Today, June 9th, we left Jarabacoa for a day of cultural activities in Santiago. Our first stop was to be in Higüerito for a ceramics activity and pottery workshop, but low and behold the cats were cooperating and we were early, so we made an unscheduled stop at Iglesia Corazón de Jésus in Moca and were able to take some pictures there.
At Artesanos Higüerito we learned about the history of the Faceless Woman figurine, and we got to try our hands at it. The Faceless Woman is a traditional Dominican craft. and the figurine represents the three aspects of the Dominican woman- indigenous, African, and European. We also learned how they make clay bricks and spin pots on a pottery wheel. We all had a good time mixing the different types of clays and sawdust that they use to make bricks, but no one was very good with the pottery wheel. We had lunch at the house of a family in Higüerito before going on to Santiago to the Centro Leon Museo. Lunch was the typical fare of plantains, rice, beans, salad, meat that I can’t eat, and a spicy stewed eggplant dish. There were also fresh mangoes available right from their trees. It being mango season, there were unfortunately also a lot of flies around while we were eating.
We were late arriving to the Centro Leon Museo (herding cats), so our tour was cut short. We learned about the history of the Dominican Republic, starting with its first inhabitants, the Taino. The museum is a fascinating space, with life size displays of daily life throughout the history of the island. You begin in a room with a video screen that scrolls through images of the Dominican Republic, past and present, before you enter into the first exhibit, which is a stylistic representation of a mangrove forest, using light, sound, and structural pieces. Parts of the museum are interactive, which is interesting until all of the interactive figures are talking at once thanks to the cats, then it just becomes a cacophony of noise.
After the museum we took a walking tour of street art in Santiago in the neighborhood known as Los Pepines. It’s a great idea, but it was HOT. We started the walking tour at Columbus Park, named after the first of the European colonizers of the island. The tour guide talked about how he didn’t like the name of the park- justifiably so- which has murals that display Columbus’ ships, as well as his interactions with the Taino. The guide says in his opinion the park should be renamed for the Taino, to honor their painful journey, but too many in the Dominican Republic still want to honor the Spanish culture, and not their indigenous culture. The street art on the walking tour was indeed beautiful. This project has been a work in process for several years. The tour took us through the Los Pepines neighborhood, which has Victorian style houses built over 100 years ago in what is known as the patrimony style. During the tour our guide takes us to a local community center where our students can interact with some local children, and they join them in a very competitive basketball game. Our Layla is really the only player we have but she gives it her all! 
We arrived to the end of our route and were greeted by a group dressed up in Carnival attire who put on a performance for us right there in the street. All of the people on the street came outside of their houses once they heard the music start to watch the dancing and whip cracking performance with us. There is so much vibrancy and color in the lives of the people here. We went back to the park to conclude our tour, loaded the bus, and went to our hotel for the night, the Platino Hotel and Casino. There was nothing "platinum" about the hotel. The room was comfortable enough, but there was entirely too much street noise, and the night staff was very loud. I could hear them in the hallways all through the night. On top of that, in the middle of the night, the garbage truck, with all of its loud beeping, showed up to collect the garbage. I swear it must have been right outside of our room. I got no sleep that night, and was glad to check out the next morning.
We arrived to the end of our route and were greeted by a group dressed up in Carnival attire who put on a performance for us right there in the street. All of the people on the street came outside of their houses once they heard the music start to watch the dancing and whip cracking performance with us. There is so much vibrancy and color in the lives of the people here. We went back to the park to conclude our tour, loaded the bus, and went to our hotel for the night, the Platino Hotel and Casino. There was nothing "platinum" about the hotel. The room was comfortable enough, but there was entirely too much street noise, and the night staff was very loud. I could hear them in the hallways all through the night. On top of that, in the middle of the night, the garbage truck, with all of its loud beeping, showed up to collect the garbage. I swear it must have been right outside of our room. I got no sleep that night, and was glad to check out the next morning.
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