Compost and Gifts

Tonight I had a long talk with Madrina sitting outside the Gazebo on plastic chairs enjoying the refreshing relief from the heat that the dusk brought with it. We started talking about the compost – the structure for which was just finished this evening. Before we started building it, I asked Maria Elena if there were rats here and she didn’t really know, so we plunged ahead with the easiest design, which is not enclosed. As it turns out, we will not be able to put the food scraps from the kitchen into the compost like I had ingenuously dreamed of.

Yesterday Maria Elena’s friend, who had tried composting here, said she had to stop because it brought lots of disease-carrying rats and cockroaches near the house. That was sort of what I had suspected but I had been ignoring the suspision because of my idealist notion of creating a complete food system where the food “waste” returns to the earth to feed the plants, which once again become food. A romantic notion indeed, but I have to make sure I don’t get ahead of myself. I have to remember that this garden however small and however far from bringing the girls into perfect harmony with nature, is going to make a difference.

So together, Maria Elena and I decided we would make compost without the addition of food – just from yard waste and cow manure. Still though, I wasn’t quite satisfied. I told her that the main reason I had wanted to use food (which is in no way necessary for making rich compost) was to keep it out of the trash. I suggested making a worm bin, which the rats wouldn’t be able to get into. Then Maria Elena surprised me, “we don’t throw the leftovers away. We give them to my brother, Rosso, for his pigs. He comes here twice a week to pick it up.” (Later she showed me the bucket where they put the pig food, which was hanging up high and had a fitted lid for rat-proofness.)

What? All this time the food had been going to good use and here I was trying (in vain) to “save” it from the trash? I asked Madrina why no one had told me about this, and she responded that she didn’t want to “desanimarme,” which is to take away one’s enthusiasm or “animo.” She saw I was excited about it so she told Rosso that there is no food for the pigs right now and he has stopped coming to pick it up. (As for the food separating confusion I described in an earlier post, perhaps the poster I made with the big lists of yeses and nos made composting seem complicated, whereas the pig food is just plain and simple “leftovers”.)

Wow, Maria Elena supports me so much in this project that she let her brother’s pigs go hungry! Now that’s dedication! She says I am one of the daughters of this house now and I’m delighted because I feel it’s true. Maria Elena treats me like she would her own daughter, never taking away from my forward motion, or “animo.”

To be clear, I told her that I think feeding the pigs is a perfectly good use of the leftovers. She laughed, and we started talking about everything we would put in the compost. Maria Elena listed the things: “Cow manure, leaves, grass… what else?” I responded, we can use wood if we chop it really small,” and Maria Elena got excited. “Yes! and we can have Manuel (the nighttime guardian of the hogar) chop it for us! And we can get William to bring straw, and he can help us make the compost too!”

Oh, dear, I thought, William is going to end up doing everything unless I speak up. “Madrina,” I chimed in, “Eh, let’s just have William bring the straw and we will make the compost.” And then I confessed, “I wanted him just to bring the sticks for the compost and he ended up building the whole thing!” Out of righteousness, I failed to mention how I actually thought it had turned out beautifully and how I didn’t know if I would have been able to build it as professionally as William had, seeing as he has much more experience than I do.

She told me what I had known all along – that tradition is strong here and that men don’t want women doing the dirty work. “But also,” she continued, “William really enjoys his work. Did you notice how no one that is helping us is doing it for the money? William comes and works hard and never charges a certain amount. He takes what you give him. Manuel comes here at night to guard and he helps us plant trees and he waters everything and he does it with love. People here love to give. Did you see how the neighbor came over this morning to borrow some chairs for her party, and when she returned them, she brought us some of the lunch she made? That’s just how people are here. I can’t walk to the church without stopping to say hello to five different friends. There’s a sense of unity here. There’s…”

“Community.” I finished her sentence.

“Si, community!” She continued, “When I went to New York, I was shocked because everyone was walking so fast and no one was even looking at each others faces! I said, ‘Oh my God, what is this?’ You get into an elevator with three other people and from the top floor down to the street no one says anything to each other, not even ‘buenos dias!’ You all live such accelerated lives. My friend Maria who moved to Virginia with her now ex-husband had to start taking pills because of how accelerated her life had become. She didn’t even have one neighbor to talk to, and she got tired of it pretty quickly.

“Look, this country may be disorganized, we may not have laws, there may be trash everywhere, but there is a lot of love and warmth among people. Here we love to help each other and to be there for each other and that way we can relax and we don’t have to live with so much stress.”

“Yeah,” I finally piped in, thoughts and feelings swirling. “It’s like we (Americans) want to be so independent, to do everything ourselves.” I was mainly thinking about myself in regards to this project.

“There’s nothing wrong with independence,” Maria Elena responded, “I’m independent with this hogar and I really enjoy it that way. But when there is need here, I am happy to ask for help.”

As we walked back toward the house, I let the truth of her words sink in. I told her that I was feeling a little bad.

“About what?” She asked with the patience and presence of a wise mother, ready to listen.

“Because I’m not going to live here, I’m going to go back to my country to live, where people aren’t as open.” I cringed at the thought of going back to car dependency, to long distances and tight schedules.

She looked straight at me and responded without hesitation, “But you have to accept your country.”

“You’re right,” I agreed, realizing suddenly how intensely I had been focusing on what’s wrong with my country and how Maria Elena had only mentioned it to get her point across about Dominicans. She never meant to tell me I live in a country without love, but that’s how I read it, and being the softie that I am, I took it to heart. It didn’t last long though, as I snapped out of the good old “I’m wrong, poor me” mode. “There’s a lot of good there too,” I said, uplifted now.

“Absolutely! When I was there I loved being with nature. It was so quiet and pure and clean.”

I was inspired by Maria Elena’s brilliant ability to recognize not only the gifts of each of her beloved girls, but also the gifts of different places and cultures. And then I had a brilliant idea.

“Yes,” I told her, “and now I’m bringing nature here and when I go back home I’m gong to bring the love of the Dominicans with me and work to bring about more community there. I can use the gifts of each place to fill the holes where the other is lacking!”

She beamed and we hugged. “Go write it down,” she said.