FInally got some internet

Saturday June 6, 2009

Hey everybody,

I know it has been a while but the past two times i have come to town to try and use the internet, it hasn´t been working. I had actually wrote a blog post one of these days to post, but of course i forgot to bring my usb drive, and camara, with me to town today. So i´ll probably just be writing about the past week, and post the older blog later (I´m going to be in la capital sunday and monday so i should be able to get internet) But life has been pretty good here in Yabonico for the past 3 weeks. I have been doing lots of walking around trying to get to know the people in my community better, as well as the general geography and layout a little bit better as well. As my campo is made up of a bunch of smaller regions, i have been doing a lot of walking, but it is really nice scenerio walking through the hills, crossing the river, or exploring some of the forests so i don´t mind. All of the people i visit are always nice and welcoming, they usually offer me coffee, juice, or some sort of food (i usually turn down the food though as i am full most of the time).

This past week i did get sick though which was a little bit of a bummer. When i went to bed on Monday night i sudennly didn´t start feeling that well and i had a fever for the entire night and hence didn´t get much sleep. On tuesday morning i just layed in my bed in my room for a while as i still wasn´t feeling well. The only bad part of this is that my room gets really hot durring the day because we have a tin roof, and i don´t have that great of ventalation in my room. My parents here kept telling me to go sit outside where there was a little bit of a breeze, but that meant i would just be sitting in an uncomfortable chair when all i wanted to do was lay down, so it was worth it to stick out the heat. Later in the afternoon i was feeling a little bit better so i was sitting outside under the enramada where the breeze felt nice, when my project partner stopped by my house to tell me that the saftey and security officer for the Peace Corps had been trying to call me (i don´t have signal at my house) and that i needed to call her back immediatly. So i walked up the hill by my house where i go to use the phone. I tried calling her (the security-saftey cordinator) but her phone was busy. But after looking at my phone i saw that i had 4 new voice mails, which is quite a bit more than usuall for me in one day. I had messages from my emergency cordinator, a receptionist at the peace corps office, the security lady, all saying that the pork flu had arrived in the Dominican Republic and that if you had a fever over 100 (mine was 101.6) you needed to call the Peace Corp medic immediatly. So of course i was thinking to myself why did i have to choose this day to get sick, i wasn´t so much worried that i had the pig flu as that they were gonna make me come in to get checked out. But i called the medic and she said that i just had to call her the next day to tell her if my fever went down (which it did) and that since i had only one of the symtoms (the fever) i was proabably fine. So after calling all of the people i needed to call, i walked back to my house and just kinda of relaxed for the rest of the day to try to get better.

Wednesday i woke up early to go to a meeting for CODECAS, an environmental origanization i´m going to be working with that meets in the pueblo here in Las Matas. Only 4 of the members showed up, which i think is a normal thing since the week before when everyone showed up, the other volunteer who is working with the group told me it was the first tiem in 8 months everyone was there. But i was more there just begin integrating myself more into the group, as i don´t have any projects to bring to them at the moment. THey are currently working on stove projects but in different communities than the one i live in. In the afternoon i was waiting around my house because one of my bosses was coming to visit (he was visiting all the new environment volunteers these two weeks) but I didn´t know at what time so i didn´t want to be far from my house. He ended up coming at 5, and stayed for a bit making sure that everything was fine for me at my house and the community, so by the time he left it was a little to late to go try to do much else, so i just stayed by my house and went to one of my neighboors house to watch a movie.

Yesterday though i did get to go do something a little more interesting. I went to go watch this little plays that some kids in my community and also some kids from another community (they traveld to mine by car) performed for part of the community. The little theater group is supported by plan international, which is a big orginization that works with development who i will most likely be working with as well. The skits where about social issues such as the rights of children, communication within the family, and about fighting ignorance and intolerance in the community. I was really happy that i went and it was also good to see that the youth here are already motivated to form groups and talk about these important subjects that are often overlooked, especially in smaller campos. IT makes me feel like i will have an easier time once try to form some youth groups of my own that there is already a base of kids who are motivated to work.

But thats about it for now. THis upcoming week i´m going to the capital on sunday to begin Kreyol language training on Monday at the training center there, and then we are going to go to a batey (a small hatian communit, which usually form to work in the sugar industry) in the south to do more training there untill friday. So hopefully monday i´ll be able to put up the few pictures i got and try to take some more this week. Hope everyone is well back at home. Adios