Returned Peace Corps Volunteers Urge US to Ensure Free, Fair and Inclusive Elections in Haiti as Condition for FundingWednesday 10 November 2010by: ¡Reclama!, t r u t h o u t | News AnalysisThe absence of democratically elected successors could potentially plunge the country into chaos, adding a political crisis to the death and destruction caused by the January 12 earthquake. - Sen. Richard Lugar's (R-Indiana) report, "Haiti: No Leadership - No Elections," to fellow members of Committee on Foreign Relations.In the face of a cholera epidemic that has claimed the lives of over 500 people, infected many thousands and is feared to intensify due to widespread flooding in the wake of Hurricane Tomas, officials have stated that the elections scheduled for November 28 will go ahead as planned. While some candidates have questioned the wisdom of holding elections during such turmoil, a rising chorus of critics is disputing the elections' very legitimacy and is urging the US, a primary funder, to take responsibility in guaranteeing a truly democratic process.In October, 120 Returned Peace Corps Volunteers (RPCVs), who recently served in the Dominican Republic, argued for the need to ensure free, fair and inclusive elections in neighboring Haiti in a joint letter addressed to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Many of the petition's signers enjoyed close personal and working relationships with Haitians and Dominicans of Haitian descent during their service; some played an active role in coordinating medical attention and other relief services for Haitian survivors in the aftermath of January's earthquake.The content of the petition, largely taken from an open letter sent to Clinton on behalf of over 20 NGOs in the US and Haiti in September, details the exclusionary nature of Haiti's upcoming elections and provides concrete recommendations for the US government, which has offered millions of dollars in funding and assistance for the Haitian elections. This letter was also signed by Kevin Quigley, president of the National Peace Corps Association, which is the leading organization of RPCVs and represents a network of 30,000 individuals. Quigley supports the former volunteers' petition, which urges that the US condition funding for the Haitian elections on the full participation of currently banned political parties and active engagement to ensure that voters among the 1.5 million internally displaced Haitians are not disenfranchised. RPCV Neil Ross ('62-'64), founding president of the NGO Friends of the Dominican Republic, an NPCA affiliate for the Dominican Republic, also signed the petition.Haiti's Provisional Electoral Council (Conseil Electoral Provisoire, or CEP) is the governing body whose members are selected by President Rene Préval and is tasked with carrying out the elections. For the upcoming November elections, it has banned 14 political parties arbitrarily, including Fanmi Lavalas (or FL), the largest party in the country. Created by Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the former president who was deposed in a coup d'etat in 2004, FL has been banned since the April 2009 elections. According to lawyer Ira Kurzban, one-time legal counsel to both Aristide and Préval, the current situation is akin to a hypothetical scenario under which the US Federal Election Commission "disqualified the Democratic and Republican parties from the 2012 presidential election and declared that only candidates of minor parties could run."The former volunteers' petition is the latest articulation of a growing wave of high-profile criticism over US funding for the compromised elections in Haiti. In a June report to the Committee on Foreign Relations, Senator Lugar urged that political parties like FL not be "excluded from the elections because of perceived technicalities." As was reported on October 8, 45 members of Congress sent a letter to Secretary Clinton that was similar to the RPCV petition. It warned that "allowing flawed elections now will come back to haunt the international community later ... Haiti's next government will be called upon to make difficult decisions ... such as land reform and allocation of reconstruction projects ... Conferring these decisions on a government perceived as illegitimate is a recipe for disaster."Their warning appears particularly prescient, as internally displaced persons living in tents faced a dearth of adequate shelter and a continuation of forced evictions in the days preceding Hurricane Tomas. The residents of the camps in Port-au-Prince, who have lived in tents for ten months, were spared the worst of the storm, but the flooding has provoked fears of the more insidious impacts of possible flash floods, mudslides and the propagation of waterborne diseases such as cholera. The members of Congress stress that "Haiti's next government will also have to ask its citizens to make sacrifices, such as losing land through eminent domain, or take risks, such as relocating to a new displacement camp. Citizens are unlikely to sacrifice for or trust a government that obtained power through dishonest means."The CEP, the Exclusion of FL and the International Community The CEP has been mired in controversy and its very authority questioned. As the Boston-based Institute for Justice and Democracy (IJDH) explains, "President Préval's system [of hand-picking its members] ensures that he retain control over all 9 members of the Council." In addition, the CEP has no basis in the Haitian Constitution, which requires the existence of an independent Permanent Electoral Council.Most damning, perhaps, have been its ongoing efforts to prevent the most popular political party in the country from participating - FL has won every election in which it has been allowed to contest. For the April 2009 elections, the CEP created a new requirement, demanding an original, nonfacsimiled signature from FL's leader Aristide, knowing this would be an impossible task. Aristide is currently exiled in South Africa under what Kurzban asserts to be "a tacit agreement between many governments [to keep] him there," while "the government of Haiti has refused to renew Aristide's passport to allow him to return to Haiti to register his party."In response, the international community loudly denounced the summary exclusion of the 14 parties; the US embassy in Haiti voiced its view that "under the law, elections should involve all major parties and serve as a unifying force for democracy. An election based on the exclusion ... will inevitably question the credibility of elections in Haiti and among donors and friends of Haiti," and similar condemnations emanated from the OAS and Canada. However, when the CEP did not budge, the US along with other donor countries still went ahead and provided millions of dollars for the compromised elections, paying for 72 percent of the cost.Following CEP's exclusion of the party for lack of Aristide's signature, FL initiated a boycott that contributed to an estimated voter turnout of between 3-10 percent in the April elections and again in the subsequent run-off round of June 2009. This consistently low turnout cast doubt on the legitimacy of the elections.Then, according to the IJDH, on November 26, 2009, "the CEP announced that 14 political parties, including FL, would be excluded from elections scheduled for February," despite the feverish efforts of FL leadership to comply with election requirements. For example, Aristide authorized FL representative Dr. Maryse Narcisse to take charge of all issues of electoral registration in an original, notarized and signed letter sent to the CEP, but such measures were met with no success.The February parliamentary elections were postponed until this November due to the earthquake and the CEP has simply extended the arbitrary ban on the 14 parties to the upcoming elections. The CEP also excluded FL from the presidential elections, also scheduled for November, based on a new requirement that the head of each party must now register presidential candidates in person. Again, as the CEP well knows, President Aristide has been kept out of Haiti since 2004 and cannot personally deliver the candidate list. It appears that crucial US and international promises to fund the elections have yet to be reconsidered or modified.Worries of Excluding VotersThe RPCV petition also expresses concern over "the lack of effective measures underway to guarantee that the hundreds of thousands of eligible voters among the over 1.5 million people displaced by the earthquake are assured the identification cards (Cartes d'identité nationale - CINs) required for voting as well as reliable and uncomplicated access to the polls on election day." The letter argues for mobile teams to be dispatched to camps of the internally displaced and to remote rural areas to distribute the cards before the November elections, and the need for polling centers near camps and transportation for those who cannot easily access the centers.Solutions, Democracy Promotion and Activism The RPCVs ended their petition with a short list of recommendations for the US: (1) withholding financial support for elections "until the CEP is replaced by a new Council chosen through a process that ensures neutrality, competence and credibility with Haiti's voters"; (2) the adoption of a "clear, firm position on the need for the upcoming elections to be free, fair and open to all of Haiti's political parties"; and (3) "adequate funding and technical assistance for a fairly-chosen CEP to prepare elections." This would include production and distribution of lost or destroyed CINs, the updating of the electoral list and ensuring that polling stations are accessible to internally displaced, poor and disabled Haitians. Extensive voter education was also suggested.David Garfunkel, who served as a Peace Corps volunteer for three years ('07-'10), is one of the coordinators of this petition. Affected like many other volunteers by the devastation of the earthquake, he organized the collection and shipment of humanitarian supplies like food, water and tents from Santo Domingo. Now working for a microfinance NGO as a small loans coordinator for poor, rural women in Haiti, he reflects back on the effect the earthquake had on his subsequent decision to live and work on the other side of Hispaniola after Peace Corps and his current political activism: "I hated the helpless feeling I had. Day after day, just across the border, I sat and watched the terrible stories unfold on the news. Then, just as quickly as the stories arrived, Haiti completely disappeared from the mainstream media. I decided that I would try to do my part not to forget." He added that although he is still unsure about what kind of impact he is making while working in Port-au-Prince, he does believe that the influence he has as a US citizen is important. "After all of the harm that US policies have done to Haiti - supporting the Duvalier dictatorships, funding death squad leaders, destroying agricultural self-sufficiency andadvancing the 2004 coup d'etat, to name a few - the least we can do is come together to support its sovereignty and democracy. I talk to Haitians every day about the elections. They know that they are a sham and they'll show the world that when they don't show up to the polls in November."He added that while concerns over democracy in China and Iran are pervasive among leaders in Washington, DC, at present, he believed that the US should focus its efforts on promoting human rights and democracy in places like Haiti, Honduras and Colombia, where the US wields enormous leverage. RPCV and signatory Neal Riemer ('06-'10) agrees. "Aside from the theater of shrill posturing, talk about Iran's democratic deficit doesn't accomplish much. In fact, American reprimands of such countries are sometimes accompanied by bellicose threats. When taking into account the use of blunt tools like economic sanctions and the unpredictable reactions from those governments, there can be unintended negative impacts for the citizens of those countries." Riemer called for a simpler and more principled stance: "If we care about promoting democracy, it's just much easier and more practical to not financially and logistically support fraudulent elections with our tax dollars," and "demand real democratic features in exchange for funding." This, in and of itself, would help "empower democratic governance in Haiti and set a precedent internationally," according to Riemer. Remarking on the fact that as UN Special Envoy, former President Bill Clinton plays a key role in formulating policy in Haiti, Riemer asserted, "we are especially obligated to promote American values like free elections in countries squarely within our sphere of influence."RPCV Joanna Carman ('07-'09), one of the signers of the petition, noted that as a current student in New York, she had had the opportunity to attend a UN Security Council meeting on Haiti. "Throughout the proceedings there was a prevailing sentiment: the need for free, fair and inclusive elections," she said. "The necessity of re-registering over a million people was also mentioned frequently. The whole time, I kept thinking about the email I had received just the day before and what the petition is working towards - promoting meaningful democracy in Haiti - and I'm proud to be one of the signers of this document."The 120 RPCVs from the Dominican Republic are hosting a modified version of the letter that anyone can sign online, with the aim of urging more members of Congress to endorse the Congressional letter to Clinton. In particular, they hope to encourage participation from RPCVs who have served throughout the world.For concerned citizens seeking another outlet, Robert Naiman of Just Foreign Policy provides one in a recent opinion piece in The Huffington Post. He asks, "Shouldn't it be a no-brainer to say that the US shouldn't pay for elections in Haiti from which the largest political party is excluded? If you agree, ask your Representative to sign the Waters letter for fair elections in Haiti. You can reach the Capitol Switchboard at 202-224-3121; ask to be transferred to your Representative's office."http://bit.ly/RPCVsKeane Bhatt is a contributor to ¡Reclama! and one of the signers of the RPCV petition.

March was one of the most physically and emotionally intense months of my service in the DR, and it funneled me into the end of my service, which funneled me into readjusting to life in the United States...which is why my blog has been so lame…

So in March, I spent the most time away from my casita, I painted murals, was given medical clearance to finalize my service and I started to decide what I really want to be when I grow up.

Each year, many American medical professionals go to the DR to do weeklong medical missions for underserved rural populations. For many of the Dominicans, it is the only time they see a doctor in their lives, or at the very least in a year. For others, it is just a routine check up from the hands of God. Many of the doctors and nurses that participate are among the best in the world at what they do, and they pay for their airfare, lodging and equipment from their own pockets. Medical professionals from all disciplines participate and the miraculous work that they do ranges from basic health checks to reconstructing the faces of young women burned with acid.

In March I had the opportunity to interpret for a team of these wonderfully talented and generous people. For a week, I helped a team of New York City ophthalmologists improve the vision of more than 1,000 patients through vision testing, glasses, and surgery. It was absolutely astounding to see their care and passion converted into about 90 surgeries a day. My role was to interpret, but as I became emotionally involved I began greeting patients, listening to their stories, learning about medical care and procedures, emotionally supporting families through surgery, and coaching patients' recovery long after the doctors had gone home (I had a local cell phone number). I made many friends on both sides of the stethoscope. Below are some of the lives that were changed because of the generous work of Volunteer Health Program.

Patients came at six in the morning and waited all day in the heat for the chance to be seen. Many were scheduled for surgery in the following days. However, priority had to be given to those with the greatest need and many will have to wait until next March to be seen again.

My tocaya - namesake - and I had a special bond, as she returned throughout the week for consultation, surgery and post operational check up. This is a post operation picture of her with her new left (prosthetic) eye.

With brand new plastic toys laying around, these children didn't even notice they were in scrubs, prepared for surgery that would straighten their eyes, and their vision.

These four young people could not wait to put in their new prosthetic eyes after surgery, but I had to first explain to them how to care for and remove it when necessary.

This strong and intelligent young women is just four years older than I am. She has two adolescent children and a wonderfully supportive husband. The removal of a brain tumor (by her previous doctor) damaged some of the nerves around her eye, so the priority now is raising her eye and eyelid to a normal height. We became friends throughout the week and I stayed late by her bedside after her surgery.

I have learned a little more of what it must be like to be a mother. The feeling of your heart dropping into your shoes when a child is missing and nearly swelling out of your chest with pride is his intelligence and talent.

For the third time in my service I took two of my boys, hours from home, to enjoy a weekend of workshops, discussions, and games with other young men and women. But this time it also included camping and snorkeling in one of the most beautiful places in this country.

My boys had never seen the inside of goggles, the animal that lives in a conch shell or a lobster in it’s habitat. Before the conference they couldn’t tell you what sea grass is, why it’s important, or how the people living all the way up in the mountains affect it. They didn’t know that coral reefs make and protect sandy beaches. They had never slept in a tent, learned on a beach or wore their bathing suits to class. No one had ever told them not to throw their trash on the ground.

Eighteen Peace Corps Volunteers changed all of that.

We taught them about rivers, coral reefs, sea grass, plate tectonics, threats to the DR’s natural environment, and inter tidal pools. We also taught them that they are smart, there are cool people with Bachelor’s degrees and that real women don’t want to marry chauvinists.

As Peace Corps Volunteers we cannot escape working with youth. They are our first friends, the ones that invite us into the community, and teach us a new language. They are the future of whatever cultural change we are hoping to impact in our two years of service. We have a 24-hour job as mentors and as the only Americans most of them will ever know. Like everyone in the United States, we make a huge impact whether we’re trying to or not.

