Finishing up

 It's been a while since I've posted anything, not because nothing has been interesting, but because I was waiting to see the houses my project partner has found for me to live in.  He says he's found 2, and I get to pick which one I want.  After 4, yes, 4, missed appointments for him to take me to see them, I decided to just write what's been new the last week or so.

So, first, looks like I will get to move out of my host families house.  The fact of the matter is, I will still probably be here nearly everyday to use the internet and talk to my family, but they're still a little sad.  My host mom said she would have to see the house first and tell me what security changes (such as bolts on the door) I would need to make since I was going to be a young white woman living alone.  I informed her Peace Corps would be tougher than she was, but she's more than welcome to come check it out.  Now, I just need to actually get to see them.  She also informed me a woman from her church will be renting her house, for RD$5,000/mo.  Let's just say, there's no way I could afford that.  Apparently, no one can, and she's thinking about putting a wall in her house to make it two apartments, and then maybe I could live there.  $2,500 is still a little steep though.

I have been rigorously finishing up my diagnostic the last week.  I had to write a diagnostic report and construct a powerpoint presentation to give at my 3-month in service training next week.  Let's just say, writing a professional community and organizational assessment in Spanish is no easy task.  Thank God Microsoft Word knows more Spanish than me.  When I approached my project partner about coming to the training with me (he has to for two days, which he's always known) he acted shocked he had to take 2 days off his schedule.  I told him he could send someone else I worked with, but he didn't like the sound of that.  I am begining to see why he is always busy, he doesn't know what the word "Delegate" means.  That may have to be on a leadership training schedule.  Either way, this training will be good and bad.  It will be good to see everyone from my sector group in a small intimate environment, it will be good to lay down things with my project partner with the supervision of my boss (who will lead him in the right direction with more authority than I have), and it will be good to get off the mountain a couple days (although it has been getting warmer-which means more bugs are coming out, ugh.)  It will be bad in that it will be entirely in Spanish the first two days.  While I'm definitely much more comfortable in Spanish now, I still sometimes feel I will miss something very important when it's being said in Spanish.  Second, because I still have to pay attention to understand what's going on in Spanish, I find it incredibly easy to just day dream and not hear anything that's going on.

There was a big meeting on Saturday about the government's new reforestion project they are doing in the area.  It was supposed to be a community meeting to answer questions of the local famers and community members about what to expect.  Instead, it was a pointless show of the Secretary of Environment and his people about what they were going to do and how great it was, and they didn't even have a question session.  It also ended in the mayor's staff (which my host brother works for) being insulted because everyone and their mother was invited to this, except them.  I thought it was funny because they think they are much more powerful than they are and this just showed what little speck on the radar they actually are, but I had to hear about it for the entire day.  Claire, my PCV neighbor, is an environment volunteer and therefore has a project that is going to be funded by this major governmental project.  So, we got swept up by the boss and taken to the special lunch and then out for some drinks.  It ended up with the boss of CODOCAFE (the government's organization to help coffee farmers) taking Claire and I up to her site to "see" the official project site.  In reality, it's just that these men are pretty much all sleeze-bags and get their kicks off hanging out with the Americans and telling us how awesome they are because they spent a week in Miami once.  I remind them that the part of Miami they were in is basically just an extension of the DR, so it doesn't really count.  It was nice to hang out with more educated members of the DR society, who actually knew what Barack Obama's positions are and didn't just think he was a good candidate because he was "black like us", but the culture schtick of gross old men thinking they have a shot with young American women crosses all educational and socio-economic lines.  

Tomorrow, I plan on finally making pumpking bread with my host mom and finally seeing the housing options...

