11 November, 2011

Second Day of Pico Duarte Trek:

We woke to the sound of the Guacaras River and promply left headed for Bao Valley, with the wet boots of Kevin (Thanks to God we found them after they had disappeared yesterday while crossing the river rapids and miraculously retrieved underneath the river reeds this morning).

We got lost.

After climbing a mountain for an hour and a half, we realized we were off the trail. Down again we went retracing our path.

Upon climbing again, we realized hiking together in a group gave us more energy and more rhythm.

Today was a very long and very great day. We left a bamboo forest to a beautiful river that we had to take off our shoes to ford. After walking 12 kilometers, we arrived to Boa Valley, where we found beautiful pines with green moss and a dense white fog that looked like snow. We bathed in Boa River, in precious, clean, and way too cold water. After smelling like mules, a nice bath felt good.

Yucca, sweet squash, and sauteed salami with onions for Dinner.

Tomorrow another climb.

We are carrying a flower to offer to God in the form of "Pachamama" to receive greatness, good energy, and everything that is holy.

Quote of the day, "If it didn't smell so much I would kiss it." - Dominican Friend Michelle about riding Blaco, the pack mule.

This was one of my favorite days climbing the great Pico Duarte (10,125 ft.). Three times I have reached the top, however this time six young Dominicans from my community and my best Peace Corps buddy we along for the climb. It was the goodbye to my community, my teenage buddies Jorge, Christopher, Carlos, Jason, and Jose Antonio who are young Dominican men I will forever remember. They were every day at my door step, ready to share work and play together. I wanted to celebrate in action. The fiesta at the top of the Caribbean's tallest mountain blessed us all. Nature triggers personal reflection. It brings us back to giving gratitude for the very elements of this planet that existing naturally. No human manipulation, no attitudes, no preferred aromas, just the simplicity of forests, diverse terrain, open skies, and an open expanse of peace on which to find your own inner peace.

Ojo de Agua has blessed me with a home and a community for the past 2 plus years. I shall move back to America and reestablish my roots, never to forget the roots I planted in that island nation. My spirit and the spirit of the Peace shall forever remain in a country and a people who I think of as family.

Going to Miss you DR,

Jared

Go adventure in nature with people you want to get to know better. It will bring out the realness of who they are.

Peace

Every day with Kevin Allison is a good day. This past weekend I was blessed with the opportunity to go camping with “muchachos,” a reality not often realized here in the Dominican Republic. A kind of peace overtook me with the kids that I previously hadn’t experienced in Peace Corps life. We were in our natural element. Unlike any other environment, nature has a way of relaxing the mind and placing one in the present moment. In one of the loudest countries in the world Kevin and I sought to find a natural, tranquil site where the noise of bustling civilization was non-existent. We solicited funds to take kids out into the tropical landscape that is their back yard and go camping.

After 3 days of adventure they hopefully understand their surroundings, the cardinal directions, how to gather firewood, set up a tent, and work in a team to accomplish the art of communal camping. I feel blessed to have arrived at this kind of wilderness adventure with my youth group here in Ojo de Agua. They are impressive kids with a desire to consume all that is new and undiscovered. So with my best Peace Corps buddy we decided we wanted to share the activities that were most fulfilling to us like living as close as possible to the beauty of God’s natural ecosystems. We ate rice and chicken, cooked over open flame, and juiced fresh lemons off of wild trees. We threw rocks and bathed with buckets under the stars, and even constructed a bond fire, told stories, and masterfully roasted marshmallows showing Dominicans how to properly make an American S’more.

These kinds of memories –sleeping under the stars and slipping out of my sleeping bag to mom’s clear call for breakfast of fresh hotcakes fresh off the griddle—are experiences that I’ve guarded in my bank of valuable childhood experiences. They are experience I want every kid in the world to experience. However, sometimes poverty can suffocate the flame of adventure and exploration because families don’t imagine a life outside their own neighborhood. Despite the depressed living situations or lack of basic public services, like water and electricity (that may lead to a certain level of discomfort), ones neighborhood is where these kids feel most at home. Disturbing sounds of muffler less motors, chickens crowing, domestic abuse, loud radios, and tightly packed living quarters all create part of the atmosphere that defines the neighborhood of Ojo de Agua. If such realities are not present then one may feel out of their element.

So I’ve come to understand how the silence of nature can somewhat disturb a Dominicans own sense of home or normalcy. What we feed ourselves daily becomes habit. My teenage host sisters, Lisanna and Lizbet, and friend Genesis all were all welcomed to go camping, not know they would enter an environment very different from what they’ve know as reality. They are superstars in the house, washing dishes, mopping floors, shinning toilets, frying up dinner, baby sitting little brother, etc. However, not being able to bathe in a private shower, sleep atop a mattress, or being told that it would be fun to hike to the top of a mountain just to spend a night far from the reaches of electricity offered a challenge and a healthy dose of complaints. I discovered the weakness of my bright intelligent host sisters. They don’t know what it means to rough it a little in the wilderness for the sake of connecting with the life that is natural and un-manipulated. I would certainly call these girls down to Earth, but they have no experience with “Earth” because the evil hand of machismo has kept them coupted up inside the home repeating the same chores their mothers learned at an early age. Lizbet, 14 years old, told me yesterday was the first time in her life she had touched a mule. It surprised me because we live in a town where almost daily I see young boys galloping past on the asphalt roads with the reigns of their horse in hand. Yet, this girl has never touched such an animal until I invited her out on a trip where she learned to place a saddle on a mule’s back. It was and anomaly I didn’t expect to confront.

Character development comes with exposure to the new. It’s been rewarding introducing kids to the beauty that exists in pure nature.

Wake up in your sleeping bag watching the sun rise and your stomach beckoning a fresh cooked breakfast. It’s you… literally grounded.

Peace,

Jared

It’s drizzling outside after a down pour turned the creek behind my house into a rushing river. These kinds of afternoons in the Peace Corps offer a Volunteer a nice chance to reflect. The tattering of water on the tine roof is like sound from that Bose speakers test sound track; A sweet meditative noise that maintains one inner spirit calm.

My birthday passed this month with a heart felt surprise of cake and a watermelon from my host family. At 26 it’s been a long while since I’ve actually had a party of some sorts. I gave those up when I thought I had graduated from childhood. However, I found a renew joy in the act of celebration since living in Latin America. Dominicans love to make any excuse to throw a Gran Fiesta. Life really should be lived as a celebration. I always remember the voice of my father at different memorial services, “We are gathered together to celebrate this love one life, not mourn their passing. So I will promise to gather together with friends and family for future birthdays to celebrate the fact that they are part of my life and I appreciate that. If the impoverished of the Dominican Republic can buy a cake to share with me, what I can’t I buy a cake and watermelon once a year to share with whoever’s around.

On another note, my host mom left for New York City early this morning to take care of a niece who is undergoing chemotherapathy. She didn’t want to have to leave her country and I certainly didn’t want to see her depart, because I don’t know when I’ll see her again. However, family has to come first in life. We were talking outside the other night over a plate of warmed up rice from lunch and we came to the conclusion that there is only one thing that you cannot change in life… and that is Family! One may be able to change one’s address, move to a warm region in the winter and a cooler region during the summer months, add more tobacco or pepper to their gumbo, sport the latest Michael Jordan high tops, chose to which God they wish to pray, read the news of their choice, and even change their legal name if desired. Nonetheless, your family members will always be your family members. You can run from them, chose not to talk to them, but you shall forever share the same blood and last name. This means they are a part of who you are just as you help to define their identity.

Now when we begin the conversation about development around the world (social, economic, you name it…) I believe our connection and healthy relationships with our families is a #1 priority. If Peace Corps DR is going to leave me with one lesson it is what Amparo Payamps, my host mom, spoke of over a warm plate of rice the other night. “Family matters! Period.” So embrace yours. When someone doesn’t feel so hot or is out of $ they’re going to go searching for that loving family member. And that loving family member should feel obligated to help them simply because they are family. They understand that they have a mutual bond that is stronger than any other relationship. The social ills of the world may find cures when we admit that each and every one of our brother and sisters, parents and grandparents, aunts and uncles, cousins, nieces, and nephews deserves our sincere care and unconditional love. If all the last names of the world do their part and takes ownership over aiding those to which they are closest, than the sustainability of mankind will be assured. Solutions are always closer than we make them appear to be.

So next time it’s your birthday, invite the family over to cheer and eat together as you were raised.

Sandia or “watermelon” is always a great treat.

Jared

We are all fundamentally the same. Neighborhood to neighborhood kids enjoy the same play; The fresh lemon juice dripping from the Dona’s hands; The nurse’s compassionate care through the simple application of a band aid on a light scrape; Sweating in the Caribbean sun; Crying with sadness. If most humans share many of these same sentiments why did I feel the least bit cautious and unsure when I signed up to volunteer at a summer camp that brought me closer to AIDS and Cholera than perhaps I will ever again be in my life. I was entering the common ground of counseling and playing with youth; but youth that carried a disease and hardship that I had learned had killed some 25 million people. How would I shed my fear, ignorance, and preconceptions of these bright, hopeful, joyous, and HIV infected young kids?

Growing up as a kid I believed those dropping staving faces and unpleasant living conditions broadcasted on television were naturally part of a HIV/AIDS lifestyle. I felt that Magic Johnson would never be recognized as good a b-ball player as Michael Jordan because he was “infected.” “Campamento Alegria and Esperanza” in Jarabacoa introduced me to 80 Dominican kids who helped me to break this stigmatization of someone “infected.” These youth did not deserve to be classified as weak, suffering, struggling, helpless, incapable, lost, poor, or any degrading term does not build self esteem. They all live with the challenge of taking extra care of themselves because their immune systems may not be fully prepared to fight off “un chin de gripe,” the same way a super studded campesino can tolerate rain, dust, mosquitoes, and a jumbo President morning and night.

I tried to make basic comparisons that would help me connect to their reality. Just as a youth of suburban San Francisco Bay Area I am accustomed to brushing my teeth morning and night; so too have the Orphans of La Romana grown up taking pills twice a day to manage HIV/AIDS. But that’s not fair because they too brush their teeth morning and night. Just as I have lived without seeing my parents for a year, so to do many of these kids go home to a shelter where they have never know a real mom or dad. Neither is this fair because my mom and dad are jetting down to the Caribbean to visit me in a month. So how would I step into the shoes and connect with these kids fighting a courageous fight?

David Castillo was deaf and infected with HIV. This did that stop him from celebrating with the rest of his friendly campers. He depicted a colorful Dominican countryside with markers, danced “Dem-Bow” in front of a crowded dinning room at the talent show, and even read children’s books out loud better than most his peers. Hector was from a violent household and his bed time shenanigans of slipping around to different bunk beds and tickling other camper’s ears kept me up an extra thirty minutes ever night, but during the quite rest hour his puzzle solving ability was unmatched. I wanted to define these kids by their strengths, rather than by their weaknesses. These young kids had the chance to take complete advantage of a freeing summer camp that chose not to focus on the baggage that we as a society often place on someone “HIV Positive.”

The sum of good work (not rest and relaxation at a Barceló resort or betting on a cock fight) is what builds a Peace Corps Volunteer’s “Close of Service” statement and resume. The reality of living with HIV/AIDS is far closer to a youthful Dominican lifestyle of going to school, eating the “bandera” at 12 noon, and playing baseball in the afternoon, than it is to the ugly depictions on TV advertisements soliciting funding for the poor and dying children of the world. Humanity needs to hold our fellow citizens of the developing world to a higher standard. They are not dying. I saw them in exuberant action at summer camp in the Dominican Republic where the population infected by HIV/AIDS is below 1%. My mission now is to spread this good news to my family and friends in the developed world who may think of themselves as living a vastly different life, when really the common ground is much greater than the uncommon, because we are all fundamentally the same.

