MERRY CHRISTMAS AND HAPPY HOLIDAYS!

So, after the temples of Khajuraho, I have toured another two Indian cities, attended a conference, gone to do a documentary in Qatar, returned home, and now, find myself in India again, doing another documentary. Where am I right now? Somewhere over some ocean. Don’t worry about it. It seems proper that I just pick up where I left off, in nonlinear fashion. Afterall I am a filmmaker, telling stories with nonlinear editing is my forté.

____________________________________________________________________ 

 Hustling through a tall curved archway, everyone pushes through, bobbing heads becoming silhouettes against the emerging daylight. And then, what I’ve only heard about, seen in postcards, read in a textbook materializes into something real. A brilliant white flesh shines, almost too bright for the eyes.

 It is the Taj Mahal.

 As a good Indian friend of mine says, if you think something is beautiful, better stare at it from afar and never come too close. Otherwise, the beauty is lost. I don’t fully agree with this statement – I find beauty in the details of life – but the Taj is most impressive when taken as a whole. The white structure is so magnificent it is hard not to want to get close, to touch, to see, to smell it. It is said to have been built with the hardest, nonporous marble in the world (found only in India). A local marble “factory showroom” my tour group was shepherded into (showing off  dark, skinny men with cracked skin bent over etching by hand) claimed a plate of marble could be thrown from the top of a building and it would barely chip. The same plate could have a cold glass of water on it for hours and never show a ring. The same plate also cost minimum $1500, with full dining tables going for $800,000. Hmm.

 Anyway, coming back to the Taj, I never knew that one of the 7 wonders of the world is actually a mausoleum, dedicated to the death of a person. In fact, dedicated to the death of one person alone. Located in a town called Agra, the surrounding economy centers on selling anything Taj-esque: Taj-keychains, Taj-postcards, Taj-plasticstatues, Taj-buddahs, Taj-goddesses, Taj-this, Taj-that. Tourists are walking targets, as with so many of these wonderous wonders, the authenticity is somewhat ruined by the kitsch trinkets, hawking, and general feeling of being a sheep herded through the gates to snap a picture, take a look, and make room for the next groups thankyouverymuch! (And take a keychain with you.100 rupees. Okay, 50 rupees. Wait don’t go! 15 rupees!)

 My “walk-through” was informative however. I approach the building with stealth, avoiding all the hawkers trying to get a rupee out of me by telling me where to stand for the best picture. I know where to stand for the best picture, and as soon as they point to a spot, my pride and professionalism tell me I automatically can’t take a picture there. Of course they are actually pointing to a few good spots, but I don’t concede. I can’t believe there are actually people waiting around here telling tourists where exactly to take pictures. This embodies for me the ultimate deterioration of a tourist experience. I can’t even have the simulated pleasure of snapping my very own photo from my very own angle.

 Breathe. Now getting closer, I see the Taj isn’t as white as I thought when I first saw the blinding sunlight reflecting off of it. Shoes must be taken off so I pad barefoot, getting finally inside. The inner chamber is dark, I can barely see. The grave lies enclosed in a intricately carved marble enclosure. My stuffy nose prevents me from smelling what I hear is something putrid. I’m content to be sick for a moment, blind and senseless in the obscurity. 2 senses down, 3 more to go… Maybe mausoleums commemorate the feeling of death as well as the actual death itself.

 After this, during the span of about 30 minutes, I get stopped a dozen times by women and men alike to pose with me, half of them thrusting their children into my arms for a picture. I’m becoming more of an attraction than the Taj Mahal. Come see Isabelle Carbonell, as-yet-unproclaimed 8^th wonder of the world!!! Just kidding.

 Maybe I’m over-analyzing but it seems wrong that this huge, breathtakingly beautiful monument pronounced a wonder for the world to behold is about only one person. Not about society, a cause, a group, a movement, or history. It is one rich man’s folly for his late wife. A folly he nearly repeated in black, mirrored across a river that runs behind the current Taj. These second foundations still lay, stopped in their tracks by his son who decided his father had squandered enough money on one Taj Mahal, threw him in prison, and took the throne. Oh those rich folk.

