Becky in the DR!

Running for Cover

2007-11-14T15:02:00.000-04:00

Tropical Storm Noel came and went, and (gracias a Dios) La Joya survived quite nicely. Many people in other communities did not – the South was hit hard, as well as many nearby communities close to rivers that swelled fuller than anybody can ever remember seeing them, swallowing houses and sometimes whole families at a time. All that happened here: no power for four days. It was sort of like a blizzard, where all you can do is stay in your house and play games, talk, read. I had never seen so much rain at once. From Sunday night until almost Wednesday night, the rain was nonstop, sometimes with a little break of drizzling in between the downpours, but always, always constant. I knew something was different when I woke up wet Sunday night from a new leak that had sprung right over my bed, in my normally non-leaking roof! Then it came out on the radio and by word of mouth of neighbors and friends that class was cancelled nationwide, that we were in the midst of an unexpectedly strong tropical storm. Now as the country deals with the aftermath, it’s interesting to see the stories of hope and the others of corruption. Many nations, groups, and families are contributing much to the rebuilding of these lives of the damnificados, or the affected, and just as quickly many politicians are siphoning away money and resources to their own families and political campaigns. How can this exist so blatantly, with everyone talking about it? But the corruption is there. And that amidst families who really were completely destroyed by the havoc this storm wreaked on them and their families. Still some parts of the South are incommunicable by vehicles. The rebuilding continues.

On a lighter note, my nearby city of San Francisco de Macorís hosted a big race Sunday afternoon, the first of its kind here in San Fran. It was (I think) a 15K for the women, youth, and old, and a 32K for the open category – the young men of the bunch who had been training for a long time. The men dominated the day completely, with barely a girl to be found in the crowd, the runners, or the judges. I figured it would be cloudy since it was raining hard when my running partner and I left at 2:30, but the sun came out, and by race time around 3:30 was hot and blazing as ever. It pounded the asphalt and the runners in the hot afternoon without relief. I had to participate, however, since the race ran right by my community; in fact, for my category, it was the turnaround point. Which meant almost the entire race, there were people cheering for me by name! I ended up winning the women’s category, and right away when I crossed the finish line and was about to fall down, a guy stuck a microphone in my face to interview me. All I could get out at the time was a “momento” to give me time to cool down. And even with two different interviews beforehand, they all made me talk during the prize ceremony about the great qualities of San Franciscans etc. – I went blank and had nothing to say, and probably looked like a complete idiot. Who knew I would become a winner in this country?

Birthdays and Deathdays

2007-09-18T15:42:00.000-04:00

Happy birthday to our computer lab, which as of September 16 has been open successfully for a year of classes and other services to the community. ¡Felicidades! Our new round of classes has begun, at the same time that a group of high school boys has been painting the high school with the paint donated by the Secretary of Ed. It makes for an interesting combination of (semi)serious class and the rowdy boys outside who come dashing in to see if we can put on some music… preferably reggaetón (think Daddy Yankee). My bike that sits outside has never given so many vueltas (circles) or popped so many wheelies in its existence. Thank you, painters! I joined their ranks last Friday to help them out on a free day in the lab, and we got the lab painted a sickening combination of a sort of lime green on the bottom half and a light green on top. Of course I exclaimed later how beautiful it was… and it does look cleaner, at least! I was the only female painter. Apparently in this country painting is a male occupation, not to be invaded by the ranks of the opposite sex. Why? It’s not exactly work that’s pesado (heavy). But every girl that stopped by that I invited to help paint looked at me like I was crazy and exclaimed that they weren’t going to do it!

This past week has brought with it a rash of random deaths in our community. It’s really interesting how there will be long periods of time in which nobody passes away, and then all of a sudden there will be a week or two in which there are many natural and unnatural deaths together. My neighbors commented that it’s caliente (hot) right now for dying. I agree! In the group of deaths that have happened recently, it has included muertes (deaths) from old age, a freak accident involving electrocution while cleaning fish in the middle of the night, a couple of crashes on the highway (pretty gruesome, actually), and a few by fights or unexplained violence. While discussing the phenomena of hit and runs here in this country, everyone here is a proponent of it. The reason: if the driver stops to apologize to the family or bystanders and see what happens, those same bystanders or family members will, almost without question, in turn kill that driver. Perhaps we need to see some changes in the judicial system so the people don’t feel such a strong need to take the law in their own hands – one of the many changes this country could afford to make.

My English class had a fun surprise the other week when we received our first group of pen pal letters from my friend Megan’s middle school Spanish class. Unfortunately the excitement did not motivate my students to get their own letters done quickly, and I have had to hassle them now for more than two weeks to get them finished! Also since nobody here really uses the postal system, when deciding what to send them (like the Pixy Stix they sent us), everyone was suggesting rather large or heavy items. Multiply that by 30 and you have quite the expensive package to mail! I think I convinced them to settle on some typical juice mix of GuanábanaYa… that is, if I ever get all the letters in.

Heat and School Days

2007-08-30T10:41:00.000-04:00

It’s school time in the Dominican Republic! A few weeks ago the secretary of ed announced that school this year was going to start August 20, even though it always begins in September. That being said, today is August 29, and the streets are still full of kids playing, the classrooms are empty, and the elementary school is being painted. Parents are indignant that anyone would even suggest going back early… and I agree: no justification was given for the early start to classes, even if one exists. Looks like summer will last just a little longer for us in the land of perpetual summer.

The other day before my run I went to put on my running shorts that were hanging up, dry from the sweaty run a couple days before. I was about to put my first foot in when out falls a scorpion on the ground. I only screamed a little then stomped the poor thing out into oblivion before it bit me. RIP running-partner-that-never-was scorpion.

Cajuíl my kitty recovered well from my trip home (I think because the 8-year-old neighbor taking care of her poured LOTS of food into her dish each day – thanks Eddy) but now is behaving a little scandalously. Yesterday morning she did not wake me up crying outside my bedroom door; instead she slunk in late at 7:30, creeping in quietly. I asked her where she’d spent the night, and then saw her boyfriend behind her, following from a distance. A big ugly white cat: what bad taste has my Cajuíl. At least he was walking her home, I suppose. Needless to say, Cajuíl and I had a little talk afterwards about her bad behavior, and how much the neighbors are going to talk. I think it was to little avail, however, because she invited the novio (boyfriend) over to my house last night. Lesson learned: have the doctor fix your cat properly to not only not have kittens, but to also NOT go through heat! I could have used that advice last November.

Are clowns more fun in the DR?

2007-08-18T12:06:00.000-04:00

Here we are in our consolidation points, awaiting Hurricane Dean to come hit the southern part of the island. Supposedly up here where I am they are only expecting rain and wind. I think they wanted to consolidate my region because it includes so much coastal area, and they probably wanted to get everyone away from the ocean... I am just hoping that it doesn't cause too much damage to the southern part of the country, which is the poorest of the poor areas here, and am keeping Jamaica in my prayers since it looks like Dean is just going to blast right over their island.

Now for camp news. Our camp in La Joya (Campamento Aventura) went wonderfully, and the best part of the week were a couple visitors. Angela, another volunteer, came to teach swing dance, which was a huge hit. Possibly almost as big as when we did the Macarena 5 times in a row on the last day of camp because of how much everyone loved the classic we revisited that day. And the clown did come from the capital to do all of his clowning around, which the kids absolutely loved. I think it was probably the first time in all of their lives they'd ever seen a clown or people walking on stilts. I think I was the luckiest, because after camp that Tuesday in my house, I got to use the stilts and learned a bit how to walk on them. The clown even offered to make me a pair of my own, and I'm very tempted to take him up on that.

We just finished the diversity camp for our region as well that I took 3 kids from my campo to, and thanks to all who donated to make that camp possible! It was a huge hit that included all sorts of speakers (from Hatians to Japanese who did judo to Hare Krishnas who sang and played their instruments to a group doing a traditional and very risqué dance that we all learned afterwards), icebreakers and games, and the fun nighttime activities (that was what I was in charge of).

I'm off to practice swing dancing a stilt walking. Who knows what may come next with a past month like this.

2007-07-10T11:15:00.000-04:00

Summer is flying by, and all I can think about are a couple things: next week's camp that will be a (better) repeat of last year's camp in our campo, and my vacation for the first time home to the US the next week after that. My goal is to see lots of people, stick my face to the tap to drink the water straight from the faucet, and eat mountains of shaved ice. It's always good to set goals before a trip, right?

Our half marathon was a couple Saturdays ago, and only four of us volunteers ran in it along with the many many other runners from here and other countries, and with a total of one cheerleader/fan for us (who was my friend Erin visiting us, so it was a forced situation... but thanks, Erin!). Tri finished faster than any of us, and then I came in at 2 hours and 3 minutes. It seems slow when you figure out the minutes per mile, but I sure felt like I was going as fast as I could, especially in the last three kilometers! At the finish line they hand you a bag with water, a couple little cakes, and an open beer: mine ended up being a gift to an unsuspecting bystander who enjoyed a lot more than I was about to. There were also fireworks after the race that were shot off from dangerously close by, which only increased the sense of excitement. All in all a very good hot humid rainy fun afternoon race.

Erin visited for about 2 weeks, and aside from her getting sick for about 5 days with fever, body aches, and diarrhea, we had a fun time. Exploring a new beach in the South that was beautiful and sort of Jurrasic Park movie-ish complete with buckets of mangos and plenty of my favorite fruit -- guanábana. We stayed in an inexpensive house on the top of a hill on a cliff looking over the ocean (pictures to be updated soon!) and spent our days at the rocky beach where the river empties into the sea. We had a few adventures while Erin was at my home as well, teaching her merengue and bachata (which she found boring) at a teacher party, going to a funeral prayer hour, and being whisked off to a river by my friends driving by. Now it's time for me to get back to reality and have a productive two weeks before vacation home! The biggest question facing me right now: do we invite my clown friend on stilts from the capital to the camp, or is he too expensive?

Welcome to the house, new tv

2007-05-11T15:28:00.000-04:00

Dilemma of the week: my neighbors called me over yesterday afternoon when I arrived. The three year old Tito proudly announced to me, “Mommy wants to give you a TV; come and see it!” as he took my hand and led me into their house. And there was the mother, and the television, both sitting there looking at me. They say they want to give it to me to embullarme, or to entertain myself. I suspect they’re worried about me on those nights that I don’t go anywhere and stay in the house reading, as that would appear more of a punishment than entertainment to most of my neighbors! I pointed out that there may be other people who need one more than me… that if I want to watch any program I can easily go to a neighbor’s house… that I never really watch TV anyway… but all to no avail. They are set on giving it to me. They are even bringing me an antenna for the slight reception we get here in the campo. I have a feeling there may be underlying motives of moving it from their house they don’t live in (the family pretty much lives at the grandparents’ house) so it doesn’t get stolen. So in addition to my protests that I vocalized, I now also have to think about having an antenna visible to all, perhaps making my house more vulnerable to break-ins if I’m ever out of town. I think, though, that I really have to accept it, if I don’t want to hurt their feelings. Oh, this is not what came to mind when I thought of Peace Corps!

The other weekend was committee weekend in the capital, and our one-year teeth and health check-ups. We happened to find out that there was a race going on Saturday afternoon around the botanical gardens, and got a group together to run in/cheer on the 12K. There weren’t a whole lot of people, but the people that were there were in great shape! It was a hot afternoon, and at the beginning they announced that any atajos (shortcuts) were encouraged, as long as you stayed outside the fence of the gardens. I ended up winning our women’s age category and Jenny also placed, so we were given medals and beer, which we promptly shared with all our friends in the taxi going back to the hostel.

It has been raining every single day here in May, which really makes me and most of the population of my campo want to do… nothing! This especially applies to cleaning the house (for me) and going to class (for the students). In spite of this, my kids have decided to put out a sort of yearbook by the end of the month for the high school, so hopefully everyone stays motivated and it works out.

Beans, beans, the magical fruit

2007-04-14T16:26:00.000-04:00

Picture the scene a couple nights ago: Becky on her bed reading by the light of her gas lamp. Everything is calm and tranquil. Then the power comes back. I blow out the lamp to use my lights in my house. Two minutes later it goes out again. I light my candle and my lamp again. The power comes again. I wait a couple minutes this time to make sure it’s there to stay, and blow out the candle and lamp again. Almost immediately after that se fue la luz (power went out) yet again! This time I resolved to leave my candle burning no matter what happened. Luckily the craziness of that night with the power doesn’t happen often, but it was after a bunch of rainstorms and something was not working right. Normally in our campo we have power for anywhere from two to six hours at a time before it leaves us for about the same amount of time. Sometimes more, sometimes less. And now I have yet another reason to like the electricity: I have a blender. And not just any old blender. This was a gift from my friend Ney, a Spanish-descended wealthy old man in my community – I think he’s around 90 – who lent me this blender from 1940-something. It’s square! Although it’s missing its lid and only has one speed, it works. My first experiment was to blend guanábana fruit with sugar and a little water to make popsicles in my neighbor’s freezer, an experiment I hope to repeat soon.

Celebrating Easter didn’t end here until Monday, when what seemed like the entire campo went to the beach together. Return to elementary school days: cramming together three to a seat on a school bus to get there. Luckily my seat sharers were skinny! After the priest said the blessing to start us out on the right foot, he declared, Ahora música, má ná! (Now music and no more!) and everybody on the bus cheered… until they heard the religious tunes blasting from the bus’ speakers. Protests abounded and continued the two hours it took to get to the beach. On the way back from the beach was when the priest finally relented to let the people have their say and listen to their reggaeton, salsa, bachata, and merengue. The worst things to happen at the beach were some sunburns and one teen that got really drunk and kept pretending to drown. He would throw himself in the water face down and stay there until the people watching began to get excited. Finally someone threw him into the back of a truck to take him to the hospital, which made him shape up pretty quickly.

