We are so over this, Yazmin.

Being Nice

In the past two weeks, I have been given two whole squashes. They taste like pumpkin, are currently in season, and are my favorite boiled with salt. When I was stuck in the hotel during the hurricane, I came back with five bricks of dulce de leche y coco, a treat made by boiling sugar, milk and coconut for a really long time. I got them for my closest families in town and was received with all sorts of kindness. These are the families that I visit the most even when I really don’t feel like it. If I hadn’t fully realized it before, I think I have learned more about the value of just being nice.

Life is so cruel, it is almost inexplicable that we even do it. Cholera is currently rampaging across Haiti taking lives painfully and tragically. Every day, CNN gives a hodgepodge of the latest horrors. It is not enough to destroy the environment and face natural disasters and wretched health problems, we kill each other in the name of all types of things that don’t make us happy. On a more mild level, we face our less catastrophic daily issues with whatever amount of grace and then bitch about that person who is just so annoying and fight with our most chummy people. Middle school is a minefield of everything despicable and caddy about human nature. Maybe warfare, complaining and cruelty are as inevitable as they seem to be. But, why not add to our horrid ways a little bit of showy love? There are buckets of psych studies showing that faking happiness actually makes you feel better. I am almost certain that even if you don’t feel nice, simulating kindness makes you sweeter.

In my six remaining months, I am resolving to focus on this (among other things). I have already had kids send thoughtful cards to Haiti and am hosting extra movie and art nights that I deeply dread only because I can. The nice ball will continue to roll and I think everyone else should do this, too. Send emails to authors of books you enjoy, packages to your friends, cookies to your neighbors! As the holiday season is upon us, we can do all sorts of cute things and smile while we do them. Peace Corps hosts a huge American Thanksgiving dinner for which I am excited to the point of anxiety. A group of volunteers have been organizing it for months because we are all on this island and holiday food, devoid in our lives, tastes so fantastically like home. We are implementing an all-volunteer Secret Santa which should lead to loads of small surprises.

I am sure everyone in the states is baking, reuniting and telling everyone how great he or she is looking. There will be traditions, treks down memory lane, and excursions (to Santa and such). As the twinkly lights come out and the new hot drink flavors, people trample each other to death for the best Walmart deal. Let’s just employ some considerate niceties and try to minimize the nasty. Everyone is doing it.

Spreading the Cholera Word and Rio Dirty

In the Time of Cholera

I am sitting in a hotel with twenty seven other Peace Corps volunteers waiting for hurricane Tomás. Even with the internet, TV shows, hot water and flush toilets uncharacteristic of our daily living conditions, we complain about feeling stir crazy without permission to even leave the building. My mom had to cancel her visit, a week planned to start tomorrow for which I have been deliriously excited and well-packed. I have forced myself to overcome my pity party for not getting the quality time with her with the gravity of the situation on this island.

About two weeks ago, a cholera epidemic was declared in Haiti. The disease has now infected thousands and killed hundreds. Although it has not yet been declared in the Dominican Republic, it is almost a matter of time because the countries share the contaminated water sources. Public health efforts in the Dominican Republic have been both strong and sad. Cholera is a waterborne bacteria that can be avoided using appropriate hygiene and water treatment practices. Posters, fliers and radio announcements have flooded the country reminding people to wash their hands and boil or bleach all water and produce. In my community, I went house to house with a group of kids handing out fliers and giving little presentations about the disease and prevention.

The sad part of the efforts is the migration control. The border, delineated by a river and an international highway (actually a barely functioning dirt road), is now officially closed. Haitians who live in the DR, including migrant workers, home owners and kids, are dropped off at the river with their possessions and told to cross. Violence and discrimination has been prevalent and only intensified by the ignorant belief that cholera is a Haitian illness. The market in my border town no longer sells anything and people who have lived here for years are being sent somewhere that is no longer their home.

You would hope this is bad enough. An immense natural disaster, cholera, deportation and a total halt on international trading is bad enough. Over a million remain displaced from the earthquake in January. Right now, this extremely vulnerable population is waiting for a hurricane. Unlike myself, they are waiting in tents in refugee camps or in badly constructed wood or earth homes for this tremendous storm. No one knows what will happen but this is not likely to be small. Beyond the inevitable structural damage, flooding can only exasperate the cholera epidemic. So, we all sit in varying levels of comfort passing the time as it starts to rain. I will soon get back to watching Top Chef with my friends, thinking about my mom not coming, and maybe blow an eyelash for the people in Haiti. Knowing nothing about meteorology, I am also wishing for some sort of large unexpected gust of wind to change the trajectory of that terrible Tomás.