Peace Corps: Dominican Republic

Nombre: Jenn
Ubicación: Las Matas de Farfan, Dominican Republic

In May 2005, I graduated from Carroll College with a B.A. in History and a minor in Anthropology. As useful as my majors are, I'm working in Agriculture with the Peace Corps in the Dominican Republic!

31 julio 2006

Six Months Down

I realized it had been a long time since I had written when I recieved a post card from Germany with my new address on it. I think it's about time I get on to keeping in touch a little better.

Things have been going pretty well. I have spent the last week out of my site and trying to recuperate from something that has been unidentified by the medical office. I left my site on Monday to make the trip to La Vega for our 3 month In Service Training. At this training, we take our project partners to present our Community Diagnostics and to begin our first year plans. Well, after the grueling trip of 3 Americans shuffling along 5 Dominicans in the glorious public transportation of the DR, we finally made it to the Conference Center on Tuesday morning. Several presentations, a couple bowls of Jello, a little bit of rum and a lot of dancing, I woke up Wednesday morning with a bit of a hangover. You know, the upset stomach, diaherra, the usual after one too many drinks. Well, Thursday, it still hadn't gone away. Now I'm thinking to myself, "That's one hell of a hangover." So, we finish up our presentations, send our project partners home, and I head up with a few other volunteers to visit our host families in Jarabacoa. Lo and behold, the hangover from hell hits me about 100 yards from our destination. Here I am, hanging out the window of a mini van, vomiting all over the road and my arm. Not a pretty sight.

So, I spent that night and the next day spent between the bathroom and my bed at my host family's place. They were very upset that I was "flaca" and sick. I made my way back to the capital, and my host brother and sisters from the campo have been taking care of me. Chicken soup, rice, the usual. It's nice to have someone take care of you when you are sick. I finally made it to the medic today, got a "kill all harming agents" pill and hopefully within the week I'll be healthy again.

Enough about me being sick. I do have some good news. I finally get to move out on my own!! Tommorrow is the first of August, the first day I can live all by myself. I moving into a house across the dirt road from my host family. It's green and orange, 4 bedroom, kitchen, porch, latrine, you name it for a campo house, I got it. It even comes with it's very own black and white cat (a best friend for Rubio). Everyone is concerned about me living alone, but with that concern comes even more people watching out for me. But finally it will be nice to have my own space. A bookshelf to put my books, a living room to clean, and my own kitchen to cook, it's all calling my name. So if you want to send a house warming gift, I'm always open to books, recipes, and chocolate. :) Gifts could also include a visit. I have 3 extra rooms!!! I have space for company!!!! Book your ticket now!!!!

With 6 months down, I also begin my work as a real volunteer. Training is over, the diagnostic period is over, and now projects begin. I don't know exactly how I'm going to go about making my projects, but this is when it starts. My community is geared up and ready to go with a tree nursery, so now I need to get going on looking for our funding for that. I found out this last week, however, that the community has all the infrastructure to make the vivero, it's just a matter of man power and finding the seeds and seedlings. Yeah for me! A project waiting to happen. Our plan is to have it started by December, but you know how plans are. And in the PC, apparently they are a lot harder.

05 julio 2006

Beaches, Kittens, and Meat Markets

So, I've had a very adventurous couple of days. It was the 4th of July yesterday, so a bunch of volunteers decided to get together to go to Bahia de Las Aguilas in the deep south of the country. This beach is an undeveloped beach without hotels, restaurants, nothing. It's part of a national park and for now, no development has happened, but that could be rapidly changing. A company wants to start building on it with a golf course and hotels, so I'm incredibly lucky to have seen this paradise before it happened. But getting there was much more of an adventure then I thought.

I had been out walking visiting people on Sunday when I got a phone call from my neighbor, Jenny, telling me that we would be leaving at 3 am for the beach, and that I needed to get into the pueblo before dark since getting there at night would be very difficult. So, I went home, got my stuff together, shaved my legs, and hopped onto a motor to get into town. We decided it was useless to sleep since we had to be on the bus at 2:30, so we spent the evening hanging out in the park, we danced a little bit, at some street food for dinner, and finally, at 2:30, we made our way to the bus. Now once we were on the bus, we had a 2 hour trip to the Azua Junction, where we got out hoping to find a way West to Barahona, where we would find our bus to the Pedernales. It was dark when we got to the junction, it was in the middle of nowhere. we were exhausted, and we found out we were going to have to hitchhike west. After about 45 minutes, we found ourselves a truck that let 5 Americans pile in the back of their truck. Another 45 minutes later we were dropped off at our bus stop for Pedernales. This time, we squeezed into a van with about 12 other people, 3 of them the smelliest you've ever smelled, and rode another couple hours to Pedernales where we met up with about 40 other volunteers. From here, we put 45ish people, their luggage, and food into the back of 2 large trucks, and rode to the entrance of our beach. Once we were there, we put 12ish people into little boats for another 45 minute ride across the ocean to one of the most beautiful places on the island. It was amazing. Blue water, white sand, and, wow, a little piece of heaven. The water was refreshing, the company was great, the food, well, that was a couple of cans of tuna and pringles. Despite the lack of food, it was nice to relax for the 3rd of July. We built a huge bonfire, and just hung out, chatting, catching up with friends we haven't seen in a while. Beautiful. We camped out under the stars, got eaten by mosquitoes, and woke up to rain. Luckily it was just a sprinkling. We got back into the capital late last night, after a 10 hour boat/bus ride. About 30 minutes from the capital, we blew a tire on the bus, so we spent more than an hour stranded on the side of the highway while they changed our tire. And now dry, clean, sunburnt, happy, I'm waiting to go eat Chinese food before I make it back to my campo.

We had kittens in my house a couple weeks ago. These ones lived. There are four beautiful, rat-faced fluff balls. When we found out that the cat was pregnant, I hoped and prayed for a little yellow one. I was lucky. I now am the proud mom of a 3 week old yellow kitten named Rubio (Blonde). I spend some quality time with the cats every day. My Host dad told me he thinks that Rubio is going to be my husband. I'm regularly told that I'm going to get parasites from holding the cats, but my new defense is that humans have parasites, too, and I can get the parasites just as easy from holding them. I'll get pictures attached soon of Rubio.

I went to the Livestock sale the other day. One of the men in my community is a negocio (buyer and seller). The Sale is in a large dusty arena sort of thing with over hundreds of bulls, cows, goats, sheep, and pigs. It's chaos, hot and dusty, and full of men. I was one of about 3 women and hundreds of men. It was crazy. The owners of the animals have these beasts on ropes and the buyers walk around looking at which ones they like. The buyers then find a negocio who starts the bidding. The owners say that they want, say, 10,000 pesos for their bull, and the negocio wants to sell for more so the difference is his commission. Its fun to watch the animals and the negocios at work. At one point, I was up on a hill watching the action, and I saw it...my bull. It was a yearling, black and white pinto, and it's brand across it's side said "PIXIE." I was incredibly close to buying myself a bull. But then I realized, what would I do with a bull. They don't cuddle, and they are not cute. And it wouldn't be very useful in getting milk into my diet. Then I realized the ultimate reason: I'm a volunteer who can't go around spending 10,000 pesos on a bull.

I would love to take some more time to write you all, but I really need to go find the Chinese food I've been craving since about March. So, write me back, tell me how you are and what you ate for dinner. I am on a steady diet of rice, beans, and plantains (an e-mail about food is on it's way).