Feliz Navidad!

From L to R: Luz Maria (host mom), me, Donald (host dad), Angelica (host sister), Gerobal (host brother)


The food.



Otoniel (another host brother) is on the right this time.




The family (minus Gabriel, another host brother)

Now some of you may be confused. I live with Luz Maria, Donald, and Gerobal permanently. Otoniel, Angelica, and Gabriel don't live with us permanently, but visit frequently.


Merry Christmas to everyone! The last week here has been a little slower than normal (which is rreeeaaallly slow) because it's Christmas. But, slow does not mean no weird experiences or cool new cultural understanding:

First, I went to a church service with my host mom. Here, "Christians" are Pentacostal Evangelicals, 7th Day Adventists...it's not an all encompassing word for someone who believes in Jesus Christ. So, I went to the "Christian" church here. First, I remembered to wear a skirt (their women don't wear pants unless they are riding a donkey or motorcycle) and was proud of myself for remembering that. But, then I get to the church (I walked over there with my host mom) and saw my host dad, so I went to sit by him. I was quickly told that that was the men's side of the church, I needed to sit on the women/children's side. No problem. After some opening songs, which I knew none of, they opened the floor for "Free Time." That is, anyone can come up to say something or lead a song. Most of this is no problem as people lead songs that everyone knows and so it goes smoothly. Well, one guy was a visitor and got up to lead a song that no one knew, so he was singing by himself....and he was not good. Then my host dad gets up there (and he is a good singer, so it was fine) and after his song starts talking about his daughter that is with him tonight (ie-me) and all this stuff about me. After I politely said I'll just stay where I'm at, things moved on until my host mom went up and did the same thing. Fine, now that the spotlight has been on me twice in one night, I got to sit back for the hour long sermon, which really didn't talk about much. All in all it wasn't a bad time, but 2 1/2 hours in a church is just a little too long for me.

Then, on Monday I was to go to a church's meal for children. This is the church that asked me to help them with the homework room and the birth certificate project. This guy told me he worked for the Catholic Church. This guy told me that this meal was going to be in the church up the street. This guy MEANT to say he is an adventist pastor and "up the street" as in a completely different town. Still, I did not realize this until two motorcycles showed up to take me and Claire (who I conned into going with me) up to this meal and I began to realize it was the church in town. Then we get there and we're at an Evangelical church. Ok, still, no big deal. Then he starts talking about how I'm going to go give English classes to those children. This wouldn't be a big deal if he wanted it once a week and was willing to pay for transportation, but teaching English isn't my main project and this isn't the town I'm supposed to be working in, so we'll see what we can work out. The food was good, though. Then, Claire and I saw the poorest people either of us had seen since coming into this country. The clothes were tattered, they obviously did not bathe much, and they ate EVERYTHING we gave them. We felt bad for them (they live in a pretty inaccessible part of the mountain, so these two children don't get any help and their mom doesn't want them to go to school). Then, the most well off people there were laughing at how poor they were, that kind of broke my Christmas spirit. Later, someone asked the pastor, quietly, why we were there. He said, I invited them, they can help with some of our projects. The woman replied: and they're rich. He said: yes. That again, broke a little of my spirit and made me wonder...they know we speak Spanish, why say those sort of blatant things right in front of us as if we don't understand?

The last two days have been fun. My host sister came into town. She's about 20 and lives in Santo Domingo and works at a bank. She is extremely nice and helpful. She speaks so clearly and I understand 100% of what she says. Plus, she sticks up for me. When people ask why I don't dance, she tells them they know nothing about American culture. I told her I don't like walking by the Discotech alone because of all the hissing and so she went with me and told off all the men. When people scoff that I'm not looking for a boyfriend, she tells them that they wouldn't be good enough anyway. And, if I don't understand someone, she translates it into clear Spanish, and when someone is being obnoxious with the hand gestures because they think my Spanish is so horrible, she yells at them and tells them my Spanish is probably better than theirs because I don't have a "campesino" (hick) accent. I'm glad she's here, obviously. Last night we had a huge meal of salads, rice/beans, chicken (which we cooked on an open flame outside because the "flavor" is better), empanadas (like a fried hot pocket), and APPLES (which are expensive here). It was great. Today we are just kind of lounging around and later my host sister might "fix my hair." If that happens, I'll take a picture.

