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!

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).