Fourteen

I witnessed a territorial dispute between two dogs the other day. A bigger dog came into a smaller dog’s territory and started peeing on his stuff (a tree stump and a bush). The smaller dog came over growling and started peeing on his own stuff again to cover up the pee of the first dog. It went back and forth like that with dogs lifting legs until the invading dog couldn’t pee anymore. So he lost the battle and left. So it turns out that it’s not the size of the dog in the fight but rather the size of that dog’s bladder and how much water he drank that day. Which made me think that if humans settled territorial disputes this way we’d have much less blood shed and the winner of the battle would have nutrient rich soil from the all of the urine, which would lessen our environmental impact due to the extraction and processing of phosphorous. Also we would completely eradicate the weapons trade and instead develop stock holds of water and beer and the most efficient diuretics, which is really just good practice anyway. If anybody happens to be at the next World Summit on Peace (Or War) you should mention this idea. One suggestion would be to leave out the butt sniffing part because our senses of smell are really not good enough to get any substantial information from that.

I'm not a cheek kisser usually. I'm not opposed to the custom but I don't initiate the cheek kiss salutation. But one of the ladies here did initiate the cheek kiss and once you do the cheek kiss there's no going back to handshakes. And now all the other ladies see that she does the cheek kiss and so they're like “Oh, he's a cheek kisser” even though I'm not. And so they start doing it. Then I'll give one a cheek kiss and their friend is there and it's really awkward because I haven't established a cheek kiss hello with that friend yet but I just cheek kissed with the other lady so if I don't do it with them does it mean I don't like them as much? So the cheek kiss has spread like wildfire and now I have to cheek kiss all the ladies. And some of those old ladies are aprovechando (taking advantage). The kisses are getting wetter and trying to steal some lip. I just want to go back to the weird handshake where you grab each others forearm like some sort of Asian wrestling (Why Asian Duncan? I'm not really sure).

Yikes. Kissing old ladies and peeing contests. They told me living in the campo might screw with my head. Let’s see if I can find something less perverse to talk about.

Last week I participated in a hitchhiking race across part of the country. I’m going to leave out some details about some of the rules of the race so as not to disgrace myself and the Peace Corps. I’ll just say that sometimes Peace Corps volunteers need to partake in some harmless, self-destructive behavior which is in no way condoned by or affiliated with the United States Peace Corps. But basically the point is to begin in one part of the country and hitchhike in pairs to another part, preferably one located on the beach. Except you cannot tell the driver that you are a Peace Corps volunteer. Also you are encouraged to dress up in costume and invent reasons for why you are hitchhiking. So this is how I ended up on the side of the highway in biking spandex telling strangers that we needed a ride because our bikes got stolen. The first ride we got was from an ambulance. The ambulance had its sirens on and was on its way to the hospital with a patient but decided that it was worth it to stop and pick up two gringos in spandex. It’s a very relaxed culture, even in emergencies. There was only one empty seat up front so I rode in the back of the ambulance with a doctor and a mother and teenage boy delirious with dengue fever and hooked up to various IVs and apparatus. Needless to say they did not seem to think the situation was nearly as funny as I did. But my point is that an ambulance on its way to the hospital is probably the best way to win a hitchhiking race. I didn’t win though. The next ride was from two French, book publishers. They were much more entertaining than the kid with dengue but they didn’t drive as fast.

I thought it would be nice to expose the people here to some Dominican cinema (while simultaneously cheating Dominican cinema out of money) by purchasing some pirated Dominican movies for 50 pesos in the city. So I brought them back to the campo and showed them to the muchachos and they didn’t want to watch any of them. They did however want to watch a Jean Claude Van Damme movie in English without subtitles. (As I later found out they cannot read subitles anyway.) In fact they will watch anything in any language as long as it has “fighting or shooting.” I’m pretty sure that it is the dream of every male in my community to marry a rich, white girl and move the United States and become a real life Dominican Chuck Norris.

Hmmm...well that's all for now I guess.