camping on the beach with barrio kids, an experience I won't forget

One of the Presidents of the Juntos de Vecinos (neighborhood groups) that I work with has an amazing heart and energy that never tires. Hence, he organizes annual camps for kids from his barrio--really poor kids that never go anywhere or do much of anything. He does this without any formal funding--just solicits donations from anyone and everyone in order to have sufficient food. Tents were borrowed from his church and some women came along to do all the cooking.

This year, the camp was to take place in Macao, the closest beach to us that Dominicans still have access to. I offered to help, excited for the opportunity to camp on the beach and organize activities to teach kids about the environment, and especially coastal areas. I enthusiastically planned crafts and games, bought art supplies and packed my hammock for four days of beach and camping. What could be better?!? Well...

-30 kids, age 4-15, never been camping before, and growing up in a rough barrio with often teenage parents, hence do not receive a lot of attention

-SAND! SAND! SAND! in my hair, my food, my pillow, my ears

-bugs--mosquitos and some tiny thing that doesn't respond to repellent and hurts & itches more than mosquitoes

-clinginess-these kids all cuddled with me at all times--sounds cute, but not in the heat, hence I "slept" in my hammock with the bugs

I could carry on about the so-called challenges of this camp, but the truth is that although I was so tired, dirty and sometimes frustrated, it was wonderful! The kids who hardly ever go anywhere had a chance to play in the water for hours, examine crabs and shells, listen to my charlas about self-esteem and environment, play games that involved pretending they were lobsters, paint, build sand castles, eat marshmellows, and stare at the stars.

There was a moment at dusk when some kids and I were walking on the beach and one of them asked me how old I was. 25, I responded ... thinking about how I used to dream about my mid-20's--hoping that I would be doing something really cool. I am doing something cool -- a gorgeous beach, speaking Spanish, trying to share my love of the environment with kids ...

PLEASE check out the pix from our trip! http://picasaweb.google.com/colleengatliff/20078BeachCampingInMacao

this is for real

So for the first 3 months we were just trainees. Nervous kids stumbling through Spanish and scared of public transportation. People told us where to be and when. We pointed out people carrying chickens under their arms, cringed at new starchy roots for dinner and had to reference a map when someone told us they were from San Juan de la Maguana.

We graduated… it was exciting, we felt accomplished and proud to be PCVs. We’d passed minimal conversational Spanish, survived CBT, built friendships, and even wore our Peace Corps DR pin for a day or two.

Then we ventured to our sites. We took full advantage of our cell phone “flota” as a social support network, learned to count ants on a wall, and drank endless cups of coffee while getting to know our new neighbors. All of this coffee drinking was supposed to have a purpose—we were conducting community diagnostics. Peace Corps tells us that we are not to begin any projects in the first 3 months—just do your diagnostic. So, it was a fantastic excuse for what often felt like aimless wandering and chatting.

Well, I wrote up a diagnostic and then went to Santiago with a friend from my site, Kassiel, to present it at the Peace Corps 3 month IST (In Service Training). All the PCVs presented our diagnostics to each other and sat through workshops on project planning and grant writing. Kassiel then left to return to Veron and our entire group of 31 went to a retreat center in the mountains for 5 days of training, relaxing and idea sharing. I so loved getting to know my group better. We’re from so many different places and have such different experiences. Who knew that I’d learn to play Pinochle (sp?), have a friend from South Dakota, learn to create a makeshift chai from colmado ingredients or spend an hour listening to a Texan explain techniques for making solar ovens?

The workshops were interesting, even if they hardly applied to my project. We learned to make an improved wood burning stove –which involved lots of mud! Learned about coffee in the DR—and the fact that it is controlled by a monopoly that offers ZERO incentives for improved quality or organics, hence it is a country with perfect coffee climate, but poor quality coffee. Bummer. A Sunday afternoon at the river was thoroughly enjoyed. Note my favorite picture from that day: PCV chicks tanning and reading Cosmos!

Anyway, the week was great, I learned a lot and enjoyed organically grown romaine lettuce (my first romaine since I arrived in this country!) And now, I am back in my site and I have no excuse of “I’m working on my diagnostic” … it’s time to plan projects, solicit funds if needed, and get movin’. Happily, I am moving at a Caribbean speed. It’s exciting, as it is unlike anything I’ve ever done but at the same time I am bringing my skills and experiences to the table. I feel like I am forming a niche, and that feels good. This niche of mine is probably best explained by Kassiel, who said to someone at Peace Corps—“Colleen is here to be a bridge for us between the hotels and the people of the community.” Yikes, that's a big job!

