Back to Work!

A couple days ago I got word that I grant I applied for from USAID has been granted. It amounts to about 140,000 pesos (almost $4,000) and will help me to something behind here in the DR. The money will go towards the development of my teacher training videos, towards painting classrooms and developing didactic material, towards tapes for the camera and maybe even a projector for the school. I’ll be able to reimburse other PCVs for travel if they want to come up and help. I’ll be able to organize lunches for the teachers who participate. So I’d like to take this moment to thank every single one of my tax paying friends and family for not only inadvertently putting me through Peace Corps, but for allowing me to leave behind a small legacy.

Because I am so excited about having finished writing the first script, I’d like to share it with you. And if you are so inclined, please leave comments and criticism (especially all you teachers out there!) This is only the first of what will be a series of 5 or 6 videos, so it’s still kind of a work in progress. But I believe it will be one step in the direction to better education and more satisfied teachers.

Thank you for reading and have a wonderful day!

America the Beautiful

     

Sitting in the lobby of a Holiday Inn Express somewhere in Montana under the shadow of the Rocky Mountains, I was given time to reflect upon my return visit to the States. It’s not that I hadn’t had time in the 20 days I’d been back, just that the inspiration to jot down my reflections finally struck me after quite a few months of proverbial silence. The challenge now, of course, is to organize that which has collected in mind over the past weeks.Have you ever really listened to the lyrics of Rod Stewart’s “Forever Young”?

The words aren’t the same without the melody behind them, but here are some of them just for reference.

May the good lord be with you
Down every road you roam,
And may sunshine and happiness
surround you when you’re far from home.
And may you grow to be proud
Dignified and true,And do unto others
As you’d have done to you.
Be courageous and be brave
And in my heart you’ll always stay
Forever Young…

And when you finally fly away
I’ll be hoping that I served you well
For all the wisdom of a lifetime
No one can ever tell.

But whatever road you choose
I’m right behind you, win or lose
Forever Young…

This is the song that the crew of American Airlines flight 1805 decided to play as we landed in Los Angeles from Miami (and before than Santo Domingo, for me). After the fatigue from upwards of fifteen hours of travel and the overwrought emotions inevitable to a Peace Corps Volunteer touching American soil after almost a year and half of not having done so, the song struck a chord, so to speak, and tugged on a couple heartstrings. I have roamed my fair share of roads. God knows I’ve been far from home. I don’t know if I’ve been courageous or brave, or even if I’ve finally flown away – but I know that I heard my mother’s and my father’s voices in every word that drifted down to me from the long aisle of the craft that bore me home. And when the music fell into the rhythm of another song, I still felt the warmth of tears in the space between my cheeks and eyelids.

So I thought, in that moment, that maybe I do all that I do in the hope that one day I might be able to sing these words to my own little one with a truth grown from the life I’ve lead.
I leave often, yes. And those I love have been accustomed to long periods of my absence, maybe even longer periods of silence. But when I find it in me to return to them, I am greeted only with open arms, even if there are unspoken sorrows hidden in their smiles.

Why do I mention this? Perhaps I’m just trying to reconcile within myself why I can’t seem to be satisfied in just one place. Why I continuously look forward to the next city, the next country. Perhaps its simple wanderlust and I can’t get enough of that high when see how much diversity the world still holds despite the infiltration of chain corporations and cultural distillation. Perhaps I’m an escapist and like the idea of starting anew. But, though I know I learn something from every new place I visit, though I do start with new friends and coworkers and communities, though I feel myself growing into the person I hope one day to be, I also know that every time I come home and visit the people that have loved me since before I set foot out of my home town that I’ll always be their daughter, their sister, their cousin, their niece – I’ll always be me.











I believe that my return visit to developed western society has been as eye opening to me as my initial months in the DR were. It was not that I was suddenly taken by the marvels of flushing toilets or constant electricity, I wasn’t even incredibly surprised at how the grand majority of people adhere to traffic laws, but I did notice something that runs a lot deeper. I felt it in myself, and I saw it grow the longer I stayed. Does it have a name? We’ll call it physical self awareness for now, a sense of how warn or tattered your clothes are, how much weight you’ve gained, the dead inch and half of hair that hasn’t been cut in more than a year. All of these things became blaringly present in my life where I hadn’t given them a second thought in the 15 months I’d been gone.

It seems somewhat ironic, since we were told in the good old days of training that the Dominicans are apt to judge a person by their appearance, possibly more so than the average American. But I’ve seen that once they’ve accepted you as the Peace Corps volunteer that you are, they really don’t care what you wear. And they praise you if you’ve gained weight. I still haven’t figured that one out – but I’m going with it. It’s true. So what. I’ll start exercising again, I’ll return to where I was, but that comes from a personal desire to want to be at my equilibrium. I don’t feel the anxiety of social pressure here that I do in the States.