Get to know someone you don't think highly of and then find reason to appreciate them,

Jared

Reality sometimes only presents itself in the midst of reflection. That is… you really don’t know what you’ve just experienced until you’ve removed yourself from the current setting and given yourself a moment to think. I come to sit and think on this park bench every Sunday to get a taste of what this Peace Corps lifestyle is truly feeding me. No one is here, the breeze always accompanying me and the distant hillsides blanketed with pine trees and green grass center me in the midst of God’s great nature. It is an hour of my week that is definitely one of those spiritual doses I cherish.

Yesterday I played in the river with 4, fourteen-year old “Tom Fooleries.“ They are the bread and the butter of my work in the neighborhood of Ojo de Agua. Together we dream about who we want to be when we grow up; we construct compost bins from scrap wood and reincarnated nails; we draw pictures of each other with big ears and mo-hawks; we dance off rocks down at the river and tear apart mangos with voracious appetites; we truck rain water in 5 gallon buckets when the clouds open up and spill water upon the tin roofs; and we celebrate cooking large amounts of rice and beans. I can call this reality for us... when we spend time together, but what is the reality when we are alone... when we are individuals on this island.

I think about adolescent Jason sharing a room with his mother and 7 brothers and cousins; His mom usually smoking and watching telenovelas when she isn’t cooking up a pot of spaghetti and yucca for the bottomless stomachs of teenaged boys. Where does Christopher go and what does he contemplate when he has the house to himself from 7:30 in the morning to six at night. When Kelvin is woken up by his grandma at the crack of dawn what is his first chore for the day. When Alex is not spraying out vulgar vocab at his younger brother and sister, what does he imagine he will say next. These four young teens spend a lot of time at my house and we almost always are enjoying ourselves and trying to learn something new in the process, but who are we and what is reality when we must be alone. I sometimes think that God has blessed me with the opportunity to provide these young men with many moments together where they can escape from some of the daily challenges they face in poverty. However, I realize that my role as a Peace Corps Volunteer and friend is not necessarily act as an escape or refuge, but rather a school of thought; an open environment where curiosities can be explored and positive reflection cultivated. I reflect when I run. Into the sunset every evening, or when I come up to this hill and sit on a park bench overlooking the magical formations of the Caribbean’s tallest mountain range. The reality of my experience becomes more clear.

I thought that perhaps when we went down to the river yesterday to swim and eat mangos, the spiritual wonder of God’s nature would offer that moment of reflection away from the noise and sometimes harsh environment of these gentlemen’s homes. However, our secure play time in nature was interrupted by a gun battle between a fleeing narco-trafficer and the local police. This is the reality in which these young men live. Drugs and drug dealers are part of the fabric that exists in their daily life.

Though these realities can appear to be large stains on the fabric we call life, I work to teach kids like Christopher, Jason, Kelvin, and Alex that they have every capability and potential to supersede these stains. They already live carefree and lively being the “Shenanigan” young boys that they are, but I see greater need to reflect so that that free energy can be focused on those positive dreams and future occupations that will carry them to a state of thinking and high self-esteem that out-does the ugliness of poverty. And so I sit and reflect.

The rain drips and lightly patters the tin roofs all day long. The large tropical leaves hold a permanent glaze as droplets of water peal off their waxy tops. I sit in this paradise that is my back yard and marvel at the shades of vibrant green. Massive vines stretch towards the heavens and golden colored mangos droop from spidery limbs as if they were Christmas ornaments adorning every patio. Sometimes I forget so much is going on in the 10 foot radius from where I sit. Leaves are breathing; trunks are expanding; larva is multiplying; beetles are nibbling; roots are drinking, mangos are ripening, mangos are decomposing. It’s ever changing and forever unique. I happily make these observations from the kiosk behind my house… the place I call home.

Not so far away on the other side of the mountains there is a desert; a dry flat landscape where vibrant greens are only seen the land is generously irrigated. I spent a week this past month in the southern part of the island surrounded by fields of towering sugar cane. I was learning Creole through a special Peace Corps language course that took volunteers to the communities where the Creole speakers in this country live. Batey 9 was home for 5 days; immersed in a community of some of the poorest families in the Dominican Republic. “Poor,” not because they are helpless or weak people. “Poor,” because they live in an intentional sugar cane community that has denied them an identity. The consortiums, or large sugar cane companies, imported cheap labor from Haiti over a century ago when slave labor was an acceptable practice. As servants to the land, the Haitian men lived in barrack like facilities directly next to the large fields of sugar cane. Over the years they had families adapted their cultural upbringing to the new situation. A version of Voodoo was celebrated, they sang their own songs, made instruments from bamboo, cooked their style food, and spoke their own language, Creole.

However, this cultural identity brought from Haiti, rooted in the West African lifestyle, was greatly compromised by the labor intensive job these men were required to perform. They made almost no money hacking down large stocks of sugar cane with their machetes as the cane husk was lit a flame in front of their eyes. They were required to work 12 days straight on 12 hour shifts and then the 13th day was 24 hours straight before they received one day off and repeated the cycle again. They were isolated in a lifestyle that was not just. When the sugar industry fell in the mid 20th century these men and their families were left without an income source. At least during the time of their indentured servitude they were paid a living stipend.

Today, multiple generations later and the current situation in 2011 is much more complex and difficult. These people own no land, not even their house, as these Bateys are still privately owned by the sugar cane companies. They are not recognized as Dominican citizens, and thus cannot legally attend high school or college, they have very few job opportunities, cannot vote, cannot travel outside their community without being harassed at military checkpoints along the highway, nor are they accepted across the Haitian border because they were not born there. These people are marginalized from society. They belong to no nation. The same story could be played out in the farming rich San Joaquin Valley of California where hard working Mexican farm workers have been imported and accepted as cheap labor to maintain the strong agricultural economy. However, you can imagine that conditions and opportunities are magnified to even a greater level of discomfort on the Dominican-Haitian border where the standard of living is much lower.

So no one has ever accused me of being an immigrant lawyer, but I constantly have to peal back the lens of privilege through which I was born into the world and understand the multiple layers to inequality. I went to Batey 9 to learn Creole and walked away with a brief understanding of a history and reality that is not just. The developing world is changing rapidly, just as the trunks of trees and vibrant green leaves in my back yard are expanding with each new drop of rain. I am hopeful that maybe the bright smiles of the children in Batey 9 that I shared every afternoon playing soccer with will one day claim their rights to be active, participating citizens in this world. They deserve an identity just like you and me.

It was the wash of wind that covered the mountain side pines, flew through my sweaty hair, and spoke peace to my spirit. No motors racing by, turning up dust, blistering the silence. No blaring bodega speakers rattling the tin roofs of the neighborhood houses. It was Peter, his cousin Jeremiah, and myself enjoying a 4 day trek to the top of Pico Duarte. I did this same hike a little less than a year ago with my college buddy Dan and his parents. This second time with fewer hikers and more time to reflect and relax, I thoroughly enjoyed a dose of the peace present in God’s natural world.

Even though I live in the “campo” I some times forget about the quiet backyard I have yet to really explore. The hills slowly roll up to the Caribbean’s highest peak, Pico Duarte (10,000 ft). Perhaps it’s not so majestic as maybe the snow capped, saw-toothed Sierra Nevada mountains of home, but it’s a world removed from everything that is loud and in your face about Dominican culture. Here the steams trickle with delight and cold fresh springs. The palm, pine, fruit, and deciduous trees cohabitate on the same slope. The birds chirp freely without fear of being pegged by a pebble from a kids sling shot. The wind whispers secrets that only the deep valleys can comprehend. And the tree feathered horizon gives way to flaming sunrises and sunsets that wake up and put to bed the Caribbean island.

I will do this hike again before I part from the Dominican Republic… perhaps 2 more times. Not only because it is a welcomed challenge, but because it represents the purity that can be found on any piece of land we choose to protect. I work to mitigate trash, create compost bins, protect clean water sources, and play with kids... all because… why?? Well, every time I return to the purity of our world’s protected areas I answer that question. I reunite with nature and my roots. I am grateful for every encounter with beauty in its un-manipulated state and I wish to offer the kids in my community the chance to connect with that not so far away wild. Perhaps the winds and water and trees brushing the top of Pico Duarte will wash upon their spirit and ignite an appreciation for the sacred natural world that can be lost in the “bulla” of a culture that vibrant and all up in your face.

Take a walk, take a hike, and then go on a trek. It’ll reconnect you to where you come from and what you’re part of.

Peace,

Jared

Four good friends came to visit from college. My first real visitors to the island and they were unable to make it up to my site. So I tried to tell them what I do... what I have learned from all this Peace Corps Volunteer business. This is what I came up with.

“I wanted the sour oranges from the top of the tree to make juice for our youth group. Luisito wanted to climb the tree just so that he could escape from his grandmother’s house for at least one moment. I wanted to finish collecting the oranges within an hour. Luisito wanted to sleep under the tree and wake up to the rising sun. I wanted to plant more fruit trees in our community. Luisito wanted to teach me how to save the seeds, dry them, and then plant them.

Sometimes the solution to a task takes longer than expected. The orange juice would come; however, not until many small, basic steps would make us appreciate the final product.”

My last two years in the Peace Corps have introduced me to a lifestyle that requires patience. However, not a dull and boring kind of patience, particularly when one has to wait to get oranges from neighbors’ trees. Rather, it is an opportunity to learn something new with every task. My job as a Community Environment Development Promoter, in the small, rural Dominican town of Ojo de Agua, is to develop projects that help the community focus on local environmental issues. Our youth group, “Defenders of the Environment,” dedicates two hours every week discussing and developing plans to resolve community environmental issues.

With lots of trash cluttering the creek that runs through our cozy neighborhood of 55 houses, we’ve learned that residents need a system to dispose of waste. Trash in the creek has had a negative impact on the health of people, plants and animals. Several kids have suffered from dengue--- a viral disease of the tropics that causes sudden fever and pain in the joints. This disease is transmitted to humans by mosquitoes. They use the standing water in the plastic bottles and plastic wraps in the creek as a place to produce new life.

We have constructed compost bins in order to dispose of organic food scraps that make up over half of our total solid waste. In addition, food scraps have brought an abundance of flies and gnats to the creek bed.

The collection of food scraps and leaves from neighbors’ yards have provided us with an opportunity to create rich, black soil. We’ve used the soil in our community gardens and tree nursery. Future enjoyable orange juice will come from trees planted by Luisito and nourished by the ingredients in our rich, black soil.

The story is one of sustainability. A chain of accomplishments by the youth group that improves not only the trash situation in Ojo de Agua, but turns that trash into a rich soil that the kids refer to as “Black Gold.” Even more important, they’re proud of it. The new Mayor has recognized the need for a healthier community, especially with the introduction of Cholera to the island. He has appreciated our lead to cut in half the amount of waste we produce and has recently improved the collection of our non-organic materials.

As a student of environmental science, I have always wanted to live in a sustainable environment. In college I learned about the systems of waste disposal and why trash and contamination destroy our water systems and contribute to bad health. However, never have I been able to put into practice these sustainable concepts until arriving in the Dominican Republic as a Peace Corps volunteer in the small rural community of Ojo de Agua.

