Literacy, Return to Site, etc.

Literacy training… happened. Then, my training group had one last great night in Santo Domingo, after which we all went our separate ways.  Upon returning to my site, I discovered that the duffle bag and backpack I left were infested with ants, and all my clothes were covered in rat hair and feces.  I was most saddened to find that my giant jar of peanut butter had a thriving ant colony in it.  Ok, so the clothes covered in rat feces was pretty saddening, too.  The bed was covered as well… welcome home!  I don’t think plague is common in the DR, so that is comforting.  When I get my own place, I’m going to invest in cats. BIG ones, with sharp teeth, like the evil ones in all those Disney movies.  They are more like household appliances than pets here.

My laptop also has a colony of ants living in it, which makes typing more like a game of Whack-A-Mole.

My CTC got internet, and I didn’t even have to petition the government!  I’ll now have a more-reliable intarweb connection! I get a rogue wifi signal at my house, but I suspect it is yet another Banca (lottery/gambling) network, so its worthless. 

It is raining everyday now, torrentially.  I never minded much in Pantoja, but in Yamasa, in a zinc-roofed house, it sounds like deafening surround-sound TV static.  You know, the kind where you throw couch cushions across the room to find the damn remote in a desperate attempt to mute it before you just decide to hurl a chair over your head at the TV.  It is nice at night when it rains lightly, but then at 3 or 4am I’m wide-eyed in bed with the pillow over my head, waiting for the house to mudslide down the hill. The holes in the roof look like stars during the day, which fade away when night comes.  At night, when it is clear, the real stars are spectacular. 

Sabrina, Mas, Jenn, and I are “training” for a half-marathon in Santo Domingo this June.  We have about 5 weeks to do a 7-week regimen, so training will be more like running whenever it isn’t raining, for as long as you can, until your community thinks you are an insane sweaty gringo. This will be the true test of the Peace Corre (our running club).  Sabrina is working with some other volunteers to make T-shirt designs, so we can all match in radical 80’s-style colors and sweatbands.

Now starts three months of living in my site.  I have this time to do the community diagnostic and meet as many people as I can, before being expected to start teaching and training.  After three months, we have a few days of in-service training (IST) in the capital, where we present our diagnostic findings and make plans of action.  I’m really excited about this part, but I think it is a realistic excitement—I know it will be slow, arduous, I’ll be set back numerous times at every step, and the result will be nothing like what it looked like at the beginning, but it will be something, and I will have done it.  I’m going to propose that as the next Peace Corps slogan:

“Peace Corps: You may be able to have done something.”

Seriously, though.  I’ve studied Latin American development, without living in underdevelopment; poverty, while satisfying sushi cravings; political movements and unrest, without any personal danger; language, with wordreference.org on my iPhone; and countercapitalism, while drinking unsustainable $0.99 coffee made from roasted Yangtze river dolphins and koala tears in a gleaming coffee shop. Does any of that count? 

That’s one of the most striking thing about the other volunteers that I’ve met—they all have pretty impressive backgrounds, but it hasn’t been enough.  They have achieved a LOT, and would all no doubt be extremely successful (professionally or financially or both) if they had chosen to stay in the States, but most felt that continuing was not progressing. 

So, I’ll be making less in a month here than I used to in two days, but it seems like I’ll do more and experience more in two days here than I used to in a month.  Rustic living situations (“It’s like camping, but every day, and it is my life for two years,” as one volunteer put it) and scarce consumer goods are balanced by fruit trees, the flota, and a temporary alternative to continuing (I’d say “alternative to the rat race,” but apparently it is now a rat race to poop on my clothes).  Amazing new friends and old friends have also helped (a lot). 

To anyone (ok, the one person) who has sent me mail—nothing has gotten through yet.  Other volunteers have had success, especially with padded envelopes and very small boxes.  Just be sure to draw lots of crosses, and label it “religious materials.”  People usually won’t open something when it is declared as bibles and lists the return address as a (fictitious) church.