Donkeys, Viveros, and Hair

Many of you have already heard of my adventure last Tuesday of bringing 5 donkeys loaded with coffee down a mountain. I set out to interview a campo (Montiada Nueva) with a guide. After riding his donkey up the mountain and interviewing this campo, I was to wait at the local school for my next guide. I was going to spend the night in the neighboring campo (Los Naranjos) and interview them the next day. After waiting for about 5-6 hours, it started to get dark and I began to think my guide was not coming. Not wanting to try and get down the mountain in darkness (not a safe idea), I decided to follow a teenage boy down the mountain with this 5 donkeys carrying coffee. After they apologized profusely that I would have to walk instead of being able to ride a donkey, we started on the journey. All was going well (There is no other place to walk but on the path, so leading the donkeys is quite easy) until we came to a fork in the path and half the donkeys went one way and half the other. The poor kid ran after the other donkeys that went down the wrong path, but the ones going down the right path kept going, so I went to stop them. He was quite impressed (really, all I did was stand in front of the donkey and he was happy to have a break to eat some grass). Then, the boy's dad came on his horse and I finally realized why most people use donkeys instead of horses, the horse almost slid into my 3 times before I gave up and walked behind him. He was very unstable on that steep, narrow path. The donkeys split up a couple times again and me, being more nimble than that stupid horse, stopped the other donkeys while the mis-directed ones got rounded up. The man was also quite impressed and offered me a job. I declined on the pretext that holding docile donkeys was about the limit of my skills. I didn't say that the life of super-rural DR coffee growers didn't exactly appeal to me.

After we got the donkeys down the mountain, they then were going to walk them into town and were very surprised when I said I would just find a motorcycle taxi to take me in. I felt a little bad, but it started raining hard right as I got home and I was very glad I was not still on the road walking with some wet, smelly donkeys.

A vivero is a nursery for plants. Claire's community wants fruit trees and it seems to be cheaper to build a vivero and grow the trees rather than buy already grown ones. This, of course, is a lot more work, and her community decided they would rather that she finds more money and just buys them rather than putting work into building a vivero. After a heated community meeting, Claire and her project partner won and she is now in charge of building a vivero for her community. Since we were both in the capital for a meeting, we decided to go together to San Cristobal (the major stop on the way to our municipality) to the government vivero to see how much seedlings cost. The directions we had, however, left a lot to be desired. I had my huge packback on carrying new art supplies, my laptop, my clothes, mail, and books. It was a ton of fun walking around San Cristobal like that, but we eventually found it. Of course, it was closed, but there was some guy outside laying on the concrete that seemed to know everything we needed to know. The only plants available (and even that meant in a couple months) were chinola (passion fruit). It takes about 100 chinola plants to fill a tarea (about 1/6 of an acre), and the community wants to plant about 100 tareas with chinola. Good luck.

Hair. I have stopped washing my hair everyday. It's too cold and just not worth it. I try to wash it every three days. To people here, that is still too much. They do not understand that I do not have the same hair as they do. My hair is not dry, kinky, afro-type hair. It is wet, straight, greesy-type hair. Most people here put grease in there hair to try to get it to cooperate. I haven't washed my hair in 4 days now, it's been so cold and I've been busy. A girl yesterday ran her hands through my hair and said, wow, how do you get it so smooth and soft (ie-greasy). I told her it was because it was so dirty. The look on her face told me they will never again wonder at why I wash my hair as much as I do.

Oyopriete

Blow this picture up and you can see my house and a couple other things I've pointed out.


On Thursday I went to Oyopriete, which is a small campo about a 30 minute moto ride from Los Cacaos. I went there because they are a part of our municipality and I wanted to find out what sort of problems they need help with and to get to know the people. My guide got me a moto to go and wait for him at the entrance to the walking path to the campo, and told me to just wait at the house because he rode his donkey into town and needed to get it back out there. So, needless to say the moto was much faster than the donkey and I got fairly aquainted with the house at the entrance to the walking path. When he did get there, he told me I could ride the donkey and he would walk. At first I felt this was incredibly unfair, this guy had to be in his 50s or older, but he wouldn't take no for an answer, I'm a woman and a foreigner, I get the donkey. Getting up on this donkey was the next challenge. It had a saddle type thing but no stirrups or horn to use to pull myself up, and it wasn't tightly attached, so I couldn't pull on the saddle at all. Finally he gave me a boost and I was on my way.

