Transnational Desires and Sex Tourism in the Dominican Republic.

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIb_D7_0MNt9PBPdXddQ5L0qUVf71Xl2r_s39BoM9eSQU90Sf53z9Y45_ckgnSqzurYYQJk7Sa5sZ7MToelHr6DnNpJKhErQITSTS3xviNF7-KEeRJJuC8uIEdZ6_pBEqAl8fcqQiiL8sw/s1600/Cabrera+and+Sosua+DR.gif (modified using Paint to circle Cabrera and Sosua)

Due to family emergency last week I was unable to post this blog about sex tourism in the Dominican Republic. It is more of a book review about a book I read for an anthropology course I am taking, but it discusses the issues that are brought up in the book and the importance as well as some additional information about sex tourism and transnationalism that I found while doing research. It seems like an odd way to end my blog, so I will post another one later this week, but as for blogs that count for marks towards my RS 383 course (that I am required to take and receive a 75% in) this will be my last blog.

Recently, I read an ethnography for my anthropology of tourism class called What’s love got to do with it? Transnational Desires and Sex Tourism in the Dominican Republic by Denise Brennan. After reading the book I wrote a lengthy book review covering the strengths, weaknesses and important parts of the ethnography and why it was a successful ethnography. I want to share what I learned about the Dominican Republic and sex tourism since it may or may not affect my stay this summer since Sosua is not that far away from Cabrera or Puerto Plata where I’ll likely be flying into, and which is one of the major cities of the Dominican Republic.

Brennan conducts her research in Sosua, known as the sex capital of the Dominican Republic. She lives there for 14 months to observe active sex workers, interview them and get to know them as people, not just as sex workers. Brennan does an excellent job giving a voice to the women that work in the Dominican Republic’s sex tourism industry and shows them not as victims or “other” but as individuals who choose this life as a mode of economic means and support for themselves and their families. 

Brennan breaks the book into four sections, in each section there are subsections with subheadings. The table of contents lays out the format of the book, which is separated into I. The Town, II. The Transnational Plan: Looking Beyond Dominican Borders, III. The Sex Trade and; IV. Plan accomplished: Getting Beyond Dominican Borders. These chapters look at the life of sex workers in various steps of sex tourism. Some women are just starting out, others are veterans and have been halfway around the world with their foreign boyfriends, and still others are content to work the same bar with the same guys every night, or week just to make enough money.

One great aspect about Brennan’s ethnography was that she was not afraid to tell the truth. In many cases where authors would like to have a happy ending, Brennan showed the reality of the situation, such as in the final chapter when she writes about “Transnational Disappointments” which include: fantasies that the sex workers have about all foreign men (how kind they are, willing to pay for anything, take them back to Europe, how easy integrating into their society will be, etc.). The women do not realize that racism is often a huge barrier that keeps them from being completely accepted in a foreign culture. Brennan mentions that quite a few women were surprised to find the families of their suitors uncomfortable with the women being black. Brennan’s ability to show all the different situations of these women shows her objectification to the situation, but her ability to deal with such a touchy topic too. Throughout the book her tone was accepting and non-judgemental. A lot of authors are unable to shake biases when they are writing even though they try and I think especially in terms of this topic it is important to have an open, as Brennan did.

While doing the research for the essay part of my book report, I found lots of other information that was extremely useful and informative about transnational relations within the Caribbean.Because transnational relationships are becoming more common due to greater accessibility (planes, tourist visas and rich foreign friends), it has become a hot topic among anthropologists, sociologists and ethnographers alike. Transnational relations such as the ones discussed in Susan Frohlick’s article called Fluidity Exchanges: The Negotiations between Tourist Women and Local Men in a Transnational Caribbean Town in Costa Rica look at the issue of a relationship based on sexual intimacy and a need for money and the exchange between these men and women. Frohlick discusses the idea that “female tourists in the Caribbean are just as likely to “service” their local lovers, than the other way around” (2008: 141), which cannot be argued in Brennan’s book, but was argued in the article by Pruitt and LaFont in Tourists and Tourism a reader by Sharon Gmelch that was regularly used in my anthropology class, which discussed sex tourism within Jamaica (Pruitt and LaFont in Gmelch 2010: 166). 