Other than the beach, everyone here celebrates holy week by (if not going to the beach or a river) making habichuela con dulce, or a dessert made from beans, batata, milk, a lot of sugar, etc. It’s sort of like the US’ Christmas cookie tradition in that everyone makes a whole lot for the purpose of giving away to all their neighbors, and everyone’s is just a little different from the next person’s. Some have more raisins, some more little cookies on top, some are thicker, some have all the beans processed, and you can eat it hot and fresh or cold afterwards. Now the problem is that it has coconut milk in it, and so sometimes it’s really hard on your stomach. I didn’t have any problems at all the whole week and was even eating it for breakfast cold, until the fateful fourth day of eating it, when something went bad and I had a horrible night afterwards. No more hcd for me… I cogí miedo (got scared!) from then on out.

Pico Duarte by the numbers. And more.

2007-03-21T15:13:00.000-04:00

Mountains climbed: 1
Mules hired: 2
Days spent hiking: 3
Falls on the slippery slope down: at least 20
Rats heard or seen at night: too many to count
Flashlights that died: 3
Torts of cassava eaten: 5 (a LOT)
Baths taken among six people: 3
River sources passed: 1
Swear words used by guide to mules: at least 250
Swear words used by competent females to useless males: a few
Marshmallows roasted around campfires: 0 (next time…)
Days hiking started at 5:00 am: 3
Dagger fights: 1, almost 2
Money spent by each, including transportation to get there: about US$60
Constipated people: 3
Unexpected detours taken: 1 big one
Miles hiked in total: 37 (60K)
Elevation of the peak: 10,? feet (3,038 meters)
Forest fires started: 0
Germans using sticks to cook: 1
Plantains eaten by curious cows: 5
Rainy days: 0!

Most abundant conversation topics among us girls: food, poop, and hiking.

What a fabulous vacation, that I would repeat in a heartbeat… or a year later. We lucked out going with a pure Cibaeño guide straight from the isolated mountains, who eventually shared some of his love stories with us (including how he conseguir-ed, or got, his woman). He also took us on a path much less traveled to get to a beautiful valley. It’s a common side trip taken, but usually on the way up via a different (groomed) path and taking a couple extra days. We took the steepest path invented to get down to it; four endless hours of falls and sliding through the shadeless burned forest, but it was beautiful once we arrived. Pico Duarte is the tallest mountain in the Caribbean and Central America, but the hike really wasn’t hard. It was full of down and up, not just straight up the whole way there. On the second day, when we reached the top, it was absolutely freezing! The wind and cold weather combined made us all wish we had gloves and hats to put on. It was amazing how the three days away from the sound of loud motores zooming by, stares and comments of the men you pass, and heaping plates of rice at lunch were completely refreshing for the soul.

I got back to my project (the lab and all it includes, the English classes, and teacher training) running smoothly, which was a wonderful feeling. My friend Laura inspired me on the hike to set up a program that’s in the works to pair high school students with elementary kids who are having trouble reading, to work with them a couple times a week. Sounds like a cool idea that would be really easy to implement. We’ll see how long it actually takes to get running. My bet: a month at least, due to vacations, nobody will come to the training meetings at first, etc.

I got to go to my first big 15años celebration this past weekend, which was so interesting. These people spend about US$2000, which is quite a bit of money here. Enough to buy a good, bigger motorcycle, as well as a fridge or tv. Wow! It started with a mass, then a procession to the discoteca, where the mc presented everyone. Various rituals always take place (the dad changing the girls sandals to close-toed heels, the group of teens sort of like bridesmaids and groomsmen doing traditional dances, and more), but after all that, there was even more excitement. A couple local reggaetón groups sang (rapped?) and danced. That was followed by several lip-sync acts, which were perhaps even cheesier than the telenovelas (mix between sitcoms and soap operas) so popular here. After the entertainment and before the food, the dancing began. It was similar to our weddings in that everyone lets loose, pulling out all the stops in dance moves (direct result of an increased intake of Brugal and Presidente?). A good time was had by all… and the next morning we got the cake we never ate for breakfast, which just completed the whole experience.

A One-Dog Kind of Night

2007-02-25T14:52:00.000-04:00

A year under our belts already! The most amazing thing about my group that arrived together is that not one of us has dropped out yet for any reason.

Time is flying, classes are going, and even the teachers have begun to get interested now that we have started to offer some teacher training once a week. I highly doubt the majority of them will ever actually apply their new knowledge, but maybe we can figure out a couple tricks to help them out in their daily lives. We had another club interchange, hosting another volunteer and her kids in our community the other weekend. I got to be host of two volunteers, one teenage girl, and one of the volunteer's dogs. My bed held me, another volunteer, and the dog. In the spare room bed mattress on the floor. How that happened I'm still trying to figure out.

During another med mission down south this past week, I got to see operations on cataracts and prostates, as well as try to hand out very large and ugly glasses to people who needed them. Appearances are so important here that even poverty doesn't stop shame, and some people who were packed off with their glasses that were probably the only pair with the prescription they actually needed you knew were never going to use them. The group of doctors, nurses, and support staff that came were a fun crew of mostly doctor or nurse couples. We dragged one or two out into the streets to have adventures with us, going for runs out of the city and trying some (safe) street food.

Upon arriving at my house this past week, my elderly neighbor told me that I'd missed out on the youth mass this week that they had especially to give prizes. I had won one of the titles: Most Athletic. A direct result of me going with a group to the Virgen de Las Piedras, the long hike to the statue in the cave far away. When we got there the priest proposed doing pushups, which quickly turned into a contest... that I won somehow, beating all the boys with something like 50 pushups in a row. The best part: after arriving and doing the contest, everyone wanted to get back home. Forget about praying or reflecting in this journey! We booked it back.

Rain, Rain, Go Away

2007-01-23T15:51:00.000-04:00

Rain, rain, and more rain has dominated January. The only thing there is as much of as rain is lodo, or mud. I didn’t believe it was possible, but the nights actually require more than just a sheet: you know it’s chilly when the people here comment that it was a two-sheet night. Even Cajuil had the sniffles.

And if December was a wedding month, January has been a party month. New Year’s, followed by Three Kings Day on the 6th, and then here was our nine day long celebration of fiestas patronales. Every city or pueblo or campo has its patron saint, and celebrates the week leading up to its day with daily mass and lots of going out. It has made for a difficult restarting of – well, everything. Lots of rain combined with cooler weather and parties decreases everybody’s motivation and attendance in all non-social pursuits.

We managed to find a couple hours of sun on a very rainy New Year’s Eve to hit the beach, and a couple friends in Sosua took us in their little motorboat to a secluded and beautiful beach, lined with palm trees and surrounded by striking rock formations. The night was a very wet celebration in Cabarete with a big group of volunteers; either you were dripping from the rain pouring outside or from dancing in the overcrowded sweaty clubs right there on the beach.

From Sosua a group of us went straight to a campo several hours away to translate for a medical mission. This one was a teaching mission, where a large portion of the nurses were earning their master’s at a school in Maine. Every morning we set out to a different area around to set up shop in the church there, and did general health and dental checks. I hadn’t realized that my Spanish really had improved vastly until I had to translate and the Dominicans really gravitated toward us Peace Corps volunteers who not only have the language but even the accent and words they use daily in our speech.

For three of us volunteers, however, the trip came to a halt when one of the big trucks took a spill on the third day. It had been raining all week and was a drizzly morning. In spite of the sprinkling, I had made a running date with one of the nurses and another volunteer for early in the morning, and we ran in the wet and dark. The nurse, Laura, was afraid she wouldn’t be able to keep up, but it was her that was the fast one. After breakfast our half of the group, Team B, took off for our site and eventually reached a church atop a hill with a gorgeous view, overlooking even the ocean. Our truck that I was in back of was a normal pickup, and it had to attempt twice to get up one of the last steep hills before arriving. The other two trucks were big flatbeds, so with their weight could get up more easily. However, as the last truck was making its way up the slippery-rocked slope, it apparently got stuck in third gear and rolled right down, continuing into the heavy brush on the side of the hill, and rolling as it went down. All 12 passengers in back were thrown out. The three in the cab had a couple minor injuries, and the one Peace Corps volunteer in that truck had hurt her thumb. The worst of it all was that Laura, the nurse I’d run with, had such bad injuries that she passed away on the way to the hospital, never even regaining consciousness after the accident. Her poor family – having to get such horrible news about their daughter here for only two weeks to help out – I can’t imagine. It was a traumatic day for everyone involved. The mission apparently continued, but the three of us volunteers in that group were called to the capital and never made it back so far away.

Back in my site, we have started the next round of computer classes, and now have almost all 18 computers functioning. I had to go to the capital to pick up 5 new monitors, and upon their first use back at the lab, the first one we turned on promptly had a mini explosion and never could turn on again. Are exploding monitors common?

Our fiestas patronales have given me a new goal at my site: to change an archaic church rule in my campo. The priest asked me to do a reading in the last day's big mass, but when I showed up (looking wonderful, of course), he told me that I'd have to go home and change. Why? To read, it's a rule that females have to wear skirts. I protested, but to no avail.

The less holy celebrations continued each night at the corner with bands, drinking, and dancing. Once again, like in Semana Cultural, my presence on a couple of nights there was an excuse for multiple males between the ages of 15 and 50, regardless of marital status, to tell me how much they love me. This statement is usually combined with an attempt at convincing me to either stay in the country forever to get married and have kids, or to take my future husband (them) back to the US with them. Depending on the amount of rum they have drinken, it may or may not be accompanied by dancing. Now anybody who missed their chance to declare their crush will have to wait til August, the next time any sort of celebration happens in my campo.

Christmas in the tropics

2006-12-29T19:23:00.000-04:00

It may be the most wonderful time of the year, but one thing is certain – Americans and Dominicans celebrate Christmas very differently, especially taking into account that both share European roots. Things I didn’t miss at all: the snow, the cold, the endless shopping for Christmas presents (sorry friends…), the cold, the Christmas music and decorations starting in November, the cold. Things that were very different for me: not hearing even one American Christmas carol all season, not seeing my family to celebrate together, waking up Christmas morning with the only present around being a little hung over from the night before, eating grapes and apples like they are exotic treats, celebrating Christmas Eve and not Christmas Day, being able to go for a long run or bike ride in shorts and a tank top, and witnessing crazy bottle rocket sort of fireworks being shot off all over the place. I was one step behind on a couple traditions that, despite my endless questions about everything under the sun, never got brought up in conversation. One was that everyone goes out all night long on Christmas Eve eve (the 23rd), and since nobody mentioned anything beforehand, I went to bed early only to wake up various times during the night hearing all the loud music and fireworks, halfway wishing I was there!

Other than Christmas celebrating, we finished our first round of classes in the lab and had a little certificate ceremony before Christmas. Gearing up for round two, of which I will be less a part of to focus on other endeavors.

One of which I accomplished when I got to go to the capital and see Shakira in a concert with a bunch of volunteers, which was an exciting experience. Her hips really don’t lie.

I also finally got to go to my very first Dominican baseball game. My team by default is the Gigantes del Cibao. They are San Francisco de Macorís’ semi-new team that are just winning away. I believe also that there is a Kansas connection – a couple of pitchers are Royals. Other than creaming the other team they were playing, the Gigantes game wasn’t too different from any other baseball game I’ve been to…

For all my friends and family that read this, if I haven’t told you already, Merry Christmas late, and have a wonderful New Year’s celebration. I envision firecrackers playing some sort of role in my own!

Journeys End

2006-12-10T13:12:00.000-04:00

I'm just returning home today from being away from my site for a very long time. I figure that, on the bright side, it's good training for when the time comes for me to actually leave my site forever. I am very ready to get home though, and unload my gigantic backpack that grew in size during my weeklong trip.

It all began last Saturday when my club of muchachos from the high school and I set off for another IT volunteer's site to have an interchange and some workshops together, sort of a weekend-long camp. My kids had fundraised to pay for the passage in public transportation, and would stay at the kids' houses there, splitting up at night. In spite of all the bad things that probably could have happened, it was a huge success. We did have a pit stop on our hike up to the high school when we first got there because of the rain, but right away all the boys started getting their hair gel out to make themselves beautiful for the girls in the other club.

I'm pretty sure that many of the activities we did during the weekend would have gotten us in trouble as real public school teachers in the US had we done the same activities there. In addition to the computer repair and photo editing workshops (acceptable), we played a couple of icebreakers that the kids had made which were basically kissing games (on the cheeks, at least), went to the same discoteca at night as all the kids, and showed the movie Scarface to the community and our kids, a fairly gory movie that made me want to cringe several times. At least everyone enjoyed the weekend, and learned a little bit.

After we got back from the camp, I went straight to the capital for a week of our last chunk of language training. Decided to follow that up with a visit out to my friend Jenny in the south, a 4 hour bus ride from the capital. Their town was in the middle of their fiestas patronales, so it was a huge party in the central park every night. I even got persuaded to stay a little longer than I would have for a road race in the town. It was a 7K, and since I live in a different part of the country they wouldn't give me a number, but Jenny ended up winning the female division! She won a washing machine (Dominican style, not like the ones you are picturing in your heads), which is pretty humorous compared to the male prize of a new little motorcycle.

When I stayed with my old host family, the host mom was really sick and it turns out she had pneumonia! They sent home lots of different medicines including a set of three shots to give herself over the next few days. Her daughter asked if I was good at giving them... I had to say that that is not one of my talents! But it was very difficult to communicate with Tita, since she couldn't hear anything. Everything I said to her I had to repeat at a yelling volume, which was a turnoff to talking with her to say the least.

I'm looking forward to going back to my campo where the rain is falling and it's probably about 10 degrees cooler than the South, especially at night. I had to buy a blanket when I went to the Hatian market in Elias Piña with Jenny from her site for those cold nights. Who would have thought that on an island I would be cold sometimes? It's a welcome change from the constant sweating.

