Whirlwind Tour

I’m in the States for xmas!  The week before I left the DR was pretty hectic, trying to wrap up a few projects, talk to a dozen people, assuage Sugeidy’s fears that I wasn’t going to return, and planning things logistically.

The ICT/Education sector’s Encargados del Futuro youth conference was in Licey, outside of Santiago, on the 5th-7th of December, so I headed to Santo Domingo to catch the Caribe bus up north.  I was sitting wedged between Phil and an extremely old man in the very back row of the guagua to the capital,  when I noticed my duffle bag fly off the top of the bus and slide across the road behind us into a ditch. You see, the minibus was crammed with about 26 people instead of the standard 12 or 15, so the cobrador (guy who takes money and helps cram people in the bus) was standing outside on the running board, holding things to the top with one hand.  As my bag was flipping end over end into incoming traffic, I calmly thought, “Well, there goes that.” and turned back around in my seat.  I’m not quite sure where I was in that moment, because I was perfectly content with letting it go.  Then, I noticed everyone in the guagua staring at me, and I half-heartedly yelled “Ai, la maleta.”

The bus came to a stop, and started backing up.  Another bus had stopped, and the other cobrador was pointing in the ditch where the bag was. Phil had the sense to try to yell at the chofer and cobrador, while I thought… yeah! That guy should be angry! His bag is all fucked up now! I muttered “Si!”, and—oh yeah—I remember where I was: focusing on not vomiting.

I get car sick pretty easily, constantly, and consistently.  One time, I visited a volunteer up in the mountains.  I spent the first few hours vomiting after getting off the bus.  The Caribe up to Santiago has almost the same effect… I’ve started popping Dramamines for any trip over half an hour. 

My bag turned out to be just fine. All that was in it was a bunch of breakable stuff that I had bought as xmas presents for all my friends and family, wrapped loosely in Hoy newspapers and plastic bags that used to hold eggplants.  I eat a lot of eggplant.

I made it to the conference, albeit a few hours late.  I wish I could have stayed longer, and participated more.  Next year, for sure.  I also made it to the airport the next day using ONLY PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION! A taxi through this guy, Wilson, runs RD$800 (about US$21).  I took two busses, and paid a total of RD$80 (US$2). 

My mom and Adam met me in the airport in Raleigh with a big jacket.  The flights weren’t that long (nothing compared to Raleigh-Taipei), but I was dead. After taking a day to “recover” by sleeping, eating, and using the internet, I spent the rest of the week sleeping, eating, and using the internet.  Mom and I drove up to Norfolk to visit my sister and her new baby, who is probably the cutest thing ever to poop. 

PICTURE TIME:

BUNDLE UP…

…BECAUSE IT’S SNOWY!

Ameian and Adelyn

Ameian and Adelyn

Mom, Jessica, and Adelyn

My sister, decorating the tree.

I baked cookies!

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving and the All-Volunteer Conference are the two events each year when (almost) all volunteers get together.  For Thanksgiving, we went to this place in the capital and spent the whole day holding basketball, volleyball, domino, swimming, and other tournaments.  A whole team of volunteers spent the previous day cooking so we could gorge ourselves at lunch time, which was awesome. 

In the evening we had a talent show.  Adam, Chandler, the two Justins, and I (ICT4EDU PCVs woooooo!) performed a pretty amazing viral video, “give your love to a cowboy,” and it was a good thing that we went last, because after us, they would have likely shut it all down.  Most of the skit was shirtless with copious air-humping, and the finale just brought it all to its logical conclusion when we dropped trow.  All-in-all a successful event, and will be hard to top next year. 

Two other guys sang a song about Phil, the volunteer who lives just down the road from me, to the tune of a song from The Lion King.  Phil himself was in three skits, including one with a new PCV, Vera, singing a song they wrote. “I’ll be the change in you, if you’ll be the change in me.” Mas was one of the MCs, and between each skit put on something different from the Free Box (the bin in the lounge where PCVs can take or leave clothing they want or don’t want). 