In fact, the only pressure I every feel while I’m in country is my own drive to accomplish my own goals. There are, or course, down sides to living in a society that lives without stringency, but on a personal level it does wonders for individual satisfaction and self-worth. At least for me it has.

Now, don’t read too much into this. I don’t plan on staying here past my term. But I do plan on being a lot more careful with letting myself fall into “it” wherever it is I end up later.

           

El Magico de Teatro

 Well I ever do this again? Well… I believe that it was a great expereince for the kids and definetely a learning opportunity for me. My hope is that the kids who participated will pass on the experience. My dream for the whole endevour will come true if one of them organizes their own theater production out of the desire to share their experiences with others. If someone comes to me and wants to do that, I will help them. But I will never do this again on my own!

After a year in country, I still despise the song lyrics encouraging Dominican youth to go in search of an Americana for the sole purpose of acquiring a visa. Crassness and degradation aside, how sad is that an entire nation believes life will magically be better over the Atlantic Ocean? – I would say. How awful that they’d do anything to leave this place but nothing to fix it – I would opine. And though to a certain extent, it’s hard to brush those feelings aside while submersed in the struggle of this country’s development, I have come to appreciate a fundamental similarity between us Peace Corps volunteers and the Dominicans we work with: There isn’t one of us that could claim we never wanted to see what’s over the rainbow.

An easy escape from the drudgery of life, a taste of the more colorful side, an adventure. The desire to achieve such things should be familiar to us all, as here we are on a tropical island leaving the woes of the American economy behind. Both us and the youth that surround us here on this island of palm trees and mangoes have a lot in common with a certain little girl from Kansas dressed in a blue-checkered dress with ruby shoes. I did my senior thesis on the Wonderful Wizard of Oz and it’s adaptations, so I should know the pervasiveness of the story, if not the sentiments. Which is why I was blown off my feet to hear that not one of my students had heard of Dorothy Gale or the Wizard of Oz.

One thing lead to another and eventually I had a full scale production of “El Mago de Oz” on my hands. I managed to get a copy of the script from a wonderful woman in Indiana and translate it after what seemed a lifetime with my dictionary and some local help. This same woman told me that she would be willing to buy my translated copy and vua-la, El Cedro had $225 US dollars to get started on their very first full-length theater production.

          

Originally I tried to work with the Liceo kids. But if I thought high school kids were lacking in motivation in the states, I had another thing coming. So after a semester of trails and failures with them, I talked to the Director of the Escuela Basica who said that he was so much behind the implementation of a theater program that he would support the kids being taken out of class once or twice a week for rehearsals. The teachers then recommended the kids who demonstrated a certain level of dedication and ability, I interviewed them, had them read a few lines from the script, and a few days later had a cast of 25 seventh and eighth graders.

One of my main goals for this project is to stimulate critical thinking within my students. Now, how would one do that with a theater production, you might say. Well, let me just relate a small part of a group discussion we had during a cold read of the script.

“One of the things that makes a story interesting is that each character has his or her own motivations,” I said. “So what do you think are some of our characters’ motivations?”

“The Espantapájaros wants a brain,” one student said.

“And el Hombre de Hojalata wants a heart,” another said.

“Dorothea wants to go home and el León quiere valor,” continued a third.

“But what about the Wizard?” I asked.

After a few moments of looking through the pages of the script for an answer, one boy finally ventured “el quiere respeto.”

And there we had it. The was enough to turn the conversation into an introspection of the lies and deceptions of the Wizard, a real-life comparison to politicos y gente famosa, and an analysis of what respect actually means. One girl said she first respected the Wizard when the four friends entered his chamber and were frightened of him, because fear equals respect. Another girl refuted that she respected him only after he started to tell the truth, that each of the four had what they were looking for all along. A third student stated that he respected him only at the beginning, before we had ever seen him, when he was a lot like Dios.

I can’t express how refreshing it was to see them so involved in the conversation, to have found something that reallyinspires my kids and gives them a reason to come to school. It is a huge challenge, and a lot of work, but I know it will vale la pena. One of the reasons I chose to do the “Wizard of Oz” is because of the variety of themes and complexities it offers. The search for respect or the traits you already posses is only one of them. So I hope for many more group discussions to come amidst the acting lessons, set design and, of course, the fundraising.

