the camera.  It reminds me of something out of Pan's Labyrinth. 

Snakes play far too big a part in La Vega's Carnaval.  We saw at least five people walking around with snakes wrapped around their necks, waving them far too close to people (like me) who didn't particularly want to be near them and letting braver people (like Stefanie) take pictures with them on their shoulders.  This was a small snake, but most of them were at least five or six feet long.

I'm not sure when Stefanie noticed there was a snake on her...

...but she was a good sport about it.

A group of scantily-clad quasi-Taino women...












...and the group of men that was walking alongside them, highly interested.  In their historical accuracy, I'm sure.

A deceptively cute little girl diablo.  The younger diablos tend to be the most zealous about swing around their vejias and, at the same time, to have the worst aim.  One of them whacked my hand by accident so hard I had a bruise on my knuckle for three days! 

 Some neon green diablos who look like they could glow in the dark.

 I think he was actually just asking this man to get out of his way, but it looks like he's about to eat him.

A very colorful diablo, lifting up his mask to get some fresh, relatively cool air.

I'll close with everyone's favorite type of picture: one of food!  Here are Ryshona and Miranda with their hotdogs, cooked on sticks over a charcoal grill, with ketchup, mustard, mayo, and hot sauce squeezed on at your request.

Food, Part Two

Back by popular demand, here is another post about the delicious food here in the DR.  Here are pictures I've taken recently of different fruit/fruit products I've eaten here....

Chinola

In English, this is passion fruit.  I'd heard of it before, but before I'd got here I'd never seen it and wasn't even quite sure what it was.  It looks bizarre, covered in green and yellow specks on the outside and filled with gunky seeds on the inside, but it's actually really delicious.  It's a little sour when you eat it plain, but in juice or smoothies, it adds a great flavor.

Pasta de Guyaba

I don't know if my family will remember this, but in high school for a Spanish assignment, I had to cook a Caribbean-style meal.  The dessert needed guava paste, but, despite searching every specialty grocery store in a 15-minute radius of our house, I couldn't even find someone who knew what guava past was.  At long last, I have discovered it.  This is guava paste.  It is basically a puree of dried guavas.  Even though it doesn't look that appetizing, it tastes pretty good, almost like raisins but with a slightly grainier texture.

Fruta Picada

This is by far my favorite breakfast/snack: a bowl full of amazingly fresh and sweet tropical fruits.  Here, there are pieces of the sweetest pineapple I've ever tasted, delicious papaya, and sweet strawberries.  So good.

Aguacate

Avocados are a reoccurring theme in the food, because they play such a big role in pretty much every meal I eat here.  This may be part of the reason: They are absolutely gigantic.  When I saw this avocado for the first time, I actually had to ask my host mom what it was because it was so big I didn't think it could possibly be an avocado.  It was the size of a small cantaloupe.  My hand is here for scale, but even this cannot convey how huge it was.

Helado de Melacotón

This is homemade peach ice cream.  It was delicious - it tasted like a creamy blend of peaches and vanilla.

Bolas de Sandía

This was another highly delicious snack - fresh and pretty watermelon balls in a glass bowl.  To top it off, my host mom drizzled on some condensed milk, so in the end it tasted like watermelon and cream, which is just as delicious as strawberries and cream.

Batida

I think batidas (or smoothies) may be my favorite food here.  They're made out of delicious fresh Dominican fruit blended with ice, milk, and a little bit of sugar, and they are incredibly refreshing on hot days (aka every day).  This particular one was made out of zapote.  I have no idea what zapote is in English, so I looked it up.  According to the online translator it is "Sapota-tree, sapodilla, and its luscious apple-shaped fruit."  As I don't think that will mean anything more to most of you than it did to me, I'll just say it was highly delicious and tasted a little bit like papaya. 