Speaking of the Free Box, I have gotten about half the shirts that I wear every day from it.  Bellvue High NHS, old Peace Corps shirts, A-shirts, and my favorite: a worn red T-shirt with thin faded yellow lettering that says:

Michigan’s Upper Peninsula: Free as its people, Tough as its winter, Rugged as its coastline.

I love this shirt. I don’t know why.  The second I pulled it from that overflowing cardboard box of discarded sports bras and women’s jean shorts, I knew that I wanted to wash it in scalding hot water twice and then wear it for a week.  So, I was rather distraught when another volunteer approached me at Thanksgiving and accused me of wearing his shirt. He had some story about his family making them, and then losing the rights to the print, and it being his favorite shirt.  I wasn’t really listening; I was trying to decide if I could Capoeira kick his knees out and hide the body before it was time to eat turkey, or if I should wait until nightfall.

Peace Corps can be hard, but no one had actually asked me for the shirt off my back yet. I ended up doing the right thing. I waited until it was dark, and then threw the body in the ocean. Ok, fine, I gave him his T-shirt. Stupid conscience--thanks a lot, MOM.

Another Month

So, another month has passed.  At some point, I'll get around to writing about it.  I fly home on Dec 7th, my sister is due to give birth any day, I started teaching English, have been traveling, learned how to cook beans, and met some Canadians.

Weekdays

I woke up today thinking it was Thursday. I planned my day for a Thursday. Today is Friday. The last time I remember being this disoriented was in high school, when the summer smushed into one long weekend. Instead, I’ve had a month of weekdays.  I need some wins.

The little island is chugging along.  The new class of volunteers swears in on Wednesday, and on Thursday I get my green card.  There is a lot going on, and I’m trying to be present for it all—good and bad.  There is a lot of good: the sweet neighbor who gives me bags of bananas and bread; the quickie-mart owner who knows I like avocados and eggplant; the dozens of smiles and “hola” ‘s when I walk anywhere; long phone calls with volunteers; the weird chickens that don’t have feathers on their necks and look like dinosaurs; bizcocho (Dominican cake), and people who give you bizcocho. I think I’ll focus on those things, even though they mostly consist of food or things that will soon be food. I will also take pictures.    

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is the horse that sometimes eats my front yard at night. It may or may not be a ghost.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dusk from my front porch, through the bars.

Power lines at night.

The Bridge

There's this bridge in my town that eats cars and people.  Lots of them. So, the community decided to get together and clean it up, and build a pedestrian walkway on the side.  My youth group kids participated in the cleanup effort, hiking up their pants and picking up trash in the river, whacking away at overgrowth with machetes, and removing layer after layer of plastic bags from the gutters. I got there late… oops… but they were already at work!
It turns out that some people didn’t think we were working hard enough (and disparaged the group), which is kinda silly.  I was amazed that so many kids turned out to pick up trash on a Saturday morning! They rocked, and did it all on their own accord—I had extremely little to do with any of the planning or coercion. 
They also all came to Escojo mi Vida (the youth group meeting) today!  I gave a charla on discrimination, and we played a game where they all sit in a circle, and the person in the middle tells everyone with X to change seats, and then tries to sit down, leaving someone else standing up (calling out people for different color hair, eyes, shoes, etc).  They explained why I have pelo bueno (good hair), in a very matter-of-fact way.  I told them about the kids committing suicide in the States after being bullied and teased over their (perceived) sexual orientation.  That shocked them. We talked about how each and every one of us makes a decision about how we interact with others, and those actions affect other people.  They talked a lot about how rich people are treated differently than poor people, not just in general, but also in the schools (student-student, and also teacher-student).  Quite a few participated in the discussion, but a few stayed silent.  I think it was a good charla, but there is so much more I wish I could get them to understand.  I’ll have to figure out how to do that.

Picking trash out of the river.

La comunidad trabajando- the community at work.

Si se puede!

Sharpening a machete.

Making green hats look gooood.

Guy building puente peatonal.

The bridge.

