Playa de Cabarete

David Blossom, the principal at the Christian school where I am planning to teach for the next two years in the Dominican Republic, has been here for only the last eight months. So in some respects he is new to this in the same way that I am. Since he has been a teacher and administrator in the public schools for many years as well as a pastor for a few years, I believe he sincerely wants to see the new teachers succeed. Some young teachers come here fresh out of college with a heart for missions and end up becoming disillusioned after two years and go back home discouraged. No statistics are before me so I am only recording my impressions.

A lot of time has been spent trying to get us accustomed to the culture. We are facing a different language, trying to set up a home in a place where nothing seems to work, or at least takes a long time to get it to work, unfamiliar geography, and a host of circumstances presenting themselves quite rapidly that we have no experience in handling. One small experience may serve as an example.

After spending a week trying to do laundry by hand we realized that we either had to hire a maid (a common practice in this country) or purchase a washing machine. We decided on the latter but had no clue where to go, how much was a fair price to charge a “gringo” (the prices are sometimes different), and how to communicate once we got to where we were going. A young teacher who has been here a couple of years volunteered to guide us through this maze of hurdles along with her Dominican boy friend. It took a whole evening after school but by bedtime we had purchased a small Dominican-style washing machine which was promised to be delivered two days later.

On the night it was supposed to arrive, my wife and I rode home on the bus for teachers and waited at our apartment. Soon a poorly dressed man appeared at our livingroom window. Since we live on the first floor and as yet have no curtains, he was able to get our attention by tapping on the window. For the next 15 minutes we tried our best to understand what he was trying to say with no success. He finally left in frustration. A few minutes later he showed up again with an attractive well-dressed Dominican lady who lives in the next apartment. She could speak only a few words of English because she has an American boyfriend and is trying to learn, but it was enough to figure out what was going on.

Evidently the appliance truck had shown up a few minutes before we got home and decided to make another delivery until we got home, and then come back in an hour. They left a message with this poor young man to give to us. The language barrier is definitely a major problem and a reason that most of us new teachers are feeling quite a culture shock.

Our principal knew this would happen and so he wants very much to lessen the impact. As a result he scheduled a week of orientation and classes in the States for all the new teachers, another week of orientation with the entire staff this past week, and then this weekend he took us to a very beautiful beach about two hours away. It takes a bit of an effort on less than perfect roads to find a beach which is only 45 miles from Santiago. The beach that he took us to is called Playa de Cabarete. With a little Googling I’m sure that you can come up with more interesting information about this place than I have time to share, but it appears to be a playground for a certain circle of jet-setters and also well-to-do Dominicans.

From the windows of the bus we had chartered we could see mansions on the top of small hills and drove past many entrances leading to breathtakingly beautiful resorts. All of us teachers stayed at a modest hotel directly on the beach called the Sans Souchi. The temperature must have been 99 degrees with a humidity close to that. Since I am not acclimated to the climate yet I’m sure I am exaggerating at this point. We were surprised at the good weather because the night before and the morning of our departure to the beach we experienced the tropical storm Fay which you may have seen on the news. It wasn’t a hurricane but we certainly had our share of wind and rain.

Our room led directly to the beach where a person could swim or simply sit under a native gazebo-type structure with a thatched roof. Carol and I aren’t too much into sun worshipping so we tended to stay in the shade most of the time. At supper time we followed the group to a beachside restaurant and had chicken wings and pizza sitting at a table under a coconut tree while a band played so loud that our chest was vibrating and conversation was impossible. Have I mentioned that this is a very loud country?

After a time of group devotions and some structured individual prayer back at the hotel we went to bed while the young people stayed up late to continue singing. On Sunday morning we attended a church service at an English speaking church out in the country. It was on the missionary compound of an organization that has an extensive ministry in the DR and also in Haiti with feeding and educating the poor. The name of the organization is New Missions and its founder, Pastor George DeTellis, died a few weeks ago.

After the service where this man’s wife preached a sermon using the Message translation we bounced to the next town on the back of an open bus that looked like it came from a jungle safari. We ate a delicious meal of pollo (chicken) and beans and rice at a small restaurant that opened on Sunday only as a favor to feed the whole group of us. The owner is a friend of the late Pastor DeTellis. On the way back to the beach we did a little sightseeing to get an idea of places that people could stay if they visited us. We saw a hotel overlooking the sea that had to have been hundreds of dollars a night … right off a picture postcard. The other was a small bungalow called "The Secret Garden" close to the beach for only $44 per night. After another hour on the beach for a last dip while dozens of kite-surfers and wind-surfers dotted the water behind us we boarded the bus and made the two hour journey back home. I recorded these few thoughts while the apartment next door played loud latin music and a car driving by with music so loud that it set off car alarms in the parking lot. I stayed up a little later than normal to wait for our washing machine to finish its very first cycle of its mechanical life. The weather is so muggy that we have to shower just before bed and also when we get up … and get this, I use cold water only because it is so refreshing.

Does this make you feel out of breath to read this? If it doesn’t then I haven’t described my feelings very well. With six classes to teach for the first time this week, I needed more time preparing than vacationing. I struggled a bit with my attitude about having to go to a beach when I have so much work to do, but I realize that the principal has a good and generous heart and underneath my fleshly reactions I truly appreciated this trip. Right now it was an activity overload, but someday I will go to this same beach on my own terms and most likely record my experiences with a very different attitude. Right now I have only calculus and biology on my mind and tomorrow is my first day of school. This year will be something that will be possible only by faith on a day-to-day basis … even when one of our activities is a pleasure trip to Playa de Cabarete.