Habichuela con Dulce

^^What I've been doing instead of blogging. haha. just kidding. I haven't been to the beach in awhile, but just showing off how beautiful this country is. This is Bayahibe, the 2 on the left are also PCVs and then a friend that did a USAID fellowship for 2 months

It has been an embarrassingly long time since I have updated this blog, part of the reason being I am very bad at writing updates (my personal journal isn’t fairing much better), and also just not being sure what to write about, so here it goes, hopefully my stream of thoughts will be interesting, and also hopefully I will not let another 2 month gap slide by.

One of the biggest changes in the past few months is finally living on my own. It is very liberating after living with host families for 6 months to not be living out of my suitcase and have space for myself. Not to mention having the luxury of cooking for myself, although I still get fed by all the doñas of the community so I don’t end up cooking that much, but having the option is great. So now I have a space where there is peace and quiet, and I can lay out my papers and work, or just sit and read for awhile without interruption. And although it gets a little lonely living alone, people always stop by and say hi so I’m never alone for long. My community still is concerned about me living alone and frequently asks if I want a muchacha (one of the neighborhood girls) to stay with me at night, which I always decline. I also not only have a machete but also a bata, a metal rod with a white tube handle for better grip. Haha. I was getting a ride with the head construction worker at the Bloque (the parent organization of the tour), and when he found out that I was living alone he insisted on making it for me. Granted they just sit by my door to make my host dad happy that I’ll be safe, but I feel pretty awesome showing them off to my visitors. And the machete is used to cut the weeds. I also nicked a kid with it when we were cutting up a sack…whoops. Luckily my host dad hadn’t sharpened it yet so it didn’t break skin and the kid thought it was funny. Unfortunately I forgot to take a picture before leaving, but don’t worry you will all see the glory that is my bata y machete.

My projects are advancing much slower then I would have liked. Almost daily I get frustrated and want to just drop the project and have to look for motivation to keep working. A big part of the problem is just the cultural differences. Coming from an individualistic society, where I am used to people striving for personal development, I find clashes with the collective culture here. Things are also just done at a very different time schedule, things aren’t as organized and things end up just getting done, but I’m trying to show that when things are planned and prepared, you can get better results. An example of that is trying to convince the women working in the kitchen it is better to buy the food a day before to make sure everything is available, and the guides that they should prep their route the day before so that they have time to get everything done.

But look how well they cook when they do :) One of my doñas making chicken

The main roadblock at the moment is that there are a lot of politics going on at the parent organization, and groups aren’t being sent to my site. This means I’m heading into the office at least once a week trying to get the problems fixed, and often coming back very frustrated and with little progress. It also means that people in my site are losing interest in working on the tour because they don’t see results so I also am often visiting and explaining how we just have to be patient and keep bettering ourselves while we wait for the problems to be fixed. The optimistic way to look at is, at least I am here working for my site, because if I wasn’t here, not to sound egoistic, but the situation would be much more grim for the tour, and it definitely has a lot of potential, which is what gives me the motivation to keep going back, knowing I probably won’t have success, but to at least keep trying to make some dents of progress.

Luckily, I have some awesome campo days, we are currently making a horseback riding route to a nearby community, so I went with 2 men that work with the tour, and 2 boys that know everything about horses

Today I had a group of Peace Corps trainees come and do the tour to give the newest guides the opportunity to practice and experience what it is like to have a real tour. It was a lot of work, very frustrating, and stressful trying to get the route prepared and get everyone organized (and trying to convince them to study more, which I didn’t have too much success at…). However, at the end of the day, I hope they learned a lot, and I was proud of them for powering through the day and sticking it through all the obstacles that arose. And hopefully it helps them to get a better idea of what they need to work on. And my women, as always, cooked amazing food, although an equally crazy intense and stressful situation, it’s a relief that the women can cook so well, and we just need to keep doing trainings and capacity building and they will be ready to blow the socks off anyone that visits. The trainees really enjoyed the tour and were giving very positive and excited reviews, which is also a perk. We also got some great pictures so we can update and expand our promotional material.