On the final night of the conference, we took the 26 youth and set them on driftwood logs two meters from the high tide. By firelight, and above the roar of the surf, we reviewed all we had taught them with a rousing game of marine ecosystem jeopardy. The salty mist was at their faces, but we were the ones blown away…

Time after time they stood up to give detailed answers to questions we had asked blank faces three days before. The older of the two boys I had brought to the conference has never done well in school, and as I watched him carry on about the intricate relationships between us, rivers and oceans, my heart felt as if it might leave my chest.

Later, in a quiet moment, he asked me how long I would be in the United States for during my vacation in May and when the color left his face at my answer it was all I could do not to cry.

He slept on my shoulder all the way home.

In 2005, Peace Corps headquarters in Washington, DC. determined that the political and social unrest in Haiti was making it unsafe for the Peace Corps Volunteers then residing there. After spending two years under the mother-hen-like care of the PC Dominican Republic administration and medical care staff, I trust that headquarters will take its careful time in deciding when and if volunteers can assist Haiti again in the near future. For now, some of us are helping Haitians through organizations, communities and people on this side of the border.

In the two months following the earthquake, many of my colleagues who had learned some Creole went to translate and organize at a Dominican clinic overflowing with Haitian refugees. Their stories are powerful and hard to listen to. Nearly all of them describe walking through the crowds of people sitting on the ground outside the clinic, doctors and organizers looking out for the people who were most in need of care. Patients with compound fractures were taken first, and for fear of the infections that would inevitably take their lives, were ordered amputations without the luxury of further consideration.

As I typically don’t go a day without hearing a racist comment, I was surprised that my community’s initial reaction to the earthquake was a unanimous outreach to their Haitian ‘brothers and sisters.’ In the days following the quake I was instructed to go across the border and pick up some orphans for them to raise as their own. One woman had recently received a huge box of clothing from the United States to sell, but instead she decided to donate it to the Haitians and so I took it to Santiago for her.

Now, although they are sympathetic still, my family is tired of hearing news about Haiti and is wondering what they did with all of the aid that has been sent there. They didn’t understand the severity of the previous economic situation and cannot comprehend the resulting hardship the earthquake has caused. Facing increasing pressure from citizens, the Dominican government soon had to send all Haitians patients at the border clinic back into Haiti, healthy or not. And this from the country who, a couple weeks before, was boasting that it provided the first aid into Haiti…well I hope so, we do share an island!

With grandsons, waiting roadside to sell his peas.

Juan Rafael is in his eighties. When Trujillo was President, he marched 20 kilometers every morning before breakfast so he wouldn’t be executed. He remembers when the highway was just a mule trail and when plastic bags didn’t exist. He made it through the 3rd grade, never learning how to read, before he began working the field.

When he walks into the room he is given the respect that all elders here deserve, “Blessings, Papa.” In return he asks God to bless us and, like his wife, has prayed the rosary every single evening of his life. He is half blind now, without the money to operate on the cataracts that whitens his right eye, but that doesn’t stop him from beating me at dominoes every afternoon.

As I am sitting here typing, Papa is sitting at my side, looking out at the land he has worked his entire life. Every once in a while he glances in my direction, examining my shiny silver laptop and matching external hard drive.

P: What’s that light? The battery?

D: Yes.

P: So if you shut it, it turns off?

D: Yep. Like this. (demonstration)

P: How many batteries does that thing take?

D: Just one. It recharges with the light (the word commonly used for electricity).

P: Wow.

This Marines hat is his work hat. His dress cap is a Yankees one.

Part 1: Adventure Getting There

“It’s the middle of the night, we are in a foreign country, we don’t speak the language, we are in the wrong city, we don’t have our luggage and I’m exhilarated” is what I said to Anna on the first night of our vacation. It didn’t take much convincing to get us on a plane out of the snowy Midwest to a tropical paradise in January. Take your pick: Anna and I had been looking forward to taking a trip to visit my old pal Danielle and see the great work she is doing with the Peace Corps, so we booked some tickets and made a plan. As it turns out, things aren’t as simple as hopping on a plane and finding yourself in a subtropical paradise, but I wasn’t about to let anything ruin my vacation, not: airline delays, missed connections, lost luggage, earthquakes, motorcycle accidents, or even manslaughter charges or kidnappings (Anna’s clarification: The Dominican Republic is actually quite safe, and we are not, nor have we ever been, accused of either of the latter two examples). No, a kidnapping is really just an opportunity meet new friends. We had intended to fly into Santiago, but ended up flying into Santo Domingo, instead. But, we thought, no big deal, we’d spend a night in a hotel in Santo Domingo, rent a car and a GPS and point it toward San Jose de las Matas, where we thought Danielle lived. We didn’t know exactly how to contact her—so far phone and email weren’t doing the trick—so we printed off a brochure of the cabana we had rented, and a picture of Danielle, figuring we would ask around (you know, using those language skills I never got around to learning) and that we would find her in no time.

The trip to San Jose de las Matas required us to drive from Santo Domingo to Santiago (about 90 miles) and then head into the countryside from there. The road to Santiago is a divided highway that appears pretty similar to a freeway in its construction, but is different in use. Many people have small motorcycles (roughly 100cc), and they are everywhere—including going the wrong way down the right-hand shoulder of the freeway. There are guaguas, usually minivans, that shuttle between two cities without set schedules or stops, and because of this there are a lot of pedestrians on the highway; when someone wants to get off they just yell. When they are en route they often have the side door open with a guy hanging out yelling to pedestrians, carnival-barker style, to inform them of their destination, should they want a ride. In addition to the pedestrians and motorcycles, the roadside and shoulder are an ever-changing scene of grazing horses and donkeys tied to trees and vendors selling everything from roadside open-pit cooking, to hand-made hooked rugs and massive sweet potatoes. And yes, those are two guys riding on the back of a flatbed truck—on the freeway!I have been an avid reader of Danielle’s blog for her entire Peace Corps assignment, so I knew that the town Danielle lives in is a very small one, where many people are related to one another, and most certainly know each other. When we got to San Jose de las Matas, we could see in the post-dusk “golden hour” that this town was slightly larger than the home base Danielle had described in her blog, so after driving around a little bit we decided to stop at a small bar and inquire. After some very rudimentary Spanish on Anna’s part—enough to establish that none of us were truly bilingual—the proprietor motioned for us to follow her. She picked up her toddling son, stood him in front of her on the running board of her motor scooter and took off, with us in hot pursuit. This unbelievably helpful woman paused to ask directions from some of the many people hanging out on their front porches enjoying the comfortable evening air, and eventually led us to the home of the landlord of the rental house. She knocked on the door and explained to the woman who answered that there were a couple of lost Americanos looking for her rental house. The Doña got her cell phone and called Danielle, and in a few short moments handed the phone to me, whereupon I heard “Nathan, I’m so glad you are alive. Now I’m going to kill you.” Danielle spoke with the Doña and asked her to call a taxi and explain to the taxi driver how to get to the cabana. The taxi soon arrived, and we followed it to the cabana. I had read on Danielle’s blog shortly before our trip that her road was “impassable” so we had opted for the midsize rental car, and we were really happy to have it when we went to Danielle’s village and found that it was riddled not only with potholes, but also the occasional mudpit capable of drowning a woolly mammoth.

Part 2: El campo

We spent two nights in a beautiful cabana in the lush countryside. There is a broad divide between rich and poor in the Dominican Republic. In Santo Domingo there had been signs of affluence, including a Mercedes-Benz dealership, high-end boutiques and various other trappings of wealth. In the countryside, a wealthy person lives like your average middle-class person in the States (newer SUV, 3-bedroom home with 24-hour electricity, glass windows, etc.) and the poor live a strange mix of current technology and old-world subsistence agriculture. Having money, we had the privilege of living like wealthy Dominicans. Here you see the view of the patio, pool and sitting area.

Anna and I, Danielle and her host brother, spent time at the cabana chilling out, telling tall tales, cooking Dominican-style oatmeal and Danielle’s fantastic stir-fry, and generally having an awesome time.

Danielle lives more like a poor Dominican, without an inverter/car battery system—which would provide consistent electricity—and with metal louver frame windows instead of glass. Danielle’s cinder block dwelling is situated at the top of a hill and fairly close to the road (I guess you could call it a road). The view is amazing, and we have a camera with a panoramic function.

We spent some time hanging out in San Jose de las Matas, (nickname: Sajoma) where we visited an art studio and checked out some very cool original art and high-design coffee tables. We also ran some errands like food shopping and using the ATM. We had planned to buy some clothing in Sajoma, as our luggage had been lost and we had been wearing the same clothing for days at this point—some of it still damp from earlier attempts at hand-washing. When Danielle’s cell phone rang and the person on the other end said something to the effect of, “We have luggage for Mista Bragg, Americano, where are you?” we could hardly believe it. Moments later, two airline employees in a van arrived at the corner and, after a quick ID check, we had our luggage back. We had honestly thought it was gone forever, and I was just hoping that whatever airline executive was wearing my bathing suit was doing it justice. Upon closer inspection, it turns out our bags were just missing in action.

While in Sajoma, Danielle and Anna enjoyed some of the economic advantages of coming from a wealthy country and got their hair washed and dried for a mere pittance. The economic disparities are striking, and this trip has caused me to think a great deal about capitalism. Many things are really cheap in the Dominican Republic; even hard goods that are not so dependent on labor, like wood clothing hangers, for instance, are a lot cheaper than any price that we have been able to find in the states. Yes, we have shopped around for wood hanger prices. This has led me to believe that the free market only “works” when it is making someone money—and with money comes power, and with power comes more money. The hangers are cheaper in the D.R. because no one would be able to afford them or buy them if they cost what they do in the U.S. The means of production controls the price, and rather than selling at prices consistent with the costs of production, they are selling at “market price” which, as near as I can tell, is an arbitrary amount. This supports my belief that the free market should be constrained in the interest of the public. The D.R. is an example of capitalism in Latin America. The D.R. was never under a socialist regime, due to the various interventions of the U.S. and the personality cult regime of the former dictator, Trujillo, who ruled from 1931 to 1961. In some cases, the invisible hand of capitalism works—for example, of all things: food safety. Bottled water appears to be safe to drink, even though it is oftentimes produced by a Dominican bottler and most tap water in the D.R. is not potable. Government regulations appear to be nonexistent or irrelevant for many things—including stopping at red lights—and I don’t think that bottled water is regulated for safety; nonetheless, the water is safe without regulations. As near as I can tell, when a company sells bad water word gets around and they are put out of business. Take note TARP recipients, this is how capitalism is supposed to work; when someone F’s up, they go belly up (I’m talking about you, Bank of America, AIG Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan Chase). At the same time, the free market in the D.R. fails horribly at providing passable roads, real opportunities for the people to change their economic status, and reliable electric power. But, I digress; this is supposed to be about my vacation, not my political rant. (Joanna’s interjection: This is where Nathan normally segues into a discussion of R-value legislation.)

The weather was warm, and we had a little rain. We didn’t mind the rain so much, except when it kept Nathan from going to 27 Waterfalls to go canyoning, which is jumping off a waterfall with a life jacket and helmet. The weather was wonderful, and very mild, despite Danielle’s insistence that it was “cold and rainy.” It was a balmy 68 degrees most of the time, but I guess comfort is relative, depending on what you are used to. A lot of cool things grow in the D.R. that we don’t have in the Midwest: palm trees, coconut trees, bananas, sugar cane and coffee.

I am reminded that a sub-tropical paradise isn’t always a paradise without safe drinking water and hot water, but still, can you say “all-you-can-eat banana buffet”?

La Bandera translates to “the flag,” and is what they call the national dish that every Dominican who is able to eat lunch eats for lunch. It typically includes rice, beans, chicken, casabe (a flatbread made from yuca root—commonly known in the States as cassava, and not to be confused with yucca), salad (shredded cabbage, head lettuce and green tomatoes) and anything else that they wish to add in, such as seasonal fruits like mangos or avocados. We ate lunch one day at Danielle’s host family’s house. Danielle explained to us that the embellished version of La Bandera that we were served was akin to their Christmas dinner. Potato salad is a special treat and this was served to us because we were guests. The orange juice was quite good, however somewhat different from what I am accustomed to; with the pulp strained out, and not made from concentrate, it tastes much more complex—like it was made from actual oranges. There were actually two serving bowls of rice on the table: one was white rice prepared as you would expect, and the other, smaller bowl was concón, the slightly-burnt, crunchy rice left at the bottom of the pan after cooking, which is really good, especially when mixed with the saucy beans. We had recently watched the documentary Food, Inc. —which is a fascinating movie, you should rent it—and have since given a lot more thought to the origins of our food. The chicken we were served came from actual free-range—not “free-range” —birds, and much more closely resembled what chickens naturally grow to look like, rather than the scientifically-grown breasts with incidental beaks and claws that we are served in the U.S.

Part 3: An earthquake felt as far as Santiago After our time spent in the cabana, we went to Santiago, the second largest city in the D.R. with a population of 1.3 million people. We drove to Santiago in our rental car, and driving in the D.R., particularly the big city, is quite an experience. In the countryside, the speed limits and red lights are, for all intents and purposes, meaningless. In Santiago, the rule of law appears to be slightly more meaningful, however the volume of cars and small motorcycles combined with narrow streets makes for insanity. There is a language of car horns that has developed, which is quite interesting: one beep means “I’m about to do something crazy” or “don’t hit me,” two beeps mean “look out” or “I’m about to merge—you had better yield.”

We went into a souvenir bazaar in Santiago to buy some things, and to find out what it feels like when you are the gazelle who trips, and is then surrounded by lions. I was bent down looking at something when Danielle said, “I think that was an earthquake,” and then I noticed an aftershock. Anna noticed nothing, working as she does in a turn-of-the-century building that reverberates with every loading dock delivery. There was a little commotion, with people shouting and being generally excited, but otherwise our vacation plans were uninterrupted. As you can see, the building we were in appears to be open-span construction. Without an engineering degree I am not really qualified to guess whether or not this building would have withstood a magnitude 7 earthquake—but this is the internet, so credentials are meaningless, and I’m guessing that my life would have been much different had the epicenter been 130 miles northeast. It got me to thinking about how precious life is. I have also been reflecting on what my life is and how it has changed. I left a pressure-cooker of a job a year ago, and I guess this trip was partly to celebrate the anniversary of having my life back. I’m feeling very lucky that I have been able to live a life every day that is fulfilling and enjoyable, because before you know it, it could all be gone.

We visited the Monument to the Heroes of the Restoration, which was originally constructed by the dictator Trujillo in the 1940s as a monument to himself (Freud would have so much to say about this); because of it’s placement and size, it told residents “I’m watching you.” The name was changed following the assassination of Trujillo, orchestrated by the CIA (the Agency’s level of involvement varies, depending on the source) in 1961, and subsequent end of his regime.

