Sports In La Hoya

I’ve had a very busy couple of weeks. A group of American volunteers have been visiting La Hoya and running sports camps for the village’s youth: basketball for boys and volleyball for the girls. (I’ve developed the bad habit of referring to them as “The Americans”, not because they’re more American than others but because that’s what all the Dominicans here call them.) The volunteers didn’t speak Spanish, so all the COPA volunteers have been working as translators to help them run their camps.  I spent a Friday and Sunday working with Suraya, the woman who was running the girl’s volleyball camp.

I’ve also started practicing with the woman’s volleyball team, after their coach and one of the school’s PE teachers invited me to play. On Sunday, we all went to the nearby town of Cabral to play against Fundacion and Cabral

Practice was an interesting experience. Our warm-up lap is simply two loops around the central park in the middle of the village, with whoever’s outside watching. Not a lot happens in La Hoya, so volleyball practice tends to attract a small crowd of children and even adults who sit outside and watch. We warm up a little, do a few stretches and a couple drills, all in a semi-organised fashion while the team shout cat-calls and insults at Ares, the man who is nominally our coach, although whose control over the “team” of about 24 women seems tenuous at best. Then we’re split into four rough teams and play a rotating game, with the winner staying on and the losing team going off.  I say “rough teams” because women come and go as they pass babies around or lose interest. Play is regularly suspended as men, children, dogs, bicycles and babies wonder across the court, which is little more than a badly laid square of concrete in the parque. Everyone is inconsistent skill-wise. Most women are pretty good but don’t try particularly hard. I can see why, because while jumping high might get you the point, if you fall wrong on the concrete you could break your ankle and an injury like that could be life-threatening and very expensive here. Few women have had anything like consistent coaching. The games are regularly interrupted by someone who’s not on the team randomly joining play. The sides of the court aren’t equal in size and electrical wires hang over one end, making aiming your serve extra difficult. There are no painted lines, making disputes over in and out particularly fervent.

For younger girls, finding a ball to play with is a constant struggle. I often see girls attempting to play volleyball with semi-flat basketballs, an experience I find traumatising on my wrists.

There’s one basketball court in town, called “la cancha”, a big grass field called “el play” and the central parque near the town’s largest colmado. The women’s volleyball practice is held in the central parque, basically a flat area of concrete vaguely in the centre of the village. Practice “starts” at 4 and “finishes” at 6, but these numbers are lies made up by Dominicans to trick foreigners, as are all times in this country.  Practice actually starts at 4:30 or 5 and usually doesn’t finish until 7, although different women play throughout practice, as different people show up, are called away to look after babies or simply wander off. Our practice on Wednesday was paused momentarily when a 7^th grader stole our volleyball and Ares was needed to go chasing after him. Although Ares referees our games, we occasionally have to pause when his phone rings or a friend of his drives by. To serve from one side of the “court” you have to step off the parque and into the street, keeping a wary eye out for motorbikes, children on bicycles and dogs.

People play sports in whatever clothes they think might work, which can be anything from a dress and flip-flops to neon green leggings and a tank top. Most women play in hairnets, although some play in curlers or head clothes. Most seem to just play in their normal day clothes and although Ares expressively forbids wearing sandals to practice, he’s mostly ignored.

Even with all these difficulties and problems, sports are really a passion here. There’s also a men’s softball team and baseball team here in La Hoya and a men’s basketball team. Boys spend their spare time playing basketball, girls volleyball and both genders basterdized versions of baseball, called “pelota” (literally translating as “ball”) here in the south.

I’m really looking forward to playing more with the woman’s volleyball team. Although practice is not nearly as demanding as I remember practice being at ISA, it comes with its own share of dangers!

Some Stories

An Assortment of Stories from the Dominican Republic

I wasn’t sure what to theme my blog post this week, especially since I didn’t update last week and so much has happened in that time, but Becky suggested that I tell a few of the interesting stories that have happened to us since we arrived here.

Meeting Jorge

Within our first few days of arriving in La Hoya, we met our fair number of new people but I love the story of how we met Jorge the best. Becky and I were cleaning up Becky’s classroom, which had sat empty for the whole summer. While pulling rolls of paper out of her cupboard, we found a tarantula that had set up home at the end of one of her long rolls of paper.

I, being slightly braver when it comes to tarantulas (although not by much), grabbed the other end of the roll and made speedily for the classroom door. At the same time, Jorge, who had come by the classroom to meet the new volunteers, appeared in the doorway, only to have me rush past him, saying “permiso!” (excuse me), roll of purple paper complete with tarantula in hand. I threw the paper out of the room but the tarantula seemed to take this as an invitation and quickly scuttled back to the classroom door. I am not that brave and quickly jumped far out of the way. Jorge, knowing neither of us, literally leaped to our rescue but taking a typically Dominican approach to bugs: kill it. He jumped on the tarantula until it died and we left its corpse outside the classroom as a warning to other spiders. The ants ate it and we met Jorge because he jumped on a spider for us.

Dead Lizard Child

On a Friday morning, when I don’t have class, the helper (ayudante) in the pre-school failed to show up for work and I became the new substitute ayudante. The pre-school teacher was there, so my job was basically to supervise and try to keep the kids quiet (as much as Dominican children are ever quiet!).

After playtime, One child, who had been misbehaving all day, kept showing something in his pocket to his friends and giggling, putting it in his hand and keeping it, quite obviously, hidden from the teacher and I. With my best no-nonsense teacher face (which I’m having to perfect very quickly here!), I stuck out a piece of paper and told him to give me whatever he had.

“Da me lo!” (Give it to me!)

What fell out of his tiny pre-school hand? A dead lizard. Of course.

The lizard had probably been alive when he’d clumsily picked it up during playtime but by then it was quite clearly dead. Normal teachers confiscate mobile phones and other contraband. I confiscate dead lizards.

Motorcycle Accident

A few weeks ago, school was cancelled without warning when  two young men from the village were killed in a motorcycle accident the previous night.  Motorcycle accidents are common here; the roads are dangerous, badly lit and everyone drives motorcycles. To rub salt in the wound, the boys had been killed while racing on night when there wasn’t electricity, meaning the streets wouldn’t have been lit. To race, Dominican youth lie on their stomach on their motorcycles and hold on to the handlebars to stay on. It means they can barely see where they’re going and when the motorcycles collided during the race, they spun out of control. One boy was pushed into a ditch and died in the ambulance when on the way to the capital. (The capital has the only decent medical care.) The second boy hit a tree and was killed instantly. They were 16 and 17.

When someone dies in the village, especially COPA students or children who used to be students, the whole village shuts down. We didn’t have school and a lot of high school students wouldn’t have gone to school in Barahona. Everyone, including COPA volunteers, are expected to visit the house of the bereaved and take part in the visitation, where everyone sits around the house and wears white. The bodies are laid out in caskets and the family grieves for the day, before the funeral actual later in the day.  All of the COPA volunteers went into the village together and paid our respects as best as we could, though none of us actually knew the boys who died. It was a very present reminder of the dangers that come with living here.