The youths in my community have had little or no exposure to environmental education. They have spent most of their lives in areas filled with trash. How should they know what a healthy environment looks like? Through my service I have realized that opportunity and balance go hand in hand. If someone is not presented with the opportunity to receive a decent education then they are not likely to understand why or how certain issues affect their existence. The Dominican Republic’s education system is not well supported and has done an injustice to it students. I see a need to highlight the fact that human beings need a clean and healthy natural world. So what is the sustainable plan for the community of Ojo de Agua? How are we going to rid ourselves of this trash problem?

Instead of preaching: “don’t litter and pick up after yourselves!!!” My goal has been to introduce youth to the reality of the world outside Ojo de Agua. I took them to conferences where they met youths from other communities in their own country, who share many of the same challenges. They talked with others and saw examples of how they could compost, create worm bins, plant gardens on the sides of hills, recycle, and reuse trash. It was encouraging to see their faces light up as they walked through green gardens sprouting fresh organic vegetables and realized they could use their own hands to design purses, flower vases, picture frames, dolls, bracelets and other art, all made from disposable trash.

If we want to improve communities we must be willing to expose those communities to new and healthy opportunities. Good ideas and successful models must be made accessible to all.

Just as the youth of Ojo de Agua became involved in real and practical solutions to properly dispose of solid waste, so too must the developed world become stewards of the environement though it may not see trash strewn across the streets. Where does the incredible quantities of pastic packaging go that seems to be included in every purshase we make.

Just as eleven-year-old Luisito did not have the opportunity to learn something new outside the boundaries of his grandmother’s yard; neither would I have understood what it means to live humbly in the rural hills of the Dominican Republic, if I had never left the comfort of a wealthier lifestyle in the San Francisco Bay Area. I am trying to improve the environmental health of Ojo de Agua through the lives of one youth at a time. However, I also have a duty to show my community in California that excessive consumption can also lead to ugly environmental conditions. The reoccurring California energy crises and water shortages are consequences of lifestyles that have not reached a balance between needs and wants. I feel that my experiences in the Dominican Republic have taught me much about making decisions that lead to a sustainable lifestyle.

The community of Ojo de Agua is not litter free, nor do many of the youths with whom I worked understand what sustainability is. Yet, we at least did challenge the idea that throwing our trash in the creek was unacceptable. We worked to understand that if we changed, we had a chance to empower the community to change.

Just as Luisito taught me patience in the making of the orange juice, so too, I must be patient with the friends and family whom I will return to in the states; friends and family who are thirsty for the freshly squeezed orange juice. However, together we will learn that it’s not about the great orange juice, but rather, about the learning process with its successes and failures, that might ultimately resemble a quenching sip.

Make some fresh juice and share it with someone you spend a lot of time with. You'll be humbled and satisfied.

Love from the island,

Jared

The seeds are planted. February is coming to a close. All eyes are on the Spring that is soon to blossom into brilliance. And Jared is blessing God for gorgeous winter weather that feels much like late spring in California. I live here in a country that has filled me up with so much pleasant weather and good food. Those are two constants I think I could live with in life. Other such things as building solid relationships with others, environmental activism, being in good shape, understanding technology, etc. are all variables that we must work to understand and sustain. Living in a developing nation provides certain intangibles that can make life more difficult or easier depending on your perspective.

Here are a few examples of those intangibles:

- It can take me upwards of a day and a half to wash and dry my clothes, however, that day and a half can be rather relaxed as I will only dip my hands in and out of water, enjoy work outside in the fresh air, and best of all see street traffic as neighbors stop by and chat for a moment.

-I’m on foot or on my bicycle to arrive at any destination within 20 minutes of my home. I may have to give myself more time to get where I’m going, but it’s great exercise and you see the people in your community face to face. You can’t ignore them if you pass by walking. Also you tend to look for a ride more often from others if you need to carry something heavy or large. Those with means of automated transport do favors for those without and thus not every Dominican has need for a car…(nor would I wish to see all of them driving with the already current state of street chaos). By choosing to walk you’re making a conscious decision to throw less carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, the streets traffic flow actually flows, and are more pedestrian friendly (if you look oncoming drivers in the eye before crossing the street = mutual agreement that you may not be slowing down, but at least you’re not going to hit me).

-I eat food that is sold in town, fresh, local, and simple. Seafood isn’t found in the mountains, nor might I find specialty Ghirardelli chocolate at the local colmado (corner market), but that doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy what is on the plate. Rice, beans, and chicken and salad are not a bad diet unless you think it is. They say 3 billion people around the world depend on rice as a dietary staple. What’s to keep that from being 7 billion people? Proteins, carbohydrates, fats all come in different forms yet they get broken down into the same simple nutrients that run our body. When I leave this country I will miss eating rice every day, or maybe it will just become an adapted habit. At least I know it is cheap, fills my bottomless stomach up, can be eaten with almost any food, and is not hard to cook.

-Yeah it rains here a lot more than most places in the states. And yes rain can get you wet. But who is to say you don’t just stop what you are doing, take some cover, and enjoy a cup of coffee at a strangers house instead of trying to continue rushing through the day with bad weather.

As you can see this lifestyle is growing on me. The Dominican Republic is on the verge of becoming a developed nation. Great external influences from “Nueva Yol” and Europe have influenced its economy greatly, the greatest of which are remittances and tourism. I don’t know what life is better. All I know is that if Good Weather and Good Food are a constant in my life then I can work to excel in the rest.

Think about what you try and manipulate and then see if you can live without manipulating it!

Peace,

Jared

The New Year is here! The New Decade is here! We think about resolutions, we think about change. We think about sacrifices that need to be made so that we can make this would a better place. Yeah sounds like an optimistic Peace Corps Volunteer talking. I just finished two weeks of invigorating work with some medical students from the University of Southern Maine. I was translating Spanish to English and English to Spanish for the humble farming families in the rural mountain region of Puerto Plata. It was like being back in college, but only moved from the Berkshire Mountains of Massachusetts to the isolated villages on a Caribbean island where cars don’t easily travel. Churches and small two room school houses were turned into general health clinics. Pews and extra small desks became the seats for 90 year old great-great grand mothers, pregnant teenagers and dedicated tobacco farmers. Their stories each unique, health issues fairly common, and smiles certainly penetrating.

I remember the 50 year old cock fighter, Pedro Martinez, from Arroyo Ancho. He walked into the clinic with a golden tooth smile after having finished cultivating acres of land, picking the soil so that he could plant corn and plantains when the rain came again. As Kaley and John, the Southern Maine medical students, checked his heart, lungs, and general health we discovered he was a strong man with few needs… until he told his story. Ten years ago he was riding back of a pick up truck when it hit a deep rut on an eroded road and flipped on its side throwing him off the back and the truck landing on his left leg. He had worked though pain for the last decade, though from the content expressions of his shinning smile and great laugh you would have never thought any such incident had occurred. This is how many of the many rural campo patients were. They came looking for help; we had a few pain killers, some special exercises or posture advice, but really I think we were there to share a cultural experience and some smiles that could themselves probably cure all ills.

This same medical mission returns every six months to these rural communities to check in on these patients. They are a demographic that does not receive many funds from the federal government, even though their needs for a basic health clinic would not be of great cost. One community we arrived at after two hours on foot because not even the 4x4 trucks could traverse the mud and steep slopes. That was a day to remember. The mayor of the community even hiked us out of the site 2 hours in his dress shoes and nice slacks, only to turn around and head back home 2 hours.

So not only did I enjoy the individual histories of these sturdy Dominicans, but the fellow Americans from Maine were pretty awesome people themselves. Their open hearts and desire to put together this trip on funds they raised themselves while studying and working made for a special exchange. I’m back in my site refreshed with hope for this new year, for this new decade.

Find time to volunteer within your job or your studies. Everyone benefits as a result.

Peace,

Jared

Who would like to face off again in a game of middle school b-ball? I want to remain young through my 40s so I can always think about these situations and then actually live them out. What a joy to be part of the world of imagination. I feel privileged and free to dream of such opportunities. The world really is an amazing place to discover through your own thoughts. It is me imagining a world where there is no electricity that got me here to rural Dominican Republic. However, living with those who are impoverished sometimes makes me feel a little guilty for having lived so many years of my life in a relatively wealthy atmosphere, or as my grandfather exclaims `` Living high on the hog!`` One day I´m bathing on a concrete floor with a chilly bucket of rain water, while the next day I find myself at a resort under a pressurized shower head with hot water massaging my back. What makes one situation better than the other… well I guess it´s all perspective. Comfort can sometimes be what you are most used to. Have I become accustomed to cold showers enough to where I think they are comfortable because they simply clean my dirty body? My recent trip to a resort (also know as Peace Corps evacuation plan upon news of Hurricane Tomas´ potential arrival to the island) had me exposed to the wonders of hot water again. And I`m not sure if I necessarily needed that hot water to put me happy. For just the fact that I could clean myself in a private bathroom with running water was enough to exclaim ``Luxury!`` My lifestyle has certainly been of relaxation in terms of what it means to work for what you get. I mean my host family feeds me hot meals twice a day, I nap usually for 1 hour after lunch, and when the yawn appears a more often I tend to take an extended rest.

Then I think about a weekend like this past one, a three day conference at a center called ``Vacation La Romana.`` We played baseball, basketball, volleyball, frisbee, tag in the pool, ate pork chops, and danced, all the while colaborating with young Dominicans about the importance of protecting our environment. They say it was my job to attend the conference with my two brilliant host sisters, Lisanna and Lizbet, but I say it was yet another weekend vacation. Peace Corps here in the Dominican Republic offers so many opportunities to each and every of its 200 volunteers to get involved with high quality programs. Programs that make your job feel fun and always new. I know there is something to be said for being close at home in your site for consecutive months at a time without leaving, but I have certainly enjoyed witnessing the personal growth and pure curiosity of my youth group members as we get to travel around the country. They get to share their lives with other youth from far away who are equally excited about sharing their lives. As youth we inspire each other to not use plastic bags, organize creek clean ups, and speak directly about the kind of environment we want to grow up in.

So my life is moving about from one conference to another. Sometimes I think I´m a trips counselor at some long extended summer camp in the Caribbean. I guess you have to enjoy what you do… so I´ve made a job out of being a kid again. This weekend brings movie watching to town. The movie is ``Maria full of Grace.`` You should check it out if you haven’t seen it.

Think about what really makes you comfortable, then orient your life around that.

Signing out from a whole lot of mind boggling, poverty-freeing paradise.

Jared

There are some moments when you play with kids that just feel so pure. This past weekend was shared with one of my best friends, Dan Golub, and 19 Dominican muchachos. I was brought back to memories of summer camp in Michigan and Bowen Island, Canada. Singing on the bus, tag in the river, climbing hills so that we could unite on the top and have a meaningful discussion. We talked about HIV/AIDS; why mother Earth is so precious and unique; and how to build a sleek paper air plane. I think my favorite activity of the weekend was seeing the 11-14 year muchachos build boats from cardboard and duct tape and then test them to see if they could ride down the river with a munchacho on board. What ensued was ultimate hilarity. In fact, the two boats that won the competition appeared to be the most poorly put together. It just happened that the muchachos that captained them weighed less than the amount of rice and beans I eat in one day, so they made a successful passage without their cardboard masterpiece sinking.

