Cheena of the Jungle
...written on 02.19.04, @ 10:03 a.m.
Sarah posted a comment about my appearance being similar to that of a Chinese/Asian in some of my pictures. Here's a little story:
Back in 1982, I was working as a Peace Corps Volunteer in the Dominican Republic. The Dominican Republic is two thirds of an island in the Caribbean, somewhere between Puerto Rico and Cuba. The other third belongs to the country of Haiti. Spanish is spoken in the D.R. and French is spoken in Haiti.
One day as I was walking across the bridge to town, I was stopped by a little Dominican boy around ten years old, carting a shoeshine box over his shoulder (he himself was wearing no shoes). My hair was dark brown then.
"China", he said, (the Spanish pronunciation is "CHEENA" and it is a general term for people from China and sometimes other Asian countries), "give me a nickel (five cents)." I smiled and told him I wasn't from China. "Where are you from?" he asked. "From America." I answered. "Well then," he said, "give me a quarter (twenty-five cents)!"