The End

Preface: I know my spelling and grammar are horrendous Isn't it annoying :)

Funny how the last two blogs I wrote have begun with a picture of a cockroach in my cup...

These are the things i will miss about this place. In America, there is almost no chance i will wake up to what can only be considered a "mutant" cockroach. The size of your fist, they are.

I am busy recovering from the whirlwind that was "volunteer march madness" while preparing to leave this country after 4 splendid years. We will get to that latter half at the end, for now ill fill you in on what has been going on this past month.

First up we had the combined group of Roger Williams University and The University of North Carolina (in the belly of the beast, Allen). They were an alright ;) group of 12 that handled the crazy task of putting together a chicas maravillas conference. I do not think it could have gone any better than it actually did. I still get chills thinking about it. Over 100 girls that have participated in our chicas maravillas program participated in the conference and I was blown away at the boldness, creativity and beauty that was represented.  To see some girls that were timid and unsure of themselves get up in front of 100 of their peers and sing their heart out brought tears to my eyes. What a transformation many of these girls made. Of course, Tania led the entire event and continues to be one of the most incredible individuals i have ever met.

The idea of the conference was to split girls into groups and have them create a skit or drama based on an assigned topic such as peer pressure, domestic violence, etc. The skits were entertaining and quite surprising when some of the RWU girls got involved in the mix.....

Major props to those ladies for donning a mustache and impersonating Dominican machismo. The entire event was so incredible that at the end we all had so much energy that we just got up and danced!

A little side "activity" happened that was outside of the typical FIMRC volunteer experience.....Two volunteers got married! They decided to have a spiritual ceremony here in town, and yours truly was asked to give away the bride. Never thought i would give a woman away before being married myself.....seems backwards somehow...... ;)

There is your proof, Meggicita. We hired the municipal police to cordon off the area, rented a friends' '02 Toyota Camry and the groom played a song to his bride on the guitar. What a memorable experience for them. Luckily there happened to be an ordained minister on the trip.

Whew! and that was just the first week!

The second week saw the return of of some old friends from last year and some welcome fresh faces. CLEMSON!!!!

I love having these guys down here. It was really nice to see some familiar faces as well. Clemson was tasked with executing a small health fair in remote El Carrizal. Boy, was that a success. 

We arrived to all of these kids waiting for us to set up and open the doors. It is a thing of beauty. 

P.s. that little toddler at the bottom of the photo is about to be very startled, ha! I couldn't stop laughing. 

We were able to support 4 main information booths, dental hygiene, sex-ed, hand washing and nutrition. The entrance table, gift corner and activity room made the event a smash hit with over 130 kids in overall attendance. 

The kids loved it and Clemson was the perfect group to organize an event like this. They also went into Haiti and did a dental charla to over 100 rural Haitian children.

The group got the kids on their feet dancing and singing. It was great!

Last but not least we had Jamies alma mater, Drexel University, come in and take part in the madness. 

As you can see they were almost all girls. Luckily, they were super cool and didn't make me feel too awkward ;) We put this group to work as they must have taught over 200 children over the course of the week in both the DR and Haiti.

Their project was to present flu prevention and treatment to a school for orphaned children in Haiti. I am constantly amazed at the creativity and individuality each group brings. They made songs, did dances, little chants and made posters to try to communicate to kids that spoke a completely different language than themselves. I was in awe of this group. 

They also presented in the DR.

What an amazing three weeks. I love having the opportunity to meet new people and expose them to a different side of the word for a short bit. I don't know how i found myself in this position. As a kid growing up in Mount Dora, Florida i never thought i would have this opportunity. I am very grateful and blessed beyond words.

Next Friday i board a plan off this island for good...........

I was updating my resume and trying to find a way to distill this experience into 3 concise bullet points. I feel like it will be the same when i am speaking with all of you who have been following this blog the past 2 years. We will meet, you will ask me how everything went, i will repeat those 3 bullet points and we will move on. What else can i do? It will be hard to tell each person that this experience and my combined 4 years on this island has humbled me beyond comparison, that i'm light years away from the man i used to be in early 2010. It will be difficult to describe the things i have seen, the words i have heard spoken and the unspoken moments that took my breath away. It will be impossible to describe the nature of the relationships God has blessed me with, and the love and care complete strangers have offered me as if i were their long lost son. What do you say about a group of people that have so profoundly impacted your life? How do you describe red to someone who cant see? 

It has been an incredible 18 months living and working in this town and the people i met initially, soon became my neighbors and in no time had become my family. Each person has a place in my heart and i will carry them with me for the rest of my life.

This is the end of my blog :)

Cockroach butts, Giardia and Witchcraft.

