Food grows on trees here

Sugar cane and bananas

An interesting difference in the daily life of suburban Michigan and the Dominican countryside is the natural knowledge of the people. In some ways it seems as though teaching environmental values is going to be more difficult here because there is less formal education. There is trash everywhere. It’s as rare here to see someone use a trash can as it is to see someone not use one in the States. However, there is more of a connection with the land and the resources than we have in the States. In our culture we recognize the products and although there are a great many Americans who know the natural environment, the majority of people where I come from cannot identify a tree and its uses unless they bought it and planted it themselves in front yard…myself included in most cases. We can identify the wood in a hard wood floor but can’t pick the tree out of a line up, let alone a forest.

Have you ever thought about the natural form of the things you eat and use? Aside from the Halls menthol candies and the boxed, ultraviolet light-treated milk, the grand majority of products here in the campo are grown here and the people know them in their natural forms.

Avacado!

Cashews for example – we know what cashews are, they come salted in tins and are delicious, a little expensive. Do you know how they grow? Is it a tree, bush or do they grow underground? Have you ever considered it? Have you ever eaten the fruit?

Though I originally pegged him as a bit of a callejero – a street guy - with his gelled hair and shiny dress shoes, my 20 year old brother is an astonishing wealth of information on the plants, trees, insects and birds of this place. You would think that a guy like this would be way too cool to hang out with the strange American girl whose always wearing that stupid looking motorcycle helmet, but I have been extremely lucky to have a professor on all things natural here. We spend countless hours every week wandering down the river, sifting through my book of Dominican trees and discussing the uses and habits of all the organisms. The other day we were looking through the tree book when we came across Cajuil (ca – hwheel). It’s a small tree with a strange shaped fruit that he told me yields a nut that you can dry and eat. While looking at the drawing of the fruit and listening to his mini-lecture it dawned on me that the shape was quite familiar. I went to my room to retrieve the delicious trail mix that had been lovingly sent from the States and returned to him with a handful of cashews…the nut that just a few minutes early he had been describing to a woman who had no idea what he was talking about. He was astonished and glad to taste the delicious treat without all the work of harvesting and drying it!

A cashew growing off the bottom of the fruit!

May 15th: Work, Day One

… and by work I mean that my project partner takes me around our office introducing me to people. It’s hard starting a new job, trying to remember everyone and make a good impression...and like everything I've done in this country so far, even harder in Spanish. I just attended my first meeting with my work group. A group of 6 young to middle aged men who live super interesting lives, walking a fine line between rural farmers and environmental development professionals. The combination of things that they accomplish everyday is evident in their uniform; nice looking work boots, a nice collared shirt for meetings, and along with the baseball cap long sleeves to keep the tropical sun off the skin. I can't wait to get to know them better and have the privilege to work alongside them! Everyone in the office and in my community has been amazingly welcoming. Since I got here I can’t count the times I’ve heard “Cual quier cosa…en su orden” – “Whatever thing you want…at your order” - It sounds a little more like servitude when you translate it into English, but here it’s just really genuine and endearing.

I try to convey how difficult it is to be here without sounding like I want to come home and try to explain how much I love life here without demeaning the sacrifices we make in our daily lives to do the work we do. The Peace Corps does pretty well in describing it when they say, “It’s the hardest job you’ll ever love.” Teaching biology in an urban high school at 23 years old was the hardest job I’ve ever loved, but this is certainly a close second.

The Life of an Environmental Development Worker

The mission of Peace Corps volunteers is to create an avenue for cultural exchange and to assist in developing countries need for skilled workers. For each of us the first priority is realized in relatively the same manner, but the second changes based on our qualifications and experience.