More than just a bunch of rotton eggs

2006-11-30T13:43:00.000-04:00

Has an entire month really passed since the last update?

Now that we're at the end of November, lots of things have happened this month! But first let me point out that today is the feast day of the patron saint San Andres. The naughty teenagers take to the streets to throw rotton eggs that they've buried a week ago and balloons of flour at passerbys. Which means my plans to take Cajuil to the vet to be fixed in the city have been thwarted yet again: I was heavily warned against entering the city today if I don't want any problems.

This month I had my first visitor from home for about 9 days: Adam, my friend from Casa Juan Diego, came down and got to see my site and a couple beautiful beaches. The most important lesson we learned while hiking in a not-so-crowded national park down in the East: always take a flashlight when hiking alone to a cave! Turns out they are not easy to navigate without light, contrary to popular belief :) While down in Bayahibe we did get the chance to go snorkeling, paying a Dominican with a little boat and snorkeling masks to take us out to some coral (not colorful coral) but full of gorgeous fish. And a jelly fish that got Adam on his stomach. We also got to do some jumping from very tall mangrove roots up in my friend's site of El Rincon, Samana, one of the most beautiful beaches I've seen and complete with the coldest river ever that is full of mangroves.

Our Thanksgiving celebration was in the capital with all the volunteers, followed the next day by the yearly all-volunteer conference. It was a great weekend, made even better by the fact that I got to go with a couple people to do a presentation to the new members the day before. And I did get to meet my blog-reader and new volunteer, Becky from Kansas. Thanksgiving was a wonderful time, that started with a 5K in one of the parks and included sports, lots of food, a pool, a dating game, and dance and domino competitions.

Now that I'm back in my campo, we're finishing up our semester of computer classes and English is going well. The priest is actually one of my students, along with people of all ages again. I think he made one of my little 11 year old boys nervous in class, because Benito broke down crying a couple classes ago. He said he was sick, so I sent him home only to discover that he was running around happily with his friends when he got home. I think I would be sick too, if a very tall and intimidating priest was sitting directly behind me in a new language class!

My animal problems continue, as well. Now that my last group of bees finally got taken away this last week (along with all the honey they'd made in their month of residence), little Cajuil is in heat. She's only just six months old, but is already having male cats come into my house, leaving their marks for me to clean up later and howling the night away. I blame this on my neighbors, who convinced me to not take her to get fixed quite yet, that everybody wants kittens, and that I can take her to get fixed after her first litter. If she makes it through this week unpregnated (although I'm sure already violated), she's going straight to the vet. I'm not going through this again!

Oops! Tirando pedos

2006-10-31T15:16:00.000-04:00

In the night, after the day is done, I have eaten and chatted with the neighbor women, I sometimes go over to a house just a little walk away. We play cards, look at the stars, laugh, play different games, etc. It is a house with a mom, dad, grandma, and three kids: two daughters in high school and a middle school age son. The daughters this Sunday were begging me to spend the night -- this is a common phenomena, that everyone wants to give of themselves and share their lives so much with the people they hold dear that girls often want me to even spend the night. Everyone was fighting over whose bed I would sleep in if I ever did spend the night, and the 89 year old grandma (Peto) finally interrupted and said that I would be sleeping with her. I agreed, settling the discussion.

Soon after that, Peto was walking by and just had a big attack of gas, letting multiple farts go. Everyone was sort of laughing, and when I joked around that I didn´t think I would be able to share her bed with her, the family just cracked up. They pointed out that she "suffers" from gas, being elderly along with some medical issues. I think the best part of it all is that to say fart in Spanish is pedo, which sounds VERY similar to the grandma´s name.

Things are going smoothly here as I plan to start English classes with a friend who speaks pretty good English. He is a med student and a community leader. The only hesitation that I had about the classes is the money issue: I wouldn´t mind giving free classes, and he wants to charge. Obviously he should, since he´ll be earning money. And we should charge something to cover our class costs. But he pointed out that one Dominican trait is that they do not value anything they don´t have to work for, and if we offer something very cheap, they will view it as cheap. It is the truth! So we´re charging, and offering "scholarships" (which is really just reducing the price to almost nothing) to the needy who jump through a couple hoops for us. The only thing I am worried about now is that a 65 year old woman signed up for the class, even though it is only for middle and high school students. I pointed out that she would be the only person older than high school age in the class and she is just fine with that! We shall see how it goes.

Classroom fun

2006-10-13T13:29:00.000-04:00

Excerpts from my computer classes this past week. Keep in mind that the students range from eight years old to about 60. Most are high school age.

When filling in a box that asked for an adjective, about 90 percent of the students in my more advanced Microsoft Office class asked me what an adjective was.

In the beginning classes, we are learning about the keyboard. The first thing I had the students do was to type out the alphabet. Unfortunately, none of the older kids remembered the order or what letters were in it, and I had to write it on the board for them. They never learn an alphabet song as kids!

A couple answers to a question about the "best country" in the world: Europa, Nueva Yol (that's Dominican for New York).

But besides the sometimes humorous and sometimes very frustrating moments in my computer classes, things are going well. The beginners are really noticeably more comfortable doing lots of stuff with the computers, and it's like instant gratification. The only part I am not liking about the classes I give is that I have them in the morning and afternoons on Saturdays, eating up more of my free time.

I finally got rid of the couple swarms of bees, only to have a small swarm arrive to the other side of my house a week ago or so. I haven't bothered the bee guys again, but it's getting to the point where I am going to call soon.

In moments of free time, however, I have been perfecting my tree-climbing skills in the pursuit of sweet oranges, and am planning with a guy in my community a night English class a couple times a week. And I have a running partner who runs harder and farther than me, always pushing me. It's fun to have someone to run with sometimes.

My kitty is getting bigger, but is such a bad bad thing that I don't know what to do. She never likes to go outside because she gets scared of the dogs around, and even the chickens. She is always biting me, and purring while she does it. I'm attempting to teach her to refrain from that bad habit. Maybe someday she'll calm down. I do have a little hope, because sometimes if I get a chance to read at night, I'll be laying on the floor, and she'll curl up on my back, purring away. Oh, Cajuil!

The dog that gave me a love bite

2006-09-19T14:42:00.000-04:00

Last Thursday was the week of crazy animals. 1)I noticed a spider living in my bathroom that only has 5 legs. Does that disqualify it as an arachnid? 2)A big swarm of bees that are bravas (angry) moved into my house that afternoon. The majority left but there's still a big family living in between the two stories of my house. I'm going to see if someone can smoke them out, because they come in at night and I don't want to live with pending stings! 3)My worst fear before coming here came true that morning when a dog bit me on my run. It was one of a pack of four sort of wild and mean dogs that always follow me in a certain spot that I have to go by. I was cornered and so walked, and all of a sudden the smaller fat one bit my calf! I looked down after scaring it away and saw that I was bleeding, and so talked to the owners and went home to scrub it for 20 minutes with soap, water, and an old toothbrush (according to our medical handbook, what we have to do after a bite to kill 90% of rabies). Called the medical office and they wanted me to come in for the post-rabies shots, but I convinced them I didn't need to. With no cases of rabies in La Joya for a long time, I'm pretty sure the dog is just mean and not rabid. Actually, I know it's mean. It used to be the dog at my old host family's house a couple years ago and ran away to become part of the dog gang it's now part of.

In my job, things are going better than my time with animals. We had the inauguration of our Telecenter yesterday, and it went well. The center is now open to the community, and we began our classes today. All six classes that we're offering this round filled up to the brim. It's good to be teaching again after so much time out of the classroom.

I took advantage of my last free weekend for a while to meet up with a couple friends in Constanza this weekend. We spent 3 days in the small town which was beautiful: a little town in the mountains that actually got cool in the nights, enough to need a sweatshirt! And in the days the heat was better, not humid at all. They grow a lot of the country's cooler-weather veggies and fruits like cabbage and broccoli, celery and strawberries. We had strawberry milkshakes or slushes every day there! The main reason we went was to hike, which we did lots of. We walked about 12 kilometers to Aguas Blancas, which is the biggest waterfall in the country. (Pictures to be posted soon!) It was such cold water that none of us swam at the base, but enjoyed its beauty instead from outside. We decided to take a bola (ride) back when a big tractor offered us one. On the back attachment, we had to hold on for dear life as the tractor went on the very bumpy and twisting road, and so after about half an hour we got off. The men on their way back to town from work just laughed with us. Another bola came along not too long afterwards that was in the back of a truck, and that was slightly more comfortable and a whole lot less work on our part of bracing ourselves. Another hike we did was more exploring the side of a very steep hill without a path. It was the beginning weekend of that town's fiestas patronales on Saturday night as well. That's when every town adopts a patron saint and celebrates the week each night with famous singers coming in and voting for a queen (teenager who wears an ugly white sort of wedding dress). But we got to see fireworks, danced in the streets, and went on a ferris wheel that was pretty fast. None of us wanted to leave the cool weather or the amazingly cute town at the end of the weekend.

Movin on out for real

2006-09-15T10:41:00.000-04:00

Life is moving along as swiftly as the hot and steady Caribbean sun permits here. The season is changing -- noticeable only by the later sunrise and earlier sunset. Now one has to be home by 7:15 instead of the deep-summer-almost-8:00 nightfall. Also mangoes have stopped dropping on all but the late season trees; avacados are still going strong, though, and the sweet, juicy oranges and lemons are just beginning to ripen. Life is good here in the Cibao, the breadbasket of the country, where there are so many edible roots, fruits, and veggies that the pigs are fattened with the tons of avacados past their peak.

Changes have been rolling through my life as well. More than a week ago I moved out of the host family house and into my new house to live along. Everything was ready but the stove and gas tank, which we still need to fix/hunt down. For the time being I am still eating at my host family house at lunch, giving us an excuse to see each other often. I was surprisingly sad to leave them, even though I only moved about a mile away. My doña still gets teary every time I leave her now. The second day in my house I brought home Cajuil (Cashew), my baby kitty. I think she is about 2 months old. After a day or two of fearing me, she started to enjoy being pet by me and now climbs all over me. This morning I was getting dressed and the next thing I know she was on my shoulder. She is still little and the other day tried to nurse in my armpit. She was not getting anything from there!

I was afraid that after 7 months of living with host families and having everything done for me that I had forgotten how to cook, clean, and do laundry. Still am unsure about the first category but have reaffirmed my ability to do everything else. Laundry here is different from in the states, but thankfully (thanks to my neighbors who let me use their machine) is not hand-washing. It involves an interesting little washing machine that you can only use when there is power. In fact, I was in the middle of my last load when the power went the other day. You haul water to fill up the machine as high as it should go, add your detergent and clothes, and start the 15 minute cycle that agitates the clothes. After a couple rounds of that, you rinse the clothes in a series of buckets. Then you put the clothes in the other opening in the machine to do a sort of spin cycle to wring the water out, and hang the clothes up to dry.

Things are rolling along in work as well. This week was inscriptions for the computer classes I will be giving for the next few months, and almost every slot is taken. Since we are only able to use 10 computers at a time with our solo inversor, classes fill fast. The center bought a new CD burner with our funds and have our opening on Monday. Everyone is very excited for this new development in the community, including the priest who wants to become proficient in computers. We shall see if that miracle comes to pass.

Coffee, cake, and camp

2006-08-26T12:22:00.000-04:00

I’ve started to drink coffee. I’m not completely sure how it happened, but one day instead of refusing it, I decided to try the miniature cup somebody handed me. And I liked it. Here people serve the coffee with sugar – a lot – with no milk, and in very small amounts. So that’s the new change in my life!

On my birthday, I thought nothing out of the ordinary would happen. However, I got lots of good phone calls and messages from all of my friends! In church in the morning, the announcements person had everyone clap for my birthday: a little embarrassing. Even more embarrassing was when the priest talked about what a good person I was for a couple minutes. In the evening, one of my high school kids from the computer club had me come over to borrow my camera, and he’d arranged a surprise party for me with the high school kids from the area! My first surprise party! There was dancing, good music, a fun game, and an awesome cake. And people my own age showed up too, which was fun. What started out as a rainy and inside kind of day turned out to be just wonderful.

Computer camp is in full swing in La Joya. I decided that the kids in my computer club hadn’t gotten the whole summer on the computers, and since we aren’t opening up the center til mid-September, I wanted to give them sort of an intense and fun intro to computers. Each day we have a different theme, such as games, or networking, or PowerPoint, or Photoshop. It’s very fun, and every day last week when we ended at noon we played Capture the Flag in the high school grounds. Hembras vs. Varones (Girls vs. Boys). It’s turned into a huge competition, with a little bit of trickery going on. At least I can be satisfied that if I never make any other differences here in the DR, I will have introduced an awesome game to a good set of people to pass it on :)

Movin' on out

2006-08-15T11:03:00.000-04:00

This past week was our three-month IST, or in-service training. Which meant almost a whole week in the capital (not my favorite spot for the heat, trash, size, and expensiveness). And it meant that we spent three of those days with project partners that we invited to the training, to help us present our community diagnostics and to collaborate to make a year plan. I got pretty enthused about our year plan, and now all we need is for the electricity to be able to enter our center. I thought everything had been resolved when the guys put the inversor in our lab, but it turned out the electricity is entering the liceo (high school) too strongly, and so it's too dangerous to use the inversor or computers still. So we're still immobilized, and have to be patient and wait for it to get taken care of. Waiting is a fact of life here!

My most exciting news from the past couple of weeks is that I think I've found a house. Rather, the priest has found it for me. It's an old casa de campo that people built to get out of the city and hang out with family for a while, and the priest is always over at the neighbor's house who owns it. It's very cute and just needs some things to be taken care of, such as adding a couple doors, repairing one, hooking up the light, and fixing the water situation so that I don't have to haul it (lucky me!). If everything goes even slowly, I could be moving in at the end of this month or the beginning of September. And the two older women who live right next door are sisters who have a great big organic garden, along with the rest of their land. They do have pigs, but I've decided it's my fate to live by those horrible animals. Oh, and one lady is going to give me one of her kittens instead of drowning it, so I'll have a friend and something to eat the mice! Which will be good: right now where I'm living there's a mouse living in my room, I'm pretty sure. Because whenever I wake up in the morning, there's always mouse poop on top of my mosquitero -- at least it's not scampering all over my body while I'm sleeping, though.

