In Which I Learn About Cement

So off we went to Nagua, y por supuesto, once again we travelled via guagua. Speaking of which...

!!!!CORRECTION!!!!

A GUAGUA IS NOT WHAT I PREVIOUSLY DEFINED IT TO BE!!! I was close, but Dominican cigars, I had not. After a deeper, more in depth discussion as to what a guagua represents in terms of life, love, and long term happiness, I discovered that it does not, in fact, refer to whether transportation is public or private at all. In fact, the definition gets simpler. A guagua, in the end, is solely a form of transportation expressed in the following equation:

guagua (greater than) car

I had big plans to actually make the mathematical symbol for ¨greater than,¨but these darn keyboards thwart me every time with their lack of symbiosis between what the key says it does versus what it really does. Boy, is foreign travel difficult.

Anyhoo, that´s a guagua. SUVs on up. Back to the narrative...

After another lovely guagua ride, our party was dropped off on a pre-determined street corner to meet Josh, a fellow peace corps volunteer, who was putting us up for the night and showing us around his latrine site the next morning. Soon enough, he came careening down the street on the only mode of transportation PCVs are allowed (and one of my own personal favorites), the bicycle. I have never, ever seen anyone go so fast on a bike. This boy was like a bat out of hell, and screeched to a stop to say hallo after a day of latrine building, so yes, he was realllllly sweaty and dirty, the picture perfect peace corps volunteer.

Oh wait I lied. PCVs are also allowed to own mules as transport, though as far as I know no one has one...

After a quick run to the market, we all headed to Joe and Jill´s, an older volunteer couple who lived right down the road from Josh. They had a beautiful block house (i.e. made of concrete, which in the peace corps world is luxurious) that we could kind of see as the power had gone out and they had no idea when it would come back on. Nonetheless, a delightful Italian meal was prepared by candlelight (puncuated half-way through by the return of electricity, huzzah!). Turns out it was also Josh´s birthday that day, so the whole meal had a festive air. The other PCV in the area also showed up for our little private party, so there were eight of us altogether, a nice little gathering of folks. We got to hear a lot of peace corps dirt, about the trials and tribulations of their work and of the peace corps itself. For instance, Joe and Jill were less than thrilled about half their furniture being stolen on their trip back home for the holidays, including their guest bed, and were more than ready for a return to not-so-bare-boned living. My favorite quote of the evening:

(asked to Joe and Jill): ¨Do you think you´ll do the peace corps again?¨
Joe: ¨Oh definitely, definitely, in a couple of years.¨
Jill: (nods assent, murmerings of agreement)
Joe: ¨Yeah, I mean, well, we´d never do this again, actually.¨

So good times, good times.

That night the four of us split up. Denny and I stayed on the couch/fouton/guest bed (as the other one was stolen) and Kate and Kristina hiked up the road to stay in Josh´s guest room.

Bright and early the next morning, we were called upon (literally. Our alarm clock was Kate´s cellphone with Josh at the other end telling us he was coming to fetch us) to get up and at ´em, today was a big day! Slowly, groggily, Denny and I got ourselves and our stuff together, so that even though we weren´t exactly awake when Josh came to show us the way to his house, at least we could make a passing effort at it. The coffee he gave us at his house helped a bit, for sure.

Our party reassembled, we took a 15 minute stroll to the brick making facility, where Josh had a team of men (working for 1 peso a brick) manufacturing by hand the materials to build the latrines. They used a small manual machine to press the bricks into shape, after which they were left to be cured for awhile under a tarp, emerging only for their twice daily waterings until they were muy fuerte and ready to go. Before this, I had no idea cement was such a delicate flower, needing to be watered and talked to and loved in order for it to reach its full potential, and I was able to learn a valuable lesson to apply to cement as well as life.

Josh then arranged for our passage up to the actual village where the latrine building was happening. Kate and Denny got a bola (aka free ride) on a motorcycle, and Kristina and I took the traditional route of guagua THEN motorcycle. Josh, cyclist extraordinaire, took his bike and beat us to the halfway point.

Aaaaand latrine building. What a project. I won´t go into too much of the logistics, only to say it involves a lot of cement and rebar (moment of pride... I now know what rebar is). It also involved a lot of sitting around and watching and being fairly useless as they constructed the floor of two of ´em. Or should I say, I was useless and Kate and Kristina actually knew what they were doing so could help. But I learned!! And learning is important!!

Finally, enough with the latrines. We then got eat a huuuuuge lunch, prepared by Josh´s assigned doña, of rice, beans, and chicken. Really tasty. As Kate says, with food here, if you can´t add sugar, fry it. Yum.

Then a moto/guagua ride back to where we came from, a gathering of things, a bittersweet parting with Kristina, and Kate, Denny and I took off for Santiago, where he would fly out the next day.

Best thing about Santiago visit number 2: visiting the cigar factory. The morning of Den´s departure, we took a quick visit to the cigar factory of whose name I cannot remember. They gave us a delightful demonstration of how they constructed their finest cigars, gave us a little sample (I tried a puff, and that was MORE than enough... it was a bit too reminiscent of the Indian tobacco fiasco...), and then showed us everything they had for sale. When we informed them we couldn´t really buy anything, but that the whole thing had been great, they gave us coupons for free beer!! Which we didn´t really use, as it was 10:30 in the morning, but still!!

And then Denny flew off into the sunset (okay, fine, afternoon sun, so much less poetic), and then we were two.