Are You Sleeping?

A travel piece about a trip to the Dominican Republic.

 

A small, black girl sat in the corner of the tent, sorting out colored beads in a small bowl and handing a few of them to an older black woman who sat behind her, braiding her hair. She seemed indifferent to the fact that her head was being jerked to the side as the older woman twisted strands of her hair around. I, on the other hand, sat gritting my teeth together and wondering if there was a polite way to tell the woman that her way of styling my hair was about as pleasant as having my scalp pulled through a strainer. I focused on the ocean off in the distance, the cool breeze flitting gently through the open area. The air smelled heavily of coconut lotion and sand. A stick figure of a man was hang gliding out over the ocean, his feet dangling gently as he soared over the water like a seagull. Two boys ran up and down the beach, pointing and laughing. My mom and sister walked into the tent; my sister was carrying a small drum. “Check this out, I just got to haggle. He was asking for forty dollars, I got it for twenty.”

            We’d only been in the Dominican Republic for a week, and my sister had already mastered the “But I only have five dollars” technique of haggling for buying jewelry, sunglasses, and drums with goat fur on them. I was more interested in experiencing the Dominican than taking it home with me, and I reminded myself of that as the large woman behind me wrenched the beads out of my hand and braided them into my hair. That was the third time I had gotten distracted from my duties to sort out my beads and hand them to the woman. My mom was grimacing as she watched. “Kristen, do you want to go horseback riding with me? Brittany and your father won’t go with me.”

            The one thing I’ve learned after living with my parents is that if two out of three of the people not my mother won’t do something, there’s probably a reason why. That doesn’t mean that I’ve learned to follow their example, just that I identify that I’m readily accepting that where I’m headed may not be altogether safe, or pleasant, but would be an experience worth remembering. In this case, the resort where we were staying informed us that they did not endorse the horseback riding because it was not safe, and that people had died on their trails.

            So there we were, standing in front of a tiny barn with six horses. Two men in jeans torn below the knee lingered outside the barn, and another one talked to my mom in broken English about where he would take us on our ride. Another man led two dusty horses up to us. We mounted our horses, and a short man who assured us that he only spoke a little English led us on our path.

            We were going so slowly, barely moving. I could feel each step the horse took as my butt shifted left, then right, then left, then right, and my top half followed, bobbling along. I never knew it was possible to come so close to getting seasick on a horse. Our guide led us down the beach, where we passed a wedding ceremony in progress. A handful of men and women in dresses and suits stood behind the bride and groom. The women were in colorful pink dresses, like the flowers growing around the private resorts with brilliant, colored birds on perches all around. I felt like a tourist on a trolley, puttering along and staring wide-eyed at the other tourists lying on the beach in their bikinis as our guide dragged us slowly along. A woman with a gut walked alongside a bronze man with a hairy chest, bloated belly, and large gold chain around his neck. There was something incredibly ape-like in the way they walked, swinging their arms back and forth as they walked down the beach, her chest golden and saggy. She carried her bikini top in her hand; he was wearing a Speedo. It had taken the entire first day for me to get accustomed to the Europeans walking around topless. The Speedos I felt I’d never accept. I couldn’t decide which was more unsightly, and was relieved when we turned away from the beach.

            I inhaled the tantalizing and sweet aroma of the woods as the horses turned from the sandy path and walked steadily into a forest of tall, green trees. The sounds of the beach faded away as the trees blocked the wind carrying the sounds of the ocean waves from reaching our ears. On steadier ground, the horses’ hooves clomped on the dirt, every now and then stepping on a branch with a satisfying crack. The breeze had died away, but the trees soothed the heat to a lukewarm temperature, like a warm bath. My mom called up to the guide, waving her hands around. She explained very slowly that we would like to go faster, or she’d fall asleep on her horse. Our guide picked up the pace a bit, twisting around in his seat every now and then to make sure my mom and I were keeping up.

            It never fails that, regardless of the location, the type of horse, or the guide, I always end up with the horse with the most personality. And by personality, I mean the one who realizes that the hand holding his rein is not the hand that feeds him, and therefore, he doesn’t have to follow my directions. The last time I had gone horseback riding with my mom, we were out west, and my horse had a habit of scooting off the trail towards the edge of the cliff to scratch his butt on every bush he could. While I struggled to control my horse, my mom was trying to have a conversation with the guide. She waved her arms around some more, asking about his life. She managed to tell him her name and mine, and that we were from the United States. When she attempted to explain more about herself, he just gave her a puzzled look and waved his arms. “I . . . don’t . . . speak Eeen-glish.” 

I tried putting my foot down with my horse. I nudged his side and asked him to move faster, and he responded by slowing down. I tried again in Spanish. “Por favor . . . caballo. ¿Camina más rápido? Please?”

            The guide was twisted around in his seat again. He called to me in a sing-song voice. “Kreee-sten, are you sleeeeeeping?”

            “No, but I think my horse is sleepwalking.”

            “Kick him harder.”

