Llego Papa

I'm here! Not only did we decide on a site, I mover there! Big stuff happening. 

So, I arrived yesterday around 5pm. It took me 5 hours to get here in, of course, the pouring rain. Why is it always raining! Before we left, I gave Rosy a good tuning up, and by me I mean I went to a mechanic and he did it. She got new all-terrain tires, oil-changed, gears/chains tightened and greased up good to go!

I got here and my landlord and key project partner (if you will) Frank was putting the finishing touches on the house, things like water and electricity: 

I bet you're thinking, "wow, that's nicer than I imagined". You probably thought I was going to live in a shanty, half underground and eat dirt, worms and bathe myself in reclaimed pig urine.....well, me too.

Seriously, its a very comfortable 3 bedroom block structure with "constant" water and electricity every now and then. I feel very fortunate to be here. Restauracion is a very cool town. To re-iterate, Restauracion is a semi-developed town (paved streets, mostly block homes, small stores, etc) and is surrounded by 7 villages (the opposite of the town). Our work will primarily be in those villages and Haiti. I chose to live in the town because I believe I can still be an effective development worker and not have to bathe myself in reclaimed pig  urine :) . Having Rosalia with me makes getting to those villages easier.

Anyways! Today was my first full day, so I spent the morning outside reading and catching up on some work in hopes that I could meet some people as they walked by. I was reading my bible a little and praying for some encouragement (its lonely sometimes guys) and almost immediately a group of Jehovas Witnesses comes to my patio an starts chatting me up. Gods sense of humor? Super nice group of people, and not even 20 minutes after they leave another pair of Witnesses comes up and talks with me. Apparently, 25% of Restauracion are JW's, ha. Interesting tidbit for ya. It was great to meet them and boosted my confidence. 

Shortly after, the Peace Corps volunteer that lives here (yup there is one here, Garrett) came by and he showed me around the community a little bit, and we got to meet a few people he knows/has worked with, which was great! At this point in the project (first day) I am trying to feel out who the leaders are and who are the people with influence/are willing to learn and better the community. This involves a lot of small talk, which i'm not super good at, but trying hard. 

I feel like I have had a pretty productive first day in terms of meeting people and getting my life organized and ready to go. I have a lot of great leads on potential project partners and people who would be interested in volunteering for the foundation. Tomorrow I hope to take Rosy out to the villages and see what they are all about. Also, I have a Pica Pollo (fried chicken) guy now. Great chicken. 

It feels a lot like i'm doing PC all over again, but this time I know exactly how to get started instead of stumbling through the first 9 months, ha. Not to mention, I know a scoche more Spanish. I know I am still on a learning curve because this is a new community, but I'm excited to get started! 

Adios!

Drumroll please.......

After 2 and a half months traveling around the country, meeting with community members, being offered copious amounts of coffee and driving my motorcycle through torrential downpours......We have finally come to a final decision on which site we will be working in. It....is.......

So, my boss Meredith came down last Monday to travel to the top three sites I had identified; Tres Ceibas, Paradero, Restauracion. Each site is so unique and brought their own set of advantages and weaknesses.

Paradero is located on the tippy top of a mountain about 2 hours outside of Santiago. It is the most remote site among the three and the only way to get up there is take a 4-wheel drive machine an hour and a half straight up a dirt path. Nearly a thousand people live up there and are served by one poorly staffed and ill-equipped clinic. The community is very organized as a good representation came to our meeting on Tuesday and asked all kinds of questions and responded very favorably to our concerns and inquiries. Meredith fell in love with the people in this site. They are so incredibly warm and welcoming! This would be a great project!

Tres Ceibas is located on the north coast near the beach town of Rio San Juan. It is a very rural village with very limited access to water. Hardly anyone has running water in their home as they have to travel great distances to retrieve water from wells. They have no health clinic and the closest one is in Rio San Juan which is a very long 8km walk. The community represented very well with 24 community members showing up to our meeting on Wednesday! Very encouraging. Many of the members who showed up were interested in our health promoter program. Many of the homes were made of tree bark and palm leaves. Definitely among the poorest of communities that I have seen. Possibilities are endless here!

