La Cumbre

Saturday April 4, 2009

So first off, I have not had internet here in La Cumbre as much as I had originally thought. I actually haven’t been able to use internet at all since I’ve been here but am writing this in the morning at my house and am going to post when I am in Santiago later today along with the other post I wrote earlier this week but didn’t have internet to post it. So you guys will have lots to read!

But I have really enjoyed it here in La Cumbre. As I had mentioned it’s a smaller community so it is easier to just walk around and get to know everyone. My family here is really cool, I have a younger sister who is 11 years old who is usually around the house when I am and then 3 brothers who are 19, 21, and 23 (I think I’m not exactly sure about the middles age) but they are not usually around the house and I haven’t met one of them because I think he is away at the University. But my Dona and Don are really nice as well and there are always other people coming and going through my house. The town is super beautiful as it is on top of a hill and has a view of the valleys and mountains around it. La Cumbre actually means “the highest point on a hill” so is very fitting.

I also like the technical training here more so in Santo Domingo as we are doing more hands on projects and what not. So for example we went on a tour of a coffee farm and learned some about how to grow coffee, what trees are good to provide shade for the coffee, and a little about pest control in coffee fields. We also have walked through a bunch of conucos, which are mixed tropical gardens. At first when looking at the conucos they look just like a random collection of trees and bushes but in actuality ever plant/tree provides something to the farmer. The plants on most the conucos I have seen here include bananas, platanoes, coffee, cacoa (chocolate), pineapple, yucca, tayota (a vegetable that grows on a vine, I think its called the Mexican pear in the states), citrus trees (orange, lemon, and grapefruit), avacodo, these pea like pods called juandules (sp?), sweet potato, other root vegetables, celery type plants, and others all of which I can’t think of now. But it is really cool because at any given time of year there is something to harvest to eat for food and helps to balance the eco-system it creates due to the variety of things that are growing.

Another day we learned how to make living and dead barriers on the slopes of hills in order to help prevent soil erosion, as this is a big environmental problem here in the DR. We learned how to find the contours of the slope and either plant things such as lemon grass to help retain the soil or even just use dead wood and rocks to create a barrier along the contour that helps retain the soil when it rains. We practiced these two techniques at the coffee farm as well as at a conuco of one of the people of the town.

Yesterday we learned how to make and manage a compost pile and made two of them at the coffee farm for practice as well as learning how to make some other types of organic fertilizer using manure and the leaves of certain trees that are rich in nitrogen. I have also been slowly learning about different types of trees, plants, and vegetables such as how to recognize them and what their names are in Spanish which is something I’ve always wanted to know (being able to identify more trees and plants).

Besides the technical we still have Spanish class every morning to continue helping us with our Spanish. We watched a movie earlier this week, listen to music, and just have conversations to help us all learn. Its still really nice because the classes are small (my class has 5 volunteers and our language facilitator) which I think really helps the learning process. But one of the mornings our class walked to the monument for the Mirabal sisters, Las Mariposas (the butterflies), who were three sisters who lived under the dictator Trujillo and are well known for their part in the revolution to overthrow the dictator. They were eventually killed by Trujillo’s henchman in 1960 along a mountain road as they were returning from visiting their husbands in jail. Even though they tried to make it look like an accident (the henchman, after killing the sisters and the driver, pushed the car over a cliff) everyone knew they were murdered which increased the anti-Trujillo sentiment throughout the country. The place where they were killed is about 4 kilometers from my house here, and this is where the monument to commemorate them lays. It was really cool to see this especially since I had just finished reading “In the time of the Butterflies”, which is a book by Julia Alvarez that is about the Mirabal sisters, before I arrived in the DR.

Yesterday was the birthday of one of the volunteers here so we all went to his house last night and his mom made a cake for everyone to share. There was also a guitar there so people were playing guitar and singing for a lot of the night. It is another one of the volunteers birthdays today, as well as another one tomorrow so I think we are gonna try to do something else tonight and tomorrow as well, but I’m not exactly sure what yet. I think the plan for tonight is to meet at the play (baseball field) and then maybe go to a colmado to hang out. But we’ll see. But this is about all I can think of to write now. There are still some things I haven’t gotten a chance to tell you all but I’ve done so much since being here it would be very hard to write it all down. But hopefully I will have some more internet next week where we have our classes in the evening but as of now it’s not looking to promising. If nothing else hopefully I’ll be able to make it to Santiago again next weekend to do so more updates and check my mail. To everyone, take it easy and I’ll talk to you all later.