“El Mago de Oz” won’t be as chalk-ful of musical numbers as the original, but we will include a few tunes, such as “El Rumbo a Oz,” you know it, “Oh, vamos para ve-er, el magico mago de Oz…” and “Sigue el Camino Amarillo.” We’re building Oz from the ground up and invite all who are interested in visiting el mundo sobre el arcoiris to come June 2nd or 3rd to witness the magic. (Maybe a K2K grant to bring along some kids?)

If you’re interested in following this yellow-brick road, please contact me for details. If you want a copy of the script, let me know. I’m also working on putting together that thing we PCVs love so much – you guessed it – a manual! So if you’re interested in helping with that, definitely speak up.

Love, Courage, and Ruby Slippers,
Your volunteer in El Cedro,
Elisa

The above text was written during the first few weeks of rehersals for the play and published in the official Peace Corps DR magazine, “The Gringo Grita.” I was on cloud nine and dreaming of theatrical perfection. As the weeks and months went by, I eventually began to come back down to earth and realize that perfection is extreamly relative. Translating the play was easy, motivating the students to continue coming was very difficult. The only reason I ever managed to get this thing off the ground and on the stage was because of the school’s principal, who I consider an angel for all intents and purposes.

 After three months of preperation and practice, we had premiered at the school on Friday, June 3. I wish I could say it went off without a hitch, but that just wouldn’t be  Dominican style! When I say it went well, I mean it. It went well when you consider that these kids, this community has never before seen or put together a full length stage production. So the fact that they forgot two scenes was – well – it was what it was.The second night went wonderfuly. It is taped and on DVD following a 5 minute mini-documentary about the kids’ experiences and is currently being thrown at local TV stations in hopes of them airing it.

In My 23 Years

As the rain continues to pour from the heavens and run down the sloping streets, pooling every now and again at the bottom of a hill, I watch the gray world from my bedroom window, the occasional splash coming through the shutters of the other. Someone’s clothes still hang on the line across the street, waiting patiently for the sunlight that might dry it. There is no electricity, so I write by the light of my computer screen only, for the time it’s battery remains, and I eat warm bread from a newly purchased fridge that has become merely a cupboard. Riley lays on her towel, contentedly gnawing away at her bone. Correction, she is now tearing up the party hat I made for her out of construction paper, which has lain under the bookshelf for the past four days.

Before I continue, I must introduce Riley, of course. She’s about a two feet tall, maybe three feet long, mostly black with four tan painted legs and brushstrokes on her face. But you can’t look at her without noticing her giant, sometimes-floppy ears, and her tiny stubby tail that wags at the hint of your approach. She is about five and a half months old and came into my life quite unexpectedly.

I had known her for a few weeks before the incident, she belonged to the neighbor of my host family and would come out play on occasion. She took to me, being the only one in her world who showed her affection other than a tossed left-over. She was not named Riley then. She and her sister, of a different breed though same litter, would follow me to the river, the sister remaining at the water’s edge, the first bounding after me, sending up sprays of water in her wake. On one particular day, she started to follow me home. Okay, I did stop to encourage her every now and then, of course I was thrilled to have a companion for a couple hours without responsibility – not knowing that she would stay the night on my little patio, or under the stairs, wherever it is she slept.

The next morning I woke early to continue my newly made goal of running a few mornings every week. That was about a month ago. I haven’t felt much like running since then. And here’s why.

The little black dog, so full of energy and the need to be loved, followed me on my run. Up the hill, over the bridge, to my turn-around point… I kept glancing back at her, marveling at the endurance of someone so small. One time, I glanced back and she had squatted to do some business. I smiled and continued on, thinking to myself how wonderful it was to be in such a place, on such a morning, doing right by my body and having a small companion for my soul. The next time I looked to see if she had caught up, the breeze from a white blur cooled the dampness on my face as I turned. And there she was. Laying on her side, feet stretched out in front of her, unmoving.



The half hour I spent on the side of the road with her, after a passerby wrote her off as good as dead and moved her by her four legs to the dirt, passed slowly by until my message reached my project partner who came to my rescue. Though even he, saint among men here in the DR, laughed later at the sight of a girl crying over a dog. But he took me to our local veterinarian. A man who works mostly with the cattle and other livestock. He gave her a couple shots, and one more after he had spoken to one of the Peace Corps doctors famous with volunteers for being the point of support when all animals are concerned.

That entire day I spent next to her, she laying on my yoga mat padded with an old comforter, me there to roll her over every time she started to cry. The blood from her gashed tongue would dirty the water every time she tried to drink. But at least she was drinking. She didn’t eat that day, though what I cleaned up would have testified otherwise. It broke my heart to see her struggle so much to lift her self up just that tiny bit so she could pee. Thank god my apartment is all tile flooring. That night, I moved the yoga mat and comforter to my bedside and slept fitfully, dreading that she wouldn’t make it ‘till morning.