We stayed at an awesome place in Santiago, called the Camp David Ranch Hotel. The exact history is somewhat unclear, but it is generally understood that it is in some way associated with Trujillo. One guidebook claimed that Camp David was Trujillo’s mountain palace, but a member of the staff told us that it had belonged to a friend of the Trujillo family. In any event, they have a bunch of his old cars there, including the one in which he was assassinated. I have decided that we stayed in Trujillo’s bed. Anna thinks that’s kind of morbid.

Camp David also has a gourmet restaurant and, at 2500 feet above sea level, an amazing view of all of Santiago. We gorged ourselves on amazing food, and found out a little more about the name “Camp David.” It turns out that when the current owners bought the property they named it for their son, David, who we think was our waiter—he had a proprietary air about him.

Part 3: Fun and sun on the sand

For the final third of our trip, we drove to Cabarete, said so long to our rental car, and gave ourselves over to the beach. We chilled out, walked on the beach, ate good seafood and generally enjoyed the coastal subtropical paradise. We read, sea-kayaked, cooked and politely turned down sales of: seashells, pirated DVDs, shoe-shines (ostensibly for our suede Merrells) and more motorcycle taxis than you can shake a stick at. We thoroughly enjoyed our time on the beach for several days until we had to fly out. I’m not sure how to sum up the experiences we had in the D.R., and passing judgment on an entire country is all but impossible, not to mention presumptuous, so I will leave you with a list of things we are grateful for:

Clean drinking waterThree meals a day and good nutritionA roof over our headsFunctioning government (all jokes aside)Twenty-four-hour-a-day electricityHot water/indoor plumbing/washer and dryerThe opportunities to be educated, work, eat and live a comfortable life available to us as AmericansReliably passable roadsAnimal welfare (Did we mention the entire island is filled with roaming feral dogs?)The privilege of international travelPlanning for our next trip to the D.R.

I woke to the sound of the waves crashing against the shore today. Our hotel is an aging oasis teetering out over the ocean on a foundation of ancient coral. This morning I feasted on melon, papaya and pineapple, stretched, and submitted what I will hope will be my last graduate school application. My Dominican life will soon come to a screeching halt (3 months left!) so I am trying to take advantage...but I find that I just want to be in the mountains with my friends and 'family.'

Tuesday February 2nd

9am I take my dog to her babysitter where a papaya milkshake and fresh squeezed orange juice are waiting for me.

Around 11am I leave my house knowing that I will arrive at the airport just an hour before my international flight…or rather, I suppose, because I’m so Dominican I don’t actually know what time it is. I even stop to take out money and buy souvenirs for my hosts.

12pm The Dominican official gives me the incorrect customs form, again! And I have to teach her to read (my green card) in order to understand that although I am white, I am indeed a resident of the Dominican Republic.

1230pm I pass the last security gate and get to the top of the escalator just in time to here the guard say, “Inform all of the passengers downstairs that we will be taking off. We can’t wait any longer.” I made it!

430pm We touch down at JFK International, NYC and a U.S customs official tries to get a young American man into the “Visitors” line. Note: As not all white people in the DR are tourists, not all young men in sideways caps and baggy pants were born south of the border… And on that same note, not all Latinos in the U.S. are Mexican.

530pm Leaving the wintery chill in my dust I am picked up at the airport by one of my fellow PC volunteers, home on leave. He takes me to his sister’s toasty little apartment in Harlem where I exclaim, “So where’s this cold weather you guys have been belly-aching about?!?” What would seemed like a cramped dwelling in a compound of old housing projects to anyone else, is a welcoming oasis to me. The apartment has books, Internet, heat and hot water! And it’s ant, cat and rat free! They fed me delicious Indian food, we watched an urban education documentary and I slept like I hadn’t in weeks.

Wednesday 3

The morning I spend preparing for my interview and planning my strategy for the subway system. Mission impossible is to find something to wear for my interview on Friday. I see Times Square, Grand Central Station, a ton of new clothes, an Egyptian temple (the Metropolitan Museum of Art), and walk half the length of Central Park before taking a train back to Harlem. My hosts are already cooking dinner (even though I had planned to take them out), which we inhale while watching an old Jacques Cousteau documentary on the Nile. Then they refuse to let me wash the dishes. I cannot believe this.

Thursday 4

I have a sort of relaxed morning, though I begin to get nervous about my interview the following day. At 10am I take a train to New Haven. Bopping up and down the east coast is so easy…why can’t we get our shit together in the Midwest!?! (That’s a rhetorical question.)

After walking a mile or so, I find the apartment of some peace corps friends of mine. She opens the door and I am instantly awestruck by the 11th floor view of Yale’s campus and downtown New Haven. I cannot believe my luck.

The take me to an amazing vegetarian dinner party and I meet lots of New Haven nurses- and engineers-to-be.

Friday 5

Tours, interviews, cucumber infused cocktails and quesadillas. Perfect.

I come home to tired friends who have been working hard all day at saving the world one patient at a time…so I make them granola for the morning and we all go to sleep.

Saturday 6

We eat the homemade almond milk and granola and then my super friends are off again! The world needs more people who get up on Saturday mornings to translate at the free clinic!

I take one of my last hot showers, a final look at the view and I head out to have tea and bagels with a friend. Train back to NYC, subway to Harlem. Its too cold outside…I’m not moving until I have to catch my plane back to the subtropics tomorrow.

My host makes me another excellent meal and I have to insist on doing the dishes. I learn to use HopStop.com to plan my public transportation route to the airport. I never want to live in NYC but its cool to know how!

It was the first time I had ever felt an earthquake. It was felt as far East as Nagua, Dominican Republic. But we are safe and there was no damage here.

I have friends visiting and we were inside a large market plaza in Santiago. I was looking at a wall of souvenirs and it moved away from me, but I didn’t realize what was happening until I heard the men outside the store yelling, “The earth is trembling, the earth is trembling!” I still can't believe what some Haitian communities were going through at that same moment. I was in the middle of a giant old building. I certainly would have been trapped inside had the earthquake hit Santiago instead.

If you want to help I would recommend the Red Cross but if you prefer to send your money with a certain motive I will deliver it personally to Port au Prince in May when I am no longer serving in the Peace Corps.

Happy New Year! As I will complete my Peace Corps service in May, the last few months of my life have been sacrificed to graduate school applications and the struggle that goes along with trying to research, communicate, complete, and send important documents without reliable Internet, phone or transportation. While I will bring that struggle into 2010, I will approach it with more tenacity! I am excited to spend time reflecting on this experience and also to begin something new. I am already though, feeling the painful loss that my move will bring to me and my friends here.

I was incredibly fortunate to have welcomed so many friends and couchsurfers into my home in 2009, to learn about Dominican culture and to teach me about being a hostess - mainly how incredibly rewarding and exhausting of an experience it is. This is also an awesome challenge I will bring into this year!

This new year has brought nothing but rain and cold to my corner of the Dominican Republic. Our dirt road is nearly impassable, but with a new baby to snuggle who could attest to a day spent indoors? And the entire day must be spent indoors because according to traditional Dominican wisdom no one that has been in the rain or cold can touch the baby. To stop his hiccups they pull a string off of his clothes and spit-paste it to his forehead!

My new 'nephew' Hendryk

Thanksgiving Week 2009 - Before Danielle left for the PeaceCorps we promised that we would come to visit her while she was gone. Shortly after she left I became pregnant with our first child. This would have made some people cancel, but not us. We are adventurous people, we like to travel and see the world. We like to experience life directly rather than sit on the sidelines watching it go by. Having a child doesn’t have to change that right? We don’t think so…

As we slept in our cabana the sound of the roosters began at about 3:30am, calling out the approaching morning. Brian has a habit of waking up with the sun and making coffee. As he goes outside to explore our gorgeous surroundings, Carter and I like to have breakfast and take things slow. Suddenly Brian yells excitedly from the garden below. He has rescued a tarantula from the swimming pool and wanted to show off his prize. I was not nearly as excited about the find.

In the mid morning Rafael (Danielle’s Papi) comes to pick us up to take us all to his family’s Sunday lunch. We stopped at Danielle’s casita, to see her modest accommodations and then took the very steep, very bumpy walk down the hill to the family’s house. We walked past Rafael and Teresa’s house on down to her parent’s place where all of the family gathering takes place. It was filled with people. The grandparents were sitting our front porch enjoying a game of dominoes, the teens were all huddled on the couch watching TV while they had electricity and the women were all busy in the kitchen. When we arrived we were warmly greeting by everyone and Carter was immediately swept away. She went bouncing along from one person to the next, loving every minute of it.We had an amazing lunch with fresh green salad, rice, beans, bananas, avocados and just killed in our honor; guinea fowl.

Around 1pm Carter is used to going to down for an afternoon nap. She is a very happy and laid back baby, but when she gets over tired, things get ugly quickly. Right around lunch time she began to get fussy. So Danielle set up a stroller in a bedroom and I went to lay her down. All of the women of the house did not understand how I could do such a thing. “She’s awake, I’ll hold her” they would say. I tried to explain that she does much better if she is allowed to sleep on her own but they disagreed. For the next hour, there was a parade of people going to check on my fussy baby. She was too distracted and entertained to think about sleep, too tired to maintain her happy disposition any longer. We needed to escape somehow.

Danielle had planned on taking us on a hike to the local swimming hole after lunch so we decided, now was the time. I knew that once Carter was in the baby carrier and away from all this activity she would sleep so we had to go. We set off into the woods; two Dominicans, 4 Americans and a sleepy Carter. All of the women at the house thought we were crazy…”don’t take the baby into the forest, leave her with us.”

Just as I predicted, Carter fell asleep in the carrier on my chest almost immediately. Which posed quite a challenge when we came across our first of 7 barbed wire fences that we would cross on our hike. With everyone’s help, I was able to safely scamper over and under each of the fences and Carter never stirred. We climbed up and down the riverbank, walking on rocks and ducking under branches. We’re not crazy, just adventurous.

After about 45 minutes, we had arrived. Joel immediately stripped down to his swimming trunks, climbed up a tree and prepared to jump off of a branch. Everyone else entered the water from a more logical location, jumping off a large rock. Carter was still asleep so we sat down to watch. I kept her covered with a shirt because Danielle mentioned that there were biting magi’s. I learned later that I should have been more worried about myself. I ended up with more than 50 bites on my lower legs and upper arms and Carter had 2. Luckily I squeezed each of them as I was instructed to get the poison out and they never bothered me, only in appearance. Carter did wake up and I was able to swim too, before we started our hike back.

Since we had already had the adventure through the woods, we decided to take a slightly longer route home that was out on the road. There was just enough cloud cover that it wasn’t too hot. The road was pretty quiet, just an occasional motorcycle to kick up some dust. Then as we were walking along, Brian noticed a large bull on the side of the road that was on our side of the barbed wire fence. Unfortunately Lucy didn’t see it soon enough and got close enough to startle the bull. Lucky for us we had Shanti, Danielle’s dog with us to chase the bull away before we could get into to much trouble.

As we got closer to town, the traffic picked up and we began to see more and more people along the side if the road; socializing, sitting in front of little stores and just relaxing on a Sunday afternoon. Then up ahead we heard a lot of commotion and see that there was a group a Haitians fighting and armed with sticks. We stopped at a safe distance and waited for the situation to disperse before we moved on to our destination.

When we finally arrived at Danielle’s Casita we visited with her housemates and waited for Rafael. We returned to our little cabana to make dinner and relax, looking out over the mountains with the beautiful blue sky and a yard full of flowers in full bloom. And that was just day one.

We had an absolutely amazing time. At 10 months old, with her big blue eyes, blonde hair and fair skin, Carter was adored everywhere we went. She didn’t mind all of the attention one bit. She started crawling for the first time in the cabana. Her first real word was established while we were there also. She said “Hi!” to every new person we encountered, often 4-5 times in a row. When we were leaving she squeaked out “Hasta Luego!” Well..…….Maybe we just imagined that part.

Now that both discos in my village are closed, every day of the year seems so dull to a young North American; the women cook, the women clean, the men work in the field, the men drive motorcycles around, people have coffee together, everyone plays dominoes. Everyday appears the same. But those who live here know that they’re only saving their energies for December, when the fact that it’s Tuesday night doesn’t mean we have to call off the party and mass starts at 6am in the morning.

My hips woke me up at 5am on the 16th, jiving to the drum and guirra (traditional cheese grater-like instrument) music out in the street and people singing, thanking God for the new baby in our house. I followed them, with only my ears and hips, to the church behind our house and the next day I got up to meet them. In the cool morning air I was glad I had my dog and that there was electricity to at least light the street lamps that were functioning. We jogged the long dark shadows that the non-functioning ones left on the country dirt road between the lit areas. Soon we found ourselves among many friends, sauntering down the street, stopping in front of select houses to sing funny rhymes about the people sleeping inside them. Eventually we reached the small concrete church perched on a hillside looking over 25 kilometers more of green rolling hills and sleeping villages in the mountains. The mass was quiet and when it finished we all went back to our beds for two more hours!

As North Americans we often forget that each crop has a harvest time; we can find everything we have ever seen within five minutes of our homes any day of the year. Here in the rural DR however, food appears on the table during its corresponding season. Around May you begin to notice orange stains around the mouths of your neighbors and down the front of their shirts. When you offer them to come in for a meal or snack, they turn it down, claiming to be full. This is when you know the mangos are ripe. In December we have more avocados and oranges than we eat, though my ‘mom’ and I together can eat all the oranges off an entire tree.

Around Christmas they have a tradition called ginjibre - ginger. This year all of the young people gathered at our friend Davi’s house at around 9pm one night to share the season and play Dominoes. His wife made us very sweet ginger tea, but one glass was not sweetened. So goes the tradition that the person who pulls the unsweetened glass has the pleasure of hosting us all for ginger tea the next night. Eventually everyone in the group will host and the last person to do so not only hosts tea but a potlatch dinner as well. It’s a great way to get around the neighborhood and gives us something fun and inexpensive to do in the evenings.

My birthday was day two of three consecutive days of rain. I don’t mean tropical, rain but it’s still sunny and 80 rain. I mean Michigan-grey sky and downpour from the time you wake up till the time you go to sleep, South Pacific monsoon rain. As a general rule, Dominicans don’t go outside when it’s raining. There is no motorcycling riding, which means that none are passing my house, which means that I am not going anywhere. Because we live in a subtropical climate the houses are relatively open and without heating systems they can get quite chilly after three days without sun. Also, I live in a single room with a cat and dog and we all have to leave the house to relive ourselves, not just them. See then, the resulting equation: 1 room studio + (woman + cat + dog)(# of times has to pee/day) – a lawn = mud in house. This might all be quite tolerable if there was electricity more than a few hours a day. But when the laptop, cell phone, and light bulbs are all dead (I don’t even have a TV or frig) what do you after reading and writing for half the day in bad light?

