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!

Selling Limes

July 23: I woke this morning in a small, hot cement room above a plaza 200 miles from my house. Already at 5am hundreds of men were busy buying and selling the previous day’s harvest of plantains, bananas, sweet potatoes, yucca, cucumbers, and other crops. We arrived late last night to park our truck full of limes in a prime selling spot, unfortunately located next to 11 other trucks full of limes. It was still relatively cool out when I pried the slated windows open to see the market so full of people, trucks, cars, carts, bikes and mules that it appeared difficult to move through. As always there was music playing but the shops lining the plaza had not opened yet when I walked down the narrow stairs to the street. I was not surprised to suddenly be the center of attention on the sidewalk but I was distracted from the hissing watching the aesthetically pleasing commercial activity. In addition to the trucks of produce there were women with giant bowls of homemade and processed snacks on their heads and men selling socks, cell phone chargers and tiny bags of water to workers carrying more than their weight back and forth between vendors. If you would have asked me before this morning if one man could carry three giant boxes of cabbage on his shoulder, teetering higher than 5 feet in the air, I would have said probably not. There were dark Haitian men, their bodies entirely muscle, leading carts moved by mules that appeared to be starving. Though they were extremely strong I guessed that the Haitians had only been eating as much as the mules. Finding our truck in the crowded, dirty street I climbed atop the mountain of limes to watch my companions sell. For hours, as the sun climbed in the sky they scooped five gallon buckets of limes, passing them over the rail of our truck into old plastic rice sacks, the unit of measurement used in this market. It was an unusually fast day of selling, though we had been at the market for a total of 12 hours, and we walked away with about $450, before subtracting costs. My companions and I then drove the 200 miles back home to get another truck full of limes for them to repeat the process in the same day.

Whirlwind trip to the Motor City

July 7: While I was boarding the plane bound for Miami in the Santiago airport the electricity went out, a daily part of life in this country and though no one else took note I took it as a wink from the Republica, “Enjoy the States” she said.

Seeing the United States from the air before touching down made the transition between it and the Dominican Republic even more evident. Flying above Miami and the surrounding area I saw the familiar grid pattern encompassing every inch of available land, houses with terra cotta roofs complimented by shiny, unmistakably unnatural turquoise swimming pools every few yards.

Flying over Southern Florida the land below turned from a familiar lawn green to a dark almost black and I saw the clouds reflected in the land, realizing then that it was water…sort of…a mix really. The everglades I imagine, stretching for miles. No houses, nothing human. I could only see water reflecting the sky from thousands of feet in the air. Amazing.

After touching down the only differences I really noticed being in the States again (granted I had only made it as far as the Miami airport) was that the electricity feeding the fluorescent light bulbs was unwavering and the smell of fast food was everywhere!

Near the gate of my plane bound for Detroit I wandered unwittingly into what is a trap even for those Americans who have not been deprived of American news and culture for months…the gift shop and bookstore. After about a half hour I finally pulled myself away from the newsstand, having to convince myself that I wasn’t going to buy the new Newsweek – the Darwin/Lincoln Big Ideas issue, David Sidaris’ hilarious new creation, the Barack Obama Rolling Stone, Oprah’s summer book picks, a book about the transformation of the American Army during the last decade and so many other, deliciously written in English, non fictions that I was dying to read! I wandered over to my gate to snack on a little peanut casave bread I had brought along for the ride when I was stopped in my tracks by a familiar red band streaming bits of news across the bottom of a flat screen TV and three letters, C-N-N, thrusting me from basic environmental education and a cool breeze over rolling green hills in the countryside into who John McCain may or may not have assaulted in 1987. For the next half hour or so, until they called the last group to board the plane I was transfixed on the television, jumping at every little tidbit of campaign garbage like our stray cats onto chicken bones. My mouth watered a bit when a guy sat down near me with the first American quality pizza I had seen in nearly 5 months, but I couldn’t even think of leaving my seat to go in search of one for myself. I was soaking it all in and loving every second of it. If I would have had more time I probably would have paid the $9.95 to buy Miami International Airport’s wireless internet for the day and would have sat there in front of CNN surfing the internet until they kicked me out. It was the first time I ever hoped that my flight would be delayed!

While in the States for less than 7 days I saw my family, who bought me all my favorite foods, said goodbye to the old house and hello to the farm my parents are buying, was ecstatic to be in Traverse City during the Cherry Festival, trekked a little through the dunes on the gorgeous Lake Michigan coatline and was honored to be the maid of honor in the wedding of my great friend, Sonia. I guess I have to grow up now that I'll be 25 this year and all my friends are getting hitched! More pictures to come!

My friends are getting married!

May 31: A couple of my friends from high school had been planning to get married in Punta Cana, Dominican Republic since before I received my Peace Corps assignment here. I was excited to be able to make it to the wedding and so Cecilia and I took the opportunity to leave the countryside and head to the cushy American resort to partake in the festivities.

Months ago when we arrived in this country the warmth of the people, even more than the weather, cushioned our entry into this foreign culture, but as we approached the grand gates of the Melia Caribe Tropical Resort the culture and all that we’ve come to know shattered around us without us noticing. The presence of foreign units of exchange (many of which are dollars) has clearly changed both the landscape and the people here. Within the high guarded walls there were hints of the country that receded out into the landscape; the beer was El Presidente, all of the workers spoke Spanish and every once in a while there was a meringue song contrasting the American rap, but the energy was different. Outside the walls of the resort Dominican towns, houses, public transportation, music and food do not exist for kilometers…there is only sugar cane, Haitians cutting it and vacant land.

Though I am still new to this country my perception of Dominicans is a very positive one, they are warm and generous. I would think that years of serving rich tourists would only make a person’s disposition even more friendly - possibly artificially, but friendly nonetheless. This was not the case with the reception at the resort and it was the first sign to Cecilia and I that although we were still on the island, we were no longer in the DR we knew. I must say though that seeing friends, the extremely gorgeous ambiance, the hot shower, the salmon dinner and the unbelievable non-existence of mosquitoes made for a phenomenal mini vacation!

It was not until we boarded a guagua with all the doors and windows open, the fresh air blowing across our faces, the sound of merengue percussion and the friendly cobrador watching over us, making sure he knew exactly where to let us off, that I realized how much I have become a part of this country already and how much of this place I have adopted as my own.

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!