Twenty-Two

Merry Christmas! Happy Hannukah! Feliz Kwanza! Happy Winter Buddhist Holiday! And so on. How about just Happy New Year! We’re all on the same calendar right? At least as far as business affairs go. And let us not kid, I mean business.

First off I want to thank everybody who donated to my project. You filled it in just a week. I still don’t know who you are but as soon they send me the list I will thank you personally. Because of your donations we were able to get water to everybody’s home for Christmas. Well I think we did.(updates soon[ish]) There was one little job left to do before we could release the water but I had to go the airport to come home for Christmas so I left it to them. But I called them from the airport and they said that water was arriving. I don’t see any reason for them to lie about that. So I’ll be back on the 27th (weather pending) to see the water come out of the tap and jump up and down shrieking and flapping my hands like they’re on fire. They’ll all have seen it already so they’ll just be like “Silly gringo. He gets excited about running water.” It’s true though. I’ve been taking running water for granted for 25 years but I’m pretty excited about this particular water. Funny how things are so much more interesting when my ego is involved.

We’re having the official Inauguration for the system on January 8th. We’ll have a ceremony and people will pray a lot and thank God. Maybe they’ll thank me as well. Usually there is a party afterwards. Unfortunately the guy who likes to party the most in my community lost his mother a couple weeks ago so he is supposed to mourn for a while and I think he’s a little bummed out about it. (His mom dying and that he can’t party.) It’s funny how Dominican’s treat death. They spend tons of money they don’t have and tons of time mourning dead family members. At the same time they tried to not connect water to this one guy’s house because they think he’s going to die soon. When he complained that that was unfair they said, “Fine but we’re not going to bury the pipes deep because when he dies we’re going to dig them up and use them somewhere else.” Now I know I have to be accepting of other people’s cultures and beliefs and all that but it seems to me that they should show a little more consideration to living people. That way they’ve already got a head start on appeasing the dead person and they don’t have to mourn for as long.

The United States is pretty cool. It’s really comfortable. I’ve been seeing a lot of people here. Some of them are people I know so I stop to talk with them. They’re all like “Hey, how’s the Peace Corps?” and so I’m like “It’s good.” And like a lot of other cool stuff has happened too.

A bunch of us volunteers are going to get together for “Campo Christmas” when I get back to the DR. They’re all coming up to my community for a camping trip. We’re going to sacrifice a turkey and some vegetables. And then we’re going to camp in tents. People in my community think it’s weird when we camp I think. They don’t really get it. They just don’t see what’s so fun about sleeping somewhere with no electricity or running water or a cement floor and cooking on an open wood fire and just hanging out with people and talking without the distractions of internet and television and iPhones. I really hope that with my guidance they’ll eventually learn how to appreciate nature like us Americans do.

And there’s your quick holiday post. Don’t say I never gave you nothin’.