Monday, May 31, 2010

Cross-cultural communication

 

It is really hard to explain certain things.  Here are some examples!

1. Not only is the US not called New York, but it is a pretty varied place.

(Example 1)

Me: There are some really poor parts of the US that receive a lot of government--

Project Partner: Fish!

(Example 2)

Guy: Where are you from in New York?

Me: New York is a city. I’m from a different state, North Carolina.

Guy: No, New York has different barrios, which one are you from?

 

2. The US, aka New York, has a lot of music that isn’t made by Aventura, and isn’t limited to bachata, merengue, or salsa.

Project Partner: Aaaaay, Adán, you can't dance to this music. This isn't music. How do you all live without plantains or bachata? What do you dance to in your car washes?

 

3. It' is pretty uncomfortable trying to explain to your host mom what you can and can’t eat because of… “digestive problems.”

Me: I can’t have juice or fried stuff for a few days.

Host mom: Oh, ok, I’ll make you some tamarind juice, it’s good for the stomach. 

Me: Just water, please. 

Host sister: Melon juice, even better. 

Me: Thanks, but the doctors said no juice for now. 

Host mom: Ah, lemon juice then, that’s what you need. I’ll go now to pick the lemons.

Neighbor (appearing): How many times have you pu-pu’d today? I brought you some fried salami and plantains for lunch.

Host mom: How do they say pu-pu in English?

Sunday, May 30, 2010

Dominican Mother's Day

I've been in my site officially for only a week, but already, my views on a lot of things have changed. I'm not sure if teaching tech classes in the CTC would be really sustainable in any way. I'm actually pretty interested in working with the adult literacy projects, after sitting in on a few classes and talking with the students and the facilitator.  They actually WANT to be there.  Most of the people who start the classes finish them, with at least a basic reading and writing level.  Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday I'll be covering the first half hour or so of the adult literacy classes in my CTC.  I've gotten a lot of help from other volunteers (Natasha, Chloe, Jessica, thanks!), and have been reading Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed just for good measure.  I've requested a bunch of resources from the Ministry of Education (MEE), which I should get... sometime.

Life in site is going well.  I bought a fan, which increased my standard of living significantly.  I found a good place to go running, met some new people, and last night went out to the Discoteca and park with my project partner, Sugeidy, and her husband, Cristian.  They are pretty great, and like parading me around the town, introducing me to everyone they know.

The other day, we went to a big cooperative/microfinance bank, and I talked with one of the bigwigs in an air conditioned office.  He happened to have been another Peace Corps volunteer's project partner back in the 90s, and told me about how that volunteer taught them how to use computers, and was pretty critical in the early success of the coop.  Now, they have something like a billion pesos loaned, and three branches.

I've started looking around for houses to rent in the coming month or two, and so far, nothing.  Phillip, the business volunteer who lives nearby, said that, when he was looking for houses, the few he found all went for 6,000 pesos or more a month.  WE ARE ONLY BUDGETED FOR ~1,200 PESOS A MONTH in housing costs. That could get me a one-room, wood-slat house with no water (or power) outside the town.  We are also on the second-to-lowest pay bracket, even though everything in this town is really expensive because of the proximity to the capital.  I'm hoping that I'll get lucky!

Happy Dominican Mother's Day!

Tuesday, May 25, 2010

Election Results

The municipal election results came in, and apparently, people weren't too happy.  There are calls of massive fraud, etc, and there is talk of a re-vote.

http://www.cosasdelcibao.net/2010/05/protesta-del-prd-en-yamasa-deja-tres-heridos-y-el-pueblo-paralizado/

"Militants" from the Dominican Revolutionary Party (which is oddly right-wingish and nonrevolutionary, as much as any party here has a platform or vision), protested the other party's win, resulting in three injured.  The video makes it look much worse than it was-- besides a bunch of military people in the streets, everything seemed normal to me.  My Dona didn't let me out of the house most of the day, but in the evening I went for a long run through the campo.  I discovered a little hamlet called San Antonio, where flocks of barefoot kids ran with me on muddy roads littered with fallen mangos.  At least you can see a bit of my town in the video-- just ignore the fires and smoke bombs.

It is really quite pretty, I'll take some pictures sometime.

Monday, May 24, 2010

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.

Friday, May 14, 2010

Swearing In!

On Wednesday we swore in as Volunteers in the Peace Corps!  This officially marks the end of our official training with Entrena, the training organization.  Many of our Doñas attended, and many mini empanadas were eaten by me. Here are a few pictures:



















The last one is of Sabrina, Mas, and I, right after we got our Peace Corps Dominican Republic pins and certificates and promised to uphold and defend the US Constitution.  You´d think that would warrant something sharper than a flag pin.

