Las Hermanas Mirabal

Last weekend we went to a house “museum” that was the house of three very important women to the history and the present of the Dominican Republic. Their story is so sad and so inspiring that I cannot help myself but share it with you and hope that you read it. (Also, a better account can be found in the movie or book of In the Time of the Butterflies or Tropico de Sangre so if you have the time to read or watch one of those do that instead of read my incomplete and probably inaccurate account-although I promise I’m not being overdramatic for the sake of story-telling. Everything I describe really did happen.)
“Las Hermanas Mirabal” refers to 3 very powerful women that were leaders in the revolution against Trujillo, a dictator that demanded respect and fear for 30 years as the Dominican Republic’s leader. Anybody that he thought did or said anything in opposition to him was “disappeared”. Sometimes they returned, a different person after suffering unmentionable tortures, but many times they did not. The Mirabal sisters’ scuffles with him began at some sort of ball or party to which their family was invited. Minerva, one of the sisters, was dying to go to law school. Of course, no woman was allowed to do this. Trujillo asked her to dance with him. Nobody says no to Trujillo. So she did but she took the opportunity to bring forth her request for him to make an exception. He told her that women belong in the house and that she was too beautiful to worry about things like law. He began to get touchy with her and she pushed him back. Nobody pushes Trujillo; the whole room stopped and stared. He let the family go home because Trujillo always did his business in secret. But a day or a few days later one of his generals showed up to their house. They took away their father. The family went to get their father back. Minerva ended up making a deal with the General. They were going to roll a dice. If she won, she got her father back and got to go to law school. If she lost, she would stay at his service for life. She won…
Sort of. Her father returned a broken, helpless man and died shortly thereafter. She did go to law school and completed her degree. But as it was handed to her, the General pointed out that he never said anything about allowing her to practice law. So she joined a revolution plotting to overthrow Trujillo. Eventually two of her three sisters joined, and they all married men in the revolution. The third sister’s husband wouldn’t allow her to be a part of it and someone had to stay home to take care of their mother and everyone else’s children. So she did. Consequently, she survived and I met her last weekend. Her name is Dedé and she is a captivatingly honest and beautiful woman. She will be turning 87 in a couple weeks. I remember that one of the questions we asked her was if she had any part in the revolution that her sisters led. She told us that clearly she hadn’t because she was still alive. She said (in Spanish, of course), “I kept my mouth shut and he didn’t kill me. They didn’t, so he killed them.” Back to the past…
The women and their husbands spent a good deal of time in jail once Trujillo was on to their little revolution. After some international involvement began, the sisters were eventually let free and returned to their homes to begin petitioning for the release of their husbands. A little bit after they were released Trujillo came to visit their house. After all he had done to them-tortures to them and their husbands right in front of their eyes-he had come to hear their gratitude for their release. This was what really got to me-it wasn’t just a power thing for him. He was so personally involved in the oppression that he personally showed up to peoples’ houses to humiliate them. Anyway, Minerva still wouldn’t have relations with him and asked for the release of their husbands when they got there. Shortly after, they went to go visit their husbands in prison. It was the year 1960. On the way back their car was stopped and they were taken into the corn field where they were beaten to death. This scene in the movie In the Time of the Butterflies was so powerful to me. I don’t know if it’s exactly how it happened or not (I’m not sure if anyone knows) but it was powerful. Minerva looked right into the eyes of one of the men who was about to beat her to death and told him that he didn’t have to do this. Even though she knew full well what he was about to do to her, she recognized his brokenness and his fear. Nevertheless the men rounded the sisters up and formed a circle around them. The women repeated to themselves over and over again “The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want…Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me…”
Of course, Trujillo made this look like an accident. He ordered that their bodies be put back in the car and a brick or something put on the gas pedal so it would drive itself off the cliff and look like an accident. By this point, though, everyone knew that there weren’t any accidents of these sorts. 6 months later, in 1961, Trujillo was assassinated.
I think part of the reason this has affected me so much is that the effects are still so apparent. Trujillo wanted to “purify the Dominican race” and gave horrible treatment to Haitians. The country has made many strides toward recovering a good relationship with Haitians, but prejudice is still very visible in some places. Some of my Dominican friends that are women are studying law and would not have that opportunity without the fight of the Mirabal sisters. Also, their strength was so profound that one cannot help but stop and take a critical look at one’s own life. Would I have the strength to do what they did in their situation? Probably not. That’s a sobering reality. What should one do to find that strength? Where does it come from? “My help comes from the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth.” –Psalm 121:2
Once again, I am going to refer to what I’ve learned from Captivating. (Seriously, reading this book was like having someone speak to me the words of my heart as I realized them for the first time. I'm not saying that it is perfect. It is written by humans. And I don't support everything in the book. But I still think that you should read it.) We all want to have an irreplaceable role in the Kingdom. Women are created with beauty, yes, but we need more that to just be beautiful. We are born wanting to save the day in some special way that nobody else can. Unfortunately, so often life gets to us and “we don’t feel that we are irreplaceable, so we try to make ourselves useful” instead. We forget that this wasn’t God’s original plan for us. I couldn’t help but remember this upon hearing the story of these women. They didn’t forget this. They died fighting for what they believed in. And yet somehow they still won. We face little battles every single day. What would the world look like if we believed so strongly in the Kingdom that was, is, and is to come that we began fighting-I mean, really fighting-for it now?