Well, that's long enough. On the 27th I am heading to the South to see a friend's parents who are coming for the holiday and then for the New Years I will be on the north coast (Cabarete). Merry Christmas Everyone!

English Speaking Tourists!

Today we had our first English speaking tourists. One was from England and the other from Florida. No one bothered to tell me this until my host mom saw the dancers preparing this morning and said to my project partner, did anyone tell Brittany about this? Of course not, even though they found out last night (which is actually a lot of notice for here), so he came this morning and told me. I saw about to say, since they speak English, didn't you even think about the opportunity this would provide me? Apparently not, but it's ok, but I did get to take them around.

The guy from Florida, Carl, was quite a character. He was your typical old white man in thought, yet he's travelled the world and is now debating moving here. It was nice to talk to someone about world issues for a bit, and explain to him what I'm doing there. It was nice to have some tourists that were happy with the tour and seemed to enjoy it. It will be nice when the tour directors (which are not a part of my organization) start telling them the truth about coffee harvests so the tourists stop thinking they're going to see plantation-like farms and horses and slaves...

I am starting to put together my diagnostic that I will present to Peace Corps in the begining of February. I have most of the information, it's just hard to compile it in useful pieces, and in Spanish.

I got invited to a Secret Santa. I didn't realize really what he was asking me and by the time I did I couldn't think of a good enough excuse. Hopefully he forgets I said yes and doesn't come get me. That seems to happen a lot. Then, I also got invited to the Catholic Church's first "youth supper." This new pastor (the Catholic Church uses the word pastor here) is very on top of things and I hope I get to work with him a lot. He invited me to come early and meet the team and start building some relationships and meet some people to work with. I'm very glad he keeps thinking of me as someone to help him, I think we'll be able to accomplish some good things for the community.

I talked to my Dona, Luz, who has a small store here, about starting business classes for the people who own businesses. She said that they had a person here for 4 weeks that did this (from Infotep, which is a training organization ran by the government) and everyone loved it and learned a lot. So, I'm glad to hear that and will hopefully start these in February after I present my diagnostic. Also, as soon as the mayor brings in the computers for the computer center, I'm going to start teaching computer classes. It's weird, I still don't think I'm a very good teacher, but this is what I am going to end up doing with most of my time. At first, I thought that was bad, but since I'm only here for two years, it's better to teach people who to do things, so they can continue doing them when I'm gone...right?

More Pics

You can see there used to be a house there by the cliff, most of it fell into the river during last year's storm. The edge of the house that's still standing is hanging off the cliff.


There used to be a basketball court here, now it's just sand.

This used to be the high school, those were the windows. Over 9 feet of sand from a landslide nearly covered the entire high school.

By popular demand, a picture of me, taking by me, while taking pictures.

This is the view from the window in Claire's house. Claire is the PC Volunteer closest to me, in a town about 20 minutes away.

Christmas Party

I forgot my camera-Sorry!-so these are just two pictures I stole from someone else of the view from our party location.

Pictures!

The view I wake up to every morning. It's not as grand in picture as it is in real life. Guess you'll have to come visit to see it! Some mornings the fog is so dence you can only see the green house.


This is the view from my porch. There used to be a building there, but they tore it down to start building the new high school.



This is my porch. People come and sit in those chairs to watch the building be torn down from the picture above or the new high school being built. I sit on those chair for at least an hour every day usually.