So without a doubt I have found a niche here in Peace Corps Dominican Republic and that is introducing creative and curious Dominicans to other creative and curious Dominicans… not such a difficult task if you´re working with creative and curious crowds. On average of about once a month I´m on the road to some ``distant destination`` on the island to enjoy a long weekend of summer camp style play and experiential education. Everything we try to teach is hands on. We learn about the history of slavery on Hispanola (the island of Haiti and the DR) or try to tackle topics of machismo or why this society consistently litters their trash across the beautiful green land. I find that Dominican kids, especially boys ages 12-18, desire adventure and learning through a mechanism I call ``getting dirty.`` What is taught in school rarely interests them or the teachers do nothing more than lecture straight out of a text book and then assign kids to copy definitions until they can no longer grip their pencil. No wonder reading comprehension and being able to analyze a story is often difficult for most muchachos. Almost none of the muchachos 15 and under in my barrio can read aloud ``Curious George`` front to back in less than 45 minutes. So they become drop outs in pursuit of a job to support their family or a chance to create their own daily schedule of adventure. I think they are well intentioned, just have not been fed enough good plates of DISCIPLINE. If nothing else than the demand of daily ON-TIME attendance to school in a clean blue collared shirt and kaki pants uniform, the muchachos at the very least are developing a routine… and good routine is something that a life in poverty can lack.

So I try to take the kids who are studying and consistently attending school on these long weekend excursions. We play like its summer camp, but put into practice the fundamentals of disciplined living; like using ``Please & Thank You`` or washing your own dish after eating good food, or writing a note to someone saying you care about them, or learning to be completely silent for 15 straight seconds to reflect upon the good that has happened to you that day. Ever so slowly I am learning how to be straight up with kids when they need a little 1-2 punch. In this last conference titled ``Soy Ingeniero`` (I´m an Engineer) 14 zear olds Christopher, Jackson, and Kelvin from my community of ojo de Agua decided they needed to be singing at the top of their lungs at 2:30 in the morning while the farmers of Roblegal and the rest of the PC volunteers tried to sleep in out tents. I have to remember what it means to be 13. If the Dominican Republic summer camp lifestyle is teaching me anything, it is how to be a responsible father. It shall certainly be a joy and a piece of work when I someday have a wild teenage kid of my own.

Signing out after a day of rest and recuperation.

Play something today. It´ll make you youthful.

Jared

The chance to be taught by someone who knows a lot about what they are teaching has me hooked on a local drawing class in the ¨Casa de Arte.¨ I feel so privileged to be in a town where affordable opportunities present themselves to youth. Heading into the third week of art classes I’ve nothing more than fill the back side of 5 sheets of photo copy paper with vertical and diagonal lines. Big deal ehh…A Picaso in the making… yeah!? But Professor Torres says you have to practice and “dominate” the fundamentals from which every image will be formed. The course is actually titled ¨Pintura¨ but it looks like we may not stroke a bush on some canvas until the second semester of class beginning in January. There’s no rush. Why should there be? Art is and expression of patience and patience I think is what helps allow the world to be happy.

Anyways I get to experience the feeling of being an international student like my good college friends, Rhaad of Bangladesh and Alcia of Jamaica and Ruben of Spain. It easy to feel like you have become the spectacle of the classroom, or the lost student asking questions whose answers were clearly addressed just 30 seconds before you bravely raised your hand. At least one of my best fiends in the community, Christopher, a 14 year old artist I the making, joins me for class. As an adolescent he’s totally over the whole back to fundamentals thing of patiently filling sheets of paper with straight lines, but I think it’s a great lesson in discipline for him…something I think he could use an extra dose of.

Anyways, learning how to draw will not come in one semester, nor without the practice of patience, but I’m loving the experience and the chance to share it with a young Dominican friend. On other fronts I’ve noticed my hands a little more worn as of late. Nothing to compare to the farming hands of my late grandfather John Wesley Oubre Senior, but I do know that at least I’m starting to develop some tougher calluses. A new tree nursery site has been created back of my house with the help of 2 earnest men, Jose Antonio and Pedro, and some loving kids. We are a small crew of 5-8, but a well juiced machine, especially when the Donas are aside us offering fresh squeezed lemonade or bread and coffee. The coolest thing about the nursery is that the trees are germinated from the very seeds that I have the kids in the neighborhood collect. They get to see the life cycle of a delicious tropical fruit from its sweet consumption to its seeding back into the earth where growth almost intantly happens with the strong Caribbean sun and rain. Right now we have an abundance of mango and avocado saplings just hoping we can branch out to chinola, guyaba, lechosa, and lemoncillo (all really great tropical fruits).

It´s totally a learning experience (fly by the seat of my pants), but I love just getting my hands dirty. I was talking with spry 70 year old Tonita today and we agreed that even here on the edge of the rural campo in one of the most productive agricultural regions of the Dominican Republic, there are few kids who find great interest in agriculture. For me it’s an exciting new adventure, for them it’s more work than they desire in a 21st century fused with technological advances that seem to make small scale gardens and trees nurseries a thing of the past. We work together to find a happy medium. We’re still waiting for that first tree to be ready to jump from its potted plant stage into the soil on the hillside of Ojo de Agua. I’ll keep you updated on the progress.

Dive into something new because there’s always something important to learn from trying.

Peace,

Jared

It was a last minute decision, but God was with me as I scrambled looking for youth in my community who could pass on school for 3 days to attend a conference on DIVERSITY. Yes, I guess it’s good sign that most parents did not want their kids absent 2 weeks into classes, and yes, the big ¨D¨ word DIVERSITY, arises all around the world.

Now that the conference has passed I can honestly say that without a healthy serving of fun and team building exercises learning would be as dull and bland as over-cooked cabbage. I am always looking to see how kids learn outside their community, outside of their comfort zones, interacting with ¨strangers.¨ I am still developing a sense of trust with those who have ever never left the fringes of this town, San Jose de Las Matas, and I am still very much a foreigner when I try to describe the world outside the island of the Dominican Republic and Haiti. I cannot talk with university level vocabulary, so I connect games to ideas and draw messages and lessons from there. A deck of cards can go a long way as well as any random ball. It´s called KID Oubre trying to be PROF Oubre.

In the mountains of Jarabacoa it was the soccer ball that brought forth a million smiles. Never have I found Dominican boys to be so enthusiastic about playing the worlds sport of futbol. Six thirty every morning was the knock on my door, 6:35 we were on the beautiful field taking wacks at the ball. We played straight for one hour and twenty five minutes before 8AM breakfast, stopping the game only to drop the kids for ¨dame 10 lagartillas¨ (give me 10 push-ups), if they touched the ball with their hands. Prayer before breakfast was said sweating, fresh off the field. I told myself I was back at summer camp… actually, that was my goal!

So another highlight included becoming closer with Nico, a good friend I met playing soccer in Batey Libertad. He’s Haitian-Dominican and receives a fair amount of discrimination from the National Police when traveling to and from his community. He quickly became a role model at the conference with his speed and flash on the soccer field as well as when her took the floor in front of some 45 Dominican youth to share some very real stories about growing up in the DR as a dark skinned boy. Racial discrimination is pretty blatant here in the DR despite the fact that almost everyone is mulato and has some sort of African blood in them. I mean no too long ago this island of Hispaniola was a destination for most slaves heading to the New World. Anyways, at 21 years of age Nico is well educated, understands why he should continue pursuing his passion of soccer, and at the same time study to realize his dream of being a qualified elementary school teacher. If there is one youth I’ve worked with whose story I find incredibly intriguing, it is this young mans. He´s been hauled by the Dominican authorities to the border of Haiti and the DR with his local soccer team of Haitian decent, only to be left there to sleep on the floor of the bus station. The Police said they did not ¨believe¨ their Dominican birth certificates and ID cards to be “real.”

The story of immigration is incredibly interesting here in the DR. It is the only open border in the world, allowing Dominicans and Haitians to walk freely across the border exchanging clothes, jewelry, corn, sugar, beans, goats… you name it. And amid all this exchange there is an unacceptable racial inequality that loudly exposes itself. I want to understand how we can tackle this issue as a Dominican and Haitian Community. Nico was born in the Dominican Republic. He is Dominican. But most Dominicans do not treat him with respect because he looks Haitian. Why is that? I want to understand racism in 2010 in the DR.

Meanwhile I play soccer with Dominican and Haitians and it brings us together!

Go play the sport you grew up playing. It might just be more refreshing than eating watermelon.

Peace,

Jared

The moments of 2010 have passed with such velocity that I don't imagine it will be too long until we have reached the year 3010. Some Peace Corps volunteers are counting down the months until their service is over, while others are looking to file for an extension. I find myself in neither situation. I am thinking much about the moment. The present summer has consumed my thought, especially with the fun in planning a summer camp called "Organizando mi Comunidad." It's healthy to have these Sunday's as a bit of down time. Here in the Dominican Republic a long extended siesta after lunch visits from family members on the weekend have been some of my most memorable moments. The barrio fills up with kids dressed in bright Caribbean colors and food enough to cure a famine. I try to stay close to home, not work, and enjoy the fact that "I am because you are." (conscientious words of Mexican poet Octavio Paz). We are connected as one force of humanity. A Dominicans desire to be in the presence of each other is a powerful reminder of how we can share the stories of our own lives as a form of basic entertainment.

So two weeks ago I spent preparing for the construction of a vivero (tree nursery). Seventeen Peace Corps Volunteers from the environmental sector came to visit my site to help construct a community tree nursery. The muchachos in my youth group, "Defensores del Medioambiente," (Defensors of the Environment) are most interested in planting fruit trees. They show interest in living the life of the campesino, while at the same time washing their converse squeaky clean, gelling their hair back, wiping off the stunner shades, and heading into the center of town to stroll the park and posting up to find the best looking girl or guy.

It can be a difficult job to read their interests at times, but the focus remains on community projects. I feel blessed to have such freedom to develop compost bins and gardens without the pressures of strict time lines… nobody putting an order to the madness of community development. It's kinda like always Saturday here. You can rest if you want and someone will gladly accompany you, you can play all day long as if you were in an AYSO soccer tournament, or you can break out the pick and tend to the garden as if it were a hobby and not 10 hours of slave paying labor. I love the options, all though I do have to be straight with myself about when I am going to take my own time. I at least know that Saturdays I will dedicate to washing my clothes and cleaning my house... I involve the kids that come over to play because cleaning alone makes the day extra long... and I know that Sundays are peaceful with God and family.

It's summer time so take a moment to enjoy the sun.

With A Tropical Burst of Love,

Yarred

There's a new kind of Peace I explored last week.

Caribbean tourism commercials present this island of Hispanola as place of white sand beaches, sexy women, and you and your friends and family relaxed sipping of mango smoothies. Well, maybe that true for the foreigner´s 4 day stay at an expensive resort, but inland a new tourism is talking shape.

They call it summiting the Caribbean's tallest peak, (Pico Duarte, 10,000ft). I call it loosing yourself in serenity and spirituality.

Here´s Day 1´s journal entry:

I woke up to bathe in the steam. It felt refreshing again after last night´s skinny dip with Justin and and college buddy Dan. Mangos and hot chcolate were for breakfast at 7am. Life is tought when it's sweet. Last night's stay in the visitor center was enjoyable with the 6 of us wraped up in our sleeping backs on the white tiled floor. I was impressed with the facilities at this 2 year old center and hope that more eco-tourists will be able to take advantage of them. The hike today was up and down ending at a nice caseta in las Garacuas. Plenty of climb and plenty of decending, however, perhaps most exciting was the furious rain storm after lunch that got the best us and even this very journal soaked in water. The trail turned into a tomato juice stream and our shoes became sponges absorbing the rice-red colored water with each step. It's pretty clear to see how important plant and roots are to evoiding erosion.