There was much celebrating later, and I´m proud to report that there have been no successful attacks on our Constitution since we have been on patrol.

Tuesday, May 11, 2010

Music

 

I like this song- Rita Indiana

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YC2PRHWloyo

Sunday, May 9, 2010

¿What? vol. 1

 

1. A commercial saying “we have combined science and religion.”  The logo was a star of david with electrons orbiting it, and the starwars theme was playing in the background. 

2. Juice.  Tropical island, full of amazing tropical fruits, and no one eats them.  Instead, they make juice.  More often than not, the juice turns out to be Tang.

3. Viveres. Potatoes, yuca, plantains, different types of tasteless bananas, a green fruit that is a cross between a pear and a potato, yama, and other things that I haven’t quite come to understand yet. This is a picture of boiled plantains with some sort of meat. I was ill this day, and had to just eat a peanut butter sandwich.

IMAGE_136

4. English names from the 17th century given to children.

5. Two main political parties, one with “thumbs-up” as its sign, and the other with the “loser” L sign.  Just, awesome.

My Site!

 

This is my CTC, built in 2009.  It is the latest iteration of what used to be LINCOS, the labs built inside shipping containers.  It has 20’ high ceilings, something like 25 computers, a daycare, radio station, social outreach center, and… NO INTERNET.  The no internet thing kills me—it has been out for over three months.

IMG_0953

This is one of the facilitadores, Elvis, hanging the picture of the First Lady up in the lobby.  Yep, the place is that new. I think we may have put it on the wrong side of the president…

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This is a group of us in a nearby municipio.

IMG_0949

The countryside between here and Santo Domingo. Sometimes, I forget that I’m on an island.

IMG_0951

Friday, May 7, 2010

On the run

Wednesday was my first full day in my new site. Some new friends from the CTC were going to a nearby city to register students for financial aid, and asked if I wanted to go with them. I had hung out with them Tuesday afternoon while they registered local students, and it was kind of neat to see all the people and chat with them, so I jumped in the back of the truck. I called the PC “whereabouts” hotline and told them where I was going, and figured that I’d be back in two or three hours.

We got to the Multiuso (multi-use gym/auditorium), which was locked, so we drove around looking for the key. We decided to take naps until people started to arrive, and then when they did, we left for lunch (no joke). The place was packed after lunch, and no one seemed to know how to order the people or set up the tables efficiently. I snapped into manager mode, and started suggesting ways of queuing people based on the IDs they had and if they were students or not, and then assigning different people to process each group. This was shot down, and later magically instituted when the mass of people grew.

After about an hour, some people in suits showed up and started asking questions. They told us to stop what we were doing, said they were military, and asked for my ID. I flashed my Peace Corps ID badge, which thank god I had in my pack, and they asked what I was doing there. They took us all outside, cuffed a few of my friends, and put them in an unmarked SUV. I was in emergency mode, speaking as fast as I could in Spanish, searching for someone to call in my phone’s contact list. I refused to get in the SUV, and luckily there wasn’t room for me—“wait here, we’ll come back for you.”

I called the PC emergency hotline, and hid behind the building until I was sure they were gone. I started to panic—I didn’t know where I was, what was going on, where my friends went, who the people in suits were. The PC safety coordinator, Jennifer, said to get out of there and back to my site, and that she would call the Embassy to see if she could find out what was going on. I calmed myself down, and then walked back to the town and asked where the nearest guagua (bus) stop was. I hid in a church until I saw a guagua come, and saw my friends pass by in the back of a police truck. The guagua was headed to Santo Domingo, and I didn’t know how to get back to my site, so I jumped in.

Two hours later, I was hiding out in the Peace Corps office, decompressing in the air conditioning while figuring out what to do. I was never so happy to be in the capital. I txt’d my friends, who said they had been let go, everything was ok now, and that it was safe to come back. I got directions to my site from the person who chose it, took the metro to the guagua stop, and by 8:30pm was back in my site.

So. I am still piecing together what happened, but it looks like a misunderstanding. I don’t think my counterparts were doing anything nefarious, and I don’t think that I was in any real danger. It was one hell of an adventure, and I’m pretty happy that I was able to handle it. I was in touch with the Peace Corps the whole time, letting them know where I was.

Every day is something different!

Wednesday, May 5, 2010

First full day in site

Wow.  My "first day in site" story will probably kick any other story in the ass. I'll try to post when I find out what the hell happened. Needless to say, I'm in Santo Domingo right now, the only place that I know how to get to and get around in. 

