A bit of brownie with pineapple marmalade

The past few weeks have been pretty busy, just how I like them. The women are on the verge of selling their dulces (sweets), the first jars have been purchased and we are fixing up the label so hopefully in a week or so they will start selling. I also have 2 youth-initiative groups formed (both Peace Corps created groups). The first is for youth in the community to learn about the fundamentals of owning a business and writing a business plan (I participated in a very similar program back in San Diego). The point is for them to learn how to identify business opportunities, create a business plan, and implement the necessary steps to start a business. I have a small group in the community that has expressed interest, and I’m starting the course next week. Hopefully I will have a few that are able to finish the course and complete a business plan. In general volunteers doing this program have a pretty high drop out rate, and since my community is so small, the group is small to begin with, so I’m keeping my fingers crossed. But excited to start the group since I think it’s a really great program, one of the best youth programs that the Peace Corps has developed. I’m also starting a girls youth group in the community, starting with 10 girls of a similar age and doing different workshops about self-esteem, goals, respect, etc. It should be a fun group and hopefully will make a difference for the girls. A lot of women here get married at a very young age, or get pregnant at a very young age, especially here in my campo. Many of the women my age have kids that are 6-7 years old and have fairly low education levels.

Some of my community at patronales

The bull "fighting"

It was also recently my birthday, which happened to coincide with patronales in my province, which is a celebration that each town has celebrating their patron saint. However, in my province it has definitely changed from what was a religious holiday into a week + of celebrations in the main town. Almost every day (except for the feast day, which is devoted to religious activities), there is bull fighting, carnival rides, and horse parades. So for my birthday I went into town and met up with some fellow volunteers (I’m lucky to have volunteers that live very close to me, 3 in the main ½ an hour away and 1 other equally close) and we went to celebrate for the day. I’ve never seen bull fighting before, and went to this one because they don’t kill any of the animals, and it wasn’t as intense as I feared it would be. However, the carnival rides were much more intense then expected. My friend and I braved it and did the ferris wheel, and it goes so fast, it’s much more like a rollercoaster, but still had a great view at the top. One of the highlights is I made a birthday cake/brownie using the cacao chocolate that they produce in the campo and sell on the tour. It was super delicious and rich. I inherited an old dutch oven that you can use on the gas stove (here everyone cooks with gas, which is expensive so using an oven is basically out of the question and not used here for cooking, only for storage). Anyways, so I made this cacao/chocolate brownie/cake, with a pineapple marmalade as frosting and it was super delicious if I do say so myself. And it felt much more like my birthday to have a cake. Also we had a conference the next week in the capital so I got to get together again with friends there, and I got a few birthday packages, so all in all, a pretty sweet celebration to bring in 24.

Birthday cake with pineapple marmalade

Getting on the ferris wheel

You can see how fast we are going!

I’ve also been playing some marathon dominoes lately. As in, when my host brother is in town a group of us goes to my host family’s house and from like 9 till 1 or 2 in the morning play dominoes none-stop, rotating teams in, it gets fairly intense, and the most recent time playing my frente (partner) and I were able to hold down the table for no joke about 2 ½ hours, only stopping because it was super late and I had to get up at 6 to head to the capital. So, the dominoes love is still going strong. And I’ve been maintaining my reputation as a Dominoes Master, mas o menos :)

I have noticed recently how much I have become part of the community. Serving in Peace Corps isn’t just to work in development, that is only 1/3 of our goals, we are also here to share our culture and learn about the Dominican culture and share it back at home (got that part done with my blog). I definitely can say I am learning to become more Dominican and am not only now welcomed but part of the community. I left for a conference in the capital last Wednesday and didn’t get back to my community until Monday afternoon, pretty close to a week being gone. While being gone I went through “campo withdrawal,” starting to miss my neighbors and my life after few days being gone. Especially when I decided to go and visit one of my closest friends, Gabby’s site in Samana. It was beautiful but I couldn’t help but start to feel the need to get back to my site and back to working with my community. Then I came back and was told by a few of my neighbors who had been asking for and looking for me. I think its really special that it’s gotten to a point where the community expects me to always be there and will stop by to check on me if I haven’t visited in a few days. I reached the point of being a part of the community, not only a member of my host family but of the community as a whole, which is pretty spectacular. I also still get fed an enormous amount, which means I’m still eating but not personally cooking Dominican, really need to get on those cooking lessons more.

My neighbor roasting peanuts, delicious

Neighbor muchachos

We are strongly in mango season, which is fantastic! Except for the fact that the skin of the mango is related to poison oak, and if I eat too many my whole face itches for the next few days…but you know, life is full of sacrifices and I’ve still got my fingers crossed that I’ll adapt.

A few people have asked me about how I get my water. My house is not one of the lucky ones with water (you know, since technically it’s not really a house), however, I live very close to one of the oldest women in the community, and they installed the pipes so that water comes to her faucet from an electric pump that more often then not works. So I walk to her house with my bucket and fill up a trash can or 2 of water, depending on how ambitious I’m feeling. Then I also drag all my dirty laundry to her house since I lack both the water source and the machine to do it at my own. Also, doing laundry here is a much more hands on process, they have a machine that gets the basic dirt out, but you still have to give it a good scrub after it is in the machine for about 15 minutes, then you rinse it yourself and put it in the dryer, which wrings out a decent amount of water then you have to put it out to dry. So the machine is useful but it is still a very interactive process. I definitely value the water that I have, and am always surprised how long I can go with such a small amount of water. Hopefully a skill that I’ll be able to maintain when I go back to the states.

Also a lesson I’ve learned, a rustic floor, while it may sound interesting and not like that much of a hassle has no pros to it. At least here, it is just a floor that doesn’t have the final smooth layer of cement on it so it is rough concrete that is constantly losing little bits of rocks. So it is bumpy, can’t be moped, constantly coming apart so is never really clean, and uncomfortable to walk barefoot on. And now that I’ve moved in, I’d have to take everything out to put on the other layer of concrete..bueno…realistically I’ll probably just keep it and continue to sweep up piles of rocks and “dirt” (my floor peeling off another layer) until I move out, but lesson learned: although rustic floors sound interesting there really is no selling point to keeping them.