Things I Want to Eat While On Vacation in the States

It's not that Dominican food isn't good, it's just that there's about 5 dishes you can make and then repeat. You can have locrio, which is like arroz con pollo, you can have la bandera which is rice, beans, and a piece of meat, you can have viveres, of which yucca is the only one I can stand. You can have moro, which is a mix of rice and beans. And you can have spaghetti. Those are the staples of the Dominican diet and you can generally find one of the five in every house that you walk in to, and they're all pretty much seasoned the same. Needless to say, you get a little tired of eating the same things day after day. So I'm excited to come home and eat good food. So here's my list of the things I hope to eat while I'm there.

Good cheese, i.e. sharp cheddar, mozzarella, brie, bleu, and any other yummy kind anyone can think of.
Sara's bloody Marys
'Leners lasagna
'Leners gumbo
Papi's granola
Papi's chili and cornbread
A big medium-rare Bean Haven steak with a baked potato with butter and sour cream.
Juanita's tortilla chips and Veronica's salsa
'Leners biscuits
A meal cooked by Aubrey
A meal cooked by Stan
Some good wine
Haagen Daz coffee ice cream
Bean Haven burgers
Good dill pickles
Salads

I know there's more...

Rogue Hazelnut Brown beer
Walking Man Raspberry Wheat beer
Some sort of beer from Double Mountain
Onion dip with potato chips

There's still more, I just can't think of it yet...

I'll add it later! I'm just excited to get home for a little while and see everyone. And play ping pong, disc golf, have a bonfire at the stones, and lots of other fun stuff.

Café

Café is my favorite little boy in the campo. He's the mayor's son (the mayor is only 29). And his grandma, Miladi, is one of my favorite doñas. He's just about as cute as they come. He's super precocious and talks up a storm. His grandma and aunt told me a story about him somehow coming up with the idea that he was the father of the neighbor's unborn baby. So he asked his dad for money so that he could go buy clothes for the baby because dads have to buy things for their babies. I asked him about it after that and sure enough he said he was the dad. He actually stopped by to visit the other day by himself. He had come over with his uncle and got bored watching him work so he came to my house and hung out for about an hour playing with the neighbor boys. He's usually running around in his underwear which is actually pretty much the norm for small children around here. Café is 2 years old. I made the mistake of showing him how to take pictures with my camera and now he's hooked, although he has a hard time holding it so he can take pictures of anything other than himself. Every time he sees me he asks if I have my camera and if he can take pictures. Sometimes I lie and say I don't have it, otherwise I have to spend an hour deleting all the photos he's taken of himself.


Here's a photo Café took of himself.


And here's one that I took of him.


Carlo, Café, y Niño

Malia and Ruth Visit

Ruth and Malia came to visit during Semana Santa for a day. We made locrio, and headed down to the river for the afternoon. Then we went out dancing that night. It was fun and Malia had never been to our part of the country so it was a new experience for her to come to the dry southern region of the country because she lives in Constanza, which is way up in the mountains of the Cordillera Central. That's about as opposite as you can get. Up where she lives you have to put on long sleeves and long pants at night for the cold, not for the mosquitos. It evens snows up in Constanza every now and again. Where I live it's so hot and dry. We have thorn trees everywhere. We have cactuses. We have euphorbia that gets used as live fencing because it never gets cold enough for it to be in any danger of dying. It's so hot during the day that being inside the house with a zinc roof between about 10 and 4 is pretty much like sitting in a sauna. I love my community, but I still sometimes wish that I lived in the north, although when I go there and it rains super hard every day and is actually pretty cold, then I appreciate my desert more!


Thony, Goné, Malia, Ruth, and Dari hanging out at the Rio.

Mural for International Women`s Day

For International Women´s Day I really wanted to do something in my community. So I had organized with the director of the biggest school to do a charla (literally chat) for the 7th and 8th graders and also to paint a mural at the school. However. Things always turn out more difficult than one thinks. I was going to head down to Paraiso for the weekend to celebrate that we`d been in the country for a year, but the day before I left I came down with dengue and instead spent the weekend in the capital laying in bed and taking ibuprofen to bring down my fever and stop my body from aching. So needless to say when I got back to my site, I wasn`t feeling up to standing on my feet for several hours to do the charla. Luckily, for me, I had my volunteer visit the next week so she helped me draw the sketch on the wall of the school and the following week we started painting it. We still haven`t finished and now I`m going to try to do another one to celebrate Earth Day. Hopefully I will be able to finish the first one and do the second one next week.


Thony and some of the muchachos helping to paint the mural.


We had a big group so we had to take turns painting. And some people were definitely more skilled than others.


Here`s how the mural looks now. Hopefully it will look even better next week when we finish.

Veggie Gardens

I know I´ve mentioned that I`ve been trying to do a vegetable garden project for awhile now. I`ve been waiting for a grant which got lost somewhere in the Peace Corps Office (not by me) to begin with and then it takes awhile to fill up as it is an online donation type grant. Thanks to everyone who donated by the way. So now I have the funds in my account, but I have to set up another account, if the guy in charge of all this will ever send me an e-mail with the amount I need to put in the new account I have to open up. In the meantime I happened to stop by the rural health clinic in my campo and was talking to the nurse there and he suggested that we start a little garden out back of there. It´s a completely enclosed area so no chickens or other animals can get it. I was excited! So Thony and a couple other boys went down and cleared out the area one day and set up little raised beds to plant in. A few days later we went back to plant the seeds. We planted tomato, bell pepper, and eggplant to begin with. Definitely staples in Dominican cooking. And hopefully I will be able to plant carrots, cilantro, lettuce and spinach seeds. All the seeds are from the Secretaria of Agriculture who has a program for community groups who would like to grow vegetables. I was excited to get some seeds planted that will provide food for the community. And I`m hoping to get everything figured out with the grant so that I can use the grant to buy the chicken wire for my women`s group so they can start planting too! Then hopefully I will do some charlas on organic gardening and how to make organic pesticides, which are pretty easy for the most part although you have to apply it more often than the regular ones. But in a relatively small vegetable garden it shouldn`t be too bad.

