A po' ta' bien

2nd year campo Christmas

2011-12-28T11:55:00.000-08:00

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

2011-12-28T11:53:00.001-08:00

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

2011-11-14T10:28:00.000-08:00

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

2011-10-04T16:39:00.000-07:00

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

2011-10-03T06:22:00.000-07:00

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.

Rats..

2011-09-01T05:59:00.000-07:00

So I have two great pictures to share.

The first is sort of depressing as well, but it happened a few days ago so now I've come to terms and thing and have just added it on to my list of Peace Corps experiences. I came with dollars to have some extra money, just in case, you know. The other part of the story is that the downside of living in a warehouse in the campo is that there are critters that come and go. The worst thus far being a few rats, that one by one have tried to set up shop in my house (I always shoot them down). The latest, unfortunately, found my dollars and for some ridiculous reason ate through ALL of them. Leave them to look like this:
2nd quick story: Dominicans love their crocs, almost everyone has a pair. Anyone that knows me knows that I have a dislike of crocs, however, I recently found these awesome crocs that are very similar to converse, and look super awesome, so I'm going against my previous stance and bought them, and am now sharing them with all of you. Look how stylish my feet look! And they are good for my muddy site.
Alright, back to my site, hope to post soon.

My First Visitor!

2011-08-27T08:56:00.000-07:00

2 blog updates in 1 week! I am on fire! Or way way behind so I have a plethora of stories to write about. It also helps that we already have another storm coming through so I’m trapped in my house for the night and know I will have internet tomorrow.

So I also recently (although already not so recently) had my first visitor! Hurrah!!! Finally! I was openly getting jealous of other volunteers who have had multiple visitors already, so it was nice to get on the scoreboard and have a visitor from home! My brother, Sean, came out for a month to hang out. It was surprising how quickly the visit went, we weren’t able to get to a lot of what I was hoping for, but I think he definitely got a feel for my campo and some of the problems that are going on in the DR and a good view at Dominican culture. Also, especially in his first days here, I realized how integrated I am becoming, to the point that I am no longer surprised by what was previously unfamiliar. I guess I hadn’t really noticed before because it’s become so second-nature to me but traveling around with my brother, down to how I communicate with the bus drivers has become much more Dominicanized. So that’s cool. Unfortunately I also had a lot of work going on when he visited, and decided to not take any time off since he was here for so long. We had a few tours and even had a group come to film the tour to do a promotional video, which is very exciting!

Anyways, Sean’s first week and a little we were in my site, lots of meetings and tour activities going on, so a lot of times I would just leave Sean with a neighbor or host family member and take care of what I had to do. It worked out pretty well because then he got to know my community, when I was around they would tell my to translate, or we would start talking too fast, or about business that isn’t that interesting if you don’t know everything that is going on. Sean got to go to the farm a lot though, went to gather avocado for a day, went to milk the cows one morning, etc. Then we went up to visit my other host family that lives in the north for a few days. I hadn’t seen them since training (almost 9 months), so it was great to have an excuse to go see them. We did a lot of what I usually did there, went to the farm, hung out in the house playing around, lots of dominoes, and went to watch my host dad play baseball, it was perfect. I also almost killed a chicken. It would have died eventually, but I didn’t make the cut deep enough so my host mom had to step in and re-cut it. But definite progress.

Then we went and worked a kids camp in Caberete for a week through the Dream Project (Dominican Republic Education And Mentoring Project), which is a great organization here in the DR that works to better educational opportunities for low income kids here, they also do work in racism, documentation, etc. It was challenging at points (large groups of kids and lots of energy) but well worth it. It also gave Sean the chance to see a different part of the country, Caberete is like a little America compared to my pueblo, with lots of foreigners and foreign stores.

When we got back to my site I realized we only had a week and a half left and still had a huge list of things we wanted to do. One of my favorites was that one night one of the dons took us out to go catch river crab. It was us and our flashlights trudging through the river for like 2 hours catching these crabs.

The don helped me to catch 3 crabs, but Sean was able to get one without any help, which was impressive. It was crazy to watch the don catching them because he was just so fast! To catch a river crab you look for their holes on the riverbank and then dart your hand and have to catch them behind the pinchers. If you are too slow they see you and run into their cave deep in the hole. But if you are a don that doesn’t stop you and you throw your arm into the cave until you physically cannot put it any further and don’t worry about them pinching off your finger, it’s intense. Then the next morning he taught us how to cook jibah en salsa de coco (coconut sauce), it is so tasty. Then we feasted on all our hard work. It was cute he is already talking about when my dad comes how he wants to take my dad out too.

2 of my favorite doñas also had Sean come over to teach him how to make dulce de coco con leche and to roast and grind some coffee to send back to the family. We also had the chance to go and see a few nearby Peace Corps projects, talking to a girl about creating a water treatment center and another that is working with a women’s group to make jewelry, which was fun and good to show some of the variety of Peace Corps projects.

Sean and some of the muchachas, waiting as the dulce is cooked

My dona making the dulce

My dona mashing the coffee

Sean grinding the coffee

final product

1 year in country!

2011-08-19T09:57:00.000-07:00

I feel like every month I have less time on the internet, and more to do every time I log in. I also spend far less time doing work on my laptop, which is both good and bad. My laptop time is definitely more dedicated to watching movies (mostly Spanish!) then work/writing emails and blog posts. But thanks to a few people mentioning the lack of blogging on my part, poof, an entry!

We are now well into mango season, huge mangoes for everyone!

