New Years

I'm staying in my site for New Years.  This will be the first major(ish) holiday that I haven't spent with other Volunteers, and while I like the ability to decline participation in large group activities, the site seems to be conspiring to make me regret my decision.

Let's talk about child abuse a bit. Say you have a kid, and the kid falls and hurts himself. Obviously, you go up to the kid, and start smacking his arms and back. If you are creative, grab a switch and beat him. Maybe throw some rocks. The kid should have known better. Or, let's say one of your kids is picking on his younger brother. The smaller kid is on the ground, being punched and kicked. Naturally, you egg it on, and yell for your neighbors to come out and watch. When it's over, you go over and beat the little kid, because he should have defended himself or have known better. If it is night time, you should probably go ahead and throw the kid out of your house and tell him to never come back.

Every so often, when I'm in my house at night cooking dinner, I'll hear wimpering at the front door. You can't take the kid back to his house, where he'll just get beaten more, and you can't really let him stay at your place, either. So you load up a Spanish-dubbed Pixar film on your laptop, make some chocolate milk, and open a pack of cookies and wait for him to calm down. If your battery is dead and there's no power, you can play the game where you each try to draw a cat/goat/car with your headlamp turned off, and then laugh at the squiggly-lined blob on your paper.  Is his grandma home? Yes. Go to the grandma's house. She starts yelling at him, neighbors come out. Public shaming. He runs away. Go back to your house, pull out the spare mosquito net, and blow up the "self inflating" sleeping pad that you pulled out of the volunteer give-away box. Give him the spare toothbrush you keep for him, and make zombie faces in the mirror with the toothpaste foam.

I can't make parents hug their kids. I can't stop them from hitting them. That's the hardest part of being here--it's not the poverty or lack of water and power and sanitation and American food.

On the other side, I find myself in a great, smiling, happy, welcoming community. Kids run around and play all day, and at lunch, just showing up means you get a big heap of rice. As soon as I moved in, my neighbor decided I needed lunch every day, and I almost had to talk her into letting me pay her for it. Every single person I pass will do a fist pump or wave and smile and chat, including the workers out in the fields. My dog is a rock star, and more people probably know his name than mine. The crazy guy in town, who everyone told me to watch out for, brings me sugar cane stalks and soup, and shouts random words in English. I left a chair outside one night, and a neighbor swooped in to grab it. When I thought it was surely stolen, as soon as I opened my door in the morning, they brought it back and told me to be more careful. I got frustrated with trying to keep order in my lab, and the next time I went back, the youth I'm working with had organized themselves and were enforcing rules, and have worked out almost all the problems in the lab since then between themselves. The organization I'm working with has given me everything I've petitioned for. Little kids sit in my house and draw, and I put the pictures up on the wall. I've spent days with them playing with rocks, teaching them how to pet my dog.

I love waking up, making coffee (and chocolate milk for the muchachos), and chatting with the neighbors who come by to say good morning to my dog. I haven't had a bad morning yet in the batey, possibly because I can hit snooze on my phone alarm as many times as I want to.

So, yeah. Some stuff sucks. Some stuff is good. There is still nowhere else I'd rather be, even on New Year's. This adventure is almost over.

Sweating in December

Batey life is going well. I spend most of the day playing with kids, supplying endless sheets of paper to draw on and fold into airplanes, and dealing countless hands of Uno. The lab is doing alright, and is pretty much running itself at this point. I have a group of youth who make sure it is open in the morning and in the afternoon, and while I’ve given up on any sort of work shift schedule, they make it work. We charge 5 pesos for an hour of internet, and don’t charge if you’re there to do school work.  The vast majority of people go to play Unreal Tournament and look at Facebook, which is fine. They’re learning how to use the keyboard and mouse, and in the case of Facebook, I doubt they have ever read or written this much in their lives. I do movie nights every once in a while, which are a hit until the power comes back on.

Every 15 minutes or so, the giant sugar cane trucks roll by and make the ground shake. My batey is off the main road, so we don’t have the sugar cane train, and the trucks have turned the road into dust 4” deep.  Zenia and I walked down to the other side of the canal one day to watch them cut cane, and we came back completely covered in dust. They set fire to the fields at night after they harvest, and the whole horizon turns to an eerie red glow. It rains ash during the day, and it collects in the corners of my house and gets caught in my mosquito net.

