Happy Birthday to Me!

My birthday rolled around again. The second time I’ve celebrated it here in country. It’s hard to believe I’ve been here for long enough to celebrate two birthdays. This year Elise came over and my friend Ben came down and we went to this pool that’s at this Italian restaurant in San Juan. Somehow we missed discovering it until just recently and to think of the fun we could have had if we had only known. Luckily, there’s still some months left to enjoy it. It’s this beautiful pool and it has this gazebo which is elevated over the pool and you can swim under. Of course, we had to sit up there. We had some decent Italian food for lunch and swam around for a couple of hours in the water. Something like that makes you forget you’re in the Peace Corps for a little bit, which is actually quite nice on occassion. Then we bought some food and headed back up to my house where we cooked up a taco dinner and drank beer and wine and just hung out and talked and listened to music. Then later that night I talked to Mom, Dad, Nate, and Gretchen, and then I called Kate W at some ungodly hour and we chatted for awhile. It was so good to hear all their voices. Oh, and I got an idea to make a raised bed back behind my kitchen building so I spent an afternoon hauling rocks with some help from the neighbor boy, and then Thony came and helped too and making this little bed. I told Thony that instead of a birthday present he could fill up the raised bed with the sandy soil from the cañada near our house. He surprised me and did it while I was handing out the chicken wire to my women's group. I just planted some seeds in little containers yesterday so that I can plant in my new raised bed. I’m really hoping I’ll have more success than I have in the crappy soil that’s out behind my house. In the end it was a mellow birthday but a good one.

Chicken Wire at Last!!

After months and months of waiting and planning and waiting some more I finally was able to get the chicken wire for my women’s group. We had lost motivation a little since last fall when we had applied for the grant and it had taken so long to get processed and up on the web site. Then I had training and my trip home in late May and June so I decided it would be best to wait until I got back from the States. Finally, I got the women together, 11 in total, less than what we had started with but a good group nonetheless. I started doing charlas. First about picking a site and planning a garden. Secondly, I did a charla about semilleros (starter beds) and we made some and planted some tomatoes for the women to take home. Then I handed out seeds to the ladies so that they could get started on their semilleros. Finally, I went and bought some more seeds and chicken wire for the ladies and the nephew of the presidenta of my women’s group took me to town to pick it up. We had a meeting that same afternoon and six of the eleven women showed up. We hung out and talked for awhile and I made plans to buy them a couple shovels, hoes, and picks to share that they can use to prepare and care for their gardens. I sent Thony to town to buy those the other day and he delivered them over to Tima’s house. This week I’ll be doing a charla about natural and cheap and easy to make pesticides that we can use to help with insects. And trust me, there are a lot of pests down here. Something about the humidity must breed more insects. It was particularly rewarding to hand out the chicken wire after so many months of waiting and working. I can’t wait to see what the ladies have done with it!

Adrienne Visits

The volunteer who was here before me came to visit in August for a few days before she started grad school. She stayed over a the doña’s house but we hung out quite a bit. We walked around and visited with some of the families she had been close to and she came to a meeting with my women’s group. We also went up to Macoca, my long lost swimming hole. I hadn’t been there in quite a long time and was super disappointed to realize that it had mainly filled in with gravel and sand since the last time I was there. The water was beautiful and clear but my swimming hole had disappeared. It was sad, although the water was still really refreshing. I’m still hoping that it will clear out again if we have a big rain. In fact, it already could have considering how much and how hard it’s been raining recently. Anyways, we went up there with Thony, Elise (the new volunteer near me), and some of the girls that Adrienne was really close to. It was fun. Then Adrienne came over that night and we drank a little wine and chatted some more. It was fun to see her after more than a year and to see just how different our experiences have been in the community. I’m working with way different people than she did, which makes me feel good, cause I feel like I’m reaching a part of the community that she hadn’t, so hopefully I’m spreading the benefits of having a volunteer to more parts of the community.

