Chaotic Organization

I am judgmental. I am arrogant. And I am ignorant.

Oh woe is me.

But the fact is that I am. Everyone is, but you seem to really take notice of your pride when abroad. Suddenly everything is wrong and you must fix the problems. But what may appear to be broken is perhaps functioning better than anything you have seen before. I think I struggle most with accepting what is around me. I want to change my environment rather than let it change me. I hold on to the sanity I know: my upbringing, my values, my norms.

But it is my own instinct for survival, my defense to cling to "normalcy" that prevents me from truly connecting and understanding a culture. Today I learned this during our commute to work. The ten minute ride includes what I have nicknamed the "Climb From Hell." It is about a half mile long street up the side of a hill. But the problem comes from the way it weaves back and forth crossing a few busy streets. As you climb it, traffic always builds up from conchos picking up and dropping off people. Usually, as the ache in my inner thighs returns about a quarter of the way up, I start to get angry. Not to where I am popping a blood vessel, but where I just can't believe how that driver has the nerve to pull out into traffic stopping both directions. Or how that women takes her sweet old time getting into the concho, making us stop.

It is complete and utter chaos. Traffic lights are needed at each corner. Problem solved.

But perhaps it isn't chaos. For I have certainly been on the receiving end of these events. I am never rushed into a motoconcho, I can always take my time. And we have never waited longer than a minute at an intersection. For by that time someone has pulled out into the intersection, effectively becoming the red light. And so, even though there is no official order, perhaps because everyone is slowed up at one point, but then also at the other end, causing the hold up, the order comes from the fact that people make apparent chaos (ironic though because it isn't chaos, confused yet?)

How people have responded to not having rules and regulations has ended up making order, no matter how unorganized it may seem. Next time you are sitting at a traffic light, waiting, waiting, waiting, just think: a minute ago a Dominican would have pulled out and finally gotten his way, not having to wait for the "order" we are so obsessed with in the West. So who really has the better way?

As tempting as it may be, don't pull out into an intersection the next time you are waiting impatiently. It won't work. Trust me. Let Dominicans be Dominicans.