Live Wires
In La Victoria the electrical wires dangle from above,
tangled, like a bird’s nest that got whipped and shredded by years of hurricane
force winds. Everywhere in this town I look,
bundles of them are attached to nothing I can decipher but wound so tightly and
randomly that to untangle them would be a daunting, if impossible task. Where are they supposed to go? Where did they
begin? If I touch a low hanging one, will I get
shocked? It seems as if no plan has been made here, but
as a whim arises or a need presents itself, another is added. From my very American sensibilities where
order and process reign, I cannot tell, I can only see that somehow these wires
have power and supply electricity, be it ever so sporadically to this town.
Out in the campo, just 10 minutes further, there are not as
many wires, maybe one or two running into a tin roof, the occasional light
shines out in the dark barrio. Electricity has not made it this far it seems.
Here is where the women are, the ones we have come to love as sisters. So many of them. A mess actually of personalities and opinions
and needs and baggage. White, toothy
smiles in a sea of dark black espresso faces.
Round mounds of mother flesh. Chairs
in tight circles with opinions and voices.
Arguments that go so far back, they have etched grooves and lines into
faces. Alliances and agreements. Live wires.
Bound tightly.
Occasionally, we will ask about a woman who lives a little
further out, with the brood of children, in the cinder block house without the
roof, why doesn’t she come around? Or
the lady without the teeth who walks with the mule out in the back roads on the
way into town? Maybe she could come to
one of our meetings with plastic chairs in the circle, dust getting kicked up
by a naked baby running around. A look
or a scowl will tell us that she is not welcome, maybe she’s done something
unpopular or offensive. This we
understand, it doesn’t need to be explained to us, this crosses our cultural
barriers.
But we come for everyone, the young Haitian refugee,
pregnant again, who can’t speak the same language and has been beaten so badly
by her old man caretaker that she has lost her hearing. We come for the proud matriarch who sits and judges
the others in the circle and her neighbor who is promiscuous with a bad
reputation. We come for the hardworking
mom, babies on each hip, who wants to bring order to this little band of women,
knowing they need each other for survival.
We come for the drunken old man who clicks his tongue at us as we walk
by and brings us bottles of coca cola while his own children go hungry. We come
for his children, to see them and tell them they matter.
We keep coming back, we, this bundle of American women who
have fallen in love with the people of the Dominican Republic. Bound tightly together, needing each other
for support. We bring our own poverty,
our messes, even if we have tried to leave them at home. We, who know what it is like to be the one
who is not welcome in the circle and we who have been the women not welcoming
others into the circle. We wind around each others hearts and stories and
brokenness and beauty. We bring our
extravagance to this impoverished country.
We leave richer than when we came.
We’ve become tangled into the web of the beautiful story that is being
written over years with these people.
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