But she did. And the next, and the next. Until I was told I had to go eat, I could leave her and she’d be fine. So I left her in my apartment, snug in her comforter, recently washed by the rain and dried by the sun. And when I got back. There she was still, awaiting my return. A week later, she had learned to hobble on the three legs that still supported her. The one, I thought, was broken, and therefore wrapped up in a bandage from my med kit.

A couple of weeks later, I was called to the capital for an emergency training session on cholera, due to the recent outbreak in our neighboring country. I didn’t know what to do with Riley. The way people take care of their dogs here isn’t exactly the way we do. My neighbors have four dogs. Two are permanently tied to tries. The other two never leave the gated area of their yard. Where Riley came from? Well she had a shack and a chain, too. I tried to teach another neighbor’s son to care for her, since I had seen in him that capacity. But his mother decided to take him to a resort that weekend, last minute. So, Riley came with me. And though I had to pay 100 extra pesos when she threw up on the bus, everything else went smoothly. Not a peep or struggle the whole way.

I took her to the vet where they said they would keep her for the night and they said they would do an x-ray on her leg, but that it looked like there was something else wrong, too. Something not so easily fixable as a broken bone. The next afternoon I pick her up. Good news, bone is no broken. Bad news, it’s nerve damage. Worse news, it might not heal. Good news again, since she’s young, she has more of change that she may get some feeling back in her paw – as of now she has none. It will take months to tell. Bad news again, she is host to three different kinds of parasites including one that causes her to poop blood and an amoeba. Final news, meds included, Riley’s visit to the doctor cost about 4,000 pesos. More than a month’s rent.

         

Home again we went. As we start our regiment of morning and night time medications, hurricane Tomas rolls in. Four out of six geographical regions of PCVs in the DR were consolidated. We were put on standfast, no leaving our sites. Sit tight. Lucky for us as there are no pets allowed at the hotels where Peace Corps you during consolidation. By this time, Riley had learned that peeing was only acceptable on the newspaper and that other droppings were preferred outside, so I was happy. Happier still when I hosted my own birthday dinner and she behaved like an angel. I’ll let slide the few times she tried to stand on her hind legs to reach the food on the table. Or when it was announced to me that my adventure dog had taken herself for a walk in the rain amidst the hubbub of the clean-up. But she was there, proud that she gone to the bathroom in the right place. And though she had gone without me, without her leash, I was secretly a little proud, too.

I had feared, when I heard that my birthday dinner had gone from 5 people to 10, that I wouldn’t have enough of my fajita dinner to feed everyone. But, when my host mom surprised me with a lasagna and a huge pan of corn bread, it turned out to be a feast. I’m still eating left-overs four days later. Not only was the food satisfying both in quantity and taste, but the company was wonderful as well. The ex-pats of the Miches area sat in a circle, some of the tile floor, some on the hammock, some on plastic chairs, all around a home-made Pictionary board and their own hand-written word cards. Afterwards, we even had cake. A beauty that Darien and Henry had had made special for the occasion. It even included a candle.

Since then, the rain has washed out my theater group auditions and the electricity in the school’s computer lab… which means I’ve pretty much been hanging out in my apartment for the last few days, just me and Riley, takin it easy. I was a bit discouraged at first by my lack of work, my overabundance of sleep. But one thing I’ve learned in my 23 years, well more so in the past few months, is that sometimes you just have to go with the flow. And if that flow is the water rolling down the streets from hurricane Tomas, well – you pick up again once you can cross the river.

Marooned

Today is El Cedro´s high school graduation. A school day. The graduation isn´t until three this afternoon, but already, at 11, one of the teachers sits under the shade of a tree waiting for his car to be washed. His students will not receive any of the four hours of learning today.
It´s a big deal for these 28 students to participate in the graduation ceremony. They´ve somehow managed to make it through this thing they call a school system, though some are in their early twenties. They´ve waited through the summer to receive their national exam scores and will wait again until January if they´re among those who will attend a university. One among them is my youngest host brother, another, a computer student of mine who plans to become a doctor. These two are rarities, gems to be found among stones, glimmers of hope in an otherwise dim succession of generations.

I had a log conversation with the principal of the school yesterday, as I waited for prospective students that never came (my classes are supposed to start next Tuesday, and still I have no one inscribed). Juanito has been in the education business for 22 years and knows the system well. And as we conversed, he did not attempt to sugar coat the situation, he even admitted to our next-door neighbor, Haiti, has a better school system than we do. Juanito, however, has plans to abandon his country for green pastures. He will join his wife and three daughters already in Philadelphia, none of whom speak English.

