A Frog Went A-Courtin'

Have I mentioned how almost every guy here in Baoba “is in love with me.” I am not being vain. It’s the truth. Of course most of them haven’t even said one word to me, but they see a blonde haired, blue-eyed American running in her knee-length shorts in the morning, and they are immediately hooked. Basically I ignore all of the catcalls and whistles because the guys who I really care about and who know me, they know I don’t like the attention. And sometimes I resort to my sassiness and tell the tigueres why their behavior is disrespectful. It’s easy to be sassy when the guys are cocky and rude, but I have now been faced with an even more difficult situation: there are nice guys that like me too, and I can’t bring myself to be rude to them. This leads to the courting process as they try to get me to fall in love with them. I have an example.

Yovani is 21. He’s a really nice guy. He knows a few English words and is in my latest English course. He also has a 2 year old daughter (sidenote: the daughter is a hermaphrodite and just recently went to the capital to remove her boy genitalia to officially make her a girl). He left high school before graduating and occasionally works harvesting coconuts. He’s not really my type (but that I mean I’m not into guys who are younger—and shorter—than me, have kids, did not graduate from high school and lack a reliable source of income).

The courting process started with him crashing my dominoes game and kicking out whoever my partner was so that we could be partners. This actually happens a lot. A guy sees me playing and wants to be my partner so that in the case that we win, he can say something cheesy like “we just understand each other, we make a great team, etc, etc.”). I didn’t really make anything of it until he started visiting me in my house. He would always visit in the early evening, around 6 pm, and there would always be other kids hanging out in my house, but there was a huge signal that perhaps he was looking for something more. Sitting on the front porch at night with someone of the opposite sex basically means that the couple is dating or about to date. And he would always bring me a little gift. During the courting, the boy always brings the girl some little gift to accompany the porch sitting time. Yovani would bring me gum and ice cream, and coconuts….lots and lots of coconuts.

I didn’t want him visiting me at night because I didn’t want the community to talk about “my new boyfriend” and also didn’t want to give the wrong impression and lead him on. So I asked a couple of 18 year old boys what I should do. I didn’t want to offend Yovani by telling him that I didn’t want him to visit me. He was a student in my English class and my job as a Peace Corps volunteer is to not shun anyone away. The boys told me that I should lie and tell him that I have a boyfriend. But if I used that lie, I would have to say that the boyfriend was someone in Baoba because if the boyfriend doesn’t live here, Yovani (like all Dominicans) wouldn’t feel threatened and would of course continue his visits. I think the boys I was talking to just wanted me to use one of them as my fake boyfriend so that they could tell people we were dating.

So Yovani came over one night with one of his friends. I was playing cards with Brandy, my 8-year-old neighbor. Because he was with his friend, I wasn’t going to say anything about him not visiting me because I didn’t want to embarrass him. But then Yovani started asking me if he could bring over this wine for us to drink. And later when some of my girls were over here, we were all talking about condoms and how to use them because I had just given them the presentation for Escojo. And Yovani asked me how old I was when I first used a condom. I was speechless. But Dominicans are blunt, and he is no different (sidenote: I was at a funeral once and the lady who was sitting next to me – who I did not know – asked me if I was a virgin. Dominicans say what they are thinking with no respect to whether it is appropriate or not).

So after the wine and condom comments, I felt like this game could not continue. I told Yovani that he was welcome to visit me anytime he wanted during the morning or afternoon, but he could not come visit me at night. I said that people were gossiping about me (which may or may not have been true- I hadn’t heard anything, but that doesn’t mean much), and that I had to protect my reputation. He told me that he understood and since then has stopped by a few times to say hi, but never at night. And he’s still in my English course, so everything seems to have worked out okay. His feelings weren’t hurt, and I no longer have to feel uncomfortable with him visiting me.