            I kicked harder, and he trotted until the guide turned back around in his seat, and resumed lollygagging. We repeated this five more times; the guide calling out to me, “Kreee-sten, are you sleeeeeeeping?” Then I’d kick him harder, he’d trot, then we’d be back to plodding down the path. Every now and then he’d turn his head, look at me, then turn off the path and chew on a branch. I was half-tempted to get off the horse and carry him on my back when the guide trotted back to me with a branch. “Use this.”

            The horse saw the switch, and took off. We rushed down the path, gloriously galloping past the trees and bushes. My hair flew, the beads tapping my head gently as the hooves thumped on the ground with a consistent pulse, matching my heart as it beat in my chest. Ga-gong, ga-gong, ga-gong. Now this was what a horseback ride in the Dominican Republic should be like. I giggled and gave my horse a pat. Then I realized that my mom and the guide were far behind me. I pulled back on the reins, and we slowed down and stopped. When the guide caught up to us, he gave me a you-should-learn-to-control-a-horse-if-you-insist-on-riding-on-trails look. I returned it with a that-was-the-greatest-ride-of-my-life-and-I’m-not-a-bit-sorry-I-didn’t-stop-my-horse-sooner smile, and we were back marching along as before, only this time my horse kept up, occasionally passing my mom’s horse and nodding his head as if he were proud.

            The path veered to the right, and we followed it along as it curved. The trees were more spaced out here, as though the farther away from the ocean they were, the more anti-social they were with one another. And then the trees were gone, and we were staring at a huge mound of refuse. Not actual garbage, but dead trees, old wooden planks, an occasional bottle. Without the trees to give us shade, or the ocean to push the wind towards us, the sun pushed down on our shoulders. The air was thick. I had to breathe through my mouth so I wouldn’t smell the decaying waste, but I could bite through the air and taste dead grass. We paraded around the pile, my horse’s tail swooshing behind me, swatting flies that abandoned the pile for something fresher. Why did we ride out here? This wasn’t paradise; this was a dancing goat away from being hell. I pulled my head down inside my shirt, breathing through the fabric so that it would act as an air filter. As we rode around the pile, I wondered why we would be out here. We had ridden in a circle around the pile, and now we were back on the original path.

            No wonder the horse had dragged his feet so much; he had known where the trail led. Walking away from the trash heap, my horse walked a little easier, his feet tapping the ground lightheartedly. Now he was only thinking of his food and water back at the shed. I was at the end of the line of horses, and I could see the lines of the bones of the horse ahead of me. These horses were working for their meals as much as the guide leading them. My thighs ached, my knees were cramped from being bent, and my hair clung to my neck in a sticky, sweaty mess, dragged down by the beads. All I could think about was getting off the horse and sitting on something well stuffed and fluffed.

            We emerged from the trail, and this time our guide kicked his horse and led us, galloping, down a path between rows of shacks. He rode this path every day; for him, this ride was as beaten and familiar as a ride on the subway is for a New Yorker. I realized then that the trail we rode on was a part of what the Dominican Republic really was. As romantic and wonderful as the Dominican is, with its skies of shimmering blue and the brilliant flowers blooming all around, they still had problems. Not only did they have political problems with Haiti, whose people illegally immigrated to the Dominican Republic to work in low-paying jobs like house cleaning in the resort, they struggled with deforestation, not visible when standing on the sandy beaches surrounded by ocean and trees, but back there, away from the resorts, it was showing.

We got off our horses and slowly waddled back to our hotel room. On the way, I really looked around me. I watched a man climb a tree, slinging a thick piece of fabric around the trunk of the tree and, pulling it tight, using it to climb up the tree to cut down coconuts. I wondered if he was from Haiti, trying to make a living at the resort. I watched two maids come out of a room, looking Americanized in their work uniforms. The uniforms were pink dresses with white aprons, the kind that tried to make their jobs seem cute and fun. I knew that tourism was their biggest source of income, but I was embarrassed by how lavish our surroundings were, how much food and water was wasted at my expense. They made our beds and fluffed our pillows while we used their water, a resource they suffered from a shortage of. Even though our family tried our best to conserve water, I still felt as though every time I turned on the water even to brush my teeth, I was stealing from them. On our ride from the airport to the resort, our enclosed paradise with parrots on stands, and tropical flowers growing around seating areas, we had seen the homes of some of these workers, what most Americans would call shacks. Wild dogs wandered the streets, and people walked barefoot down the path, to and from work. I felt like an intruder, walking into their homes before they had a chance to tidy up. They embraced their life, though. They painted their houses bright colors, and wore bright fabrics around their hair. I would much rather have seen them in their own clothes, with their fabrics and native beauty, like the woman in the tent who had braided my hair, my attempt to know and experience the people around me, than covering up who they were for the sake of my enjoyment of their sun and sand. Their beauty. No, Kreee-sten is not sleeping. 

Reviews

[Robyn]

I really liked this story, I've never been to the Dominican Republic, but this piece gave me a nice insight in regards to what it would be like. Your use of imagery was great, especially how you described the smell of the waste. The theme of appearance versus reality is there, along with the fact that we have to open our eyes and see the truth. Great story.