Well, we are back out at sea again. Our time in the Dominican Republic flew by, it’s hard to believe we were there for 12 days and are now already on our way to our third stop: St. John’s, Antigua. DR had been on my list of places to visit for some time, so I was excited when I heard it was one of our stops during the Continuing Promise 2009 mission. I must admit my original vision of going to the DR involved beaches, meringue clubs, and Presidente beer, and not during a job with the Navy as part of a humanitarian mission with not even a single hour off to be a tourist!
I must say, working with the military has definitely given me a new perspective of what hard work is. Starting at 0500, announcements blare over the 1MC (loudspeaker) on the ship calling people into the CASREC (casualty receiving area) where they muster into groups onto boats taking them ashore to begin their long workday in the Dominican sun. Then, they arrive into port only to be herded onto buses and taken to their respective work sites. For the Seabees, this means long days of exhausting construction work in the hot sun. For the medical staff, this means setting up the medical stations where patients will be treated according to area- dentistry, optometry, pediatrics, or general medicine.
One day I arrived to one of the medical sites early at 0800 only to find hundreds of people already lined up outside the gates, and we weren’t even due to open the doors until 0930. Some people said they had been waiting since 0400. Once people started streaming inside, I was amazed to see how organized our folks were at getting people through the check in process to be seen by the doctors. Since I speak Spanish, I helped out where I could, checking people in at admin and directing them to the right spots. At one point I was translating for a dentist and witnessing three teeth being pulled, while also babysitting for the patient’s four month old!
Then at the end of the day, the sites get packed up, the masses from the USNS COMFORT ship are loaded back on the buses, dropped off at the marina, and packed onto boats for the ride back to the ship. By the time we get back to our hospital ship, we are smelly, sweaty, hungry, oily from repeated applications of sunblock and bug repellant, and disoriented from the choppy boat ride in the late afternoon swell. Usually we have just enough time to change and grab dinner before the mess line is closed, then it’s off to the evening meeting. By the end of the day everyone is so exhausted from the hard day’s work yet so content from the feeling of having helped so many people.
While I didn’t have a chance to go to the beach, I did get to know a lot about the Dominican culture and meet a lot of people. The Dominican culture is a mix of many influences- including the laid back Caribbean vibes (being late is never an issue!), a unique Spanish accent and slang (which at time was so hard to understand it didn’t sound like Spanish at all), and amazing cuisine of Latin, Caribbean, and African influences (you’ve got to try the mafongo!), and of course friendly and warm people. Overall, it was a great mission in the DR, and I’m already planning my next trip back (on vacation, of course!)
Spanish is such an important language. By different estimates it is the fourth most spoken language (by number of speakers) in the world after Mandarin, Hindu and English. Here is a great web site - ElPlop.Com - that is a Spanish slang and idioms dictionary and is interactive in the sense that one can rate the definitions given and can add their own definitions.
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