Yesterday, the 17^th, marks my one year anniversary of leaving home. Tomorrow, the 19^th, is when I landed in the Dominican Republic and started this journey. It is pretty surreal thinking back from where I started from, and how much I have changed. For one thing, it is almost disgusting how much I know about cacao, especially considering how much I knew coming in…I find myself admiring the production when I walk through different farms and can talk about the entire cacao production from start to finish, so if you want to know, just hit me up! I’m also becoming very Dominican in my hospitality and Spanish. Which means I am successfully becoming immersed in the culture, it also makes me concerned about coming back to the States, considering I still have over a year over service, and already have changed as much as I have. We had a youth camp last weekend, so I spoke Spanish in front of many of my peer volunteers, and received many compliments about the development of my Spanish and how tiguere, which I guess you could translate to “street savvy,” it had become. Which is awesome that I really speak like a Dominican, but I am starting to speak like my campo host dad, who I love but is not quite the ideal Spanish to bring back to the States. A good example is that now instead of saying despues, I say with Dominican speed dpue and don’t understand why the other Americans look at me with a confused face. Needless to say, it will be an interesting transition back.

A logical update would be about my projects. One of my favorite activities right now is the business class that I am teaching. The structure is a basic class teaching youth how to writing and plan a business, it’s fantastic because I’m teaching so many basic skills that they have never thought about before. Here is one of the girls learning about fixed and variable costs:

Doing cost analysis, preparing a vision, marketing strategies, etc. It’s also a chance to review a lot of basic math functions, such as multiplying percentages, which they would otherwise go without. Given the low education level that is the norm in my site, this isn’t a project that doesn’t reach the majority of my community, but a great project non-the less. We are trying to get them to write a plan before the end of the month to enter a competition that will occur in October where the best plans receive funding to start their businesses, fingers crossed!

Here they calculated the point of equilibrium, it took them about an hour to go through all the steps, I was so proud!

I also am still very active in my primary project, the Chocolate Tour. It is slow going, which as an ecotourism project, it should be in order to have sustainable progress. My women are getting better every time we have a group at buying the correct amount of supplies, and getting everything prepared on time. We also have the guides slowly but surely getting better, getting them to study is a definite challenge, but pa’ lante. The biggest success that we have been having is that we are starting to get independent groups to come do the tour, slowly but surely, but that means that the promotions and conversations we have been having are working. We even had two guys just drive to the tour center in my site, which is fairly remote, just getting recommendations and directions in different towns, which is extraordinary. We also had a company come out and film the tour, to be shown on Dominican TVs all along the coast, which will hopefully be some great promotion, and definitely got everyone in my community excited that they got to be filmed. We also filmed going horseback riding to the river and then went swimming, which is a great afternoon activity. And when everyone left I convinced one of my muchachos to keep riding with me and we went for about 3 hours, until the sun set, it was awesome! I am getting respectable at riding now and can get the horse to run and not freak out, which is huge progress. Unfortunately we road for so long that I got huge bruises, so I haven’t been since, but now that’s all cleared up so I’m going to look for my muchacho to see when we can go again ;)

One of the other great things about Peace Corps in the Dominican Republic is that we are close enough and safe enough that we can get together and do camps and conferences with other volunteers and members of our community. Last weekend we had Celebrando el Este, Celebrating the East. Which is a cultural and diversity camp that any volunteer in the East can participate in. We bring two youth with us and do activities about the Eastern region, the Dominican Republic, the United States, and the world. We talk about history, geography, diversity, what culture is, discrimination, etc. It was a huge success. We had a great team of volunteers planning and all the activities worked out, not one was a miss. We taught them different dances and dips from around the world, here are some pictures:

Everyone painted a huge map of the world:

We also did an immigration charla and put up little green men for places members of our family have immigrated to, this is a green man for my brother and family Cousin Ben in Canada!

Teaching the kids to do an Irish jig:

These are our dips around the world: hummus, bruchetta, cillantro pesto, and we were going to do guac but the avocados went bad, all stuff they can repeat in their site too!

We also did this great activity on discrimination, they were in four groups and some groups received more materials and help then others, the lower groups were sent to “prison” for 5 minutes while we let the higher groups cheat and helped them build a city. It was impressive at the end of the discussion how well they grasped the concepts of corruption, inequality, etc.

Anyways, theres a quick update ;) I'll try and get another one soon because I also have lots of stories because I finally had a visitor with my middle brother here for a month!

2011-06-13T12:18:00.000-07:00

www.tourdechocolate.com

This is the new website for my tour. Pretty excited that we finally got the website up!

Feel free to check it out, hopefully it encourages you to come visit =D

Roads turn to rivers

2011-06-13T07:55:00.000-07:00

The rainy season has begun. In general for the campo this is a fantastic because all the farms are getting a lot of water, we had a dry season so everyone is really excited and hopefully this will help to have better cacao in the next season. Also, the side crops, such as the avocado trees, are getting nicely watered, so I’m excited. The rain also means that everyone (minus me because I don’t have a system set up) now has all their rain water tanks filled up, so people don’t have to spend a lot of time looking for water, which is great. However, rain also means that a lot of my meetings are canceled because people don’t really leave their house when it rains…And I found out if it rains hard enough it starts to enter my house, but that’s fine because it doesn’t flood, it’s just a pool of water that I sweep out. Luckily it doesn’t have much effect on my rustic floor, it probably makes it better. Haha.

Tuesday was an especially rainy day. It was a combination of relaxing because I was just in my house listening to the rain on my zinc roof and doing whatever I wanted, and depressing because I was stuck alone in my house for the whole day. Then one of my doñas came by to see how I was doing, and we hung out on my “porch” watching her son play in the rain formed river, it was pretty amusing. I would call it the campo version of Raging Waters for all you in San Jose.

Then we went on a stroll through the neighborhood to see all the chaos of the water, and that water was flowing! Rivers and ponds throughout the road. Then we found another doña and three of us along with a few kids went to one of the best mango trees and ate to our hearts content. We were drenched from head to toe but definitely a memorable and enjoyable afternoon.