As I took my first pull of fresh Dominican coffee I felt something brush against my upper lip. I thought nothing of it. Maybe it was a little clump of dirt, or a grain of rice. These are pretty common things to find at the bottom of your coffee here. As the object brushed my lip for the second time I decided to take a look. I baptized my fork in the rich dark goodness and lifted out the bottom half of a cockroach......

.....I did not finish the coffee.....

Well, since the last time i updated this blog (2013) I have had a wisdom tooth removed and gone through the painful motions of Giardia (look it up).....simultaneously. I had been on a pretty good role, but when it rains it pours, I guess.

The past two months we have been hosting a 4th year medical student who is doing a short international rotation in the Hospital here in town. He spends the mornings in the Hospital shadowing physicians and consulting patients and in the afternoons he collaborates with our regular programming; chicas maravillas, diabetes clubs, school first aid kits, etc. We have also executed 3 mobile clinics in areas with little or no access to a health post.

First aid training w/kit in Los Cerezos

Consulting a whole mess of kids at a mobile clinic in Valle Nuevo 

Teaching our new Mariano Cestero Diabetes Club the importance of a balanced diet 

Consulting patients at our mobile clinic in Cruz de Cabrera

Female anatomy lesson to our Chicas Maravillas group in Restauracion

First aid training w/kit in Trinitaria

Doing some chair aerobics with Restauracion Diabetes Club. (They are pretty old so you have to work with what you got).

Explaining to over 100 kids in El Carrizal the importance of personal hygiene and how proper hand washing can help prevent many diseases.

Proper hand-washing demonstration.

We are leaving today for La Jagua for another mobile clinic. We have been keeping busy and its only two more weeks until the first group of March volunteers arrives! We expect around 50 volunteers next month. Some of the cool project we plan to do with them include: Chicas Maravillas conference, diabetes walk-a-thon, health fairs, dental hygiene campaigns AND what I am most excited about is our introduction into Haiti.
I mean it has always been there, but we are just starting to really develop it and have met a few of the right people (finally) to help us. We are going to start with some basic health education in this school.

Built by World Vision (of course)

Hopefully, this will get our foot in the door and begin to understand the goings on in Tiroli. We also had the odd fortune of meeting a witch doctor named Marino. After following 3 Haitian men crammed onto one motorcycle for what seemed like 2 miles outside of town we arrived at the "brujos" house. We were shown into his room of witchcraft and wizardry. 

You place your hand on the skull to drive out evil spirits. Marino referred to it in Spanish/Kreyol as the "enfermedad zombie" or "zombie sickness". Its like a movie or something.

He makes all of his medicine himself. 

Pretty wild stuff. Their is actually a license to practice this form of Voo Doo. Marino has been gracious enough to agree to meet with our volunteer groups in March and answer any questions we might have about this style of "alternative medicine". There might be one or two questions.

A lot of exciting stuff is happening here! On the flip side my contract ends in April and I will be transitioning back to the United States. I am trying not to think about it so I don't get too sad just yet. It will be a tough goodbye.....

Well, Hasta Luego!

December to Remember

Booya!

Remember in January when i wrote a blog post about an area affected by cholera, and how we wanted to build latrines to help prevent future outbreaks? Well, i guess it is better late than never. It took almost an entire 12 months to petition, receive funds, organize logistics, buy materials, take them out to the sites on trucks, donkeys and brute strength (not mine, obviously), and begin building. Here is the finished product:

Glorious!

Granted, we still need to install the actual "toilet", which will be poured into a mold and hand delivered to each house thus christening the final product. Now you don't have to hear me talk about poop (as much) anymore! yay!

Seriously, I am really happy that we were able to make first-time latrine owners out of these families in rural nowhere. Many thanks to Notre Dame University for making it happen. 

Here is a funny photo of how our builder decided to put the roof on one of the latrines:

Just balance on a nearby post while the assistant provides upward force via that stick over there. I just want to note that our assistant is wearing a Steelers shirt and Clemson Tiger pants (you know who i;m talking to).

So that is that.

Last week we executed what had been planned for the past few months...our first community health fair!

