Another week in la Cumbre

April 12, 2009

So I had another full, busy week full of activities. We had to do a mini-diagnostic in groups based on the communities we live in (there are 4 communities with a total distance of 9 kilometers between the first and last) that we have to present on Tuesday. I am pretty much finished with my part but we are meeting tomorrow as a group to go over all of our stuff one more time. We made a map of our community, which was fun because we went exploring down some of the roads that I might not otherwise have ventured down. I also did a family tree of my household, which was quite extensive considering the large size of family here. My mom has 9 other siblings, and my dad has I think around 17. So I fit in as many people as I could but there was not enough room on my poster to go back to far. I also had to do interviews with 3 people in the community which went alright, I sometimes got answers that were a little odd or lacked some depth but I think that’s how it is with people everyone. It reminded me of working at the survey lab and asking questions and getting responses that did not quite fit the question I had asked, but I still think I learned some things I can present for Tuesday. We also have to do the presentation in Spanish as we are also being evaluated on our Spanish at this point, but I am not to worried about this. I feel like my Spanish is doing pretty good. I can’t always think of the word I want to use or always use the right tense but I can usually get my point across at this point.



me with the neighborhood kids











I also started another project we have to do with my friend Sarah in making a compost pile at the conuco of one of the kids who lives next to me. We finished making the enclosed area we are gonna put the compost (it took a while with having to collect and chop the wood to length) and are going to collect everything to fill it up later this week hopefully on Wednesday.

compost pile with me and sarah, my host sister (on left) and another neigbor

On Thursday night our Spanish class met up our teachers house here to make an auyama pie. Auyama is like a type of squash so we basically were making pumpkin pie. It was a lot of fun and it turned out good, but it was kind of funny because all of Dominican women at the house at first were trying to tell us how to make it, even though they didn’t really even know what we were making. I think they had a hard time understanding the concept of a pie because they don’t really have pies here. We had to keep explaining that the crust was not supposed to rise, and that it wasn’t like a cake which is what I think they thought we were trying to make. But it all turned out well and I think everyone who tried it enjoyed it.
My spanish class, my spanish teacher (one on the far right bending down, with white shirt and green sweater), and other locals at Dona Nena's house (one in pink) with our finished auyama pie




On Friday we had a day of from class so I worked some on my part of the diagnostic project and in the afternoon some of us walked to one of the other communities about 3 kilometers away to hang out at one of our friends house there and drink tea. Overall it was a pretty low key day.


Yesterday me and two of my friends, Woodley and Andrea, went on a little hike down to look for a lagoon and a river that is somewhat close to my house. When we took a wrong turn in our search for the lagoon we stopped to ask some people who were outside eating lunch for directions. We ended up sitting down and talking with him for like a half hour, which has become a very common thing here. It is almost impossible to enter into someone’s house without them asking you to sit down and have some coffee, a soda or some juice even though they have never met us before. The people here are just super nice and friendly. After this we continued down to the river (we went to the lagoon after the river) and followed it down for a little bit. The river wasn’t that big, its more like a little stream. I don’t think there was much more than a foot of water in depth. Later that night all of us met up at the plaza where we had a few drinks and just sat around to chat. It is always nice when we can all get together as a group since we are all more spread out here. I think tonight we are going to go to the plaza because people want to go dance (last night the part upstairs where there is room to dance was closed). The people here will dance meringue and bachata for hours one end. I haven’t been able to escape it either, everytime I go out I have to dance with at least one or two people. The Dominicans think I’m crazy when I say that I don’t dance very much, so I guess I’m just gonna have to learn in order to fit in a little better here. But at least meringue is easy to dance, you don’t really have to move around all the much. But that’s all for now. Feliz Dia del Resurecion!

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.