Restauracion is a border town approximately 12km from the Haitian village of Tiluri way up in the mountains. There are about 10,000 people in the village. There is a town center, which is fairly developed and 7 outlying rural villages which are about 50% Haitian. There is a municipal hospital and 4 rural clinics that serve this population, but given its proximity to Haiti and the influx of immigrants there is not enough infrastructure to support the number of people visiting the clinics. The clinics are understaffed and inadequate in quality. The hospital is basically a clinic in that it has nothing better than any of the clinics. It is a level one care center. Great site!

Which one, which one...............

We rented a small SUV to get to the sites. I thought it would be a better idea than both of us on my motorcycle for hours at a time. There were a few times I didn't know if we would make it up certain inclines, mostly in Paradero. It was nice being able to drive through the rain and not get completely soaked!

So, I will be spending the next year and a half enjoying the fresh mountain air in.............

Restauracion!

We have a winner! Restauracion offered so many opportunities to work not only with the Dominican population, but also with the marginalized undocumented Haitian communities on both sides of the border. We had a great meeting with the local government  which offered their full support of our project, but I think the moment Meredith and I both knew was when we crossed the border and it felt like we were in a different world. We saw malnourished children running up to the car banging on the window begging for food. It was very upsetting. You want to give them everything because you know if you give them whatever you have at the bottom of your left pocket will make them the richest kid in the village. Homes made of earth, and no electricity/water whatsoever. A little education would go a long way here.

We are going to work on integrating into that village as a side project. I am very excited about the opportunity. Can't wait to find a niche there and get involved in the culture. Gonna be awesome!

I move in next week!!

Haitian countryside:

More countryside...












Awesome picture of 2 kids crossing the border in Dajabon. One guy got on the others shoulders so as not to get clothes and shoes wet, haha. DR to the left, Haiti to the right:

Thats it! 

Pulling dinner out of the ground

I am finished with the second round of site visits. Some of you may be saying, " i did not realize you were doing a second round of site visits". You are now caught up.

I just got back from Restauracion (on the border) today, and I am fairly tired due to the loud rap music that permeated the night. A cockroach scurried across my neck all night and went in my mouth and pooped in my eyeball...ok that last part didnt happen, and its really gross, but I was woken to the light fleeting sensation of a cockroach on more than one occasion. I have been off visiting sites and preparing budgets for volunteer costs; lodging, food, transportation, rat poison( for the rats, not volunteers) and all that jazz. I took public transport to the 2 of the sites so I could compare the trips.......I like my motorcycle.

In between site visits I may or may not have been to the beach.....twice.....

Gotta stay motivated, right?

I don't really have much to tell you guys, but I wanted to update you on where i'm at in my life. I have a fancy new cell phone now with unlimited data so if you have a smartphone download the app Whatsapp and we can text for FREE.....UNLIMITED....WAAAAAOOOOO. My number is 829-562-9792. Hook it up brotha.

Ummmm......what else......nothing. Here are some photos of what we had for dinner last night. Its called yuka and its a root, literally:

So its a little tree and you pull it out to the roots, cut the roots ( the thick poop looking things), peel the roots, boil and eat the roots.....its actually very good with some onions and cheese. This guys just went into his field and picked some out.

Little taste of the Dominican diet for ya, Adios!

Tall brooms

Things are sssllllooooowwwwwwwww.

We have narrowed down options to our top-3 sites! Drumroll..........Restauracion, Tres Ceibas, Paradero! I know that probably means nothing to you guys, but there it is. I feel like we can't really go wrong with any of these sites, so what we have to do now is research the volunteer program costs. I will be traveling back to these 3 sites to collect data on lodging, transportation, food costs. For the most part, volunteers will have to stay with host families, so I have to go back to the villages and check out a few families recommended by the leadership in the community as well as current PC volunteers. Once we get all the costs figured out, we can analyze which project makes the most sense cost-wise since we already like the work aspect in each one. Rosalia and I will be back on the road!

I have until November 12 do to all of this. My CEO is coming on the 12th, to check out final suggestions. This means I have a month to visit 3 sites....

I am trying to learn a whole bunch of stuff on random health topics. I have a whole dropbox full of manuals and lessons that I need to look over in order to familiarize myself with the material that I will be teaching. It is hard to fill the day with that, so I am really just taking it easy for the next 30 days. I am learning a bunch of new stuff......and am really really bored.