Where both of my flip flops broke and sank into the mud
This use to be a tiny stream, and then the rains came down
Two of my favorite doñas enjoying the rain -

So one of my biggest problems in my site is that most of the groups struggle just to meet, not to have successful meeting, just to get people to the location and meet. So this Saturday I had a general community meeting to talk about how this was a negative situation that the community had to change. I would say it went really well. Not only did we talk about the need to meet and have a bunch of mini pep talks about the importance of the community groups (lots of if we aren’t meeting, we aren’t in anything and we will never get anywhere). We also talked about a lot of the problems that are currently going on in the community. The rain is beating up the road and making it almost impassable, most of the street lights have burnt out and the mayor still hasn’t replaced them, about half the community doesn’t have a dependent water source, the mayor hasn’t provided any money that was promised from the budget (and last year they never received anything), and also they are starting to charge the community for trash pick up. In a country in which most people just burn their trash or just leave it wherever and don’t worry about where it goes or becomes deposited, forcing people that are worrying about making ends meet to pay to get it picked up is not a step in the right direction. Anyways those from the community that attended the meeting and talked about these issues (and a few others), and were able to make a list of the most important needs and also come up with multiple plans of attack to resolve the problem. I was really proud of them, and I’m keeping my fingers crossed that they will continue with this motivation to keep meeting and working together. Vamos a ver

This is dulce de cajuil. It sort of looks like tiny cooked up brains, but it tastes delicious! My neighbor is start to send me food almost every day, normal it is dinner or lunch, but this Saturday it was a dulce, lucky me (and everyone that has stopped by to visit)!

I’m also making progress on starting a literacy project in my community. We were able to find an organization that is starting to give support to literacy classes (funding for books, training, help for the instructors, etc). So currently gathering the details about everyone motivated to take the course. I believe I mentioned this before, but literacy is a huge problem here, and not just in the adults but the youth, a lot of people around my age, went to school a few years and just got nothing about out of it, so it’s really exciting that they are coming up and saying that they would like to learn now. Hopefully they will be able to maintain the motivation through the course and really learn how to read and write.

Some of the doñas getting their hair ready to celebrate Mother's Day

My next door neighbor has been in town for the last 3 weeks with heart problems, she just came back on Saturday, and wow did I miss her! I visit her almost every day and call out to her every time I pass by, which is a lot. I've already visited her 4 times and also hung out with her 8 year old grandson Sunday night, who had also been gone with her (we had a race, I fell, it was funny. He also enjoyed my music which was exciting). I also get my water from her and do laundry at her house, so it is nice to have her back to talk to and visit. It was also great to see everyone in the community rush to visit her this weekend, it was brought up by everyone I saw. And you could tell she was so happy to be back in our community and with all her friends. She kept going on about how it doesn't matter how sick she is, she wants to be at home so she call call out and know everyone passing by, and sit on her front porch enjoying her campo. I'm definitely glad to have her back in my life :)

This is her with one of her many visitors

Me, my vecina and some of her friends

An amazing view

2011-05-22T07:41:00.000-07:00

This week a friend (another volunteer), came up for a day with my project partner with the goal of planning a good hiking route to the highest mountain in the area to offer to visitors. We also just wanted to go horseback riding, and saw it as a good excuse. They arrived early and we spent a few hours looking for and prepping the horses till my 11 year old savior arrived.

I would say this kid knows more about animals and farming then most people in my community, he really is the horse whisperer, it’s incredible. Anyways so he had to go to the dentist but came back and got all the horses prepared and came with us for the morning (went back early for school at 2). We headed through the cacao and started up the hill, grabbed some mangos to eat and continued till we had to leave the horses because it became too steep.

It was a beautiful view overlooking the Oriental Mountain Range (one of the 3 main mountain ranges in the country), and while we ran into some horse problems (like mine being unresponsive to most urges to walk, to the point where my project partner or the horse whisperer would often just ride behind me or else mine would just stop. At the end I switched horses and got to run a bit).

Then the 3 of us tried our best to continue up the mountain, finding strategic rocks and trees and also crawling on our hands and knees. We didn’t bring a machete and weren’t able to make it to the top, and it’s definitely not suitable for groups, but it was an amazing view.

Then we headed back down the mountain, my horse continued to be stubborn, my project partner jumped on a cow, and we got back to the community. Then we took one last detour to go to one of the best mango trees in the area. It was only like a 5 minute ride away, but as soon as we got there it started to pour, and it continued for the 20 minutes that we stood there eating mango after mango. We were literally soaked to the skin even had our shoes full of muddy water,. It was a refreshing situation to just stand there and enjoy the rain, and having our biggest concern being the need for more mangoes.One of those I can't believe this is my life moments and a memory I'm sure I'll maintain long after Peace Corps. And the mangoes were indeed, extremely delicious.

Life is good!

A bit of brownie with pineapple marmalade

2011-05-20T07:22:00.000-07:00

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.

Habichuela con Dulce

2011-04-26T15:20:00.000-07:00

^^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 :)

2011-02-28T04:58:00.000-08:00

I have past my 3-month point in my site and am now well into my 4th. This means the end of my “diagnostic” period, so my report on my project is all typed up and presented and I’m officially in my project phase of my work as a volunteer. Reaching the 3-month point also included an in-service training for 4 days, half of which was with a project partner we brought from our site. I ended up bringing a 19 year old from my community, she is quite involved in the tour, and doesn’t have a farm or house to look after, so she could easily be gone for a few days. It ended up going very well; we created a plan for the next few months for steps to take with the tour, and also talked about starting a youth group, and other potential projects in the community. It was interesting to see her reaction to being around the other 18 volunteers that we did training with (the other business volunteers). She hasn’t been around many Americans, and she would comment all the time about our habits that she found so surprising. For example, her jaw literally dropped when a friend of mine filled up a travel mug with coffee, she asked me why my friend would drink so much coffee at once (commenting, but it is coffee, not juice!).

It is interesting to see how stunned people are in my community when talking about differences in the states and here in the DR. There are some, like that most people in the states are not white, that they have really never heard before. I feel really grateful to have grown up in the bay area and to have such a diverse group of friends, and have been using the pictures I have from home to show that not everyone is light skinned. I have also had people in my community ask me if it is true that nobody in the states is poor. Needless to say there are many assumptions made about life in the states and the people that live there. It isn’t surprising to me that the American Dream is so strong in the DR and I’m sure it will continue to be the dream of many as the prices continue to rise and the economy struggles. Hopefully I can continue to show a different side of American culture and share my experiences of what life is like in the states.