He continued by saying that the Ministry of Education is as submersed in the corruption as the rest of the country. A principal does not hire his or her teachers; they are assigned to the school. Neither can he let them go of his own accord, for they would only pay off the nearest politician to keep their jobs. The Ministry itself is given less money than the budget of the first lady (vying for future votes for her husband – who can be reelected for as long as lives) and uses that money to print its own books as a way of saying “look, we´ve done something!” Unfortunately for all that receive the books, if they ever do, they probably won´t learn much from them at all. I flipped through the book titled ¨success communication in English.” It was indecipherable.

It´s common among Peace Corps volunteers to discuss the state of the Education System we work against. Saying we work with it, would be a stretch, though I´m sure that´s what Peace Corps would have us say.  In one particular conversation, we discussed just that – Peace Corp regulations, or restrictions, rather, on published content. One girl wrote an article for a small newspaper back home that merely touched upon the “corrupt government” here. Peace Corp struck that from the records. Wouldn´t let her publish it with the word ¨corrupt.” Since part of our mission is to “help promote a better understand of other people´s on the part of the American people,” I suppose politicians don´t count as people.

Anyhow, as difficult as it is know that I´m swimming up stream, that I can´t reform the education system working with only one school, I have implemented my first course of action directly relating to the students and not directly involving technological instruction. I call it PODER. I came up with that acronym all by myself. I am so proud. Poder means power, and PODER stands for Programas Organizados de Estudiantes Realizados. Realizado – realized, complete or accomplished. I introduced the program to the teachers on Tuesday (it was supposed to be on Monday, but the school didn´t have electricity, my PowerPoint and I were forced to wait) and will introduce it to the students this coming Monday, si Dios quiere.

What exactly am I introducing? PODER is an infrastructure under which the students have the support and ability to form their interest groups. It is an extra-curricular organization, designed to foster a self-determining realization and encourage creative activity. Self-determining realization? That bit of mumbo jumbo is me trying to say that these students are a product of a fatalistic society. They believe that whatever happens is or was supposed to happen; that everything in their lives is because Dios quiere. Because God wants. Therefore, for them to realize that they have some control over the outcome of their lives, is huge. For them to feel that they have the ability to speak freely of their desires, to not only form a group around their own interests, but to govern it – well that´s just revolutionary.

This isn´t to say that I´m expecting a flood of students rushing to sign up. I´m expecting quite the opposite, really. But if they want an “Escojo mi Vida” group, a “Brigada Verde,” or “Encargados del Futuro” it´s all up to them now. It´s worked into the program that they´ll need to solicit an advisor, a teacher or community member willing to work with them and support them. I will of course, make myself and Peace Corps resources available to them, but I want them to realize that I am not a family member from The States sending remittances, that they will have to work for whatever it is they want.

The day after IST (In Service Training) concluded, where I developed the rudimentary idea for PODER, I headed out to a little place in the northern Cibao called Janico. Close to the city of Santiago, Janico´s ancestry is shown through it´s skin as having been mainly Spanish. A concern for me, as I knew our little film crew wanted to portray typical Dominican students in the struggle of a telenovela life. But, Janico has almost 24 hour electricity. It´s a lovely pueblo, and the perfect site for our character Luz to be lost and then found again.

Our cast was composed entirely of high school students, even the adult roles, and I was so pleasantly surprised by the enthusiasm and professionalism they displayed throughout the shoot. Their memorize/repeat educational structure became apparent through their acting, as they had to be told exactly what to do every time the slightest change to the script was made. Improvisation was not really within their capabilities. But like I said, they were great kids. And it was amazing to see their reactions when we showed them a teaser, a short compilation of the work they had done over those few days.

If they couldn´t improvise, I think the crew made up for it in spades. We had a group of people that just made things happen. If we needed a boom mic, we tied a regular one to a broom stick. We did the same thing with a light bulb to illuminate a shot. We fastened tin foil to a poster board to create a reflector and made a bed in a corner look like a whole room. Most of the crew had never worked in television or film before, so it was insane. But wonderful. Before the next shoot, in which we´ll be aided by proper equipment from an established production company in the capital, we are going to have a film 101 session, so that our squeaky machine purrs by the time we´re done. “Me Toca A Mi” (It´s My  Turn) might even have it´s run on Dominican television, if the production company get´s its way, though it´s main purpose is simply to accompany the manual to a Peace Corp youth group promoting healthy and life-bettering decisions.

