My parents take on the campo

In January my parents were finally able to come down and visit the DR and also my site. First off, it was incredible to be able to share my community with them, talking and sharing stories over the phone is one thing, but being able to walk around my site with them, introducing them to my closest families, showing them the beauty of my site and the people around them was an amazing way for them to connect and understand what I do, and why I do it.

Also while they were down, as an unfortunate timing coincidence, a French Canadian film crew came down and spent about a week traveling around my site and province filming about the Chocolate Tour and typical Dominican life. Here is the link to the video they made: http://video.tv5.ca/partir-autrement-4/republique-dominicaine We did just about everything, spent a few days just doing the tour (and I got to invite a few PC friends to come and enjoy the filming as well), we visited various Fair Trade projects, talking about the development of Fair Trade in the area, had 2 dance lessons, 1 in atabales (the most traditional and more campo and bateye based) which was new even for me to dance to since I usually just watch, and the other was bachata and merengue which my host sister taught and was just a little party in the middle of the road in my site.

Getting miked for the camera

So after spending the first almost week running around with the film crew and my parents and everyone in my site, we finish the filming and see the Canadians off, then my parents really got into it in my site since I no longer had to work (work as in coordinating all of the activities, all the participants, overnight stay, food, translating for everyone, etc), my dad and I went night time river crab hunting with one of the men of my community, we had coffee at many a houses, we had a few hefty meals including a goat cookout.

Parents meet Padres

Then, after my parents had a week of coffee pumping into their veins, intense amounts of food constantly being offered to them (which oddly enough my dad didn’t mind), meeting everyone in my campo, being taken to all the hip parts of my site, etc we hopped on a bus and headed to the beach! But not just any beach, we went up to Samana, one of the most beautiful parts of the island. We stayed right by the beach, had amazing weather, got to go WHALE WATCHING!, and relaxed on the beach. Oh and they took me to a really nice restaurant with amazing food on a cliff, which compared to my peace corps food, mmmm nice restaurants are an automatic win =D.

Food and a beautiful view!

Finally we went to Santiago, in a weird plot twist I was actually the only one that got sick on the trip, which I guess is better, but didn’t make for an amazingly comfortable bus trip for me, but I was fine by the time we got in, and got to wander around the city for a little before seeing my parents off. Seeing them off just made me realize more how much I miss everyone back stateside, having the hint of being around family and friends again definitely makes you miss being around them even more, but it was an amazing trip, and a great way to share my experience with my parents. And also made my community love my parents even more. It’s crazy how good my community is about asking how my parents are, asking to say hello, and checking in on me, I’m pretty sure my host family asks how my parents are about 3 times as frequently as I actually talk to my parents, so it was definitely wonderful to bring those two worlds together!

April Updates

Keep a blog, not the easiest thing for me apparently. Thanks to everyone that’s asked how I’ve been, let’s see if I can start from the most recent and work my way back a bit. We just finished Semana Santa, Holy Week. This means many people in the cities leave and travel to beaches and rivers, and here in the campo everyone comes back to visit their families, and everyone spends a few days visiting. 5 of my host sibilings came back with the kids, so I’ve spend the last few days holding lots of babies, helping to cook food, and playing lots of dominoes of course. Every house also make habichuela con dulce, sweet beans, you cook the beans, grind them up, and then cook them again with milk, sugar, and various spices. And this year I actually helped make it, except for when it boiled over once because we weren’t paying attention, we did a good job =D. Then I walked around to do some of my mandatory visits and ate a lot more habichuela con dulce, once again filling my craving so I won’t even think about it till next year.

My host family and my host uncles family also took a day trip to a nearby campo where they have land and did a big cook out, it was a lot of fun and great to have a change of scenary, cooked some goat and a ridiculous amount of viveres, root vegetables, and we were going to go swim in the river afterwards, along with about 200 other people in the river, but a huge storm was coming through so we had to ditch the river idea, much to the kids dismay. Unfortunately we didn’t leave soon enough and this insane amount of rain caused one of the rivers on the way home to flood. Here is a video of what the river turned into, mind you this is usually a small stream that flows under the bridge that connects the road.

