September 11, 2008

The people here in the DR are incredibly hospitable and generous, and even more so here in the campo. When you visit a house you will be asked to sit, though it seems more of a command than an invitation and you will inevitably be served a coffee or juice at some point during your visit. I was out visiting families and community leaders today and I ended up drinking 6 glasses of fresh fruit juice, including cherry (cereza), lime (limon), melon (melon) and passion fruit (chinola) in addition to a coffee and a few oranges (naranjas) off the tree. I was in heaven!

Because we don’t go to the grocery store every time we have a craving for something like avocados or bananas, you gotta eat the oranges too when they’re ripe. So many days my extended family and I harvest a pile of them and sit for any hour peeling and eating until our lips hurt.

I spent the evening hours today in a small wooden house playing dominoes with my teenage brothers. The light had gone out just as the sun set and not long after a beautiful storm moved in, bringing thunder, lightning and a ton of water. With downpour loud on the tin roof the four of us played dominoes for hours by candlelight, teasing and laughing the entire time.

Various people in my community acknowledged today as a day to recognize for the United States. Dominicans have a strong connection with the United States, so many of their families are in New York and more are joining our society every day. I was proud, on the anniversary of a day we mourn, a day when many people realized that our foreign policy might need some improvement, to be an American who has chosen to engage in the cultural exchange with other countries. I read the book Three Cups of Tea since I’ve been here, a story of a man who gives his life to build schools in a part of the world where it seems that every obstacle is in his way. He finds in his travels that a cause of Anti-American terrorism from the Middle East is a lack of positive educational options. He ventures to believe then that building schools, rather than bombing entire countries of people, is the answer…hmm…what a concept.

I highly recommend reading it.

I am currently reading Truman, a huge biography of Harry S. Truman, Be Bold, a book about people who have chosen to start non profit organizations like Teach for America as their life’s work, Educating Esme, a hilarious journal of a wonderful person’s first year of teaching and Tropical Nature, a unique piece of writing describing the biology of the tropical forest ecosystem in a very accessible, interesting form.

The juice I made with the gorgeous cheeries pictures above. Of course they're no Michigan cheeries but they're alright anyway.

Tropical Storm Fay, Hurricanes Gustav, Hanna and Ike

Welcome to Hurricane season in the Caribbean! It sounds a little scary and the red spinning spirals on the radar are unnerving but here on the ground, at least in most places, it just looks like a lot of rain.

However, as Hurricane Ike approached the north shore of the DR in the last couple days they set into play our emergency action plan, sending all 160 of us to consolidation points across the country.

I live high in the foothills of the mountains in the center of the country making my site one of the safest places during heavy rains and hurricanes, which is why when I packed my things to leave for lower land this morning my family was a tad puzzled. But you're safer here they said, rightfully so.

As I write this I am sitting in a hotel lounge with about 45 other volunteers and although it’s still not raining here we are prohibited from leaving the hotel. Better to be safe – with good food and air conditioning – than sorry. A few of us are even taking the opportunity to get some work done while we’re together, in between delicious meals, internet time, House, MD. marathons and games of dominoes of course!

The morning after we were cleared of Hurricane Gustav I went running. It’s so gorgeous here in the foothills the morning after rain because the sky is clear and you can see crisply into the distance in both directions; over the rolling green hills to the neighboring villages, the pines and the palm trees, and into the mountains. Everything was still wet at 6am and when I ran past the stand of pines not really noticing it, a breeze blew and the smell of pine stopped me mid run. I felt like I was in the Michigan forest and I had to look up to orient myself. I’m looking forward to being back in the campo after all of this rain fills the rivers and makes everything green.

Running Alone

August 30: When San the puppy began running with me months ago it was a huge hassle and I would pray, as I crept out of the house in the mornings at dawn, that he would still be sleeping just long enough for me to escape without him chasing. He was a jumper, too excited to run to contain himself. The back of my calves were always scratched and on some days he would tire himself out around the mid point and I would have to sacrifice my run to carry him up the hills back to the house. We tried strategies to stop him from going; sometimes I would yell at him to stay at the house and he’d wait until I got just out of sight to chase me. Sometimes the family would hold him, yelping frantically, until I was long gone…but he knew the route and as soon as they released him he was off like lightning, racing up behind me faster than you would believe dachshund mutt legs could go. But sometime in the last three months I unconsciously started to enjoy his company.