Cacao

This is where chocolate comes from, and it's another thing I'd kind of known about but never really seen before I got here.  Those white pods are soft, delicious fruit that surrounds each bean that, when dried and ground, becomes cocao powder.  Although most of the time the fruit is just used for the cocao beans, the white part is edible.  When my host family showed me cocoa for the first time, they told me I could eat it and told me to take one of the white pods and eat it.  With some difficulty, as the white pods are quite slippery, I got one out of them out, popped it in my mouth, and started chewing.  Immediately, my host parents started laughing and saying, "No!  You're not supposed to chew it!"  I found out why a split second later, when I broke through the white part and was overwhelmed by the disgusting taste of pure bitterness that is a raw cocao bean.  A little later, though, I had the chance to try it again and, if you just suck on the white part and don't bit into it, it's actually a really delicious, sweet, mild flavor.

Carnaval!

Carnaval, in a nutshell

While I did learn a more detailed history of Carnaval in my Dominican Folklore class, what it I believe it basically boils down to was this:  The Spaniards brought over their tradition of celebrating Marti Gras before Ash Wednesday.  As colonization went on and all sorts of Taínos, Europeans, and African people were living together, they agreed, despite their differences and conflicts, that Marti Gras was great, so they all participated in it every year and created a great blend of music, dances, and costumes.  Then, at some point, someone said, "Man, this Marti Gras things is great.  But you know what would make it even better?  If we celebrated it for the entire month of February!"  And, thus, Dominican Carnaval was born.  Carnaval is a little different in every town, with unique traditions and characters that people dress up as year after year, and last week I was lucky enough to see Santiago's version.  (I did not, however, bring my camera.  So all of these pictures are from Miranda and Stefanie, to whom I am most grateful.)

The ride grounds, with a little of the parade visible behind it

Santiago's Carnaval is held every Sunday until Lent starts and is centered around the monument, the main landmark in the center of the city.  All around the monument, the grassy spaces and streets were full of booths selling freshly fried empanadas and yucca balls, booming music stages, families with kids dressed as Spiderman and princesses, cheesy carnival rides, and card tables where people pulled 2-liters of pop and glass bottles of rum out of plastic coolers to make and sell mixed drinks.  There were also tons of men and boys dressed as lechones (Santiago's version of the Carnaval demons).  They wore masks and colorful suits and, if they weren't in the parade, spent their time running around smacking people's butts with vejigas, which are strings attached to what used to be dried and inflated pig bladders but are now (usually) balloons or plastic balls.  While a lot of the lechones are young and have bad aim, some of them are rather zealous about swinging their vejigas around, and they can sting, as we found out on multiple occasions.

This is a lechon, with vejiga and whip

After getting out of our concho, weaving our way through the ride area, and stopping to look inside a booth selling temporary tattoos of everything from butterflies to Che Guevara, we stumbled upon the center of Carnaval: the parade.  We watched, mesmerized, as group after group of lechones danced past us, dressed in paper mache masks with curved snouts that looked like duck bills and brightly colored costumes with all sorts of bells, beads, and bits of metal hanging off of them.  As they went, they rhythmically bounced their feet and swayed their hips to blaring reggaeton music while using one hand to shake those pig bladders and the other to whirl their gigantic whips in huge circles over their heads and then crack them loudly against the ground.  (The point of the whips is just to make a noise, not to hit anyone, but given how close everyone was standing and the fact that half of the lechones were 6-12-year-old boys, I'm shocked I only saw one lechon get clipped with one on the top of his horn during the parade.)

Probably exactly what the Taínos were like

Between clusters of lechones came groups of people representing different dance schools, boy scout troops, or groups that get together every year just to perform in Carnaval.  Some of them were really professional, with coordinated dances and costumes that reflected everything from the indigenous people's rituals to modern politics.  Some groups were decked out in the very traditional Carnaval style, with lechones wearing masks made just like they were in the 1800s and limping as they walked (because, the story went, the devils were on earth because they'd fallen from heaven and, during the landing, they'd hurt their legs).  One group performed a reenactment of one of the battles for Dominican independence, complete with fake guns that clapped and smoked when fired and a mobile brick fortress that people dressed as 19th century soldiers stood behind and aimed from.  Other groups were not quite as organized, such as the numerous sets of little girls who walked by shaking their booties in an enthusiastic but not very coordinated manner.

