Trying to keep you guys up to date...

I have been at my site a little over 2 weeks now. I feel very comfortable with my host family and also feel as though my Spanish may be getting a little better even. My host dad is super talkative and I am really appreciative of that because he is constantly trying to teach me things. Not only in Spanish but also about growing fruit trees and gardening. He is also planning to teach my how to put electricity in my house and how to set up a tube for water. Also, we are going to build a bed frame and other household items for me when it is getting closer to my time to live in my own house.

As far as my community diagnostic goes, I am feeling a little bit panicky. I have been going to all of my community meetings to keep trying to learn more but it is hard to imagine getting a report written and a presentation formed within the next 2 1/2 months. It seems like a lot of time right now, but when the days go by slow and the weeks fairly quickly it gets me a little worried. The only things that I have started to work on so far are my community map and some interviews to learn more about the financial situations of different families. It blows my mind that familys of 3-5 people are living off of 200-300 US dollars a month. We would not dream of that in the states! Although necessities are a cheaper here, $200-300 does not go far. So, you are probably wondering how these interviews will come into play for my community diagnostic. I am learning about how families spend and save their money so that I can see if there are ways that they could do things better. This will be included in my two year plan if I see it necessary to give "charlas" or, presentations, over financial planning and basic accounting skills that they can use. I have found that most families to do not really know what their actually income is because they don't have a set income from month to month. This is due to the fact that they are selling a few nuts or mangos here or giving a few moto rides there.

I am also continuing to attend community meetings and association meetings of my fruit producer group. I am trying to work on an organizational diagnostic with Andres, my project partner, but that is coming along slowly if at all. At the meetings, the members are constantly trying to talk at the same time and nothing every really gets accomplished. I think that I will be working a lot with getting them organized and getting them able to have more constructive meetings. An additional problem is that many of the members do not attend meetings.

Right now there is a volunteer COSing (close of service) in Dajabon about 15 minutes away from me. Yesterday I attended her going away party that was thrown by the association of bee keepers that she was working with for the last 2 years. They presented her with so many plaques and certificates it was unreal. I hope I will be able to figure out a way to make such an impact on my association, but right now it seems like I can't even figure out with is going on! Other volunteers that have been here awhile tell me that I should not stress about it because this is how everyone feels at the beginning...clueless! :) So, I am trying to just keep calm and not worry about it too much. It will all come together eventually.

As for all of you--keep saving those pennies to come visit. I really think that this is a once in a lifetime opportunity to come see and learn about developing country first hand...and take a few trips to different beaches as well. Love you all and miss you all.

Life @ my site

I swore in as a volunteer about a week ago and came back to my site on Friday. I think it is going to be a lot harder getting started in my community that I had originally thought before getting out here. I have no idea where to begin as far as the fruit producer group goes but I have spoken with some people about the problems that exist and also was giving a "course" on how they plant and grow the fruit here. Basically there are 3 parts to growing the fruit. To my understanding, first they plant the seeds for the fruit in bags in something called a "jimanadero" and after 15 days they replant in the "vivero". The vivero is somewhat of a nursery where the seeds continue to grow for 45 days and then they go to the fields to continue growing until the fruit is ripe. I will probably continue to learn the process for this, as of right now that is the most that I got out of the "course" that a man named Gregorio taught me.

Right now I have decided to just focus myself on getting to know members of the community better and try to look for opportunities for secondary projects. So far I have taken notice that many families do not have bathrooms (latrines) and this could be a possibility for a project later on if I can find the resources to do it. Also, some members of the community have approached me about wanting to learn English and I think that that could be an option to start here in the upcoming month. For now, I plan to just settle in to my community and talk to people about their needs and wants. There are also some things going on in and around my community right now and some events have taken place that make me a little nervous about my safety and I know that I need to take precautions for the time being until I know my surroundings better. Thats all for now..:) Stay tuned for more.

My site visit

If one could have seen me a week ago (only my fellow PC Trainees truly know), mentally I was somewhat of a mess. I could not stop thinking negatively about my site. I was disappointed that I had not been placed in a mountainous area, but ultimately I knew that it would only be the people there that would make or break my site. I tried endlessly to think positive but I was pretty disappointed that I had not been put in a more beautiful area of the country. I told myself I needed to do a 380 and remind myself why I joined the Peace Corps. I joined my own personal growth as an individual, but at the same time I am here because I want to help and improve the lives of others. I had to remind myself that this is not about me. So, with that as my mindset I headed out to meet my project partner in a country outside of the city of Dajabon. It was approximately a 6 hour bus ride from Santo Domingo, which means that I am one of the volunteers further away from the Peace Corps office here in the capital. I am also pretty isolated because there is not another volunteer in my training group that is very close to me. The closest volunteers to me are in Monte Cristi which is about an hour away from my site.