Naranjito

I spent the last week on a medical mission up in the mountains outside Santiago, translating for American doctors and dentists.  It was a good experience, and I was surprised at how much I was able to say—I didn’t know much medical terminology, but neither did the patients. The group comes three times a year to the community, and over about 13 years, has constructed three clinics, a church, and a school house.

I helped a dentist pull a tooth, and sucked up blood with the sucker hose.  The tooth broke off, and he had to really dig in there and cut open the gums to get the rest out.  After that, I didn’t assist with any more tooth extractions… I stuck to translating. I was paired with a doctor in the women’s clinic, and did a lot of pap smear and breast exam translating, which was quite an experience.  In my down time, I did patient intake, taking blood pressure, temperature, weight, and height measurements, and patient history. 

Peace Corps has a med mission group, but this was not a part of it. I’m actually still trying to figure out how I feel about this group. They didn’t pay for PC volunteer travel, and the volunteers they brought had to pay quite a bit in program fees.  The clinic runs three times a year for 3.5 days, and they keep files on all the patients they see, but there is no health education or follow ups.  People are given drugs with no real explanation of the side effects, and for things like diabetes, no one explained the need for sustained dietary change.  They should have required a class or group or something for every patient who had high blood pressure, taught by locals, and sustained between clinic visits—use community members who frequent the clinic as health education workers. The director was also pretty direct about asking for donations, which put a bad taste in my mouth. I also don’t want to hear the phrase “we just touched so many lives this week” ever again.  Talk about a circlejerk.

Poverty tourism. Well-meaning people paying to sleep under mosquito nets, eat beans and rice, “help the poor” for a few days, and take cold bucket baths to wash off the white guilt; then, back to the posh hotel, and back to the States, without ever leaving the group or holding a peso. 

13 years is a long time to have a presence somewhere. A few of the Americans had known local kids since they were born, and really seemed to have a connection to the place, but would never come visit on their own—they wouldn’t know how to get there.  We all stayed with host families in small tight compounds of caneboard kitchens, bedrooms, and outhouses, and while not posh, they were comfortable; like most things in the DR, they were arranged to different material aesthetics and functions than Western standards, but that doesn’t mean that they are inferior (or that the people who built them are inferior). I guess that’s what I’m trying to say with a lot of this—walking through a campo like Naranjito with a lump of acidic repulsion-guilt in your throat doesn’t show you anything other than your own views. You “see” part of the island that doesn’t look like an all-inclusive resort, but if that’s a solitary event that doesn’t affect you any longer than the good feelings after visiting Disney World, and it’s main change is only in your dinner party anecdotes, then the only result of your stepping off the airplane was to add a few pounds of human waste to the Dominican sewers and rivers.

We think of poverty as an economic benchmark, which dictates living standards, education levels, and culture. Poor people are different than us. If they weren’t poor, they would live like us, go to school like us, and be like us. We have, they don’t have. We visit, and give advice, give medications, give dentures, give bottles of shampoo from the hotel, give clothes, give hugs, give buildings. These are all good things, but giving is never sufficient, and in this culture, free is wanted but not valued. With health care, there is so much more to do than simply giving. You have a whole community that values the clinic, but which has nothing really to do with the clinic. If foreign donations dry up, so does the stream of visiting Americans. 

The clinic does serve a purpose, and does a lot of good. A lot of teeth were pulled, a lot of pain was alleviated, and routine checkups no doubt improved the general health of the community. I am being pretty damn harsh on the operation. Maybe the visitors can come and go, and don’t have to experience the place, and can give whatever they want to.  It’s just… haven’t we learned alternative ways of implementing community health programs by now? I think about these things a lot, what with being a foreigner living here and trying to save the world.

There were a few Dominicans working at the clinic, and they were or had become important people in the community. In 15 minutes, I was trained to take vital signs.  Is that something a local couldn’t be trained to do, and to continue doing as a health education worker?  But then, what would the tourists do?