Here is the video showing the river, and you can see the lineup as well

My past few months have been filled with conferences. The best part of conferences is that you can really see in a small amount of time how much people are learning, and how many new ideas are being shared through the trainings that you give. Here are some highlights from a few of them:

Camp Superman
This is a boys group initiative that works with boys primarily between the ages of 11 and 14. The point of the groups is to work with boys helping to motivate them to apply themselves in school by doing educational learning activities (super active science class), talking about future planning, and also about the machismo society that we live in, with the hopes that gender roles will change. So, we went to camp out on the beach in Las Galaras in Samana, a beautiful beach area on the northeast peninsula.

It ended up pouring rain the first night we got there, so with tents, beds, clothes, and suitcases full of water, we ran to the nearest school and ran the rest of the camp with somewhere dry to sleep, and were able to still go out and enjoy the beach and water. It’s definitely the most high-energy camp that I’ve participated in. A few examples of activities is talking about gravity and force using a Water Balloon Launcher, team building and planning through a Sand Castle building contest, talking about values and making God’s Eyes (popsicle sticks and yarn), building structures with spaghetti and marshmallows, and a relay race on the beach. There was also more direct talks, such as about good sportsmanship and gender roles, but we made sure there were lots of high energy activities as well. And we all returned back to our sites (volunteers and boys), and passed out, I personally fell asleep at 6 pm and slept long into the morning.

Somos Mujeres

This is a “Doña Camp” a 3 day conference for women’s groups. This conference emphasizes healthy lifestyle choices, positive relationships, and effective business practices that will lead to women being better educated and informed and then return to their communities improving their quality of life and we as the lives of their families and communities. This is a new initiative that was started since women often hold leadership positions in society and organizations and also have a role raising children and caring for spouses and families. While various sectors emphasize working with women for these reasons, this is the first initiative that focuses more primarily on a more well rounded knowledge base.

This was also an amazing conference, especially considering how much knowledge was passed on to the women in just 3 days. We did a lot of HIV/AIDS education, women's health education, basic finances and accounting, team strengthening, talking about violence against women, creating community groups, healthy cooking, etc. Needless to say, a jam-packed conference, but the women loved it! And mine were still awake telling jokes the whole bus ride home. And were so incredibly motivated from the whole experience and are now going full force with motivation for the next meeting of the women's group (so hopefully that motivation will stay up for awhile!).

Construye Tus Sueños

So I’ve recently participated in 2 conferences recently. The first was the “winners conference” in which we brought the 4 winners from the conference in October together and distributed the money they won and also a few activities to prepare them to start their business, such as creating statues, social responsibility, preparing for failure and setback, and we also had a microfinance consultant come in and talk to each group thoroughly about their plans. It was also a great way to celebrate the work that the 4 groups have achieved.

Getting down to business, signing contracts to recieve prize money.

Me and Andy, my winner with the motorcycle repair shop

We also had a conference for those starting groups for the upcoming conference. Volunteers came out with a few potential students or potential multipicadores (those who will teach the course in the coming year), to review some of the more involved materials, accounting, market analysis, etc. But also we made it our focus to discuss not only the importance and potential impact of the course and what the current outlook of business development, and what is “innovation.” One of the goals we want to stress in CTS is that plans are being developed that are innovative. Our concept is that while it is great to have businesses open that sell clothes and food, if we can encourage the youth to start analyzing the resources they have available and trying to look for creative ways to utilize them.

2nd year campo Christmas

Unlike most of my swear in group, I stayed in site for my 2^nd year Christmas. Since the Dominican Republic is so close to the states, and because Christmas time everything shuts down here in the DR, many volunteers head back to the states for their second Christmas, however, my parents are in Spain, and I enjoy my campo on Christmas so I decided to stay put. The biggest change during Christmas is that everyone comes back home to the campo for Christmas, which means the population about triples, or quadruples, algo asi. The 22^nd and the 23^rd is when everyone kills their pigs, which while for my campo is very normal, many of my friends don’t have that as part of their Christmas tradition because they just buy a piece in the city, but here in my site they kill the pigs in their backyard, and often families will share a pig between two to split up the meat, but there are a few men in my community that go around and help everyone out with the slaughter and business is done. Then on the 24^th, Noche Buena, the holy night, there is a big dinner, and during the day there is all the food preparation. I went up to my host families in the morning, had a breakfast of viveres (root veggies) and salami, and helped take care of the kids all morning (ended up with 3 kids under 1 and 2 under 3 for awhile). It was great to be able to play with all my little host nieces and nephews and to be able to actually help in the house, especially since my host mom just had a surgery and can’t pick up the kids right now, so I helped a lot with the kids and feeding them, putting them to sleep etc. Then in good Dominican fashion we had a big lunch (I knew to cut back in preparation for having to eat a big dinner as well) of rice with pigeon peas and chicken. Unlike last year where I stayed at the house all day, this year I spent the afternoon walking around and saludaring everyone that had come around, and visiting the families that I had promised a visit. It always feel fairly similar to holidays back at home because the family gets together, but since the community is so small, it’s like a huge family reunion every holiday. Especially with all the 30-somethings that have left to work (many to work in the large resorts/hotels on the coast) that come back and get together to catch up, and visit the mothers of all their friends, etc.