I took two kids to the regional Brigada Verde conference, which was pretty fun. We went to the island in the middle of lake Enriquillo, the giant below-sea-level salt lake that is slowly rising, which may make it possible to kayak from Puerto Principe to Barahona in a few years. Thar be crocodiles! And giant iguanas with red eyes!

Thanksgiving was a blast. Three other volunteers and I stayed at the country director’s house in the capital and baked pies for three days. He and his wife told us stories at dinner about all the things they’e done in all the countries they’ve lived in with all the different organizations they’ve worked for. For example—they went to a Soviet bloc country after the fall of communism, and had projects to essentially create a market economy. I forget if that was with Peace Corps or USAID. When he was a Peace Corps Volunteer, one of his projects was to introduce these small cows to the Andes that could deal with altitude better.

View from CD’s apt in Santo Domingo

Safe Space training

Before she COS’d, Sarah and I started up a QPCV group. Following other PC countries, we may end up naming it Volunteer Diversity and Support. The three main goals are:

Q Volunteer support

Raise staff and admin awareness

Influence new Volunteer training

This past Tuesday, Ellen, Nora, and I pulled off the first Safe Space (Espacio Seguro) training in PCDR! The training director gave us an entire day with the whole training staff and medical officers, without really knowing what we were going to do. The level of support that we have gotten from the administration has been pretty surprising, and we hope to duplicate the training for the rest of the staff and admin.  I think that we were able to start a lot of good conversations, and if nothing else, got the training staff to think about culturally-taboo topics. It was a little strange having the teacher/student positions switched—most of the participants were once teaching us about Dominican culture and how to speak Spanish, and here we were, giving a day-long training session.

The difficulty that we face now is keeping the group active, and trying to develop useful training materials for the admin and new volunteers. Ellen is going to sit down with the training director to go over the curriculum they use during training, in the hopes of weeding out heteronormativity, and making them more open to different voices. The fact that they are asking us to work with them, instead of us trying to convince them, is huge.

So, hopefully, we can leave Peace Corps Dominican Republic more open and inclusive than when we found it.

Why does it feel like it’s ending?

So.  I have less than 9 months left here. Let’s review!

DONE:

• Adult literacy classes
• Adult literacy computer classes
• I lost 10 pounds (where’d they go?)
• Computer repair class
• American music radio program
• Ran a half-marathon
• Got a dog (BEAN!)
• Sex ed/environmental awareness youth group
• Taught English in a high school
• Tons of cholera prevention classes, in high school and rural communities
• English teacher training workshops
• I site-changed from a large town near the capital to a sugar cane work camp in the desert.
• Became a whole lot less introverted
• Set up a computer lab (awesome project- want to do this in 4 more communities)
• Shaved my head twice
• Basic computer classes

TO DO:

• Water filter project (50 filters) (ongoing)
• Supervise adult literacy program in new site
• Finish plumbing and flooring new house
• Health/sanitation charlas
• Train lab managers (I miss my UNC Labbies!)
• Create lab support team
• More computer repair classes
• More basic computer classes
• Get thousands of condoms, and teach how to use them
• Get internet for 4 labs
• …make 4 labs sustainable…
• 27 Charcos (jumping off 27 waterfalls)
• Climb Pico Duarte (highest point in the Carribbean)
• Figure out why I can’t feel two fingers on my left hand
• Apply to grad schools
• Learn how to cook beans

I’ve been here a long time, I should have been able to do more.  I wasted a lot of time watching the entire Battlestar Galactica series, QAF, and a few seasons of Futurama and The Simpsons on my laptop while in a site that I didn’t believe in. 

My first project partner, Sugeidy, was phenomenal. Seriously, she is one of the most amazing people I’ve met. I felt like I was holding her back, because I thought too small.  She lived for progress, and simply didn’t believe in being stopped.  She could raise money, gain support, carry out projects, and be done before I had fully convinced myself that we could do it. Her mom adopted me, and made sure that I ate a good Dominican lunch every day. 