Jovenes are the future

You remember that episode of The Simpsons where Springfield is competing for the Olympics, and Lisa’s class is on the bleachers singing “Children! Children! Future! Future! Children are the future!”  ?  That was playing through my head this morning while I was trying to plan activities for my Escojo mi Vida youth group.  I’m mostly terrified of this group.  So many 14/15/16 year olds, so few of me.  All the charlas (chats/lectures) just sound like mush to me when I’m planning… It’s like the first episode of Daria, where Daria meets Jane in self-esteem class; “Today, lets talk about SELF ESTEEM! When we’re talking about self esteem, we’re talking about….US!” 

Today, our topic was…. self esteem!  In the previous class, I had gotten a muchacha to prepare something for this week, and she gave a pretty great charla today.  Participation was actually pretty good, and lots of kids who just happened to be in the CTC sat down and listened.  Pretty soon, we had about 20 kids, and some CTC workers came out and started talking too, which was awesome.  I ended up just sitting in the back and directing who could talk, and moving them along to the next topic.  My lesson plan was left unloved in my pack, which was probably for the best. 

I pulled together a dinamica on the spot, and had them break into three groups to do mini-dramas related to self esteem.  Then, everyone in the center came outside and watched the groups perform, which in hindsight may not have been good for those with low self esteem. We had visitors from the national HIV/AIDS organization (my town is kicking off a massive HIV/AIDS initiative, we had a parade yesterday), and they had their cameraman take pictures, which the kids thought was awesome.  I’m going to work with them to organize charlas and activities, and they promised to give me all the materials and resources possible. They dropped off a box of about two thousand pamphlets.. wooooo!  I got bonus points, because the CTC’s supervisor group was also meeting, and they saw me doing something other than working on my laptop. 

So, I think I can do this whole youth group thing, maybe, without it blowing up in my face.  As long as I stay away from activities that use dynamite.  Or cake. You should see them with cake…

Just to make the day even more productive, I worked it out with a woman from the Ministry of Education to pick up literacy books and materials.  Now, I just have to find a time to… do that. 

Pictures from the HIV/AIDS kickoff parade and speeches:

Sugeidy with the kids. We all had hats!

This was before it downpoured.

My kids are cuter than your kids.

They discovered HIV! It was behind this pink sheet the whole time!

Words that begin with H! Heteros are smiley, and homos are shirtless and in large groups.

Yooth

I filled out a Vacation Request Form, took a picture of it, and emailed it to my program coordinator.  If it gets approved, I’ll be back in the States from December 8th to the 28th.  That will more than wipe out all my accrued vacation days… Also, I’m really happy to have a job where I have vacation days, and health care, and the ability to stay in my house reading David Sedaris books all day if I feel like it.  I’m also really happy when the ice cream truck (literally, a truck with a cooler in the back that plays Chinese jingles over a loudspeaker taped to the cabin roof) comes around. They have this cake-flavored popsicle that has little flecks of cake in it, and as soon as you finish it (which is fast, since you’re on the surface of the sun) you start thinking about what your neighbors would think if you chased the truck down the street with cakesicle smeared across your face and down your shirt. Better to take off the shirt first. It would even be possible to calmly walk out to the main street, and pay a motorcycle taxi to drive you down the street and drop you off in front of the ice cream truck.  However, then your 10 peso treat has turned into a 70 peso sugar-fueled brainfreeze binge and weekly meetings in the capital.  Which… is covered by health care!

The CTC has been hosting about a dozen volunteers from a local private high school every Wednesday (and any other day they decide to come), and it has been pretty interesting.  I suggested something similar to my project partner about a month ago, and presto, she made it happen.  There are kids working in the radio room, in the office, in the library, and with adult literacy classes.  They all come in their school uniforms, and look like professional bumble bees.  They’re polite, smile, and dance bachata with each other when they get bored.

I also had the second meeting of my Escojo mi Vida/Brigada Verde/Encargados del Futuro youth group.  10 kids showed up, which is about right, and we talked for a bit about the environment before playing a few rounds of Mafia.  We had to keep starting over because everyone kept cheating on every turn.  It isn’t suspicious AT ALL when every single person points at the killer immediately after the first round.  Come on, kids.  Besides being finely-tuned game-cheating machines, they seem like a good group of kids, and are excited about picking up trash and planting trees.  Actually, I suppose they were only interested in those things after I mentioned that we should think about designs for T-shirts. 