What a success it was! We planned on receiving 500 people, and we received closer to 600! Many children came from villages at least 5km outside of town on foot to be part of the event. The picture above illustrates everyone that made the event possible. We recruited kids from the local high-school that had participated in one of our AIDS presentations and had shown an interest in getting involved. Peace Corps volunteers Ryan and Allison helped tremendously and our local hires Dr. Ricardo and Tania both contributed by manning their own stations and greeting guests. We cannot forget the masterminds behind the whole shebang; Maghan, Hannah (not pictured) and Jamie. I knew having interns would pay off :)

The idea of the fair was to inform kids and adults of simple ways to prevent major illnesses. We had various booths that dealt with themes like proper hand-washing techniques, dental hygiene, the importance of physical activity, sexual health, well balanced meals and the dangers of sugar consumption. Another reason we wanted to do a large scale health fair was to get our name out there. Organizations like World Vision are established and have over a decade working in the area. Peace Corps is another organization that is well known. Believe it or not it is incredibly difficult to brand FIMRC. First of all, its almost impossible for Dominicans to pronounce FIMRC. But its not like we can say Cuerpo de Paz ( Peace Corps) or Vision Mundial (World Vision), no, we have to say Fundacion Internacional de Alivio Medico para la Ninez. Try saying that ten times fast. How did we solve that? We had one booth set up solely for the purpose of having kids try to pronounce FIMRC. If they got it right we gave them a prize. Bottom line. We gotta change our name :) 

So, the kids walk in and receive a card that requires six stamps. They have to pass by all six health booths in order to fill up their card and receive their prize bag, which was an assortment of toothbrushes, tooth paste, hand soap, floss, crayons, etc. We had a raffle with items donated from local businesses, and all proceeds went into our local regular programming. People helping people. Here are a few of the featured booths:

Nutrition booth manned by Mary Luz

 Wheel of STD's. Spin the wheel and whatever you land on you are infected with. Then you get a talkin to by one of our volunteers. We handed out condoms as well.

 A fair would not be a fair without awesome games. So, among many other interactive activities, we contracted a local German carpenter to fabricate these:

Corn-hole baby!!! FIMRC style

It was an amazing activity that the community not only participated in, but helped sponsor! Kids are still talking about it and keep asking when the next one is going to be. 

December has been a crazy month and we are not even halfway done. We receive a 3rd year medical student-volunteer on Sunday, and two more after Christmas. I get a few days in between to celebrate the holidays, roasted pig style :)

Well that's all for now. Here is one final picture of the health fair....5-minutes after the doors opened:

Woo!

A Hole for Your Poop

I rode a donkey today. My feet almost touched the ground. I felt like i was riding a pony or other similar tiny horse. My grin was grand.

Lets just cut to the chase...where does THAT expression come from.? Is it like if a police pursuit of a criminal is televised and everyone just wants to see the chase, and the reporter goes, "Ok, Brad, lets cut to the chase"? The intention is to skip all the crap and get to the good stuff. The expression is clearly having an unintended effect right now as i am still rambling. Maybe give us a little history behind this seemingly arbitrary statements, popular media. 

Anyways, a little update from the past month or so. My padre came down to visit and our latrine project is finally at full speed. 

My dad came down for a few days to hang out in town and his trip happened to coincide with the beginning of our latrine building scheme. As you can see below we make a pretty good team:

Clearly doing the lions share of the work....

Laying down foundation.....or analyzing rock samples.....

Seriously, the homes we are building latrines for a really far off the beaten path and it takes half a day just to deliver the materials to them. We have to take the equivalent of 3 wheel-barrels (its a lot tougher when you don't have the wheel-barrel) of sand, 1 wheel-barrel (that's how we measure things out here) of small rocks to mix cement, 2 bags of cement, 3 re barb, 20 cement blocks, nails, wire, etc. out to these homes by hand. Today we used a donkey.

I always used to wander why other NGO's like World Vision or UNICEF never built latrines here.....i now know. BUT, it is a very worthwhile project, and every time I even think of complaining about how much work it is I take a look at all the kids that are giving everything they got to help us:

 Homeboy wanted to carry a whole block so bad, but i negotiated with him and he carried this piece of broken block on his head with the proudest smile in the world. HE helped build his family's latrine. It is powerful stuff. Very humbling. What is not pictured is the distance he carried this block...barefoot, or the time when he helped me shovel sand into a bucket....a few grains at a time, or the all day he spent following me in case i needed his help.  It is hard to find that work ethic in a grown man much less a small boy. He is one of 13 brothers and sisters and this is his home:

That is why we do what we do here. These people out here are all but forgotten. They receive no aid. They are good. They are good people who are hidden from the rest of the world. For me it is like uncovering buried treasure. I'm sure they do not see it that way, but I feel blessed just to have met them. 

You can talk about improving hygiene and eliminating diarrhea all day, but unless you give them the resources to put it into practice it is worthless. As you can clearly see it is not a one-sided effort. 

A really cool component to the latrines are these hands-free hand washing stations:

 

If you look closely at the photo you can see her right foot pressing down on a lever which tilts the bucket downward. The soap is on a rope (soap on a rope!). A genius idea that was brought to our attention by one of our interns, Hannah. That is what my dad was helping create with Becky's (my machetes) help:

A full blown effort to reduce the incidents of intestinal bacterial infection in the area. Yhatzee.