La Isabela

This weekend our trip was a co-pay trip to La Isabela, the first established European colony in the New World. I have previously expressed my feelings on history, but this was actually so cool! So I want to share a little bit. I’m going to do a sweeping accreditation right now of my facts to the spoken word of my program director Lynne Guitar, a researcher of history and anthropology. First off, some people will say that it’s not worth going to because so many of the ruins are gone. Part of this is because Trujillo ordered one of his men to clean up the mess, whose solution was to dump it all in the sea. What’s left of the ruins is dwindling because the locals will take the rubble from what’s left to build their own homes. It’s hard for them to respect the history when they’re just trying to survive their own place in history right now. Columbus first arrived with his men around Christmas time. They celebrated Christmas Eve more heartily than Christmas day itself, and they did so but drinking it away. There was a shipwreck because all of the men were drunk and a 12-year-old was left in charge of the ship. So when they decided to return, 39 of them had to stay. But Columbus promised that he would be back within a year. And he was-he came back around Christmas time the next year…to find the rotting corpses of all 39 of them. What had happened was that the Spaniards had integrated well with the Tainos and the Tainos killed them because “they didn’t know how to live in a civilized society”. They had begun raping the Taino women. This was mostly due to them not understanding the Taino culture very clearly. The Tainos encouraged sexual experimentation from a very young age before marriage. Any baby born was seen as a gift. And they were very hospitable so when the Spaniards came as guests they would lend them women to be their bedmates. Since the Spaniards saw everyone sleeping with everyone else, they thought it was okay to take any woman they pleased, but it was not. So the Tainos decided they had to kill them off. But they couldn’t have imagined the terremoto that came back with Columbus, but neither were the Spaniards prepared for such disaster. Columbus brought 1,200 men with him. Each Spaniard ate about 8 times what each Taino would eat. And they were all hidalgos-important people-so they weren’t going to lift a finger to help cultivate the land. Everyone was going hungry after awhile. Furthermore, the Spaniards encountered new diseases they had no immunity to. Within the first 3 months 400 Spaniards died of dehydration from dysentery. We saw a complete skeleton of one of the Spaniards (the Tainos put boards on the foreheads of their children so they all has purposefully slanted foreheads so with his flat forehead this is known to be a Spaniard) and that was really a strange feeling. It wasn’t even like in a glass box in a museum. It was just out in the open with a hut over it to shelter it from the elements.
Okay, end of history lesson for the day. After this we went to the beach in La Isabela, where there is a large coral reef. The water was so calm and so shallow and so warm! And I got to walk on the reef! (Thank you Chacos! :) ) I found some shells and some other cool things and just had fun exploring. Later we were finding cool crabs and stuff when some Dominicans sauntered by with a LIVE sea urchin in their hands!!! They let me hold it =] It felt so weird because I could feel it moving. In our other searches I made a hermit crab friend and we found some baby sea urchins. At one point I was holding both my friend and a baby sea urchin and I think that the sea urchin was about to eat the crab because it suctioned him to himself so I had to separate them (although I have to admit, that would have been fascinating to watch, but I was a little leery of a sea urchin stunning his prey on my hand…) We ate lunch from an amazing woman who cooks on the beach for a living and it was soooo good. Some people ate fish (I don’t particularly enjoy seafood so I wasn’t that daring) and others ate chicken. We had to let her know in advance that we were coming because they catch the fish the morning of, and she had to know how many to catch. The meat plus the tostones plus the rice and beans plus the salad plus the coke was about $5. Incredible.