It is sort of hard to think about leading this group, because I don’t think I would join it myself.  I’m not really a joiner.  I don’t know what I can really offer them… all the charlas I can think of are sort of lame, and I don’t have the crazy energy necessary to keep a dozen kids focused and interested.  I’m more apt to just stop mid-speech and say “Yeah, ok, you got me--this is lame.  Do you want to go play cards, or go online or something? I’ll teach you English if you promise to stay awake!”  I think there is a reason that I am not a Youth & Families volunteer. I like teaching, but this is different. Maybe I can just put on a movie or entertain them with YouTube videos of pets doing funny things. Fake it till you make it?

Eating Guacamole

Avocados are EVERYWHERE right now. I would eat them in my house, I would eat them with a mouse. In my pueblo, they go for 5 to 10 pesos, which is about $0.13 to $0.26 each. I eat a lot of avocado.
My basic recipe for guacamole is avocado, olive oil, garlic, and salt. You can add tomato, onion, or ginger too. You can add it to scrambled eggs (makes green eggs, ham is extra), pasta, eggplant, fried plantains, rice and beans… almost anything you can buy at a colmado.
I promised one of the women in literacy class that I’d make her guacamole the next time I bought avocados (which was later that night, but I ended up eating all of it while standing in the kitchen), so I mixed some up last night and brought it over with some bread. She inhaled the whole tub while standing next to the table (that’s how you know she’s good people), and pulled out an article on the Dominican political system. Then, she proceeded to read the first paragraph out loud. She struggled with a few words, but had no problems with “legislativo,” “ejecutivo,” and “judicial.” Which is crazy, and so far from the “la, le, li, la, lu” and “ra, re, ri, ro, ru” exercises from class. She was actually reading, not just guessing the sounds; I was blown away. I should have brought more guacamole.
We talked about cooking, which Dominican foods I like, and how hard she has worked to learn to read and write, and how many years it has taken me to speak Spanish like a third grader. She tried to explain the perfect way to cook rice using measurements on her index finger, but it was lost on me. Her house is identical to mine, but feels worn-in and lived in, instead of a mostly-empty shell with piles of clothes on top of duffle bags and a small table with one chair in the corner. She even had a picture of Leonel Fernandez, the presidente, on the wall in true Dominican fashion.

I was in a really good mood when I got home, so I filled all my water buckets and mopped my house for the second time ever, and immediately regretted buying the baby-scented floor soap. Why would you want to mop your house with a baby? Do they also make baby-flavored toothpaste? I went to sleep that night with the overpowering scent of nurseries and nursing homes wafting not-quickly-enough out the window, and had a bizarre recurring dream where it’s 5 minutes before my first-year economics class, and I just realized I didn’t write the term paper due that day. Right when the TA who didn’t know my name was about to ask for it, I was awoken by a neighbor blasting Lady Gaga’s “Bad Romance”, and the woman next door yelling at a goat that wandered onto my front lawn. The babies were still in full force.

Class

The computer teachers are in the capital for training, so Sugeidy has been covering some of their classes.  She doesn’t know much about computers, but has no shame in throwing herself out there.  Which is probably more important than knowing much about computers.

Today, she brought me into the classroom, about 20 minutes after the class was supposed to start, and told me that I was going to teach it because she didn’t know anything about Excel.  So, I taught it.  With no materials or preparation or knowledge of the words I needed to use in Spanish.  Actually, I taught two of these classes, for a total of 4hrs, and they went really well.

I had the students make a list of things to buy for a sancocho, a type of scalding hot soup that has… just everything in it.  Then, we put prices and quantities, and used formulas to get totals per item and per person.  Then, we added and subtracted items to see how the totals automatically change with the formulas, and how that’s way easier to do than manually entering everything. 

I have a computer repair class at 6, which will round out 6hrs streight of teaching in Spanish. 