Instead of being picked up by my project partner, I was picked up in the capital by a woman named Dora and a man named Polito. Dora was awesome and we ended up hitting it off right away. I knew that we were going to get along great when I told her my feet hurt from wearing heels, she offered me hers. Dominicans are all about sharing, some a situation like sharing shoes is pretty typical.. Turns out she is my neighbor and also is a member of the Mothers Group (Grupo de los Madres) in my community. The other man that came to pick me up is one of the fruit producers that I will be working with in my town. He seems like he will be a very hard worker and a great motivator in the community. I found out that I will not only be working with mangos, but also a various other fruits including avacados, bananas, passion fruit, grapefruit, ect.

Arriving at my site, I met my actual project partner, Andres, who was super intense and seems to be very motivated to make improvements for the association of fruit producers. After speaking with Andres, I have discovered that the main problem that the producers are facing in the community is that the Haitians are crossing the border and selling the same fruits at a super low price, which is driving down the price of the fruit so low that the farmers in my communities are not making enough money on their fruit. Also, they are not able to sell all of the fruit that they produce, so they lose a large quantity of the fruit every year that is not consumed. Andres and I will be doing a diagnostic and a census of the fruit in my community and the surrounding communities that are all part of the organic fruit association. I attended a meeting of one of the producer groups, which was amazing. I was gifted with big bags of avocados and grapefruit and was told that I was like a daughter to them now and that they would be looking after me. So don’t worry mom, I have at least 10 old men watching my back to make sure I stay out of trouble and don’t get involved with people I cannot trust. Eventually, it sounds like our principle goal will be planning and implementing a small factory where they will be able to process their fruit so that it will last longer and so that they are able to sell it. This would also mean that they would be able to create new products such as juice or wine and could potentially sell it in the Dominican Haitian market in Dajabon. This could also open doors for them to export at some point. I feel like there is a lot of work and planning that will need to be done in the next 2 years for this to happen, and certainly a lot of letter writing for grants to even get the funds to. In addition, during my community diagnostic over the next three months I will be searching for other smaller projects to work on.

On the home front, my host family is great. I live with a couple named Rolando and Suni who have 2 children, Muneca and Reynaldo, 17 and 19, respectively. Suni’s mother, Zarra, also lives with us. The house is small, we don’t have running water and electricity is spontaneous. I take bucket baths outside behind a piece of tin that doesn’t really cover much and if someone from the street knew to look, they would definitely get a show. I just throw the water over my head and hope I am not being spied on. We also have a latrine, but I get a little cup for the middle of the night so that I don’t have to go all the way outside to go to the bathroom if I wake up. Our back yard is abundant with cherry, coconut, mango, avocado, orange and grapefruit trees. I’ve already been told by Rolando to never hesitate to yell out when I want a piece of fruit. The family also has a “colmado” attached to their house. Colmados are basically tiny little shops with gum, suckers, rice, noodles, butter, oil, eggs, ect. People can go and buy exactly the quantity that they need. I also have introduced Scrabble and Uno to my family, which have both been a big hit and huge ice breakers for me to get to know everyone. Muneca and I also went running together to the river. It is a nice place to run and I hope to get in better shape while I am here. I also think I have already found a house to rent when I can finally live solo in 3 months! It needs some fixing up but I can get an advance from Peace Corps from my settling in allowance to do that. I realized during the visit that all of my worries before going to my site were pretty pointless and not realistic at all. The countryside is quite beautiful even if it wasn’t the mountains that I had originally hoped for. I can’t wait to get back to my site Friday to be honest, I couldn’t be more excited.

Wednesday is the big day to swear in officially as volunteers! Time sure does fly..I can’t believe I have been here already for 2 ½ months almost. That means 24 months to go…which is still a hell of a long time. SO, with that in mind…don’t forget..packages are always welcome! So are phone calls, I just got a phone and would really love to hear from you all. It is 33 cents a minute for me to call there, which is really not something that I can afford on a volunteer budget of 30 cents a day. So if anyone is willing to make the splurge, its cheaper on your end to call me. Shoot me off an email/facebook message if you would like the number! Love you all. Peace.

