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.