This wasn’t how I was planning the day.  Natasha came in from the capital, and I wanted her to see the CTC’s literacy classes. I didn’t plan on throwing her in to co-teach the class while I taught a different one, but she did amazingly.  The women loved her, and the literacy facilitator pulled me aside and told me to bring her back every week.  I really wish I had been there, but crazy happens and you just have to go with it.

Also, I finally put up a bunch of the pictures I brought from home:

Roofs

Well, this is interesting.  It seems that if I climb up onto my roof, I can pick up an open Wi-Fi signal! Oh Peace Corps… being an IT volunteer is funny sometimes.

I’ll just call you “Peter.”

We started a new cycle of adult literacy classes at the CTC, so I get to see everything from the first day (this past Tuesday), and have a bigger hand in the classes. Above are three of the women who I am working with, Justina, Carlita, and Maria Jose.  So far, it has been pretty great.  Well, mostly great.  The first class, I locked all my materials in the radio room, and Diomaris, the literacy facilitator, hadn’t received the new workbooks yet. So, about 10 mins before class started, I IM’d Natasha, a literacy volunteer working at an NGO in Santo Domingo, and she quickly emailed me some ideas for class.  They worked amazingly, and saved the class.

We all introduced ourselves, talked about why they were here, and what they hoped to get out of the classes.  Reading the bible was a common goal, as was being able to help their grandchildren.  Then, we showed them how to write their names.  I was struck by how strange and powerful that seemed to me—these women had gone their whole lives without knowing exactly how to write their names, or what their names looked like, and now they were able to write them down.  To represent themselves, to record themselves, to put their names on something.  You have a name—Juana—that is a part of who you are, but it’s always just in the air.  You can say it, but it doesn’t stick like it does when it’s written down.  Then it’s permanent, it’s… I don’t know.  It seems different.  We talked about where their names came from, and who gave them to them. They had history, and stories, and you could tell that they felt proud to share.

So, I sat down next to one of the women, and asked her what her name was.  I wrote it down at the top of the first page of her notebook: Vincenta. I wasn’t sure how to spell her last name—it had either a Y or a LL, which make the same sounds.  I checked the roster, and used the LL. Then, she copied it down to cover the rest of the page.  Vincenta.  Vincenta Vincenta Vincenta…  After she finished, she looked at it, proud. She smiled, and laughed, and retraced the letters with her pencil. The rest of the women were still working, and Vincenta started counting the number of letters in her name. She looked a little confused. 

Diomaris wrote all the womens’ names on the board so they could see them all together, and my stomach sank. Vicenta. NOT Vincenta.  I had taught this woman how to spell her own name incorrectly. I’m an IT volunteer who thought he could do literacy and just fucking taught someone how to spell her name incorrectly. Shit shitshitshit. Diomaris saw my look of horror, and I told her what I did.  Terror flashed in her eyes, and then she buckled with a stifled burst of laughter. Vicenta was recounting the letters in her name. Shit.  Maybe she won’t notice. Maybe she’d like being Vincenta better! Even if she notices, I have a degree in Spanish… Hell, what have I done? I felt like throwing up. I should ET (early termination) right now.

Here goes: I smiled at her, and said “You know something is wrong, don’t you—I made a mistake. I’m sorry, I taught you how to spell the Americanized version of your name instead of the Spanish one.  I’m still learning Spanish, we’re all students here.” And she thought it was really funny, and wanted to know how to pronounce it in English.  She kept laughing about it through the rest of class, because for a few minutes, she was officially an American with an American name. And I officially worked at Ellis Island.

 

Lines

Instant message poetry from my Katy Williams, my world-traveling comrade:

tropical countries

eliminating lines on peoples' faces

except for the ones that are poor enough that the daily struggle to make ends meet

creates those lines and makes them leather

by the age of 30

Tienes que ser loco

“You have to be crazy, like me.” said my project partner.  “Two days ago, I said in a meeting that I thought we should have coffee for when important people visit. Today, I got us a stove, gas tank, coffee pot, and cups, in exchange for promoting a local business on the radio. You have to be crazy to make things happen, to make anything change.  Not enough people here are crazy.”