Weekend with Brigada Verde

Tuesday March 31, 2009

So I have a lot to write about so we will see how far I get. This past Friday our two groups in training, the environmental group (I’m in this one) and the Information technology group split up. The information technology group went to the city where they are doing their technical training, I think its called el cebo but I’m not positive. Us environmentalists on Friday morning went to the Eastern regional conference of a group called Brigada Verde in the region of San Cristobal, a little to the west and south of Santo Domingo. Brigada Verde is one of the projects that the environmental development program here works with. Basically volunteers try to start and environmental awareness group in their communities (called Brigada Verde) that learn about the environmental issues here in the Dominican Republic as well as participate in community service activities such as trash cleanups at beaches, rivers, or along the roads. This conference had different Brigada Verde groups from the eastern region, and the focus of the conference was on how to run a summer camp in hopes that the groups would be able to start their own camps this upcoming summer.

Us new volunteers showed up at the ranch where the camp was being held, it was like a summer camp type place. When we got there we split up into different groups based upon our Spanish class and set up our “stations”. Half of us were going to set up an “obstacle course” the groups would have to go through before entering the camp that where supposed to encourage group strengthening, and the other half were going to do activities at night with the kids. My group was with the obstacle course so we had to set up quickly when we got there so we would be prepared when the kids arrived. There were I think 8 different stations/activities and each had a volunteer overseeing that station. The first station was to make nametags, the next the group had to use objects to cross a “river of fire” (they couldn’t touch the ground but had a chair, a board and some other objects to stand on to go from one side to the other), the next was a activity where everyone got in a circle and grabbed the hands of someone else in the circle (not next to them) and then had to untangle themselves without letting go so the persons whose hands each one was grapping was on either side of them. The fourth station, which I was at, we divided the group in two teams and one person on each team had a blindfold on, and their teammates had to take turns giving the blind folded person directions to find an object I had put on the ground. Next they did a jigsaw puzzle of the different regions of the Dominican Republic, after that they had to do a relay race where they ran to a stick, had to spin around it 8 times, and then try to run back to tag their teammate and they repeated until everyone had finished. The last activity was a drawing game where someone drew a picture then covered most of it, then someone else had to expand on the part that was uncovered then cover their drawing except for a little part, and so on until at the end there was a non-sensical drawing made up of 4 or 5 different little drawings. All of the games we tried to teach a lesson or have elements of group strengthening. So for example, in my activity, when it was over, I would talk about how sometimes we have to rely on others, our teammates, in order to obtain a goal. The person who was blindfolded had to have confianza (trust) in his/her teammates to not run him into a tree or other obstacles along the way, and the people giving directions had to be clear and concise or else their teammate would end up moving farther away from the ultimate goal: the object. But we had to do all of these activities in Spanish so this also helped with our language and was just a lot of fun because we would do these activities along with the kids. It was also a way to give examples of activities they could implement themselves if they were to start their own summer camp, as this was the overall theme of the conference.

After everyone had gone through the obstacle course we all ate lunch and afterwords everyone went to one of the pavilions where we had a couple presentations from volunteers and our technical trainer about how to funding for summer camps, issues that can be addressed, group strengthening techniques, how to recruit members for a Brigada Verde group and so on. By the time we had gone through all of the presentations it was time for dinner so we all ate and after dinner the other groups who hadn’t done the activities earlier split up the kids and did their activities with them.


The next day we had more presentations throughout the day, but also had a little bit of time to hang out and play with the kids. In the afternoon some of the volunteers and some of the kids got a game of ultimate Frisbee going which was a lot of fun. I also gave a presentation to the volunteers (we all have to do one about one subject or another and present it to each other) about interpretation. Basically it was supposed to teach techniques on how to interpret trails and other things for such activities as eco-tourism and I was able to used examples of when I volunteered at the museum of natural history at UF to explain how I interpreted exhibits and tried to keep the kids interested. Later that night there was a bonfire that everyone went to and where we made smores. We also were playing music together and singing as some of the kids from the youth group had brought some drums and other instruments and had a little meringue/borchata band going on and I had brought my guitar along. It was a lot of fun and another great way to interact with all of the kids who had come to the camp.