Today, for the first time in these months, I ran alone.

I originally thought that this entry would be a eulogy to my late running partner, San Gonzalez Ortega Hunt, but he is still alive. On Friday he was hit by something, probably a motorcycle, as I said he is still alive. We don’t run on the weekends and he’s sort of a vagabond anyway so when he didn’t come home I didn’t even notice. On Saturday morning my dad and I happened to be down at the local convenience store partaking in a cerveza for his birthday when we overheard the people taking about the little dog that runs with me every morning. The prognosis wasn’t good, they told me he was at a nearby house and that he was going to die. “I’m sorry for your friend,” my dad said to me in English. They were reluctant, and a little puzzled by my concern but took me on the motorcycle to see my friend when I asked.

He wasn’t using his back legs at all laying there in their yard but I scooped him up and brought him home not exactly sure what to do next. I suggested to my brother having him put to sleep if he was in pain and not improving but he replied, “You are not the boss.” This is a culture that relies heavily on God to make the decisions. The reply to many everyday questions is “Si Dios quiere” – if God wants it. It’s also not part of the culture here to care for animals like family, dogs are dogs. So without the support of anyone I had no idea what to do. I spent the weekend bathing him, trying to get him to eat and carrying him outside to pee, thankful he was still functioning well enough to wait until he was outside. During the remaining hours he just laid wherever I set him.

Though I imagine he will never be the same he has improved in the last week and a half. Now he walks around like a circus dog with his back legs in the air and yesterday he used his back legs very gingerly! Although he is not his happy jumping self, he is eating and wags his tail whenever I come around. The other volunteer who I work with suggested that I strap him to the front of me in a baby carrier to run in the mornings. I think this is a little extreme but we may fashion him some sort of scooter if I can find some wheels his size!

La Feria Ganadera

August 10: Our county fair housed a showcase of prize cows, a cotton candy machine, a popcorn machine, a plasma screen tv, a satellite dish and three ancient carnival rides. After scoping the array of delightfully well groomed cows - and I’m talking cows at least 2 or 3 times the size of the largest cow you have ever seen - like a large buffalo or something, my brothers and I got drinks and watched the X-games on ESPN in a little tent (in the middle of the campo on a subtropical island) …you never, never know what to expect here in the DR – never! After a while of motorcross, bmx and some fried foods it was getting dark outside and we were preparing to leave for home when my little brother turned to me, begging me to take him on la estrella (s-tray-ya) – the star.

La estrella was a medium sized ferris wheel, not nearly the size of some I had been on before, but just glancing at it you would swear it was taken right from Coney Island around the turn of the century…the last century…a hundred years ago. The paint was gone, along with its original motor and in its place was a makeshift machine moving the iron structure faster than I had ever seen one move. As the cars moved over the front side of the wheel they accelerated a bit and the people squealed. It did look like a lot of fun, and opportunities like this are incredibly rare where we live. The family looked at me waiting to see if I was brave enough to accompany the young boy on this adventure, which of course I was, I was actually really excited. But for some reason I shook my head. “I would really love to,” I said “but here? I don’t think so.” I felt even worse saying it this way because this is where he lives, not near Cedar Point or in the United States where there are regulations, lawsuits and security attached to things like this. But that’s what I said and with both us slightly disappointed, we left.

Less than a half hour our uncle stormed into the house, searching frantically to locate our cousin who went to bed early with a headache - a cable in the center of la estrella had snapped and the two sides of giant wheel, filled with people, moved in separate directions. Fortunately no one died but several people were severally injured, a young girl won’t walk again and I think Samuel learned a new lesson, thanking me.

