My Bratty Two Cents

You may disagree with me, but I don’t think a person can be too bratty about his/her house. It makes perfect sense that when it comes to where you’re going to live, you have to be picky and do things your way, because you’re the one who’s going to have to come home to it every day and mellow out in it every evening.

Well, I’m being a brat about my new house.

So as you know, I’m staying in this hotel/apartment/condo. It’s really nice. It has hot running water, cable TV, a little stove, living room, bedroom, etc. It’s really just as nice as my place in New York. (Not very Peace Corps like, huh?) Most Peace Corps volunteers stay with their host families for the first 3 months in their sites, but because I’m staying in a hotel, I had a deadline to move out by January 25 (which I found out about on January 10). Housing is really hard to find in Bayahibe and VERY expensive (compared to the rest of the country), because it’s a tourist town. So after 3 or 4 houses that fell through for one reason or another, I finally found my house 2 days before my “deadline.” It was basically a pile of rocks with walls at that point. The owner, Sirilo, one of the nicest men I’ve met here, said they could finish it in 2 days (of course that’s 2 days Dominican-time, so basically 2 weeks American time). So since the house wasn’t yet finished, I’ve had my say throughout the building process and I’ve definitely felt like a brat at times. My perfectionist demands of “Put the ‘kitchen’ there,” (I say “kitchen because it’s really just a tiny cement counter with a sink.) “No, put the ‘kitchen’ here,” (I’ve never been good at decisions) “Move the toilet 2 inches mas por aca,” “I want blinds instead of doors on my windows,” etc have only been met with utmost respect and patience by him and his workers. However, when it came down to one of the most important aspects of the house – the paint – I was not around to put in my bratty two cents, and now I’m facing the consequences.

Sirilo’s sister was in charge of painting the house. I made it clear what colors I wanted the house to be – light green on the inside and bright blue on the outside (side note: in the US, I would never have a bright blue house, but this is the DR and I feel compelled to). Well, two days ago, I went to their house to let her know that I have to move out by Saturday and we had two days to paint the inside of the house because I didn’t want to spend the night inhaling paint fumes. She asked for the first month’s rent (this is after I had already given them 3 month’s worth) so that she could paint it before I moved. I told her I would get the money later that day (as I have to take a 30 minute bus ride into La Romana to withdraw cash) and she said that was okay and we’d all go pick out the paint together. Well, you can imagine my surprise when I went to the house about 4 hours later that day and the inside was almost completely painted a BRIGHT LIME GREEN! I hadn’t even given her the money yet to buy the paint and here I was standing in a lime skittle (I could almost taste the sourness). It was upsetting, but it didn’t seem right to make a big deal out of it, because the job was almost done and she’d clearly been working all afternoon. Plus she was so sweet about it. I couldn’t bring myself to be that big of a brat. “Besides,” I thought, “at least the outside will be a pretty blue.”

THEN, as if living in a skittle isn’t hard enough (I keep thinking to myself, “How the hell will I ever be able to spend more than an hour in this color?”), it got worse. Yesterday I spent the entire day in La Romana with Sirilo shopping for my furniture (I decided to take a Dominican man along to avoid the “gringa” prices that I was sure to get charged without him.). It was a very stressful day, partly because after we got there at 10:00am, we had to wait until 4:00pm for the cash advancement from the Peace Corps to reach my account, and partly because shopping for furniture is just stressful (it is in America, let alone a developing country where hardly anyone speaks English and waiting for a hour for the moving truck to arrive is a prerequisite for any big purchases). So, after spending my entire settling-in allowance (Peace Corps gives each volunteer RD $12,000, which is the equivalent of $400, to by a bed, a stove, a fridge, a table, chairs, and ALL other household essentials like forks and plates, pots and pans, a bookshelf if you have books, etc) on a bed, little stove, and mini-fridge (guess I’ll just eat off the floor with my hands for the time being), we headed back to Bayahibe. We unloaded my stuff in the hotel and then went straight to the house, which was supposed to be finally finished (all we lacked was the door, one window and the paint). Oh it was finished all right… in a ridiculous PEACH color. (Peach, by the way, is one of my least favorite colors of all time.). Where she came up with this peach color I have no idea, but again, I had to bite my tongue, because the job was done and she had worked so hard on it.

So I have a coral/peach house with a green skittle interior and I’m just not sure how much longer I’m going to keep my mouth shut about it, because frankly, it is not okay. I cannot live in a house with those colors – do peach and lime green even go together… ever? I couldn’t sleep last night because of the house. I’m depressed that I’m going to move into my skittle/peach house today and that I won’t have shelf for my books or a closet for my clothes or a place to put my stove (it’s a table stove, so I guess that would require a table, wouldn’t it? Peace Corps didn’t really think this money thing through very well… since when is $400 enough to furnish a house?). And on top of all of this moving and stressing about eating off the floor (which, I don’t know why I’m worried about it, I did it in India and I survived), I’m supposed to somehow come up with a presentation on my community diagnostic, which I’m supposed to give on Wednesday at our 3 month IST (In-Service Training) meeting in front my boss, etc. Man, that Steve & Barry’s corporate job and my posh NY apartment are sounding pretty damn good right about now.

This whole experience is making me feel spoiled and ridiculous. After all, at least I have a house, right? I’m doing better than many people in this country. I think the situation is just exacerbated by the fact that I'm already living in a stressful situation. I guess I just wanted the color of my house to be aesthetically pleasing, since living in the house is going to be physically uncomfortable in so many ways.

Anyway, I’m going to get over it and embrace the peach/skittle that I’ll be living in for the next two years – or until I get permission to repaint it. I know I'll be fine once I move in.

PS – I really wish I could post a picture to accompany this blog, so you can see , but of course, my camera is probably being sold on the black market somewhere right now.