Since I haven’t written an entry in so long, I also wanted to share about another aspect of my life here. It is interesting how much of an impact and daily issue water is for the community. For the 86 households that are in the community, there are 4 or 5 different water sources, all of which have varying levels of functionality. Some always provide water, others every few days, and about half the community always have to carry water to their house. Various organizations have come in and built water systems, but most of them no longer work. That means that families (and more often then not the kids) spend a big chunk of time looking for water for their family to do the daily chores of washing, mopping, and bathing. Even in the house of my host family, they have a pump that their son installed for them from a well down the hill, but it doesn’t always work and they end up looking for water every few weeks. It leads you to really appreciate having any water, using it much more sparsely, and also just thinking about your water access all the time. Not a day goes by that people aren’t making what seems like countless trips to bring water to the house. And it is worse in a lot of other communities. I have friends (many in bateyes) that don’t have the option to walk down the road for water, many wait for days until the water truck passes and have to pay drivers if they want water jugs in their house.

This also makes rain valuable not only for the crops, but also to fill up the barrels that everyone has to catch the water falling from the roof, so that they have some water stored at their house. This means for a few days the kids can play a bit more because they don’t have to make those trips to carry jugs back and forth. Living here I have not only become much more aware of water’s importance in my life, but also no longer take it for granted, valuing those days when I don’t have to worry about how to have access. I am about to move into my own house, and still am not really sure how I will get water to my house since I don’t have a faucet, so I’m sure water will continue to make an impact on my daily routine for the rest of my 2 years.

Bearded Chicken

2011-01-31T11:43:00.000-08:00

Unfortunately I got back from the capital without having time to have used the internet at all, and now have internet but have to leave soon to catch a ride up my mountain (free ride in a truck definitely beats paying to take a moto when you have a lot of bags)

But until I am able to to a justifiable blog update, here are a few pictures so you can at least see some of what's been going on --

I've been going around and doing interviews at all of the houses in my community, and while going around I noticed how interesting some of the animals are, especially the chickens. So here is a nice collection for your viewing pleasure. The first ones remind me of my brothers and cousins who have gone through facial hair phases =D
If you didn't notice, it has a beard!! So awesome.

Needless to say, I'm hoping to get some for my own, and sat around watching these birds for a long time with my neighbors, enjoying every second of it!

And here are a few other pictures I've been able to take:

With my host parents ^^

Doing a chocolate making course for a week with some of my donas^^

My host sister with a huge papaya ^^ delicious!

Cuidanse!

A quick glimpse at Navidad en la Republica

2011-01-03T06:39:00.000-08:00

So in my campo the past few weeks everything has been pretty much frozen, with everyone on Christmas break. I've been spending a lot of time going around and visiting people in my campo, finding out about their holiday plans and making a little more progress in my game of "who is related to who in my campo" (short answer, almost everyone...) and continuing to work on my community and organizational diagnostics. I am also starting to look for my own place (exciting!) and will have to look for furniture, etc this month as well. The holiday season was full of family time. Especially in the campo, a lot of family members that have moved into the cities come back to celebrate Christmas, and especially Christmas Eve dinner with their family and their roots in the campo. So it was fun (although slightly overwhelming to have the population more then double for a few nights) to see the extended family of everyone, and to have many of my host siblings in the house for Christmas. Unfortunately, I'm about to head back to my campo, so I can't write too many details right now, but I wanted to at least share a few pictures from December:

We would spend hours every day playing dominoes, here are various relatives, eating a lot and playing dominoes:

Also, with so many people around there was a lot of food to cook, so they would often set up a fire outside and cook in a huge pot, here they are cooking plantains, potatoes, and other roots. Tasty!

Most of my host family with our Christmas Eve dinner. We had pig, chicken, meat empanadas, spaghetti, bread, grapes, apples, and little gummi candies

My host sister and some neighbors cracking open almonds to snack on, this can entertain the kids for hours, and also leads to them bringing me as many almonds as they can (it has become a competition a few times)

My 9 year old host sister showing off an almond that she just opened to eat, hopefully you can see the little almond in the middle and the thick casing it is surrounded by

I'll hopefully be able to get to the internet again in a few weeks, happy holidays everyone!

Becoming more campo

2010-12-06T13:31:00.000-08:00

I guess I haven’t written much about what I’ve actually been doing, so I’ll try and fix that now.

To start, last week for Thanksgiving a lot of volunteers came into the capital to celebrate together, because feasting by yourself just isn’t as fun. There was a group that organized the dinner, complete with turkey, potatoes, gravy, and plenty of pie to go around. It was good timing since I had been at my site for about a month, so I was definitely starting to miss my friends from training. And also it was a good opportunity to get to know some of the other volunteers (there are 200 in country). We spent the day at a country club in the capital, so we also had a pool, basketball court, volleyball, and areas to hang out for the day. Definitely fun and a good break from my site.

This is all the food that was prepared:

And look at this ridiculous amount of pie:

After Thanksgiving and a weekend in the capital I headed back to my site. Unfortunately, I got back and was sick the next day. After a few days of denial and trying to let my body take care of itself, I headed back to the capital to visit the doctor and get some antibiotics, and I’ve spent the weekend resting and waiting for the pills to kick in. But now I’m starting to feel better and will finally be heading back to my site in the morning.

Now, I realize I’ve failed to mention what I am doing at my site. Technically, my first three months of service are dedicated to doing an organizational and community diagnostic. This is basically looking at what are the strengths and weaknesses and then also the community resources and what opportunities I can see for future projects. But also while doing the diagnostic, I am just trying to learn about everyone in my community, and just start the process of becoming part of the community. Dominicans really value having people of “confianza” (translated to trust more or less) in their lives, so it is important for me to go around and make those relationships and show I am a “mujer seria” (serious, professional woman) in my community. I’m not even allowed to go on a moto if it isn’t a muchacho de confianza, someone from and trusted in my community, so in order to get anything done in the future, it’s important to invest in the relationships now. And also, I just want to have friends where I am going to live for the next 2 years =D.