I’m not crazy enough.  I take too much time to figure things out before taking chances.  I want to know everything about something—to be so far above other people’s knowledge of something that I can understand how the decisions I make affect things, and when problems come up, I can have solutions.  In training, they told us to “fake it till you make it.”  I’ve been faking a lot lately, but I’m getting there.

I think the difference between faking it till you make it and being crazy is that when you fake it, you’re waiting for someone to call you out.  Being crazy dares them to. Being crazy means accepting failure as a possibility and still doing it, instead of pretending failure isn’t there.

I’m an introspective introvert.  I wait in lines and rely on systems.  What am I doing in a country dominated by the informal sector, where to do anything, you have to have the loudest voice and talk over everyone else? When you walk into a quickie mart, you just yell “GIVE ME 5 PESOS OF BUTTER” without caring if someone was there before you. If you don’t get the butter, you yell again, this time waving your money in the air. You have to be crazy to buy butter.

I went to Pantoja to drop off some keys with my old Dona, and stopped by the training center to see the new Peace Corps class.  50-some brand-new trainees, fresh off the airplane.  Biggest class ever.  I’ve faked it for over 5.5 months already, and as circles of trainees formed around me as I talked, I couldn’t believe that I was telling them to not freak out.  FREAK OUT. The ways you’re used to doing things won’t work, and you can’t fake learning the ropes.  And then, in a non-neocolonial, non-culturally-imperialistic way, you’re supposed to teach things. Things that, for the most part, I just figured out on my own.  You have to be crazy to sign up for this stuff.

My project partner and her husband were two of the ones arrested by the military my first day in-site… I guess that’s just a possible side effect of being crazy. At least we have coffee now!

UPDATE ON CHICKENS: The chicken truck came around, and my neighbor bought a live one.  She tried to talk the guy into giving me a chick to take care of, and for about 4 seconds I was hoping he would give me one. He didn’t.  But thanks to him, the neighborhood has about 5 times as many chickens! hooray!

First class

Today was my first class on computer repair at the CTC!  Sadly, no one showed up for it.  I've been a bit sick, and didn't show up in the morning, but still had every intention of giving class.  So, I guess that was my fault.  I even had a lesson plan, powerpoint, and challenge questions planned out.

Next class is on Tuesday; I'll be sure not to look ill then.  Now back to bed.

Bahoruco

I took the weekend off, and visited Chloe, Jeff, and Justin at Justin’s site down south.  Justin lives in a little cane-board shack right on the beach.  It was pretty amazing to sit on the empty beach at night with a bonfire, watching the Perseid meteor shower. 

The beach.

The back of Justin’s house, from the beach (it’s the one with the two red chairs).  Yes, it is falling apart, and it’s awesome.

 

Two of the dozens of local muchachos.

Tragedy of the Commons

Dengue-free!

Today was an all around memorable day. I love my house, and the neighborhood is great. I have a tinaco, which is a big black drum that sits on your roof and stores water for when the pipes are dry. It turns out that you can go through 250 gallons of water in two days when all the muchachos in the neighborhood are filling up 5 gallon buckets at the outside spigot when you're gone or not looking. It also turns out that the tinaco will not refill with water if a neighbor cuts your water pipe.

So, I went to Sugeidy's mom, Margo, who is my new in-country mother. She brings me coffee in the morning, rice at lunchtime, and tried to explain to me how to stir spaghetti with a fork when it is cooking. "Like this!" She also had her son build me a little table to put my stove on, and sent a muchacho to fill up my gas tank. Within 10 minutes, she had yelled at the neighbor who had cut the pipe, scolded a few muchachos who stole water, and was finding me a bucket of water to bathe with. She kept assuring me that the tinaco would refill with water soon, but nothing was happening. We went to the neighborhood well, next to a colmado (quickie mart) on the entry street, and filled up the bucket with water. The colmado owner showed me how this switch in the dirt a bit off the sidewalk turns on the water for half the barrio at a time. When we left, Sugeidy made sure the switch was on our side. Still no water in the tinaco. The neighbor who had cut the pipe supposedly repaired it, but who knows.