The next day we left before noon to head back to Santo Domingo but stopped by the beach for a little bit before returning back home. I was really excited to see the beach since I hadn’t been there since I arrived. It was super pretty and a relaxing activity to do before returning to the big city. On returning to the city I ate lunch at my house and hung out a little bit with my friends before I had to go back home to back because on Monday we left Santo Domingo to go a little town called La Cumbre where we are going to be living for 4 weeks for our technical training. I left early Monday morning and arrived here in La Cumbre for lunch with my new host family. They are super nice and I think I’ll like it here better than Santo Domingo because it is a super pretty town up in the mountains and is much smaller with much less noise and hustle and bustle. But I will write more later this week. Oh and I got a camara last week so hopefully I’ll be able to put up some pictures soon. Hasta luego.

My Trip to the Mountains

So I got back from my volunteer visit yesterday, and I had a really awesome time. The volunteer I visited, Ryan, lives in a place called El Rubio up in the mountains in the region of Santiago. The first day I got there (Thursday) we just ate lunch in San Jose de las Matas, a bigger city near his site, before we continued on to his house in El Rubio. That night I went with him to a meeting he was having with two of his project partners where they discussed some of the plans such as the river clean up with the local school kids they had planned for the next day. After the meeting we went to the store to buy some food and make dinner at his house. He didn’t have any electricity that night, it kinda of comes and goes at will, so we had to cook by lantern light and a candle. It was really good dinner, we made carrots and beets, this wheat rice like stuff, and soya with curry spice and onions. It was nice especially since curry has been the biggest food I’ve missed since I’ve been here.

The next morning we woke up, and it had been raining the whole night before so they had to call of the river clean up that was planned because they feared the river would be too dangerous because of all the extra water that would be fueling the currents due to the large amount of rain; especially since it was with the kids. Instead he took me on a little tour of his town which took quite a while since he knew almost everyone there and we would stop to say hello to everyone we saw on the way. For lunch we went to his “host moms” house where we had rice, beans, and fried eggplant, and then started to go to a couple peoples houses because he had to find a host family for the new volunteer that will be going there after him. At each house we had were offered coffee or juice and at one house this really awesome coconut cake pastry. It was also interesting because in this particular town there are many people who have either lived in the US for a number of years or receive remittances from family members who live in the US. I think this made them especially friendly to Americans and loved just talking about day to day life here and there. We went back to the volunteers house in the evening, it had started raining again, and I took a nap for a little bit.

Later that night we went to one of his neighbor’s house were we just hung out and made plans for the next day. His neighbor was one of the owners of a radio station in a nearby city called Mao and we were going to spend the day with him there. We had a few drinks at his house before returning home to eat dinner and go to bed.

The next day we met up at his neighbors house, his name is Don Percio, and he drove us to Mao which is about an hour and half way from where we were in El Rubio. Part of the reason why it took that long to get there is that for about half the way the road was not paved so it was a pretty bumpy ride. They are actually gonna have a huelga (a strike) this Wednesday to try to get a stretch of road paved. When we got to Mao me and the other volunteer walked around the city a little bit and got some lunch then went back to the radio station where Ryan spoke on the radio a little bit about some environmental issues in his town and the broadcasters actually, on the spot, decided to go to El Rubio the following weekend in order to do a live broadcast about the environmental issues there, which is super cool. After that Don Percio, his brother, the brothers wife, 2 other guys that worked at the station, and me and Ryan went to a little bar where we hung out, drank some beers, and chatted through the afternoon. We left later in the evening and Don Percio took us back to his house where he cooked us dinner, and then we returned home to go to sleep.