We recently celebrated International Toilet Day. Being involved in this project really makes me appreciate that holiday a lot more. Why doesn't hallmark make cards for it? A few suggestions:

Happy Flushing!

Poop (that's it)

It's midnight. Do you know where your poop is? (Probably more appropriate in a TV ad)

I just want you to know that i'm thinking about you...r toilet.

Got TP? (Could be used as a t-shirt design)

The possibilities are clearly endless.

Everything else is good too; Diabetes club, Chicas Maravillas, Nutrition class, Health Fair, etc.

Adios!

My Soapbox

Last month the Constitutional (clown) Court of the Dominican Republic ruled that every child born to an undocumented Haitian immigrant on DR soil since 1929 would be stripped of their citizenship. This ludicrous legislation would reportedly affect around 200,000 people who are now subject to deportation at any given moment. What essentially is happening here is that the DR is deporting Dominicans to Haiti. There are many Haitian children i know in town who were born on this side of the border and do not speak Haitian Kreyol. I can only imagine someone born around.....1950 has spent the last 50-odd years being....Dominican. The people living here after this arbitrary break off point may not speak Kreyol and definitely do not have Haitian citizenship. So what happens? Haitian-Dominicans are being shipped to a foreign land where they might not know the language and/or have citizenship, basically making them state-less. No access to schools here or there. No access to healthcare here or there. No access to any social services here or there. Its like that Tom Hanks movie, (ok, i obviously know its nothing like that) The Terminal where homeboy is stuck in an airport terminal for a hot minute.

Haitians are not going to stop coming here. Come up with a better plan....Ok, off my Soapbox.
P.s. Why is it called, "getting on and/or off ones soapbox?" Why soap specifically?

Anyways, this legislation doesn't apply to us. Empowering Haitian immigrants to adopt healthy practices (many of which have had little to no formal education in our area), leads to a more peaceful existence between both sides. Instead of excluding them from social services (like healthcare and sanitation), include them so they are not the ones out of the loop and unwittingly spreading infectious disease! Dominicans claim Haitians are "dirty" or "ignorant to basic sanitation", well have you ever sat down and asked them why they don't wash their hands or where they poop? We have. It ultimately boils down to behavioral change, which is difficult in a any culture, but Haitians are very open to it.

It appears that i have mounted my soapbox once again.

Speaking of all this, our Latrine project is almost underway! We had our sanitation presentation (which was attended by all families receiving latrines) and our construction materials arrive tomorrow. Many of the families have already dug their 8-10ft. hole, which out here is like walking out into your driveway with a shovel and going to town (the ground is hard).

We also recently started two amazing initiatives: Diabetes support group and Pregnancy club (attended almost exclusively by Haitians).

I'm in my element amidst a sea of pregnant women. I was just really interested in what Jewel had to say. The Pregnancy club is so inspiring. Each class the women will receive a weeks worth of pre-natal vitamins (keeps em coming back for more!) and a special gift for their baby like socks or beanies, etc. For some women it is their first child.....for others its their 9th or 10th! Jewel, the NP we contracted from Santiago, leads the class and is doing a fantastic job. It seems Haitian women are the only one taking advantage of this opportunity....don't get back on it, Joe.

Amongst all of our new clubs and groups are our existing youth empowerment initiatives, which saw the conclusion of another awesome Superman club:

Easily my favorite group so far. We plan on meeting monthly to keep the momentum going. Best baseball play of the group? Fito, who only has one hand. Its quite incredible.

Our recent local hire, Tania, is about to completely take over her Wonder Woman class. Chalk one up to sustainability!

Our Nutrition Club is going great for the women of Jimenez. Maghan and Hannah are rockin it.

Lots of good stuff happening. I am really excited about the direction this project is taking and can't wait to see how much better it continues to become.

I leave for Peru on Wednesday! Super excited to see Machu Pichu and take a little vacay with my ol' PC pal Heather. Ill be gone for a good two weeks, and the project will be left in the hands of the interns....... :). They will do fine without me. I'm sure they are looking forward to kicking me out of the house for a few days so they can....use all the toilet paper and play with each others hair? Still not sure what it is girls do.

Anyways, that's all for now.

Final thought: Take a second a think about how lucky you are to be a citizen of America! A lot of people here can't even say they belong to either 3rd-world country at this point, much less a developed one like the US. We will never really (lord willing) endure the same struggles these Haitian immigrants are facing right now. If you want, you can go trade in your old i-phone for a new i-phone, no questions asked. Here its a relentless battle to get your child enrolled in school. Take a healthy dose of perspective.

 
Does she deserve that?