Celebrando El Sur

At the end of July we had a conference here in the south of the country. It was called Celebrando El Sur (celebrating the south). After having been to a few camps here, I know how positive they are for the kids, but can also be very stressful for the volunteers. This camp turned out to be the best camp I’ve done so far in country. My friend Justin planned the whole thing pretty much by himself, handing out different charlas and tasks for the rest of us to do. We had 15 volunteers and 45 kids. It was up outside of this city called Neiba about half an hour on this partially paved, super curvy road, then turned off onto this rock (not gravel, but big rocks) road that leads at a 45 degree angle up this mountain to this camp. It was a pretty small place but had bunk rooms for all our us. Volunteers bunking with the kids because a bunch of Dominican teenagers unsupervised is just generally not a good idea. Heck, I guess that applies to all teenagers, not just Dominican ones.

The theme of the camp was diversity. So we had charlas about gender, ethnicity and immigration, HIV/AIDS and sexual pressures, biodiversity (I did that one), the continents of the world (I did Africa), and a few others I’m not remembering right now. The kids had to present a few times as well. They had to present something that represented their community. My two girls Laury and Germania presented about our holy spirit. They had a photo that they shared with the group while they talked about the holy spirit festival. Each group of kids also had to do a presentation on a different country of the world. We also had a game night where we had a bunch of stations the kids stayed at for 15 minutes each. The favorites were musical chairs and beer pong (with water of course) and flip cup. On the last day, the kids were divided into groups and they were each given a news article about some sort of diversity that they had to turn into a news broadcast. They were hysterical. We all got matching t-shirts and took a group picture on the last day complete with certificates for each of the kids and for each of us volunteers. It was a great weekend with the kids and I was so proud of my girls.

Mini-Vac meeting

Once every few months we get together with all the volunteers that live in our region for a mini-vac. I can’t remember what mini-vac means anymore, but pretty much what happens is one person is the representative for our region and they go to a meeting in the capital where they talk about what’s going on with Peace Corps, bring up any issues volunteers are having, etc. Then we get together as a group and talk about all that stuff, but also hang out and relax with other volunteers for an evening. It works pretty well here in region two because there are only nine of us. Although it’s hard to make a time that works for everyone. We decided to hold our last mini-vac meeting at my friend Jeff’s house. We call it Hotel de Jefe. We were going to have a chili cook-off but we got standfasted the day before we were supposed to have the meeting so we all made chili and ate it in our sites instead. Luckily the standfast ended the next night so on Sunday instead of Saturday those of us who were able headed out to Jeff’s place. We cooked up a mean dinner and then tried to burn a stump in Jeff’s backyard and sat around listening to music and chatting. It was a great night. Peace Corps is funny in a way. You get so used to just being in your community that you don’t realize that you’re stressed out or just tired of having to integrate all the time until you hang out with another group of volunteers. Number one it’s a nice reminder of the fact that you’re not alone in feeling stressed and tired, but it’s also a chance to vent, and laugh, and share stories, and listen to American music.

4th of July

There are a few times during Peace Corps service where we get to gather together and celebrate a U.S. holiday and 4th of July is one of the big ones. Which is funny because 4th of July has never been a huge holiday for me, but for many Peace Corps Volunteers it is. I stayed in my site last year but this year I decided it was time to get out of the campo and head to the beach. So I made the trek up to the Samana peninsula. A bus into the capital and then another bus on the “new highway” which only some parts of were new. We went winding through mountain roads on a huge Greyhound looking bus. When we go to the town of Samana we then had to catch a ride in a guagua that wasn’t really a bus but the back of a truck. We were piled in like sardines with all our backpacks and about 6 Dominicans as well with their produce, gas cans, etc. Needless to say it was really cozy. We got dropped off at the grocery store to stock up on supplies and then headed over to meet up with the friends we were bunking with. We went out to dinner and then headed to a party that some of the other volunteers were having and then headed out dancing for the evening to a discoteca. All in all a pretty good evening. Upon waking in the morning on the 4th of July we went and grabbed breakfast and then headed out to catch a boat to the beach we were going to spend the day at. It was beautiful. I mean spectacularly beautiful. We rented chairs that were strategically placed in the shade to hang out around and to stash our stuff. We spent the rest of the day swimming, lying around, munching snack food, and drinking. We headed back in the late afternoon and headed out for dinner and another night of visiting parties at various houses and hotels. We ended up at my friend Sarah’s room playing guitar and singing songs. Not a bad way to spend 4th of July. I may have to change my mind about the holiday, although it helps to be on a tropical island where no one else celebrates the holiday.