On another note, I started a little vegetable garden too. I planted Tomatos, peppers, eggplant, lettuce, carrot, cilantro, and basil. However, I think the chickens ate most of the seeds. As of now I have 3 tomatoes, 5 eggplants, a bunch of cilantro that I actually planted in a different spot than the garden. The peppers sprouted, but then it was like something ate them right away. The other stuff never even sprouted so I`m pretty sure the chickens got ahold of it. I`m pretty the chickens ate the seeds of everything else. I guess I´m just going to have to bite the bullet and buy chicken wire. Think I might do so now that I got my return. Thank goodness for working for a couple months in the states before I came down here.

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Here`s the little garden. It`s right behind the health clinic.


Here`s Thony planting some tomato seeds I think.


Here`s our friend Mudo (the mute) up in the coconut tree in the clinic yard throwing us down some coconuts. All the boys and men here climb the trees like monkeys. It`s impressive to watch. Mudo is probbly about 20 or 25 feet up this coconut tree.

Volunteer Visit

About a year ago, when I first got in country I went for a volunteer visit to see Ann and Tim. Now, a year later it was my turn to have a volunteer visit. I remember thinking how much it seemed Ann and Tim knew and trying to imagine that I would feel so knowledgeable a year later and be able to give good advice to a new trainee. Needless to say, I still don´t feel that knowledgeable, but Ann and Tim assured me they didn´t feel very knowledgable by the time I came to visit them either. I wanted my trainee to have a good time so as I had been planning on doing a mural for international women´s day before the dengue hit me, I decided it would be a fun project to do while she was here. So Thursday I went down to the school to start mapping out and drawing the mural I had designed. My volunteer Lauren arrived in the afternoon and I hauled her down to the school and we worked on drawing out the mural to be painted on Friday. However, Friday dawned cool and rainy, which meant no school, so no kids to help us paint, plus it wasn´t ideal weather for painting. So we had a lazy Friday, watched a movie, I made soup for dinner and we played cards and dominoes. Luckily, Saturday morning was sunny and my friend Ruth who is the closest volunteer to me and her trainee Carly (who grew up in Beaverton) came up to visit. We had arranged for some of my friends to take us to the Rio Mijo which is a 20 minute drive or so from my campo. We had a nice lunch of locrio first and then put on our cascos and hopped on the motorcycles of my friends to take us out to the river. We spent a few hours at the rive, enjoying the cool water on a hot day. It was lovely. Then we headed back to my house where we rested for a few hours and I made spaghetti for dinner, then it was time to head out to the discoteca for a little bit of dancing. We went to one and were almost the only one there although luckily my friends saved us and we spent plenty of time dancing and then decided to head over to the other discoteca, which was closed until the owner saw us pass and opened it up for us. So we spent another couple of hours and dancing. It was a great night and I was so happy to be in my campo and see that the girls were having a good time and that my guys were being such gentleman and buying our drinks and dancing with all of us. I knew they were good guys but it made me proud to see how they treated my friends and encouraged them to dance. Here´s some pictures. I will perhaps add more later.


Me, Carly, Madeline (my little neighbor), Ruth, and Lauren.


Dari and Goné hanging out in the hammock whil we waited for lunch.


Martin trying out the hammock de los estados unidos.


Ruth enjoying her locrio.


As snug as three bugs in a rug. Ruth, Lauren, and Carly curling up for a good night´s rest after an action-packed day.

Dengue

That´s right dengue. I made it almost one year exactly in country and came down with dengue. For those of you who don´t know dengue is a virus transmitted by mosquitoes and there are more cases of dengue than malaria here in the DR. Although mine started a little abornmally. I was on my way to San Juan on a motoconcho and started feeling light-headed and like I was going to pass out so when we got to the stop in San Juan I sat and rested until I felt a little better. Then I proceeded to walk down the street, but only made it about half a block before I got the light-headed feeling again and had to go into a shop and sit down. So I went back to the stop with the intention of going back to my site, but I couldn´t even sit on a motoconcho without feeling light-headed. I called one of the Peace Corps doctors and she said it was probably from the heat, to have a Coca-Cola and water and let her know how I feel. Well, the Coke and water helped well enough for me to make it back to my site. But then, that evening my temperature started went up to 101 and my back and legs started acheing. I took some medicine to make my temperature go down but by the middle of the night it wore off and my body was still all achy. By 6:00 am my temperature was up to 102. I called the doctor and she told me to come in. They sent me for blood tests, gave me some ibuprofen for the fever and aches, told me to drink lots of water, and gave me two options, go to the hospital or get a private room at the little hostel like place we normally stay at. I opted for that rather than being all alone at a hospital. It was a nice relaxing weekend and by Monday I was feeling much better although I had a crazy looking rash all over my body. It was even worse on Tuesday but I felt well enough to go back to my site. The rash lasted a couple days more and was a little itchy going away and I was pretty low energy for the next couple weeks. But I am better and doing well now. Here´s some pictures of my rash.


Here´s the rash on my neck.


Here´s the rash on my elbow and forearm