I will never forget the lightening that struck overhead causing me to duck in fear of being struck. Fortunately we summited our final ridge of the day and the storm moved on echoing through the different river basins of Jose Armando Bermudez National Park. Mata Grande, our starting point for this 5 day terk, is still not far off. The rivers here are absolutely beautiful and clear. They are where the life of this country begins. I am thankful to the Golub family for inviting me on this trip. Tonight we are eating Tono and Jeraldo's (our guides) rice and beans. I am sure I shall not be let down. I will dry out and sleep strong. 18 kilometers today, wet, well fed, we're just breaking in the hike!

My Peace Corps experience in the Dominincan Republic has been nothing short of fun play ground activity, including TAG until the sun shines no more. They call me a Environamental Comunity Development Promoter, but really I create adventures with youth, running around with the wheel barrow picking up litter and transforming banana peals and cow manure into fresh compost for our backyard gardens. The big project for this summer is creating compost bins for neighbors to share in depositing their organic waste. With organic waste (leaves, mango peals, burnt rice...) we can create good soil and with good soil we can create gardens. We'll see how the experiment goes. However, before that a few kids in my barrio want to get colorful and paint a world map mural at their school. We'll see if we can keep the paint in the can.

So, what I´ve learned in all this play is that PATIENCE gets things done. When I attempt something alone I realize it is not sustainable because no one else in the small barrio of Ojo de Aguas is learning how to serve their community. It´s not about getting 10 packets of free vegetable seeds from the Department of Agriculture, nor is it about planting trees just because, but it´s about empowering others who haven´t been presented with such opportunities. I find the Peace Corps experience is most exhilarating when I am listening, Thus I realize I am often learning more about myself and my own habits than maybe imparting ideas upon my community. The other day I learned to sow recycled rice sacks together to create an impenatrable fence around our garden keeping the wandering chicken from eating the cilantro and lettuce. Choco and Josue also taught me that it is also possible to construct a sand lot style basketball hoop from rebar, bolts, and a tree alongside the road. It is so fun to see imagination come to life.

In the end I spend much of my day developing relationships and just trying to be a role model to many boys and young men who don´t have fathers, nor a vison of what they want to do when they grow up. So for now we play and I learn. One more year and we´ll be like actual brothers.

Take a visit to another country and listen to the peoples stories. You will learn so much about yourself.

Peace,

Jared Oubre

P.S. And added plus: Dan Golub (Williams ´08) is also here in the country with me serving as a Peace Corps Volunteer. I couldn´t be more lucky to have a great Williams' buddy, runner, and fun dude along on the journey. Next week we're headed to the top of the Caribbeans tallest mountain, Pico Duarte (10,000 ft), with Dan´s parents. God is good!

Yesterday was Election day in the Dominica Republic and that means the days and months surrounding the is day have equalled organized chaos. Two parties the PLD (Partido Liberation Dominicana) and the PRD (Partido Reformista Dominicana) have displayed their colors, purple and white respectively, with fanatical pride. I know it was a big deal when we elected our first black president, but campaigning her is just noise, parades, strikes in the street, flag waving, and catchy music announcements booming from 16 speakers loaded into the back of a small pick up truck.

I was most recently in the capital enjoying a relaxing moment of pitch and catch (we were actually playing ¨Pickle¨ with a few kids, Arecito, Christian, and Esteven) when a propeller plane flew low over our neighbourhood showering the streets with shinny sheets of paper on which was plastered a light-skinned Dominican politician. It was like New Years in New York, but instead of welcoming in the New Year in was election propaganda. I learned that the local mayoral and congressional races are of supreme importance because the Dominicans often get to see their leaders in person... something most presidential races could never offer and small pueblo or rural campesino family.

So a little background on the ¨democratic¨ voting system here: Right now across the country it seems to be two parties dominating the political campaigns, each paying bribes of up to 1000 pesos ($30) to the poor and uneducated if they will promise to vote for their party. Live chickens, salami roles, baseball caps, sandals, bright colored T-shirts, baseball caps, electrical wire, free water, tired smiles, you name it, are given out by campaign promoters to help each party ¨buy¨ a vote. ¨Promises are made that will never be follow through with,¨ says my host mom, ¨because anyone in power is going to find a way to siphon the pueblos $ into their pockets.¨ It is as if politics in a game that is played here, where those who are the most corrupt win the pot. I can´t vote because I don´t have a cedula (Dominican ID card), but even if I illegally bought one, which apparently happens quite often during election time, I still not sure which candidate is promising something they can actually follow through with. One can surely not fix all the social inequalities of a developing nation in one election term, so the perfectly crafted speeches of a utopian tomorrow often seem hallow. That is not to say that I do not believe there is great potential and resources her in the DR. It´s a country in which you can do almost anything you want and always be celebrating along with others doing the same.

One thing is for sure is that this country needs to find a way to develop its education system. They put no resources forward to support their students and teachers and thus they receive one of the lowest ranked education systems in Latin American. If there is one thing that I firmly believe is a sustainable path out of poverty, it is education. A pueblo educated is a pueblo that knows how to prioritize its needs. Right now the DR´s filled with many happy people, but I think it could be even more organized and realize it hopeful political agendas if it fought the tough fight of great schooling.

Celebrate your right to be an educated voter,

Paz Paz,

Jared

My father´s birthday passed and I was so ingrossed in the art of playing with Dominican kids that I forgot to call him from the island and wish him happy birthday. There are moments of extreme alegria (or happiness) in the Peace Corps experience and this past weekend was certainly one of them. ASk me to plan a youth camp that brings together 72 dominincan teenagers from around the island, including those of haitian decent, and I´d probably respond ¨Who? What? Where? When? Why?¨ However, there are some things that are consistent in this world and one of them is that children will always want to play and learn together. Never have I felt so comfortable around Dominicans as I did in that room of 37 boys singing, sharing a sip of water, brushing our teeth, sleeping, waking up, and of course eating together. We were a brotherhood, 25 American Peace Corps Volunteers serving as fathers, mothers, counselors, and trustworthy friends to a captivated audience of vibrant youth. Perhaps the 3 day conference was more time than any of these kids had spent away from their homes and family, but I´m positive Arenayi will remember that first ever bike ride (without shoes and no breaks on the bike... the Dominican way) in the National Park Mirador Norte and 16 year old Exeido will surely remember his fantastic presentation about the impact of humans on planet Earth´s natural environment.

I lay in my bed completely exhausted from this weekend of recreation and environemtal lessons from ¨Leave No Trace¨ to ¨Indigenous Taino Farming Methods.¨ I am here to reflect upon hom much I enjoyed this expereince. The swimming and Boo-Ga-Loo song singing with those 15 years olds were my favorites, followed by the talk about AIDS and self-esteem, the skits performed by animated volunteers, the pizza and home made tamarindo and wheat drink, and ohh yes, elbow tag.

Anyways, nothing can be taken for granted when everthing is completely new to someone. These young dominicans certainly have a grand job in front of them to care for their environment, and clean that which has been contaminated, but they also have the spirit of firecrackers. Explosion of culture one might say. I´m glad to be back here with more of a feeling settled in than ever! This job is teaching and offering me so much. The kids are inspiring!

With the renewed heart of a kid go out and play today.

Love,

Jared

The breeze made for a refreshing week here in Ojo de Agua. It is tonight that I will celebrate 3 weeks in the country. My good friend and fellow Peace Corps Volunteer, Kevin, from small town Indiana, just came to visit me. My plate is full of project ideas as well as mounds of ¨habichuelas and arroz¨ (beans and rice). On Good Friday every kitchen and Dona in the Dominican Republic was busy stirring together their favorite sweet ingredients to ¨Habichuelas con Dulce.¨ Four mugs were delivered to my home within a couple of hours and my stomach was more than blessed. However, perhaps the most beautiful scene thus far in my return to Ojo de Agua was the faces of 500 plus Dominicans lit by candle light the night that we celebrated Jesus´s resurrection, or Easter Sunday. Their smooth skin gleaned inside the packed church, different shades of brown, light and dark (This is a country filled with mulattos, diverse in appearance but certainly all very much sharing the same loud and happy Dominican culture). Little girls sat on the laps of their fathers fresh in their new dresses and hair straighten and neatly pulled back. Grandpa and grandmas were tightly sandwiched alongside children and children in law, perhaps uncomfortable, but they didn´t have to stand along the walls. Everyone connected through the beautiful light of God, holding candles to celebrate the bright example Jesus gave the world. I felt part of something special, part of a spiritual moment.

And then the most classic of Latin American scenes… the congregation offered water as a blessing to Christ for having given his life to teach humanity the power of the healing Spirit. Together the 500 plus Dominicans and I raised water containers above our heads furnishing a shiny sea of plastic before the crucifix. One can only imagine the dozens of different brand names displayed on the sides of the recycled and reused plastic containers. Two liter Coke-Cola bottles, 20 oz. Dasani water bottles, Clorox, Cristol Corn Oil, and Apple Juice gallon jugs raised high above the church pews. Some even furnished old tupper-wear with water, while others had nicely pealed the plastic bands glued to the sides of the bottles allowing for a more cleaned up look at church. Everyone had water or perhaps a large framed painting of Mary, but for that moment we were again united, different colors, different brand names on out containers, and different amounts of water, but still united. It was a day to colorfully celebrate one of the most admired and humble persons to walk this earth. It was a Latin American day.

The colorful ideas and desire to invent always bring fresh perspective to each and every day here.

Go celebrate with something colorful and recycled today.

Peace,

Jared

The humidity flushed over my new hair cut, the drums thumped loud, and the comforting sound of children singing greeted me as the airport doors slid open. People with signs and smiling faces jumped up and down as they saw their brother, or cousins, or parents arriving fresh off the plane. I scanned the energetic audience behind the large metal barricades and found Francisco, a Peace Corps driver, winking at me. I knew who he was and I knew I was returning home to the Dominincan Republic in good hands.

The atmosphere at the airport well descibres what this country is about. Celebration! Every moment is to be enjoyed together. Unity can certainly be found in family, and though my family is not here I feel as though the Dominicans have welcomed me a son. This morning I took off on a run in Santo Domingo's historic downtown... one of the oldest downtowns in the Americas dating back to when Christopher Columbus landed on the island (he call it Hispanola). On the streets I saw faces that I hadn't seen in 8 months, I saw the sun rising from the east over the blue Caribbean water, and I splashed my face into the sea "baptising" my own arrival to Peace Corps PART II. As my aunt used to recommend when traveling, "Get up early and see a city wake up and you'll get a good idea of where you are and who the people are." It was a beautiful experience and easy to get excited about waking up my first morning here. Now I've promised myself to keep it up for the remainder of my stay here in the DR. Jared's saying it right now for all you doubters... he's going to commit himself to the rural farmer motto: "Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy wealthy and wise." I've got plenty of examples in my community of Ojo de Aguas, so why not do it.

So the brother is healthy, he's back, and he's going to love the heck out of playing with Dominincan kids again. If you have any fun games to recommend that aren't too complex and don't require many resources let me know, I'd be interested.

Brotha's Back!

Get up early and take some time alone.

Peace de Santo Domingo,

Jared

Many of us saw the 2010 Olympic champions stand on those podiums and receive their medals: gold, silver, and bronze. The medals honored these athletes for their a level of commitment and determination that we all can admire. Certainly they make their parents, coaches, and country proud, but perhaps more importantly they make the world proud. There would be no Olympics without the thousands of competitors. There would be no Olympics if the competitors did not train and make sacrifices to be in the best shape of their life for these two weeks. And there would be no Olympics without the sportsmanship that transcends cultural and language differences. To see so many different nations represented on those podiums cheering each other on and listening to the many national anthems of the world was inspiring.

