On My Own

The Kirby's left on Friday, September 12. It rained all night
leading up to their departure at 5am before the sun had roused himself. It rained after they left. I found water soaking the bottom of the fridge and pooled in the shower. Belmont (the "good" dog) sat at the corner of the house staring after them for several minutes. It seems all Banica mourned their parting. Truth be told, the Kirby's shed a few tears themselves. Banica might be poor, but there is much love here.


I have been told the Dominicans cannot tell time but (holding my breath), I think they are starting to learn that when I say they can ride bicycles between 2 and 4pm only, that I mostly mean between 2 and 4 only. Not at 8am or 10am or even 1:45pm. Because the ground is so rough and filled with stones and thorns, they are restricted to riding around the circular "patio". And as unexciting as that may seem to us Americans, the Dominican children will come eagerly day after day to get their turn riding round and round on an overgrown patio.


As I mentioned in a previous posting, only 3 of 7 bicycles were operational. So I have a "cinco minuto" rule - ride for 5 minutes and then the next boy/girl gets to ride. Today two of the boys fixed up 3 of the remaining bikes. I paid them 100 pesos total per bike. That is 3 bikes fixed and 300 Pesos to split (approximately $9US total). Now at the next bike outing I will have 6 bikes available! A historic moment in Banica. ;) I am intending to work "religion" into this but still haven't quite figured out how best to do it. Certainly an opening and closing prayer. But I want to more than just that with it - counting on a small jolt of divine inspiration!

The first day without the Kirby's was taxing, I have to admit. The usual moving, unpacking, cleaning, discovering how things work, giving the animals extra love as they clearly missed the Kirby's etc. Trying to keep the squabbles to a minimum for 2 hours of boys on bikes. Friday night I was ready to crash. The dogs decided to start barking at that very moment and continued. Incessantly. Past 3am. I sat on the couch strangely not sleepy - I am sure the barking had nothing to do with it.

Finally sleep announced its arrival and I stumbled down the hall toward bed. As I was lifting the mosquito netting, I heard heavy, and I mean heavy, breathing outside my window... What the heck?!!!! Cows! And it all became clear in a lightning flash. I had left the gate open and 4 cows had wandered (been herded?) in. The dogs were barking at the cows that were big enough not to be concerned by them. I was as happily surprised as you can be at 3:30 in the morning that a single angry yell from me thru the window sent them hurrying to another part of the El Centro grounds.

I crawled into bed. Finally! Sleep! Did I mention it rained most of the day? And when night came, it turned torrential. I personally know of two songs singing longingly of time spent under a tin roof with rain coming down. I bought it, until my time in Banica. A gentle rain, maybe. A heavy rain, much less a downpour? Forget about it, nothing pleasant in that. And it's very conducive to sleeping - at a later time when you are even more tired.

I was finally getting used to the rain (or tired enough for it not to matter) when "Kerthunk!" I was jerked rudely back to full attention! "What was that on my roof?!!" A few moments later... another "Kerthunk!". I was surely under attack! Someone was tossing grenades onto my roof! Then it hit me (the thought not the thing that went Kerthunk in the night), there is a tree just outside the bedroom window with lots and lots and lots of its fruit. Lots of its fruit ready to adorn the earth, but only after bouncing and clattering off the roof.

Of course this morning of all mornings, Danni arrived at 8am on his throaty motorcycle and hollered into the house to be sure I was alive after my first day alone in Banica. "No Danni, I wasn't violently jolted from sleep by your motorcycle, so it's a good thing you yelled into the house or I'd have never known you were here." (good thing he doesn't speak English or he might have missed the joke. ) "Thank you Danni, but no, I don't have any work for you today. And thank you again for making sure I didn't get enough sleep.". I crawled back to bed. A few minutes later the phone rang. Down the hall. I got to it too late.

Since it seemed I was destined to not get any more sleep, I made myself a pbj. A bite and a half into it, Omero showed up wanting diesel for the pickup truck from the 55 gallon drums Father has stored here. I felt wrong not helping him. Before I could get back to my pbj... "Knock, knock" there was Fr. O'Hare.

Finally! Back to my sandwich...only to discover that I had unknowingly extended an invite for a picnic to the local ants that were happily enjoying the pbj sandwich. One of my sayings is "When all else fails... eat". I didn't know what to say in this case. I'm thinking, "If eating fails, get a stiff drink". This Saturday morning, I had a stiff mug of... coffee.

