Midnight Diary

Sabana Perdida. The Lost Savannah.

Every time I tell someone I live there, the response is, "BIEN Perdida! Ja,Ja!" Which is a play on words meaning, "You are so lost, ha,ha." I am pretty far out there.

Here is a recent journal entry docking the hours of a typical night for me in the barrio.

8:00 PM, Nov. 2. I am sitting on the front steps with the neighborhood tigeres, or "badboys." (really, on my street, they are just posers). Lights go out in the Barrio, 2 hours earlier than usual. Everyone complains as the street lights, loud Merengue, televisions, and water pumps are suddenly cut off. I continue my polling project, asking my neighbors about the energy crisis. I asked three generations tonight. I asked oldest to youngest, and all three gave the same basic answer. "Barrios don't pay their bills, so the company cuts the lights." When I asked why the barrios do not pay, the tigere answered, "Because the company cheats you when you do. Let's say you consume RD$200 of energy a month. At the end of the month, your bill will read RD$1000. So it is better not to pay at all, because they would shut the lights off even if we did." I picked up on the Fatalism so common in the Latin American context. I had not yet experienced it here among this generally optimistic people group.

9:59 PM. After sharing more laughs and stories with my neighbors, I go inside, dead tired. There are four votive candles strategically placed on my refrigerator (which is in the living room, Dominican style. Our kitchens are too small for appliances), my stove, in the downstairs bathroom (where I have filled the largest tubs of water I hauled from the cistern) and in the open sala upstairs. It is enough to see by, but not to work by. It is impossible for anyone to study after 8 PM here, which makes Dominican college students crazy. They hate the energy crisis, because it means no computer, no internet, no study lamps, etc. and more than one student I know has dropped their studies because they were frustrated with all the systems at work against them...the dark reality of poverty being one of the major contributing factors.

I decide to sleep on my balcony. A friend had helped me drag the mattress (a double) out earlier in the day. The balcony faces the North on one side and the East on the other, so I get breezes from both the Ozama River wilderness (where lots of poor neighbors set up shanty towns that are flooded regularly)and from the barrios of the Northern corner of Sabana Perdida. The nights are cool out here, and the apagon allows us to see the stars and the brilliant full moon tonight. I can smell goats. Where are they?

The kids next door play noisily as I get ready to sleep. The mom runs a school from her home that is absolutely filled to the gills with children during the day. I wonder how she has the energy to let her two little ones play outside until 10:00 PM!

Motos whiz by on my street, the boys outside talk, and I lay on my mattress and drift into a damp, restless Santo Domingo sleep.

12:00 AM. The lights come back on, so there is movement everywhere. People plan their days-and nights- around the blackouts. So midnight is more like 7:00 PM. People take showers, wash dishes, do homework, watch TV, turn on boom boxes.

2:00 AM. I am waking up, shivering. I had more strange dreams. I pray and listen. I mostly pray in Spanish. Is it because Spanish is my vulnerable language, and I feel a little insecure?

2:30 AM. I fumble through unpacked boxes, looking for a spoon to eat some stale granola with. I don't have milk, because my nivera is not working yet, so I eat it dry. But because I dumped honey in it, I have to scoop the granola with my finger. So I eat like a child out of a white mug in the dark and listen to the neighbors. The tigere next door is doing dishes at 2:30 AM. He yells at his yappy little dog, who is not happy with my movement in my one-hip-only kitchen. We all live close enough in the barrios to hear EVERYTHING through our ever-open windows, and if curiosity surmounts decency, to see everything, too. Dominicans use curtains as doors on the inside of their homes, not as decoration for their windows. And the sun bleaches everything here, so curtains on windows would be a waste of fabric.

It is 2:45 AM and I pull out my guitar as the neighbor continues his dish washing. I play a few chords, trying to relax. Why are people awake at this hour, doing life? Why aren't we sleeping?

4:00 AM. It is pitch-dark, but the roosters and hens that live in my neighborhood are gloriously singing. First there is one voice, like a bugle call, then a chorus of hens follow with a jubilant "Gloria, Gloria, Gloria!!!" I try to feel annoyed, but can't help but laugh out loud.I am being serenaded awake by barnyard roosters in a Megacity at 4:00 AM.

7:00 AM. I wake up to popping motos and quiet voices. The air is still cool, and my sheets are damp with Santo Domingo soppiness. It is humid here. I feel exhausted. I need a day off of life.

8:00AM. The Colegio (little school) next door sings the Himno National to start the day. It sounds more like a chant than a song, only the professor has a lovely voice, and he is actually singing. I can faintly hear his voice during transitions in the rowdy chant. The kids wear white shirts and blue pants. The girls have fun braids with all those plastic balls on their colitas. Their energy makes me think of coffee, so I head down to the street to find some cafe.