Grudgingly, I got someone to take me out to buy my own birthday cake. I don’t even like cake. My best friend planned to make me dinner but it was my job to buy the dessert, and they may not have let me stay had I not shown up with cake. (Dominicans are quite particular about how they execute social gatherings.) It actually turned out to be more than worth it though, when a spontaneous frosting fight broke out between the six of us. Wrapping up 25 childish years with a kid’s dream birthday celebration!

On Christmas Eve - Noche Buena - we had a huge meal with the family. Roasted pig, two chickens, salads, rice, pigeon peas, cake, candies, punch, wine and merriment! The best things about the 24th and 25th of December here, hardly any presents and the electricity company doesn't take the electricity away!

Duquesne University in Pittsburgh

As usual, I made plans to visit Michigan with the fantasy that I would be sitting in front of a fire having relaxed tea and talks with my parents and brother, and doing nothing more. The reality was, and no one's fault but my own, that I spent more time in the car than anything else. In sixteen days I managed to squeeze in trips to Miami (the airport anyway), Chicago, Kalamazoo, Detroit, and Pittsburgh! My mother and I spent days in the Salvation Army doing our very own toys for (Dominican) tots program, many family and friends came by to chat and I took the Graduate Records Examination after months of studying! It's always wonderful to see the people I love, but I look forward to it being more commonplace and less rush! In June for sure, but right now send me back to my warm little tropical island!

Baby love from GEO! (Cousin's baby - cousin once removed? I think I deserve aunt status!)

Climbing the Caribbean’s highest peak…hmmm…wasn’t easy. I think grueling is the word I would use to describe the hike; five days through forest on a trail that does not contour the mountains, but rather takes advantage of every peak and every valley – up, down, up, down, up, down – crossing every luxuriously potable river in Armando Bermudez National Park. In one day we hiked from low, swampy, bamboo forest to a savannah valley high in the mountains, arguably the most beautiful place in the Dominican Republic.

The scenery however, was rivaled by the most excellent company a woman could ask for; 3 other female volunteers from my training class, two Dominican guides from the remote village at the trailhead, and two mules. And although we could have just taken the ol’ helicopter to the base and waltzed up Duarte’s Peak we most definitely enjoyed spending every shoe destroying moment together for the entire 5 days. We took about 500 pictures. Since we couldn't get a good one of the flocks of wild parrots, boars, owls or sunrises, most of them are of me being ridiculous…here are some of the prettier ones.

Campfire - good for drying shoes and panties while cooking marshmellows!

Valle de Bao - Bao Valley at the base of Mt. Pelona

Rarely did we lose sight of the gorgeous Rio Bao

"This is the trail? What happened?" "Agua" the guide replied.

1st task of the day: 6am river crossing

Traditional Mule Saddles

Every once in a while some group of important people will pull Peace Corps volunteers out of their campo and set them at fancy table to eat with people in suits. No one ever tells us in advance what we´re really getting into, but I believe that it is solely for their own entertainment, ¨Oh, dahling, tell me again the story about how you had a rat in your bed! Oh ha ha, you are simply killing me.¨ This is a tale of one such event in my experience.

Friday I get a call from one of the assistants in the Peace Corps office. Apparently the chargé d´ Affaires (acting ambassador) of the United States is coming through the region on Tuesday and he would like some Peace Corps company at a luncheon. She tells me that my boss has recommended me (and many others, I assumed) for the role. The dress is formal. That is ALL the information I am given.

Monday I receive an invitation in my email that says only ¨AMCHAM Luncheon¨ and the name of the hotel in Santiago. ¨AMCHAM?¨ I ponder, then I Google it. ¨American Chamber of Commerce. Interesting… So where does the ambassador fit into all of this?¨ These are the puzzles I am paid to solve in order top complete my mission in the United States Peace Corps. This is apparently why I am going to be so sought after by employers come May, because I don´t need a lot of direction to figure things out…and in some cases, I don´t receive any.

So Tuesday I get my hair dried, (I have no electricity in my house, plus it costs only $4 for a wash and dry, man I am going to miss it here when I go!) put on the best clothes I can borrow and head to Santiago. One of my best friends here was also invited, so at least we can be clueless together. In the cab on the way to the hotel I fill her in on the details of the mission that I have picked up - Codewords AMCHAM, chargé d´ Affaires etc.

Arriving at the conference room in the super fancy Gran Almirante Hotel and Casino we are surrounded by old men in suits and find that we are the only two volunteers on the list, invited by the American Embassy. And yet again we think, ¨Well, this should certainly be interesting.¨ Not recognizing anyone I take a strawberry juice in champagne glass and we begin strategizing our seating. We don´t want to sit front and center but only the antisocial choose the back tables with so many seats available. We had just decided on a safe one in the middle with women at it when two men popped into our fields of view. ¨Are you from the Peace Corps?¨ they asked enthusiastically. ¨Come with us!¨ We were lead to the lead table, front and center to sit with the incredibly fun and interesting staff of the American Embassy and the ambassador´s very well traveled wife. What followed was interesting conversation, a deliciously luxurious lunch and in the middle of his speech (impressively delivered in Spanish) on the economy of the United States and the development of Commerce in the Dominican Republic and Haiti, the ambassador (former Peace Corps volunteer, Costa Rica) stopped to recognize the two of us and lead the room in a round of applause for our work. Another highlight was sitting next to the speechwriter and getting to read along and learn new vocabulary such as Producto Interno Bruto (Gross Domestic Product) and Inversionistas (Investors)!

You never know where you´ll end up when you join the Peace Corps! What fun!

Warning: Contains warm and fuzzy feelings!

Three days in August I spent with 50 Dominican youth and the 25 American volunteers who brought them all together to learn and share in a mountain retreat center. As you can deduce by the numbers, each volunteer could only bring two youth and with a group of 20 enthusiastic young men it was a decision I took very seriously, but ultimately was easy to make. Number one was the guy who is always driving the adults crazy, riding way too fast on his motorcycle, but who’s always showing up at my house asking when he should round up the boys for a meeting. This trip would be a just reward for his dependability. The other was my younger brother; a boy who stops by his house only to sleep, attends alternative high school and raises fighting cocks. I believe that people often become what others think and say about them, so I have always called him mi angelito – my little angel. He has an excellent demeanor, dependable and thoughtful, but he’s almost as racist and homophobic as they come. I thought a diversity conference would be an excellent place for him.

The week before the conference they were both beside themselves with excitement, according to their mothers. They needed to pack their best t-shirts and buy a new pair of jeans, of course… for the first time in a long time they would be seeing people they hadn’t known for their entire lives.

On Monday morning when we arrived in Santiago I navigated the city streets and negotiated taxi fare in my tough Dominican Spanish with the two young men, ages 16 and 19, standing behind me. I could feel their surprised looks through the back of my head. It quickly became clear to the three of us that I was the mama duck and they were my pichones – hatchlings. I was certain though, that when they found all the other youth, the females in particular, they would leave the nest and I would have to cling to other abandoned volunteers for comfort.

During the three days we attended workshops on diversity, Haitians, Muslims, Jews, Koreans, American, AIDS, clean water, Kung Fu and disabilities. We did activities about countries around the world, economic disparities and what they want to do in their own communities. And most importantly we played games and sung songs. During all of this my pichones never wandered far. I lead yoga at 7am, one did yoga, and one came to watch. We were 3 of the top 4 in limbo and my angelito and I took third place in a crazy partner game. They never ran up to me saying how awesome it was or how grateful they were to be there, but they were happy and they were totally into the workshops.

After the workshop about Haitians and Dominican immigration law the racist one came up to me and said, “You know that’s right because we want our children to be born in the States but when they (Haitians) have babies here we won’t even register them!” I just sipped my juice, smiling inside and nodding as he spouted more of what he’d learned in the workshop.

On a wall near the main classroom there were envelopes posted with all of our names on them and papers and markers to write positive notes to others during the 3 days. When I took my envelope down at the end of the conference only 2 of the 75 people there had written me… my 2 baby ducks. The two notes said something like this:

‘Daniela, I am writing to tell you how pretty you are. Your parents should feel so proud to have a daughter like you. From someone who loves you a lot.’

‘Daniela, Thank you for thinking of me for this trip. The truth is that I feel proud to be here with you.’

I nearly cried.

And so with 75 people on the big bus back to the city we had to sit three to a seat, but as we dropped people off and other seats opened none of the 3 of us moved into the empty ones. We stayed squashed together, dancing back and forth and joking about random things until we got home.

The morning after I wandered around my house not knowing what to do and wondering what my baby ducks were up to. I found my younger brother putting his new certificate proudly in an old frame and when I entered he asked me how we were going to improve our group and teach more people about all the stuff we learned.

…

I know that it filled quickly after I wrote about it but THANK YOU to any of you who donated, or tried to donate, to this conference fund after my last blog entry!

The water tank behind our house

A couple years back I watched a documentary called “A world without water.” It’s a must see about places in the world where there are great water shortages, not caused by desertification or draught but rather the privatization of potable water in places where the people can’t afford to buy it. The documentary interviews many victims including a rural African farming family who had groundwater for generations before Coca-Cola moved a factory in next door and sucked it out from under them for free.

It’s a difficult issue because if you charge people for water they presumably value it more and waste less but what do you do when people can’t afford it?

Being from a middle class, great-lakes-state family, I could not even get close to relating to the people I saw in the documentary. The challenges facing these people were nothing I had ever imagined doing; walking miles and hauling water, not being able to eat because it doesn’t rain on the crops, etc. But this is not just a problem for rural people of color living on poor continents. Part of the documentary highlights some of the approximately 40,000 families living in Detroit homes without running water. What we think of as “third world” conditions within our own city.

Now I understand a little bit more... As I wrote about before, here in this tiny piece of the rural Dominican Republic we are fortunate to have an aqueduct that brings us safe, clean water from the protected national park to our sinks and showers. Last Sunday something only a little short of a tragedy occurred when one of the main pipes broke near the source. It took the man in charge of the aqueduct and all of the plumbers away from their families for the entire Sunday. I work with these men a lot and I know how hard they work every other day of the week so I felt bad already, but I felt even worse the next day when the water still hadn’t showed up. In my community we receive water two days a week, Monday and Friday. So on these days we do laundry (if there’s electricity), wash the floors and fill the tanks and barrels to last us the next four days until it shows up again. Although we have to ration the water a bit more, it’s not so bad if it doesn’t show up Monday as long as it comes Friday. Some communities only receive water one day a week or once every two weeks. These are the people that suffer when there’s no water on their day. Monday there was no water and Friday it didn’t come either. At this point there was no water for drinking, the floors were incredibly dirty and the only water left in the barrel (for bathing of course) was the bottom 10th that if you move too much you stir up the dirt and algae that have settled on the bottom.

“And when this is gone what happens?” I had to ask out loud because I had never considered the problem before in my life. (We live so privileged, so many of us, that we can’t tell you where a source of clean water is outside of our homes. We live so environmentally unconscious that for the majority of us there isn’t a source clean enough to drink anywhere near our homes.) My brother pointed in the direction of the small river that runs behind the adjacent properties. “Oh yeah,” I thought, “now I remember, the river that just 10 years ago they were bathing, washing and drinking out of.” It doesn’t make my top ten list of bodies of water out of which I’d like to drink but it certainly could be worse. It didn’t turn out to be necessary but the experience made me think.

Like this whole Peace Corps experience it is just making me even more flexible and grateful. I can just imagine the conversation with the landlord of my next apartment… “It has running water and I can turn the lights on whenever I want? You mean 24 hours a day the refrigerator will be working? Wow that’s great, I’ll take it.”

My "bathroom" after a windy evening.

The scene outside is the main road in front of my house.

Here in the rural Dominican Republic there is one single sin that a dog can commit that will shun her from society forever. They have a name for the dogs that do it, a scarlet letter that will never be forgotten… “comepollo” - ”chicken eater,” and the minute a chicken, duck or hatchling comes up missing you’ll be the first one they turn to. A couple weeks ago a duck came up missing in a neighbor’s yard and every night for a week the owner’s teenage son killed every dog that wandered near his property, by poison or hanging. There were at least 6. True story. Biting a person is typically forgiven, stealing their chicken or its eggs, life ending. My dog Shanti has not eaten a chicken…not one that she killed herself, anyway. She has a knack for finding them rotted from days or weeks back and gnawing on them, and not just chickens. She has a nose for rotten eggs, too. As an American (who refrigerates eggs) I thought I knew the smell of a rotten egg…you know, like the sulfur pools at Yellowstone or something. Actually I had NEVER smelled a rotten egg before she got a hold of one and I wish I was never going to smell it again. The last time she ate one was a week or so back and her mouth still smells like the day she ate it. We couldn’t even get near her, like if a skunk sprayed sulfur at her face. If we were in the States I might brush her teeth, here they would think I was a lunatic if I did that. Apparently the American volunteers who have been in this site (A woman named Alicia who was here in the 80s and myself), we have a history of having chicken eating dogs. (Let me take a moment to clarify again that I do not have a chicken eating dog. Shanti eats dead animals regardless of their species and she eats rotten eggs but the people here “know” that she will quickly learn to hunt and eat them fresh.) Alicia’s dog killed and ate someone’s chicken sometime in the 80s and people still talk about it. Apparently Alicia said to the chicken’s owner– and I completely agree – “Well YOU eat chicken, don’t you?” and then she had to pay the owner for the chicken. This is very serious. I think that dogs should be loose and chickens should be confined, but here they think it’s the other way around.

When I first arrived in my site a year and some months ago I ran into a Haitian man in the colmado – convenience store – who asked me in English, if I would help him with his English. I told him of course but then I never saw him again until recently. Now, Tuesday and Thursday mornings he shows up at 8am on his beat up motorcycle, always on time and dressed in the best clothes I imagine he has...he looks very nice. The motorcycle doesn’t have a seat on the back because in the afternoons he straps a cooler on when he drives from community to community selling ice cream for 5-15 pesos (14-43 cents) a piece.

His native language is Creole and he also speaks French fluently, as both are spoken in Haiti, French more commonly by the rich. He learned basic Spanish and English in school as well. Haitian’s are known here for being great with languages. But he doesn’t know Spanish well enough to have an easy time translating for me the English that I test him on. But as we find ourselves here in the DR, somewhere between Haiti and the US, it is the language the two of us need to use as an intermediate to communicate since neither of us speaks the other’s native tongue. I spend an hour with him two days a week, learning new vocabulary, fixing his broken grammar and trying very hard to help him overcome his French/Creole language tendency to change Rs into Ws when he speaks. For example, in Creole, pre means close but it’s pronounced pwe.