One article that I looked at was called Transnationalism in the Caribbean: Formal and Informal which compares the effects of transnationalism in Central Europe (which mimics our own culture) and the English-speaking Caribbean. The article looks at the changes which are consequences of this transnationalism and how it affects the Caribbean peoples’ culture, economy, language, identity, class and political organization. The author of the article, Don Robotham, argues that globalization has a lot to do with the new transnational relationships that have become more popular (Robotham 1996: 307). We saw this is three articles in our textbooks about sex tourism.

All of the texts that I looked at discussed transnationalism in one way or another as something that potentially has damaging affects upon the culture that practices it. Globalization is a major factor in transnationalism, whether it be intimate relationships, friendship, business, etc. between locals and foreigners, the culture is under major pressure to change and become more transnationally friendly. This is potentially problematic as the culture struggles to meet these expectations with little resources or know-how to proceed comfortably and within range of the culture/country’s ability. This is where sex tourism comes in because it seems like a good solution to the problem of failing economies. Throughout the course I learned a lot about sex tourism and the Caribbean and this ethnography really opened my eyes to the stereotypes that surround women in the DR who are sex workers. I think it was really important for Brennan to write this ethnography and represent the sex workers of Sosua, with names and faces because she shows that they are human too.

I picked this ethnography to research for my anthropology class out of interest in sex tourism and because I wanted to learn more about the Dominican Republic. I thought it would be an interesting way to learn more about the country I'm going to and get an assignment done about a topic that interests me. It interested me enough to find more articles and information about sex tourism in the Caribbean to see how it has flourished since it started and why. 

As this semester draws to a close and my departure date draws nearer, I find myself craving information about the DOminican Republic. Not only to comfort loved ones being left behind but also to comfort myself. Learning about the country, even things like sex tourism, helps me understand the type of culture I am going into and to see the similiarities between my own country and the one I will soon call home for three months!

One of many life lessons so far...

Hello Followers,

After having let the topic for this blog stew with me since Wednesday, I have finally decided to publish it. I had friends look over it and give me some suggestions and I had to look over it and do some thinking about what kind of blog I wanted it to be. I knew what I didn’t want it to be: a whiney, complaining blog about how people are ungrateful, but I didn’t want to deviate too much from how I felt or what the situation was like for me.

To orient yourself, picture me at St. John’s Kicthen, serving food to a long, long line up of people. If you have never been to St. John’s Kitchen, then picture any Community Kitchen that you know. It doesn’t matter what the people look like, how they are dressed, or what situation has brought them there. The main point is that they are there. They are in line to get food, because they are hungry, and they cannot fulfill the basic necessity of having enough food to nourish themselves. This is perhaps what I forgot on Wednesday as my patience began to wear thin.

This is where my BREATHE acronym comes in. Except it didn’t. I was standing there, spoon in hand, ready to food, but not really ready. Only thinking I was ready.

Wednesday morning was possibly THE most stressful experience I’ve had at my placement at St. John’s Kitchen so far. I know I had a rough first day, but first days everywhere are brutal and I thought being this far into my placement that things could only get better and more positive. This theory was proved wrong.

By the end of my three hours there I was almost in tears (yet again) and I couldn’t wait to get out of there. Everyone (mostly patrons) was cranky, rude, upset, yelling, etc. and I was just standing in the middle of it, trying not to let it bring me down. But eventually it did, and that I know is my own fault, but man it is hard when everyone else around you is being a Negative Nancy.

I witnessed a patron of St. John’s have a complete freak out on Wednesday. I mean FREAK OUT. She threw her full food tray at the counter which obviously exploded everywhere and then tried to clean it up but got too upset to clean. She walked away with her half empty tray, food all over and then threw it on the table she sat at to eat her meal. Two minutes later she was back up and demanding more food. You may think that the language I am using (referring to Karsten’s blog) is persuasive, however I have thought long and hard about this blog and about the language I have used since reading Karsten’s blog and I assure you that demanding is what she did. It took everything I had in me NOT to say something to her. I remembered that I don’t know her, or anything about her. I don’t know her life story, what she’s been through or going through. After I saw yet another temper tantrum from her, I am really glad I kept to myself. 