(note: if you can read Spanish and want to see my diagnostic, just ask. If you can’t read in spanish and are really interested, ask nicely and I’ll translate it)

power and such

On Friday, my project partner Maria was inaugurated as the first mayor of Veron. The event was filled with fanfare, champagne, a helicopter, and lots of important people.

A member of the national newspaper told me he forgot his camera and asked me to take photos for him, so I acted not only as the token Americana, but also as press! One of the presidential candidates, Amable Aristy, and his daughter Karina, mayor of Higuey, arrived in a helicopter, which was very exciting for everyone involved. Maria gave a speech that she had practiced for hours with me and answered questions of the press. I enjoyed the opportunity to chat with community members and continued to be amazed at the fact that I am a PCV drinking champagne! The people of power in this community are the people of tourism as this area is the largest tourism destination in the Caribbean and the highest grossing province in the DR. So, many presidents of hotels were present supporting this new effort.

Maria is busy setting up her new office and finding out what funds she will have.
Now, with her as mayor and Veron as a Municipality, we will apparently have access to a lot more resources for basic needs such as trash services and school buildings. I am still trying to understand exactly how things work and what role I can play in all of this. It looks like I am going to help link the community groups to the Ayuntamiento (mayor’s office) in order to improve communication and distribute resources, but how that happens I don’t quite understand (and I don’t know that anyone does!)
A few weeks ago I found out about a community group that is trying to build a school in a barrio where there are no public schools. They had a piece of land donated and a little bit of money. I told Maria and expressed interest in helping this group, she told Ayuntamiento in Higuey, and at the inauguration, they announced that they would be building this school. (Although the Secretary of Education is not involved, so therefore we’ll have a school but no teachers or supplies…). Gotta love the system here!

Adventures with Tropical Fruit

This post is dedicated to the people who went blueberry picking in Jacksonville on my birthday, you know who you are. I’ll gladly admit that you made me very jealous with your stories of billions of pounds of blueberries, but now, Ha! – I have passion fruit, papaya, mangos, zapotes, and pineapple—all grown near me. YUM

Although my initial vision of Peace Corps was living in a tiny campo with an abundance of free fruit and that is not quite my situation, I do live in a country of unbelievable fruits and generous people who share (and when all else fails, I can buy fruit off the side of the road).

Our adventures shall begin with chinola (passion fruit)—an ugly yellow fruit with an even uglier center and a very bitter taste, but when made into a juice, with incredible amounts of sugar, is delicious! Dona Juana gave me a lesson in juice making, which you can view here: http://picasaweb.google.com/colleengatliff/ChinolaJuice It’s quite a process, but well worth it in the end. Warning to men: the lore has it here that you should be careful with chinola. Consume too much and you’ll lose your virility. Oh—and I almost forgot—chinolas can also be made into margaritas at Mexican restaurants in the Capital—which is how I celebrated my birthday.

Adventure dos: Guineo. Simply, banana. They’re sweet, they’re fresh, they’re really cheap, and they’ve never seen an airplane. Twice now I’ve made banana bread (pan de guineo) for my family—using the oven that no one else uses—and both times while the oven was heating a giant rat has scurried out from under it, causing many screaming folks, including me, to flee the house. I’ve named him Guineo. The bread though is delicious and we eat it for breakfast sometimes.

Adventure tres: MANGOS, I saved the best for last! I waited very patiently for mango season and it’s finally here. I have learned to eat them without a knife, a process that involves peeling the skin with your teeth as you eat, careful to keep up with the juice, or else you’ll have a very sticky forearm. My first few times with this involved me nearly needing to bathe myself afterwards! But alas, I am now an expert and the world is full of mangos. Happy day. One afternoon two of my fishermen friends and I took one of their motorcycles on a mango hunt. We climbed through barbed wire and found a tree full of ripe fruit. One of the guys climbed it and shook branches, resulting in a literal raining of mangos. I stayed under the tree, guarding my head and collecting mangos as they fell (with one hand of course, as the other was occupied eating a mango). I ate 3 or 4 during that little excursion and carried home overflowing bags, which were used for mango batidas (milk, mango & ice in a blender), then shared mangos with “todo el mundo” and still ate 1 or 2 a day for about a week. Yum!

true story

Her question to me was did I go to the sea often?
Why I asked
You smell of it, she said
No I replied
But thought to myself—it’s because I am from there
This based on and inspired by the actual incident mentioned above, which occurred the other day in our public clinic, and also one of my favorite Brian Andreas poems:
“He kept a piece of algae behind his ear to remind him of his roots. A million years ago every place was a little place by the sea, he would say & my mind would go blank & I would swim through the day without a care in the world & it all seemed so familiar that I knew I would go back someday to my own little place by the sea.”

what is it that I actually do?