When I was young I had that dream of becoming an Olympic athlete. I thought maybe someday I would be sprinting like Jesse Owens around the track in Berlin or speed skating so fast like Dan Jansen that tears would stream from my eyes. Though my time has come and I am no where near those podiums, it makes me proud to see the young people of the world getting together to compete; to share the universal language of athletic competition. The vigor, defeat, victory, and pure emotion that sport demands. I think these athletes help us remember how very much we all share in common. Ice skaters in the small country of Slovakia trained for four years to compete against the hockey stars of Canada, and they lost. South Korean teenagers carried high hopes for their 19 year figure skating "Queen," Kim Yu-Na, and she set a world record score with her gold medal performance. And the country of Georgia remembered the courageous and fierce competitor in Nodar Kumaritashvili, who died hours before the Olympics started during a training run on the Skeleton slide.

So the world comes to relate to each other through these different stories. Perhaps at first when the games begin we are inclined to focus solely on the successes of our own country men (our "ambassadors"). However, as the competition progresses we begin to realize their would be no competitive spirit in the Olympics without all the different athletes from all over the world. It is here where the meaning of the Olympics expands beyond the gold, silver, and bronze. We realize that competiton forces everyone to best their own mark and thus produce a higher level of excellence. This excellence is the same energy that drives peace. My desire to succeed and your desire to succeed are mutual because we can not alone be pushed to greater levels of excellence... for we need our fellow competitors. In fact we need the best in the world.

So my personal dream to run along side the likes of Jesse Owens in an Olympic setting may not be fully realized, but my dream for peace is seen in events like the Olympics.

Find ways to make Peace active,

Jared

Last time I took a moment to write down some thoughts on this blog I was fresh off the job of jack hammering the plaster from a pool. It was then I was thinking about the work it might take to clean up a giant earthquake. How many days and volunteers it might take to make sense of the rubble and reconstruct civilization again. Here I am a month later and Haiti is in the middle of a relief and clean up effort I don't think any of us could ever imagine. Daily I pray for God to meet the needs of our Haitian brothers and sisters who are searching for a home, searching for their family, and desiring just one sip of fresh, clean water.

So what do we do as a world? How can we lovingly attend to this small island nation? First thing that comes to mind is to keep these brothers and sisters in our thoughts and prayers. They need our positive thinking and to be included in our dinner table prayers. We can bring up discussions with each other about the social inequalities that remain ever present in our world. The 7.0 quake that hit the poorest nation in the western hemisphere had a much greater affect than the 6.9 earthquake that hit San Francisco two decades ago. Why is this? Haiti does not have the infrastructure nor the building codes, or enforcement of those codes, that a wealthy city like San Francisco may have. There are so many layers to poverty that I still seek to uncover, but nothing makes you think about it more than when it presents itself on the front cover of every newspaper in the world one morning.

Living near many Haitians in the Dominincan Republic has opened my eyes to the resilience of these people. They are a strong people because they know how to come together and share whatever they have. I believe poverty can be extinguished by human kinds efforts to share all that they have including Love. Supplies may be waiting to be distributed at the airport in Port au Prince, but the supply of Love is never waiting. Love is in infinite abundance if we choose it to be. Our direct loving interactions with people most closely around us can ripple across the world and better the human race.

So I urge everyone to start loving and more intimately tapping into the infinite supply of love where ever they are on the globe. It can help the people in Haiti.

DIVINE LOVE ALWAYS HAS MET AND ALWAYS WILL MEET EVERY HUMAN NEED. - Mary Eddy

I Love you,

Jared

As I was jack-hammering at Forest Hills swim club I started to think about the pile of plaster rubble that was growing higher and higher. Then I thought about the project of cleaning up an earthquake. Plaster is hard and the hours of trying to control the vibrating jackhammer led my mind on a wild moment of pulsating reflection. Where do you begin in an earthquake clean up? What tools are available? How long until electricity arrives again? Who’s responsible for what space? How long will all the clean up take? Each jab of the long steel shaft on the thick white plaster lining of the pool sent small shocks through my body. Shocks that remind me of the "physicalness" of physical labor and the real work that goes into everything I seem to take for granted, like a nice pool to swim in. I was mad at the jackhammer for quite a while, or rather maybe it was the impervious plaster, nonetheless I needed to allow my mind wander and allow the labor to just happen.

This job is no earthquake clean up. This job is learning a heck of a lot about patience. We’re removing the old plaster lining of a six-lane lap pool so it can be lined anew. I work with two cool guys who have found the Bible and the Christ like example of Jesus as an inspiration, leading them away from a past life of heavy drug addictions. Everyday I look forward to shoveling out plaster in the crisp cool morning and breaking for lunch on the pool deck where I listen to stories of the street life, unwanted drug dealers, soup kitchens, drive by shootings, and a desire to change. Neither the open relationship I’ve built with my co-workers, nor the on the job personal reflection time was written into the contact when I signed up for this temp job. And I am certainly grateful for these unseen opportunities. I think God may have led me wandering down an unmarked road as I await Peace Corps reinstatement, but certainly it is no road of waste or barren. Rather, I find myself stumbling across many treasures, sweet fruits, good Samaritans, and reflection time that challenges my sense of what is a good job for me.

Some wonder how the recent college graduate has found himself at the bottom of a drained pool hammering away at nasty plaster with x-drug attics... and I respond... there’s something to learn from everyone and every moment. This temporary job has certainly humbled me and introduced me to people who are Good men despite their past struggles. And you can certainly say Dad’s seasoned turkey burgers and squash soup tonight tasted twice as good after the long days work, and I know tonight’s sleep will be nothing less than solid.

So I wish you all a wonderful Holiday Season and may the spirit of Christ bless you all. Sing many songs, drink hot chocolate like it’s going out of style, and write a few personal letters to the people you love.

Drug addicts will always have many interesting stories. Be curious and have them tell you a fun story. It'll open you up.

In the Spirit of Christ,

Jared

Snow fell upon Mt. Diablo this week... a rare occurrence for the mild Bay Area climate, and nearly an impossibility in the tropical Dominican Republic.

My time in Pleasant Hill has been extended. Home is where my heart is. I'm anxious to return to the streets of the Dominican Republic and to the sound of kids playing baseball and rosters crowing and my Dona announcing "La Comida esta lista!" or "lunch is ready." In my mind I was there just yesterday, but it's been several months now and I'm still keeping that patience as I wait for Washington to give me medical clearance for return. Meanwhile, home has found my legs churning miles along old running routes with the College Park High cross country team. I love to run and so I thought why not share some time helping to coach and run with high schoolers. However, I've realized youth sports are made way too competitive in America compared with that of Latin American countries. Instead of kids on the street playing catch with their neighbor with any form of weathered ball or hard round fruit they can find, parents have taken over the scheduling and creativity of good old child's play. Now there are rules, there are rule enforcers, there are specified venues where play is appropriate, and perhaps most difficult of all their is a price to play. The streets are not safe because no one's out there. Sandlot or a pick up game of soccer or baseball are rarely found. I guess I just wish I could sometimes run out in the middle of a rain storm and know that the kids are enjoying a wet game of b-ball down at the local court. From a coaches perspective I have discovered that athletes here as well as anywhere in the world perform best when they are having fun. So I enter practice with a smile on my face and the rest just falls into place.

This past weekend I joined the Varsity Boys squad for a 3 mile race in LA. They're a goofy group of 16 and 17 year olds who love to "slug bug" punch each others' 125 pound frames every time they see a Volkswagen Beetle on the road. They also asked for more all you can eat bread sticks after their three course dinner at the Olive Garden had sufficiently filled their stomachs. The thing is I remember living out those those teenage days not too long so... I put up with it... and sometimes find myself shamefully joining it. I just want to be a kid... not ready to grow up and own a house and welcome debt.

The other side of sports (and the reason they will always be an exciting part of my every day) is that they bring such a competitive nature out of individuals that allow us all to perform at a higher level and thus challenge ourselves to perform our very best. It's so interesting to observe how this group of 8 goofy teenagers can focus in silence during their 40 minute warm up prior to their race, when during after school practice we coaches have to pry them away from fort building out by the eucalyptus trees so as to begin practice. It a balance of intensity and straight up fun loving attitudes.

In other activity on the Oubre front, my sisters are full of spirit, singing and dancing in the kitchen to oldies while I attempt to sing along and finish washing the dishes... the same dishes I swear I washed three hours ago. Sunday is always a day to go hear Mom read at Church and then retire to the family room with Dad to watch the improved San Francisco 49ers play fundamental football under coach Mike Singletary. I sometimes imagine if I were to go back 50 years ago and meet my grandpa from Louisiana during the volital decade of the 1950s in the South, he would be a lot like Coach Singletary on the football sidelines... no nonsense, intensely spiritual, and a "everybody listens when I talk" kind of guy.

So I my brother comes back to the Bay Area this Friday for a brief visit and then Saturday I'm off to trick-o-treat with my sister during one of the best Holidays of the year. I'm thinking maybe I'll dress as some scary green leafy creature because my dad and I have been generating plenty of green yard compost as of late or shall I straighten my hair and bring back Michael Jackson. Funny fact, the day I started feeling not so well in the DR was the the day Jackson died. That's coincidence or maybe that's saying something about my deep connection to the "King of Pop."

Have a grateful day, be silly, and get dressed up and get out on the streets for Halloween.

Peace,

Jared

Running buddies of the alma mater and me at Mt. Sac Race in LA

Celebrating win as a team

There are moments when you forget your wallet leaving the house. You forget the Visa card and agenda book, the tie around your neck. You forget about Saturday morning cartoons or a second cup of coffee. Perhaps it's because you are thinking about somebody else. You have set your own schedule aside for the day so that you may give of yourself.

It's time to serve; "to help a brother out." This past weekend was dedicated to community service in my northern California hometown of Pleasant Hill. However, I was surprised to find out that on my creek clean up crew I would meet volunteers from almost every bordering suburb of Pleasant Hill. I thought it was exciting enough that I might see some of my neighbors out on the streets picking up trash, painting the youth center, or collecting donations for the food bank. But I wasn't expecting people to show up to serve in a community that was not their own? Then I thought of the story of the Peace Corps volunteer. Enter a new country, often learn a new language, and open your arms to the possibility of service... or better yet getting to know a stranger. So my goal, beside getting sweaty and dirty, became to meet some new people.

I wanted to know where these people came from and why they came? Just as I'm sure many "vecinos" (neighbors) in my Dominican Republic Village of Ojo de Aguas want to know how it is this foreigner came to move into their town and now is running around every morning with a half dozen kids and a wheel barrow collecting litter.

It was not until the sweat began to pour and our mouths called for a water break that all 20 of us creek cleaners realized we had something in common. No one was being paid and no one was going to complain about getting dirty. Why? Because this was our free time and if you didn't want to be there then why were you there? No one was working off parole hours or reducing the their jail sentence. We now all identified with each other and were no longer strangers despite the fact that the only name I knew in the group for the first half hour was of the one smiling dude who had introduced himself to me as "Jim, I clean pools."

So the story emerged that an active Bible Church near my home had attracted some 60+ members to serve the nearby community and their membership came from all over the East Bay Area to attend church. So here they were on a Saturday morning, some of them a whole hour from home, helping out the city of Pleasant Hill. While we dug out invasive reeds on the side of the creek bed and de-strangled sycamore trees from voracious ivy plants, we shared interesting stories and a similar passion for outreach, or better yet a passion for sharing. The 35 year old dad Jim, the pool cleaner guy, really opened up to me as a best friend would. We tag teamed deep roots with pick axes, chased a too-groovy-to-handle Gardner Snake, and stepped a top an intensely excited hive of yellow jackets. I've since been invited over to his house for a roast beef dinner. Then there was Dakota, the shy 8th grade girl from Benicia, California who worked without ceasing and without need of any instructions. She sure knew how to swing a pick like a pro and seemed to be smiling at the same stubborn roots that would give the rest of us a cringed face. Dakota had lived her toddler years in chilling Alaska before moving to tornado ally in Tulsa, Oklahoma and eventually on to California. We interviewed each other as we help out the community.