While we were in the capital, some of us girls went shopping the last afternoon, and I ended up getting a second pair of Dominican jeans. This means that the jeans are not only not baggy like so many American jeans are, but you have to really work to get them on. With these and all my other pants and skirts that I had to get majorly taken in, I feel like I have a whole new wardrobe! Let's just hope that avacado season right now doesn't engordarme (fatten me up) too much so that I can continue to fit into all of my smaller clothes now. . . I so far have not gained anything and eat lots of avacado every night for dinner: think an entire small one. Some avacados from our trees are HUGE, almost as big as a child's head! It's even better than mango season, I think.

Dirty Dancing

2006-08-01T09:30:00.000-04:00

Camp is all over, and was a huge success! Around 70 kids came each day. We had environmental education activities that were especially successful in small groups, and did other fun activities like sports, big races, a camp game of Capture the Flag, and a Casino Night. We ended the camp with a dance, and after a rousing round of limbo, we asked the kids if they wanted to have a dance competition. Everyone did, and started chanting, “Reggae, reggae, reggae!” which is the affectionate name here for reggaeton music. We gave in and the kids danced off to reggaeton for about three minutes, until the dancing got too provocative for their young eyes and bodies, and we switched to good healthy merengue.

The helpers were amazing counselors. Everyone here is used to entertaining kids from birth, so they were all naturals with their groups of muchachos. The only problems we had were: 1. Older kids tried to sneak into the camp halfway through each day. 2. After making skits about saving the environment and the negative effects of throwing trash anywhere, the kids threw their popsicle wrappers all over the ground. 3. On Thursday about five counselors just didn’t show up for various reasons; out of ten counselors, that’s a lot! Luckily we had a couple extra helpers come that day, so things worked out just fine. All the kids wanted the camp to be a month long, but I told them we couldn’t do that with volunteer counselors. However, maybe next summer we can start a camp where the counselors actually get paid, and have it be longer. The lesson we did learn from doing the camp is that there is a need for organized activities for kids here. The only organized activities here are for teenagers in the church youth groups. Other than that, there is nothing – no sports, no hang out spots, no scout troops, etc.

Good news is that the secretary of education actually looked for and found a used inversor for our computer lab that they installed yesterday. So I’ll actually have a job when my community diagnostic time ends, which is good for everyone. My stomach is also much better for some unknown reason, although I may still get a stool sample! We (Ambrosia and I) made it to the beach this weekend up north in Cabarete to get together with a group of environmental volunteers there. Cabarete was much farther than expected, and I’m not sure if it was worth the trip: four hours each way in different guaguas. It was supposed to have a great nightlife, but was just full of sunburned tourists who weren’t dancing except to some bad techno music. It’s the windsurfing beach of the island, and it was cool to see all the windsurfers during the day, but definitely wasn’t the most beautiful beach at all!

I had a moment of vergüenza (embarrassment) the other day when I was talking to my camp counselors. It was raining and the sun was out, and a counselor commented that “Se está casando una bruja,” or that a witch is getting married. I wanted to say that we say in English sometimes that the devil is beating his wife (thanks, Dad, for passing down that wonderful saying) but what came out of my mouth was not the word golpeando, or beating, but “Decimos allá que el Diablo está pegando a su esposa,” which can be interpreted as something entirely different than beating. Just use your imaginations if you don’t speak Spanish!

Parasite pal?

2006-07-21T15:20:00.000-04:00

I have been considering my methods for a time now of accepting various glasses of juice in all sorts of different houses without any questions. The problem is that when you go to visit a house here, they offer coffee, soda, or juice to almost any special guest. I don’t drink either of the first two, and already feel difficult enough without any more comments, and so accept the juice. That would be fine, except for the fact that I’ve discovered through my community diagnostic that almost every family drinks not bottled or boiled water, but rainwater. Or “what God sends us,” as most put it.

Which leads to my current situation: I think I’m sick with an amoeba. And everyone that knows about my diarrhea and occasional stomach aches which arrived over a week ago has agreed that I do as well. Luckily I can pretty easily control the symptoms that I just mentioned by a bland diet and not much oil (ok, that’s sort of hard here with my oil-happy family cooking for me). But if I want to know for sure that I do have this parasite and get it out of my system, I have to trek on down to the capital and give a couple poop samples and then wait for them to get analyzed. At the current moment, I prefer trying the home remedy teas and lemon water, and the next time I make it down to the capital I can get it checked out. Yuck. At least I’m never all alone, right?

I’m hoping and wishing and praying with all my might that the camp we’re having next week goes off well. There are about 65 kids signed up. We’ve had our counselor training sessions, and they’re excited and prepared. The only real problem that we are encountering is that I budgeted just a couple pesos per kid per day for water and bread for a little snack, since we’re just meeting in the morning till noon. I’ve gotten lots of little comments about how horrible it is to make the children FAST, but never paid much attention to the comments until Monday when all ten counselors decided that it would not work to just give bread and water, and put a juice-making schedule together. The reason: the kids will not come back after the first day if we don’t give them something better! Then they gave me a Dominican saying that “Comer es primero,” which is roughly in English “Eating comes first.” I never realized it was such a serious situation I’d gotten us into until that moment when the counselors confronted me!

I’m still house-hunting here to hopefully move out in the first part of August. It’s harder than expected! There are quite a few empty houses around, but finding a house with close neighbors, good neighbors, and that isn’t too big or falling apart at the seams is a different question. I have a couple small leads, including a house in the little street right next to the church. Which, although there are always a certain type of crazies associated with any church, being so close could keep away a different type of crazy here in town.

Peaje season

2006-07-10T12:39:00.000-04:00

Fundraising for our stolen inversores is under way, with the help of my club of kids who are super interested in computers. They're helping me with my community diagnostics and now with fundraising, and are just the best bunch of high schoolers. I feel bad for them, because they just want to do computer stuff, and we can't yet.

The fundraiser they chose to do was a peaje, which is like the Dominican version of the firefighters holding boots at intersections. We had to jump through a million hoops to get permission to do the peaje to begin with, and then we made some signs telling the cause and got a rope and money pouch together. All Saturday we stood out on the highway that leads into the city at a key shady location, and stopped cars to get them to give us money. I had no idea why the fundraiser sounded so appealing to these kids, but it turned out well, and we made quite a bit of money. One guy even gave us an American dollar :) The trick to the peaje is that you have to put the rope down when motorcycles are coming, because we didn't want to create any injuries, and it took lots of care since the majority of vehicles are motores! The only low point was the dust, that kicked up quite a bit since they're redoing the highway, and when the heavy afternoon rain came and ruined all our signs. The kids had fun, though, and want to do another one soon!

We'll see what surprises are awaiting me when I get back to my home from being in the capital last night and today. Ambrosia and I came in to get prescriptions filled and run other errands, and are headed back soon. But last time we went to the beach, I got back and knew that somebody had slept in my bed. Which is not a big deal, but then when I was putting up my mosquitero later that night, I found under the bed a vasinilla (sp?), or Dominican chamber pot, that was full to the brim of pee. I knew it was my host mom's -- she's the only one that still uses one instead of walking to the bathroom (I know because our walls don't go to the ceilings, and you can hear any little noise from any of the rooms). I was a little grossed out and sort of upset, but decided that I would just laugh it off and sort of smiled and walked out and through the living room past the mom and her son, saying, "I found a surprise under my bed!" The host mom, instead of laughing along with me, tried to say that it was her granddaugher and that she must have done it when she was making the bed (that I had already made?). That was more annoying that she tried to lie to me instead of just mentioning she'd slept in my bed! But only a few more weeks there. . . banking on the hope that I'll find a house soon.

Esta noche de travesura

2006-07-03T21:13:00.000-04:00

Just now I am recovering from a week of parties, and here tomorrow is the 4th of July. Obviously not such a widely-celebrated holiday here in the Dominican Republic, but a few of us are getting together a couple of pueblos over to celebrate in some yet-to-be-determined American way. The parties I went to last week varied from a surprise birthday party to an elementary school teacher trip to a big pool in Santiago – complete with water slides! – to the big school year end bash of all the teachers in the district. That party was perhaps the most fun, and it was definitely the most dancing. It ran from before 11 in the morning until 6 in the afternoon, with the dancing beginning before noon. I got complimented on my dancing, even though I dance like a normal person as far as I can tell, and a few people commented that I don’t dance like an American. That’s good, I suppose! Now I just need to brush up on my salsa to add to the merengue and bachata ever present, be it in clubs, colmados, or on the radio. I was reflecting the other day after my run how much I’ve grown to love dancing merengue and bachata for some reason, and how sad it would be if I ever live somewhere that I can’t dance them when I’m old and gray. Probably not the most pressing issue I should be worrying about, but there you have it.

The pigs have done it again. Why is it they are so gross yet so fascinating? Yesterday a neighbor came over, concerned about a missing pig some of our family was keeping an eye out for. He thought it might have fallen down a hole, and the hole turned out to be a huge deep pit behind the pigpen that is the drainage ditch for all the pig waste, and is covered pretty well with wood and sticks. Sure enough, the four-footed escapee had somehow fallen into the pit and was paddling around in the muck. It miraculously hadn’t drowned, and its white eyes looked up at us, wondering what was happening. After we stood around for a while thinking about what to do, the inevitable happened: one of the guys got the ladder out and descended into the pit. Into the muck. The poo. The slime. The disgustingness. He changed right before going down into a newly-made pair of cutoff shorts from pants of a skinnier person, which was fairly hilarious, but I just felt too bad for the guy. All the other men grabbed parts of the rope that David had tied around the pig to pull it out, and on the first try came really close to choking the poor thing. All this time I was thanking the Lord for the inflexible gender roles in this country that dictated that men would fix this horrible situation, and it was completely acceptable for me to be present without helping! The second pull was the charm, and that squealing pig was pulled out with the strength of five men. In my opinion, this happenstance was just one more reason that pigs are not worth the effort and smell.

Puercos, piedras, and piernas

2006-06-27T16:50:00.000-04:00

Pig-selling and slaughtering time is here. The other day the truck pulled up to help cart the pigs away that my little brother here wanted to sell, and all morning long the pigs were squealing like crazy as they were carried out to the truck. Understandable since some of the guys carried the fat things by the ears. Then today my family went and killed one of the ones they’d kept around to eat tonight at a birthday celebration. I’m glad I’m a vegetarian.

This past week has been an adventure. I was invited to go walk to the much-talked-about Casa de las Piedras, or Virgen de las Piedras. One of the youth motivators in church from the next community over invited me, and he told me there were several other people going along. Most people in my community have been at some point, and I was interested in seeing what all the fuss was about, so I agreed to go. We left at 6:00 am, and it turned out to be only me, the leader guy, and the semi-crazy gardener from the church, Benito. It was actually a really good time, and it turned out to be a 20 km round trip, which is about 13 miles. My butt is still sore from when we came back on steep downhill inclines through the cacao. The place we visited was a church in the middle of nowhere, with some cave-like rocks and a place carved out for a statue of the Virgen Mary. It was in the middle of lots of lush vegetation and really beautiful. We meditated and said a rosary, rested a bit, and found some sweet lemons to snack on before heading back. I had to share my water bottle with the two guys that had not thought to bring water (who doesn’t bring water on a 13 mile hike??), which did not make me happy. But definitely a worthwhile trip.

Last Saturday I tagged along to an English class at one of the institutes that everyone seems to go to in the city. My neighbor was the person that had invited me, but after arriving the director dragged me around to all the classes to have them practice some English with me. After the director found out I had graduated in language education, he asked if I would be interested in doing some teacher training… and I agreed, figuring that it was for the better of education even though for a for-profit organization! Our first session was Friday afternoon, and another American was there who was from Minnesota and visiting her fiancé for a month or so. She studies Spanish in grad school, and it turned out that she had done the Costa Rica study abroad program through KU, and knows several of the same people that went to school with me – Melissa Hartnett, for one. Small world!

This weekend I headed out to help Iris, another IT volunteer. Between her, Laura, and me, we pimped out her lab with some fun games and got it all ready for the grand opening with slide shows of her community and the ads for classes all over. Her site is a good site, but I’ve decided that since Dominicans in general are very likeable and fun people, it would be hard to find a bad site. We danced a little bachata Saturday afternoon in front of her colmado, which I had been craving to do for some reason lately! Like always, it was fun to see other volunteers. Iris did have her little guy friends look for some horses for us to ride down through the cacao and to the river close by her house, and we all had trouble jumping onto the horses – it is hard to get on without stirrups or anything to grab on to. On the ride back in the guagua to Macoris, I was in the same seat of a pickup as 3 very heavy, if not obese, adults, and sat sideways to accomodate them. After 40 minutes or so, my left leg was so asleep that I lost my flip flop as I got out and almost fell over from having no feeling in the leg. But I survived.

Climbing trees and exorcising demons

2006-06-19T11:25:00.000-04:00

It was reunion time two weekends ago, when several of us from our group came together in the capital to share stories and check mail! Yes, we are like campers, eagerly anticipating any mail that might have happened to come our way in the last month. My favorites this time were some crossword puzzles cut out of newspapers and sesame sticks. . . although I’m certainly not lacking for anything here at all! (Well, besides clothes that don’t stretch out and get holes in the wash, but nothing a trip to a border market can’t fix.) In the news of everyone, it turns out that one of our friends that had been sick during our swearing-in weekend had been sick with dengue, a rough and not-so-preventable illness you get from mosquitoes.