Enlordodos

There were also all kinds of other characters joining different groups or weaving in and out of them independently.  There were diablitos, men who paint their entire bodies from toes to eyelids with a greasy black paint and run up to you, threatening to touch you unless you give them money or protest enough, and enlorlodos, who do the same thing but cover themselves in a tan mud.  There were a few renditions of Death, complete with long black robes decorated with cobwebs and frogs.  There was Nicholas Denden, a man dressed as a bear in a mangy, furry costume that must have been...wait for it...an un-bear-able in all of the heat of the bright sun and huge crowds.  (I do apologize.)

An imitation Robalagallina

There were also imitations of Robalagallina, the most famous character of Santiago's Carnaval.  Robalagallina was started by a man who dressed up as a woman with a gigantic fake butt and chest, and he performed her every year until he died.  He is super well known in the city - there is even a statue of Robalagallina near the monument, on the same level as the statues of a famous baseball team, and just below the ones honoring the heroes of the Dominican independence movement.  Seriously.  Santiagans love Robalagallina.  While there are many copycats, the legacy is being officially continued by a man who were were lucky enough to see today (although he's waiting until later in the season to unveil his full costume and was in plain clothes today).  Even without it, however, he was recognized and treated like a celebrity - when he walked by us in the parade, people started screaming and rushing towards him to get pictures. 

A dancing, limping lechon

The parade seemed to go on and on - we watched it for at least three hours, and arrived when it was already in full swing.  For much of that time, we stood in the shadow of a huge green stage covered by a gigantic canopy advertising Presidente beer.  Although, like a lot of the Carnaval grounds, it smelled a little too strongly of sweat and spilled Presidente, it was a great spot to be in: The speakers alternated techno and reggaeton music with dozens of repetitions of the same peppy and festive song about Carnaval, and each group that came by would take their time crossing the stage, dancing and showing off their costumes.  Sometimes they were accompanied by a pickup truck carrying huge speakers that blared their own music loud enough to drown out that of the stage; sometimes, the families of the participants ran alongside them dancing and waving their arms.  The groups weren't spaced with quite the same precision as, say, the nightly Disney World parade - some groups would be so close together that belly-dancing preteens would come dangerously close to getting whipped by limping lechones while other times there would be pauses so long that we thought the parade was over. 

Posing for photos

This parade was also less formal.  If you walked up to a lechon you were particularly impressed with, he'd almost always be happy to stop and take a picture with you.  In fact, during a particularly long stretch without any groups, a man standing near us hopped up on stage for a few minutes to show off his (very impressive) break dancing skills while the people all around the stage cheered.

It was absolutely unlike anything I had seen before.  I also somehow can't see anything like it taking place in the US....I'm thinking a holiday whose main focus is dressing up like devils, letting little kids wave around whips, and smacking people in the butt with imitation pig bladders would present a few too many liability issues.  Here's a video of it, in an attempt to better show what it was like.  (Skip to the 1:30-2:00 mark, which has best representation of the lechones' dancing and also features the song that was playing approximately 65% of the day.)

Eventually, we were able to tear ourselves away from the parade long enough to explore the rest of the festivities (and get whacked in the butt several more times).   We found ourselves back among the carnival rides, facing this one.  We had a dilemma.  On the one hand, this was a slightly rickety-looking ride set up temporarily for a carnival where, judging by the fact that one of the main attractions is waving around huge whips, safety is not the number one priority, in a country where no one sues anyone (and, therefore, there would be no one to get money from if the whole thing toppled over and crushed our limbs).  On the other hand, it did appear to be a ride made in the US, following US standards...it looked super fun...we hadn't heard any warnings about rides here...and we couldn't pass up the once-in-a-lifetime chance to go on a Dominican carnival ride.  So we watched it closely several times, observed zero problems, decided we liked those odds, and bought our tickets. 

This view, more or less.