One of my guides showing off a cacao mazorca

Last week was Semana Santa, very similar to Christmas, in the campo most of what happened was a lot of family time, which to me equals a ridiculous amount of playing dominoes (easily at least 5 hours a day, most often way more, and almost always going until about 1 am, which is really late in campo time). I’m not sure if it is just because I am involved in my church more, but it was a lot of church time as well, very similar services to what St. Martin’s does, washing of the feet on Thursday, the stations of the Cross on Friday, and Easter Vigil (we even had a bonfire, although not as impressive as the one back at SMT). Also, we’ve been singing a song that I taught my dad (who is in the choir), because at home they sing it half in Spanish. It’s nice to have the small world experiences because I like thinking about my family and everything back in California. But not going to lie, it makes it harder sometimes when I start to think about who and what I miss, and how long I’ll be away. Before Peace Corps, the longest I had been away from California was 4 months. Now that I am at 8 months (wow!) out of country, and still with very limited contact with people back at home, it really makes me appreciate how awesome my family, friends, and community are/were. It also makes me appreciate what technology has achieved, I still can’t believe my mom went 2 years in the Peace Corps only communicating through letters, and depending purely on the mail system. I guess moral of this rambling is that it’s much harder then I expected it to be in terms of being so disconnected, but I just try not to think about it =D That’s also not to say that I don’t love it here, I am (thankfully) still 100% sure this is where I want to be and what I want to be doing with my life, which is a very nice feeling to have.

Luckily I'm greeted by this at my doorway when I wake up, I love the muchachos in my community

Anyways, back to Semana Santa. The main highlight is (drumroll…) Habichuela con dulce, which is a sweet, made with beans, it has a pudding like texture. I don’t think describing the process will help sell it, but it’s delicious! Every household makes a huge amount and then just chow on it until it is all finished. My host family made 2 huge pots of it, and it was gone the next day. Quite impressive if you ask me. So the big day of celebration here is on Good Friday, everyone gets together with their family, and every household makes rice, beans, fish, salad, and habichuela con dulce. Then they process to send plates to their neighbors and close family members. And in turn receive platefuls from all their neighbors and close family members. It’s cute to see my host mom running around and sending plates with whatever kid is around, and keeping track of what is received. Semana Santa has also turned into a time where a lot of people go to the beach and the rivers, and they just get packed with people. It’s turning more into a time for families to travel, like spring break in the states, so the roads are crowded, and people drink a lot more too. However, I literally stayed in my campo the entire time, so that’s all just what others have told me.

My host sister in law, this is half of the habichuela con dulce that they made

Tasty!

I’m pretty sure if I write much more people will just stop reading, but I guess my last summary piece looking back on my last 2 months is that I’ve been getting compliments on my Spanish recently, which is always nice to hear. Coming to country my Spanish level was fairly high, but I was frustrated during training because after “Dominicanizing” my Spanish (picking up on their slang (which is very different), accent, and ridiculously fast speed at which they talk) I felt like I hadn’t improved much more. But I’ve been told that my Spanish is becoming more fluid, and I’m also picking up some new vocabulary (although probably 85% is only useful when talking about cacao…haha). My goal is to start reading books in Spanish so that I can get more useful vocabulary and not be using so much English when I’m on my own. I also am slowly convincing myself how much I need to sit down and study the subjunctive, which is my biggest weakness. I guess dropping Spanish 4 for stats senior year at Mitty did have an adverse affect. So the good news is, people say, and I agree, that I’m improving, so I will be an amazing translator for anyone that comes to visit (hint hint wink wink). Also it means forgive me if I ever use strange words that don’t quite fit, I’m starting to forget my English vocabulary. For example, for the past 2 days I’ve been trying to remember what the other word for mowing grass, all that comes to mind is trim, which I know is just for hair…but in Spanish it’s chapear! So look forward to Alanna having a very strange vocabulary in a year and a half.

Ok, I’m at almost 3 full pages in a word document, that’s enough filling in for the day. I have a full next few weeks. I’ll be trying to keep up the momentum from the last visit to get people working harder and fixing the problems that exist, planning/starting a girls group and if I can gather the interest (pray for me on this one) to start a class teaching how to write a business plan and how to plan and start your own business, as well as it is patronales, which is a big celebration of the patron saint of the province starting this weekend. Not to mention my birthday is in 10 days! I’ve started mentioning it in my community, and am sure I’ll find something fun to do, after all, I can just play dominoes all day =P

Pictures I want to share, but didn't blog about:

I took 2 girls from my community to a regional girls camp, talking about women's empowerment, body image, having goals for the future, etc. And just having a good time

My host sister also had me go with her to the court house to formally get married (not that common here). I would have been the witness but I forgot my ID back at the house :)

The women's softball team in my community that I've been working with a bit

And in case it isn't clear, I'm still very much surrounded by cacao. I'm going to be a cacao master by the end of this!

This is my backyard. They dry cacao here when there is too much to take into town. So it smells like cacao in my house now, luckily I actually really like the smell now :)

Mmm cacao fresh from the farm

And cacao after fermentation :)