Every time he comes he brings me breakfast of a combination cheese-filled crackers, chocolate milk and/or red (Washington) apple but other payment includes good laughs and learning a tiny bit of French and Creole. I’ll surely learn more when we get him a French to English dictionary!

In what some would consider pure masochism, I decided to organize a weekend trip for my Green Brigade to one of the national parks, an hour into the mountains from our homes. Armando Bermudez is the national park that houses the highest point in the Caribbean and is often referred to as the mother of the waters, as so many of our rivers begin there. For nearly all of my brigade it was their first time inside the park and for all but one it was the first time they had ever seen the river that supplies all the water that they use to drink, cook, bathe and wash.

When the old, giant, land-cruiser-like truck (which we now affecionately refer to as the Brigada Verde Hummer) arrived, my kids an hour early as usual, ran wrestling to pile in. When it was completely jam packed a little less than half of us were still standing outside. So we eventually packed in, even the puppy came along! In their usual, high energy positivity we did environmental education, hikes, Leave No Trace activities, painting quilts and murals, and all kinds of fun playing baseball, hacky sack, swimming in the rivers and roasting marshmallows by the fire. Because it was overnight I had to play mom, an even more thankless job than teacher, curing cuts and tummy aches, but they really enjoyed it so it was worth it.

For all of my kids this was the first and last time they would ever see this river like this. Last week construction started on a 285 million dollar hydroelectric dam that will be built between the hills you see just above his head. They say that a whopping 25% of this water will continue to flow from the dam down towards our homes in the foothills. We Americans have our doubts, having studied the US's history, but it will be providing relatively clean energy to a country who should definitely be addressing thier energy needs in that direction... It's an unfortunate tradeoff, though I imagine there's enough wind and solar here in the Caribbean to do the job!

Summer vacation for my kids means nothing but eating and swimming in the rivers!

You can find the rest of the pictures at http://share.shutterfly.com/action/welcome?sid=0AaMWrZi1ZOWLrY.

Shanti at 2 months, Perla at 5.5 monthsUpdating on the "Perla & Co." post: after finding the three newborn puppies and conning my brother into bottle feeding them twice a day for the two weeks I was in the States, I came home to half of a sled dog team of puppies who were looking less and less like Rotweillers every day...it must have been part of their evolutionary survival tactic. Conveniently, as they were eating me out of house and home, the annual All Volunteer Conference was approaching, and as the name suggests, all 180 Dominican Peace Corps volunteers would be attending. Needless to say, the two puppies I took with me immediately found good Dominican-American homes. The third puppy, by far the largest and least aggressive (and by least aggressive I mean a big baby) I kept for my own. Her name is Shanti, peace in Sanskrit, and depending on what time of day you catch her she is exactly or exactly the opposite of what her name means. Either way she is the happiest creature ever and does have a special peace to her nature. She and the kitten are constantly wrestling and still sleeping together. The other day I caught the kitten cleaning Shanti's face while she was sleeping, as if to say, "My gosh you are disgusting, don't you know how to clean your face? Don't worry, I love you." Adorable. Last weekend I took Shanti with me to the river for the first time and after we both got wet we snoozed together on the rocks, she as my pillow. It is not part of their culture to have a pet as part of the family, and definitely not to hold it or put your head on it, that's quite repulsive actually, but even one of my youth noted, "Ese perra vale cuarto!" - "That dogs worth a lot of money!" seeing her so calm under my head.

April 20th 5am – The alarm goes off. I think, “I have to feed the kitten…oh god, we have three newborn puppies.” Thank goodness there happened to be electricity. 7am – In the airport I paid RD$180 for a Gatorade and a quipe (whole wheat and ground meat mix deep fried). I usually pay RD$48. D’oh! I was glad I brought my own chips from the colmado (party store)! 845am - Flight number one leaves the DR. 1050am – Touchdown in Miami. I hear a woman on the plane say, “Ah, I’m so glad to be back in the States! American soil.” The statement made me cringe a little. Coming from an upper class white woman on a mission trip to the DR it sounded racist. 1055am – Walking off the plane and into the terminal I took a deep breathe and thought, “Ah, I’m so glad to be back in the States! American soil.” I laughed at myself, at the same time wanting to be speaking Spanish and listening to Bachata… I live two lives. Noon – I set myself in front of CNN in Miami International Airport to see President Obama, to the incredible dismay of Republicans, shaking hands with *gasp* Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. The world has changed since I’ve been in the campo. Never seeing television or internet images of him, I still don’t immediately recognize that handsome young man as my President. Also, the same commercials are playing as were in January and I remember why I’m thankful I don’t have so much media in my life right now. 224pm – Waking up from my two hour floor nap groggy and starving I reach into my bag for a snack. Breaking off a piece of my sesame honey bar a large chunk goes flying, nearly knocking a man next to me in the side of the head….still waiting for the second of three planes today. 645pm – I see I-94, the freeway that I used to drive to and from Kalamazoo in my sleep, and I feel a little anxious about leaving the plane into what seems like a fast-paced metropolis by comparison. 650pm (Central Time) – Touching down in Chicago I finished my book and the movie Madagascar 2. Two planes down one to go! 7pm – I realized that there are a lot of people in the United States and I am no longer the only person within 40 miles with blue eyes. I feel a little lost in the crowd. 705pm (Central) – It hails for approximately 30 seconds. Ah, back in the Midwest United States. 12pm – My brother picks me up in a giant pickup truck, loud music and flying down expressway and smooth dirt roads we arrive at my parents new house in 20 minutes. Where I live in the DR this would have been and hour long trip due to the quality of the roads. The first week in the US I spent in Kalamazoo eating with my closest friends. When you’re trying to see people during a work and exam week meals are the only times they have free, which is fine for me because I had 4 months of not eating American food to catch up on! It’s so nice for people to always be so excited to see you. I should stay away for long periods of time more often! It was so nice to be staying with my great friend in his clean, tranquil apartment fully stocked with super nutritious foods – I can’t wait to have my own place again! Week number two I spent with the family and friends on the east side of the state. This also included a lot of eating – my grandpa’s Italian food being #1! I did middle school presentations about the Dominican Republic, saw new babies and one day magnificent day headed to Detroit with a great friend of mine...

Waterford has one of Michigan's first "green" restaurants?!?!

If only these people really knew what it tastes like they wouldn't be able to call this flavor mango.

Classifying his own trash at the restaurant.

The Metroparks are a treasure!

Real beer and pizza sold here - AMAZING!

Not pictured is the phenomenal Brasilian guitar concert in the low lit Diego Rivera mural room at the Detroit Institute of Arts. Perfect.

Racism is unfortunately alive and well in the world and here in the Dominican Republic it is not different.

For the last two weeks my 'mom' has been taking care of a baby that is not hers. Born to impoverished Haitian parents without papers in the Dominican Republic, he is a citizen of no country. The Catholic church here won't even baptise him because of his presumed nationality. His mother didn't understand the doctors when they told her that she would have to remove her own stitches after her c-section and so her stomach rotted them out weeks after. The "hospital" in the town closest to us refused her service because she is Haitian and without my 'dad' taking her for free to the city an hour away she would have had no way to get there. She stayed much longer in the hospital than she needed to, as her husband worked for the money to pay the doctors to operate and stitch her back up again. The baby went from two weeks to one month old without seeing his mother. And, as his mother said upon receiving him again, he went from poor to rich. When he arrived at our house they owned a couple t-shirts for him and a thin blanket, when we sent him back he went with four large garbage bags of things, given to him by a family of 7 that has a monthly income well below what I support myself on, the family that supports me here.

I am generalizing here, but in the United States this would be a regular story of kindness, something that almost anyone would do and not many of you would be surprised to hear. Or would you? Two weeks is a long time to take care of a newborn... Anyway, there are many people where we live here that can not relate to doing this. My two younger siblings here, ages 16 and 19, did not even hold the baby the two weeks he was with us, wanted nothing to with him. There aren't many people here who would have taken him, let alone buy formula and give the parents free transportation to and from the city during this time. They wouldn't because they are racist.

In a small country with a strong culture and national identity the youth are not often taught the value of diversity and the freedom that it offers those who are different from the mainstream. So many grow up racist, chauvanistic, homophobic, generally intolerant.

I work with youth A LOT and I am almost always initiating conversation about these issues. We volunteers are now taking it a step further by planning an entire diversity conference about these issues for youth in this region. We will bring together teenagers from all differernt classes and places for the weekend to interact with experts, Dominican, Americans, Haitians and each other in games, workshops and discussions. They will learn about and deal with diversity issues that they rarely, if ever in their lives, would otherwise have the opportunity to consider in a culture that too often values having everyone the same. In the fall I planned an environmental conference for youth in the central region of the DR and was lucky enough to have a local organization realize its importance and pay the bill, almost entirely. We plan to do the conference in August but we are counting this time on American dollars to make this magic happen. Please go to the following site asap to donate whatever you can! Please pass it on and let me know if you have difficulty. Thank you!

https://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=resources.donors.

contribute.projDetail&projdesc=517-290

My environmental group of youth, though young and wild, is passionate, positive and fun. They are constantly asking me to plan field trips and since we live within hiking distance of a few gorgeous rivers I took them for a morning of swimming, eating and picking up trash. Another reminder that we live in a paradise…

What other youth group do you know that has to defeather the chicken for lunch before they leave for a field trip?

They wanted so bad to just snatch a tiny bit of the tabacco being dried by a local farmer, though not one of the 20 smokes.

Fresh water crab - catch and release of course.

The waterfall during a time of rain.

The group's four females.

We can't go anywhere without getting in a little batting practice with whatever stick is laying around.

It took me in drill sargent mode to get them back up the hill.

Many swore they would not walk the next day.

This is a flamboyan tree. They say when it's blooming young women leave their houses, marrying their novios (boyfriends). Here in the country, when two young people move in together they are married. Whether they choose to get married in the church or by law is another special step, many do and many don't. Sometimes young women leave their homes without telling their families and so they call it getting married por la ventana - through the window because that's, figuratively, how they leave the house.

Well I'll be damned if this folklore isn't true...the flamboyan outside our house had only produced a couple flowers when my roommate, 26 years of age, took off on the motorcycle with her boyfriend. Several minutes later she sent us a text message informing us that they weren't just going for ice cream. It was our job then, to inform her mother. Although I am not a mother (of a human at least) I understand that eloping is not the ideal form of marriage of one of your daughters and neither is them moving in with a young man you don't know. But I still did not immediately understand the anger and tears that were shed by her mother or the general sadness, in place of joy, of the rest of family. I got up the next morning, feeling joyous at their young love and spontenaity, but to my dismay there were only comments about how much they missed her prescence already.

As the days have passed and she hasn't returned to the house I am beginning to understand what everyone else already knew; one of the women in our family has become the woman of a different family. We now have to take up the work she was doing and we will see her very rarely.

It's not that she lives far away, in a community only a couple kilometers from our house, but that she does not drive, has no money to buy phone cards to call, and she now has her own daily responsibilities in their house. As I have described it, it seems at first like a discovery chanel marrying off of a young villager to a man in a village miles away, but I suppose it wouldn't be so different from my own experience if I would have lived in my parents house with my mother until now and neither of us worked outside of the home.

I too, miss having her in the house now and I am looking forward to when they may have their own place where it would be customary to go and visit.

Having pets here in the DR has been, for me, an exercise in dealing with loss. During a family trip to Santiago, that I was not on I might add, San the dog jumped out of the back of the truck and found a new home, apparently, in the outskirts of the city. I still wish he was around to run with me.

A few months ago our cat (in the DR = the cat who eats our scraps) had kittens, one of which I begged my roommate to keep. His name was Pansa – Belly. More than a month ago he mysteriously died of some sort of poisoning, I guess. One day he slept all day and the next he was dead when I got home in the afternoon. I mourned him until the next came along.

If you have a house without a cat within a week you have a house with rats. Uninterested in a repeat of my brother’s heroic rat hunt I was on the lookout for a kitten. The cutest one alive happened to be female, which means no one else wanted her (because she can reproduce more cute kittens). So I brought her home and asked the roomie if I could keep her. I called her Manchita – little spot. The other person taking care of her (her papi, you could say) thinks that she’s a princess and therefore finds a name that can also mean little stain, to be inappropriate for her. Her name is Perla – Pearl. And she’s feisty…perfect for her line of work. As if having an 8 week old kitten wasn’t more work and responsibility than I really wanted...

I was born into a line of women that is spiritually connected to our animal brothers and sisters…especially lost baby ones J I personally also have a soft spot in my heart for defending especially females’ rights. And so goes the story…

Returning from a trip to the river my brother spotted a puppy on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere. Unfortunately it’s so common here that they are abandoned, we knew immediately without looking that she was female. He stayed on the motorcycle while I stood over her deciding what to do. She was alive and strong but very young, eyes closed and crawling. “She’s going to die either way. She doesn’t know how to eat from us yet,” he commented. I was looking down at her still when I heard another one a few meters away. I put the two together and we stayed starring; now wondering what we would do with two puppies too young to lap milk. Mid sentence I hushed him, “Oh no,” we echoed each other, hearing baby barking from beneath a pile of dirt. This time he got off the motorcycle and grabbed a stick. As we began to uncover the third she started baby growling…cutest…thing…ever. Now with three in a pile we looked at each other. “They look like Rottweilers,” I said, knowing that this would touch a soft spot. “Okay, pick one,” he groaned. I had no idea what I was going to do with three baby Rottweiler’s with full weeks of work, a brand new project, a youth group, painting class and my two week vacation to the States two days later, but I thought of my mother and grandmother and saying nothing I picked up each of the three and placed them in my bag. The crazy American girl, wet from the river on a cloudy day, in bathing suit, jean shorts, motorcycle helmet and now with a squirming bag of female Rottweiler puppies. At least I don’t have a dead owl in the trunk of my car…just because I haven’t found one yet J

So now three or four times a day we try to teach three squirming, milk-drenched puppies to drink. And he curses, “Pray to God that you’re a Rottweiler.”

This was a sweet pair of Jordans just a couple years ago... Made of hard plastics they'll last nearly forever in the environment like this. Last week I started a huge zero trash project in one of my communities and yesterday morning I spent interviewing all of the convenience store owners about how many plastic bags they give away. In the afternoon I calculated how much money they are losing by giving them away for free, bagging one thing in a giant bag and double bagging everything. Imagine an entire community in a developing country using cloth bags to get their groceries...I have fantasies about my work :)

I arrive in Santo Domingo, the nation's capital, at night after a long day of waiting, waiting, and a little flying time. Daniela and her driver arrive in style and the first priority is clear among all of us - falafel. Some insiders may know that falafel has sometimes been the glue that holds our friendship together. Particularly when we were living together in Kalamazoo and moving through the knowledge factory of WMU. Anway, we head to a classy falafel / drinks / American music establishment to dig in. I have my first sip of fresh chinola juice (passion fruit) and blissfully forget about my stiff body, lack of sleep, and disgust for the Miami airport.

