DR part 1: happiness

I've taken the first few days this week to collect my thoughts. It's still hard to think about the DR...and even harder to not think about it. After only 9 days in the Dominican, I'm as unhappy to be back in the States as I was after 4 months in Spain.

So here are my first collected thoughts:

It was amazing. Heartbreaking and devastating and painful and exhausting, yes, but amazing. My pastor put it best, speaking about the hardest day of work we had down there: "This is killing me...but this is giving me life."

The last time I went, we worked with the kids - that was our primary focus, and we designed lessons and activities for them. This time, we focused on construction, and played with the kids when we got done or needed a break. We laid cement floors for 3 or 4 houses, painted the walls of the vocational school, baked bread to be taken to Haiti for earthquake refugees, and the boys played baseball.

I can't imagine not having a cement floor. A floor, for Pete's sake, that can't get muddy when it rains or smell rotten when it's hot. The woman who owned the house where we put the first floor in was so proud to usher us back in that afternoon - look at my new floor, look at my house, isn't it wonderful? All we gave her was a floor - I want to give her rugs and furniture and so much more. But she was so happy.

Dominicans are happy. That's the main reason I'm so depressed up here, I think - Americans are not happy. Don't try to reason with me; everything that I am is screaming to get out of the country right now. I can't help it. The Dominicans never went more than 5 minutes without laughing. Indeed, I think the only time I saw it happen was when Wili, one of the helpers, told me that he got in trouble for everything he said to me and was going to not talk for the rest of the bus ride. (I later told Joselito, a translator, that Wili had shut up for 10 minutes, and he said, "And the SKY didn't fall?!"

They are so ready to laugh. Their faces are just alive with it - not just our translators, not just the people who worked for the mission and had a steady job and a normal house - but all of them. The kids - these kids who get one meal a day and don't know their fathers and run around naked most of the time - they are so happy.

I have so much - so much! - and I'm not as happy as they are. What is wrong with me? What is wrong with all of us, Americans? I'm sitting here on my laptop, in my apartment furnished with a bed and table and chairs and dresser and bookcase, with as much food as I want, with an iPod and an iPhone and books and movies and so much shit that I don't need, and I'm not happy.

But that won't do; the Dominicans would never dwell on such things. I'm not happy because I spend all my time thinking about myself. I'm happiest when I forget my own interests in pursuit of serving others.

So this first installment of the DR debriefing goes to my Dominican friends, who made me feel at home from the very first day. This is for Juanchi, Joselito, Alejandro, Rambo, Wili, Jessi, Juan, Manuela, Iris, Renzo and Juan, who made me laugh every moment of every day.

I miss everything.

Love always,

molly