So I made some friends and realized that I serve because there's something special in the nature of service that unites us all. There was a spirit that day at Ellinwood Creek. I guess that's why I chose to enter the Peace Corps. Their is no prerequisite to be of service to someone else. You just need to be willing. As Martin Luther King Jr. said, "Everybody can be great, because everyone can serve. You don't have to have a college degree to serve... you only need a heart full of Grace, Soul generated by Love."

Serve because you want to, because you can be great.

Peace

Jared

Mis amigos,

My time resting at home has been an opportunity to imaginatively challenge myself and reflect upon the importance of family life. My dad has nicely outlined roofing fixes, garage reorganization, tree trimming, and other sweaty summer projects. Mom is allowing sister Faith and I to plan summer dinners, all of which surprise the family for better or for worse. Thirteen layer nacho dishes and Chinese chicken salad made the taste buds smile, while sour lemonade forced puckered lips upon Dad’s face. Aside from piles of medical forms and tedious documented messes (wonder why Health Care is outrageously expensive??), much free time has led me on many spontaneous adventures.

The Continental Divide in Colorado captured my attention this past week. My dad and I moved my brother out to a new teaching job in Colorado and I found the opportunity to scale Longs Peak in Rocky Mountain National Park with two extremely nice strangers, now connected friends. The hike began at 4am in a packed parking lot and head lamps scattered across the mountain side. We crawled to the summit for a 9am “lunch break” and returned to the trail head by 3pm before thunderstorms could chase us back below tree line. The air was thin and my heart was pounding up around 14,000 ft., but I can’t be grateful enough for the chance to take such a hike. Piles of rocks owned every square inch of the glacial swept mountain tops. I now wish I had studied geology past Ms. Nelson’s sixth grade natural science class. Rocks rock dude, especially when you’re climbing around on them all day. I was on this same mountain with my family at age 7, now 23 I enjoyed the hike with a humbling spiritual flavor. Nature is some much bigger than human civilization. It pushes on the human mind. It forces one to think outside themselves. I can only contemplate the day when humans will be connected to nature; considered one with nature, “Man WITH Wild.” Perhaps my home in a California suburb will feel more natural and just as sacred as that feeling atop the mountaintop. MLK’s said he’s been to the “mountaintop” and seen the light. My goal is to get there too.

Go hike, it brings you down to Earth.

Les extrano a Uds, Jared

Joy atop Longs Peak, 14,256 ft

Dishes, Dishes, oh what wonderful dishes!

The suds, the foam, oh no mom's home

We're just starting, the kitchen a complete mess

But with 4 hungry children who would expect less

She calls each name, "Jared, Faith, Maya, Joel!"

"Dried corn flakes are caked upon the cereal bowls!"

"And will you look at the stove, all nice and greasy!"

"My goodness children, "The floor needs a squeegee"

So the twenty year olds all point their fingers

At 16 year old Faith, in the bathroom she lingers

"We've been waiting for her." older brother Joel says

Maya adds "Yeah that's right, we though she was dead."

"And Jared, what's your dang excuse?"

"Please tell me you wise little goose."

"Well, Joel's never here and maybe Maya sometimes"

"And I've been in the Dominican Republic lovin' sunshine"

"Okay that's nice. What more can be said."

All the twenty year olds begin to scratch their heads.

"We need a miracle, oh what shall we do?"

"Faith's in the bathroom takin' the longest pooh."

"That's not true!" screams a voice through the wall."

All them twenty year olds are straight off the ball."

I been sitting here with a sponge in me hand

While you geezers out there been acting like hams."

And with the snap her fingers and a blink of an eye

She dashed to the kitchen and cleaned them dishes dry

The twenty year olds and mama stood shocked

"She's a dish witch." their voices carried down the block

Papa Oubre woke up and put in his teeth

Upon reaching the scene they had dropped to his feet.

"Enough of this dishes and witches, I been trying to sleep

Like my papa told me, talk is cheap."

Dishes, Dishes, oh what wonderful dishes! He says with a clatter

You stubborn fools, here's the truth of the matter

"They always say the youngest learn from the rest"

"But in the end, they do the dishes best"

(A taste of my recovery life back home in Pleasant Hill, CA)

They say LIFESTRONG. Lance is pumping the petals through Western Europe and I'm strutting with my yellow slippers down the white halls of Jackson Memorial Hospital. So I'm here about to bust out of all this medical attention and finish resting up at Cousin Dee Dee's house in Miami. I've met gracious doctors and nurses who have served me at 3:30am with the sweetest smiles plastered on their faces. I know it's not easy being trapped inside these concrete walls for 12 hour shifts, but these people have the patience and the vision for the job. God has blessed me with peace and a strong recovery from who knows what. My mom sat by my side with bags of nuts and m&ms as well as a library of the richest spiritual writings Mary Baker Eddy has to offer. There's a healing that comes from every challenge in life. This healing for me has involved Dominicans and Americans, moms and dads, pilots and social workers, good people and buena gente. I have so much to be grateful for so I spend much of my day reading and reflecting upon "the good already recieved." To be healed I have to step outside myself and recognize my true identity as a healthy, capable, and humble child of God. No one really knows what happened to me beside me feeling really fatigued one day after cutting some weeds and prunning some trees in Ojo de Agua. It's easy to talk about how my body struggled, but I'd rather report on finding my harmonica again as a friendly companion, or chillin' with "Lazy Richard" the nurse who actually drove my mom home to my cousin's house after a late night visit. Or what about walking outside for the first time in a week in the fresh air and acutely observing the diversity of colors and ages cruise, skip, roll, or crutch across the Jackson Memorial Hospital Plaza. I'm in a new and unfamiliar location, but none the less surrounded by smiles and people getting healthy. Home is where you are, so room #509 to bed #1, and now room #519.... each of you know my sweat and my thoughts and my Bible flopped open to Mark. Bless the Lord! The brother is healing up and 'bout to see his family again. Amen and Amen!

It wasn´t really the trip to the beach this past weekend that made for a nice break from the mountain barrio of Ojo de Aguas. Taxi driver Wilson and 21 year old Haitian immigrant Manuelito welcomed me into their world with their stories of adventure, hard work, and friendships. You just have to start talking to a stranger and once they find out you´re a friendly english speaker they want to hear your story and they start to test out the little English they know. Wilson happened to be good friends with another Peace Corp Volunteer I know in the mountains. He spoke of his admiration for the adventurous personalities peace corps gringos roaming the island countryside with funky hats and plain worn out clothes. Manuelito took a long walk down the beach in Nagua with me as my curious self proceed to hold a news conference with him. As he divulged his riveting autobiography to me of leaving Haiti alone at age 14 to find work in the DR, we managed to test out 4 different languages, Spanish, English, French, and most fun Creole. ¨Papimal¨ means you are doing well.

I meet new fiends because there is always something precious and invigorating in the story of a stranger. Just listening has helped put my Peace Corps project into perpective. A Project of LISTENING, if nothing else. I want to accomplish a lot, but for now I shall am at peace with just listening.

That’s all I get and that’s all I need to clean my lanky body every morning. After returning home from my sunrise walk with Pedro I run out to the 60 gallon oil drum, dip my 5 gallon bucket in and I’m off to douse myself in fresh chilling rain water. ¨At least I have water,¨ I tell myself when I start to dream about the comfort of a hot shower. The idea of comfort is all in my head, and I’m not draining an unnecessary 35 gallons of heated water with that of my 5 minute customary shower back home.

So sure my community has kilometers to go before they change their conscience and poor practices of littering trash in their own yards and rivers, but at least they are using 7 times less water than I was using 3 months ago. I’m starting to understand that poverty means fewer resources, which also often means fewer opportunities, but it also means people are living within their means. They use what they need and the rest is left to someone else to enjoy.

Just a few observations of a beautiful occurrence here know as reusing:

-The bird cage is salvaged rebar and chicken wire from a demolished building in town.

-The flower pots are all large coffee cans or the bottom half of a Clorox jug.

-Instead of buying paint to color the cement walls of their dining room, Pedro and Mecho have created a colorful collage of reused bed sheets to decorate their home.

It’s not that these Dominicans are trying to win some abstract, recycled art contest at the Museum of Modern Art... rather it’s how they make use of the resources they have. I thought my concentration in Environmental Science at Williams had prepared me to understand Sustainability in this 21st century, but I find myself being schooled every day in the art of ¨Living with what you have.¨ (Not with what someone else has or with what someone is trying to sell you). I don’t need to purchase something more to be happy. Maybe I’ll look around my house for that strand of extra phone line to help me hang a picture and maybe I won’t fill that 5 gallon bucket all the way to the top when the rainy season stops.

Reuse it to Recreate.

Paz, Jared

It´s Friday. The picks and shovels are waiting in the sun. One Hundred small palm trees arrived to my Donas house. And The Kids are excited to plant. So after lunch at Mecho´s house I´m going to rally the rambuncious troops (Jairo my 10 year side kick is especially energetic) and off we shall march to odorn the entrance to our barrio with beautiful trees. Each kid will be responsible for taking care of each tree they plant for as long as they´re living here in Ojo de Aguas. I´m just imagining how this barrio will look when I return in 20 years with my own kids to show them where I spent two years of my life enjoying a family neighborhood of cousins, trees, and trash.

Basketball continues to flow through my mind as I enjoy time just relaxing with my favorite Dominican father, Pedro. Yesterday I played 5 games, and tonight I think I´m headed to watch a game under the lights. If I continue to live the life with the barrio kids I think I will continue to be a kid. I always dreamed of having the chance to go to ¨Never, Never, Land.¨ Perhaps it has arrived here in the barrio of Ojos de Aguas, at the base of the mountains, in La Republica Dominicana... far different than I imagined it to be, but none the less just as delicious and flavorful as a papaya smoothie.

Obama was on Choco´s cell phone and Choco wanted me to talk with him.

¨Hola, soy Yarred¨ I say in my sloppy Spanish accent.

I listen, I listen while all my youth group is waiting patiently for me to say something more. ¨Okay pues, 3 meses, está bien.¨ I end the call adn let them know that Obama is going to pay our barrio, Ojo de Agua, a visit in three months to construct a basketball court. They all cheer, some laugh.

It´s all a game and they know it, but why not dream big. The thing is these kids dream big every day and every dream is attempted to be realized in the moment. The agenda planner doesn´t exist. The future vacation travel dates don´t exist. The year in which they will be able to read, pass all their exams, and graduate from high school doesn´t exist. So what do you do when everything is in the moment???? You build your own basketball court. The guama tree was chopped down, they took a piece of scrap rebar down to auto body shop to get it welded into a hoop for three and half dollars, and then they nailed it into the tree, dug a hole in the dirt road and within hours we were playing a two on two basketball tournament in our own neighborhood. Creativity has no end here and that is why my first week in site I have focused most all my time with the youth. Studying for Math exams which happen today, playing ¨pelota¨ until we lose the baseball over the cement wall of the foreigners gated summer home, and best of all just passing the entire day outside.

One week has passed fast. I´m in my own modest house next to my Power House Dona(Casa de Potencial) and eat a variety of food which is always served with white rice or plaintains. It rains every day around 2pm and that means I just chill... something I am still learning how to do correctly.