In the batey I have Eduard and Mirta, and they’re incredibly involved with community progress.  They were working before I got here, and they’ll continue after I leave.  So, this time, I’m giving a lot of leeway.  When I talk about the lab with Eduard, he already hits all the main points I want to make, so I just try to give some oomph to the project, and fill in all the technical cracks.  Mirta is a health coordinator for another batey, and I’ve seen her issue contraceptives to campesinos.  She was the first person I met in the batey, and she completely opened her home to me (she even cleaned out a room, and said I could stay there whenever I wanted).  Her kids are my best friends in site, and are probably what made me decide to change sites. 

The lab project is what I was recruited for.  World Vision donated money for Indotel (Instituto Dominicano del Telefono, or Dominican Telephone Institute, I swear the two languages are the same sometimes…) to build the lab, but no one is actually making it WORK.  That’s what IT for EDU volunteers are for! I’ve gotten the entire lab set up software-wise, and just finished setting up the wireless network.  They can now charge for services, and track usage.

I also, ah, set it up so they can have Unreal Tournament LAN parties… This quickly eclipsed MS Paint in popularity.  Bienvenidos a the newest group of Dominicans who talk about frags! The computers also have Encarta (encyclopedia), and in order to reach the games they have to know how to navigate the file system, so I figure it’s a net gain.

 

I’ve also been thinking about Eve. This is where her memorial marker is, in the UNC Arboretum.  I didn’t get a lot of stuff back then about service and progress, and I remember her telling me about them. I think I’m starting to get it, just a few years late.  So, Hey. To all my friends who figured this out long ago, I wish I could share all this now with you back then.

New House

I’m finally making progress with the new house! 

The living room/kitchen. I spent a long time sweeping it—the owner was using the house to raise chickens. It was not pretty.

The bathroom. Yeah, no plumbing, but lots of rocks.  Not sure why there are rocks.

My bedroom! It has a window, but it is boarded up right now. Notice how nice and flat-ish the floor is—I spent a few hours with some jovenes digging dead tree roots and stuff out of it. 

The neighborhood!

Mirta, my next door neighbor, has this little window that her kids sell water and lemonade bags out of.

Batey 1

I’m a sureño! I moved in temporarily with Chloe, and at the moment, an evangelical church has set up massive speakers and about a hundred chairs (a bit hopeful…) two houses down, and everything is vibrating.  If they turned it down just a bit, you could hear something besides a billion decibels of static (screaming is…better?). It´s worse than what they do in movies in hostage situations, and has been going on for over 4 hours. Chloe and I complained, and they explained that they were doing god´s work. Bean is hiding under a chair.

I started teaching basic computer classes in the batey! I have ten students, and they´re awesome. Class is at 9am, and the bike ride out is absolutely beautiful in the mornings.  The first time I rode out, a group of about 25 muchachos surrounded me, in awe of my sweet bike.

This is pretty much how my day went:

I woke up around 6:30am, made coffee and toast, and let Bean out of the bathroom (that´s where he sleeps).  Around 8, Chloe went for a run with Bean, and it started raining.  No biking today. I grabbed my helmet, and set out for a moto taxi. On Thursdays and Sundays, there is a massive street market that winds through the streets of Tamayo, selling pretty much everything from tomatoes to mini tubes of toothpaste with American dentists´ names printed on them.  They also have tables of pharmaceuticals, “Dolce & Dabanna” t-shirts, and roasted nuts. On the other side of it, I hopped on a motoconcho to Batey 1.  The dirt path goes along the canal between sugar cane fields, with barren mountains in the background and lines of palm trees in the distance. 

The mountains and palm trees are kind of like in the side-scrolling Super Mario games, where they move at different speeds than the sugar cane whizzing by right by you.  It´s kind of neat.  After longer than you remember taking before, and when you think you´ve missed a turn, the mountains are big and looming. You can see where there have been mud slides, and the parts that have been recently deforested and burned. Then, you see a small white water tower and squat yellow buildings—the school—off to the left.  That´s Batey 1.

The lab was open when I got there, and a few students were waiting. It was our second class, and two new people showed up. After class, I sat in front of Mirta´s house (essentially my new doña), drinking lemonade from a plastic bag. A small dust storm blew up, caking all my sweat with dirt. It switched from dust to rain in a matter of minutes, and then in a lull I jumped on a moto back to town.

Walking back through the street market I bought a bunch of veggies, and then made a massive veggie sandwich for lunch.  With ketchup. mmmmmm.

