Patronales

Here in Baoba, we are in the midst of celebrating our Patronales. Patronales is a 9-day party with live music and of course lots of drinking. Technically, Patronales is supposed to be 9 days of religious services for us to celebrate Baoba’s patron saint. But like with all Dominican religious holidays (see previous entry on Semana Santa), it’s just another excuse to get drunk.

Patronales started on Friday the 14th and ended on Sunday the 23rd. As a general rule, I try to stay away from the Patronales. Since I’m supposed to be a role model for the kids here, I don’t like to become associated with parties with alcohol, drugs, and dirty dancing. So I usually go to the religious services and then head home before the real partying starts.

On Wednesday night, I made an exception. The girls in my Escojo group wanted to do two of their choreographed dances in front of everyone at Patronales. I have seen these dances a million times and even danced with them a few times, so I wanted to be there at Patronales to support my girls. The church service ended at 9 pm, Patronales started at 9:01, and the girls danced at 9:30. They did a great job, and afterwards we all stayed and enjoyed listening to the music.

Around 10 pm, I was talking with Valerio, the father of one of my girls, and he pointed out a group of people, mostly teenagers, that were all crowded in a circle, smoking drugs. He came in a pickup truck, so we decided that he and his daughter and I would head on home before any trouble started. As we started walking to the truck, a huge fight broke up between the people who were smoking. I knew that Valerio always carried a gun with him, and when I saw him reach for it on his belt, I very calmly walked far away from him and the fight.

The fight was getting intense- one kid had a baseball bat- and Valerio shot his gun into the air to break up the fight. This of course caused panic with all of the other Dominicans, yet did nothing to break up the fight. Two more shots were fired by someone else, and everyone started running. I didn’t run. I was partially hidden behind a tent so I just stayed there and watched the action, ready to flee if necessary. But I thought that running hysterically would just cause more panic.

Valerio came and got me and told me we had to leave right then. I had planned on going with him and his daughter and leaving the rest of the kids at the party to enjoy the Patronales. But after the fight broke out, there was no way I was going to leave my kids alone. So I told Valerio that he had to wait, and walked around and found every single one of my 20 teenagers and sent them all home in the pick up truck.

We all arrived home safely, and when I got home, it finally occurred to me how dangerous that situation could have been. The next night, we all went to the Catholic mass, and went straight home. No one was going to stick around Patronales to see if another fight would break out.