Just... holy shit.

Project Partner day, going to site!

 

Tuesday was project partner day, where all the trainees met their new work partners!  The word I’d use for this would be “awkward.” It was like a blind date workshop—we had on name tags, and were matched up with people who a few minutes ago we were politely smiling at (is he the one?? or that group with the matching shirts? why’d we have to do this outside, I’m sweating like a whore in church).  I got to my site Tuesday afternoon after a two-hour car ride, one hour of which was just trying to get out of Santo Domingo.  I fell asleep in the car, and was drooling when I woke up.  Because I like to make good first impressions.  The car pulled up to a tiny tin-roofed house, and I was greeted by a very quiet man and a very large woman, my Don and Dona, Euclides and Santa. 

My project partners, Onally and Sugeidy, took me by the CTC, where about 20 three-year-olds and the entire staff were waiting to greet me.  I stammered through some unconnected Spanish words thanking them, and then we were off to visit about half the residents of the town.

The town is a small, happy, rustic community set in the loma, which is Dominican for “scorching hot rolling hills filled with mango trees and chickens.” A lot of my volunteer friends live within 25 minutes of each other up in the north, in the cooler rainforesty area that looks like Avatar. My closest volunteer is in Santo Domingo, about 2-2.5hrs from here.

Should be fun!

Tuesday, May 4, 2010

Post!

 

I got my site! I’ll be in a small town outside Santo Domingo.  Hopefully it will be good!  I have my bags packed, cellphone charged, and sunglasses in my pocket.

Saturday, May 1, 2010

Rantings on sustainability

 

Yesterday, many of the volunteers that work in (or will work in) the CTCs met with representatives from the Dispacho de la Primera Dama (the Office of the First Lady) to welcome the new volunteers, and to say goodbye to those that are at the close of their service.  I expected it to be a mundane, predictable event, but the question/answer session turned into a pretty great (sometimes heated) discussion between the officials and current volunteers about lab policies and management.

Here is some back-story:  The Dispacho runs a number of community and social programs and centers, including the Centro Tecnologia Comunitario (CTC). CTCs usually have a radio station, daycare center, small library, and 1 or 2 labs of 10 computers each. They get funding from the Dominican gov’t, as well as other gov’ts, NGOs, and multinationals (Taiwan, Brazil, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, etc.).  It aims for the “democratization of information” and “self-sustainable community-based centers,” and on paper and in presentations it does a great job.  Volunteers, however, have to work with all the structural problems endemic to the institution. 

The most salient is that, within the last few months, the Dispacho decided to offer all CTC services for free. It is a wonderful opportunity to provide IT services to anyone, regardless of his/her ability to pay, therefore breaking down a barrier between the poor and a set of tools for self-advancement. From an American’s (or a donor’s) perspective, this is terrific. 

Great, right? Before, patrons would pay around $0.60 or $0.70USD for an hour of internet in the lab, or maybe $3.00USD for a month of classes (depending on the area).  This money was used to pay for things the lab needed- new keyboards, microphones, etc., and could possibly be used to pay for utility costs, upkeep, and staffing.  Not having these funds on hand makes it pretty hard to run the labs smoothly, and destroys their sustainability—they are dependent on the Dispacho for all funds and help.  Our Associate Peace Corps Director explained that this goes back to Trujillo, and the overarching sense of patronship, where everything comes from the government, and the government is embedded in everything.  Dominicans also tend to not value things that are free—something must be better if you have to pay for it.  So, they don’t show up to classes, they don’t do homework, and they don’t take advantage of the labs. 

Also, since the labs are funded and run by the First Lady’s office and other gov’ts, they are susceptible to political winds, and often are perceived as having a political bent. Free programs make the admin look pretty good! Como se dice “clientelism”? If the other party wins the next presidential election, what happens to all this investment? If national funds are stretched, what gets cut? The Dispacho also hires all personnel, who may or may not be the best people for the job.

Furthermore, in some cases, the CTCs may be competing with private institutions.  CTCs may duplicate services that are already provided by private or community-based organizations.  The CTCs grew out of the LINCOS (Little INtelligent COmmunitieS), which were tents stretched over shipping containers that held a few computers and power generators, and could be dropped in remote communities. They have come a long way since then, but so have internet cafes and NGOs. A program built out of shipping containers probably was not supposed to be permanent.

So: millions of dollars of investment, considerable resources, significant inherent/institutional problems. I really think that the Despacho staff wants the program to succeed, and they are some pretty impressive folk.  They are doing a lot of good—it is important to not overlook that—but there is space for much more, and I’m excited to see what I can do.