When we woke up on Sunday we and walked out of the bedroom we were surprised to see that the rest of his house was covered in an inch or more of water. There was a leak in the ceiling in one of the back rooms and since it had been raining pretty much non-stop all weekend, and the door to that room had been closed, they water was probably building up until it finally went under the door and infiltrated the rest of the house. We spent the next hour or 2 trying to bail out his house. We got a lot of it out but there was still almost an inch of standing water in the back room when I left that he was going to have to continue to build up throughout the day. I was supposed to take a carro publico to get back to San Jose de las Matas but since it was raining everything was shut down so they were not running. I ended up having to take a bola, basically hitchhiking with a random guy that was going in my direction, in order to get to San Jose de las Matas and take the bus back to Santo Domingo. The guy was super nice, and I actually went to mass with him because he was stopping in another town first on the way to go to church, so it was that or not get to where I needed to go. It was actually interesting to see what a mass was like here, I am always interested in different religious practices, and it only took about an hour. After mass we finished driving the rest of the way and he dropped me off by a park and then I walked to the bus stop where I was going to meet my friend who visited a different volunteer in a nearby city so we would travel back to Santo Domingo together. When we met up I wanted to show her the picture of Ryan’s flooded house but when I looked for my camara in my bag it was not there. I realized that it had probably fallen out of my bag when in the car of the guy who gave me a ride because at one point I pulled out my notebook to write something down and wasn’t thinking that this was the pocket my camara was in. Looking back I can just see it happening and I just was clueless, I’m sure its just sitting on the floor of his car, and since this was just a random good sumaritan giving me a ride, there is no way to get in contact with him. But asi es la vida, I’ll just have to try to buy another camara at some point, whenever I have free time which probably won’t be for a few weeks but I’m sure I can bum some pictures from other people.

But on returning to Santo Domingo I just ate dinner, did some of my homework, and then went to bed early. This weekend our group is going to a Brigada Verde regional meeting, they are a youth group here in the DR, and our going to be doing activities with them all weekend then come back to Santo Domingo on Sunday. Then on Monday morning we leave for community based training which is in a smaller campo (town) where we are gonna be for 5 ½ weeks learning some more technical skills for our sector (environment), improving our Spanish, and also integrating with a new host family. I don’t know what my internet situation will be like there but hopefully there will be an internet café or something so I can stay in touch with everyone. But until then hope everyone is doing well. Bye for now.

first weeks continued

So to continue… This past Saturday I woke up and went to go do yoga at a church near one of the volunteers house. There are a couple of people here who wanted to do yoga and one of the girls leads us through the exercises. I did yoga the first time last week and Saturday was my second time. It was definitely nice and it should help me with some flexibility and to stretch my back some, as well as just be some good overall exercise. I hope to continue doing it even though I have slacked off the past two days, but I think we are going to have a session this afternoon, so hopefully I’ll get back in the groove. After that me and 3 other people went into the city to a street that a couple music stores on it, and I bought a sweet new guitar! It is a classical guitar so it has vinyl strings which should make it easier to try to learn flamenco style guitar, which I had decided I would attempt to learn a few weeks ago. I have also been trying to grow out the nails on my right hand to aid myself in plucking the strings, which has been somewhat hard since I tend to pick my nails whenever they reach any type of length. But right now they are the longest they have been in a long time so I’m doing alright. The guitar and the case costed 3000 Dominican pesos, which is a little under 90 US dollars so it was a pretty good deal. I could have gotten one for half that price but this one is better quality and has a nice sound, so it was worth paying the price for it. I had also brought a little extra money just for this.

On Sunday we went to the Ciudad Colonial where a professor who lives in the city of Santiago in the Dominican Republic, whose specialty is in the history of the DR took us on a tour around the old city. We walked by the cathedral, the fortress, old houses, the house of the Diego Columbus (casa de Colon), and other old buildings as she told us some of the history of the sites, the city, and the country as a whole. It was nice to learn some more about the history of the city especially with our guide being an expert on the subject. After the tour a couple of us ate at a vegetarian restaurant close by before returning to our barrio where we relaxed and played some dominoes.