So aside from constantly wearing pants every day because the bugs still love my new blood, I am attending any community meeting being held (at least a few every week), and going around to make visits, along with doing my scheduled activities with the tour organization (we are starting to look into promotion). And then I also roam around. Sometimes I just sit by the colmado, a very basic neighborhood store, watching people come and pick up whatever ingredient they need for the next meal or go to the “play” to watch some softball which they seem to be playing almost every day now. I also really enjoy just watching peoples’ everyday chores like being impressed by their ability to lift huge bags of cacao when bringing it over to sell, or shaving the bark off logs with their machete for the roof of their house.

Also, I’m starting to work on my “make Alanna more of a campo” project, which is just a list of things that everyone else in my community has been doing since they were born, that I need to catch up on. So far, besides many cooking lessons I have:
1. Learn how to ride a horse really well

2. Harvest cacao

3. Milk a cow

4. Mastering the machete

5. Possibly kill or at least feather a chicken (my host brother says I’m doing it during Christmas break)

And I’m sure the list will continue to grow : )

Anyways, I'll try and get some pictures once I start to complete the list, maybe not of the chicken though... so now I am going back to my site to continue working on my diagnostic and also starting the Christmas celebrations. My host dad has 8 kids, many of whom will be coming by with their kids so it should be a packed house. And apparently we are roasting a pig at some point, so pretty exciting =D

It's picture time!

2010-11-24T07:51:00.000-08:00

2 of my neighbors in my yard

The little piglets that are always in front of my house =D

I am learning how to horse back ride with some of my guides, the boy on the right (11 years old) is my main teacher

These are cacao trees

Me, surrounded by cacao

part of my tour site

my tiny cup of coffee - it's super strong though, and so adorable!

my community watching a baseball game, they sit on a bamboo bench

The view from my mirador (gazebo right about my house), i go here almost every day

My host family in Santo Domingo on the night that I swore in (thats why we are all dressed up) and became an official Peace Corps volunteer

And then there were little critters

2010-11-19T06:59:00.000-08:00

So this story is actually from training, but I forgot to put it in here before. One morning we were picking up everyone in the van to go on a hike for the day. So everyone has their bags with water and sunscreen, long pants, socks, and tennis shoes. I was no different and just waiting for everyone to load the bus. Then as soon as we start driving I felt a pain, almost a pinch, on my leg. It was definitely out of the ordinary but I assumed it was just a new bug bite. Then the pain went up my leg and I touched my leg, and felt something long, like 4-6 inches in my pants moving up my leg. I immediately started screaming, thrashing around, and pulling up my jeans to see what was there. The rest of my row, and a few people behind us start to do the same. Meanwhile the van is still driving full speed, as my friend at the end of my row is starting to open the door and the rest of the van is yelling at the driver to stop. I just keep screaming and screaming as I finally find this huge centipede crawling around my knee. I’m trying to brush it off me without touching it and finally my row unloads from the van so I can get out and use a notebook to get it off me. It was unbelievably huge for being a centipede, and apparently it bites really hard, so I was lucky I got it off me. Actually, my Spanish instructor got bit a few days later while he was sleeping and confirmed how much it hurt and couldn’t go back to sleep before getting it taken care of, so I feel my screams were justified.

Also, one of my favorite cultural differences that I’ve encountered is that there are a lot of Dominicans (at least in the campos I’ve been to) that are afraid of frogs. Snakes and spiders? No hay problema. But even the smallest frog jumping around will send the Dominicans I know running and screaming in the other direction. My favorite reaction is from my host uncle, a 65 year old farmer, that literally ran off and left the property and did not return one night when we were hanging out and a frog showed up. I've also gone over to pick up the frog and move it a few times when they are around, so that people will sit down and they think I am crazy to touch a frog and will then tell people about who brave I was, it's great.

Overall I’ve been doing really well. We got poured on when Hurricane Tomas was in the area (although they say it is nothing compared to the rainy season). And I’ve been really busy the last week and a half getting to know where the tour is in terms of what needs to be done before receiving tours. Also, there was an outside consultant that worked through an NGO doing guide training, so that was very useful to have to observe the strengths and weaknesses they have and what I need to focus on. I’ve also been working on getting to know everyone in my campo, which is definitely a task on it’s own. It’s especially hard because everyone already knows my name and so people will come up to me and I have no idea who they are, but they already know everything about me. But with time I’ll learn names and who is related (which, in short, is everyone). Also, a lot of Dominicans have nicknames, so they will introduce themselves with their birth name, but then nobody actually calls them by that name. And a lot of the times the nickname has little or nothing to do with their birth name. So like I know a Franklin who goes by Joselo; Bienvenido is Buben; a Kelvin who is Titi, and a Catalina who goes by Juanita. It is all very confusing. But I’m having fun and learning something new every day.

We are also having cholera slowly approach us. I’m pretty cut off from the news here, but found out there was a case on Tuesday in a town just a bit east of us, so it is definitely just a matter of time. I’m sure you all know that the cholera started about a month ago in Haiti, so it has made its way across the border. I’m pretty far east, but I know other volunteers closer to the border have already had cases in their communities. It has been hard to talk to people in my community about it because they identify it as a Haitian disease, so I’m trying to emphasize that it’s been in Latin America for about 20 years and didn’t originate there, but they don’t seem very convinced. It’s unfortunate that it is coming over from Haiti, because it is just adding more strain on the Dominican-Haitian relations.

Drum roll please...

2010-10-25T18:03:00.000-07:00

This will be me for the next 2 years! More or less =D
(This is cacao, and I'm the one in the purple shirt and grey sweater on the left side)

So my big news is that I have now visited and finally know where my site is and more or less what my project is! I’ll be living in the east of the country. The east coast is the really touristy area, so I’ll be like 1-2 hours away from that, but I’m inland and I’ll be living with a small cacao campo (rural town, probably at most 100 houses). So from my host families house, as you walk down the only road about 20 minutes you pass a colmado (like a 7-11, but the main source of food supplies), the school, 2 association buildings, and probably about 10 houses. Everyone I’ve met is really nice, and they are very protective of me, but definitely the campo is a lot smaller then what I was used to in San Jose and San Diego. Also, it’s amusing because they refuse to let me walk around the community alone, even though it’s just the one road. I’ve mentioned walking alone if nobody is going the same way, but they look at me like I’m crazy and I’ll get lost. On the one road. Haha. But I appreciate they are looking out for me, and much prefer it to the other option. And I’m sure as I’m there longer (it’s only been 5 days) that will change.