 There is definitely something bittersweet about the Taj Mahal. Pure white, bright, brilliant, seeming innocence, hope, a prayer. An unprecedented token of post-mortem love (his idea to build a second black Taj Mahal surely shows his narcissism, but nevertheless). As with all grand things you finally visit, it can never live up to your expectations (I’m positive expectations are the death of many things, a fatal human flaw) (why, the most precious moments in life occur from spontaneity and not planning, when expectations were naught - and when one travels, the best moments are always, bar none, moments you have not planned).

 Only the small wonders of the world, on no one’s list but your own, are the ones you will truly cherish. One of the most delicious cups of tea I’ve ever had in my life was at a small hole-in-the-wall family-saree-shop this morning. And if I try to repeat this experience, it will be a cup of expectations, not tea. And in that I try to find peace that moments come and go, and there is no way to create The Moment. The best way to create those moments we all crave when on a break from daily routine is to be open to traveling away from the beaten path.

 Much Love And Only A Small Amount of Cynicism

Namasté

Isabelle

While filming, I was interviewed for a state-wide newspaper. The questions were basic:

1. Did I like India?

2. What was my favorite part of India? and

3. What did I think of India and its people?

I said, “yes, I liked India.” and that “I didn’t have any favorite parts of India yet, seeing as how I hadn’t been many places.” This answer did not translate well, so I just answered the city where I found myself - “Allahabad.” And to the last question, I answered that “I thought Indians were welcoming, warm and open.”

The journalist looked at me blankly.

He didn’t understand my english, so I tried to explain myself in other ways - “You know, open, warm, generous, giving, honest…” and apparently the only word that rang a bell was “honest” so now the headline reads something like…

“UNIVERAL DIGITAL LIBRARY IS A VEHICLE TO DISSEMINATE THE ANCIENT TRADITIONAL KNOWLEDGE OF INDIA;
ISABELLE ADMIRES INDIAN’S HONESTY”

Who knew my opinion on mattered so much? Enjoy the pictures…

Shooting at the conference…

The entire conference team, more or less. As you can see, I am one of the tallest. As usual.

Bindi and all, drinking Indian tea, being pictured entirely too much

The journalist in question who got my answer wrong -

Delhi, INDIA
Staring out of a bus window complacently, an unidentifiable animal with grey fur suddenly rounds the corner barreling at full speed down the street with a vicious dog on the chase. It swings a fist at the dog -

(A fist? What?)

and with a heavy grace, it grabs a branch and heaves itself into a tree - growling loudly. My jaw drops. It’s a baboon, in the middle of the city.

Furiously looking out of the window for the next two hours makes me realize monkeys of more than one sort are common here in Delhi. So are cows, which are considered sacred and hold up to 85 gods. Left to their own devices in the city streets, they chew on what is available to eat: trash. Their big dark eyes stare at me as I walk past; I imagine staring into the eyes of divine beings, so I stare back.

“Hello?” (Those gods must be crowded in there.) “Hey, I’m Isabelle, nice to meet you…Hi?”

The cow and I have locked eyes together for what I thought was a special moment, but, fat and unbothered, it waddles over to a pile of street garbage and starts to munch. The irony (sacred cow eating plastic wrappers) doesn’t escape me but I am too polite to ask if the contradiction strikes anyone else – perhaps there is no free lunch even for the gods.

Speaking of Gods, there are more than 330 million gods in the Hindu religion. Holy cow! Literally! I’m starting to learn more about Hinduism and its vast differences from the other two major religions I’ve been exposed to (Christianity, Judaism). Suddenly all those Krishna chanters in the city streets of Ann Arbor, Washington D.C., New York, and countless other cities I’ve been to are put into context. I actually know who Krishna is now (a divine being representing love/a charmer/a playboy/don juan/Casanova) and I know why they worship him (something about how he represents love, the purpose of life). I’ve been offered a book detailing Krishna’s philosophies, so I plan to convert in the near future. My days are numbered, soon I’ll be shaving my curls - they are up for grabs, OBO. No, but in all seriousness, I look forward to reading more about him, and I am glad to have finally enquired more into a group I have always considered a cult. This is what travel is supposed to do - debunk stereotypes and let you get to know a culture intimately.

