On Leave from the Island

August turned into a big surprise month when my mom found great tickets for the whole family to Miami. My mama moved to the States in the 50's from Venezuela, and all 13 kids and my grandparents settled down in Miami. My mom and some of her siblings moved to California in the 70's (along with all the hippies!), and most of my uncles were back and forth to California during their Vietnam deployments. Today, about a quarter of my mom's family lives in California, and the rest live in either Atlanta or south Florida. So what's funny about that is the California people are Democrats who recycle, and the southerners have framed pictures of W., religious art icons, and Walmart!

Now, when I was young, we took family trips driving from Los Angeles, CA to Hollywood, FL. Those were epic journeys where I would read LRH's 10-volume sci-fi series Mission Earth between trips to the Alamo, swimming in KOA pools, and fighting with my brothers and sisters. Some years, we would take short (meaning 2 weeks+) journeys to Mexico, too. These vacations were a month plus, and I was never delivered home in time to attend the first day of school. A trip to Miami hasn't happened since the 80's, so my littlest sister (the Bob) didn't even know all the Miami family until this 2008 Miracle Airfare Trip.

Ben and I getting the Dominican Republic as our Peace Corps assignment: it's weird thinking that I would be geographically closer to half my aunts and uncles than I am usually! Also, getting to know my Caribbean culture, more, too - ironic, poetic justice, idyllic? In California, we mostly have Mexicans like my dad, and assorted latinos from Central America; my mom has generally been a cultural outlier with all her Caribbean habits, like being freakishly loud and the argument conversation style. There's a lot more to be said about that, but back to the vacation.

My moms gets these great, cheap fares on August 1st and by 4 PM that day, I'm booked on a flight out off the island over to Miami on the 9th. I had resigned myself to completing service without a break to the States, and I took this as just another sign that when you live in the DR, what happens is what “Dios quiere” (what God wants). There have been times when I wished for home pretty bad, and part of my struggle with my service is homesickness. For the most part, the stories of my companions center on angst or disappointment with Dominicana as a country or its nationals, and project troubles.

I concur that the culture clash is tiresome and draining, and the fate of one's project is a strain on the heart muscle. But my personal struggle is homesickness - homesickness for family, art supplies, textile arts, theater, food - my people and those activities that are a part of my personality.

Well, Ben and I had concentrated much effort on fortifying me against waves of homesickness, installing storm windows, against the flying coconut in the tormenta of homesickness, and then Dios kicks me a great long trip home. Now, we've been Stateside 13 days with 4 to go, and I am so relaxed.

I think I had forgotten how easy we have in the US. And I remember now some things about American living that I had forgotten in months 3-9 of my service. These things that were apparent in the first three months are now obvious again as the pendulum of experience swings back and I the US and DR at once, feel them at once.

Here in the States, I take these beautiful showers, hop in the pool, watch the Olympics on a flat screen tv, head to the movies, gratuitously enjoy the Internet - revel in beautiful green lawns and draining highways with smooth clean asphalt like a clear complexion. My toes are snuggled in carpet and the leather couch is like a hug, too. Its so much to enjoy! In the afternoons, my dad likes to take us to Barnes and Noble to browse books.

In the DR, life is so different is incomparable. I started off trying to qualify and quantify what it takes to make the DR a safer, healthier place. I'm still manifestly interested in the question, but the scheme of comparison - I'm not sure it exists. I'm happy to be going back, to be able to offer my education to the community we'll be returning to; and still, I will need to invent a method, personally mine, to working within the development model and in the DR.

Finally, I would like to say that this trip has made clear to me where and how my personal growth occurred. I have a little list of accomplishments to make the hard days easier, but this trip was nice in that, much like the visit from the Berry's in July, I saw those personality changes I had as goals when I left back in September 07.