I also witness some of the most selfish behaviour I’ve seen in a long time. I’ve seen 5 year olds act more pleasantly than some of the people at St. John’s Kitchen did on Wednesday. We served chicken fingers  and I guess it was a hit, because one lady came up (I kid you not) TEN TIMES to fill up TWO plates completely with chicken fingers ONLY, nothing else. And boy was she rude when people asked if she wanted anything else on the plates. Some people hadn’t even gotten one plate and she was coming up for more. I feel like this comes from a mentality somewhere within the person saying, “Get more food, or die.” This might be a little bit extreme but I think that for some people it literally is the difference between life and death. For this woman, maybe not so much, but people in general seem to have this need to over-consume, over-hoard, over-indulge and go over the top with some things. People who do not generally always have an overabundance tend to do this when they can, which would account for her lack of respect to those who had not eaten yet. It has become a dog-eat-dog world; an every-person-for-themselves, individualistic-based world.

Now, I know this sounds like a complete complaining fest, which is exactly what I just said was annoying about my placement on Wednesday. But I’m just writing down what the facts of the situations are, and trying to figure out how these actions and situations are justified. My entire morning revolved around serving others, which I understand is the point of this placement; however I did not sign up to be a maid to these people, which is what it ended up feeling like. I was told several times to “Give me that”, or “Give me more, no more, NO MORE”. It gets annoying after a while and it makes me feel like I am babysitting them. These are fully grown people who have the capacity to learn new things yet they refuse to use the oldest tricks in the book, like being polite.

The saying “beggars can’t be choosers” also came into my head, because at one point, a really nice pasta salad had been finished and rice was put in its place. The next ten to fifteen people in line complained and said they didn’t want “that”, they wanted the pasta salad, and when I said, “Well, this is what we’re serving right now”, almost all of them turned up their noses and walked away. I understand that it was a personal decision that made them walk away and decide that they just weren’t hungry enough to eat rice, but I thought to myself long and hard, if I was starving and this was one of my only meals, or whatever for the week that I would be a lot more grateful and eat whatever was given to me. 

I had a conversation with a friend the following day about serving people with dignity. I thought she meant the actual servers themselves, but she was talking about the people receiving the food. She said that it was more than just giving them food on a plastic disposable plate. It was giving them nice ceramic plates, with silverware and cups. A meal with dignity because it wasn’t served on a disposable plate, because it had silverware, because the people who served it to them cared enough to make a meal that was worth eating. The more I thought about this, the more I realized that she was right. It has to be about more than just getting by, and feeding the homeless or the hungry. It has to be about giving them what’s good enough for everyone. Helping out is a nice gesture, but if an individual helps out for personal gain they aren’t going to get anywhere. Perhaps this is the message I lost while struggling through my frustrations and anger the other morning at St. John’s.

I’ve always been told that if I’m not part of the solution, I’m part of the problem. This little saying has given me a new perspective on a lot of situations, and I never cease to learn a life lesson when I repeat it in my head going into a situation. In a way, being at St. John’s is being part of the solution to poverty within Kitchener/Waterloo, but being a negative Nancy and turning against these people in stressful, or hard times is definitely part of the problem. Days later I am able to see this revelation; however it was a difficult task to get where I am in terms of how I feel about this past Wednesday at St. John’s. I feel as though it was a life lesson that had to be learned the hard way, and it never fails that I would choose to learn something the hard way.

I also received some insight into possible future situations that may occur at my placement abroad. Perhaps not the same situation, but the same theme, lack of respect, lack of dignity (on both parts), which will lead me to become frustrated and upset easily (as we can see from this situation). Little life lessons like the one I experienced on Wednesday and throughout the rest of the week have been integral in the making of who I have become, and they also show me a lot about myself in stressful situations (which I will encounter many of in my new country this summer). I am glad that I was able to reflect on the situation and take a second look at it (with the help of  great friends, you know who you are!) and with some deeper insight, believing that there had to be more to the situation than just what had frustrated me. 

Hopefully this lesson will teach me to me more open to the next life lesson that is in store for me. I feel as though the difficulties of this one made me realize that I need to be more open to life lessons, or even simple lessons that are still life changing.

With only three more weeks left at my placement, I am sad to leave because I have gotten to know some of the people, volunteers and patrons so well. Also because I feel as though I have learned a lot at this placement (good, bad, ugly, frustrating, angering, etc.) and that a lot of these lessons couldn’t have been learned without the help of St. John’s Kitchen. So, although I had some mixed feelings about this lesson at the beginning, I feel as though I have been able to accept the challenges that St. John’s has thrown at me, and I’ve become a better person for it. 