The coffee might have kept my eyelids propped open, but it did not energize me one bit. So Saturday was a low key day. I moved most of my things from the dormitory to the house. I used the electric sander on the front door so that it closes easily now. I drilled a hole in the backing of a bookshelf so I can power cords thru the back instead of around the front. Those who know me and my need to do things/have things "just so", will either smile knowingly or roll your eyes. Those who don't know me so well may also be inclined to roll their eyes. Luckily for you eye rollers, it was a low energy day and I called it a day after those two arduous tasks. :)

I ride the bicycle to town when I can. For the most part I drive about 2 miles a day - to mass and back. I would ride the bicycle for that also except that I hope getting a ride will encourage more of the residents to go to daily mass. And yet one thing seems to be becoming clear. I will do very little personal driving but one of my major expenses here will be fuel - diesel.

Diesel for the generator to be specific. The running joke is that Banica has power half the time. The rest of the time, you either have no electricity or if you are fortunate, you run a generator to provide for the down times. I am fortunate, so I run a generator. Dave (Kirby) said a gallon of diesel will run it for an hour. And typically the generator runs for 1 to 2 hours a day to charge the battery bank here. So I'll estimate 50 gallons a month and $5US/gallong for diesel. That's a guessitmated $250/month which will hopefully be my largest expense each month. It had better be! And I am really, really hoping that I have over estimated! :)

This past Sunday, I helped make tacos and homemade salsa for dinner with the priests and Michelle (a recent Christendom grad and current volunteer in Banica). Ok. Ok. Michelle did all the seasoning and the vast majority of the cooking, but I chopped up an onion, stirred the hamburger meat, and mashed the "refried" beans. So let me feel good about my culinary abilities for the briefest of moments. :)

Monday in preparation for an all-day trip to see the new "soup run" for this years "soup program", we took the truck to get the gas filled with diesel. And thanks be to God, the only gas station in Banica has diesel and gasoline again after being out of both for the last couple of... weeks... Ouch. Then Monday at lunch I found out that our Tuesday trip would most likely have to be cancelled anyway. It seems there is a large boulder blocking the road (too large for a couple of men to move) and no one knows when it will be moved. All I can tell you is that whenever that boulder gets moved and we are finally able to make the trip, I will not be driving! I'll most likely be grabbing something tightly with my eyes closed for parts of the ride - not a good thing for the driver to be doing.

I forgot to mention, Monday on the way to mass, the horn in the truck decided to blare of its own accord and without ceasing. The army trucks have a built in compressor. Whenever the engine runs, it builds up air pressure. There is a nozzle for an air hose for filling tires, etc. There are the brakes... until enough air pressure builds up, this huge truck does not have any brakes. And then there is the horn which it powers. It seems the valve for the horn had gotten dirty enough that it stuck open. As soon as enough pressure built up, air escaped thru the horn and well, it got louder and louder. So there I am at 6:45am with many people no doubt still sleeping, driving thru town with horn blaring, waving to the police officer at the check point as if all was normal. On the way home, I hooked the air hose up, and in one hand held the nozzle while pressing the valve with a screw driver - letting air escape to keep the pressure from building up enough to sound the horn while trying to watch the gauge so that I didn't completely kill the brakes. It worked! But let me tell you, driving a huge truck thru city streets without power steering, with people and a few cars and motor bikes on the other side of the road - or on your side - with one hand is a daunting task. There were a few interesting moments on the mile ride back to El Centro!

Wednesday night after holy hour it was dark. Quite dark. Just dark enough to make driving a huge army truck, without power steering thru town particularly interesting. Naturally, I needed something even more interesting in my life - surely an hour with our Lord in adoration wasn't enough. So there we were, the truck and I sitting at the curb with 3 expectant boys waiting for a ride home. "Hello truck. I've never driven you in the dark before. Do you have lights? Let's try this switch. That switch. Ruh Roh..." Father arrived with a flashlight, still no luck getting lights turned on. So I told Fr. that I'll drive real slow and with that he hammers the final nail in our coffin saying, "Well at least Banica has power and the street lights are on". He waved as we pulled away and was still standing there as not 50 feet down the road... Banica power went out... Gulp. I kept driving and feverishly flipping the same few switches again and again. And lo and behold, just before we got to the police check point, the lights came on!!

One a more serious note, there is another outbreak of Denge fever to contend with. The cook who works the afternoon shift in the rectory has come down with Denge. The government says that the best way to fight this is to eliminate free standing water.


As you can see from the photo, I have nothing to worry about here at El Centro.... And I'm sure the mosquitoes I have seen in my bathroom... right above the water that doesn't drain from the shower because the floor is not sloped correctly are... friendly... Right....

I have "my crew" of Atile, Manuel, and Danni spending the next few days driving the truck to get fill dirt to fill in the puddles you see in the photo as well as several others around the house. Mosquitoes be warned! :)