My travels over the past 2 weeks didn´t stop their. From Janico I went to Imbert, a larger pueblo very near the northern coastline. What´s in Imbert? Well, aside from being the residence of a fellow volunteer and dedicated crew member, it´s right up against the 27 Charcos. If you´ve ever wanted to feel out of time, even out of body, this is the place. I, of course, did not have my waterproof camera, since it had recently broken. And, of course, they were out of disposable ones for sale when we got there. So I have no photos of the 27 pristine pools and waterfalls, of the lagoons and caverns that snake along, open to the sky and rain. I have no pictures of me being hauled up a natural water slide by one of the guides or of Becca jumping of a 30 foot ledge surrounded by the most beautiful fauna that I could never name. I cannot show you the limestone formations, the stalactites and stalactites on the rock that bordered a gently flowing, crystal blue river, or the utter serenity, the complete detachment from the world that you experience traveling through this system of cascades and charcos.  But I can tell you that neither words nor photos can capture it.

After a stopover in the Capital, where the heat immediately became a reality once again and the humidity a force to recon with, I headed back up to Miches to participate in a round of reef checking. We were up at five on Saturday morning to be out on the water by seven. At 9:04 exactly, our boats engine quietly rolled over and died. Thankfully, we had cell reception, better than we do on land actually,  and were able to alert the Park from which we had departed. They didn´t seem to think much of the situation, however, and four hours later, a boat came bouncing off the waves toward us with six Dominicans and a rope. Well, we didn´t get more than some small measurement of distance before they´re engine cut, too. They were out of gas, and ours wasn´t going to cut it. Their engine needed gas mixed with oil, which we didn´t have. So about another hour goes by before another three Dominicans come speeding up, oil container in hand and we´re finally on our way back to shore. Not a single reef survey taken. But we did discover a new place we might one day survey. We dubbed it Stranded Reef.

The next day was more or less a success. We did a single dive in a reef near a ship wreck and relocated a concrete lobster house, all out of a fisherman´s fiberglass boat. I was really excited for when we might get to continue with those other dives that had been on hold, as they are supposed to be some of the best in the area. But, lo and behold, I´ve caught the gripe (gree-pe) and cannot dive this weekend even if my congestion cuts itself in half. But I will film this special event the dive shop owners (Paul and Diane) are sponsoring – a gathering of eco-tourism leaders and environmentally concerned Samaritans. They say even that I might be able to use the footage in my documentary…

“Submerge yourself in the waters of the coral reefs, into a world that battles for survival against the nets and harpoons of fisherman who struggle feed themselves and their families.” This documentary will both educate the Dominican viewer on alternative methods to both provide for themselves and conserve their habitats as well as introducing the outside world to the splendors of the Dominican island and how their support of eco-tourism can help to affect a positive revolution of their economy.  More on that later. The ship is still being built to sail.

In the mean time, enjoy what is left of your summer. Subscribe to the site if you wish to have email notifications of it´s being updated, and leave comments to let me know you´re reading! Fare thee well for another few weeks.

A Whole Bunch' A Words

Today I had one of my tutoring sessions with a nine year old girl who has to think about how old she is before she answers to that question. I’m trying to help her learn how to read and write, which is no easy task. First there’s the matter of the child herself, who I swear would be classified as ADD in the states, and then there’s the whole other matter of the inept school system here in the DR. The children aren’t taught the alphabet, nor are they taught the sounds each letter makes. Instead, they are taught through syllables, starting with “ma” then “me,” “mi,” “mo,” “mu,” and so on. The result is that the kids, and even the adults, don’t know how to differentiate letters from sound snd have difficulty recognizing anything that isn’t a consonant immediately followed by a vowel. That’s on a good day.

Today was not a good day. What letters make up the sound “br” – I asked her. First she counts off “ba,” “be,” “bi,” “bo,” “bu.” When that didn’t work, “bra,” “bre,” “bri,” “bro,” “bru.”  Una “bra,” she decides, as if “bra” were the letter itself. Though, I have to complement myself here, because working with her has vastly improved my level of tolerance – though I still feel the frustration bubbling up, I’m able to suppress it a bit more than I would have.

After she left the house, unable to focus for the last half hour of our session, I asked Zuni (my host mother) if this was normal in a 9-10 year old. Apparently, it’s not too un-common, but even she admitted that this particular case is somewhat special. She’s sick – she told me. And also, she has something wrong with her mind. Okay, I had figured that much out. But sick? When her husband left the room, Zuni told me that the girl as well as her entire family, are HIV positive. I couldn’t quite make out if she thought the ability to learn and the HIV were connected. I did learn, however, that in the district of Miches, El Cedro has the highest percentage of HIV positive residents and that there are still “old men” who “leave there families and spread it with many women.” The community knows this, that HIV is prevalent, and most of them know how you got, too. But still I have not seen one condom for sale in any of the stores.