I walked Bean, talked with some neighbors, and then sat on the porch and read for a while.  I went to the colmado to exchange an empty water jug for a full one, and carried it very manly on my shoulder.  5 gallons of purified water is 30 pesos (25 off the truck), but a liter of beer is 100 pesos. A dollar is about 37 pesos. A more reasonable rate of conversion, widely used by other volunteers, is the egg rate.  An egg is 5 pesos. So, a botellon of water is 6 eggs, and a beer is 20 eggs.  You can get a beer, or you can eat breakfast for like 2 weeks.

Here are some pictures from the last week:

Bean, on Chloe´s back porch, protecting us from delincuentes and tigueres.

My lab! 15 HP computers in total. 2.5ghz Celeron dual-core, 320gb HDD, 2gb RAM, Windows 7, Office 2010, 19” widescreen LCD panels. Pretty damn nice—nicer than some of my labs were at UNC.

Carlos, one of the main muchachos.

Tree climbing!

The view from my future house. That line of green goes on forever.

Getting mangos.

Carlos, up in the mango tree.

Muchachos, waiting for mangos.

Still site changing…

I’m trying to get the floor poured in my new house, but it’s a lucha since I’m not there. So, I’m going to move to Chloe’s for a while until the new place gets set up. In the mean time, I’ve been spending some quality time with Bean!

 

Bean made friends with a goat. He looks like a fatty in this picture because he still hadn’t digested the pounds of white rice, chicken bones, and full-cream milk and oil that doña feeds him when I´m not there. 

Some of the other volunteers in Monte Plata threw me a going away party. We made pancakes, went to the park, and ate street food.  It figures that I find out Yamasa has amazing empanadas (better than El Seibo, even) right before leaving. 

A few weeks ago, we had the All Volunteer Conference, where everyone descends on the capital for a day of meetings and charlas, etc. It also means… Peace Corps prom! The theme was “Tígueres of the Caribbean,” and it was a much-needed break from everything. 

ALSO: I figured out how to make rice without measuring anything! It even came out with the crunchy layer of burnt rice on the bottom, concón, that is so good that it´s worth throwing out all the rest of the rice to get to.  I brought some rice over to my doña to prove that I can actually cook, and she refused to believe that I had made it until she tasted it and declared that it had too much garlic. Then, she put her hand to her head and said that she had to sit down because it would lower her blood pressure too much if she tried any more. 

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This is Batey 8, way out in the middle of kilometers of sugar cane fields. 

Mas, Chloe, Guitana, and Sarah, walking down the road to Batey 9.

Site Change

I’ve been in the Dominican Republic for over 14 months, and in my site for almost a year. I decided a few weeks ago that another year in Yamasa may not be the most productive, and that I was ready for a new challenge.  It also didn’t help that, during this period, two of the girls that had been in my youth group, and who had also been in my English workshop in the High School, had won a regional Model UN conference, and one of them had done it in English.  It’s awesome, but also codifies the nagging feeling of not really being needed here. 

So, I started talking with other volunteers, trying to see if anyone knew of a good site.  I had managed UNC’s computer labs before joining Peace Corps, and I was nominated and accepted and trained for service as an Information and Communication Technology Specialist, so finding a strong IT site was importante (and, I know, crazy—working within my sector? whoa!)

I had already narrowed the region down to the south—generally the poorest, most underprivileged part of the country. Chloe mentioned that World Vision had recently donated computer labs to a few of the Bateys around her, and we set up the visits over the next few days. 

Bateys are essentially sugar cane work camps that have grown to include families and a few colmados and a small primary school. They’re poor, dusty, and surrounded by kilometers of sugar cane fields. The sugar companies (for the most part, 5 families) brought over men to work in the fields from Haiti.  Many of the workers are undocumented, which makes leaving the Batey hard- all major roads in the south have numerous military checkpoints. Undocumented children can’t go to High School, won’t be allowed to vote, and are denied many other rights based on their parents’ nationality, even if they themselves were born in the DR. 

So, I found a challenge.  More specifically, I found a challenge with a computer lab.  The Bateys in this part of the south are numbered 0-9, although a few have actual names.