En route to Santo Domingo, our guagua got a flat tire. We all piled out for the driver and cobrador (money-taker) to fix it. We were on the side of the highway, far from any town and only close to a bunch of trees. Ambrosia, the volunteer really close to me, had had something explode in her bag, and was trying to wash it off with her water bottle, when somebody pointed her to a little path in the woods that led to a llave (faucet of water). How did they know it was there? Other people immediately began to climb trees to get little fruits called limoncillos that they shared with everybody on the bus, and I think some other people found a mango tree that had a couple ripe ones on it. It’s mango season right now; only the beginning here in the north with the little stringy mangos beginning to drop, but going strong in the south with big red sweet mangos already ripening. My friends in the south get presents of huge bags of mangos almost daily! Ambrosia and I from the north bought a couple of the good mangos in the capital, and right now I’m wishing that I had brought a bunch back for the family.

A small group of us headed out the next day to Bayahibe, a small little beach town near La Romana, and found a great hotel for about 300 pesos each – about $10US. That’s more than we wanted to pay, but it was really nice and included towels to use at the beach, an air conditioning unit, and hot water! I took my first heated shower in four months while we were there, which was pretty nice. The beach was beautiful and there were more waves than some other beaches we’ve visited. We met an Italian at a gelato place, and it turns out that in the next little town over, there’s a big Italian and European population that has settled there. We danced the night away in a disco nearby, and didn’t get home until almost 5 in the morning – later than I’ve stayed out in a long time! And there really were a lot of Europeans there, including a Serbian who tried to talk to me for a while since he didn’t speak any Spanish at all. The weekend was fabulous and a good little break from our sites and going to bed at 10 or earlier every night.

Back in La Joya, school is out for the summer, and everyone got their grades this Friday. This past Thursday was a holiday – Corpus Christi – that we celebrated with a walk at 5:00 am up to the church on the hill, a couple miles worth of walking. I was surprised at how many people showed up.

One of our chickens has decided that she really likes my room, and if I don’t shut my door, I invariably find either her or her egg laid in my zip-up little closet. Even if I almost zip my closet up all the way, she flies onto my bed and from there can sort of undo the closet. She isn’t afraid of me, either, when I shoo her out. Eggs in my clothes are a surprise that I could do without!

Oh, and a week or so ago, a girl was supposedly possessed by demons or the devil. Luckily a big group prayed over her in a little ceremony in her house so the demons have been exorcised. Some have theorized that it could have something to do with the girl’s recent marriage (she’s 14). I asked how everybody knew she was possessed, and everybody sort of skirted my question, saying she was acting weird. It’s just one of those mysteries, I suppose.

And the ants go marching

2006-06-08T11:30:00.000-04:00

As some of you know, I'm organizing a weeklong daycamp to be held this July for 10 through 13 year olds. It has to do with the environment and we're going to do normal fun camp stuff too. So I've been handing out the final fliers at the nearby schools, and I included in the information that the kids should wear sneakers and shorts, if possible, since we'll be moving around a lot (not to mention the heat factor). This point has been a big deal! Almost all the little girls have been asking me wide-eyed, "We're supposed to wear SHORTS?" I reassure them that they can in fact wear pants if they don't have shorts. I have actually seen most of those same little girls wearing shorts before; perhaps just around the house, but shorts nonetheless. One father on a motorcycle rode up next to me on my bike the other day when I was en route to my home, asking me specifically about the shorts issue! Who knew it would be such an issue?

The ants have been bothering me just a little lately, some days more than others. They are everywhere! They're on my toothbrush sometimes when I take it out of its holder, they try to get into toothpaste, they're on bread if your host brothers don't tie up the sack tight (a rare occasion), they're on plates that have just been washed, they're on all sorts of things! Sometimes you don't notice them if they aren't on your food until you feel a little tickling on your hand, and realize they're on the way to your plate. At least they're not biting ants. . .

Last night I was hanging out at the grandma's house right down our little road, and there was a group of about four of us playing cards. It's always fun to be out in front of the house, because pretty soon more kids and adults arrive, and we're all sitting around chatting. The funny part is that two of the kids realize they still have homework to do around 9:00 (which is something that is not an everyday event) and so go get it. The assignment for these fifth grade students: to draw a picture of the environment. All of a sudden everybody's asking me to draw it for them! I deferred, telling the boys that it was their homework and they need to do it themselves. Well, the adults and older kids sitting around took up the pencils and crayons and started drawing. I'm not sure I actually saw any of the kids whose homework it was actually do anything at all, except hand colored pencils to some people. I was opposed at first, but when they had me draw some fish and trees, I couldn't say no the second time, and the group effort was pretty enjoyable. We were all sitting around discussing what else should go in, cuddling with the littler kids, and coloring. Morally opposed? Yes. A good time? Yes. I think it sort of depicts the family relations in the country: everyone helps each other with everything -- it's expected and welcome, and can be pretty fun!

One last riddle: How do you change a towel from nice and soft and fuzzy to one that's hard and doesn't really dry your skin well anymore?
Answer: I don't know, but it has something to do with Dominican laundry!

The spider was huge!

2006-05-30T11:29:00.000-04:00

Half jumping and making little screaming noises, I was carrying out a huge spider from my room on a magazine and passed my host mom sitting on the porch. When she looked at me questioningly, I told her that I had to get it out of my room since it had a huge egg sac underneath it, and I didn't want to kill it. I was searching for the words in Spanish to explain that I didn't want all it's little babies running around my room if I squished the spider and they all came out, but Valeria filled in my words saying, "And every living creature has a right to life." I agreed with her to avoid my squishing explanation and let her think I had more noble reasons for not killing the mother spider.

An accomplishment for the week that made me feel great is that a girl my age called me last night to invite me over to her house this weekend. I may be making friends, however slowly it is taking. I actually met her this weekend when I consented to hang out with a high school student again -- ok, so it was actually really fun, and a bunch of us went to a little river/water hole area to play in the water and we played cards together and made little fruit smoothies. And now all those girls are trying to find a house for me to rent in their neighborhood area! It's funny, because when we were at the river, we had to leave when a couple motorcycles pulled up, as some men were coming to bathe.

Sunday was Mother's Day, and it is a big deal here. I went to a program at the elementary school on Friday afternoon where they had presents and a show for all the mothers, including some poetry and singing and dancing. Very cute. For our family's celebration we gathered at the grandmother's house a few houses down from me, and all of us single females did the cooking and dishwashing. After our big lunch, we headed out into the middle of nowhere to the house that my host mom and all her brothers and sisters grew up in. What a hard life to grow up there, out of the reach of any nearby communities! It was beautiful, though. The rich uncle had just cut a road out to the house so we drove up instead of having to hike through the bush to get there, but I think going on those steep hills in the back of the pickup was a lot scarier than going on foot! I had a plan of action of where to jump if the truck lost control; luckily I didn't have to use it.

And then there were none -- inversores, that is

2006-05-24T17:18:00.000-04:00

News flash of the week! On Monday when I was on my way to the high school, some people hanging out at the nearby colmado (general store) told me that there had been a robbery in our school’s computer lab. Sure enough, when I arrived, the director was arriving at the same time with two members of the police department to accompany him. Some ladrones, or thieves, had cut through the fence surrounding the school sometime during Sunday night, we believe. They had wrenched the bars on the computer lab window open far enough for a skinny person to crawl through, and cut through and bent back the slats covering the windows. They took two CPUs and both of our inversores (those would be the battery backup generators that control when the batteries are charging and when they are working). The inversores are a big loss, because they are very expensive and critical to a computer lab here. There is not a whole lot of electricity in this community – maybe around four hours in the morning and a couple in the afternoon and then a few at night, and there is certainly no schedule for the electricity, making inversores a key member of any lab.

The police didn’t find any fingerprints after they looked halfheartedly. Our school had been the last in the area to be robbed; every other school surrounding us with a computer lab had been robbed at some point in the last couple of years. It’s fairly common here since you can sell any of those things for quite a bit of money on the street. So our current plan of action is to put more secure bars on the insides of the windows of the lab as well as install an alarm system, I believe. We’ll see how fast this can all get resolved, because without the inversores, I have very little reason to be here doing the information technology job I’m here to do. Luckily I’m still in the community diagnostic phase of my job. . . we haven’t started classes yet or anything of the sort, and high school classes are coming to an end, making the demands at this time of the year on the lab very few.

My bike arrived last week in a car sent by the Peace Corps, but unfortunately my helmet that I had attached to the bar of the bike did not make it into the car somehow. I thought that perhaps it was the office’s idea of a good joke on Becky, since we can’t ride without our helmets! After thinking about buying a helmet or going to the capital to get mine from the office, some friends down the street suggested the express bus service that can also deliver packages. It’s in the works; I believe the office is sending it today! I will have more freedom and a larger area to explore now.

This weekend I went out for the first time in the city of San Francisco with the girlfriends of my host brothers here as well as the closest volunteer to me, Ambrosia. The brothers all felt compelled to come out and make sure their girlfriends weren’t doing anything naughty. . . which was fine, but I was looking forward to a girls’ night out. Those don’t seem to exist here! Nubia and Anyolina had convinced me to let them paint my nails that afternoon, and I let them, ending up with French-tipped nails with a black little design on my ring finger nail. In the cities, all the women get their nails done at little neighborhood salons and the current fad is exactly what I had. When Ambrosia showed up later, she had matching toenails. We laughed nervously at the fact that our nails had become Dominicanized. What will come next? Perhaps next time I see friends from home I’ll be wearing skin-tight outfits, spending all Saturday straightening my hair with chemicals and rollers, and refusing to wear shorts!

Besides having the lab broken into, things are going better here now than the first couple of weeks. I know more people, am getting invited to eat lunch at different peoples’ houses, and am busier now that Ambrosia and I are planning our day camps for July. I have begun to cart my motor helmet with me whenever I walk anywhere, because so many people offer me bolas (free rides) that it’s only a question of minutes before I zip off on a moto.

Schooltime Serenading

2006-05-15T13:43:00.000-04:00

Some events and reflexions on the past week:

1. I followed a group of boys including my host brother to the rooster house where they keep their fighting cocks, and was amazed to see how they spend a lot of their time with them: giving them baths. Yes, bathing roosters! Which they say also massages the animal. To prepare it to fight better.

2. I’ve decided that I will only be killing cockroaches from here on out, because the other creepy crawlies around here aren’t too annoying and do some sort of good – the spiders may be big, but they eat other insects; the lizards eat a bunch of flies and maybe mosquitoes too; the frogs make good music even if it drowns out the other person you may be talking to in the room; and finally, the ants are way too numerous to do anything to!

3. I’m still puzzled how and when the kids here learn anything in school. While observing some classes in the high school last week, I witnessed a few interesting things. The kids got out of class two hours early (and it only goes from 2-6 anyway) a couple days last week, mainly because it had started to rain. In the classes themselves, one class I sat in on recited their homework student by student for points, which was exactly as they had copied it from the board to memorize at home. While one student was reciting, the class was abuzz with all the other students murmuring their piece to better memorize it. I observed an art class that started out with homework stuff in a similar manner, and then because it was a Friday and I was observing, the teacher sang me two songs. This was followed by the students singing me a reggaeton song. I do like the teachers a lot, though – they’re a very friendly bunch.

4. I have gone to two hora santas in the last week here and one in Santo Domingo the week before, which is in English a holy hour. When people die here, their families and friends get together and pray for an hour for the week or so following their death, and then once a month for the first few months, and then once a year for something like seven years. After the prayers, people are still gathered and the family then comes around to all the guests and hands out treats: usually juice, some sort of cupcake or snack like arroz con leche, and a couple pieces of candy. It feels so strange to me to go immediately from the mother or sister or wife or daughter wailing to eating some sweets and hanging out like at a little party.

5. I got invited to go with the sophomore that had me over to her house the other day to go out on Sunday night. That’s the going out night here more than any other night of the week. I couldn’t think of what to tell her, but couldn’t imagine a night hanging out at the park with all the teenagers running around socializing, so said that I couldn’t. I think all the high school students think that I’m their age and am there to be their best friend. . . don’t quite know what I’m going to do about that yet, but I have some time to think about it.

6. A typical day so far while I prepare to do my community diagnostic in these first three months to figure out what the community needs/wants. I wake up and exercise or run, shower or bucket bath depending on how much water there is, and try to motivate myself to get out the door by 9 or 9:30. At this time everybody in the community is doing work like normal people, either at their job or around the house, but my job right now is to get to know people in the community so they trust me by the time I do interviews with them. I walk around, down the street, trying to go a different route each day, and hoping that somebody outside will say hi. Usually if I ask them how they are, they invite me in to the front porch to chat for a little bit. Sometimes we have a great conversation, especially if there are lots of family members around or if there’s a big talker among them. Other times the conversation lulls and we just sort of look around and sit a little bit longer. I eat at home the big meal of the day, and when we can’t move from eating so many rice, beans, and veggies (in my case), we sit around and listen to a radio program at 1:00 that has dramatic voices and is called something like Rabiosa Santa Maria. I then set out in the afternoon for either the high school or one of the elementary schools around to check things out and do a little chatting with the teachers or checking out of the computer lab or whatever happens to come up. In the night we usually hang out on the front porch chatting or reading; it’s much quieter here in the country than in the city!

7. Better than Slimfast? Almost every volunteer here has lost some weight, ranging from one or two pounds to more than 20! From the first two and a half months, I know that I personally had somehow lost more than 10. How, I have no idea. Every day at lunch, like I mentioned, I eat more than I can believe! Not only that, but I am definitely eating more oil than ever before in my life – everybody adds quite a bit to even the rice, and all of us have acquired a taste for fried foods such as tostones (fried plantains) and arepitas (fried cassava or corn flour mixture). One theory is that we don’t eat any processed food, really. And I know that I for one hate the taste of all the cheese here, so I never eat anything with cheese in it and very rarely anything with milk. Another interesting thing is that the IT group lost more weight than the other groups, beating out even agroforestry, I believe. Of course, they were building muscles out there in the fields while we were just strengthening our finger muscles. . . We’ll see if my weight holds steady here in the campo with my host mom always pushing me to eat more even after I’ve eaten more than my fill. Fortunately, I have a will of steel when I need to.