In Service Training

Thinking back to pre service training they gave us a calendar and told us about all the trainings and opportunities we would have for professional development throughout our service. But back then it didn’t seem to matter much because it was so far away. It was hard to imagine a time when we knew where we would be living for the two years, let alone thinking of a time when we had already been serving there for 3 months. For my training group this time has come in the blink of an eye. We have completed our community diagnostics, our visions, our goals, we’ve started networking, many of us are moving into new homes and its come time to flap our little alas out of the nest and get to work… but first a little more training in some super interesting stuff! Nineteen of us – environmental development volunteers of the first class of 2008 – crawled out of campos in every part of country, strapped on our helmets, hopped onto motos and rode packed guaguas for hours to see each other again. We met for a week in the mountains to learn about agro forestry, native birds, youth movements, grants and more in addition to catching up on what everyone has been up to for the last 3 months.

Our trainer has done an absolutely fabulous job creating opportunities for us to learn from the people who are doing the work that we aspire to do here in the DR. So on Friday half of us hopped in the back of the truck headed for the coffee plantations. We spent the morning with two Class A organic coffee growers learning how to germinate, plant, care for and prune coffee and fruit trees. Following an amazing lunch filled with – gasp – vegetables! we were taken to the little coffee tasting room overlooking gorgeous misty mountain scenery to learn all about the classes, aromas, flavors and regions of the world’s second largest traded commodity.

This experience yet again reinforced that although we live in country where we don’t know the language, we share small spaces with crazy host families, eat the exact same thing every day and shower out of buckets of cold water we are the luckiest people in the world.

On Sunday we took the opportunity to support the area’s local ecotourism with some white water rafting. We lost a couple people to the river but not one person in our class of 36 has quit the Peace Corps so we figured we had a couple to spare.

Adventures of an aspiring Dominican naturalist

My brother and I were wandering around the wild backyard of our grandmother’s house the when we came across a vine that looked similar to Chinola - passion fruit. As a familiarly devious smirk appeared on his face my brother asked me if I wanted to know the plant. In my naivety I said, as I always do when he asks, “Yes, I want to learn everything.” “Segura?” he asked, “Are you sure?” “Yes…” With a ‘suit your self’ sort of shrug he touched the plant to my arm, just barely and paused, watching my face. “What?” I asked … and then my arm burst into flames. Not just the flames of fire…more like fiberglass on fire…inside my arm. At this point I was physically uncomfortable but relieved with my new ability to identify a plant that I was going to be sure never to touch again. “Sigue” he said, walking away – continue. Obediently I followed him, exclaiming aloud the pain to his delight as we continued walking down through the forest toward the river. Passing it nonchalantly he pulled a couple leaves off a small tree, I wasn’t going to ask which one this time, cursing myself for being so curious. With these leaves in one hand he grabbed my arm and crushed them into my skin, the pain evaporating instantly…And there are people who say it’s more difficult to teach environmentalism here.

I have spent a ton of time with him learning the plants, trees and birds of our region. I know more about the plants here than I do about the ones in Michigan I think! These pictures are from one of our many hikes. After hours of exploring we ended up at a natural infinity pool. The pictured waterfall flowed into a small natural pool where we swam over looking the gorgeous valley pictured above.

This is me sitting on the edge thinking, "Is this really where I live?"

Vamos para el rio! Let's go to the river!

August 4: I was invited by the leader of the women’s group in my community to partake in a day at the river with her catechism class and was super excited to spend the whole day hanging out with people other than my family – who I absolutely love but you know how it is…

Dos Danielas!

So me, a couple adults and a truck bed full of kids bought refrescos – sodas – and headed for el Rio Inoa. The rivers here are completely gorgeous and the people here in the campo love nothing more than to spend the day swimming in them. We swam, ate rice and beans, learned English in the river and made a human pyramid three standing people high before crashing down, laughing too hard to support each others weight.

I was feeling a little sleepy after lunch so one teen made me a bed and a sleeping mask of leaves.

After lunch the teenagers and I we were talking about how much they enjoyed their experience in Scouts and I happened to mention that I can’t wait to start a similar environmental youth group where we live (actually I didn’t just happen to mention it, really it’s the bulk of what I’d like to accomplish during my time here but I have to be sneaky about roping kids in ;) to go camping, take trips, clean up trash etc…and, be still my beating heart, they said, “Well lets start right now!” and began collecting all the trash from the river bank. We finished a huge pile of trash, four smiles (though they don't typically smile in pictures) and a conversation about what color green our new club shirts are going to be - definitely a high point on the roller coaster of being pro-environment…in any country.

