Speaking “Dominican”

Thoughts on language learning .. again! :)

Scrawled from yesterday, Day 1: My mind’s been spinning since daybreak!  I’d missed a connecting flight in New York, so my trip ended up being up being more than a 24 hour journey that started with a red eye flight from Seattle that I didn’t really sleep on... after getting re-routed through Miami, I finally I got into Ocoa, the province in the DR where we work,  at 1:30am ... and was “off to work” by 8:30 am that next morning for a meeting with all the Heads of Department of our partner, ADESJO... by the time the whirlwind of introductions finished, and I was still processing the last 10 minutes of what was being said, everyone had turned expectantly looking at me -- and I was drawing blanks.  Luckily, Chicho, the Head of the Education Department who had picked me up from the airport the night before and I’d been able to chat with for the couple hour drive into Ocoa while in a better (running on no-sleep adrenaline, and one-on-one) headspace, saved me by introducing me until I got my head back together.

But no WONDER i have such a hard time understanding them on the phone!! I usually make calls to our partners from our office when there’s a need cuz I can speak Spanish, which I’m always happy to do, as it’s a joy to be able to put it to use. :)  But no WONDER I struggle to talk to them on the phone, I can barely understand them in person!! It’s such a different accent here than the Spanish I’d learned in CR/Guatemala – if I were to put a totally Rainbow-centric label on it, I’d call it mumbly and slurred... almost like they have a suuuuthern drawwwwl to their accent or something!  When I’ve talked to a couple staff on the phone before, I thought that particular staff just wasn’t enunciating very clearly... but then... turns out EVERYONE speaks like that here – I’M just the oddball out that can’t understand! I say I’d catch 80% of what they are saying when I am listening hard...  hopefully the important 80%! I almost feel like I’m re-learning the language to figure out what they are saying. My mind was working overtime, trying to catch everything I needed to know about projects, while half trying to figure out what was different  about their accent so I could better catch what I was missing – I got, maybe it’s coming from a little further back in their tongue/throat so their articulation of consonants is a less pronounced... it was like they were dropping S’s and sometimes t’s and d’s off the ends of their words, and sometimes off the syllables in between, and the R’s a bit more of a thick L, than a typical (to me) Spanish rrrr. But all that, and the fact they ACTUALLY talk faster than ME (in English, when I’m excited -- aren’t drawls supposed to slow you down? :P), means that they were pretty much incomprehensible on 6 hours of sleep in 2 days when I wasn’t paying 110% attention!  I gave up trying to be part of the lively conversation when we were having lunch... better save my fading energies for projects!

At one point, at the end of the day, in a group interview with a women’s association (a group of women who get together and work together for the improvement of their community), I was dancing around gender issues, and whether there any social issues that have come as part of organizing of, or participating in, such a women’s group, and everyone was talking at once, and the conversation eventually seemed to diverge away from how the women’s group and the men’s group interact, towards <<????>>,  and then towards  the fruit tree reforestation project, aguacates (avocados) in particular.. and JUSSST when I thought I’d gotten back on track with the avocados, they were like, YES, that’s the problem!! (yes, yes, murmur of agreement). Say WHAT’S the problem?! The avocados????!  Aiy! I’m using my camera as a voice recorder tomorrow!

Avocados :)

Nothing yet about the projects here – I’ll sum up with some photos tomorrow! :)                                           

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And... from today :)

Ok, still no actual project photos & stories yet – I need to work on compiling those:)  But just a funny story for now, along the same line of tripping over language. :)

I’ve been visiting various projects that HOPE has funded, in particular, reporting on a medicines/medical supplies donation program, a reforestration program, an innovative greenhouse agriculture program, and a latrine & sanitation project. There’s a lot more going on, but those were the key ones... but over the last 2 days, they kept talking about the “sheep project” too, every now and then, which I was a little confused about – I hadn’t realized we were funding sheep programs, but hey, it more often than not surprises me what we are a part of that I don’t know being still a HOPE staff for just 2 years in a partnership that has been ongoing for over 20 years!  Anyhow, I just kept thinking, I’m no connoisseur of pastoral life, but it surrrre seems awfully hilly – and forested – for sheep to thrive here – not the Psalm 23 image I usually think of! Finally at the end of today, making our way back from a community for the latrine construction project, we hopped out of the truck, so I could see this so-called “sheep project”. It was seriously a 60% grade hike up behind a family’s home in the forest, and I’m just WAITING to see how on EARTH these cuddly baaa baaa fluffy sheep make their home in this rough landscape... when I look up to see

... boxes. 

And then it clicked. AHHH. 

“Abejas”. 

= “Bees”. Yes, we have an apiculture (beekeeping) project for women to keep bees to produce honey as an income-generating activity. 

“Ovejas” = Sheep. Unfortunately, b’s and v’s are pronounced the same in Spanish. :P We do NOT have a sheep project. I SEE.  LOL.

Haha. Anyways. Not sure when I’ll have access to internet again. But I will try to get some more interesting photos & stories up when I have the chance... though I’m switching gears and hopping countries after tomorrow...  I’ll see what I can do!  :)

Much love!

Arco Iris (my name here, Rainbow in Spanish) :)