Anyway, I shall not go off on that soap box. I only wished to reflect on how real HIV became all of a sudden, to me. Though, at the same time, I understood how they feel it is so much less threatening than what we were taught in school. They know, even those we would consider impoverished, that they’re taken care of, and that they can live for at least another twenty years. The major difference here is that there medication is fully paid for by the government. Maybe that’s why there’s no money for the schools.

While I’m on the topic of money and schools, I should mention my talent show. I spent a little more than a month coordinating this event with a group of four women. A couple of weeks into our planning, on of the ladies daughter’s seemed to magically appear and take charge of what needed to be done, including recruiting participants. I was thankful for her help, so told myself not to be annoyed by her randomly showing up at my house and walking into my bedroom while I was sleeping, or things of that nature.

Because she had done so much, I also allowed her to manage the income from the ticket sales. And though I had my qualms about the Dominican system (ticket now, pay later), I let it be, hoping I’d be proved wrong.

After the initial chaos in the beginning of the night when we had no electricity, no equipment, and no participants, things started to go alright. My only wish during the event itself, which started 2.5 hours late, was that I wasn’t stuck behind the counter selling food, unable to really see any of the performances. The up side was, I had a watch over the money at that point and I took the money home with me afterwards to count. Oh, my other regret was that my host brother didn’t win, though I honestly believe he was the most talented there (and he would have given us back the 500 pesos that was the winner’s prize). Anyhow, after all our weeks of work, we only ended up making 3,175 pesos. That’s about 100 dollars. My goal was to be able to buy a projector for the school. And that’s not nearly enough.

Two days later, I’m sitting in the living room with my literacy student and in comes the girl who had been helping me, the girl who was the host for the event and who never mentioned me once throughout it. So she comes in and I figure she wants her purse back. It was what we were using to keep all of the money in during the event. I give her the purse and expect her to leave so I can get on with my lesson. But no. Oh no. Mira, she says. I had two hundred pesos of my own in my purse and I want it. Whether or not she was lying, I still can’t say. All I can say was that it was quite an unlikely story, since she had been using that same purse to collect the ticket money in. What made it all the worse was that Zuni was not home to help me deal with the issue. And she wouldn’t leave the house until I gave her the money. I made her sign a note explaining her circumstance, though I don’t think it will make the slightest bit of difference. What’s done is done. And I’ve learned my lesson.

On a completely new topic, I was finally taken to see the waterfall. It was gorgeous, though I have to say, quite savage. I returned from the excursion with my skin on fire from a combination of mosquito bites, make-shift saddle, and some irritation from a malicious plant.  And since we had to slide down the side of a rock on our bums, you can only imagine how pleasant it was to sit down for a few days after! But not only was the waterfall itself gorgeous, the way there was just as beautiful. We left the campo behind and entered into the mountains. You could really believe that no human had been there before, except for the packed earth of the trail. And now that I have a horse of my own, I plan on returning.

Yes, you read right – I have a horse of my own! He as of yet remains nameless but he definitely has personality. Apparently, so the men tell me, he does not trust women, having had little exposure to the female persuasion. So he plays very hard to get when I reach to pet him. But once I’m on, he’s usually pretty obedient. I say usually because on our way to the beach he stopped half way there and wouldn’t budge, no matter how hard I kicked him. Now, granted, I never kick a horse very hard because I don’t want to hurt them, and I also have this persistent belief that they shouldn’t be forced to do something they don’t want to do. Anyhow, I too was determined and so got down off his back, knowing full well that I could not get back up without help, him being bareback and all, and so walked the rest of the way.

On the way back, he was sluggish, andI wondered why, as most horses like going home. It wasn’t until a few minutes in that I started to notice a clicking noise as he walked that wasn’t there before. Great, I said to myself, my horse is throwing a shoe. A yup. The shoe was half way off and hell if I was going to try to get it all the way off. So we walked at a snails pace back to his pastures and succeeded in avoiding the moto drivers who thought it amusing to pass by us as fast as they could, as close as they could, in the dark.

So I hope that we will be friends in time. Until then, I shall change his shoes and give him his vitamins, or whatever it is I’m supposed to give him, and take the occasional ride to the beach.

And another smooth segue – I participated in my first Reef Check excursion off of the Miches coast line. The experience was quite an adventure. The dive shop is situated just by a river which lets out into the ocean, which is rather convenient to dock a boat at. Unfortunately, it’s rather inconvenient during torrential downpours, especially when the owners of the dive shop also live there, are new to the country, and have never experienced a flood.  After all of our theory training (recognizing fish and corals and invertebrates, etc) we set out for a full day of diving. It was nice and cool on the boat, as there was a constant drizzle, and we got to see a spectacular display of lighting on shore. Unfortunately, we had to pull up anchor much sooner than expected, as we noticed a line of brown water creeping steadily toward us from the direction of the river mouth.