On Monday, the adventures officially begin. At the crack of dawn... errrr... when our eyes crack open and we jump out of bed, we head out in search of the right guagua to get us to the northeast coast of the island. A guagua is the Dominican term for and van or small bus that will get you where you wanna go. We find the man for the job, have a strange conversation about the cost of transporting my luggage, and are off for the 3-hour trip. Our destination? The little town of Sabana de La Mar. Our purpose? Mangroves, caves, and whales, of course. Another Peace Corps volunteer lives here, and we stay with him. He leads a chapter of the national youth group, Brigada Verde. One project of theirs is to give tours of the nearby large, beautiful national park - Parque Nacional Los Haitises. So, we pay a couple of members and a driver some big bucks to take us out to the action. After a long, dusty drive past the cattle and rice, we hop into a boat and zoom through the mangrove forests - the coast's protection from tropical storms. The place is amazing, especially under the bright blue sky. Next up? Stop and check out some caves in the coral. We stroll through several series of caves, many of which boast ancient sculptures, drawings, and carvings from the island's indigenous Taíno people (who are long gone). Last stop: a fancy eco-resort inside the park for some café and a little tour. It's a fantastic place covered with streams, waterfalls, and German tourists. After a standard Dominican dinner of chicken and fried green plantains, it's time to continue recovering all of my lost sleep.

Tuesday is another experience in getting to know the country. There's a ferry across the bay to the whale-watching and fishing town of Samaná. We're assured the night before that it leaves at 9am. Ready to go in the morning, we hear some conflicting news. After wandering, waiting, hanging out with some kids, and contemplating which local to trust for our ferry information, the boat finally comes at 11 and we're off to our tourist destination. Whale Watching with Kim, that is. Kim is a very cool marine biologist, marine activist, and dog-lover. She's engaged in whale protection and research here while running her business. All of us "watchers" are offered Dramamine and herded onto the boat. The tour begins, in 3-4 languages, and we pass a giant cruise ship on the way out to open ocean. We learn about whales from Kim and crew and the fun process of finding them. It's not long before they start breaching (jumping out of the surface and back in) and flipping fins all around us. It's also not long before many people start getting sick, including mi amor Daniela. These can be some rough waters. The whales are worth it though, especially as a pair decides to start playing with the boat. They come say hi within 20 feet of us and must be amused by the "ooos" and excited giggles of 40 humans with cameras. A few hours of watching these incredible creatures gives one a new appreciation for the oceans that surround our little chunks of land.

Over the next several days, we hang out in Daniela's community, which is near San Jose de Las Matas, on the other side of the country. It's in the mountains, has a comfortable climate, and has plenty of dust. I enjoy meeting her friends, colleagues, and neighbors. It's also fun to play the guessing game of when we'll have electricity. The power goes out daily for anywhere from 4-10 hours. But, we usually have running water and huge supplies of candles, so things are alright. Daniela has been here nearly a year, so she knows everyone quite well. There are even people who act like they know her when in fact they've never met. During these relaxing few days, we read, cook, eat with other families, hike the river, and play dominoes. Oh, and can't forget the blasting music that plays whenever the power is on. These folks are serious about their beats.

On the last day in the mountains, I get a chance to see El Centro de Validación y Transferencia Tecnológica Los Montones. This is an amazing project that teaches agricultural skills to many people in the region. They are also growing tons of crops; raising chickens, pigs, and bees; experimenting with greenhouses; and doing some intense worm composting! Vermicomposting enthusiasts, prepare to be wowed when I show you these photos. These worms have got it made. The center is currently running a free class that teaches locals how to start their own greenhouse businesses (growing tomatoes and/or peppers). This place is an incredible community empowerment resource and I hope more like it are successful around the world. Check out these links for more info:

El Centro de Validación y Transferencia Tecnológica Los Montones

Plan Sierra, funded by W.K. Kellogg Foundation

The remaining days in La Republica are definitely more urban. Back to the land of cars, constant electricity, and fruit vendors on every block. We stay in an excellent guest-house in Santiago for Peace Corps members and other volunteers. I get the fun opportunity to meet lots of other volunteers and hear all about their projects. Some are building aqueducts in rural communities with no running water, some are doing youth environmental organizing, and another is building a solar-powered community center. In all, they're great people to get to know. We have two days to see the city. On the first, we visit Centro Leon — a museum filled with Dominican history, environmental exhibits, art, and overzealous salads. A fascinating place complete with a fake mangrove forest that you can walk underneath. There's also a cigar-rolling shack out back, which is unfortunately closed at the moment. The whole operation is funded by a large beer and cigar producer.

And, the best is saved for last. I'm not sure that I can adequately describe the experience with the written word. And, it was too wet and wild for cameras. So bear with me. There's a place about an hour outside of town called 27 Charcos (27 Waterfalls). You might imagine what aquatic feature one can find there. A Peace Corps volunteer is also stationed here to help with the tourist development (these people are everywhere!). After shelling out some cash, we trek up a mountain with our guide. After a 45-minute hike, we reach a spring that feeds this alluring river. And, it's time to jump in. A quick dip in the cold, clear water gets us ready for the next few hours of the unknown. It helps that I can't wear my glasses, which offers fun new sensations of dulled depth perception and balance. The adventure begins when the three of us jump off the first 20-foot high waterfall. And, yes, there are 26 more to go. We spend the afternoon swimming, sliding down natural waterslides, and jumping off waterfalls in the most beautiful place I've been to on this whole trip. The water is clean and fast. The guide becomes increasingly more goofy as we go on. Warming up to the time-honored practices of singing, rehearsing animal noises, and mocking the accents he hears from a global variety of tourists. I become increasingly more... brave to jump into the unknown. Daniela becomes more giggly. The waterfalls, rock formations, and small canyons that we flow through are incredible. Red, tan, green earth under a hot, bright sun. When we finish, I am exhausted and amazed at our feat.

My fellow volunteer and good friend Ryan and I have a Monday routine, a ritual that has become part of our beings here in the DR. Every week we meet at the organization we both work with in the pueblo and try to get work done together while meeting the social requirement of greeting every person in the office, asking them how they and their families are – though the answers are always the same, “Bien, Gracias a Dios”- “Good, thanks to God.” Then we open our laptops and stare at the documents we’re supposed to be working on while we catch up on each others lives and talk about all the hard issues of the world. At noon whether we’ve done any actual work or not we head for El Rancho for the best papaya milkshakes in the Dominican Republic, the rice and beans is just a side dish.

This week, we quickly ran through our greetings and found a back room away from the hustle and bustle of the Monday morning office, purposely hiding ourselves from the people and at the same time staying out of their ways. The room we found had nothing but the basic requirement, chairs. But laptops, as their name suggests do not require a desk or table of any kind. After a half hour or so or chatting, and sometimes venting our frustrations with Dominican culture, we were spotted. The tiny old woman who works in the kitchen entered the room with two big cups of oatmeal lime-aid and two packages of crackers apologizing, as is customary, for the plastic cups and some fictitious lack of lime that the juice possessed. We, as is customary, insisted that she was wrong, the juice was the best we’d ever tasted and it was much too generous of her to have brought it in the first place (both true). Less than one half hour later the younger of the kitchen women appeared with a tablecloth, followed by two men struggling to fit a very large table through the door. I hadn’t picked up on it because the place was generally under construction and they hadn’t even said anything that would have elicited a thank you, but Ryan knew that they had brought the table in just for us and when they left he suggested that I try and lift the table to appreciate just what had been done for me. I could barely lift the one end, there was no way that I could have carried it, and so I reflected on the amazing generosity of Dominicans. I work very hard not to generalize this culture, positively or negatively, but the majority of people here that I have come to know, poor people who live in the country, give constantly without expectation of anything in return. (I also had to reflect on the small daily benefits afforded to me for being either white, rich, young, educated, or pretty… and many times in this country the last four characteristics are assumed as a result of the first...But thats another blog!)

So, whether we complete any tasks on Monday morning is irrelevant, because I value Ryan's insights on our lives here and his friendship a great deal and I think we both end up leaving these mornings feeling better and more productive… And so I say “Gracias a Dios” for our friendship and the time we’ve already spent in this country.

As part of the experience of hosting visitors I love to learn what it is that they find new and interesting about this place, providing me with insights and taking me back to a time when this experience was new to me. Each visitor is required to write a piece about their adventures in the Dominican Republic, and so following is Tristan’s account of his week of “vacation” in December…

Having the honor of being Daniela's first visitor in the Dominican Republic (DR), I'm submitting this account of my unforgettable trip to this Caribbean paradise. I was impressed. Daniela lives a life without luxury in the hilly, remote, countryside of this beautiful nation. She is adored by all who meet her and she is quick to befriend all whom she meets. Without her pasty skin, she is easily mistaken for a walking, talking, dancing Dominican. While the country has much to offer with its beautifully green countryside, its unique culture with genuine and placid people, and its famous beaches and clear blue waters, it is also, clearly, a country still dealing with significant development problems (which Daniela does a great job of documenting in her blog). A vacationer can easily avoid seeing the real Dominican people and lifestyle by insulating themselves in their beachside resorts but a simple venture on a gua-gua (a cross between a bus and a taxi) can provide a perfect snapshot of life in the Republic… I am sincerely grateful for the privilege of experiencing your Dominican life and beautiful country, Daniela! Muchisima gracia!

Arriving in La Republica Dominicana: On December 23, I arrived at the outskirts of the Dominican Republic, JFK International Airport in New York City. At 11: 30pm the only people in the terminal were Dominicans – eagerly awaiting our flight – many families, with many children, joking around and having a good time. As we waited to take off, it became apparent that the omnipresent order and rules of the United States were not applicable on this international flight. There seemed to be no respect for the ‘fasten seat belts’ sign and for the entire flight, one gentleman stood up in his seat and cracked jokes (in Spanish) to an audience of his family and friends sitting on both sides of the six-person wide plane. Needless to say, it was a raucous plane ride, which culminated when the entire plane erupted in cheers and song when the plane touched down in Santo Domingo.

As a seasoned traveler with perfect directions and a couple years of Spanish classes, I made my way via taxi, bus, gua-gua, and motor-cycle taxi to Daniela's remote abode in the mountains west of Santiago. Driving up into the mountains in a gua-gua packed with 15, I noticed that nearly every inch of the rolling hills of the campo appeared to be being used for something. I saw beans, banana, guava, papaya, orange, lemon, and lime orchards, along with grazing cattle, horses, and goats all occupying large swaths of hillsides, which once held lush Dominican Rainforest. Once I made it to the nearby town about 15 minutes from Daniela's abode, I transferred to the back of a motor-bike taxi and bounced along a single hilly, muddy and at times dusty dirt road, which stretched for miles and was dotted with houses the way an exurban neighborhood would be in the States.

Arriving with Daniela nowhere to be found, I tried to explain in Spanish who I was and what I was doing in Daniela's family's home. Instead of sitting around waiting for Daniela, who was off buying gifts and food for the Christmas feast, I was sent off to pick oranges and mandarins with two young boys who knew not a word of English. I would soon learn that nearly everything that was eaten in the campo came from the plants and animals that surrounded Daniela's house…

I can, however, understand what a challenge it could be to eat three square meals a day which feature a starchy plant. On the other hand, I did explain to Daniela's host family that in the U.S., it is a luxury to eat the freshly picked fruits off of which their family subsists. From them, I learned that Dominicans eat seasonally. So, for example, I came during the avocado season, which meant that I lucked out with an unlimited supply of grapefruit sized avocados and fresh citrus fruits to the heart's content, but at other times of year they do without avocados.

The Neighborhood: A large room, which serves as a bar/dance club, and gathering place is located directly across from Daniela's driveway, and provides a safe place for her and her friends to dance Merengue and Bachata, the Dominican dances that originated decades ago right where she is living. There is a tiny cement block church just a few houses away and a few kilometers further is Daniela's office, where she conducts workshops and helps develop the people’s understanding of the environmental system in which they live.

Though not everyone is related in Daniela's campo, they all seemed to me to be one big family. As you all would expect, Daniela is everyone's favorite, she always makes sure to say hi and everyone feels as though they are an important part of Daniela's life. Her Brigada Verde Group (a group of youth that Daniela has organized to help raise environmental awareness) clearly teaches Daniela as much about life in the DR as she teaches them about life and the importance of being responsible for our environment.

La Ciudad (the city): Our visit to the big cities of Santiago and Santo Domingo were short but I was there long enough to see that they were not cities orientated towards tourists. Santiago is a city of Dominicans (and for that matter Haitians, who stream over the border in hopes of jobs, food, and a better life for their families). In Santiago, Daniela and I visited the cultural museum, which featured the incredibly elaborate masks that are worn on Independence Day (February 27) in a festive carnival setting. We also received an unprompted tour around the city from a local man who took us to an old prison cell and execution site turned art studio. It was nice to see some of the city and learn a useful phrase in Dominican –ahorita – which is a delicate way of saying, "I don't have time or interest in whatever it is you’re offering me."

The Samana Peninsula and Beaches: When I think of the Dominican Republic, the things I think of are: baseball, lush forests, sugar cane, and beaches. We did manage to catch some of Daniela's baseball team on a big screen TV at a bar in Santiago, and heading eastward to the beaches, I finally saw some sugar cane. For the beaches, Daniela brought me to the Samana peninsula, home to what are considered to be the most beautiful in the Caribbean. In the city of Samana, we spent the first night with one of Daniela's fellow PCVs (Rosa) where we all shared a delicious Italian meal and stories about living in the Peace Corps. The next day, after an embarrassing incident with a "malfunctioning" motorcycle that left both my ego and my foot a little wounded, Daniela and I headed out on our rented motorbike to the beach. After 20 miles of riding beside crystal clear blue water beaches our Vespa was climbing the rocky terrain of La Rancheta hotel and horse farm. La Rancheta is run by some soft-spoken and generously sun weathered French expatriates, who we found also built the beautiful hacienda when the man escorted us out of our room to find the light switch saying, “Light is here, I make mistake.” We quickly made use of our time snorkeling around the reefs of Las Galeras – seeing fish of all shapes, colors, and stripes, and beautiful wave swept corals. After a flipper clad Daniela famously did a walrus shimmy back onto our kayak, I paddled our tired bodies to shore where we dined on local delicacies: Chivo (goat) and Pescado (fish). The next day, we woke up at the crack of dawn to hike through the rainforest to one of the most beautiful beaches I've ever seen – la Madama. It was what I imagine a desert island beach to look like – white powdery sand, crystal clear blue water and massive coral cliffs on either side, featuring bat filled caves that Daniela bravely entered on her elbows and stomach. No people (of course), no buildings, no sounds of civilization. Just palm trees, crystal clear blue water and me in my birthday suit (sorry, no pictures).