For those of you that don’t know, cacao is what they use to make chocolate! And I am going to help them to develop a cacao trail, where people will come to learn about the whole process of processing it, visiting a typical cacao farm, and then going to have lunch and see a demonstration of some of the ways they use it (chocolate wine, marmalade, as well as just the normal chocolate bars). So I’ll be working with the organization to help them organize and establish themselves, hopefully they will be able to give tours at the start of the new year.

So it is primarily the women’s group in town that works the tourism project. Most of the guides are from the group, they do all the cooking, and also the demonstrations of the different ways to use cacao. However, the products (the chocolate wine, marmalade, and bars) they demonstrate are actually made in a different community, so the women want to create and market their own product as well. Right now they are thinking about doing some sort of dulce (sweets/candy) that has the cacao and fruit they they also grow on the farms, such as papaya, mango, pineapple, and bananas. I think it will be great to work with them to design everything and pick the dulces, and then do the entire feasibility study and plan with them. So I’m really excited about that addition to my project, and also the chance to be baking while in country!

I am officially done with training and a Peace Corps Volunteer on Wednesday, when we have the ceremony with US officials, and all that formality. And I start my official 2 years! Very exciting!

^^And this is my view for the next 2 years =D

Smore time

2010-10-13T08:49:00.001-07:00

Me, my host siblings, and some neighbors on the top of a nearby hill with a gorgeous view!
^^This is the view

So one of my exciting moments was when I was in Spanish class and I received 2 packages from home! It would double exciting because I was actually the only one that had a delivery, so I felt extra special. Anyways, the good news is that the packages come through! (use an envelope, not a box). They actually still haven’t given us our letters, which is slightly ridiculous, but I’m hoping when we are back in the capital that we’ll get everything then. It was crazy how connected to home I felt just from a few packages, but they definitely gave me the warm fuzzies =P. Also on a side note, to the amazing 5th graders at St. Martins, everyone was super jealous of all your notes and my letter will be in the mail in a few days when I have access to sending mail again =D but thank you so much I really appreciated all the time and effort and plan to have them up on my wall once I get settled in!
Training is literally flashing by, and in less than a week I will be on my own in my site. This will be my first time on my own and I’ll be seeing my project and meeting my community that I’ll be staying with for the next 2 years, so needless to say I’m slightly anxious, but it’s also coming so quickly that I don’t have much time to think about it.

Fun fact, I found my favorite rooster ever visiting my host aunts farm, here is a picture, look how pretty he is! And so colorful!
and here I am holding my new best friend, they wanted me to take him, but i don't think he would enjoy the trip back to the capital

One of my favorite weekends thus far we spent in the capital at a youth business plan competition. I actually worked with a similar project doing an internship in San Diego at City Heights, and it’s the same concept but applied to the Dominican Republic. It’s mainly Peace Corps but anyone can apply and participate. Basically the Volunteers teach a class on how to prepare a business plan, and if afterwards the class is motivated enough, they create their own, for whatever product they think will be a success. There was a pretty big variety like bamboo workers, fruit and smoothie stands, cheese makers, a homemade gym, and internet cafes. Then the top twenty plans are invited to participate in this competition where they present to the judges and the top 3 win the money to complete their project. It was great to see how well they knew their plan, and also just how excited they were for it. Definitely one of the projects I hope to join while I am here, and hopefully we can continue to expand it. It really does a good job at motivating them, and also just teachers them so much about the business world that they hadn’t considered before. Anyways, I got really excited about it after seeing it in action. I also did an hour and a half presentation about what is microfinance and how we will be utilizing it to my group that weekend, so it was very busy.
We also looked at ecotourism last week and took a trip to a place called 27 waterfalls. We climbed up and then proceeded to jump down or slide all 27 for a morning with 3 guides who each had the strength of superman. There were a few were they would literally just grab our hands and pull us up, and were our safety net when we would slip (which of course I never did…). It was incredible to do, not only to do these huge jumps but also just passing through all the rock formations and really just enjoying the river, it was awesome. Not to mention good to be with the group and just have some fun = D
I’ve also become really close to my host family and community here. It’s interesting to this about I’ve only been here for 5 weeks but I know so many people here and have some great memories with them. It will be strange to leave on Saturday and not be able to go to their baseball game, or get the 50 hugs I get a day from all the kids running around. But I feel blessed to have been able to integrate as much as I have, especially considering how many other Americanos are around. Also, we taught them a few recipes and visa versa, we’ve made them hummus, pizza, rice krispie treats, and a Dominicanized version of pumpkin pie to name a few. Which that alone has been great, and also very relaxing to just be able to hang out and cook for an evening. Oh we also taught them the art of making a delicious smore for my host brother’s birthday, which was a big hit. It was funny the first time we walked them through the steps, because holding a marshmallow on a fork in the fire does not look promising, but it was a success!

And here I am with my host family celebrating my host brother's birthday, I know, we are adorable =D

Also, everyone knows me for my love of the giants (VAMOS GIGANTES!) so I have been able to watch some games, assuming there is electricity and the game doesn't start at 10pm over here, and they cheer for my team with me which is exciting, although pretty much everyone here is a Yankees fan. But it is nice to have that instant connection through baseball for sure.

So I will be leaving on Saturday to head back to the capital and meet with the big group, and then on Tuesday I am off and will learn about my site!