After that beach we went to a different beach that was much wavier. There was a string of rocks the went out into the ocean (sort of like what lines the Grand Haven pier but without the pier) and I made it all the way out! But barely. I lost a flip flop a couple of times and I was scared of losing my camera. But I made it and it was beautiful. After I got back from that, a friend and I decided we were going to try and cross off another Reto from our list by obtaining, opening, and drinking a coconut from a tree. We intended to climb the tree but that was ruled out after a few feeble attempts. So I got a coconut from the ground and threw it at the cluster. I had several really good hits! But I think that they were not at all ripe and they hardly budged. So my friend began to shimmy up with another friend’s help with spotting. She made it so far up but he wasn’t tall enough to get her up further and she was still a little out of reach. All the Dominicans on the beach had formed a little motorcycle cluster and thought we were so amusing. Sadly, we had to go so we had to give up. I was a little heartbroken. We will find a way somehow before we leave! I slept contentedly for much of the way home and arrived peacefully. Then, I began my homework for the next day. Just another day in the life :)

Sosúa

The next day we had planned on going to the beach. We had to be out of the hotel by 10 and had to pack up all of our contents that were dispersed throughout the room and screw the lightbulb back in so we set an alarm for 9. We woke up and it was pouring rain outside and not a single one of us got up until at least 9:30. Lots of times it will rain in the morning and then clear up so we decided to go anyway. So the hotel lady told us to go to this plaza that was a couple of blocks away and look for a Sosúa taxi. So we trudged there in the rain but then couldn’t find the taxis and didn’t really understand all of her instructions on how to find them so we asked a man selling stuff about the whole situation. He told us that taxis are so much more expensive and that we should just take a guaguita, which is like the size of our church van that just sort of goes along the coast and picks up people/drops them off wherever they need it. Then of course he wanted us to buy something so Katie bought a ring to satisfy him out of a little bit of frustration but then realized she actually really liked it, which was convenient. Plus he knew we were students, not tourists, so he didn’t overcharge her.

Our ride itself was an experience. We eventually had 20 people in an 11-maybe-12-passenger van. And there was a lady on there who had to have been certifiably insane. She didn’t stop talking the whole way. The guys were telling her that nobody wanted to listen to her talk but she kept talking about her motoconcho injuries and all of the languages she can speak. She kept speaking to us in English. Katie muttered to us in Spanish that it would be easier to understand her if she were speaking in Spanish than English, and the whole back of the bus heard her and bursted out laughing and nodding their heads in agreement. She was oblivious to their annoyance and just kept right on chatting. It was phenomenal. I really kind of enjoyed her.

But we finally decided to go to Sosúa instead of Cabarete and we made it! The sun had started to peek out so we rented chairs and settled in. The man we rented from took the umbrella away so we could enjoy the sun. 20 minutes later it started to rain and he was nowhere in sight. It was hard enough rain to be really annoying but not enough that we clearly had to leave so we debated for awhile and decided to stay, which was good because the sun played hide-and-go-seek all day and sometimes it was really nice! So we stayed and took a nap and swam and played with the fishies and watched these kids doing crazy gymnastics tricks. It ended up being a great day. We left feeling satisfied and ready to go back home and start on homework, if that’s possible...

But we had to get some done because the next day was the 9^th game of the DR series and they were tied 4-4! If the Aguilas were to win, everyone would take to the streets and start dancing and drinking and singing and shouting and celebrating in every way imaginable. Traffic wouldn’t have been able to pass through very well because the streets would be flooded with people. We went to our favorite restaurant/coffee shop the next day to watch it. Anna and I were there all day studying and tried to do some studying during the game but it was really hard and by the 8^th innning it was entirely impossible. It was the closest, most stressful game I have ever witnessed. In the top of the 9^th inning the Aguilas were down 5-4 and were up to bat. An incredible play brought the game to 5-5 and the place was in uproar. Unfortunately, a well-placed hit in the bottom of the inning with men on first and third won the game for Escogido. It was still the best game I’ve ever watched in my life (partially because I never watch baseball, but it was still really good!). That time spent with friends was a perfect end to a great weekend (aside from the fact that the Aguilas lost :( )