Playa Madama

The El Limon Waterfall - well worth the trip into the forest!

The Best Part of the Trip: In a trip full of exciting things (many that seemed a bit dangerous at times), it's difficult to pick out the most exciting thing. But, traveling by horseback up and down steep, rocky, and half-meter high mud to a 30 meter high waterfall lagoon took the cake for me. Daniela and Rosa can attest to my shaky voice and genuine fear that my seriously undernourished horse was going to collapse in the mud (and potentially on top of me). But, when we made it to the waterfall and I had a chance to swim in the lagoon, the death defying trip for the horses and us, seemed more than worth it. Ultimately, the horseback riding typified the best part of the trip – seeing and doing many exciting new things, in a paradise like setting, speaking in heavily Dominican-Spanish accents, enjoying heavily Dominican culture, and being guided by a confident and proud United States Peace Corps Volunteer. For those of you who know Daniela, this might not need to be noted, but it is worth visiting her if for no other reason than to marvel at her ability to blend in with the people wherever she goes. Her friends all consider her Dominican and, literally, part of their families. The gua-gua drivers, restaurant owners, shopkeepers, police officers, random strangers mistake her for a tourist until she opens her mouth and they quickly realize she is to be treated like any other Dominican. In the two days in La Semana, by my account, Daniela made friends with nearly a dozen shop-keepers, rental equipment providers, restaurant staff, strangers, and fellow travelers. You can imagine why, despite her sometimes simple surroundings, there's never a dull moment for her there…

I have to admit I know little about the following organization and have never experienced their camps but it's a great idea and I'm a sucker for helping out, especially if it means getting kids outside. Check them out for yourself if you're looking for a summer gig...

The Fresh Air Fund is accepting applications for counselors for this coming summer of '09. They create summer camps in New York state and are looking for a diverse group of college-aged men and women who love to work with children for this year. You can find the media news release here: http://freshairfundcounselors.smnr.us/ They are also always looking for Fresh Air hosts for the summer to open their homes to a child. See their site for details.

Being asked to be part of a wedding is always such an honor, and even more so when its a wedding in a community that you have recently become a part of. One of my best friends is 23 and is the hardest working woman I know here. We talk for hours and she is never afraid to tell it to me like it is. She also edits all my documents in Spanish. I was one of the four bridesmaids in her December wedding to a great guy. As my second time as a bridesmaid I didn't get quite as lucky with the bride's dress selection. These pictures are for your enjoyment.

The handsome couple and my bro will be starting their own greenhouses in the coming year as part of a youth business course.

This cake was huge and came in the back of a station wagon. I don't know how it survived our bumpy dirt road.

Las Damas - the ladies or bridesmaids.

My new roommate and I head to toe in GOLD. Can you see my eyeshadow? Yes, gold. At least we didn't have to buy the dresses!

I was prepared to pass my 25th birthday, a quarter century, my capicua (the name for when you can play your last domino on either end of the train, earning 25 points) here in the campo, a nondescript day of reflection and thanksgiving for all the breaks I’ve been given in 25 years. When people called and asked what I was doing I shrugged, “moving my three suitcases to a new house, relaxing, eating rice and beans and if I get really ambitious I’ll make some pancakes later”…I was surprisingly content about it. I guess that probably comes from a lifetime of having your birthday so close to Christmas that none of your friends are ever around (although I must say that my family has always been phenomenal).

My relaxing day was a bit thrown off by this new allergy I have developed, I believe to dust, which is what my road is made of unfortunately. It had me sneezing uncontrollably, with a runny nose and watery eyes – which my family here now contributes to me crying all day because of their evil conspiracy not to wish me a happy birthday, even though they all knew it was.

She didn’t wish me a happy birthday but my ‘mom’ cooked my favorite – eggplant – for lunch and then we played some dominoes, which I am always happy about. I thought it was quite strange that all of my siblings were nowhere to be found, but figured that our aunt must have cooked something really great for lunch as they were all there, supposedly.

Because it was my birthday my brother said that I could come with him to visit some friends later on in the evening. At about 8pm he came looking for me, exclaiming on sight, “Pero tu estas fea! Ponte linda! Un poco, por lo menos!” – Ah, you look ugly! Get yourself pretty! A little at least! – “Well, this isn’t starting out to be a very nice birthday outing,” I thought, but my mom (the real one) always says “Just slap on a little lipstick and go!” At 25 I still don’t wear lipstick but I generally opt for mascara and heels, and I switched to a sparkly shirt.

Turns out that my group of youth had been planning my big surprise party for a month. They had all chipped in and were waiting in the dark in disco at the end of my driveway, along with half of the community, a giant cake and a photographer. When I walked in they sang me the traditional Dominican birthday song and I took about a million photos with every different combination of people at the party. We danced a little and they had even bought giant bottles of soda and prepared several trays of ketchup/mayo salad sandwiches – not exactly my favorite, but they are vegetarian and fit the budget of a group of 15 year olds.

These pictures don't do them justice, I'm still waiting for the photographers pics, but the decorations were fabulous – pink ‘It’s a girl!’ balloons! I suppose it was a girl, 25 years ago on this day. And a bottle of rum from our local Brugal company rep.

Needless to say I felt extremely special and was even more glad I had passed my 25th here with such generous friends. In case you are wondering my good friends here range in age from 19-25, which is a rare age population in the campo. Usually they all go to the city to work and study, but I am lucky to have so many around.

We gathered 50 of us around the tv, fighting over CNN, fox or one of the other two channels that we get in English. Each time the results came in the volunteers from the respective state got boos or kisses - I'm so glad Michigan went Obama! But we were all happy when the official declaration came in.

My, I can be proud to be an American, Barack is my president smile!

I came back to the Capital to the original training center for language training this week. I was so nervous to come back and visit my original host family. You may remember them as having two adorable girls, ages 3 and 13. I wasn’t able to have serious conversations with them before due to my lack of language skills and I haven’t talked to them since I left in May. I had forgotten how much I adore them.

During this experience as a whole it has not ceased to astound me, how easily we as human beings can move in and out of people’s lives regardless of our temporary dependence on them or their feelings for us. There are volunteers who chose, during this in-service language training, not to stay with their original host families. There are volunteers getting ready to leave this island after working for two years in a place, who consider not telling the people in their community that they’re leaving forever… I do not understand this.

I am not one of these people. I honestly and whole-heartedly put myself into this work and value the incredible friendships I’ve made. I’m not sure that someone can do successful, sustainable development work without gaining an appreciation for the actual people. Not like “Oh those Dominicans are so crazy,” or “I felt bad for this boy who was shining shoes.” Not the people you feel like you know because you see snapshots of them in the brochure and you think that bachata music is really special. I mean the women I know who have unnecessary hysterectomies, who lose babies born alive because their doctors need just a little more training or a few more supplies. I’m talking about the kid in my English class who wants to learn English so bad he pays his weekly earnings to travel an hour from home for a class that’s less than an hour long every week, never missing class. I know the group of 20 or so high school aged guys who ask me every day when we’re going to have another environmental club meeting and when we’re going to pick up all the trash.

These people are not starving to death, they don’t need handouts, they are not poor people living on the other side of the world who you wish that there was something you could do but you never really follow up on the emotion. These are friends of mine, they are the people who support me physically and emotionally day in and day out, they are family now. I have gained more from them than they will from me, or at least as much.

This trip to the Capital has been one of appreciation for the special things I missed before. I gave it another chance, and thanks to my host family and good friend and volunteer mentor, Ryan, I have come to appreciate it a great deal though of course there is much work to be done.

There are 170 Peace Corps volunteers here in the Dominican Republic and nearly all of us came together for the yearly Thanksgiving feast. I won’t make a list but the feast was everything and more than it always is including vegetarian lasagna and pecan, pumpkin pies and three types of brownies and cookies. The volunteers at my table and I shared what we were thankful for including each other, the experience, generous Dominicans and our outhouses among others. We also celebrated with a morning 5.5k Turkey Trot, a domino tournament and an unforgettable “lack of talent” show that turned out to be quite amazing.

The Turkey Trot's anchorwomen - my good friends Cecilia and Kathy. You may remember Cecilia from earlier posts - we came in together and we'll go out together. She's the only one who understands it all!

The joy of being able to stop running!

Last night we encountered one of the small beady-eyed friends that has been nibbling my batatas – sweet potatoes - and peanut bars. These are not mean, Nueva York, trash eating street rats. These are wholesome corn fed country rats, gray and quite fluffy. Nonetheless they carry diseases and eat my stuff, I suppose, regardless of cuteness. These rats are a difficult thing for me to deal with. I do not like to kill things, or see things die generally, and especially not mammals in a cruel manner. My brother and best friend, generally feels similar (the only one in my community who doesn’t kill insects on sight) except when you’re talking about rats and praying mantises, I have no idea what anyone could have against a praying mantis, but whatever. So he was on a mission to kill this rat. I was thinking to myself, “Really? This rat is running around in the rafters and he’s going to chase it around the house? What a waste of time, you don’t catch rats. You have to set traps. Never in a million years could I catch a rat running after it.” I told him I didn’t want any part of the rat hunt, both because I didn’t want to kill it and because I didn’t think there was any way it was going to work. He proceeded by telling me that if I was really serious about not killing it than he would leave it, but did I think that this rat was a pet? Had I heard of Leptospirosis? Did I know that with Leptospirosis we were talking about a month in the hospital? “Do you want to get sick? Huh?” I reply in a small squeaky voice, trying to get out of rat killing duty, “…no…” “Okay,” he said, “Grab that mop.” So I tapped the side of the oven a couple times before my allergy to god-knows-what that I’ve been battling with lately flared up. The rat popped out of the oven and I ran for the pantry. He tells the story as between fits of broom handle swinging he looks back, expecting his fearless partner standing strong and angry with mop handle… seeing nobody he pauses to hear uncontrollable sneezing coming from inside the pantry. From the pantry, in between my fits of uncontrollable sneezing I heard broom handle swinging and dishes flying. The chase continued up a wall. And this is where I poked my beady eyes out of the pantry to see what was going on. The cement walls in my house don’t touch the tin roof so he proceeded to scale one and perch himself atop it. Out of nowhere the campo warrior in the war on disease grabbed a piece of loose concrete and drew it back behind his shoulder. Two seconds later the rat appeared atop another wall across the house and he threw the concrete, connecting with amazing accuracy, and falling the rat into an adjacent bedroom. “It’s still alive!” he said, “But not that alive! Call the cats!” he yelled to me. I took a couple steps to the back door and called, instead of kitty kitty kitty, “Meeshee, meeshee, meeshee.” One of the three resident mini panthers comes, a little skeptical about all the racket so late in the evening, is perfectly elated by the juicy find! And in the wake of the tragic death of this relatively small mammal, I couldn’t help but reflect on the impressive hunting skills of this young man, crouched atop a concrete wall with a broom handle in one hand and a chunk of concrete in the other. Mission impossible accomplished. We’ll leave the other rat to my roommate.

It’s raining again…

The carretera (road) is too muddy to cross in some parts. Some of the muchachos gather on the grassy knoll next to a big hill on our road to watch suvs and motorcycles attempt to climb and descend. It makes me think of Rio’s favorite sport.

Maybe the rain will realize that tomorrows Monday, the beginning of a new week.

Today is Sunday. It has been raining since noon on Wednesday. I washed my clothes Tuesday late afternoon and they weren’t dry so I left them out on Wednesday morning while I went to the office. So they got wet again and they will remain wet until the sun comes out as I have yet to see an electric dryer in this country. Let me take a moment to say that they definitely exist, as a few weeks ago I met some young women my age who were so privileged as to never have done their own laundry…these types of young women and their families do not live in the campo…but that’s a whole ‘nother entry. It has actually stopped raining but the sun still has not made its appearance. I didn’t think it was possible for it to rain three and a half days straight or that wool sweaters were really an appropriate thing to pack for two years on a Caribbean island…Turns out that both are the case.

Back in April I attended a regional conference of Brigada Verde, our environmental youth organization, and I was taken aback to see what the topic of conversation was. What an unusual sight to see a room full of 11 – 16 year olds spending their weekend learning about ecotourism and the meanings of biodiversity, endemic species and Dominican tourism (endemic = fancy science word for a species that occurs no where else in the world). The mix of American volunteers and Dominican youth has become commonplace in my work here, groups of young people aiming to contribute to the conservation of the natural environment and the development of their communities. But what struck me as an urgent realization was that they were all gathered for an extracurricular activity that has the power to lift their communities to a higher quality of life. Money from international tourism comprises the largest income to this country, aside from remittances from family members who have become residents of the States. By obtaining information on the natural environment, what tourists seek from their country and how to start a community based tourism project they, at 15 years old have the power to change the course of their community’s future. In the States its not as crucial to teach a rural Nebraska 12 year old how to show a French couple around the savannah but the reality here is, as one Dominican boy said when asked to define the word, “Tourism is when the Gringo comes.” Their present, and more importantly, their future economy depends on tourism from France, Germany and The United States of America.

The photo above is from the conference that my great friend Ryan and I were in charge of planning. We had about 40 youth from the central region of the country come for the weekend to learn all about ecosystems, trash, water, trees, themselves and each other. At the end we had a little ceremony where we handed out certificates which are now hanging up in most of their homes. It was a stressful but very rewarding weekend. That was the weekend on November 7th and my kids are still asking me when we're going to do it again.

Hallelujah I wore a jacket today! What a thrill to wake up a little chilly, to be reminded again that I am alive. The days have passed here (almost 240 of them!) some days are rainier some are hotter but relatively all the same, and it adds a great deal of monotonous convenience…being able to always go outside, farm etc…which I guess is a fair trade off for having a life in which you have to go out to the latrine to pee. Can you imagine going outside in Michigan winter every time you had to use the restroom?!?! Anyway, the morning air is gorgeous when it’s cool like this. Especially the mornings after a good rain when I open the back door and I can see the mountains so clearly in the distance as to see the shapes of trees where a uniform green mat lays every other day. This place is really beautiful. I had an amazing day today – I went to the city to meet a friend who had received my absentee ballot from the capital and with a belly full of nutritious vegetarian food from the Adventist church restaurant, I voted from Santiago, Republica Dominicana! Although I wanted to be in the States for the campaign season it has been a really amazing experience being here in the DR with all the other expats!

The hardest working people in miles, working 5 days a week 8-4pm in the office, and who knows how many hours outside of it, but they are never in the office without smiles on their faces. The morning starts with a smile, handshake or hug for everyone, and around the circle again every time a new face enters the room. For an hour or so we catch up on the week’s events, drinking tea and coffee as everyone arrives. I’m not in the office everyday and so I share my thrilling stories of my adventures in the outside world as we joke and laugh. They love to hear what’s going on in the Capital whenever I have work to do there, committee meetings etc, and without fail we talk about how much hotter and uncomfortable it is there as opposed to the climate here in the foothills.