Turns out that line in the water, was all the run-off from the flood which almost completely devastated their house. Not a nice thing to come back to after a day of diving. Anyway, we said that we would come back and help them the next morning with anything else they needed (the local Dominicans had already helped them mop up the layers of mud on their floor). At about one in the afternoon on that next day, just as we were arriving, it started raining again. Paul, the ‘male leader’ of the dive master team, was convinced that the house would be taken out by the next flood. So as the water rose, we spent the next hour and them some, relocating everything in their little house. By the time we were done, I stood, completely eaten by mosquitoes, waste deep in muddy water on their doorstep.

I haven’t spoken to them since that day, as we’re not scheduled for another dive until August, but I haven’t heard anything, so I’m assuming no news is good news. In the mean time, now that I’ve settled in with the Miches team, I have a place to go when I need to escape and a kitchen to cook in where all the food is paid for – courtesy of Columbia University. It’s not a bad deal.

Well, there’s another chapter in this novel of mine. In a couple weeks I’ll be off to my three month IST (in-service training) and that will be another. For now, I must put up a mosquito net around my freshly planted garden so that the chickens don’t eat my plants. Hasta luego!

Paraiso (Paradise)

Since I feel like it’s been so long since I’ve chronicled last, I almost feel obliged to bullet note the events of the past few weeks, since I know I can be prolific anyway ☺. The fourth of July was the most recent of events which deserves notations, so I’ll start there and work my way back.
I finally agreed to come out of my bubble (my site) and go with the group to a place called Paraiso (Paradise) down south. It’s on the eastern coast of the southern-most peninsula of the DR, which means that it was my first time swimming in the Caribbean since I’ve been in country. What was amazing, though, wasn’t necessarily the ocean itself, though the color was an unbelievable crystalline turquoise, but the world’s shortest river which lead up to it.

This river came out of a mountain stream, which meant it was cold, the coldest water I’ve felt in country, and amazingly clear. Some rented inner tubes to float the short way down, and others of us braved it feet first, bumping against the rocks on the bottom as we went. It couldn’t have been much more than a quarter mile before we found ourselves in a swirl of salt and sweet water after a bout of rapids. The contrast between the sharp coolness of the river and the bathwater of the Caribbean was almost startling. Even more so was the current. It was overpoweringly strong. Much more so than our beach here in the north and stronger even still than our beaches in Southern California. It wasn’t a rip tide though, just an incredibly strong push of the water.

Anyhow, that was the highlight of the weekend. I floated along a river to the ocean side where I allowed myself to collect a sample of the amazing variety of stones that populated the shore instead of stand. Some were so smooth they could have been polished marble. I have pictures, but unfortunately, most of them are on other people’s cameras – both of the beach and of roasting hotdogs and s’mores over the campfire. So I don’t know how long it will be until I get them. For now, I’ll just provide what I have.

The only other event that sticks out in my mind from the past few weeks is the discovery of our own river mouth. Starting from the nearby hotel, I decided to follow the river to wherever it went, ducking under barbed wire (of which there’s enough in this country to encircle the equator several times) and stepping over giant tree roots. The walk, though short, was mystifying. To see the trees seemingly grow out of the river and spread a canopy across the path made by the animals, to follow the butterflies and see the scuttling tiny crabs, to wonder at the splashes as I passed by – was all wondrous. Have you ever seen a sprouting coconut? By the time I reached the river mouth, I was already on such a high from my surroundings that the place itself seemed that much more amazingly alluring.

The sand formed a sort of gully, with jutting cliffs and sloping banks for the river water that went astray. The locals had used heavy driftwood to form a barrier between the river itself and the ocean, which created a sandbar between the two where the currents of hot and cold water mingled. Looking back, you could see the slightly murky river water bordered by a wall of think green and scattered coconut trees. It was beautiful. One day soon, I’ll return to photograph it.

Since the last time I’ve written, I’ve also given my first exam in the only set of classes that remained afloat during this flo-ho summer schedule. The curve seemed to be relatively normal, with an average score of 75, though some of my students still  couldn’t quite master the use of the mouse or the double click, let alone highlighting text and changing the font size. It’s coming together though. This month I now have three different levels, so three classes and have settled on a progression they might follow to reach a graduation in December. Vamos a ver.

I’ve also filmed my first event here (a church event of my brother’s) and edited it together for him. It’s – interesting, since I did it with my one camera and the lighting wasn’t great. But if I can ever get it up on line, I’ll let you be the judge of that.

That’s all for now, folks! Thanks for reading and definitely don’t be afraid to comment and let me know what you think