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I was riding on the back of Andres’s motorcycle along the canal, mesmerized by the bright green of the 7” high sugar cane swaying in the wind on either side of the path.  Andres called out to a group of women walking some cows down the path as we passed them—he knows everyone out here, I’m convinced of it.  Off in the distance are stands of palm trees, and beyond that, the unbroken line of tree-less mountains that extends into Haiti. I made a mental note to look up the range’s name.  Suddenly, we were out of the cane fields, and turning past a small blue water tower emblazoned with the European Union flag into a small grouping of houses.  Batey 1.

A small group of locals showed us the brand new, still-wrapped-in-plastic rows of computers in the lab.  They were all modern HP desktops, with what looked like 19” widescreen LCDs on top of them.  Damn... World Vision doesn’t fuck around.  They all had USB WiFi antennas next to the monitors, and the same off-brand Chinese WiFi router that I had told my mom to buy off Newegg.com sitting on a table at the front of the room.  This was easily the nicest lab I’d ever seen in the DR, and certainly the only one that had ever been in that batey.  The second floor of the building was supposed to be the library, although in place of books it had stacks of empty computer boxes and some random chairs.

We walked around the rest of the community, a simple U shape with a big space in the middle that used to be a baseball field.  6 churches in all—Catholic, Adventist, and Pentecostal, not including the witch doctor. Around 200 families, with a total population of something like 1300.  My current site has northward of 50,000. 

I was excited.  This place felt good.  I hope that feeling wasn’t due to the unseasonably cool weather and light breeze, and the exhaustion of going from batey to batey in the past few days…but it felt good nonetheless, and the people walking with us were friendly and happy to sit and chat under a tree. 

It took me a few days to decide to pull the trigger and submit the site change paperwork to my program assistant. My temporary acting APCD (they fired the last one after just a few months on the job) called me a few days later, and thought it was a great idea.  Now all I have to do is find a house in the new site, and wrap things up in the old site, and try to not stress out in the process.  It’s going to be a crazy month… it’s a crazy change. But hey, I only have a year left, and Yamasa has let me get too comfortable. I think this will be good.

Article

Jessica, Chloe, and I worked on this article for the PCDR magazine, the Gringo Grita.

New Chapters: Alfabetizing Peace Corps

Imagine that you can’t look up information in your phonebook, check your child's homework, follow street signs, verify that your bill was correct, or understand the warning labels on medication. Some say that being able to read and write your own name is sufficient to be "functionally literate," therefore not illiterate.  Such arguments help disguise the surprising number of Dominicans who sign their names with an XX.

We know this bait and switch. Look at the massive hotel chains in Punta Cana, the beautiful ecotourism projects of Samaná, and Santo Domingo’s brand new shiny French metro system. As Peace Corps volunteers, we know that crippling poverty, unbridled pollution, nonexistent sanitation systems, faulty electricity, and washout-prone roads are all a mere guagua ride away from the glossy brochure destinations. This is why we PCVs are here – to fight for underprivileged communities, and to give a voice to those in the shadow of the all-inclusives.

So, we turn to education. PCDR’s Education sector has historically focused on information and communication technologies, and we are extremely happy to now include literacy within the sector goals. With numerous studies on the links between literacy and a population’s health, economy, and family development, we can conclude that many other Peace Corps sector goals depend on literacy. Imagine trying to do a water filter project, an Escojo Mi Vida group, teaching health coordinators, or training cacao guides, not to mention teaching basic computer classes, with groups who can’t read or write. Knowing how to put on a condom is extremely important, but being able to read the wrapper is just as empowering.

We have literacy volunteers working in the Capital, bateyes, and towns large and small. We are reaching out to Haitians, Dominicans, and the multitude that neither government will claim. We are working with 80-year-old doñas in rolos, single mothers, men who exchange their machete for a pencil, and youth who never went to school. We are coordinating with NGOs, the Ministry of Education, and the First Lady’s office. We are strengthening and broadening the vision of the Education sector by making information technology accessible to people who never imagined they would touch a mouse or understand the symbols on a keyboard.

This is huge. This is transformative. We don’t remember how our own worlds changed when we first opened a book and plodded through the combinations of consonants and vowels, forgetting punctuation and skipping lines. As literacy volunteers, our projects can’t be concluded by graduations or certificates or grand openings. Our moments come when least expected, whether it’s watching weathered, shaking hands writing letters on a chalk board, or watching a group of women learn how to write their names for the first time in their lives. It is the impact of these moments that will forever mark our service, our lives. To learn the value of literacy, ask a person who cannot read.