Guineos Galore

2006-05-09T19:29:00.000-04:00

Yes, guineos are indeed bananas. But what I didn't realize until just a couple weeks ago is that they can also refer to platanos, or plantains. Which is the main staple of what my family here eats for breakfast and dinner. They are definitely not my favorite food when they are just boiled, which is the normal way to make them, so I've tried to just eat one a day and find other food around. There's a saying here about platanos and how eating too many of them makes one. . . slow. . .

More importantly, I got quite the surprise yesterday when my doña showed me the big bottle of water that she had bought for me to eat. I was under the impression that I had been drinking bottled water in my first visit here, especially since I specifically asked three different people. Turns out the water had run out and I had been drinking water from a pozo, or well, just like the family. I´m in utter amazement that I did not get sick. Time to be more careful!

My group reunited in the capital for our swearing-in ceremony and settling in workshop, and of course a little bit of dancing all night and going to a beach the next day. Nobody in our group has quit so far, amazingly enough! We all have cell phones now, too. If anybody wants to text message me, they can from the www.orange.com website for free. My number is 1-829-979-9038 for anybody interested!

I rode on my first motorscooter today when a high school girl came to pick me up and take me to her house, showing me around her community. My helmet is quite the fashion statement! I still prefer going in the backs of trucks; it feels even more free and open!

So my job for the next few months is to do a community diagnostic of the area, talking to people first then interviewing them about what they like and what they want to change, and fitting my project to their needs and wants. To gain confianza, I´m the new stranger in town and I talk to anybody who talks to me or even looks my way, and haven´t had any doors shut in my face yet :) Hope my luck continues!

I survived my first week there

2006-05-01T13:53:00.000-04:00

After my first week in my site, I’m relieved to come back to Santo Domingo for a week more of orientation and planning, and being with friends who are just now becoming good friends instead of acquaintances. It’s stressful to be in a new community all by yourself but never alone, meeting everyone important and in the neighborhood and trying to figure out how you’re going to have a life for two whole years in this new place. Overwhelming! And then to have to adjust to yet another host family that you’re paying your rent and food money to and counting on for help in integration to the community – it was a hard week. At least I wasn’t in a parade and didn’t have everybody in the community at a big reception for me on the day I arrived like some of my friends had happen!

It all began on Project Partner Day last Tuesday, when we all brought our luggage and spent a half a day getting to know our project partners through group activities. I noticed my partner was not the norm for here when I offered for him to sit and he didn’t want to. No Dominican ever chooses to stand over sitting! He is a ball of energy in the world of school principals, and had a lot of connections with the other school directors that were there that day. He walks fast and can talk forever, and everybody knows him. He’s a nice guy, and is looking forward to his retirement in a couple years.

We got to my site pretty early, since it’s only a couple hours away from the capital. We’re fairly close to the big city of San Francisco de Macorís. La Joya is my campo (country) site that is pretty beautiful. There are trees and shade and flowers everywhere, and in my community, cacao is the predominant crop along with plátanos. My new host family that I’ll be living with for my first three months there is really nice. The people living in the house are the doña (VERY Catholic) and her three sons still in the country, as well as a granddaughter whose parents are in the US. Then there is a woman Cecilia who comes over every day to help cook and clean, and her three little kids are fun and cute. There are also about ten guys who came over to work cutting down the cacao all week and taking the seeds out to dry. The husband of Cecilia fell off a horse while transporting some cacao on Friday and was bleeding from his lower back badly on Friday night, so my host brother ran him to the hospital in the city. It ended up being fine, but makes you think about the lack of insurance and job-related injuries here. My family also has a bunch of chickens – one of which I found sitting on my pillow on my bed the other day and shooed out – a pig that we feed all the food scraps to that smells pretty bad, and a big dog that’s mean because it stays in its little cage most of the day. Sometimes there’s a horse around too.

I spent the week visiting the high school, meeting the teachers, the students (introducing myself to every single class), and checking out the computer lab. I also visited the elementary school as well as the high and elementary schools in the next community over, and went to an inauguration of a university library close by one morning. In the libraries here there are never that many books, though. I can maybe see how elementary and high school students get by without resources of books, but can’t fathom university without any. The priest is maybe the most important person I met all week. The whole community loves him, and he’s perhaps the most active organizer around. He has a long grey beard and cropped hair, is a vegetarian and a big advocate of organic gardening, goes around promoting non-chemical pesticides to farmers and discourages burning of trash, encourages walking by the older people around especially, and has the youth very active and involved in the community. I think he’s my new partner for any activity outside of computer stuff from here on out. Good news is that he wants to help organize a camp this summer J He was a big promoter of the day of clean air this last Sunday, that the community tried to celebrate with less driving.

My biggest problems this week were that I got bored a couple times and felt very out-of-place and directionless. I think that will not be such the case in the future when I figure out more of a schedule for myself and get a BIKE. I also question the need for a volunteer in this community that seems to have its act together a lot more than other places I’ve seen. I suppose that there is always more to be done and I shouldn’t make any judgments quite yet, though. One thing that is great is that there are lots of places to run around there, including the big hill we live right by. That will help me stay sane as I learn how to effectively use my time and get to know everybody and turn down offers of pop and coffee at every house I visit!

A Jewel of a Site

2006-04-24T17:03:00.000-04:00

We found out our sites today, and I'm going to be up in the Northeast Cibao region. My pueblo is called La Joya, and it's 9 km NW of San Francisco de Macoris, which is the third largest city in the DR. All I know is that the high school that I'll be working in has about 350 kids, and the area is mainly farmland. We meet our project partners tomorrow and leave with them to go check out our sites and cell phone service, and then return to the capital on Sunday. I'll be able to say more about my site then. I am fairly excited for my placement so far, because it sounds like a great location and I won't have to forgo vegetarianism (my fear if I got placed in the desert south!). My technical trainer described the area like the childhood home of the Maribel sisters in the movie In the Time of the Butterflies if anybody has seen that movie. I'm mostly excited about the size of the pueblo (small) and the proximity to a city with a grocery store and internet. I'm extremely nervous about this weekend, so wish me luck.

a capital homecoming

2006-04-17T12:30:00.000-04:00

Semana Santa is over, and we´re back in the capital. For an idea of our timeline, we spend one and a half weeks in Santo Domingo, and this Monday we find out our permanent site. Then we visit that site for a half a week and meet all the people in town and our new families there. After the visit we return to our training grounds in the capital for a last week of settling-in workshop stuff, and then we swear in on Cinco de Mayo and move to our sites for good. Scary and exciting, all wrapped up in one. I´m sad to have left El Seybo, it´s been a great little town!

Our host brother Adonis commented that Jenny and I were his buddies, which was a huge thing for this little kid who people only talk at instead of with. It was hardest to say bye to our host mom Daisy and one of my sisters who I´d gotten to be really good friends with. I wasn´t sad to leave the crazy puppy at all, though! We had a fun last lunch on Monday all eating together and chatting, and telling stories together.

We had some vacation days during Semana Santa before Easter after finishing up a few days of training with our group in El Seybo, and the break from workshops about computers and teaching and Spanish was welcome. Jenny gave me a haircut Thursday morning to start out our vacation that´s unexpectedly short right after she cut her own hair. We were supervised by my little host brother Adonis and the neighbor´s visiting relative (also Adonis) who were riding their "horses" which were actually palm trees right next to us. As far as I could tell, it was a pretty close race. I´m thinking about visiting her every time I need it cut from here on out – it´s great! On Friday morning our family mentioned that we were going to go to the beach later that day, but it turned out that it was one of those Dominican comments that means that a stated plan is actually just a thought running through the person´s mind. Instead a few of us ended up going down to the river in town to hang out at the get together the town was having: there was volleyball, swimming, boxing, hula hooping, political stuff, and lots of drinking – but no music, because it was Good Friday. Ironic? Maybe, but enjoyable, and we didn´t get our eardrums blasted out for once!

On Saturday our host sister and her boyfriend Jesus were taking their half sister back to her house a ways away, so Jenny and I went along. Road trips are pretty fun here, because you always stop a million times to buy things from people on the side of the road or get out for some reason or another. One little clarification: when I´ve talked in the past about our truck rides, we actually pay for those. People drive trucks as another form of public transportation here which is really good on unpaved roads. Anyway, the sister lives in a little town called Yuma, and after dropping her off there we headed the 15 minutes farther to the coastal town of Boca de Yuma to eat by the water at a little seafood stand and walk around by the water. It was close to a national park that I want to go back to someday soon. To get to the beach there, you have to take a little boat across a canal and walk a good little ways, or take a boat out into the ocean. We didn´t go all the way there since we didn´t have our suits and it was starting to rain, but instead went back to Higüey, the big town between El Seybo and Boca de Yuma. There was a beautiful cathedral there that we got to visit with really cool architecture that reminded me of Gaudi. Jesus (the boyfriend) decided he wanted to go by his aunt´s house which turned out to be in Miches, far away from where we were. So we were in his car a long time that day, but I never get tired of seeing more of this beautiful country. The aunt lived on a farm and so we explored around a little bit before it got dark. I convinced everyone to work on their palm tree climbing skills and so we were climbing when we got surprised by the toro that´s guapo. Guapo does not equal good-looking like it does in the rest of the Spanish speaking world. Here it means angry, and to be around a bull that is characterized as guapo by the excited kids around us was sort of scary.

Speaking of crazy words here, anyone who can email me the correct answer to the next question gets a piece of real snail mail from me. But no cheating online or anything. If you ask for a guineo here, what would people give you? One hint: you wouldn´t get a punch in the face.

On Easter, the group of us went for an awesome hike in the next little town over with the volunteer there to some waterfalls. Jenny managed to step in three different cow patties. They say here that stepping in one means you´re going to be rich, so I think she may just get lucky. We all got eaten up after we swam right below the falls – my legs look like I have chicken pox.

On one of the guaguas on the way back home Monday, a couple of things scared some of us. 1) We all have started to sort of enjoy bachata music, and even hum or sing along when the songs that play lots come on. 2) We all got really excited to see mangoes at the markets there downtown, just because we´ve been anticipating mango season for a while and watching the mangoes not turn yet is painful. Now we know there is hope! 3) We finally saw a real cinqueño, who are actually more common in El Seybo. Maybe he was from there. That would be a person with 6 fingers on one hand, and we had been trying to spot one the whole time we were in El Seybo. This guy stood right in front of a couple of us, and on a scary swerve he grabbed the seat in front of us and actually brushed my forehead with his sixth finger.

One more thing: sumo dog. Come to find out from another trainee here, dogs see size horizontally instead of vertically, so human legs look very non-threatening. Some trainees have thus built on this information to form a defense mechanism that we like to call sumo dog. It´s where the human being chased by a dog drops low to the ground with their arms spread eagle and makes some sound. I tried it while running with Jenny the other day, and the dog that was chasing us actually whimpered and ran away as fast as it could. The only negative side effect was that Jenny had a hard time running up the hill because she was laughing so hard. One warning: this has never to my knowledge been tried on groups of dogs, only solitary ones. But go ahead and try it at home :)

Don´t forget: guineo.

Barefoot Weekends: Running and Ríos

2006-04-10T12:23:00.000-04:00

Last weekend all of our adventures were with our friend Iris’ host family. Saturday night a bunch of us headed over to her family’s rooftop to assemble pastelitos en hoja, which are the Dominican version of tamales. Instead of having a corn masa, you grate a bunch of their starchy veggies (víveres), like plátanos, yucca, ahuyama, batatas, and more. We cut a bunch of plátano leaves from the yard to boil then use as wrappers, like the corn husks on tamales. To the masa we added meat and raisins (or just raisins for some of us vegetarians). After wrapping them up, we threw them into the pot over the fire we had going to boil for an hour or so, and then there are lots so a bunch of people can eat at the same time. In our case, that was on the roof, under the stars with a big family and lots of friends to share with.

The next day, my family-sharing-friend Jenny and I headed back over to Iris’ house to spend the day in the campo (country) with her family. We rode in the back of a pickup and got dropped off by a little group of houses called Rollo Tabaco. We all got one of the family friends Pedro to take us on a hike to the top of a big hill, and saw the cacao trees and yam area that he farms – the place the yams were planted was on a steep hill high up, and had been "cleaned." That’s how they refer to their slashing and burning farming technique, which is very prevalent on this eastern side of the island: there is quite a bit of deforestation here. We paused during our hike to eat some wild sugar cane and to suck the sweet slime off the seeds of the cacao after you break them open. We ate a little lunch at Pedro’s house which included as many chinas (sweet oranges) from his grove of china trees as we wanted. Everyone here peels them with a knife starting at the top and moving in circles until the whole skin falls off in one spiraling piece; my current goal is to acquire that skill, but I have a long way to go. Then we "let our blood cool down" before we headed to the river – because, if you go by what all of the doñas (women, moms) say here, your face or body will be frozen or paralyzed mid-spasm when your hot blood meets too quickly with cold water. Looks like I’ve just survived all these years by pure luck!

To the river and back, some of us got to ride Pedro’s horse, which was really hard to get on without any stirrups. Playing in the river was incredibly beautiful and fun especially with all the kids. But, it was getting cloudier, and lately it’s been raining almost every day here. We got back to a family friend’s house before the hard rain came, and then we wondered if the pickup truck would come back like he said he would; the road crossing the river isn’t above the water even in normal times, and if the downpour made the river rise, we’d be trapped for the night. He did show up, and we had another drenching ride in the back of a pickup. We Peace Corps girls had brought our moto helmets in case we had to take one, so we wore those for warmth. After the long ride back, Jenny and I got dropped off on the main street a few blocks from home, and we saw our "dad" driving by. We shouldn’t have been surprised, because he’s absolutely everywhere we go for some reason, but this time we weren’t going to pass our chance up to get a bola (free ride) home! He didn’t recognize us crazies in the cascos at first, but cracked up when he realized who was climbing into his front seat.