Merengue days and bachata nights

On Saturday night a couple weeks ago I attended a fiesta, one of many to celebrate las patronales – days of the patron saints - of a neighboring community. Each community celebrates the patron saint of their church at a different time of year and each has a nine day long celebration to honor him or her. For nine days the church has special masses and for nine nights the community has huge parties. The party that I attended was not one of the nine huge parties but rather a fairly large party to celebrate the fact that it is nearly patronales.

It was the first time that I had attended a party being part of the community and my sister had taken the initiative of dressing me up a bit, adding large hoop earrings, black heels and a rosary to my outfit in an attempt to assimilate me, as I thought the halter top was probably taking it a bit too far. I arrived with a group of young men, family and friends, and not being part of a giant obvious group of Americans was a relief (though I do miss them dearly). As I arrived and was seated with a group of young men the cultural rules here follow that any respectful man who wanted to dance with me would ask my brother permission first. Although I’ve been here for nearly 5 months, this was a new experience and although it seems kind of old fashion judging through the lens of my own culture, it was certainly a great way to weed out the creeps and tigeres - tigers!

Bringing flax to the New World

While I was in the States my grandmother gifted me several pounds of brown flax seed to bring here to the DR (at my request). In the last couple years I have developed an addiction to the seed, which in addition to being part of the plant used to make linen, is a fantastic source of Omega 3 fatty acids and when crushed is delicious on yogurt, granola, fruit or anywhere else a slightly nutty flavor is appropriate. At the airport I had to rearrange some things as my luggage was slightly overweight and I am sure that anyone who saw it was probably like, “Why is this chick transporting animal feed into to the DR?” Which really is a stupid question since there is a huge abundance of livestock here. But anyway, I have an addiction to the seed my grandma uses to make her horses coats shinier and from what I can tell there are about two health food stores in this entire country.

Since returning I have been hand crushing it with my mortar and pestle and putting it in all the food I make for myself and my family. So far it’s been a great hit with my dad and one of my little brothers. They absolutely loved it in banana bread, peanut butter banana milk shakes and banana pancakes…can you guess what we have an abundance of in the house right now, aside from flax?

When something is in season here you usually can’t get much of it during the rest of the year so we just eat it all day every day when it’s around. As an American who is used to having every type of food from every corner of the world at my fingertips whenever I want it, come hell or high oil prices, I hate this. But I hate more to see food go to waste – especially fresh fruits and vegetables, so I have been inventing new ways to eat bananas and avocados. If only Tristan were here to help!

Note: In case you didn’t pick up on it this entry is slightly facetious. I really do love flax but I really have no idea where flax originated and I don’t believe that this hemisphere is the new world – rather it was indeed a world before the Europeans were here :)

Another right of passage

July 22: I am sick for the first time since living in the country. It’s just a stomach ache but there are many hypotheses about what’s wrong with me, including that I ate something from the street vendors and I got too much sun atop the pile of limes yesterday. For the last 24 hours my family has been curing me with liquid concoctions and depriving me of anything tasty. The concoctions almost all contain lime and salt and taste horrible. I think it’s a tad curious that the only ingredient that we have an abundance of – lime - happens to cure what I have, but I trust their knowledge of natural remedies. Besides, I think the ingredients are less important to them than just making my stomach uninhabitable for living things. If not, it’s back to the capital in a couple days to get a scoped for parasites. What fun!

July 26: After a few days of laying low, living off a bit of white rice and fresh fruit juices I am well again! I had a hunch that the salami flavored water I was given at a friends house was probably not boiled…so I only had a swig or two…probably a bad idea. Where I live the water is delicious but when visiting others it’s probably best stay away from salami flavored water and uncooked leafy greens!

Note: Do spend one second worrying over the health of this intrepid explorer living in a developing Latin American country. The training and medical care of the Peace Corps is impeccable and I have a huge Dominican family constantly telling me to sit down, go take a nap, I'm not eating enough etc. and monitoring what I eat and where I am every minute of every day and night - I doubt I will ever in my life be as cared for as I am right now!