Still No Internet

This will probably be a long post, I still have no internet, so here's an update on the last few weeks.

Wedding:  I finally got to see a Dominican Wedding.  There are two ways to get married here.  The first is to leave the house where you live with your father (if your a girl) and go spend the night at your boyfriends house.  You stay there for 7 days and then you're married and there's a big party.  Obviously, it's just common law marriage, but that's what the majority of people in the rural areas are.  This wedding was the other way to get married, in the church, with papers.  It was basically an American wedding, there is a "Maid of Honor" and a "Best Man", and the dad walks the Bride down the isle.  This one was fancy and there was a GORGEOUS cake and pictures.  There were two big differences.  One, as the wedding party is walking down the isle, the "MC" is announcing what is going on, kind of like a beauty pageant:  "Here comes the bride's sister, her maid of honor, isn't she precious ladies and gentlemen, oh and here is the ring bearer, Carlos, son of Manuel and Julia, how adorable."  Then, while there is an "official" photographer, he just has a regular digital camera, so everyone else is running up and down the aisle and getting close and taking pictures.  For the first kiss, the entire audience had their camera phones out and walked up to take pictures, it was crazy.

Hospital:  We have FOUR doctors now.  Each doctor has an assigned health promotor and they should be going to the mountain communities once a week to see the people who can't get to the hospital easily.  We are still working on getting patients to be able to stay overnight, but we are at least making progress.

Business Classes:  My business classes are actually going OK.  I have about 10 people showing up.  I know a lot of it is going over their heads, but just taking the initiative to come is good.  The harder stuff (accounting, costing/pricing) is coming up, and I've told them I'd be available to go over things individually if they want.  That is where the most change will come, hopefully.

Stoves:  The volunteer next to me, Claire, is doing a stove project.  All of the women in her community cook on an open fire, these stoves are wood burning stoves that use less wood and have a chimnea to keep the fire out of their faces.  They're very good for those who have to cook outside on an open fire.  Now, my community wants them as well.  Most of the people in my community have an indoor kitchen and a gas stove.  Gas is expensive, so they want these stoves. I'm not too thrilled about doing this for people that don't need them, but there are some people in my community that really do need them.  So, I will start working on this project, but I have a feeling it will be a huge headache, wish me luck.

I am in a Spanish training session until next week, so I should have internet pretty much every day!  Use this time to talk to me because who knows when the internet will be back in my site!

I am most likely getting a cat now because a mouse crawled on my mosquito net while I was in it and I'm not putting up with that.  I found a woman who has a pregnant cat and told her I wanted one of the kittens, she thinks she'll give birth in a month, we'll see if I actually get one once the kittens are born, but I hope so, I can't live with mice IN my house...

Open for Business

If you’ve ever seen a Rube-Goldberg machine, you know that there is usually one part that happens really slowly, such as the burning of a string, but as soon as it’s done, everything else falls into place rather quickly.  Everything up until that point happens quickly, and everything after that point happens quickly, but there’s that point where it all slows down.  We were at that point with the hospital project.  We got the people organized and behind the project rather fast, we got the equipment (again, thanks Mom!) quickly, we had appointments with the government in quick succession.  Then, we were just at a standstill, waiting for the government to come repair the hospital building and allow us to move in.  In my last blog I was ecstatic that they were finally working on the hospital, but imagined it would take quite a while for them to finish.  In two days, they finished the hospital and we moved in!  Then, three days later, they sent a commission with two more doctors (that are married to each other, so they won’t feel so lonely here), some reception area furniture, and the promise that they will send more stuff and even picked a date to meet about the progress!  It’s all finally fallen into place and we are the first rural hospital in our province and the municipality has 24/7 medical care for the first time EVER!  It is such a great accomplishment, I am so happy, and I was really overwhelmed when the people and the government representatives suggested naming the hospital after me!  I don’t deserve the recognition (ok, maybe my blonde hair deserves recognition as it motivated the government), but I am so happy to know that the people in my community are as excited about this as I am.

I start giving business classes tomorrow, hopefully people show up.  I set it up in a way that gives people the option of coming to any or all of the classes.  We will start and finish each topic in on class, so if they are interested in costing and pricing but not marketing, they don’t need to attend that class.  I also decided to make them all free.  When I passed out the information about the classes, people seemed disinterested (even though when I asked them before if they’d be interested they all said ‘yes’).  We’ll see if anyone shows up.

The technology center should be open this week and I should start giving classes (I have 53 students for a total of 4 classes, twice a week!) the next week.  I’ll start out with very basic computer classes and then we will start with more advanced things.  My project partner’s daughter, Lina, got a full scholarship to college and thinks she wants to study systems engineering.  She is worried about not being able to find a job so I’m hoping with this class and the technology volunteer I’m bringing in she can learn if she wants to study that or not.  All in all, things are going well here, even though we are still suffering from the effects of all the rain (still no internet and the roads are really washed out), and I’m very content at the moment.