Volunteer Visit Part 4

After Escojo and another round of neighbor visits, it was time for a rousing sermon about stories from Genesis and the sermon on the mount led by Doña Elena at the Adventist church. Aftewards we visited her home where she prepared us dinner and through conversation impressed me as remarkably wordly and kind. Well past ten at night, we returned to the house Cassidy shares with a community member and we shared his comfortable bed. 

Cassidy and Magee demonstrate the proper use of a latrine


The next day held a morning spent with our new friends from Iowa and a visit to Magee's community just up the road where Cassidy had arranged to work on the school's computer lab. As we walked there, Cassidy shared a horrific story about a Haitian woman whose husband has allegedly broken her arm. He said that her ordeal was flippantly mentioned to him one day and that when he found her, she sat visibly suffering while Dominicans stood by playing dominoes and cracking jokes.

The patio of the collection of buildings where Cassidy takes his meals

After several hours of troubleshooting computers, Cassidy found a stopping place and we made our way to Magee's house where she made us a spaghetti dinner and the two volunteers regaled me, among other things, with Peace Corps gossip, insight into Dominican Culture, and a particularly amusing conversation about reality television. Back at Cassidy's a drifted off to sleep to the sound of rain his aluminum roof.