And then there were little critters

So this story is actually from training, but I forgot to put it in here before. One morning we were picking up everyone in the van to go on a hike for the day. So everyone has their bags with water and sunscreen, long pants, socks, and tennis shoes. I was no different and just waiting for everyone to load the bus. Then as soon as we start driving I felt a pain, almost a pinch, on my leg. It was definitely out of the ordinary but I assumed it was just a new bug bite. Then the pain went up my leg and I touched my leg, and felt something long, like 4-6 inches in my pants moving up my leg. I immediately started screaming, thrashing around, and pulling up my jeans to see what was there. The rest of my row, and a few people behind us start to do the same. Meanwhile the van is still driving full speed, as my friend at the end of my row is starting to open the door and the rest of the van is yelling at the driver to stop. I just keep screaming and screaming as I finally find this huge centipede crawling around my knee. I’m trying to brush it off me without touching it and finally my row unloads from the van so I can get out and use a notebook to get it off me. It was unbelievably huge for being a centipede, and apparently it bites really hard, so I was lucky I got it off me. Actually, my Spanish instructor got bit a few days later while he was sleeping and confirmed how much it hurt and couldn’t go back to sleep before getting it taken care of, so I feel my screams were justified.

Also, one of my favorite cultural differences that I’ve encountered is that there are a lot of Dominicans (at least in the campos I’ve been to) that are afraid of frogs. Snakes and spiders? No hay problema. But even the smallest frog jumping around will send the Dominicans I know running and screaming in the other direction. My favorite reaction is from my host uncle, a 65 year old farmer, that literally ran off and left the property and did not return one night when we were hanging out and a frog showed up. I've also gone over to pick up the frog and move it a few times when they are around, so that people will sit down and they think I am crazy to touch a frog and will then tell people about who brave I was, it's great.

Overall I’ve been doing really well. We got poured on when Hurricane Tomas was in the area (although they say it is nothing compared to the rainy season). And I’ve been really busy the last week and a half getting to know where the tour is in terms of what needs to be done before receiving tours. Also, there was an outside consultant that worked through an NGO doing guide training, so that was very useful to have to observe the strengths and weaknesses they have and what I need to focus on. I’ve also been working on getting to know everyone in my campo, which is definitely a task on it’s own. It’s especially hard because everyone already knows my name and so people will come up to me and I have no idea who they are, but they already know everything about me. But with time I’ll learn names and who is related (which, in short, is everyone). Also, a lot of Dominicans have nicknames, so they will introduce themselves with their birth name, but then nobody actually calls them by that name. And a lot of the times the nickname has little or nothing to do with their birth name. So like I know a Franklin who goes by Joselo; Bienvenido is Buben; a Kelvin who is Titi, and a Catalina who goes by Juanita. It is all very confusing. But I’m having fun and learning something new every day.

We are also having cholera slowly approach us. I’m pretty cut off from the news here, but found out there was a case on Tuesday in a town just a bit east of us, so it is definitely just a matter of time. I’m sure you all know that the cholera started about a month ago in Haiti, so it has made its way across the border. I’m pretty far east, but I know other volunteers closer to the border have already had cases in their communities. It has been hard to talk to people in my community about it because they identify it as a Haitian disease, so I’m trying to emphasize that it’s been in Latin America for about 20 years and didn’t originate there, but they don’t seem very convinced. It’s unfortunate that it is coming over from Haiti, because it is just adding more strain on the Dominican-Haitian relations.