Week 29

Sorry this is so late but nothing happened this week. Not a single thing. Just kidding. My friend Kyle, a Peace Corps Volunteer in St. Lucia, came to visit and it was awesome. We visited some beautiful places, I snorkeled for the first time, I lead us into a terribly dense, un-navigable forest where we got covered in ant bites, Kyle taught me to make homemade flour tortillas for our fish tacos with guacamole, and we visited another village’s feast and danced on the beach in a Tropical Storm warning (for Hurricane Irene before she became a hurricane) which reinforced that Salisbury is hands-down the best village in Dominica. Only about 150 people turned up for their feast (more would have shown up in Salisbury even if there was an actual hurricane) and they opened the night playing songs from Salisbury’s Reunion.

I’d like to use this opportunity to talk about riding the bus. The buses, as I’ve described before, are actually 15 passenger vans (pick-up trucks here are called vans) with flip-out seats in the aisle. One would think that people would file into the bus filling in all the seats to allow for ease of loading new passengers. When I first arrived in made me furious that instead people do not fill the bus in any logical way. People sit in the aisle seats before the rows are filled and for the 10^th – 15^th people getting on the bus half the bus unloads to let them on and reloads back into their seats. I sat balling up my hands and chewing on my cheek as what could be a 40-minute bus ride became an hour, in a non-air-conditioned van with 15+ people. Then I sat in the back row a few times. It is treacherous. There’s no air circulation, they cram 5 people into a row and every pothole feels like it is throwing you through the roof. So now I also climb in and out of the bus 4 or 5 times each morning to avoid the back row.

Buses are privately owned here. Usually on my bus home from town (I only go into town about once a week) someone on the bus will yell “Stop a while” in one of the villages we pass on the way to Salisbury. Sometimes he/she gets out of the bus to relieve his/her bladder on the side of the road. Sometimes another person runs up to the bus and collects a bag of chicken from a passenger on the bus. Sometimes the person gets out of the bus walks into the village and we all wait on the bus with no indication of what is happening for 5 – 10 minutes. Well, if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. About a month ago I was walking up the road to drop something for a woman when a bus was passing down. I got in the bus and asked (questions here sound like demands which is an entirely different sense of confusion) the driver, “Reverse up the road a while for me to drop this for Auntie Connie.” Sure enough he proceeded to reverse 50 yards up the road to Connie’s house and made all the passengers wait while I went into Connie’s house to drop her package.

Dominican Phrase Book: Doe (pronounced like a female deer) means don’t. Sometimes I still have trouble figuring out if people are asking me a question, “Doe you go there?” (Do you go there?) or yelling at me, “Doe you go there!” (Don’t go there!)

Patron at the Reunion Bar: Bush rum and I doe wan’ ice.

Confused Peace Corps Volunteer: You do or you don’t want ice?

Patron at the Reunion Bar: (louder) I DOE want ice.

Confused Peace Corps Volunteer: I’m sorry I just don’t understand- do you want ice or not?

Patron at Reunion Bar: Titus, gimme a bush rum and I doe wan’ ice.

Titus: In a while. (Immediately brings the man a bush rum with no ice in it.)