I went to some local waterfalls with my buddy Jake (not the same waterfalls for those of you who have been here). It was really cool, we made our own trail of sorts which ended up being a tad illegal what with all the trampsing through protected land and what not. It was a really cool experience. We climbed up, down and around these sheer rock faces bare-foot, and jumped off random cliffs into deep ice-cold spring water. Of course, I caught a touch of poison ivy/oak whatever, which has since gone away, but was pretty uncomfortable all over my arms. Pretty neat falls, though:

This is in front of the falls.

Behind the falls, swimming through mystery caverns and climbing up rocks.

Also! how could I forget this? I recently became the proud owner of the worlds longest/skinniest broom. This old guy was selling them door to door, and it is clearly worth 2 cents, but I paid top dollar. Check it out:

This picture doesn't even really do it justice. On your right is a conventional broom.
It is so long and skinny, and the broom top is a haphazardly strewn together collection of pine straw. I tried to sweep my room and it all started shedding off. It is purely a show broom from this point on......

See how bored I am? Adios!

Perejil

So, my post site visit day-to-day has been a little slow. I have been reading up on health education materials to try and learn what i will be teaching in the next few months. Currently, I am 1/4 of the way through Donde No Hay Doctor (Where there is no Doctor), and I must say, i'm overwhelmed, ha!

I ended up meeting a great group of people during their stay the the HUB, whom were organizing a solidarity march towards the border of Haiti to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the Perejil Massacre that took place in the Dominican Republic. Long story short, upwards of 20,000 ethnic Haitians were slaughtered with machetes and shot-guns by the Dominican military under the harsh rule of dictator Rafael Trujillo. It was an event that was covered up by the Dominican government, and news never leaked out of the island so the world was kept in the dark while one of the most heinous acts against mankind was carried out. It was never labeled a genocide, but a "systematic campaign of extermination". There was a litmus test to verify if you were Haitian or Dominican, because Dominicans can be very dark skinned as well. They had to say the word Perejil (parsley). That Haitian accent makes it very difficult to pronounce the word correctly, so it was a dead give away.
The motives of the massacre are uncertain and range from land acquisition to general hatred. Members of the  dictatorship were never prosecuted or sentenced because of some legal mumbo jumbo (love politics). Racism against dark-skinned people was very strong all over the world at this time, so its no real surprise that it did not make the headlines.

I was ignorant to this whole incident, and I have been living here for almost 3 years. Dominicans do not really know of it either. Anyways, I hitched a ride with Elaine (most incredible woman ever) her daughter Portia and a handful of study abroad students to the border to join the march (which was only like 1/4 mile). It was a very neat event: 2 simultaneous catholic masses (1 in DR, 1 in Haiti), we lit candles and marched to the border where a river separates the two countries. The river is called Rio Massacre, which means massacre river, and they say that when the killings were taking place that the river was pure blood red. There were not thousands of people, but a small group of maybe over a hundred. It was a very intimate event, very quiet, and moving. We sang hymns, people read poems they had written:

Reminds me of a quote that is on the wall here in the HUB, "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has. "- Margaret Mead

I remember being there last night and as the event started to wind down you could hear a voice in the dark distance. From the poorest country in the western hemisphere, a country that has seen so much strife and turmoil in even the past decade, a country marginalized by the rest of the world, came a solitary little voice over and over again, "Merci Anpil!" , which means, "Thank you so much!" in Haitian Kreyol. It brought the entire night into focus. Two small groups of Haitians and Dominicans coming together in the name of solidarity to remember the past and make sure it never happens again. Mutual respect and appreciation. My heart stopped for a second. It was very cool to be a part of this event.

Other than that, I have just been hanging out. I am enjoying the peace, because things are gonna get hot and heavy here soon once we decide on a site. I made arrangements to visit one more site, because it seemed to good to be true. I'm doing that on Monday, but after that we should be good to go.

Adios!

Rain rain go away....