Heading out of Delhi, I visited some temples representing a few of these gods (including Krishna) in the forgotten town of Khajuraho, India. After an economic downturn, it lay fallow to the world for 1000 years, until a British explorer stumbled upon its 27 extremely “unique” temples. I wish I could have seen the expression on his face. Temples upon temples graced with figurines practicing the kama sutra abound. Positions requiring an unprecedented agility modern man has certainly lost are set in stone, 1000 years strong. The eroticism in the sculptures is acclaimed, yet I doubt that was the effect they were going for 1000 years ago. Full bodied men and women gaze out of stone, symbols of ultimate beauty in both acts of love and daily life. It is said they were meant to remind worshippers to leave their desires outside - so to enter the temple desireless. Only in this way could they be open to truth and enlightenment.

I hear tourists snickering behind me that this is 1000 year old porn. Instead, I find the temples refreshing – why impose our puritanical views to every corner and time period of this world? Rejoice that at least one culture was able to openly incorporate something into their daily act of worship that is normally on the verge of being taboo. There is something so human about these sculptures, an accidental documentation of love, sex, and sensuality. Though some features are exaggerated (the eyes, the breasts), the proportions of the body are correct. Even the slight curve of the stomach, the calves, the biceps are well represented. And that we are still up to the same kind of thing 1000 years ago gives me perspective that we are all just human after all, and 1000 years from now, if we haven’t blown ourselves up, and asteroids have charted their courses out of our way, we will be up to the same, exact… activities.

Love,
Isabelle

I’m in the midst of my travels here in India and Qatar, I sit glued to any TV possible to see what is happening.

The news I was so nervous for finally came, with no little anticipation: OBAMA WON!

My next president will be just another human being, not a messiah, but I am proud to have voted for a human being with such potential to lead with forethought, complexity, honesty, humanity, strength, and kindness. He will invariably have to make compromises to achieve higher goals, but he will also invariably be one of the most intelligent presidents we have ever had, though intelligence does not begin to describe why he will be an amazing president.

I am so proud and excited to be living in America.

If anyone has any reactions they’d like to share with me on the ground (in America or anywhere in the world) please send me your thoughts. I sit here longing to be home to share the excitement.

Much love,
Isabelle

Not long ago, I got an email from a friend telling me that “I’d been quiet for too long.” There are many reasons for this. But things have changed. Quiet I will be no longer. Here are some updates, some may be more exciting than others:

1.    THE DR: The background hum of my work has been the Dominican Republic documentary, something which I am still working on. Obviously, my trip in August upset quite a few assumptions I had made about certain characters I had thought I had previously understood. I’m rebalancing, translating, editing. I set deadlines, but then opportunities come up, such as…

2.    TATTOOS: I have written a book proposal, and designed a mock-up for a photography book I’d like to publish, called A Canvas of Flesh: The Untold Tales Behind Tattoos. It is a first-hand documentary account of the reasons and personal stories people have behind their tattoos – instead of focusing on the art alone. Pretty fascinating stuff. The stories I’ve collected are wild. Stuff like: one 28-year-old Detroit native with metal caps on his teeth bares his forearm to me and reveals some black patches. It looks like a botched tattoo. The he tells me they are footprints of his dead baby twins. I’m submitting to agents right now to see who’s interested. Next up, straight to the publishers.

3.    INDIA/QATAR: The last, but definitely not the least, is that I’m on my way to India and Qatar. I’m doing a promotional documentary for the Universal Digital Library, a project and organization based out of Carnegie Mellon University. They are flying me out to India for their annual conference on the issues and breakthroughs of digitizing books, and then I’m going to Qatar to film the documentary at the Heritage Library. I’ve got pages more to explain, so I’ll keep it short and vague today and expound on the upcoming blog posts.

Please send me your address if you’d like a personal postcard!

I’ll have pictures posted as I go along, and I’ll always provide links to my blog. If you have any comments/questions, you can either post them on the blog or email me. I love to hear from you, so don’t hesitate.