Monday and Tuesday were pretty normal days at training, we had Spanish classes and more orientation type things. For example, yesterday we learned some more about the different regions of the country and characteristics of these regions as well as some about the diversity of ecosystems and climates that are found here. We have sunny beaches, mangrove forests, tropical forests, arid land, valleys, mountains (including Pico Duarte, the highest peak east of the Mississippi and above the equator in this part of the world, I think its like 10,000 feet above sea level), and some others I can’t remember at the moment. I am actually going to a city in the mountains tomorrow to visit a volunteer who lives and works there (all of us trainees are visiting a different volunteer) in order to see what life will be like once I am a volunteer. It is apparently somewhat cool up there as I was advised to bring long sleeves or a jacket, but I am really excited to get to see another part of the country. Today we also got issued a motorcycle helmet as I think we are the only country that PeaceCorp is in that are allowed to ride on (not drive) motorcycle taxis because for a lot of sites people work at the only way to reach them is by motorcycle. Needless to say we are required to wear the helmets at all times when riding a motorcycle, or else we get sent home. To reach the place I’m going this weekend I will not need to take a motoconcho (the motorcycle taxis) but am sure I will need to sometime in the future.

But that is about all for now, I’ll try to get up another post next week to talk about my weekend and hopefully to take/put up some pictures. So far I have forgotten to bring my camara to all of the places we’ve been, such as the ciudad colonial, so I don’t have very many pictures. Hope all is well with everyone in the states and elsewhere. Ciao

First weeks

So I finally got around to making a blog today in order to keep everyone updated a little easier instead of trying to write tons of emails. So i arrived in the Dominican Republic on the 5th of this month. The first night we went to a retreat (i think it is usually a place nuns/priests go for a break) and had some orientation information given to us, met our nurse here at the training center, and then blayd a dinamica (ice-breaker) in order to get to know each other a little better. Then next day we all came to the training center here in Santo Domingo which is gorgeous. There is a lot of open space, its nice and quite which lends to the learning atmosphere, and there are lots of fruit trees all around the yard including a giant mango tree in the center. Sadly though they will not be ripe untill june, which is after training will have finished. We have our classes (spanish and more technical type training) in these enramadas ( gazebo like things) outside which is super nice. All the locals here think it has been unusually cold the past two weeks but i think its the perfect temperture right now, i'm defenitly enjoying the more mild tempeture as i know the summer will be extremely hot.

Later in the day on that first friday our host family's came to pick us up from the training center and bring us to our main home for the next 3 months. My Dona is super nice and lives with her niece in a nice little house about a 15 minute walk from training. The niece is in school and works so she isn't at home a lot but one night we did watch "From Dusk Till Dawn" on the spanish movie channel, which is just as good as a movie in spanish. My Dona feeds me huge meals in the evening and mornings and always makes sure i have a cafecito (little coffee) when i get home. Here coffee is drinking in small amounts, about the quantity of an expresso shot, but is very strong and they put in tons of sugar. It defintly has helped me get through the day, i have coffee in the morning, with lunch, and when i get home from training. Two other volunteers live on the houses to either side of me and there are 7 of us total in our barrio. The rest of the volunteers live in other neighboorhoods that aren't too far away either.

A normal day for me is to wake up around 6:30, eat breakfast around 7, leave for class at 7:30 and training starts at 8:00. We have an hour of lunch from 12-1 which is nice to relax and use the computer (the training center has internet!) During the day we have a mix of presentations about various topics, for example development, or dominican culture, as well as spanish class which are nice because we are split up into small groups (4 people and a teacher) so i get lots of practice listening and speaking spanish. after training ends at 5 a couple of us usually walk to our neighboorhood colmado (its like a corner store where people hang out) to get a coca cola and play dominoes, which is my new favorite game. I usually eat dinner around 7 or 7:30 and then go to my room 9ish to read a little/do homework and have been asleep by 10 everynight. The only bad thing so far is that the gallos (roosters) start to go off around 3:30 or 4:00 in the morning and continue to be loud and annoying untill i should be waking up. It doesn't help that there are like 5 or 6 around my house and when one starts they all go off.

But i have to go to class now, i'll continue with another post later today or tomorrow.