Cheers!

It is what it is...

Meeting for the first time in three weeks with my Beyond Borders crew made my Monday a lot better this morning. It was great to finally get into the nitty gritty details about what we need to pack, what shots to get and when, where to buy some of the supplies we would need, ask questions about flights, communication and to have some laughs with people that are going through the same thing that I am.

Today, Joanne gave us the acronym BREATHE and told us that this is what we need to do in stressful situations:
Be still
Release the tension
Examine the situation
Accept the challenge (it is what it is...*)
Thank others for help and advice (use resources around you)
Handle one thing at a time
Engage (act, begin, move forward from the situation)

I felt like this was a really important acronym to remember because being and ENFJ (Myer-Briggs Personality Type) I like organization, planning and knowing. These are all things that have stressed me out majorly this semester because most of these things have to be put on hold while Joanne waits to hear about placement confirmation, flight confirmation, health insurance policies, etc. Obtaining information and getting to know what is important has been difficult, because for me, everything is important and need to know; therefore I am taking in so much information about everything. This has created more than one problem, for obvious reasons.

So, today when Joanne said “it is what it is”, something clicked inside my head. I sat back, breathed, and realized, it is what it is. Everything will work out, no matter what. This might sound somewhat cliché, but I believe that if I say it enough times, it will work out and things will be okay.

We also discussed filling out some risk management forms about personal safety, environmental risks and political risks about the country we are travelling to. While filling out these forms, I could feel my stress level rising, just like the number of dengue outbreaks in the Dominican Republic since November 2010. The information was overwhelming and intimidating, but, as Joanne said, it is what it is. And the more I know now about these diseases and infections, etc. the more likely I can prevent getting them because I have the information and the know-how to deal with various illness-related incidents.

In turn, this also made me think about my last blog and Nicole’s blog about volun-tourism, which has been discussed a lot and was discussed in class. It made me think about the programs in the countries where each of us will be travelling to, and how each of the programs are grassroots programs. They are started in the country using what is already there to build upon and create a more sustainable project that supports the locals in the area. It is what it is, also came to mind when we were discussing this issue today in class. I felt very much rejuvenated from this discussion about the programs within the countries and talking about the volun-tourism topic versus us as student volunteers promoting sustainable grassroots programs.

I feel like perhaps I have had a change in heart over the last two weeks. My best friend left for Cuba today and though I struggled with it the entire time, alas, they are gone for an entire week; leaving me here to wonder what on earth s/he is doing, etc. But today has made dealing with this a lot easier because it is what it is. My best friend will come back with lots of awesome stories (and hopefully a souvenir for me! Teehee!), and I am going to love hearing about it and perhaps we can even have a discussion about what the resort was like, what types of people s/he met while in Cuba, etc. It also made me feel a little better that my best friend was planning on taking a trip into the nearby town to get a feel for the locals and try some local food, etc. This seemed like a good step because my best friend knows very little about this type of culture and I thought it would be a great conversation piece for us when s/he arrive back home.

After thinking lots about all of this I feel more confident in my trip, I feel less insulted about my best friends choice to travel to a fancy resort and I feel that I can actually handle whatever it is that the next 7 weeks feels like throwing at me before I leave. I was also reminded that everyone else in the program is going through similar things and that they are there for me no matter what.

One last thing, last week I read Brittany’s and Jess’s blogs which talked about the blogs in general being “me” discussions. I definitely agree, but I think that it is the entire point of the blogs, to write our feelings, thoughts, analysis, etc. about what is going on in our lives to prepare us for these adventures. I think it is great that the blogs are “me” themed, putting yourself at the centre of analysis, which is what I tried to do in my last blog about travel and tourism and whether I was doing the right thing. I also think that reading about what others think, feel and do daily helps other to get through what they are doing, so all around I think “me” blogs are helpful!

Cheers!

To learn more about Myers-Briggs Personality Type Indicator, this website can give you some information about the different types:

http://www.myersbriggs.org/my-mbti-personality-type/mbti-basics/
Back in the Fall 2010 term in the first half of the Beyond Borders courses (RS 283) we took the Myers Briggs Personality Type Indicator to get a better idea of who we are, what types of things we value and how we react in different situations. The results gave us descriptions about the type of people we are based on the four letter system. As mentioned above I am an ENFJ.