Interviews and Computers

I finally did my interviews these last two days. The interviews are part of the diagnostic I am conducting about the community. Basically, I asked people what they thought the strengths and weaknesses of the community were and statistical things like their age, number of people that live in their house, and the education levels. It went wonderfully. My project partner set me up with a guide to help me because I am white (and therefore people think I am there to give them money and will not give me honest answers) and because I don't have the best Spanish (so he translated people's ramblings into something comprehensible for me). Thank God for him, he made it so easy. He's probably the best person I've worked with here. He had a plan for us before I even explained everything, where we were going to get the most houses done, and I didn't even have to explain what I wanted, he just kind went with it and did wonderfully. The best part, he's one of the people in the "youth" group (he's 26, but youth here include people up to 30), so I get to use him whenever I want and he's willing to help.

What did I find from the interviews, nothing too unusual. People want a new highway and streets. I'll admit, they're HORRIBLE, it takes and hour to go less than 30 Km. (that's about 18 miles). But, even if the road was good, that wouldn't really "fix" anything in the town, it's not like people can't leave or even choose not to, it would just make things more comfortable, and it's not like I can finance the construction of 30Km of road on a mountain. Second, people want better electricity. That would be nice, but, again, not something I can really accomplish without being President of the country. Next, a hospital. Correction, they have the hospital building, which some foreign NGO built for them. Then the NGO turned it over to the government to staff and equip, which they have never done. This is actually something I could possibly help. There are a lot of NGOs I could ask for help and I could get a meeting with the Secretary of Health and plead my case. My hesitation is, do they really need an entire hospital? I agree that they need medical staff here permanently. Right now they have a Dr. that travels to the town 4 days a week. So, if there is an emergency, that person has to wait over an hour (if they can find someone to take them, there is no ambulance) to get to the city for help. If that person is from one of the surrounding campos, it's more than an hour, if at all. But, I'm not sure an entire hospital STAFFED 24/7 is necessary or cost effective. Lastly, they want jobs. Well, I am an economic development worker, so hopefully I can help here at least.


My next project for the week was thanks to the Secretary of Education. As a political ploy he decided to give computers to the top performers in the graduating high school class. He failed to realize that he gave them ENGLISH versions Microsoft Vista. They are pretty nice computers, 64-bit, 320GB hard drive (not that these kids would ever need 320 GB, they don't have internet to download anything). Well, because they're in English, these kids couldn't use them, so they came to me to figure out how to change them. Apparently, unless you have Vista Ultimate or Enterprise, you cannot change the language (you were supposed to by the correct language in the first place) without upgrading. Obviously these kids can't pay the US$200 to change their computers, so I found some pirate software to change it for them. Well, because the internet here is super slow, it took ELEVEN hours to download, geesh. Now, they have working computers in Spanish. Next problem, none of the kids have ever owned a computer, many have hardly used one. So, my project now is being "on-call" when they want to do things like copy music or change their desktop screen (which is basically all they can do, they didn't even come with Microsoft Works, let alone Office). At least I'm on the good side of the high school's top performers now, I can tap them for help when I need it.

Banana Bread and Strangers

So my Dona and I finally made our banana bread in her dutch oven. It's not a dutch oven like the charcoal using cast iron ones that people think of, it's an aluminum one made for use indoors over a propane stove, for people who don't have ovens (like us). Most people here don't have ovens, or if they do, they don't use them. Baking is practically non-existant. The banana bread was something my boss told the women's group here that we could do and they could sell to the tourists (why she put this idea in there head, I have no idea), but I thought I better make sure I could successfully make it in a dutch oven before showing the entire women's group what I failure I am (that is, if they could ever get a meeting together). The bread was successful, a little burnt on the outside, but nothing too bad, definately edible. Now comes the next problem, every one tried it but no one will eat it! They all liked it and I was like, have some more, and they just keep saying that it's my food. I find this so strange because this is such a sharing culture, if you have a hard candy you bite off half and give the rest to the stranger sitting next to you, yet my own "family" refuses to eat a lot of the bread because it's "mine"...go figure. I will now eat an entire loaf of banana bread by myself.