Today is unusual, as there is a serious, political corruption conversation going on. Although it’s difficult to be super productive and efficient in the beginning of your Peace Corps service without being fluent in the language, my inability to understand their conversations and communicate my personal opinions from day one here has kept me out of the political and chisme (gossip) circles. They know now that they can ask my opinion on topics, but that I’m not going to sit around and share the silly office gossip. When I share my opinion it's because they've asked me personally and they all fall silent waiting to hear my response. My response is usually laced with a female inspiring message that leaves all the women in the office like "Hell yes I should be allowed to leave the house whenever I want!" Which is unfortunately a big problem with some of couples here.

Not knowing the language right away has also given me the opportunity to get to know the people and the culture before sharing my opinions on things, which are typically quite different from what they are used to hearing. It is really beautiful coming from the world’s melting pot, to become part of a country with such a strong culture (though theirs too has roots on three or four continents). The food, music, dancing, speech and customs are their own and they have great pride in it all. My experience here over the last 8 months is that sometimes the tradeoff for having a strong national culture is tolerance and an open mind. For example, of the approximately 9.8 million people in this country 95% of them declare themselves Catholic. Although I am involved in and supportive of the church here, I believe that it a major cause of abstinence only promotion and homophobia, which I am not supportive of.

On Saturday night a couple weeks ago I attended a fiesta, one of many to celebrate las patronales – days of the patron saints - of a neighboring community. Each community celebrates the patron saint of their church at a different time of year and each has a nine day long celebration to honor him or her. For nine days the church has special masses and for nine nights the community has huge parties. The party that I attended was not one of the nine huge parties but rather a fairly large party to celebrate the fact that it is nearly patronales.

It was the first time that I had attended a party being part of the community and my sister had taken the initiative of dressing me up a bit, adding large hoop earrings, black heels and a rosary to my outfit in an attempt to assimilate me, as I thought the halter top was probably taking it a bit too far. I arrived with a group of young men, family and friends, and not being part of a giant obvious group of Americans was a relief (though I do miss them dearly). As I arrived and was seated with a group of young men the cultural rules here follow that any respectful man who wanted to dance with me would ask my brother permission first. Although I’ve been here for nearly 5 months, this was a new experience and although it seems kind of old fashion judging through the lens of my own culture, it was certainly a great way to weed out the creeps and tigeres - tigers!

While I was in the States my grandmother gifted me several pounds of brown flax seed to bring here to the DR (at my request). In the last couple years I have developed an addiction to the seed, which in addition to being part of the plant used to make linen, is a fantastic source of Omega 3 fatty acids and when crushed is delicious on yogurt, granola, fruit or anywhere else a slightly nutty flavor is appropriate. At the airport I had to rearrange some things as my luggage was slightly overweight and I am sure that anyone who saw it was probably like, “Why is this chick transporting animal feed into to the DR?” Which really is a stupid question since there is a huge abundance of livestock here. But anyway, I have an addiction to the seed my grandma uses to make her horses coats shinier and from what I can tell there are about two health food stores in this entire country.

Since returning I have been hand crushing it with my mortar and pestle and putting it in all the food I make for myself and my family. So far it’s been a great hit with my dad and one of my little brothers. They absolutely loved it in banana bread, peanut butter banana milk shakes and banana pancakes…can you guess what we have an abundance of in the house right now, aside from flax?

When something is in season here you usually can’t get much of it during the rest of the year so we just eat it all day every day when it’s around. As an American who is used to having every type of food from every corner of the world at my fingertips whenever I want it, come hell or high oil prices, I hate this. But I hate more to see food go to waste – especially fresh fruits and vegetables, so I have been inventing new ways to eat bananas and avocados. If only Tristan were here to help!

Note: In case you didn’t pick up on it this entry is slightly facetious. I really do love flax but I really have no idea where flax originated and I don’t believe that this hemisphere is the new world – rather it was indeed a world before the Europeans were here :)

July 22: I am sick for the first time since living in the country. It’s just a stomach ache but there are many hypotheses about what’s wrong with me, including that I ate something from the street vendors and I got too much sun atop the pile of limes yesterday. For the last 24 hours my family has been curing me with liquid concoctions and depriving me of anything tasty. The concoctions almost all contain lime and salt and taste horrible. I think it’s a tad curious that the only ingredient that we have an abundance of – lime - happens to cure what I have, but I trust their knowledge of natural remedies. Besides, I think the ingredients are less important to them than just making my stomach uninhabitable for living things. If not, it’s back to the capital in a couple days to get a scoped for parasites. What fun!

July 26: After a few days of laying low, living off a bit of white rice and fresh fruit juices I am well again! I had a hunch that the salami flavored water I was given at a friends house was probably not boiled…so I only had a swig or two…probably a bad idea. Where I live the water is delicious but when visiting others it’s probably best stay away from salami flavored water and uncooked leafy greens!

Note: Do spend one second worrying over the health of this intrepid explorer living in a developing Latin American country. The training and medical care of the Peace Corps is impeccable and I have a huge Dominican family constantly telling me to sit down, go take a nap, I'm not eating enough etc. and monitoring what I eat and where I am every minute of every day and night - I doubt I will ever in my life be as cared for as I am right now!

July 23: I woke this morning in a small, hot cement room above a plaza 200 miles from my house. Already at 5am hundreds of men were busy buying and selling the previous day’s harvest of plantains, bananas, sweet potatoes, yucca, cucumbers, and other crops. We arrived late last night to park our truck full of limes in a prime selling spot, unfortunately located next to 11 other trucks full of limes. It was still relatively cool out when I pried the slated windows open to see the market so full of people, trucks, cars, carts, bikes and mules that it appeared difficult to move through. As always there was music playing but the shops lining the plaza had not opened yet when I walked down the narrow stairs to the street. I was not surprised to suddenly be the center of attention on the sidewalk but I was distracted from the hissing watching the aesthetically pleasing commercial activity. In addition to the trucks of produce there were women with giant bowls of homemade and processed snacks on their heads and men selling socks, cell phone chargers and tiny bags of water to workers carrying more than their weight back and forth between vendors. If you would have asked me before this morning if one man could carry three giant boxes of cabbage on his shoulder, teetering higher than 5 feet in the air, I would have said probably not. There were dark Haitian men, their bodies entirely muscle, leading carts moved by mules that appeared to be starving. Though they were extremely strong I guessed that the Haitians had only been eating as much as the mules. Finding our truck in the crowded, dirty street I climbed atop the mountain of limes to watch my companions sell. For hours, as the sun climbed in the sky they scooped five gallon buckets of limes, passing them over the rail of our truck into old plastic rice sacks, the unit of measurement used in this market. It was an unusually fast day of selling, though we had been at the market for a total of 12 hours, and we walked away with about $450, before subtracting costs. My companions and I then drove the 200 miles back home to get another truck full of limes for them to repeat the process in the same day.

July 7: While I was boarding the plane bound for Miami in the Santiago airport the electricity went out, a daily part of life in this country and though no one else took note I took it as a wink from the Republica, “Enjoy the States” she said.

Seeing the United States from the air before touching down made the transition between it and the Dominican Republic even more evident. Flying above Miami and the surrounding area I saw the familiar grid pattern encompassing every inch of available land, houses with terra cotta roofs complimented by shiny, unmistakably unnatural turquoise swimming pools every few yards.

Flying over Southern Florida the land below turned from a familiar lawn green to a dark almost black and I saw the clouds reflected in the land, realizing then that it was water…sort of…a mix really. The everglades I imagine, stretching for miles. No houses, nothing human. I could only see water reflecting the sky from thousands of feet in the air. Amazing.

After touching down the only differences I really noticed being in the States again (granted I had only made it as far as the Miami airport) was that the electricity feeding the fluorescent light bulbs was unwavering and the smell of fast food was everywhere!

Near the gate of my plane bound for Detroit I wandered unwittingly into what is a trap even for those Americans who have not been deprived of American news and culture for months…the gift shop and bookstore. After about a half hour I finally pulled myself away from the newsstand, having to convince myself that I wasn’t going to buy the new Newsweek – the Darwin/Lincoln Big Ideas issue, David Sidaris’ hilarious new creation, the Barack Obama Rolling Stone, Oprah’s summer book picks, a book about the transformation of the American Army during the last decade and so many other, deliciously written in English, non fictions that I was dying to read! I wandered over to my gate to snack on a little peanut casave bread I had brought along for the ride when I was stopped in my tracks by a familiar red band streaming bits of news across the bottom of a flat screen TV and three letters, C-N-N, thrusting me from basic environmental education and a cool breeze over rolling green hills in the countryside into who John McCain may or may not have assaulted in 1987. For the next half hour or so, until they called the last group to board the plane I was transfixed on the television, jumping at every little tidbit of campaign garbage like our stray cats onto chicken bones. My mouth watered a bit when a guy sat down near me with the first American quality pizza I had seen in nearly 5 months, but I couldn’t even think of leaving my seat to go in search of one for myself. I was soaking it all in and loving every second of it. If I would have had more time I probably would have paid the $9.95 to buy Miami International Airport’s wireless internet for the day and would have sat there in front of CNN surfing the internet until they kicked me out. It was the first time I ever hoped that my flight would be delayed!

While in the States for less than 7 days I saw my family, who bought me all my favorite foods, said goodbye to the old house and hello to the farm my parents are buying, was ecstatic to be in Traverse City during the Cherry Festival, trekked a little through the dunes on the gorgeous Lake Michigan coatline and was honored to be the maid of honor in the wedding of my great friend, Sonia. I guess I have to grow up now that I'll be 25 this year and all my friends are getting hitched! More pictures to come!

May 31: A couple of my friends from high school had been planning to get married in Punta Cana, Dominican Republic since before I received my Peace Corps assignment here. I was excited to be able to make it to the wedding and so Cecilia and I took the opportunity to leave the countryside and head to the cushy American resort to partake in the festivities.

Months ago when we arrived in this country the warmth of the people, even more than the weather, cushioned our entry into this foreign culture, but as we approached the grand gates of the Melia Caribe Tropical Resort the culture and all that we’ve come to know shattered around us without us noticing. The presence of foreign units of exchange (many of which are dollars) has clearly changed both the landscape and the people here. Within the high guarded walls there were hints of the country that receded out into the landscape; the beer was El Presidente, all of the workers spoke Spanish and every once in a while there was a meringue song contrasting the American rap, but the energy was different. Outside the walls of the resort Dominican towns, houses, public transportation, music and food do not exist for kilometers…there is only sugar cane, Haitians cutting it and vacant land.

Though I am still new to this country my perception of Dominicans is a very positive one, they are warm and generous. I would think that years of serving rich tourists would only make a person’s disposition even more friendly - possibly artificially, but friendly nonetheless. This was not the case with the reception at the resort and it was the first sign to Cecilia and I that although we were still on the island, we were no longer in the DR we knew. I must say though that seeing friends, the extremely gorgeous ambiance, the hot shower, the salmon dinner and the unbelievable non-existence of mosquitoes made for a phenomenal mini vacation!

It was not until we boarded a guagua with all the doors and windows open, the fresh air blowing across our faces, the sound of merengue percussion and the friendly cobrador watching over us, making sure he knew exactly where to let us off, that I realized how much I have become a part of this country already and how much of this place I have adopted as my own.

Sugar cane and bananas

An interesting difference in the daily life of suburban Michigan and the Dominican countryside is the natural knowledge of the people. In some ways it seems as though teaching environmental values is going to be more difficult here because there is less formal education. There is trash everywhere. It’s as rare here to see someone use a trash can as it is to see someone not use one in the States. However, there is more of a connection with the land and the resources than we have in the States. In our culture we recognize the products and although there are a great many Americans who know the natural environment, the majority of people where I come from cannot identify a tree and its uses unless they bought it and planted it themselves in front yard…myself included in most cases. We can identify the wood in a hard wood floor but can’t pick the tree out of a line up, let alone a forest.

Have you ever thought about the natural form of the things you eat and use? Aside from the Halls menthol candies and the boxed, ultraviolet light-treated milk, the grand majority of products here in the campo are grown here and the people know them in their natural forms.

Avacado!

Cashews for example – we know what cashews are, they come salted in tins and are delicious, a little expensive. Do you know how they grow? Is it a tree, bush or do they grow underground? Have you ever considered it? Have you ever eaten the fruit?

Though I originally pegged him as a bit of a callejero – a street guy - with his gelled hair and shiny dress shoes, my 20 year old brother is an astonishing wealth of information on the plants, trees, insects and birds of this place. You would think that a guy like this would be way too cool to hang out with the strange American girl whose always wearing that stupid looking motorcycle helmet, but I have been extremely lucky to have a professor on all things natural here. We spend countless hours every week wandering down the river, sifting through my book of Dominican trees and discussing the uses and habits of all the organisms. The other day we were looking through the tree book when we came across Cajuil (ca – hwheel). It’s a small tree with a strange shaped fruit that he told me yields a nut that you can dry and eat. While looking at the drawing of the fruit and listening to his mini-lecture it dawned on me that the shape was quite familiar. I went to my room to retrieve the delicious trail mix that had been lovingly sent from the States and returned to him with a handful of cashews…the nut that just a few minutes early he had been describing to a woman who had no idea what he was talking about. He was astonished and glad to taste the delicious treat without all the work of harvesting and drying it!

A cashew growing off the bottom of the fruit!

… and by work I mean that my project partner takes me around our office introducing me to people. It’s hard starting a new job, trying to remember everyone and make a good impression...and like everything I've done in this country so far, even harder in Spanish. I just attended my first meeting with my work group. A group of 6 young to middle aged men who live super interesting lives, walking a fine line between rural farmers and environmental development professionals. The combination of things that they accomplish everyday is evident in their uniform; nice looking work boots, a nice collared shirt for meetings, and along with the baseball cap long sleeves to keep the tropical sun off the skin. I can't wait to get to know them better and have the privilege to work alongside them! Everyone in the office and in my community has been amazingly welcoming. Since I got here I can’t count the times I’ve heard “Cual quier cosa…en su orden” – “Whatever thing you want…at your order” - It sounds a little more like servitude when you translate it into English, but here it’s just really genuine and endearing.

I try to convey how difficult it is to be here without sounding like I want to come home and try to explain how much I love life here without demeaning the sacrifices we make in our daily lives to do the work we do. The Peace Corps does pretty well in describing it when they say, “It’s the hardest job you’ll ever love.” Teaching biology in an urban high school at 23 years old was the hardest job I’ve ever loved, but this is certainly a close second.