So, this is what we are working for. We would like to acknowledge volunteers across all sectors who work with literacy projects.  The literacy initiative is still new, and we have a long road ahead to fully develop it, but we are Peace Corps volunteers. This is what we do. If you haven’t, visit a literacy volunteer. Observe a class, talk to the participants, and make a pencil the most powerful symbol in your community.

Signed, XX

Trainee Visit

The newest class of Peace Corps Trainees arrived in March!  After a week or two of training, each newbie goes out to visit a volunteer to see what their service is like.  I took Blair around to all my classes and groups, out to one of the bateys, and got to see Heidi's kids play baseball. 

This is the basic computer class for women who have completed basic literacy.  Look at your keyboard. The letters are tiny, strange-looking, there are tons of symbols, and the entire thing is baffling.  Especially if you can’t really see it.

Blair, helping out some of my favorite Doñas. These are awesome, funny, kind women. I’m glad she got to meet them.

The baseball game between Heidi’s kids and the team from La Mina. Batey baseball is pretty awesome.

Every once in a while, we had to stop the game so a truck could drive across the field and load up on cinder blocks and gravel. Horses, cows, and motorcycles also wandered onto the field...

My cousins play baseball in West Virginia, and generally kick ass. They’re superstars. My uncle uploaded the above picture from one of their games, and I was shocked by how different it looked. That grass is SO GREEN.

The province is pretty damn pretty. Once you get out of Yamasa and the rolling hills, it gets really flat and arid. They used to grow sugar cane here under Trujillo, but they stopped, and now the cane towns are left without any major form of work and income. Peace Corps has started putting more volunteers out here, and they’re doing really awesome work with kids.  These are small communities of just a few hundred people, without running water, paved roads, sanitation systems, reliable power, or virtually any other services.  The main goal for a lot of the kids is to get out. There is so little to do, and so few opportunities even for those who do manage to stand out. 

Not the one in Texas

This is San Antonio!

Out in the campo. Green, green, green.

The road used to be paved. Then, it got a lot of potholes, so the mayor had it torn up, and never repaved it. The aqueduct is damaged, and only reaches a part of the community when it is working.

The school yard. I think the trees may have been planted by a PCV in the 80’s.  The Ministry of Ed was fixing it up, then the contractor left with the money. So, the offices are rubble, they don’t have batteries or invertors, and they use an outdoor shelter made from political banners and advertisements as class space.

You can see the fogons (three-stone cooking fires) mixed in with the chairs.

The offices, boarded up.

It’s a great little campo town. The people are super nice, very welcoming, and are excited of the prospects of doing projects.  First up: sending letters to the Ministry of Ed, and trying to get the school fixed up.

Muchachos

These are some of the neighborhood muchachos.  They hang around my house once in a while, ask me questions about living in Nueba Yol, and now, play with Bean. They came cover today with shirtfulls of cahuil fruit that they picked by climbing on the church roof, and we sat on my porch and gorged until the grass was covered with pits and chunks of fruit that the bugs had gotten to first.

Marcel, showing how careful he is with Bean.

Josue, climbing on the porch bars.

Josue, climbing on Micky. Bean, too tired to try to escape.

Earlier in the day, I met with an American who teaches English in the next town down the road, the two CTC managers, and a guy who works in the Ministry of Education to plan some cholera charlas.  I’ve already given slews of these charlas, but hey, it’s always nice to meet new people who are interested in working on projects!

Bean

I sort of got a dog. His name is Bean. I have no idea what kind of dog he is, or how big he’s going to get, or where he came from.

So that’s cool. Margo will take care of him when I leave site, and it’s kind of fun to have the little guy running around.

Sure, he poops and pees a lot, but my entire house is cement, and bleach is cheap.

The CTC had a secret santa and pot-luck for valentine’s day, which is Dominican for “let’s scream for no reason.”  The rules for the secret santa were not quite clear, so I bought a pack of gum and some chocolate. The recipient was nonplussed, and threw them on the table and didn’t look at me the rest of the evening. Other people were exchanging plastic knickknacks and stuff… I didn’t get the memo.