Finally: IF ANYONE HAS ANY SORT OF CONNECTION OR KNOWS A BOOK AGENT OR PUBLISHER PLEASE PASS ME THE INFORMATION!!!

All my love
Isabelle

A grand return, but nothing has changed.

It was early in May and I was trying to finish editing the documentary I started last summer about people living from a landfill in the Dominican Republic. Some of you may know more about this project than others. I realized I needed more footage, the kind which I had just *not* been able to get the year before because of a lack of connections, and a lack of trust from the community. The year that had elapsed since I went had opened more doors, however, and I decided to go back and see what I could get.

I have been keeping up with events in the area by calling a few contacts and asking for any updates or news they had. My best source does not own a telephone, and I have to call the colmado (small neighborhood store) across the street from his house. They shout his name across the street until he comes for the phone. Apparently the government filled in the dump with dirt to abate the smoke, and they bought some new trash trucks. “They are bright green and orange,” Jose said. So some of the smoke is gone, but not much else has changed. “Are you sure?” I asked, aware of all the plans the government had told me were going into action this year. It didn’t sound right. But I wanted to document how this had effected the lives of the people.

Upon my arrival, I indeed noticed how much better the smoke was. My arms and face didn’t go black anymore when I walked through the dump. But the essential problem of the dump hasn’t been addressed: there is a lot of trash, it’s not going away, and they need a place to put it. The trashflow is not being tackled on the front end: for example, reducing packaging materials, or, say, consumer recycling in homes. Oh yeah, and the buzos are as disempowered, poor, dirty, uneducated as ever. They have NO opportunities. There has been a lot of money thrown at the situation and very, very little has been done that can be accounted for. The money the sindico (mayor) has supposedly allotted for the project (75 million pesos) has produced green-and-orange trucks and one-time-dirt-fill. That’s about it. It’s a fascinating case study of politics, and also incredibly frustrating.

The situation stinks. The trash is putrid. Kids dirty with slime and black ash from head to toe still work in the dump. If the buzos find any food worth eating, they stuff their mouths straight from the ground. Poverty abounds, multiplying with every child born, misery in every nook and cranny. At a political level, the situation is also rotten. It has become a political battleground of wills, possible (definite) corruption, with the buzos lost somewhere in the middle. In fact, almost no one think about the buzos. They are nonexistent. Undocumented, illiterate, unskilled, they have no political power. They are ghosts in a system of grand corruption. Hey, guess what? I made a documentary about ghosts.

But I really enjoyed my stay there - I got to reconnect with all the different characters I had interviewed last year (Santos, Ignacio, Bedona, Diego, Ramon, Chivito, Pablo Esteben, etc…) and I also interviewed a host of more official characters such as the mayor himself (Jose Sued), the subsecretary of the environment (Ernesto Rayna), two doctors who have done health studies on the population surrounding the dump (Arsenio Estevez, Juan Rosario), two journalists (Maximo Laureano, Miguel Ponce) and more.

I feel like I really have a complete set of tools to finish the documentary now, a lot more information, and a better grasp on the situation. I also have some exceedingly juicy footage of the dump.. I got right into the trash along with them.

It’s a scandal, what’s happening. I don’t have a lot of power to change any of it, but I hope I can make some waves. Now comes the editing.

Oh and a big shout out to Ernesto, who was my translator. I can speak Spanish well, but when it comes to communicating complex ideas (”What do you think of the cycle of poverty that is perpetuated by the illiteracy and lack of political will from the state?”) I need a lot of help. He really enabled the trip and made all the interviews come alive.

More soon. Photos will be up shortly.
Besos,

Isabelle

I have several projects going on right now, in different stages of planning/starting/finishing -

1. *** Finishing the DR “100 Fires: Living from a Landfill” documentary ***

2. Starting Drew De Four’s “music on the road” documentary

3. Finishing the screenplay for the movie “Confession”, featuring argentine tango.

4. Researching for the “Plastics” documentary. I’m collecting material for this, and hope to write up a treatment by the end of the summer/fall so I can get funding secured by next summer.

Other than those 4 main projects, I have a few smaller ones that need polishing… Polynesian Dancers short, Will Copeland short, Vietnam> the 4th poem, Iraq Veterans short.

