I know you're wondering what particularities I was referring too in my previous post, well, while adjusting myself to this big spacious house full of my little mosquito friends I encountered an unusual situation, all of a sudden we had no electricity and no water to bathe or flush the toilet unless we went to a big concrete square hole in the front lawn called “cisterna,” it was a place to store large quantities of water. No one warned me about this, why was there no electricity all of the sudden and why was bread and avocado the main meal on the menu at dinner time.
I was told we were privileged enough to have what’s called an “inversor”which provides electricity, most families did not have this equipment because it was very expensive. The water situation on the other hand was not solved and my sacrificed mother would carry heavy buckets all the time so I could bathe and refresh from the extremely humid heat. Electric outages would last from hours to a full day or more and would happen a couple times a week.
Eventually we moved out on our own and I started to adapt a little to the water and electric situation because nobody really gets use to it. We have a saying in our country that the outages bring families together because with nothing to do everyone would gather in the living room and talk but this comes at a high cost with far too many disadvantages.
In a constant battle to identify myself with this country I started to learn about its history, some things very interesting and some very disturbing. You see this is a very poor country but at the same time a very rich one for a small group of people. It’s just too confusing to get into but there was and still is such a high level of ignorance and corruption that truly saddens me.
Our financial situation made it harder for the family to settle and we would constantly switch schools. I would reminisce about what could have been if I'd stayed in my "magical" city. After a couple of years these thoughts were out of sight and out of mind replaced by the great stage of adolescence and worse my identity crisis, you see I’m a Libra and well, decisions don’t come easy to us.
After years of an established life in “paradise” I was pretty happy and like any other twenty year old I was experiencing life, moving on my own, working, studying and many other things. But at the age of twenty-eight I was offered an opportunity to move back to a city I once called my own and thought I’d never see again or at least not for a while, the lower east side, Manhattan, now a completely different city.
Apparently Manhattan and Santo Domingo are essential places in my journey through life and hopefully there are many adventures ahead!
No comments:
Post a Comment