CTC Radio

I’m a radio DJ! Today was the first day of La Hora Americana, the American Hour, on 107.9 Radio CTC Yamasa.  Here’s my first playlist:

• One Republic- Everybody loves me
• Adele- Chasing Pavements
• Good Charlotte- Dance floor anthem
• Santogold- LES Artistes
• Metro Station- Disco
• Mute math- Electrify
• Klaxons- Golden skans
• One Republic- All the right moves
• The Ataris- Boys of summer
• 44- 155
• Jimmy Eat World- Sweetness
• Tracks like Trains- Eskimo
• The Arcade Fire- Rebellion
• The Postal Service- The district sleeps alone tonight
• Miike Snow- Song for no one
• The Temper Trap- Fader
• Florence + The Machine- Cosmic love
• Coldplay- Lost!
• Coldplay- Viva la vida
• Ratatat- Kennedy
• U2- Where the streets have no name
• U2- Sunday bloody sunday
• U2- With or without you

All this is preceded by an evangelical prayer show, which is pretty much an hour or so of solid chanting, wailing, yelling, and auditory agony, punctuated by spanish gospel-bachata-soft rock. I got to the broadcast room at 8:50am, ready to start at 9, and they were just ending a prayer-shouting session. Well, I thought they were… it went on for a solid 25 minutes longer, by which time Sugeidy appeared and asked why I hadn’t just kicked them out already.

It was pretty cool. I had talked on the radio before, but this was the first time I did it solo.

This afternoon I’m starting a Photoshop course.  It’ll be interesting.  My plan is to make it project-based, instead of just teaching off of Powerpoint… we’ll see how that goes.

I’m looking for a cat. Since my last post, 4 more tomato bushes have appeared in my yard. If I can do that (I’m totally taking credit for it), I can deal with a cat. However, it doesn’t look like Yamasa has many cats available for free. I saw one in front of a house the other day, and seriously thought about swiping it, but I hesitated, and kids came out of the house. So close. There is the crazy cat woman in Santo Domingo who tried to pass off a cat in a bag to us that one time, but I don’t think I ever want to interact with her again. Sugeidy thinks I should get a dog, because they’re less work than cats. I tried to explain that American dogs are actually more work, but that concept was lost.

Sideshow

I decided to finally mow my lawn again. The horse and goats haven’t been around lately to do the job, so I had a whack with it with my machete. This, of course, drew a crowd of neighbor women, who stood at a distance and smiled and pointed at me as I flailed at the overgrowth with a giant blade. You’d think they’d be used to it by now. Margo came over, holding her granddaughter, and in 5 broad sweeps with my machete, had cleared the area that I had been hacking away at.

One of the nice things about living on a tropical island is that STUFF GROWS. Sure, it sucks having to hack it down, but it also means that you can inadvertently grow big tomato bushes by throwing unused parts of tomatoes out your door (campo compost). Or, about a month ago, I threw out some rotten oranges, and now I have an orange tree. I also have what I think is basil, mint, and peppers. I sure hope the mint is actually mint, because Margo made some tea out of it.

Kids also grow really fast. Below are Joelvis and Javier, my host mom’s grandkids. When I got here, Joelvis was crawling around. Now, he can run and grow a pretty sweet afro.

That, of course, makes me kind of sad—my niece was born on December 3rd, and the next time I see her, she’ll probably be walking.

Med Mission #2

I spent the last week working in a clinic near Santiago with some other volunteers. The doctors were awesome, and it was a pretty great experience.  In the mornings we translated for patient intake, and in the afternoons we watched surgeries (and got to scrub in and help with a few). 

They were doing bumps and lumps—hernias, sebaceous cysts, and lipomas. I learned how to do interrupted and subcuticle sutures, cut out lipomas, and some other stuff that’ll come in handy if I ever get into trouble in the campo. 

This med mission was so, so much better than the first one I did.  The doctors were all professional, they knew what they were doing, it was well-planned, and they taught us about all the procedures they were doing. 

There was another group of med students doing gyno stuff, and I ended up translating for their pap smears and breast exams too.  I think it was their first time ever in a room with patients before, and they didn’t know Spanish, so they did a pretty good job of looking freaked out.  It was as if they were reading off a list of steps to do, and couldn’t remember what step they were on. So, while they were wigging out, I just chatted with the patients and kept them from fleeing.