My second priority is environmental development. In order to work towards sustainability in this area I work in coalition with two regional organizations to plan informal environmental education. As part of our work all PCDR volunteers conduct a community diagnostic to determine the general facts of the community, the strengths and the weaknesses. I say PCDR because each Peace Corps country program is completely different and this is not necessarily the way it works everywhere. Although we already have an idea of what the community wants us to do – because they request us - this diagnostic helps us get to know the people and the true needs. Because I’m still getting to know this place my work will change over the course of the two years but this is how I have been spending my days lately:

6 – 7am Running and Yoga. I still don’t have a bike and I’m starting to notice all the white rice gathering around my waistline, so although I absolutely hate it I’ve been running every week day. I run before the tropical sun gets to high in the sky and before the trucks begin throwing the dusty road into the air. I feel great afterwards and I’m meeting more people because they see me run by everyday and love my running partner, San (pictured below). A few of the local girls have shown interest too, so maybe it will even turn into something bigger.



730am Breakfast. Fried egg over one of the following starchy vegetables – they call them viveres and there are countless varieties that they apparently never tire of. They include potato, batata, yucca, yautia and squash and we don’t have a meal without them. I don’t eat this for breakfast anymore as my family is now buying oatmeal, peanut butter and bananas and I imagine that my cholesterol was skyrocketing from massive egg intake. We also have tea with breakfast every morning.

8-12pm Because I’m still getting to know my community and defining my work here it’s hard to describe what I do everyday in a concise way. Basically I do whatever people invite me to but largely I am riding around on the back of a motorcycle supervising reforestation of private lands or meeting with community leaders to get to know the people in my 6 work communities. I work with an organization called Plan Sierra, Inc. that has been doing reforestation – mostly with Pine – and other environmental development activities for the last 30 years in this region. The dark green tree line in the photo above is all part of a huge pine forest that they are responsible for. Usually my project partner and I are visiting private properties to study how the recent reforestations of pine trees have survived. He is also an agronomist so we spend a lot of time visiting lime orchards, diagnosing diseases and recommending pesticides and fungicides, organic and synthetic, to the farmers growing your limes. I’ve also recently started work on my first book! A fellow environment volunteer and I are writing a curriculum for Peace Corps on how to use English language classes to teach environmental issues. We are super excited about having some sort of concrete project to work on and we hope to have it done by Thanksgiving.

Eventually my work will be almost entirely doing environmental lectures and activities in the schools and with community groups such as the women’s groups, youth groups, and neighborhood associations. I also hope to start an environmental youth group and a girl scouts-like club as we are severely in need of youth activities in my community.

12-2pm Lunch time! Lunch is the biggest meal here and everyone comes home to eat every day, and every day we have what they call La Bandera Dominicana – the Dominican flag – rice, beans, and meat, usually chicken and sometimes salad.

2-4pm In addition to using this time to hang out with my siblings and plan English classes I have been learning the business of limes! My dad grows, buys and sells limes for export to the United States and I have been taking advantage of the opportunity to learn all about the crop. Many days I spend bouncing around in the cab of a truck, riding hours up the dusty mountain road to buy limes. The other day I found myself parked, alongside three young men who have become my brothers and two Haitian workers, atop a truck load of limes. Turns out in order to buy limes you have to know how many there are… and so went the next two hours, and my freshly painted nails…counting limes.



4-8pm Teaching English….thoughts on world domination… Here at PCDR small projects that earn you confiansa –trust – and help you get to know the community are called quick wins. My quick win? Teaching English. When I applied to Peace Corps I told them that I would not teach English and I’ve spent a great deal of time considering the pros and cons. I’ve probably spent more time thinking about this than anything else since I’ve been here. I once believed that teaching English would just be a reinforcement of the idea that the people of the world, and specifically those from the Dominican Republic, need to learn English to be successful. I’ve since come to the conclusion that that me teaching English does not affect the reality that the economy of this country is controlled by the United States. The majority of large companies here, including those that process the sugar and tobacco are American and the two biggest money makers of this country are 1) Tourism (from the United States and European countries) and 2) Remittances – money from family members living in New York. My community is relatively well off and has the highest emigration rate to the States of any in the Dominican Republic. The people here have the things they need, and although there are still countless opportunities for education in every sector, they want more than anything else from me, to learn English. I am here improving my education and quality of life by learning Spanish and it would be silly to deny them the same while they are giving so much to me. And so, for better or for worse I am spending four evenings a week teaching English. We have a lot of fun with it, and eventually I’ll be trying out my new environmental curriculum on them!

8pm Dinner. Fried egg over starchy vegetable…always.