I got back to the house right when it was getting dark and the food was about done being prepared. The food filled the main table and then after a prayer the mass preparation of plates began. Besides all the relatives that were there (all my host siblings and their families and a few friends), plates are prepared to send out to many other houses in the community, and some of the houses that do not prepare a meal come by to eat as well (for example the Haitian workers, 20 something men that are here alone) come to eat and hang out for Christmas. And that is why they can cook an entire pig and barely have leftovers. Christmas dinner: lots of pork, yucca empanandas, spaghetti, green salad, french bread, grapes, apples, gummi candies, very tasty. But thats one of the best parts, not only do they share with the rest of their family and have everyone get together, but really whoever doesn't have a place to eat dinner knows that they have a place to go.

Me with one of my donas on her birthday

Me, as a natural rubia

The hair dying process, this is how dominican women traditionally dry their hair, in huge rolos, it didn't do anything to change mine, but it was fun!

The final product, merry christmas to me!

mid December update

I think saying that November was a very busy month just isn’t strong enough to talk about how all over the place I was during that month. I’ve spent half of December recovering and am now in a place where I can write a blog entry. Let’s just say my Peace Corps is far from me just sitting around being isolated, which I’m very grateful for. November was full of celebrating my one year in country with all those that swore in with me, my 1 year in service-training, a youth environmental camp, having a few tour events, thanksgiving dinner (and helping to cook the stuffing, gravy, and brownies for about 180 Peace Corps volunteers and staff that attended the event), presenting to the Peace Corps staff about my service (I was volunteer of the month, go me!), artisan fairs, and ended the month with a guide interpretation conference. I get exhausted just writing all of that out. Was really glad I could participate in all these events, I just wish they were more spread out, as did my community. My community is really good at laying on the guilty when I’m gone for too long, and will often come at with “Alanna, pero tu si estás perdida!” (direct translation would be Alanna, but you have been lost!) whenever they don’t see me for even just a few days. So, after this crazy month at the next meetings I attended and walking around my community I got this campo guilt to an extreme, telling me they thought I had abandoned them and gone back to the states, that they were planning to send out a search party, and that they were going to tie me up to my house so that I couldn’t leave them again. You know, nice to be missed. So the past week I just stayed in my site and went to all my meetings and just walked around and visited everyone so that they would know I’m still here. It’s been like a vacation being back in my site, just relaxing and talking to everyone, playing lots of dominoes, it’s great.

And now it’s back to work with my community projects. Mid December through mid January almost everything goes on break here. All the community groups close, family comes into town, and it’s hard to get a lot done. So I’m taking the time to just sit and schedule and start to prep for the activities in January. One of the most important aspects that the tour is still lacking is promotion, we are having a group from Canada come out in January to film the tour for their program which will hopefully help out in getting groups to come visit. So January will also be super busy, but I'm looking forward to it!

The two girls I took to the environment conference (Brigada Verde) we went to a lagoon as an afternoon outing

The girls presenting on the animal with the largest heart,

The entire group, Brigada Verde, el este!

When the cowboys of El Seibo came to use the tour for a day

Parking their horses

Construye Tus Sueños

Now a few weeks ago, excuse my laziness (I’ll blame the frequent loss of electricity recently), 2 groups from my community were invited to a conference called Construye Tus Sueños. I’ll back track and explain that this is the business course that is a secondary project for many volunteers (especially in my sector, Community Economic Development) that teaches community members, especially jovenes/youth how to start a micro business. So there was the course, then any groups that wanted to could submit their plans, and the top 24 plans were chosen to participate in the competition in mid October in the capital.