I´m trying not to use my planner much, but I do know in two days I will be talking it up with the kids about imortance of NO trash and LOTS of trees in their community.

Eat well every day because it´s worth it!

Jared

Last of Dona Aton and Alcarrizos, the Santo Domingo barrio where the kids run wild and the elders bring their plastic chairs out onto the sidewalks to observe the urban climate and play dominos. I know I'll won't miss the noise, but it's always fun to be around such activity. Everyone knows when little barefooted Fernando ('Nando) is being called by his mom to get his butt home, and everyone knows that the garbage trucks has arrived when it blows its air horm 5 feet from your dinning room table, and everyone knows when a mango falls from above onto your neigbors tin roof in the middle of the night... It's the Barrio and everyone knows.

Now I'm off to the Campo where at the base of the mountains rests a small pueblo with incredibly humble people who know what good food is, especially casaba (yuca panacakes with garlic or penuts sprinkled on top.

Life is changing...I'm on my own.

Write is your jounal for 1 week straight. It's healthy to reflect

We were at the base of the mountains within 4 hours and meeting with the leaders of the community within 24. The call it “Ojo de Agua” (Eye of Water), the oldest community in San Jose de Las Matas (SaJOMA). I think I counted one car in the neighborhood, a host of motor scooters, and children and chickens enough to fill the dirt paths. The houses sit almost on top of each other with narrow ally ways connecting one family compound to the next. Old fruit trees and calabaza vines stretch across the patches of soil where extended family members have not tried to cram in their own house on the Dona’s small piece of property. It’s a healthy rural slum barrio and I’m proud to call it my home for the next two years. The people life with what they have, and if that means unwinding close hangers to make a fence, then that’s what’s going to happen. If you come to visit we’ll find space and without a doubt we’ll find food. I’m in the richest agricultural region of the country, El Cibao…and that means Jared, or “Yarred” as they say here, is going to be eating more than his share of rice, beans, yucca, and all that other good news.

I will certainly miss my fellow Peace Corps Volunteers with whom I trained, but Dominican time is NOW. I am sworn in as an official Volunteer this Wednesday and I’m not looking back. I’ll be working closely with Plan Sierra, a well known local NGO, and playing with kids as much as possible. We already have a youth meeting scheduled for two days after I get back to my site. The 400 people of Ojo de Agua will be hoppin’!

“El que quiere hacer algo encuentra el camino. El que no quiere hacer nada encuentra una excusa.”

“He who wants to do something finds a way. He who does not want to do anything finds an excuse.”

(words written on the wall next to my project partner’s desk)

Yarred en las Montanas

Two months came faster than I ever imagined. I’ve traveled and danced the Dominican Republic with comfort, smiles, and with enough home cooked food each night to feed three persons or one extra tall “Americano.” Coco sweets and mashed red beans with sugar and a host of other sweet ingredients rank among the top on my dessert list. All I have to say is that the Peace Corps has its act together. I don’t think I’ll be laid off and tomorrow my training group is going reef checking (aka. Snorkeling around the coral reefs near Santo Domingo). I am privileged to be part of an organization that has given me the opportunity to thoroughly question my definition of poverty. As a fellow volunteer reminded me today, “It is only when we have nothing, that we are free to have anything.” – Today was that example for me. We traveled to the urban slum of Las Casetas on the outskirts of the capital and held interviews with many households where the daily expenditures amounted to $2-3. Ones vision of transport, choices of food, or even purchasing children’s school uniforms is severely limited under such budget constraints. However, the people share the warmth of lots of face time and frequent sips of coffee on the plastic chairs of their front porch. One Dona even poured me (the stranger in the barrio) a fresh cup of tamarind juice to welcome me into a front porch conversation; a cup of juice that she would have ordinarily sold for 10 pesos (35 cents), but for me was welcoming refreshment from walking the humid and hot streets.

So I count down 6 more days before I receive my final placement. I’m hoping for the mountains, but good people grow like weeds here so they can plant me anywhere.

In the name of Tim Keifer, our environmental training director, “Feed your soils and let your soils fed your plants.

Love, Jared

The fog roled in, I turned over the soil, and “Big Mama” tries to break out of her pig pen. This all happens daily in the mountain town of La Cumbre. I wake early to run and enjoy six pieces of buttered toast and home made hot chocolate from Dona Nenita and view the deep valleys and rolling ridges sloping their way from my host families block house down to the Caribbean waters 40 kilometers to the north. I know I am in paradise, it just it’s not the view nor the tremendous food that has brough me there. Certainly I’ve enjoyed spending time making good food and then eating good food with the Oubre family, and for sure we’ve traveled along that picturesque California coastline man times admiring the great Pacfic waves, but never have I found people who open their doors to guests as easily as Dominicans do. There’s not a house in La Cumbre that I can walk past and not be invited in by a Dona shouting, “Entra! Sientase!” Then I’m served a fresh cup of home grown coffee and forced to just chill. I’m not going to complain about being delayed in my Peace Corps work because I’m chilling. In fact they keep stressing that the most meaningful work I can do right now is to get to know the culture and the people. “Convivencia” they call it, or “Chilling” I call it.

This Easter Weekend was filled with walking... the most primitive of human actions. I set foot passing through farms, avoiding muddy shoes at the edge of the lagoon, bush wacking through an abandoned cocoa orchard (sure I ate some), and following a river bed upstream to a beautiful waterfall where a group of us enjoyed a wonderful picnic. Listening to the water fall from 60 feet above was a highlight. I would repeat the weekend 52 times a year if I could despite missing a little chocolate and egg hunt action and dressing up all nice for Easter Sunday.

Tomorrow I interview the kids, parents, teachers, and administrators of the local Hermanas Mirabal elementary school. Don’t know if anyone’s read “In the time of the Butterfly’s”, but part of it takes place here in the town I’m now training in, La Cumbre. So environemental technical training keeps me busy 8-12noon and 1:30-5:30pm everyday. I’m really begining to enjoy my fellow Peace Corps volunteers and entertaining Spanish classes in which you can only laugh at yourself as you state, “My leaves (“hojas”) itch,” instead of “My eyes (“ojos”) itch.” We’re all attempting to share our talents with the community most recent of which have been squash pie making, lyric writing, and telling bad stories in broken Spanish.

Walk to your next destination. Don’t be in a rush, listen, and you’re sure to enjoy it.

I have made it to the mountains where the people know how to grow their food, mine for Amber, and keep it real. If you want to know what it really means to chill out them come to the La Cumbre and stay with Dona Carmen “Nenita and Freddy’s family. I’m not talking about remaining mute on the couch for two and a half hours while you watch the Warriors barely lose another b-ball game... I am talking about sitting on the front porch with my host families chatting it up until the sun sets and we decide it will rise again soon enough so we hit the sack early. I’m talking about wanting a sweet snack so I take 10 steps out of the house with a machette in hand and I find myself a sugar cane stalk and the rest is history.

Morning is for work and evening is family time. I haven’t met one organization, instituion, association, clan, whatever you want to call them...that can out sustain the bond of the Dominican family. I watch the young sister give here even younger brother a nice cold bucket bath, while the mother sends her 18 year old son out to the fields to collect another bunch of green bananas that she will boil for dinner, while the father sharpens his machette with a rock for another hard days work tomorrow in the family canuco.

In my morning studying Spanish with 5 other Peace Corps volunteers, returning home for a larger than life lunch (rice, spaghetti, beans, eggs, salad, and a papaya smoothie) and then by afternoon learning how make natural fertilizer from horse manure or compost from coffee shells and leaves. They days are long, but the weeks pass faster than I want them to and I’m not sweating nearly enough. However, I’m finding it plenty easy to dirty my clothes through a game of baseball with the millions of kids that are every where in this country. The longer you play the more the field fills up until you have to see if you can get two game going at the same time on a diamond that only has a left field. Right field is a hill that has been comendeared by roaming goats.

I guess the tropical heat will come in the summer, but for now there are no complaints with the beautiful weather and rich green scenery.

Go visit a long time friend. Hang out. It’s worth it.

Jared

Doña Tempora has probably four times the age of me and I still don’t understand how she outworks me sun up to sun down every day. I think of the generations of people she’s fed. How many times she’s cleaned out that black, favorite, and dented caldron of hers. The number of days she’s sat at here bed side and humbled herself in front of the Bible. She inspires me when I start to daydream during Spanish class and I catch myself drooling as I look up to those green mangos hanging outside the classroom that will soon ripen and fall to the ground like free candy from a piñata. She reminds me to stay focused on why I’m doing what I’m doing, not what others think I ought to be doing. So she’s the “ama de casa,” “leader of the house,” “washer and folder of 10 peoples laundry,” and makes the best random mixture of dog food I’ve seen this side of the universe.

Tonight was perhaps the most exciting game of basketball I have ever played with Latinos. We’re creating our own live March Madness tournament here in the barrios. They play hard with the spirit of tigers. They call the men of streets here in Santo Domingo “Tigeres” because there’s no holding back on the “cat” calls or foolishly courageous remarks they exclaim to gain the ear of ANY lady passing by on the street. Anyways, the “Americanos” held on to win two games, despite the hot-damp tropical island climate, and a gang of international basketball rules that seem to change the game for a more friendly, yet more foul prone game. But I don’t know what I’m talking about basketball for because they say here Baseball is the national religion. I say the Dona’s presence in church and their ability to mobilize an entire family is more powerful than a loud Dominican baseball game at the end of Calle Ocho, but there really is no kid here who doesn’t adamantly declare baseball to be his or her favorite sport. That is all the while the old men play dominos and a funny checkers games called “tablero” where they use recycled bottle caps as game pieces.

These people know how to enjoy themselves, their friends, and their family, despite the difficult economic situation they endure. They are a culture of survivors and always find a way to fix their car tire (sometimes with a banana peal) or save an extra few pesos so they can share a candy from the Colmado with their best friend after school. I love the culture… I don’t care for the taste or sound of muffler-less motorcycles… I love the smile of eight year old Willis next door… I don’t care for the fact that other kids on the block think he’s not a good kid because his skin in darker than most Dominicans and that makes him Haitian, and Haitians “don’t belong here.” I see a world full of potential. I wish I could share this experience with you all but for now I can offer a little electronic update and the fact that Jared is smiling a whole lot.

I train for another 2 months (Spanish class, learn to build an efficient cooking stove, learn how to plant trees and what it means to manage a coffee farm, teach youth how to organize and mobilize in their communities, etc.) then I’m off to my project site for two years, probably in a rural area.

I know you all are doing well and so am I!

Share all you have. It will make a difference.

One week past and I'm living it up here in the DR.  Santo Domingo, the urban jungle is in an your face city! Motocicletas flying by on street, sometimes even on the sidewalks if the young drivers have enough courage, music blasting through the night, and intense games of dominos manifesting themselves on every street corner.  I eat more than enough food; that means seconds on Pollo y Arroz for lunch and two meals from Dona Tempora each night.  The nice thing is I always have a healthy appetite after walking through the tropical sun and long days in Spanish class.  I'm sweating right now after Marenge and Bachata lessons.  So everything is packed into the day during this Peace Corps training process and I'm well taken care of.  Perhaps most fun is sandlot baseball every afternoon with the barrio kids.  They play without gloves, they share sips of water from the one bottle the wealthier kid can afford, and they laugh without ceasing.  Everyday I gain more confidence, everyday I talk to more neighbors, and I'm learning to listen to the Dominican tongue.  Que Chevere!  Hasta otra semana!

So Long My Friends.

Adios mis amigos.

Come sandia.

Check this blog for my life DR style. The Peace Corps Experience has begun.