Puerto Plata

The morning after la Fiesta, myself and several of my friends (Sam, Katie, Stephen, Renata, Anna, and Shanita) got up early to make the 8:00 bus to Puerto Plata. I was still a pretty sick at this point from something I picked up from the food at La Solapa, and the bus ride killed me. I felt like such a liability. But I barely made it without incident, then threw up the 4 crackers I had eaten that morning and was ready to face the day (side note: I never throw up. Like ever. This was a strange experience for me.) Our philosophy for this weekend was to kind of show up and see what happened. We had an idea of some things that would be cool to see, but we didn’t know where any of them were. When we arrived we took a taxi bus to a hotel we knew was cheap but would be safe to keep our things in. Thankfully, they had a room for us! The one thing we knew for sure we wanted to do by thispointwas to take the teleférico, which I think means cable car because that’s sort of what it was. We asked the hostess at the hotel to call a taxi because we wanted to get started right away, and off we went. Our taxista dropped us off and gave us his card so we could call him when we were done (this is a mundane detail to include because they always do that, but it becomes sort of funny later on...). Immediately after we all got out a man came and insisted that we let him be our guide. We tried to ignore him because we had been told not to do this because you don’t need a guide on the mountain and they just make you pay them money. But he was so insistent and kept talking about a special for students and said that he could lower our ticket prices significantly if we let him guide us. So after a lot of frustrating discussion we finally decided to let him. This ended up helping us a lot because even after tipping him our cost was much less than it would’ve been if we hadn’t accepted his help in convicing the ticket lady to lower our price and we learned some cool stuff about the plants and this cave that was there and the city and stuff. But it was also a little bit sketchy because he kept asking where we were staying and other questions we had to avoid answering. I was a little bit terrified on the cable ride (handling heights isn’t one of my strongest points) but it was literally a breathtaking view (photo credit: Stephen). Once we got to the top of the mountain we walked around a little bit with the guidance of our eccentric guide and got to see some beautiful flora and even a little cave! It was really cool. We went back down the cable car, which I think was even scarier for me than going up but it was still so pretty.

Once we got down we decided to go to the grocery store to get food instead of eating out for all of our meals. We were told it would be about a 20 minute walk so we started on our way, even though we felt a little bad for not calling our taxista (when you go somewhere it’s good to form a good relationship with one taxista so you don’t get ripped off and you can count on him to take care of you). Exactly an hour an a half later, after asking about 9 more people for directions, each of them saying that we were only 5 minutes away from the store, we made it! (Cultural note: Dominican time is very much different than US time:) ) We dispersed ourselves throughout the store without much of a plan other than sandwiches and snacks because we were so hungry by this point. Somehow, an incredibly short time later, we reunited with exactly the right items and right amount for what we needed for a lunch and breakfast/lunch the next day. It was amazing to me. We didn’t want to wait to eat until we got back to our hotel so we decided to eat upstairs in the little food court (We recognized the strangeness of our little picnic but we didn’t care at this point-but just to understand how weird we were for this, it would be like grocery shopping at Meijer and taking the groceries upstairs to eat them.).

While eating, we decided our next move was to call this horseback riding place we had read about to see if they were open. It took awhile to get a hold of them but we finally did and they said they were saddling up horses for us and to call when our taxista arrived so they could explain how to get there because it was difficult. Also, we were cutting it close for getting the people who weren’t going to stay overnight to the bus station on time. So we went downstairs and there were some taxi drivers there but weregoing to charge us what seemed like a lot to get there so we decided to call our taxista. He was pretty confused as to how we had gotten to the store (we were too...) but he came. The other drivers were pretty indignant with us for not using them and calling someone else. That was awkard while we waited right next to them. He finally came...with a flat tire. The other drivers were giving us priceless looks that clearly said some form of “Suck it” and “That’s what you get.” Hah but he got it fixed and took us there and it ended up only costing a little less than they were going to charge. But we finally made it, groceries and all (we didn’t have time to go back to the hotel first, and it would’ve costed more taxi money). And then I remembered how scared I was of riding horses, because they are pretty tall.

Fear notwithstanding, it was such a crazy and wonderful experience! The scenery was beautiful and the people were off their rockers. Not to mention the horses. They kept running themselves, and consequently us, into the other horses. Mine didn’t listen that much to me and he kept biting other horses. But he was beautiful, probably the prettiest one there and I’m not even being biased because we had a pretty crotchety relationship, and his name was Chendi. One of the guide’s names was Javier and he took a particular interest in Katie (Katie is the only one who is married out of all of us, which makes it even more amusing) and I was by her a lot and he wouldkeep splashing us with his horse when we went through puddles that were the sixe of small lakes, which we did a lot. And he kept calling me Sophia, which I have to admit is a much more sophisticated name than Kristen but was strange nonetheless. 3 hours and much sorer legs later, we were done with our little jaunt through the mountains and were in a hurry to make it to the bus on time. So we had the secretary call a taxi right away and headed on our merry way.