The second new thing is how weird it is for me with the community porches. This random guy keeps coming up to our porch and sitting, talks for a bit, and leaves. He sits there even if no one is out there with him or even if the door is closed and no one is home. I figured he was a friend of my family....apparently not. My Dona told me today that when I leave make sure I put my computer away because she doesn't know the man sitting on the porch! I was thinking, if you don't know him, tell him to go away! That is not the culture here, if he wants to sit on the porch, that's fine, but you need to make sure all your valuables are put out of site, just incase the guy is a theif. I just want to be like, your porch is part of your property, it's not a community park, you can kick people out...but that would be rude. So, I am off to meet with my project partner, with my computer safely tucked away in my locked room.

Deconstruction & projects

They have started destructing a building across the street from my house in order to build a new high school. This is a big deal because our municipality has the worst school system in the country (so you can imagine how bad it is). The problem is, a new high school isn't really going to make the school system better, at least not in the amount of kids that stay in school or how much they learn, but that is for another discussion. My recent discovery is how you tear down a building in rural DR. First, you call the entire town to come watch. Fine, except in this culture, everyone's porch is for whatever passerby, so my porch is suddenly so crowded with people (as it has the best viewing spot) that there would be no way to leave my house if I wanted to. Then, they procede to knock down the walls (made of tin) and doors. Fairly normal, but all done by hand, there is no power equipment to do this sort of stuff. This was day one. Then, little by little, the concrete foundation is starting to be beaten down into polvo (dust). Again, this is done by men with hammers, not a mechanical jack-hammer. There doesn't seem to be any method to it either, it seems pretty random, people will just come up and start hammering at the concrete until they get tired and quit.

Next, the trees. They need to get rid of the trees on this property because the high school will be too big. I just kept thinking about how much protest there would be in the states if people cut down these trees (about 5 of them), but here no one cares. Then, they start a small fire around the roots of the tree to get them to turn to ashes on one side (could you imagine this in Custer?) Then, they hack the other side of the roots with an ax (without eye protection, OSHA would have a field day) and tie a rope around the tree to pull it down. I asked why they didn't tie the rope to a truck and just drive to pull it down and they said finding and relying on a truck driver to show up would be too much work. So, they do it all manually. Then, they burn the tree. Needless to say my house has been full of smoke lately and my cough has not subsided.

Good News: a pastor of one of the churches came up to me today and asked if I'd be willing to help him with some projects. One is a "sala de tarea", which is basically a room for kids to come get help with their homework. Many youth volunteers do this, and even though I'm not a huge fan of kids, organizing something like this would be fairly easy and helpful for the kids. The other project is for "actos de nacimientos"...AKA birth certificates. This is a huge problem in this country. If you don't have a birth certificate you can't go to school, get a bank account, or join many organizations. Getting a birth certificate can be fairly easy...if both your parents have one (meaning they were born here and aren't Haitian) and take the hospital slip within two years to the "courthouse."

The problem comes in a couple forms, first, you either need both your parents or your father to sign for you, you cannot be just a single mom and get a birth certificate. I was told this was not a put-down to mothers but to try and get father's to take responsibility. Well, that doesn't really work, there's no incentive to take responsibility for your child, and really, only the child is hurt in this process. Additionally, many people live very far from a "courthouse" to take care of this and getting to one is difficult, so they just never do it. It is not an automatic process like in the US. So, if you wait to do this until the child is older than 2, it costs money (apparently "a lot", but I don't know how much). When you kid wants to go to school you realize you should have gotten him a birth certificate a while ago. So, we are going to try and do a "drive" to get some kids their birth certificates so they can go to school and have a more normal life. Why kids should be punished for their parents lack of responsibility, I don't know, but that seems to happen a lot everywhere.