When our turn came, the three of us got squished into one cage/seat with a bar that came right to our stomachs and a grated door that the operator latched shut.  The ride itself was one of those ferris-wheel-like things that have the seats that swing and occasionally flip upside down, and as it was loading people, we had an amazing view.  We'd gotten on it right at sunset, so we could look out and see the entire city light up by the redish-purple sun: the Carnaval parade close to us, stretches of houses behind it, and the mountains surrounding them on all sides.  It was an incredible view.  Then, the ride started.  It was a little faster and rougher than most of the rides at, say, Valleyfair, and the moments of being whipped around and seeing the dry, packed dirt ground beneath us, coming towards us far too quickly, were terrifying.  Most of the time, though, we were laughing and thoroughly enjoying our situation - spinning and catching glimpses of the beautiful scenery in a beautiful country as strains of "Carnaval...Carnaval...Carnaval...Te quiero...Lalalala" came blasting from the parade.

After that, we walked back towards the parade, ducked under the barbed wire fence that blocked off the grassy spaces between the steps leading up to the monument from dogs (but not people, of whom there were dozens sitting and walking all over it), and headed down the slope to find a place to sit and watch the end of the parade.  As we were sitting down, I accidentally slipped a little on the dry, packed-down grass and kicked loose a rock that tumbled down the hill, rolled up a little branch, soared off the branch, and landed right in middle of the back of a man in a fedora hat sitting below us.

A man who was shaking his hips and dancing on these stilts

He looked back at us, I waved apologetically and called out "Lo siento!" and he, noticing we were foreigners, came up and sat down beside us.  He asked us if this was our first time at the parade and what we'd thought of it, and when we told him we loved it, he started telling us all about the history of Carnaval, which traditions they've stopped doing and which are still going strong, the names of the different characters who walked past us, and the differences between Santiago's Carnaval and the one in La Vega.  He seemed to agree with most of the people here: While La Vega's Carnaval is more organized, has more money and energy put into it, and is objectively better, Santiago's is more creative, accessible, and spontaneous.  At some point, he mentioned that he was a visual artist who came to Carnaval every year to take pictures to base paintings off of later, and he got out his Blackberry to show us some photos of his finished paintings.

They were incredible.  He had a huge range of subjects and styles - realistic outlines of the Dominican countryside, surrealistic people, trees, and buildings melting into weird and interesting shapes, and a few abstract pieces with really beautiful color combinations.  When he'd shown us most of his gallery on his phone (and an adorable picture of his baby nephew), he reached into his messenger bag and pulled out a stuffed file folder, explaining that he also taught art classes and had some of the sketches he'd been doing there as examples inside.  He flipped through them and we oohed and ahhed - even though they were rough sketches, they looked just like the parts of the country that we've been to.  Kelsey told him that she's in an art class now and hopes that, by the end of the semester, she'll be able to sketches even half that well, and he smiled and said it wasn't that hard.  He found a couple of blank pieces of paper among his pictures and rested them on top of his file folder.  Then he rummaged around in his bag, found a charcoal pencil, and used a pocket knife to sharpen it. 

I love love love this picture!

"Okay," he said, "what do you want to see?"  We started listing our favorite parts of the countryside - the huge palm trees, the rivers, the little houses - and he sketched them all out, explaining as he went: "Here's lines for perspective, so this house is the right amount smaller than this one...I'm shading this side because the sun's coming from over there...You've seen people riding on burros, right?  I'm adding one here..."  And, in a few short minutes, there was a sketch that somehow managed to look just like the tiny towns surrounded by huge fields that we've driven through every time we've left Santiago.  When he was done, he flipped it over and scribbled "Dedicado a Anna de el artista Ofemil - muchas bendiciones" (dedicated to Anna by the artist Ofemil - many blessings), then added his email address and full name so we could find him and his gallery on facebook.  He then turned to Kelsey, asked what else he should draw, and drew another scene of a small town by the mountains, this time featuring a woman balancing a fruit basket on her head walking home from the river.  He signed it to her on the back, smiled, and told us we should hold on to them for when he's famous someday.  We thanked him profusely and told him we certainly would, and that we'll make sure to stop by the booth/cell that he has in the colonial-jail-turned-art-gallery that we're going to visit on a field trip for one of our classes. 

Then, it was time to head home, so we thanked him again, carefully rolled up our sketches, and headed off to find a taxi, gushing about how much we loved Carnaval.

Fun fact: At home, I discovered my sketch looks eerily like a painting on my host family's wall.