This host dad of ours is a crazy guy: he’s maybe not all there, but is always up to interesting things. This Wednesday we made a bet with him about whether it would rain in the afternoon or not. If it did, no meat for him all Thursday; if it didn’t, no concón for us all Thursday. (Concón is the part of the rice that sticks to the bottom of the pot, and is dark and crunchy. Jenny and I are both addicted.) He lost, and as I walked by his cement block factory in the downpour, he yelled across the yard, "No meat tomorrow!" Jenny and I made sure to stop by his friend’s cafeteria he frequents to make sure they didn’t sell him any meat that day, which all of his friends found pretty funny. It turned out to be a long and difficult day for Rolando, and a glorious one for us. . .

Last week was the last week of our morning internships, and the kids in Tri and my computer classes were really cute and huggable all Thursday. The teacher they have to return back to doesn’t know any of their names and prefers to lecture even the 8 year olds with big words at the table instead of having them actually use the computers.

This weekend was packed full again: we got up early Saturday morning to plant some trees with a volunteer’s youth group. We did it down by the river that runs through town, because a bunch of the trees had been knocked down in the last cyclone that had passed through. That volunteer had a housewarming party for her youth group and us that night, which featured dominos and dancing (like usual!).

Sunday was a fantastic day. I got up early for an outdoor Palm Sunday mass right next to the cool church in town, where I ran into some people I knew. I got home in time to change fast and hop into our dad’s truck to head to the next little town over where there was a "marathon" going on that day. A guy at a little cafeteria saw Jenny and I going by earlier in the week and told us about this race on Sunday that supposedly was a 10K and started at 10 in the morning – that part made me doubt that it would happen, because it’s already really hot by 10:00. But we decided to check it out, and Jenny, Tri, and I got our host dad to take us. When we arrived in town we knew it was on: we got photographed getting out of the cars and found people warming up. There was no entrance fee, but it was a big race with people from all over. My goal was to finish the race, being my first 10K ever and not having trained or anything! The runners looked like Kenyans, though, and we were all really nervous. It was amazing, because I’ve only seen a couple runners at all in the time I’ve been here, but they all came out of the woodwork for this race. When we started talking to people, it sounded like nobody really knew what the route was or how long it was exactly. As we lined up at the starting line, we also saw people in skirts, people in jean shorts, people in socks, and people barefoot. We looked at each other and thought we’d do fine. Some of those barefoot people beat us! It ended up being a Dominican 10K, which was something around 8K. The heat was killer, and so were the big hills. A lot of the Dominicans would walk up the hills and then pass me on the downhill as I cursed them in my head. Luckily there were people waiting with water to shower us along the way, especially when we ran into El Seybo. One woman got me with a bucket so big on my back that it pulled my running shorts halfway down, and as I pulled them back up and gave a little "Whooo!" all the people by the bucket lady laughed. We got lots of fans cheering for us americanos. Chi had the best time and came in 9th among the men 20 and up, Jenny came in 3rd in the adult women’s category, and I got 4th place in the same.

The fun for the day wasn’t over yet: we ended up going to a river with our family and neighbors as soon as we got home from running which was the best river trip yet. Now that we’re entering into Semana Santa, who knows what will go on this week!

piropos 101

2006-04-01T14:51:00.000-04:00

Running down the not-busy highway last night brought a new moto story: moto-flying. Who knew it could be done? These teens raced each other down the highway on their motos by swinging up so that their bodies were laying across their seats, and their legs were flying out straight in back. All you could see were their hands on the handlebars and their faces looking straight ahead. It was like Superman on a bike, but probably a little more dangerous.

The kids here are my favorite people, I´ve decided. I was helping a little girl around 10 or 11 with a program (called Mousercicio) to help learn how to use a mouse in the classes we´ve been teaching, and I helped her sound out the words she had to read because she couldn´t get by with her reading knowledge at all. By the end she gave me a huge hug, probably for not yelling at her! And now when I´m walking to my classes in the different neighborhoods or just to a friend´s house, I´ll hear all these little voices yelling, "Hola, Rebecca!" It only takes a few kids to know your name before all the kids they hang out with do too. Too bad I only know a few of their names!

Other greetings I get are more interesting. Here, everyone has their birth name (or more like 4: when they tell you their name, it goes on forever!) and most also have an apodo, or nickname. Usually it´s based on what they look like, so I´ve met people who are introduced by names like Flaco (Skinny), Cabezudo (Big head), Negrita (Little black girl -- this woman was around 70), and Gordo (Fatso). The standard for us Americanas here is Rubia (blond) even if you have black hair. So we hear lots of "Adios Rubia!" (Adios is like our Hey) walking down the street from men. Apparently the women here like compliments and expect men to comment on their beautiful appearance, so we also get lots of comments from guys as we walk past. My personal favorite that makes me laugh is when they ask what basically translates to "Can I help you walk?" or "Can I help you run?" even if they look like the laziest bum in the world! I sometimes wonder what they would do if I said sure. . . I have to say that when I have a bad day, the comments drive me nuts. But here, there´s no such thing as being in your own little world -- your life is everyone´s business, right on down to your neighbors that yell out to you as you go by. At least most are friendly, and if I ever need to really get away, there´s always the cow pastures!

motoconcho fiesta

2006-03-30T10:31:00.000-04:00

Motoconcho craziness that I´ve seen recently (those are the motorbikes that take people around wherever they need to go): 1. Passenger with a huge leg cast sticking straight out to the left like a turn signal. Cast was glistening white in the sun. Crutches were crammed in between her, her friend, and the driver. 2. In front of the elementary school, a group of 5 people on the same motorbike. That included the driver, the dad, the mom, and two kids in their uniforms. Nobody fell off as far as I could see. 3. In front of our house puttered by one the other day with an older lady on the back, not holding onto the driver or her seat under her, but with a goat laying across her lap. Its legs were tied together and it was most definitely dead and headed for the cooking pot. . . mmmm, chivo.

yolas and mud pies

2006-03-25T11:44:00.000-04:00

I was under the impression that the beach we visited last weekend was close to perfect. The only problem I could see is that for surfers out there, the waves are wimpy. However, in a discussion this week, I discovered that the beach we went to is on the top 10 list in the world of human trafficking takeoff points. Along with that statistic is the fact that it's also a prime drug trafficking departure spot. Apparently, many people fly into Santo Domingo and after landing go straight to Miches (in addition to the people from the DR). From there, they take off in yolas, or little made-on-location boats to Puerto Rico. I've been able to talk to a few guys who have made the trip in yolas to Puerto Rico and to the US by plane after that, and it's a tough process. And usually more expensive than the money immigrants from south of the border have to spend to get into the country. People can die fairly easily even though it's a short trip, and there's always the threat of getting caught in the ocean or on land, and deported. Pretty crazy emigration situation. . .

To get to the beach, you do have to drive (or walk) down a long winding dirt road through palm trees and rice paddies, with no signs to direct anyone to the beach; it is super isolated. Our friend who drove us lost his keys while we were there for a few hours, and I'm glad we didn't have to end up spending the night there! We only found them buried deep in the sand after half-heartedly helping him look a few times.

On a lighter note, there were a couple little pigs who came to visit while we were there. And I´m not referring to the pasty and heavy Europeans there on vaction :)

This week was just a normal week here in El Seibo: we have internships at our various computer centers, Spanish classes, and other sessions, along with family and neighbor time outside of classes. The classes that my partner and I help teach have kids ages 10 through 21 in the same class, which makes things interesting. Jenny and I continue to have our runs through the cow pastures at the edge of our neighborhood, and sometimes we get scared because we accidentally make the cows run away from us. We run pretty close to them, but it's wonderful to get out of the town and into the open. The baseball field boys that we have to run past at the beginning yell Jennifer Lopez and I love you when we go past to get into the open fields.

I usually walk the same way to my Spanish class at my friend´s house, and there are always people out staring at me as I walk -- gringos in the country here are always a source of interest. And staring or yelling comments is completely ordinary. This week there were four little kids gathered who lined up when they saw me coming down their dirt street, and I heard them saying, "Uno, dos, tres" and then I here a chorus of "Good morning!" directed at me. They´d been preparing to say hi to me! I stopped and chatted for a little bit, and now I have some new friends to wave to on my way to class.

picture link

2006-03-21T18:46:00.000-04:00

Until I get enough time online to figure out how to add this as a sidebar link, here is a link to the pictures that I have online so far. . . I forgot to mention in my last blog that we went to the most beautiful beach ever on Saturday! http://www.flickr.com/photos/50909747@N00/

encounters with a slingshot

2006-03-19T11:37:00.000-04:00

Here we are in El Seybo, on the dryer and hotter side of the island but much closer to inspiring hills that are almost as big as mountains! This week has been a little on the stressful side because of the move: it's hard to get used to moving in with another new family. Although I should not be complaining about my new family at all: it's a house mostly of women who are all really fun. I have three sisters, and two have older boyfriends (think 21/30 and 17/34!!!). My mom has a clothing store that she runs out of a room in the house, so there's always all sorts of people coming in and out, and it's never dull. One of them just got a new baby puppy that is really cute but pees everywhere. We also have a 6 year old boy in the house who is somebody's son, and a 6 month old baby, one of the sister's. The little boy has a neighbor friend who is 6 and sticks to my side like glue. She wants to go running with me and says she can run for 30 minutes. They brought out a towel and copied me when I was doing yoga the other day! The little girl can border on very annoying, especially when she touches me so much and continues to honk my nose, even after I've asked her why she does it: maybe because it's red and grabbable?

On Thursday, the first bought of sickness really hit our group: three of our group of 8 were really sick. The worst part is that some of them don't have running water, so every time they would get sick, they would have to go outside, fill a bucket, and lug it inside to manually flush the toilet! I'm still hoping nothing happens to me anytime soon. . .

My friend Jenny and I have gone running together and found a nice big cow pasture that's been well-traversed and has some foot paths running through it. After a while on our first run, we noticed rocks flying at us and looked up to discover some kids with a slingshot aiming at us! I yelled at them to not throw rocks, and we kept running. On our way back they decided to be more daring and ran after us with the slingshot. All I could think of were the headlines: Stupid Runner's Body Found in Cow Pasture. We decided to confront them, and had a little conversation with the group of three boys who were surprised we would come and talk to them victory? Later on in that run and in runs afterward, various groups of boys have started to run with us if we happen to pass them, always kids who get tired pretty quickly. They do have feet of steel, though, running through hay like it doesn't hurt their sandaled feet and paying no attention to the cow patties dotting the fields!

Friday night I got a new sharer of my house: my friend Jenny, who needed to move. Her house was under construction and had a Se vende sign painted on the front (for sale). She kept interrupting her family's prayer time (some type of Evangelist) which seemed to be all the time. And there were no doors or curtains on the bedrooms or bathroom, which was a small problem when she was bathing. There was a little chalkboard to put in front of the bathroom door, that we've decided is to announce the presence of someone in the bathroom!

My personal success of the week: mastering the bucket shower. In Santo Domingo, I got lucky my family there has a tinaco (water tank) on the roof, and the little pipe goes into the bathroom window so that when there's no water (most of the time there), you just take a sort of pipe shower, turning the water on as you need it. Here there's running water but no shower head, so I take a bucket instead. Definitely not as hard as I expected. And so far I haven't seen many floaties in the big water bucket that other people have talked about: so far, so good!

cock fighting and dulces

2006-03-11T14:22:00.000-04:00

This was our last week at the training center here in Santo Domingo before we split up for technical training in different regions around the country. My group of information technology is going to El Seybo in the east of the country, which is full of sugarcane fields. It looks like my host family there is going to have a lot of people living in the house, including a six month old baby. FYI my address will stay the same.

I’m curious what it will be like to be in a school type of setting. After visiting a couple schools here and talking with volunteers about schools, the word frustrating arises most often. It really is amazing to see how different the schools are here from the US: school tandas, or sessions, only last four hours. The schools offer a morning and afternoon tanda, and some offer a night one as well (but each kid only goes to one). Oh, and each public school class can have 50 or 60 kids in it. The tandas never start on time, they have a recess that is at least 20 minutes in the middle, and everyone almost always gets out early -- it just depends how much. So kids here are looking at around 3 contact hours of class a day, and so far I have yet to see how they learn everything with the teacher writing something on the board for them to copy or the kids just running around. Also, if the teachers have a meeting during the school day or need to run out and get groceries or anything, they just leave their class to go wild. It looks like permanent summer vacation. The teachers have little motivation because they almost can’t ever get fired (until after elections when power changes hands in the government), and only get hired because of their political affiliations anyway. Obviously, there are good and bad teachers everywhere, but this is on a completely different level.

This week we had a potluck lunch where each language class was assigned a couple dishes to bring that are typical here, and my partner and I ended up with dulce de coco con batata. It sounded a little sketch, since it’s supposed to be a dessert and it’s primary two ingredients are coconut and batata, which is sort of similar to a sweet potato. My partner Adam and I took longer than 3 hours to make this dessert, it was so labor-intensive! My host dad helped by machete-ing the coconut shell off, but then we still had to grate them, cook the batatas and coco forever, and make a caramel mixture to coat them. My neighbor Ariani ended up saving us by helping out on the complicated parts, and it turned out pretty well in the end, receiving the most compliments from the Dominicans that work at the training center. It was amazing to see how much sugar went into this dish: I think by the end we had added two whole pounds. It was good that we made more than we needed, though, because as the word spread, a steady trickle of extended family that lives around here came to have some!