When your on the road and it begins raining there is no difference with driving an inch or a mile...you are totally soaked within the second.
Anyways, as you can imagine I got caught in the rain again. These were fat rain drops too. I know you guys know what i'm talking about. There is fat rain and skinny rain. This was fat rain. I decided to stop on the side of the road this time, because....I don't really know. I stopped and took a leak in the woods, because why not right? Whilst relieving myself, I found a sizable banana leaf that I decided to use as covering for my soaked backpack. I fancied myself a young Robinson Crusoe the way I was utilizing the island for my necessities. A few Dominicans that got caught in the rain decided to stop where I was as well and use my covering. We had a typical Dominican-American conversation:
Him: Where you from?
Me: The United States
Him: oh New York
Me: Sure...
Him: Nice bike
Me: (thinking to myself: great, just go ahead and take it what am I honestly going to do about it)  Yea I really like it, its fun to drive around, but it sucks to get stuck in the rain.
Him: Better lock it up or someone will steal it.
Me: (never heard that one before) Thanks, yea I have this huge chain to lock it up wherever I go.
Him: nice
Me: cool
Now that I have you on the edge of your seats......as the rain stopped and I decided to continue on I reached for my glasses that I had put in my rain jacket pocket.......they are not there.
Now, there is no way homeboy took my glasses because he never touched me, we never shook hands, nothing. Could he have stolen them? Because I am completely confused as to how I could have lost them when they were sealed in my jacket.
Him: What are you looking for.
Me: My glasses
Him: Where are they?
Me: (blank stare) I put them in my pocket and now they are gone.
Him: They probably came out a ways down the road, because when you drive a motorcycle  lots of air can push things out of your pockets.
Me: No, I just took them off when we were standing here (as i continue to look for them)
Him: Well i have to go. Check down the road a ways. Things can fly out when you are driving.
Me: but...ok. Thanks see you later.
After that useless exchange I spent the next 30 minutes trying to figure out how they could be gone. Eventually, I find them in  random area of the woods that I was never in. Did I black out, and in my unconscious state fling my glasses into the woods in a fit of incoherent rage? I don't think I will ever understand what happened that day......but I found them, gracias a dios, and I can see!

Rosalia and I stopped off at the beach before the torrential downpour began.....

I'm sorry for having wasted your time with that ridiculous rant on how I ALMOST lost my glasses. It can get lonely here.
I was up on the north coast this week finishing up my site visits, which are now officially done! I visited two sites that are very close to the beach :) There are a lot of non-profits in this area, because it is an attractive program for volunteers. Lots of touristy things. They were both interesting sites though, and neither community had access to potable water, having to walk as long as an hour round trip with their bucket.
Needless to say , there is tons of need and I have an even harder decision to make now that I have to narrow them all down.
I will be doing paperwork all weekend and then try to get a feel for what direction i think we should go. Keep praying that i make the right choice!

 Why sit in a chair?

 Many homes made of palm bark walls and palm frond roofs....with a tin door kicker.

Anybody fancy a poop?

Mountain Biking

I spit in my helmet the other day.....

Got something stuck in my mouth and my natural reaction (like anyones) was to spit out. I did not realize i had a helmet on so i splattered off the face mask and back onto my face. It was pretty gross. Now that you have that image in your head......

I am finishing up site visits, and traveled to remote Paradero yesterday. This campo is about an hour and a half up a mountain.....all dirt and gravel. It really tested my driving ability, which turned out to still lack experience. I felt so uncomfortable that I paid a motorcycle taxi driver to drive MY motorcycle back down the mountain after the visit with me on the back until we hit pavement. I was even more scared being on the back than driving myself, ha. Made it alive, gracias a Dios. View from the top:

So, since this site is so remote the project pretty much defines itself. It has a lot of potential with the infrastructure that already exists. We are not trying to re-invent the wheel or anything. The goal is to build off of what is already there. They have a "clinic" that is very poorly run and the one doctor and zero nurses are hardly ever there. When he is there, he does not seem qualified to treat patients as many have left the clinic confused and given medicine to treat symptoms they do not have. There is a lot of Doctor turnover as the on-site doctor is really a medical student who is doing an internship, and they change out every 9 months. The instability leads to a lot of uncertainty.
There are some health pomoters, but they are undertrained. The biggest advantage Paradero has is it leadership, and its mostly women. The ladies control this town, and since the men spend most of the day in the fields, this is a good thing. They are making positive changes in the community. They are involved in micro-business, and a community bank, which is phenomenal. The initiatve is impressive and i think FIMRC would be received well here. We shall see.

I have a few more sites this week to visit, but then I am pretty much done! So,Ii need to sit down and seriously evaluate everything I have taken in over the past few weeks, and narrow it down to 3-4 solid options. Pray that I make the right decision!

More photos from Paradero,

Home sweet home!

Adios!