About 20 minutes in I realized I really should have walked, not because of the leg pain (which I was worried about), but because these hills were STEEP and I was practically sliding off the donkey with the saddle and had to stirrups to balance myself. Then, he kept telling the donkey to hurry up. Walking on the side of a mountain with a steep drop off to one side made me tell the donkey to slow down, take your time, and not drop me off the mountain. We went to about 5 houses and talked to about 7 different families. At each house I got to opportunity to show my amazing donkey de-mounting skills. All of these people pull their leg over the head of the donkey and slide down on their butts. Me, being used to stirrups, kept putting my leg over the butt of the donkey, reached for a stirrup that wasn't there, and then slid down on my stomach. Graceful.

Besides the donkey uncomfortableness (it was a 45 minute donkey ride, eachway), I got to meet some very nice ladies who seemed very willing to help me if I wanted to strengthen the women's club that everyone is apart of but that no one attends. It is becoming really apparent that the hospital (as seen in the map) needs to be a priority. These women, if they are pregnant, have no chance of getting to a hospital to give birth in unless they're lucky and happen to be in town when they go into labor. It would take them more than 3 hours to get to the nearest hospital, if they have a donkey to carry them (I can't imagine a woman in labor walking 45 minutes down this mountain). As a result, most of the women end up having their children on the walking path as they're attempting to make it down the mountain. This country has one of the worst mortality rates of women while giving birth, so this should be addressed while I'm here. The second sad thing I saw was a young boy (probably about 3) with down syndrome. To me, it was obvious, as it would be to anyone in the US. They told me he had TB. But they also told me he has seen a doctor in San Cristobal, so I'm hoping they just don't know what it's really called, but the doctor does, and this kid is getting some sort of medical care. Either way, he will never attend any sort of school or have any sort of independance, but then, should the whole family move to the city (where they have no skills to work, they're all substinance farmers) so this kid can get a semi-education and lead a semi-independant life?

Santa Gracia and Dia De Los Reyes

The day after getting back Claire and I went to a meeting with my project partner association. They have a delegate from the surrounding campos come to these meetings to discuss problems they are having. Claire came because the director of the environment program (her boss) wants to put another volunteer in the area, so she was talking to the delegates to see if anyone wanted a volunteer. I came because I wanted to visit these campos for my diagnostic, to see if there were any pressing issues I should address in my work. We decided to visit one campo, Santa Gracia, together the next day.

We get in motorcycles to go, because a car really wouldn't be able to make it on this road. It is about a 45 minute moto ride to this town. We get there and all the houses are nice trailor houses, and the community building is REALLY nice! We start asking questions, like what NGO build all this stuff for them. They told us that it was the government. Now, with my experience with the government here, they wouldn't do something like that without a REALLY good reason. Turns out the buildings were built to house the Italian engineers the government imported to build the dam in the river near-by. After the dam was finished and the Italians left, the government just forgot about the buildings. It's a community of squatters in the middle of no-where. Weird.

Then we went to take a walk around town and meet the people. Of course people thought we were there to give them food or money or things like that, but most were receptive after we explained to them that we were volunteers and didn't have anything to give them. We were trying to get them a volunteer. One woman we met had 7 children in her squatter's apartment. None of them had birth certificates or attended school. She claimed they were malnourished, but they did not have the signs we've been trained to look for. It was apparent, however, that the woman had mental health issues and the kids basically have no chance to ever break out of the cycle she's set for them. The second tragedy we saw there was a 5-year old little girl. She has a disease that keeps her from growing up, literally. She is the size of an infant and has what looks like a corrected cleft pallet and consequently can hardly breath. They feed her liquids only as she cannot sit up, chew, talk, crawl, or any of these things, she can barely open her eyes. I'm not sure there is any viable medical care available for this issue, but if there is, this girl will never have access to it and her parents will have to care for her until she dies, which I assume will be prematurely.