We dropped Anna, Renate and Shanita off at the bus and Sam, Katie, Stephen and I went back to the hotel to shower and think about dinner. Stephen had this guide book thing that had become our best friend this day and we found a pizza place that looked nice and affordable so we decided to go there. The pizza was so good! It was an open air, all outdoors restaurant that was really quaint. And it was really cheap. Afterwards we decided we wanted to just hang out and play cards instead of do anything else. There was this cockfighting thing that had looked really cool (on a cultural experience level, I don’t think I would’ve been able to actually watch the whole thing) but we thought we had had enough adventure for one day so we went back and made cards out of paper and talked and laughed and also shared some really deep life story events. It was a great evening to end a great day. When we finally decided to go to sleep (don’t worry, there were two beds so Stephen got his own double and the three of us shared a queen size-we are poor college kids and couldn’t afford 2 rooms!), we turned the light off but it kept flickering and wouldn’t turn off. It was really annoying but also kindof creepy. So we made Stephen unscrew the bulb. Then the TV wouldn’t turn off and we hadunscrewed the light wo we couldnt’t really see things too clearly. So we just turned it to video so it was kind dark. The random and strangeday just wouldn’t have been complete without a light and a television that wouldn’t turn off!

Being Lost, Dominican Service and Fiesta de los Palos

Last weekend was such a crazy weekend. Mostly because of the little things, so it probably won’t seem that crazy as I recount it. In any case, we had a great time and went on many adventures! We also crossed a couple of the 25 retos off our lists :) It all started with a birthday party for one ofour friends (we have been here exactly a month and have had 4 birthdays to celebrate, with about a thousand more to go...:) ) Stephen and I were headed on our way, got off the concho at the right spot and were heading down the right road. After about 20 minutes of walking we were pretty sure we had gone past where we were supposed to (we get lost a lot, not too big of a deal anymore haha). We ask people along the way where things are, but if they don't know they typically give us an answer anyway because they'd rather have a wrong answer than no answer. Anyway, it was around this time that a man’s head and torso popped up over the 8-foot brick wall and he shouted out something so loudly and so suddenly above our heads that Stephen screamed like a little girl (I may have jumped a little...). We still do not know what the big deal was. Anyway, we eventually made it to the restaurant after turning back and making several phone calls. We first ordered our drinks. About 45 minutes later they came out. We then ordered our food. About an hour and a half later it came out (cultural lesson: service in the Dominican Republic is not as timely as service in the US and it doesn’t even matter if you are there so early that no one else is at the restaurant yet). After we shoveled down our food, we split up. Some people went to see the (great) Aguilas game (It was in the championship series-them against a team from Santo Domingo. Best out of 9 goes to the Caribbean series.They went all the way to the 9^th game...I will get to that later :))

The rest of us went to Fiesta de los Palos. It was a really strange and really good experience. Although the African roots of the Dominican people are rarely recognized by this people who strive to assert their Spanish and European blood, there are some ways in which the African influence shines through in the culture, and Fiesta de los Palos is one of those things. Musical and rhythmic African expression is closely tied to religious culture, and this fiesta which meets once a month is sort of a celebration of this heritage. Men gather around and sing and play on various sorts of drums, but the most prominent is the kind that is long (about up to a person’s waist) and the player straddles it to play it. Like our praise teams, they take drink breaks in between songs, but unlike our praise teams, their drink of choice is whiskey, I believe. Along with the instruments there is some sort of ritual dance that is beautiful and very different from the popular Dominican dances. One woman got so into it that she ended up laying on the ground and her partner had to “call her” to get up.

If I’m being honest, I was a little nervous at first of going to this celebration. I wasn’t entirely sure if this was a Christian form of expression or more like voodoo (from what I gather, I believe they take aspects from both). In our culture we don’t talk or think too much about various spirits, and we don’t have ritual dances that we perform to “divinities” or to religious leaders.There are some Catholic influences in this fiesta, but there are many secular aspects as well. I was a little scared of getting involved with something that is so spiritual but with aspects of voodoo. But I knew that it would be an important cultural experience, and in the end, I knew that I can rest in the security of my heart in God’s hands. And I am really glad I went, if nothing else to think more seriously about spiritual warfare and see a different way of religion. Though I don’t share their views, I can learn something from their dedication and expression. But I also did enjoy learning a new style of dance. And I felt so...fulfilled and blessed to be able to rest in the hope and assurance in 1 John: “Dear friends, do not believe in every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world...You, dear children, are from God and have overcome them, because the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world.” (1 John 4:1,4)