When we went together to the market to shop for our ingredients, our language teacher Danny took us to his house, where he showed us all his 17 cocks that he raises and fights occasionally. His little 5 year old son helped show us, and we all held one of them that was missing an eye from a fight a few weeks ago. He let a couple people swing two back and forth at each other and let them fight a little bit, which was wild! Their neck feathers ruffle up like dinosaurs in Jurassic Park, and they don’t just sit around; they go at each other viciously! Earlier in the week, he had been robbed of one of his hens that produces good fighters, along with her two chicks. By some sort of coincidence, his friend is a police officer and bought them back from some guy in the street for only 60 pesos. When their stories coincided, Danny got his missing hens back! Apparently the criminal didn’t know the hen was worth a lot of money. . .

Last night I threw a party for everyone in our training group, since it was the last time we’ll be together for a long time. We have the perfect patio in back, surrounded by a bunch of our families houses, and plastic chairs appeared like magic as people showed up. By the end of the party later, the ratio had changed from mostly Americans to mostly Dominicans, and there was much more merengue dancing than earlier! The 50 something year old in our group, Ed, was voted most likely to become a tigre and marry a Dominican woman -- tigre being either somebody really good at something, like “He’s a tigre at playing the guitar” or tigre referring to good-for-nothings who like to steal and hang out on corners drinking. I was voted most likely to become Peace Corps Volunteer Leader (the person from the group that stays for a third year to be in charge of a program or two) -- which I have no desire to do; I think it came about after I made the comment over lunch that I was born to be a camp counselor :)

Stay tuned for new adventures from the east side!

Another venture into the wild

2006-03-07T16:59:00.000-04:00

My assignment this weekend: go visit my assigned real life Peace Corps Volunteer in her own community. Get there on my own with no assistance from anybody, explore her community with her, and get to know the real side of the PC story.

Mission completed. . . with a fun twist!

Step one -- the first leg of the journey: I made it to Esperanza to visit my volunteer on Thursday afternoon as planned, after a couple packed guaguas and a pretty normal bus for US standards. Esperanza was a dusty town about the size of my hometown Topeka in the middle of the Cibao, or breadbasket region of the country surrounded by mountain vistas. This volunteer’s computer lab at the school has internet, which we new volunteers probably are not going to have in our labs that we’re assigned to this round. After a couple days there, we worked on our weekend plans and got invited to a little volunteer despedida, or goodbye sort of party for a couple people finishing up their couple years. I decided to go and meet some more people even though my volunteer couldn’t (she was waiting for her fiance to visit her).

Step two -- the journey gets exciting: I took off early Saturday morning to another volunteer’s community about an hour away, and from there we traveled together a couple hours to a place called Loma de Cabrera, which is an absolutely gorgeous mountain pueblo in the Northwest, close to the Hatian border. To get to our final destination (Rio Limpio) we paid a pickup truck to take us the last hour and a half of unpaved mountain roads to the ecotourism center where everyone else already was. This truck ride was wild! There were 12 people crammed into half the bed of the pickup; the other half was full of goods and bags of stuff like rice. A little girl fell asleep crouched down on my foot, which promptly fell asleep for the 40 minutes she stayed there. We drove through the most beautiful part of this country I’ve seen so far, full of dwellings speckled around the mountains, all sorts of little streams and rivers, and much more. We saw lots of baby goats, had to wait for a woman to walk her pig across the road, accidentally caused a mini stampede of some cows being herded along the road, and drove by lots of naked kids playing by their houses. All the while hoping the truck wouldn’t pitch anyone off the side by accident.

Step three -- ecotourism: Got to meet a bunch of volunteers, some of them with their visiting trainees. We were paying 100 pesos a night to bunk at this campy sort of lodge, which is around 3 US dollars if you convert. The weather and situation were both really cool, and after exploring a little bit, we had a fun dinner with ended in dancing with a bunch of people to a typical merengue/bachata band that showed up. For my friends from Hawaii this summer, IDC (Interpretive Dance Challenge) was played and loved. The stars: so bright! I would love to be placed in the mountains, even if the people there don’t have electricity or other stuff. We’ll see, though; with IT, sites could be lacking there.

Step four -- the journey home: Sunday was a rainy day after the clouds moved in onto us, and so our back-of-the-pickup ride back to Loma was not an especially happy one as we got soaked and cold. We did get to see a huge rainbow, though. All in all, this weekend was a breath of fresh air after living in the barrios of Santo Domingo. Did we really have to come back?

Funny times: Sunday morning, a couple random Dominican men were in our cabin to use our bathrooms, and it turns out they had stayed in the locked room that was in our cabin without our knowing. We had just figured that the mattress that disappeared before we went to bed was removed by the staff for some unknown reason. . .

The weather: So many of you have been asking about the weather, and I keep forgetting to write about it. I personally think it’s perfect. I don’t know the exact temps, but I’d say the days are hot (mid or low 80s) and usually sunny, and the nights are still warm enough to sleep with only a sheet and a fan going. When I run, it’s either early morning or at 6:00 when it’s cooler (sun sets around 7:00). When we were in the mountains just now, the temps were cold -- probably low 60s at night, and mid 70s in the day. And as for the beach that I’ve been to, it was nice and clear blue with lots of palm trees, but not many waves at all. And my friends dragged me out of the water as they kept getting bit by little things in the water that I wasn’t getting bit by and none of us could see. I still think it was in their imagination!

One more thing. If anyone sends packages, DO NOT send boxes or anything other than envelopes, because it ends up costing more money for everyone and word on the street is that most boxes don’t even make it.

The Guaguas and MORE

2006-03-01T17:06:00.000-04:00

I have to spend a minute explaining about the guaguas here, which is my favorite way to take public transportation so far. Of course, we’re about to learn how to ride on the back of a motorcycle tomorrow for the times we‘re in the middle of the country with no other transportation options, so my opinions may change soon. My helmet is pretty slick, all beautiful shiny blue with a couple white stripes. I’ll have time this weekend to put up a picture of it :)
The guaguas here are like the regular big busses, but instead of being big and stopping at designated spots, they go on their routes and stop for anyone that is waiting anywhere or for any passenger that wants to get off. They’re like really very long vans, and have usually 4 or 5 seats across, including the one that folds down in the aisle, and around 14 rows. Anyway, they fill up to the brim, and the whole time the cobrador (the guy that hangs out the side calling out the route to the people waiting) keeps track of where every single passenger is going, who still needs to pay and how much, and where everyone is supposed to be sitting depending on their destination. One of the favorite places I’ve ridden is squashed into the front seat with a few others, because you can see exactly where you’re going (and how many near-accidents every car on the road comes close to having!). It’s fairly inexpensive, with the main guaguas going pretty far for 10 to 13 pesos, which is about 30 or 40 cents in US dollars.
A few rides ago, there was a group of around 6 of us on one guagua, and every time we approached people waiting, his cries included “Las Americas!” We thought he was advertising the fact that a bunch of Americans were riding this guagua, since we get quite a bit of attention anywhere we go or any guagua we get on, and were pretty amused to be the freak show of the day. When we asked around later, though, it turns out the route we were on continues onto a hospital that’s called the hospital of the americas, which the cobradores shorten. . . so really we weren’t quite special enough to deserve the strange attention we thought we were attracting!

Enough about guaguas: we had the wildest experience this weekend that was completely unexpected. As planned, I headed to Boca Chica beach this Saturday with a couple girls and a host family of one of them: the little girls were so excited to go. It was a nice beach, but the best part was the beautiful Caribbean water and just being at the beach in February!
While we were at the beach, we made some new friends who we chatted with a good part of the day. They eventually invited us to go with them to celebrate Carnaval on a tour bus sort of thing on Sunday, and we decided to take them up on the offer since it only comes once a year.
The tour left at 8:30 the next morning, and took us to La Vega a couple hours away. Carnaval was madness! Most people on the bus had the loudest plastic horns I’ve ever heard, and so they played those nonstop. Even the rest stop on the way was a huge party, with big drums appearing out of nowhere and a huge dance party forming in the parking lot and inside by the pizza and sandwich sellers. When we actually got there, we danced at different sort of amphitheater places and eventually headed to the main parade. There was music coming from everywhere, and it was so loud that my ears are still ringing three days later! The costumes were amazing, but what we didn’t know is that in these parades, instead of giving out candy like in the US, the people dressed up give out spankings. With what I found out is a pig’s bladder covered in cloth that’s tied to a stick. They strike without warning, and if you try to escape, good luck! It’s actually very painful, and I think I will be bruised on my behind for a while. . .
Monday was Independence Day here, and so nobody had school or work. I went with my host parents to the market in a nearby barrio, and we got all sorts of good fruits and veggies. My least favorite stall was the butcher’s where the huge carcasses hang in the back of the little stall until the customer tells what part they want. The butchers are the same ones who carve the animals up as well as take the money and give change, even with their hands still covered in blood. I’m glad I don’t eat meat, with all the flies hanging around the dead stuff.
We also went to the regular grocery store, where there was actually one whole side of an aisle dedicated to canned meat like tuna and sardines. People here also love to eat salami, especially if it’s fried on top of mashed platanos: I think all the non-vegetarians in our training group eat some form of salami at least once a day!
Later in the day my host parents took me and their 4 year old grandson down to the Malecon (sea walk) to see the end of the military parade and just hang out. We drove by a beautiful park in the city that alone made me change my mind about the level of beauty in the city. The cousin Brian has an endless supply of energy and danced I think almost the entire couple hours we hung out! On the way home, it was only 9:30, so we stopped by Carrefour, which is sort of like a Super Walmart. I had been in Prague, but everyone here seems to be obsessed with it, and my host family really wanted me to see it.
Stay tuned for an update from Mao/La Cruce de Esperanza, where I’m headed on Thursday to visit a current volunteer there!

my address and more

2006-02-25T08:42:00.000-04:00

This morning I’m headed over to a friend’s house just a barrio away; we’re going to the beach (Boca Chica) with her host family, and the SPF 30 is going to be plastered on this winter white skin! I haven’t been able to take many pictures, because there’s a fairly high crime rate where we’re living and I’m afraid to have my camera stolen -- especially at places like beaches and in the city when we have to ride on super crowded guaguas and public cars. The rule here for public cars (different than taxis) is that the passenger limit (and norm) is 4 passengers in the back and two in the front passenger seat of these old beaters, which makes for some interesting rides with strangers so close together.
This weekend is a three day weekend because of Independence Day on Monday (celebrated with Carnaval in some parts), and we’re going to be going to the beach today, to the campo tomorrow, and who knows what else we’ll be doing. Hopefully going to the grocery store soon, because I haven’t had fruit at home for a while!
Before I forget, my new address is the following for the next 10 or 11 weeks:
Rebecca Anderson
Cuerpo de Paz
PO Box 1412
Santo Domingo
Dominican Republic
This week we went to the city center to practice our transportation knowledge again, and it is a beautiful city. We toured the Peace Corps office, as well as the hospital where we have to go if we get really sick while we’re in the country. We got to see the main street in the old section of downtown, and the oldest cathedral in the “New World.” We talked to one guy who had just climbed Pico Duarte, and it definitely sounds fantastic; it takes two or three days to do it, amazingly enough.
We also learned how to dance the bachata and merengue this week in class, with a couple of my neighbors coming in to be extra male bodies helping us learn. Immediately following that lesson, we learned to play dominos, which many old men play in front of the colmados (like little general stores) here all day long. I got to put my dancing skills into practice last night when my host family went to their daughter’s house (a block away) for some drinks with their other daughter and friends visiting from grad school, and it turned into dancing at the end.
It’s only been a little more than one full week in this country, but I feel like I’ve been here a long time. I still feel like I’m studying abroad! I am excited about Tuesday, though, when in our technical training we get to learn how to take apart, clean, and put back together computers manually so that when the dust and sand and rats get into the computers, we know how to fix it!

Ya llegé!

2006-02-21T17:03:00.000-04:00

My first go at a computer, and its pretty exciting!
Training in Miami was a pretty good time, other than feeling like a pack horse with my luggage. We are a group of about 30 volunteers, and everyone is cool. The only exploring we had time for was in the couple nights we were there, and so we all went on a huge group "date" for Valentienes Day in Coco Beach. Thursday morning it was off to the DR. . .
At the airport we experienced our first apagon, or power outage, while we were waiting for our luggage. We caught a brief glimpse of the beautiful sea before we got whisked away to a retreat center on the edge of Santo Domingo. There we were supplied with our mosquiteros (mosquito nets), bug spray, and our first dose of malaria prophylaxis. We met a bunch of people, and then early the next morning we headed to the training center.
The training center is in the NW part of the city, and we all live in different barrios around the area with what here is lower middle class families. Its cool; my family has a mom, dad, and 15 year old son living in the house and about a zillion other relatives and friends always popping in. Being alone is something you never need to worry about here! I have a new friend here who is 9 and is stuck to my side like glue. We have electricity sometimes, and running water sometimes too. I sleep like a princess surrounded by the mosquitero, and always forget about it when I wake up in the morning.
We spend most of our days in classes for language, culture, and technical stuff, and almost everything is fun. My host mom here (Tita) is a great cook and basically understands vegetarianism, which is good. I have a couple friends who run, so we go together (before the dark, after the hot), and we have only been chased by a couple dogs. My host mom recommends carrying a stick or rocks.
My time is up, but more to come. . . along with pix.
Oh, and I think we are going to La Vega for Carnaval this weekend. I miss you guys, and wish I had money to pay for the time to email you all! But write back :)
Hasta pronto!

countdown to departure

2006-02-12T23:37:00.000-04:00

I'm getting ready to leave home in less than 2 days. I fly to Miami early in the morning on Valentine's Day. On Feb 16, we leave as a group of about 30 trainees from Miami down to Santo Domingo, where we'll get placed soon with a host family for our training.
Right now my current challenge is deciding what and what not to pack!