January 6th is the Three Kings day (you know, when the 3 Wise Men gave Jesus gifts). Here, this is the day that kids get presents for Christmas, not on Dec. 25th. Well, as a political gesture, the senator from my area of the province came out to give gifts to the children. He lives in San Cristobal, which is about an hour drive by private car, but that's not quick enough I guess because he arrived by helicopter. Which makes so much sense, he wouldn't want to use the bridges about ready to fall into the river that he still hasn't repaired from last year's storm, and since he hasn't repaired them, I'm sure he has plenty of money around to get a helicopter to bring him 28 km (< 18 miles). That's my first annoyance. Then, he sends a team of people from our local government up to the campos to give out toys to those kids. In Claire's campo, all was going well. There were a lot of visiting kids who hadn't signed up to get toys (you had to sign up about a week ago), but there were enough to give them toys anyway. Then come the Haitian kids. There are two Haitian families in Claire's campo, and those kids had signed up when the list came around. However, when they went to collect their toys, the guy told them that he couldn't give them toys, even though they had signed up. The discrimination is so blatant it's sickening sometimes. I tried to think of a reasonable argument for the guy, like since they're "illegal" they don't pay taxes which is what paid for the toys, but NO ONE in the campo pays taxes, not one. The other thought was that because they didn't have birth certificates they couldn't get them, but that's such a problem in these campos that hardly any of the kids have birth certificates. Nope, it was just blatant "racism" which is in quotes because while the Haitains are "blacker" I sometimes can't tell the difference in skin color at all. It's more nationalism if there is such a thing.

New Years!

My feet and the beach at Cabarete

Me sitting on the pool-side chairs at Casa Bonita

The river in Baharuco

The ocean in Baharuco

Happy New Years to everyone! I hope everyone had an exciting and safe New Years. I did, so don't be alarmed at any of the following stories:

I left my site on Dec. 27th to head to Baharuco (in the South West) to visit another volunteer. Getting to this site from mine requires 4 bus trips. The first two went off without a hitch. Then, for the third one, the longest, the busses kept getting filled before I got on them. So, I finally got on a bus, standing room only. It was SO uncomfortable. Then, I got to my 4th bus, got on, and immediately told the cobrador (the person who collects the money and regulates the stops) that I needed to get off before the bridge at the "Casa Bonita" which is this hotel near Baharuco and I didn't know exactly where that was. He told me, no worries, he'll stop there. Well, I see the sign and ask him, and we've passed it, so I got out and walked back. Fun stuff. The next day we decide to go to the beach (being that I still hadn't been to one in this island) and swim. Well, let's just say this ocean is very vengeful. We get in and immediately get knocked down. These waves were very powerful. One would be trying to take your feet out to sea while one would be trying to push your head underwater. It was literally as if they were trying to kill you. So, after loosing my sunglasses and almost my swimsuit, we decided to get out.

That night we went to the town high school graduation. That was fairly nice until they did fireworks and the young boys kept picking them up and shooting them at people. The next day we went to the river, which was cold, but a nice walk. Then we ate at the Casa Bonita (thanks to Dad's Christmas present) and left the next day for our New Year's trip.

After travelling for about 7 hours we arrived in a town near Santiago to stay at another volunteer's house. There were 10 of us, so most of us slept on the cement floor. We got empanadas and yucca balls for dinner, it was great. We left the next day for Cabarete, another 3-4 hours on a bus. We get there, check into the hotel, and head to the BEACH.

Unfortunately there was no surfing in Cabarete like expected, you had to go to another beach and it just seemed like a big hassle. So we just lounged around on the beach and in the ocean all day, had some good dinner, and rocked in the New Year with fireworks on the beach. The next day was much of the same, lounging on the beach all day. Then, some of our volunteers were walking on the street (keep in mind, Cabarete is a major tourist spot and we actually aren't the only white people for once), and some girl came up, grabbed one of their purses, and ran away, in broad daylight. Needless to say, that put a damper on their night.

The next day we headed out of Cabarete and I headed back to my site, on the other side of the country. It was a long day and I was happy to arrive in the capital to see all my Christmas packages! Thank you to EVERYONE who sent me something, it's so great to get mail, especially when that mail contains chocolate :) I am now back in my site and had a 6 hour long meeting today, so am a little tired. Looks like I'll have a lot of work this month as I'll be visiting a bunch of small small campos to meet people there. Wish me luck!