Time - the most precious commodity. I often have wished I could create time, as if it was some kind of substance that could be made, pulled, stretched… elastic as it is even in its regularity (some hours pass in minutes, some minutes stretch on as hours), I wish I could mold it. As it is, I live intensely and productively. I could wish for nothing more.

Abrazos

Isabelle

The Obama ad actually scored the 91st percentile, out of 1100 ads that were submitted. Top tier. Not bad. I’m still hoping to submit the ad directly to the campaign so all my work can still get used.

Hey New Yorkers,

A redux version of my film “Mexico: Chasing the American Dream” is being shown at the New Filmmakers Latino Anthology Screening tomorrow night (wednesday May 7) at 6pm, at 32 Second Avenue @ 2nd Street (at a theater called Anthology Film Archives). See below.

I’d love to see all your faces and reconnect… and I’m still hunting for a one night stay on a couch

Much love,
Isabelle

Update: have scored a place to stay. Thanks for the offers!

NEWFILMMAKERS is America’s National Screening Series.
NEWFILMMAKERS NY screens Weekly at Anthology Film Archives, one of the leading theaters in New York City, located at 32 Second Avenue @ 2nd Street.

Admission for the entire evening in New York and in Los Angeles is still only $5.

MAY 7TH
NewFilmmakers & NewLatino Filmmakers
Edwin Pagan, Series Director / Curator

6:00PM DOCUMENTARIES

THE GUARANI MBYA NOMADS OF THE ATLANTIC RAINFOREST
Marcia/Norbert Gomes deOliveira Suchanek, Writer, Directors

MEXICO: CHASING THE AMERICAN DREAM
Isabelle Carbonell, Director, Producer

SHIKASHIKA
Stephen Hyde, Director

7:00PM SHORT FILMS

RED PRINCESS BLUES: THE ANIMATED PREQUEL
Alex Ferrari, Creator, Writer, Director / Dean Cregan, Director, Producer

COOKIE
Francisco Ordonez, Writer, Director

OUTLOOK
Derek Velez Partridge, Writer - Director

8:00PM FIRST FEATURE

BUSCANDO A MIGUEL
Juan Fisher, Writer, Director
Miguel is a young Colombian politician blinded by his own privilege. Victim of a violent attack, he loses his memory and finds himself living in a very different world, a world inhabited precisely by the kind of people he had once.

9:45PM SECOND FEATURE

SALSA LESSONS
Antonio de la Cruz, Director
Two people meet by chance in New York City. Pedro is a salsa instructor and Rosa wants to learn how to dance.

Way to go Convergence magazine for publishing an awesome zine last month full of great poetry and my perhaps most obscure non-mainstream, non-photojournalism, non-eye-candy work. All photos shown in the zine are taken by yours truly. Sometimes magazines will email me and ask if they can use my photography. I always tell them to pick through my site as it’s usually a pretty good bet they’ll find what they’re looking to publish. It can be quite a surprise what they decide to pick sometimes. I’m pleased that this kind of work is getting out there - makes you feel like you don’t always have to sensationalize everything. Check out the zine here.

Check out my film “Palindrome” in Athens, Ohio, at the AthensFest. It’ll be showing Wednesday, May 30, at 7.30pm. I won’t be there, unfortunately, but give me a heads up if you get to attend and catch my film. I’m so thrilled that Palindrome has been getting into so many festivals. We have a 70% success rate! Of course, in the future when I submit my work (future=better work) I will not be hoping to be accepted to film festivals but hoping to win awards and such. One step at a time though. Though short, Palindrome obviously has some kind of universal appeal as an experimental work of art. It’s given me great ideas for other works I’m doing - video can be anything you make it. Don’t be afraid to break the rules. I think that’s the main thing. But you gotta know the rules before you break them, and therein lies the learning.

