One English student

When I first arrived in my site a year and some months ago I ran into a Haitian man in the colmado – convenience store – who asked me in English, if I would help him with his English. I told him of course but then I never saw him again until recently. Now, Tuesday and Thursday mornings he shows up at 8am on his beat up motorcycle, always on time and dressed in the best clothes I imagine he has...he looks very nice. The motorcycle doesn’t have a seat on the back because in the afternoons he straps a cooler on when he drives from community to community selling ice cream for 5-15 pesos (14-43 cents) a piece.

His native language is Creole and he also speaks French fluently, as both are spoken in Haiti, French more commonly by the rich. He learned basic Spanish and English in school as well. Haitian’s are known here for being great with languages. But he doesn’t know Spanish well enough to have an easy time translating for me the English that I test him on. But as we find ourselves here in the DR, somewhere between Haiti and the US, it is the language the two of us need to use as an intermediate to communicate since neither of us speaks the other’s native tongue. I spend an hour with him two days a week, learning new vocabulary, fixing his broken grammar and trying very hard to help him overcome his French/Creole language tendency to change Rs into Ws when he speaks. For example, in Creole, pre means close but it’s pronounced pwe.

Every time he comes he brings me breakfast of a combination cheese-filled crackers, chocolate milk and/or red (Washington) apple but other payment includes good laughs and learning a tiny bit of French and Creole. I’ll surely learn more when we get him a French to English dictionary!

Summer Camping

In what some would consider pure masochism, I decided to organize a weekend trip for my Green Brigade to one of the national parks, an hour into the mountains from our homes. Armando Bermudez is the national park that houses the highest point in the Caribbean and is often referred to as the mother of the waters, as so many of our rivers begin there. For nearly all of my brigade it was their first time inside the park and for all but one it was the first time they had ever seen the river that supplies all the water that they use to drink, cook, bathe and wash.

When the old, giant, land-cruiser-like truck (which we now affecionately refer to as the Brigada Verde Hummer) arrived, my kids an hour early as usual, ran wrestling to pile in. When it was completely jam packed a little less than half of us were still standing outside. So we eventually packed in, even the puppy came along! In their usual, high energy positivity we did environmental education, hikes, Leave No Trace activities, painting quilts and murals, and all kinds of fun playing baseball, hacky sack, swimming in the rivers and roasting marshmallows by the fire. Because it was overnight I had to play mom, an even more thankless job than teacher, curing cuts and tummy aches, but they really enjoyed it so it was worth it.

For all of my kids this was the first and last time they would ever see this river like this. Last week construction started on a 285 million dollar hydroelectric dam that will be built between the hills you see just above his head. They say that a whopping 25% of this water will continue to flow from the dam down towards our homes in the foothills. We Americans have our doubts, having studied the US's history, but it will be providing relatively clean energy to a country who should definitely be addressing thier energy needs in that direction... It's an unfortunate tradeoff, though I imagine there's enough wind and solar here in the Caribbean to do the job!

Summer vacation for my kids means nothing but eating and swimming in the rivers!

You can find the rest of the pictures at http://share.shutterfly.com/action/welcome?sid=0AaMWrZi1ZOWLrY.