When I moved into this house, I thought it was a magical place. I took showers, washed dishes, and flushed the toilet. In 5 months, my hands had never been so clean. At first, the tinaco was overflowing with water because there is no off valve--it just keeps filling whenever there is water. It bothered me when I had to shoo away a muchacho who was filling his bucket at the spigot, but I thought, "hey, it's overflowing with water, it's ok." Then it was empty, and my bright sunny land of unicorns and care bears vanished.

They don't see it as stealing water. I have water, they need water, so they take my water. It all comes from a community well, and no one pays. It is like the Tragedy of the Commons playing out on my roof. One bucket here or there doesn't make a difference if the system is working properly, but rampant tinaco abuse and no refilling equals everyone, especially me, is screwed. That's what happened to Haiti's trees, and Dominicans pride themselves on the fact that they care about the environment. Then, they toss bags of trash in the street, litter at every opportunity, and don't devise a cutoff valve for overflowing tinacos. Everything is incredibly polluted, and the water is undrinkable, and while they recognize there is a problem, it is difficult to change when "it has always been that way." But, jesus, I don't think I can just wash my hands of the unnecessary pollution and litter. Right now, I can't even wash my hands.

Sick.

So I’m in the capital.  I have dengue, but it isn’t a really bad case.  My eyes started hurting like hell on Thursday, and I called the Peace Corps doctors on Saturday, and they had me come in. 

Earlier on Saturday, Sugeidy and I went in to Villa Mella at 6am to go hunting for a bed/stove/gas tank/table, bought said items, and found a truck to carry them back to site (which HAPPENED to be driven by Sugeidy’s cousin.  She knows everyone in this country).  Then, I packed everything I had at my host family’s house, and transported it on the back of a friend’s brother’s moped.  In 3 trips.  And piled it in the middle of the floor of my new house. And then got in one of the last cars leaving Yamasa to Santo Domingo.

I thought my eyes were just hurting because of staring at my computer for too long, and it wasn’t until the military gave me a flyer about dengue that I realized I had most of the symptoms. 

So, I have three free nights in the capital, in a hotel room with AC, hot water, and satellite TV, and am getting paid per diem too.  So, it isn’t too bad, and all i have to do is poop in a cup a few times, and have my blood checked every once in a while.  Pizza Hut even delivers to the hotel! I’m feeling good, the Peace Corps doctors are calling me every few hours, and they stop by and check in.  No DR volunteers have ever died from dengue, and if anything serious happens, they’ll send me to the States.  But everything is good, i’m feeling better, and am on the uptick.

My CTC is having a youth summer camp this week, and they cancelled the first day because I wasn’t there.  I let them know that it is OK for them to go ahead with it, and sent them all the water conservation information I have from Peace Corps.  Elvis is leaving tomorrow, so I’ll be the only male working in the CTC…. eeeek!

 

Here are some pictures from Yamasa:

 

Pics from July 4th

Finally, here are a few pictures from the 4th of July beach trip.

Playa San Rafael, from the San Rafael House porch.  I never wanted to leave this place.

Clayton’s project site in Paraiso (Paradise).

Pool, beach, camping.

Catching a ride in the back of a construction truck from San Rafael to Paraiso.

Friends Without Borders

On Thursday, I had about 25 middleschoolers from New Jersey visit my site.  It was a Friends Without Borders trip, organized by Tours Trips Treks & Travel.  I gave them a tour of the CTC, and talked about what Peace Corps is like, what we do, and a bit about Dominican culture. We played some games, and then a girl got locked in the bathroom.  We spent a few minutes with a knife and pen trying to pry it open, but eventually freed her. Then, I took them on a tour of the Taino pottery workshop in my town.  Some kids were selling limoncillo (small tangy sweet fruits), so I bought some and passed it out—very popular.  I also scored some Dominican points by bringing in tourists, and American points for showing them less-touristy stuff. 

Outside the CTC.

Playing “Espalda a Espalda”

Inside the pottery workshop

My friend Yndira making sun god figurines.