Hey everyone -

I was a bit preemptive to ask all of you to go to youtube, though it helped me a lot. The Obama team has made its own site for the contest. There are two ways they are counting votes. One way is “Most Viewed.” So could you visit this link & enter your email so they can count your “view” vote? Of course, pass it along to friends and family if you get a chance, too -

http://obamain30seconds.org/vote/?v=view-1675-2meM6f

They won’t send you any emails, it’s just to prevent voting fraud (to have someone click refresh over and over). If you’d like to view and vote some of the other videos (this is the second way they count votes), and see what my competition is all about:

http://www.obamain30seconds.org/vote/?id=12484-9104616-.95ni5

Thanks for supporting my activism, my art, and me, and ultimately, Obama.

I will return the favor any way I can.

All my love,

Isabelle (& Drew)

So among 4 other film festivals so far, my film “Palindrome” has gotten into the Kansas Jubilee Film Festival. It’s showing tonight (Friday, April 18) at 4.15pm, at Tivoli Cinema, in Kansas City. It’s also showing tomorrow (Saturday, April 19) at 7.30pm, at Westport House Theater. Which is also in Kansas City.

I can’t make it out to Kansas this time, though if you’re living in and around the area, please tell me how it goes, and any news and reports from the festival!!! My b-side page can be found here.

Go film festivals. Especially those that accept my weirdest stuff. The next one is Athens, but I’ll blog later about that one.

Abrazo

Iza

I’ve been sending out all these emails to my list and neglecting my blog. It’s time for a change! So I’ll go ahead and update you with my latest funny bad/good news to start with -

My beautiful, expensive HVR-Z1U camera needs major repair. Do you know how it feels to send in your camera to a blank, faceless, maybe-it’ll-be-under-warranty repair service? It feels like you’re sending off your child to summer camp in Mongolia and you don’t know if they’ll come back. Nothing against Mongolia. But without my camera, I can’t produce new stuff. Which is probably a good thing, seeing HOW much backlog I have to work through still, including, but not limited to:

1. The Dominican Republic documentary - in full.

2. Vietnam in Poems - the rest of the vignettes (yes, there are more than three)

3. Polynesian Dancers short

4. Will Copeland Poem short

5. Iraq Veteran Interviews (w/ Aidan Delgado) short

It makes me jittery thinking about how much work I have on my plate. I’ll update you guys as soon as new work comes out!!!

I measure the days by spitting on my thumb and tracing a path of black on my arm. Today I wrote the letter B. B for bad. The lady selling me water pointed to a hose. I climb up a steep slope of black-rust mixed with broken glass. My feet anchor on patches of dying grass and long strings of old plastic bags, clouds of soot blowing in my face.

Ignacio shouts my name and jokes, “Everyday, you look more like us… Soon we will have to dig to find your true color!” What is he talking about, I thought?… Oh. Blacker. I look blacker. Later he unclasps his watch, and shows me his tan line, “This is what my skin really looks like. I’m darker now because I work in the sun all day picking this trash.” Somehow, I can sense, this should change my opinion of him. Another slap in the face. For I am beginning to understand: The whiter you are, the luckier you are. I hadn’t realized racism came in such precise shades of skin. The insidious tentacles of racist history yet had their hold, even the “75% mixed” population of the Dominican Republic. I told him to put his watch back on, unable to articulate my sorrowful disgust.Ignacio leads me through the landfill, stooping for pieces of metal. Trash becomes more recognizable; cans, bottles, needles, boxes, plastic bags, dolls, telephones, shoes, mattress springs, plastic gallons, paper… it fades from being picked-through burned rubble to piles of steaming fresh trash. Today we stayed away from people, and unfortunately downwind of the fires.

During the interview, smoke billowed through, hiding Ignacio behind a windy curtain of grey. He looked as if he would disappear altogether, and I asked him, “So where do you see yourself in 10 years?” After a long pause he said, “I’m standing on my grave.”

A storm blows through, torrential rains pouring from the sky with no remorse. The road has become slippery mud. Afterwards, clothes hang from barbed wire fences as makeshift drying lines. In the guagua** I sit like a sardine between two blaring women having recognized each other only halfway through the ride. My ears start to hurt. I lean forward and see the busdriver’s hands are thick with a double-skin. I ask him what he used to do; he says he picked and sold plantains. This job is better. I shake his rough hand when I step off the guagua.