Pa Manga Mi Visa

2010-09-21T13:18:00.000-07:00

Also, the internet is really slow so I can't post pictures from here, but for those interested, this is one of the new reggaeton songs that is out, and has led to really uncreative catcalls all the time especially in the capital =D I think it's funny hopefully you will too
It's basically I want an American so I can go to the US, which is actually fairly commonly said and suggested here

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6YFyCt7hD2g

I'm Becoming a Dominoes Master!

2010-09-21T12:02:00.000-07:00

I am currently living in the mountains in the north for the next 4 weeks of training, and it is so nice. I’m living in a decent sized campo, mostly based in agriculture, and my host family is great. We are in a very active community, they have a few associations we can learn from, and even a softball team for the men that have games with other nearby towns every Saturday, last Saturday we got to drive like an hour away for the game, super fun and a beautiful drive through the mountains. It’s also an interesting community since almost everyone is dependent on their land for food and money, they all have similar lifestyles and are very much a sharing community. If someone ever needs a banana, yucca, etc they just ask their neighbor, they would never buy something that is grown in the area because someone is always willing to give it to them, not sell or trade it, just give it. It’s a really refreshing concept to be around. And it doesn’t pertain just to food, they literally act just like one unit all the time, which is great. It also means I’m familiar with most of the community and always have people to say hi to and look out for me.

My most exciting news is definitely that I am working hard to become a dominoes master. It’s practically the national pastime, so it’s really good that I am learning the strategy now, it’s actually really intense. But every time I play with adult Dominicans they comment on how I am learning and how good I am, which is always nice to hear. Right behind my house they play for hours every afternoon, and if I get out of training early enough I play with them, and my host siblings are always excited and willing to play as well (my 6 year old host sister is seriously a dominoes shark, it’s ridiculous how good she is). So, I feel pretty awesome about that because they are genuinely excited and respectful that I am a competitor =D

Most of my time though, I’m training with the 19 other CED (Community Economic Development) volunteers. We have Spanish class almost every day, and then will often meet as the large group for technical training, so sometimes I’m not home till like 7, it’s a stretch, but we are learning a lot so I never feel like they shouldn’t be having a session, which is good. It’s draining but I appreciate it because I am definitely starting to feel more prepared to do specific tasks and know what resources I have rather then just this vague concept of what I will be doing.
Also, they have us divided up into 5 different communities, so I actually only live close to 3 other girls. It’s a really good system because then when I am in my own community in November, it won’t be as much to adjust to.

For those of you that know my eating habits, I actually had some sort of crab, twice, and enjoyed it. Crazy I know right? They were still alive when they came home and were cooked with a lot of flavors so I didn’t taste the fishy-ness, but I know a few people will be proud. I don’t expect much more progress in that area. I also feel bad because my community has like 5 different varieties of bananas, so my family is constantly eating them, so my host mom is constantly looking for substitutes for me, but there’s definitely a lot of variety so it’s been going well.

2010-09-09T06:11:00.000-07:00

Today I leave for the campo! I’ll be in Altamira, close to Puerto Plata to the north of the DR for the next 5 weeks doing mainly technical training, I’ll only be with other CED volunteers (19 of us). I’m excited to get out of the city and hopefully our site will be great! It will be interesting to see what amenities I have and don’t have. I already know my host family doesn’t have a phone, and we have been warned that like in most the country, there probably won’t be steady access to water or electricity, but I guess I will just find out when I get there. I’m definitely looking forward to doing the technical training though and to be in the mountains. Also, I still have no idea where I’ll be placed for the next 2 years, and won’t find out till after I get back.

I’ve really enjoyed my time in Santo Domingo, starting to get to know the group better and to feel more comfortable with everything, which is good. I also visited a volunteer last weekend and it was a really positive experience. First off she lives in the mountains and it was gorgeous so that was nice. It was nice to be cold and need to wear a sweatshirt for sure, and we got to hike around, go in some rivers, and meet her community and some other volunteers. Also it was very helpful to me to talk to her about her personal struggles and issues that she has run into and how she has gotten around them. And she told me about the PC life and the events that the volunteers throw every year. I’m still excited and looking forward to everything!

Also I’m hoping to play some more dominos when I get out there, because my host family now lent their set out and doesn’t have any, and I’m hoping to become a master by the time I get back. I’m bringing my cribbage board as well though, just to have something I’m already awesome at ;) Also, something I didn’t really think about before, is that I’ll be having 3 host families here, which is awesome to have close connections in so many places, but just for a heads up, I’m just going to say host family and it will correspond to the family in whatever part of the country I’m in. But yea, I’m doing well, am still enjoying the rice and beans, yucca, fruits and veggies, and everything else they are serving me, we will also see if there is much food variety where I am going…

So I may not have a chance to update this for a while, but I’ll just be busy training, probably nothing too exciting.

And I’m off!

My first week of training

2010-08-29T16:31:00.000-07:00

So I’ve been thinking the past few days of what to write about as my first official blog post. Technically I’ve only been here for 10 days, but it has been 10 packed days for sure.

To start with the basics: at my request I’m eating an insane amount of fruit (at least 2 big bowls/platefuls a day it is delicious), already am noticeably covered with mosquito bites but am religiously taking maleria pills and sleeping under my mosquito net, and am doing pretty good communicating but am working on all their slang and how rapidly they talk.

I live with a family, 2 parents (my dona and don) and then 4 of their grandkids whose dad works in the US and the mom has a visa and is currently visiting him for the next 2-5 months. I get along well with the family and can for the most part understand everything they say. Except the 2 year old, whose own siblings sometimes don’t understand so I don’t feel too bad. But he is super adorable and just yells the same thing over and over again so eventually we catch on =D He laughs all the time, but gets serious for the camera:

In my barrio (neighborhood) there are 2 other PC volunteers/trainees who live with siblings of my dona, and we basically live right next to each other which is very convenient, especially since we have to take 2 shared taxis or buses to get to and from training, so it’s nice to have the company. Also, one of the girls is awesome and likes cribbage so we’ve been playing the last few nights.