We ended up with a total of 100 youth, representing 45 plans (we invited those that completed good plans to come and participate although they could not compete). Then the 24 groups first competed in front of a small group of judges then the top 8 were selected to present a second time in front of everyone, and the top 4 were chosen to have their business plans fully funded.

I personally had 2 groups come from my classes to participate. The first are 2 boys who created a plan to develop an egg producing business. Their research of the area discovered that all the eggs sold in the eastern part of the country were produced by a huge company in the north of the DR. They realized they could purchase hens that 1-2 eggs a day and sell those at a lower price then the competition, and also be selling a better quality egg then the eggs that we currently consume.

My other boy worked alone to plan a motor repair shop our in our campo. The importance of his shop is that almost everyone in the area depends on motorcycles for transport into town, to go work on their farms, etc, and the roads are so bad that the motorcycles are often damaged. Then they have to find a way to get their motor back to town to get it fixed because there aren’t any options in the campo.

Both groups did a fantastic job presenting, I was definitely the proud mama in the background with my fingers crossed the entire time.

The motor repair shop was able to make it to the finals, and did a great job presenting in front of everyone (he was really nervous and up until the night before was reading everything off his notecards and spent the whole 10 minutes without breathing or looking up, but on the day of presenting he was smiling and looked at the notecards minimally, it was fantastic! I was so proud!).

Then the big drum roll……HE WON!

He barely got in the top 4 so my campo will soon have an up and running motor repair shop! Which is fantastic and will hopefully help out the community a lot and will give my boy a job and income!

This is 2 of my friends and I working at the conference :)

Now that the conference is over, we are working to get all of the budget finalized and the money will be distributed at the end of the month! The volunteers are also starting to work together to form a team that will take on the planning and organizing of next years conference and program. Construye Tus Sueños only have about 5 years of existance so we are still developing the program a lot. I am working and planning to help with the development of this program and be on the team so that we can work to fund more plans, find strong partner organizations (especially Dominican), find ways to encourage well thought out (not extravagant) budgets, and continue to work to improve accountability (instead of just saying that it will improve the community, how do we know that it is true). The prize money varies because it depends on what their budget is, but it can rise up to 60,000 pesos, about $1,600 dollars, so the program can definitely continue to have a huge impact if we are able to structure it correctly.

Anyways, that is a good solid update about one of the projects I am working on. It is one of my favorite parts about my service because I can see everything that they are learning and to me learning good business skills can make a huge difference in your life, and now I am also taking that material to teach it to adults with businesses in the community, and hopefully will be able to continue to have a positive impact.

Video of my project

For those of you that habla español, you can understand everything, but for those that cannot, here is at least to see a video of what the tour I am working with is all about, especially half way through at 6:40, those are clips of only my site, Los Botados.

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=10150323240603459

enjoy!

Sharing a Menta

Dominicans are known for being a compartiendo or sharing culture. Coming from a world where there is a desire for independence and to not have to depend on anyone, it is often a challenge to immerse myself. In general, if I don’t have something I go out and buy it, not just ask someone else for it.

One of my favorite examples here is just how much a Dominican will share. Dominicans are crazy about mentas, most often Hall’s cough drops, but any small candy that you can suck on it considered a menta. Often times I will be at the colmado, corner store, buying some sort of food and if a handful of mentas are bought, they will then be quickly dispersed to whoever is standing around. Or if we are waiting for a meeting to start often times a doña will dig around in her purse and pull out mentas for all in the surrounding area. But what about the case when there are more people then mentas you may ask? Give them to your favorites? No need, that is when the beauty of compartir-ing really takes place. Just bite off your half and pass it over to your companion, so that everyone can enjoy a little of the mint. Maybe not the most hygienic of habits, sorry all you doctors and nurses in the family, but it’s sort of a beautiful tradition in my eyes. To make sure that everyone can enjoy equally, and the desire to share with everyone, is so strong that you will go as far as to break off a piece of a Hall’s cough drop, aka candy, so that everyone can have a piece, is a great thing. One night another volunteer was visiting me (she came to take pictures of my site), and so I had 2 friends come over and we cooked dinner, a huge dinner of river crab, various viveres, the root vegetables, guacamole, and arepitas de yuca, and to finish off our feast, one of my friends breaks out a heart shaped lollipop, and breaks it into four little pieces so that we can all enjoy it. I guess what I’m trying to say is, if you come visit don’t be surprised when I hand you half of a Hall’s cough drop.