Dragonflies fly alongside us on the motorbikes. I thank them for eating the mosquitoes that have feasted on my legs. I trust that my driver will deliver our non-helmeted heads to my destination, and not the graveyard. This is as close as I’ve ever come to believing in a miracle. He asks me about my life, where I’m from, my name, my age, where I live, and “Do you have any children?” I laugh and tell him no, I’m too young. He does not comment on this. I arrive at my destination.

She is 24 years old, and has 8 kids. Across the dirt-filled car tires stairs is her neighbor, who is 30 and has 7 kids. They live within 6 feet of each other, with only a path separating their lean-to, tin-roof, wooden-slat houses. The 24 year old won’t look at me in the eye when I introduce myself. I am not sure what to think. Does she despise me? Is she ashamed? Is she just shy? Is she psychologically detuned because of her hazardous surroundings? Then I think her husband gives me a clue. He is gruff, silent, appraising. He is a buzo, a “diver”, a trash picker. They are very poor. Coming back from work, he wears two different kinds of shoes, both caked in a thick, black, unnatural mud, and his white pants aren’t white. The wife yells at one of her kids crying in the house, “¡Ay Dios, callate hijo!” (Dear god, shut up son!). The path that separates the two families is the locals’ entryway to La Rafey, Santiago’s garbage dump where they scavenge their survival. Picking through lost opportunities.

Weeks later I return to the 24-year-old with her 8 kids at the bottom of the rubber tire staircase. I take out my video camera, and interview her about matters she has never been asked about. It takes a long time for her to answer my questions. She is uncomfortable, awkward, shy. Her children crawl around her, their messy mouths fuchsia-red from popsicles.

The neighbors have gathered around to watch, sitting farther up on a small mountain of trash and rusted bedsprings. The man who made a slit-throat motion to me the first day I came here weeks ago is now smiling at me kindly, holding his daughter. I wonder, is he the same guy? I’m pretty sure. I am aware that I represent an empire of wealth they will never have. How to mediate this?

You tend to get a little spit on your cheek when you kiss someone here: they really mean it when they say hello or goodbye. I realize how superficial greetings are in the US, a wave across the room satisfies saying hello, or a caved-chest hug followed by a light pat on the back. Here, validating a persons’ presence through a greeting is the most important thing to establish before a conversation/connection. I grab people’s hands to lead them somewhere, I touch people’s arms when I’m making a point, I put my arm around the ladies to make a joke. They reciprocate this with vigor, and so I know it is important for them I do this. I do not try to keep my distance from them, I shake their hands and hug their sweaty bodies, and pick the naked kids up without a second thought. I hope to build trust, just as I am starting to trust them.

*A cheap big van-bus that is used for public transportation. They will fit up to 19 people (4 in each row), plus the driver, and the comedor, a man who leans out of the open-door moving van to get more customers, and to collect the money once they are inside.

Dumping trash straight into their hands

Ignacio; heavy fires today

Rare photo of me filming; too muddy for tripod

Dolls, needles, cardboard, shoes…

One minute to the next; smoke billowing through

Backdrop of her home

She could be my daughter

Ignacio; climbing up the mountain of trash

There is death in mystery

Production shot; interview of Ramon

Tough bare feet that walk on glass

Tearing open a section of my hand with glass and unveiling bone on Tuesday morning while washing dishes gave me an unexpected tour of a private Dominican hospital. My doctor spoke English, had done a residency in Omaha, and served me immediately upon entering the emergency room. 11 stitches later I was out, with a bill that would make an American audience laugh, or cry. I was happy to pay ~$100 for the prompt care, attention and medicine I got. I’m not sure how affordable that is for the average Dominican however, though I’m told they have insurance.

The next day I found myself going back to the barrio with the team to narrate in Spanish a short play we made up about teenage pregnancy. Before that I was asked to choreograph a dance for the girls, on the spot, to kill time while we waited for more children to come to the sexual health session. I tried to dig through my Spanish vocabulary for dancing (spin, turn, duck down, on 3!) and blundered my way through, wounded hand included. Half the 13 year olds had miniskirts and low heels on however, which I kept forgetting about as I showed them ways to contort their bodies to the beat. “No podemos hacer!” I kept hearing (We can’t do that!).