I am lucky enough to live in a very social neighborhood, so almost every night we just sit on the patio and talk to the family and neighbors and the kids play and wander the streets, everyone looks out for everyone else. Also there is a slight breeze outside, so I’m almost never in the house and really enjoy our evening situation. The humidity is (unfortunately) definitely something to get use to. My host sister with a neighbor in front of our house:

This is my neighborhood, a friend came over and we played dodgeball (more or less) with the kids:

The majority of my days are packed with training, getting up at 6:30 to train from 8 to 4:30/5 everyday. They pack our days with Spanish classes, technical training, general cultural information, and dos and don’ts in the society. Between the information overload and the heat I sleep very well every night.

One cultural difference that I’m trying to quickly adapt and often forget is that they almost never say no. If someone asks if you like something, rather then say no, you would say I would prefer…Similarly if someone asks to borrow something, generally an excuse is made rather than being direct. Even if you aren’t hungry, if food is offered you shouldn’t say no but rather enjoy your food, etc. I’m really bad at this and luckily mainly am offered things by my host family, who aren’t insulted by my constant use of no.

We’ve also gone on a few trips into downtown to get comfortable with the transportation and to get historical information. This is some of my group on one of our bus rides downtown, nice and packed together:

I’m really overall feeling comfortable with everything we are asked to do at the moment. Am definitely not envious of the 5 people in our group coming in with pretty much no Spanish background. But I’m assuming the next few weeks will get to be more challenging.

Here are some things I enjoyed coming across on our trips downtown:

Their China town, although Chinese restaurants here are actually Dominican fast food so...I'm not sure what there is in Chinatown, just that it exists

Segways are everywhere in the world : )

...as are crocs. This one is mainly for my mom =D

At least a basic intro to my life here the past week. I may have cheated and used a lot of pictures, but at least a peak in. Hopefully I’ll have another chance to write soon, but I’m happy, healthy, and learning a lot!

Safely in DR!

2010-08-20T09:56:00.000-07:00

Hello all, we are on a quick lunch break from orientation, just wanted to let you know that our flight went well and we are all safely in the Dominican Republic!! Was a very long day of flying yesterday (flying with 59 people makes airport processes very long...), but glad to be safe and finally here after waiting for so long.

It is pretty humid, so I have a nice layer of sweat, but it actually isn't as bad as I thought it would be. I'll be meeting my host family tonight!!! Very exciting :) And we are doing loads of orientation stuff at the moment, lots of packs and schedules of what to learn.

So yea, I've got to get back to training, but miss you all and I'm doing well!

Safe in DC

2010-08-18T06:09:00.000-07:00

So just to give everyone a quick update, landed in DC last night at 7:20, all my bags arrived which is awesome. Then my friend Lisa from my Costa Rica program picked me up and helped me with my bags to the hotel (I have 4...seems like it will be very difficult to move around). Then we went out and got some delicious Mexican food.

One the plane next to me was a couple doing the same program as me, it was nice to have 2 soon to be familiar faces to get to know doing the 4 1/2 hour flight over, although I did sleep for a solid chunk of it. They were both really sweet, and the husband is doing the same program as me. Also it was good to talk to people and not sit by myself, especially after having to say bye to all my family and friends.

It was actually nice to fly in a day early because this morning my roommate (a really cool girl also from California, went to UC Santa Cruz and from Orange County) just went and got breakfast and relaxed a bit and got organized before the staging started. For staging we turned in the last of our paperwork, reviewed the Peace Corps policies, expectations, etc, and talked about our own fears and all.

We have to leave at 2 am for our flight, so I am going to go pack and get ready for bed, but just so everyone knows I am safely in, still very excited to go, and will be in the Dominican Republic tomorrow!!!

Contacting me!

2010-08-03T12:48:00.000-07:00

So for those of you interested in being my pen-pal, or sending me little packages of awesomeness, I decided to list some of the pointers recommended by the Peace Corps in terms of mailing to the Dominican Republic:

The mail service in the DR is neither as efficient nor as predictable as the U.S. Postal Service, thus it is important to be patient. It can take up to 4 weeks to receive mail from Santo Domingo to the United States via the Dominican postal system; from a Volunteer's site, mail might take in excess of a month to reach the U.S. We suggest that you let your volunteer know the length of time it takes to receive his/her letters and then try to establish a predictable pattern of how often the Volunteer will write.
Numbering your letters allows your Volunteer to know if one is missing.
Postcards should be sent in envelopes--otherwise they may be found on the wall of the local
Sending packages. Relatives often like to mail care packages. Unfortunately, mailing packages can be a frustrating experience due to the high incidence of theft and expensive customs tax. You may try mailing inexpensive items, but there is no guarantee that these items will arrive. We do not recommend mailing costly items.
It is recommended that packages be sent in padded envelopes if possible, as boxes tend to be taxed and opened more frequently.

Exciting I know. Anyways, although once I get settle I may open my own mail box, for the time being if you want to send me anything, address it to:

Alanna Crotty, PCV

Cuerpo de Paz

APDO 1412

Santo Domingo

Dominican Republic

And I will definitely appreciate it! And try to write back in a timely manner =D

Getting ready to leave

2010-08-03T12:43:00.001-07:00

Hello all,

So I have started packing, searching for luggage to bring, getting all my loose ends tied. I leave in 2 weeks exactly, so I figured it was about time to make my blog, changes may be made in the next few days but I just wanted to have the link so I can start giving it out.

Hopefully in the next few weeks I can see everyone and get everything packed so I don't have to chaotically throw it all together the morning of the 17th (I fly out of San Jose at 9 on Tuesday the 17th to do staging in Washington DC, making sure we have documentation etc, on the 18th, fly to Santo Domingo on the 19th!). The past few weeks have definitely flown by and I'm sure my last 2 will be no different.

Just so that everyone knows what my assignment is; I'll be in training (language, culture, and work) for the first few months, and will at least for the first part be in Santo Domingo, then after completing training I'll be off to my site, wherever it may be. I'm assigned to be a Community Economic Advisor, and am very excited to continue to use my Spanish and business training.

Hopefully I'll have consistent internet access while I'm there, but no matter the situation I definitely will do my best to keep up with my posts and pictures!