My last real entry about what I was up to was a pathetic attempt at putting a positive spin on a very frustrating month. The home I was living in was, well, difficult (ask if you want to hear the story!), I wasn’t quite sure what I was doing, and my project partners that I have been assigned to work with were extremely busy with meetings and political campaigns. Things have since turned around and I am really loving what I'm doing.

(side note on politics: Peace Corps mandates that PCVs avoid all things political. With that said, one of my project partners is the sindico (mayor) of our town and is very involved in a campaign for a presidential candidate. The general elections are next year, but primaries were held a week and a half ago. It seems that her involvement will continue and the candidate may be bringing helpful resources to our town. It’ll be an interesting balance for me to maintain.)

Back to what’s happening in Veron, Dominican Republic. First, a history lesson: in the 1970’s a few investors discovered what is now called the Coconut Coast. At that time, this far east part of Hispanola was a quiet place with pristine beaches and a few fishing communities. These investors purchased a large chunk of land and named it “Punta Cana” after the Cana Palm that is quite abundant. Punta Cana developed into a multi-hotel enterprise with golf courses and enormous residential areas. This development brought attention to the coast, and now 30 years later there are over 20,000 hotel rooms, almost all of which are all-inclusive. Punta Cana is only one part of the area, most of all-inclusives are in an area called Bavaro, although most say they are part of Punta Cana. Here's touristy info about the area, for you to get an idea. http://www.debbiesdominicantravel.com/eastcoast.html

See below touristy map of area. I live in Veron, but spend a lot of my days near the Punta Cana area. (southern area of map)

As the tourist industy has developed here. ;ittle by little, people that lived on the coast have been relocated. Unfortuntely, development of community infrastructure (schools, waste disposal, healthcare, etc.) has lagged behind. Now we're playing catch-up.

Many of the relocated people were/are fishermen. There is still a group of people that fish, but their access to the ocean is very limited. I’ll explain more details of this in a future entry.

Basically, the situation now is this: the coast is filled with hotels, million-dollar homes and golf courses. There is a reef that runs along the coast that is in pretty rough shape. The Punta Cana Group, which has an ecological foundation, has contracted with the University of Miami to conduct a 2-year study of the reef. The study includes 3 dimensions: 1. a very technical water-analysis part, looking at nutrients and algae, 2. a coral and fish evaluation, and 3. a socio-economic project examining fishermen’s livelihoods. The end goal: find solutions to preserve the reef.

I will work with the University of Miami project mostly on the socioeconomic part. The idea is to first understand how/ why/ when/ how much/ etc. the fishermen fish, and then together establish best practices for preserving the reef. One such idea is to develop a Marine Protected Area (MPA). People from Reef Check are working with me to explore this idea and how it has been successfully implemented with fishermen communities in other countries. I have begun to breach the topic with some of the fishermen and it’s gone over well so far, which has surprised me. Right now, anything that can be fished is being fished—tiny parrotfish, small lobster (even though it’s the closed season), you name it. So right now, I’m spending a lot of time at the marina and in the water with the fishermen—learning about their lives and establishing confianza (trust). There’s a great group of 5 guys that I spend a lot of time with. They are all “buceos” or snorkelers. They don snorkel gear and a spear gun and spend the entire day swimming to and from the reef shooting fish. Their catches are strung on a wire that stays afloat with a makeshift buoy. It’s an interesting life! Other fishermen use air compressors with a long tube and spend hours at over 100 feet (umm…Bends, anyone?) shooting larger fish—groupers, red hinds, snapper, and occasional baby nurse sharks.

When I’m not with fishermen, I am spending time with my project partner Maria or with various community groups. There is a small group of people that is trying to build a school in a barrio that does not have a public school. I’m helping them get organized so that we can look for funding and the support of the Secretary of Education. Maria is involved in a lot, and I help where I can. There is a disaster mitigation committee for the entire zone, which I’ll be involved in.

At the same time as these other projects, I am supposed to be conducting a community diagnostic, so I spend time interviewing people and collecting information when I can. It’s a busy life, but I’m really glad for it… and take “busy” with a grain of salt. I’m busy sitting. … and spending sufficient time at these unbelievable beaches.

marlin

Below is a 4 1/2 foot white marlin caught by this fisherman in a boat similar to what you see behind him. He caught and fought this marlin simply with fishing line in his hands. He does not use a pole! He said he snagged 3 others that day, but this was the only one he was able to fight to bring in. He held it up for a photo like this because he's seen that in the nearby marina where there is currently a marlin tournament being held. The people competing in the tournament are using half million dollar boats...