Public health work can be challenging in ways I hadn’t thought of: Crossing Borders, the NGO that I am working with from home here, is partnering with another NGO, International Child Care (ICC) which has been based in Dominican Republic for some time now. We are in conjunction running a sexual health campaign in the barrios using different and varied methodologies. I am traveling with Crossing Borders as a team member, participating in most activities with this project, but I am also going to be slowly but surely spending more time on my own filming a documentary.

Lastly, on that same afternoon, we visited the landfill I had previously referred to as Cien Fuegos (100 Fires). I climbed down the side of a neighborhood, crossed a small but highly toxic stream, to climb back up a hill that gave way to piles of trash. Shoes, plastic bags, pill bottles, jeans, cans, “disposable” plates and cups: anything you could imagine. People picked through the garbage that was the freshest, with a long L-shaped pointed metal pick. Some wore protective clothing and rags over their mouths, and some others went nearly uncovered, including a kid who couldn’t have been older than 8.It’s one thing to see something in pictures all the time – people picking through trash at an uncovered landfill – and another to be in the thick of it. I am going to be returning many times to this site, hopefully investigating with the county, city or state about the landfill’s history, system, rules, expectations, expiration date and the like, as well as performing interviews with its many and varied occupants.More poetry later, for now I am still shocked by the reality.

Besos y abrazos para todos

Isabelle

PS. Escríbame en español si quiere porque necesito practicar en cualquier manera posible!!!

6 brothers and sisters who all sleep in the same bed

“Daniel Peluqueria”

Brothers in front of their house

Space between the houses

Big Haitan family living under one roof & me

Family in front of house, 5 to a bed

Looking like parents already; playing with a white doll

Showing me their cool card moves

Dirty, oversized dress

Pots and pans to make the house look nice (a tradition)

Grown old and still alive

We ride from paved to unpaved road, the houses turning from cement blocks to wooden slats. This barrio, called Cien Fuegos (100 Fires), is just like any other. Climbing the side of a hill, the view is one of distant mountains, clouds, and a smoking landfill (hence 100 Fires). Birds fly over the fray like flies. I’m visiting Santiago’s trash soon, up close and personal: details to come.

Santiago, Dominican Republic, is a city of about 800,000 people. To be honest, I’ve only gone into the barrios so far, outside the city, taking a plunge directly into the kind of work Crossing Borders will be doing most of the summer.

Kids scramble about houses here, barefoot, some naked. I wish it wasn’t so stereotypical; I remind myself that it’s summer and school’s out. Trash abounds the streets, I don’t quite know how it ever gets cleaned up. It’s all about the same color with the dust blowing about. Plastic bottles, lonely shoes, banana peels and the like accumulate on curbsides.

Girls play in the streets with a jumping rope made out of a heavy electrical cord. Tree trunks twist terribly up to the sky, tormented torsos without arms or heads, roots buried by cement.

Without making any generalizations, this reminds me of Nogales, Mexico, where I actually did a homestay with a family who lived in a bordertown barrio. I briefly experienced what it’s actually like to live on “borrowed” electricity, no running water, an expired outhouse and the like.

This time I got to go home at night, take a cold shower, get on my computer and write.

No pity. Just empathy.

Con abrazos, besos y todo mi amor

Isabelita

 Teaching an impromptu dance class

 Showing me her house

 By request, my hand

 Toxic stream

 Blowing up her find in the landfill

 Picking his way through

 No more than 8 years old

 Dumping fresh trash; Around each of these loads, a swarm of people surround it and immediately pick through what has been just dumped.

 He looks like a veteran; He was not the only one which wore long sleeves, a jacket, and a rag over his face, but they were not many. The landfill is a hill in full sun, and along with the smell of the trash, at the height of the day it is suffocating to be there. I cannot imagine wearing all those clothes and something over my breathing on top of that.

  Going home with a day’s worth

 Diagonal Curiosity 

 Her Name is “Lady”

 One of the ninas attending our HIV/AIDS sessions

 Playing with what’s around

 Stairs to the Roof

 Ninas y Yo

 Taking a walk beneath laundry

 Streets of Santiago