The end of CBT

Wow, time sure does fly. I can´t believe Community Based Training is almost over. I am going to miss the fruit trees, tropical mountainside and eating avocado and super delicious bananas everyday out here in the country side when we head back to the capital. We have done so much in CBT I really don´t know where to begin. I didn´t do a very good job of describing much of the training process in my last post so I am going to be using this post to do just that. The principal idea that Peace Corps wants us to grasp is to see a vision for the community. They want us to be able to use the development idea of teaching sustainable ideas to the community. Basically that means that we need to serve as facilitators and educators in our community so that they will be able to continue doing what we teach them for theirselves after we leave in 2 years. For example, we have visited an artisan group in this region of the country (the Cibao region) that makes tons of detailed wooden carving projects by hand and sell them. Their main market is tourists so that have worked with hotels in Puerta Plata to bring buses of tourists to see their site. They have had Peace Corps volunteers in the past that have helped to teach them how to do websites, marketing, financial planning, ect. Since we are living amongst a fertile land of Cocoa plants, we have also visited 2 chocolate producers, one of which being much more developed than the other. The further developed one is now focused on getting their site conditions improved to be as sanitary as possible and also by wearing hairnets and clean shoes on the floor so eventually they may be able to export. Also, they are trying to turn their site into an ecotourism spot to generate more income. The smaller chocolate factory is struggling because they can´t produce all of the time because of the constant power outages that the majority of the country faces. Also, they do not have as big of a market span and their product is not as well known. A Peace Corps volunteer´s job is to go in and start to help with the marketing by teaching them the promotional skills that they need. Examples could be websites, fliers, brochures, business cards, ect.

At the technical training classes we have really just focused on the basic accounting, marketing and business principles that we may be using as volunteers. Right now, we are working with business plans and next week will be attending a business plan competition. The reason why we are doing this is because we may be assisting youth and young adults in the community to write business plans to submit to the regional business plan competition that takes place once a year. This competition is great for people of smaller communities because it helps them get more hands on experience of how to organize a business on paper and they can recieve start up money for the business and-or scholarships if their plan is one of the better ones submitted. With the expertise of a Peace Corps Volunteer like myself, hopefully I can help a winner. Just kidding...

Lastly, yesterday my friend Ben and I gave a ¨Charla¨ which is basically a presentation to a group in the community over something that could help their group. We chose to do an income generation project with the ¨Grupo Juventir¨ which consists of young people in the community who try to create activities like small fiestas, playing movies for the community since many do not have tv-electricity, ect. The product we selected as an income generator was banana bread. Although this product could be anything ranging from floor cleaner to Vicks Vapor Rub..we will have the recipes and can get the chemicals to do it thanks to Peace Corps. We taught them how they could use this product to generate income for the group by selling it in the community. We went over the fixed and variable costs to select a price, talked about doing a feasibility study to see if there is demand in the community, ect.

Anyway more to come on my Peace Corps life. I am headed back to Santo Domingo Sunday for the business plan competition. I will be getting a cell phone on October 28th, so please buy calling cards so you can call me..I really want to hear what is going on with everyone. It is more expensive for me to call there...very expensive. I will repay with wonderful souvenirs or a free place to stay with out electricity when you visit.

Strange dreams

Well its been awhile since I have been able to sit down and write out a nice long blog for all of you guys back home. First of all, I can´t believe I have already been gone for over a month. I miss you all dearly! Unfortunately since my last post we have had 4 volunteers in our training class ET.aka.Early Terminate. It is sad to see them go but I think they all made the right decision for them. Things have been hectic here in Community Based Training aka CBT. Our director of the Community Economic Development sector, Tim, is great! He is a lot of fun and we are all learning a lot from him and each other as we are plowing through some of the basic business skills and community diagnostic skills for when we are sent to our own sites. Hopefully it will all come in handy. I live in a small community called Arroyo Blanco, in English that is White Stream basically. My family is great! At first everyone was very quiet around me, quite possibly because I was only the second American that they had ever seen. The first being a PCV that had worked on a water project and got running water going for most members of the community. Strange to think that only 5 years ago this small community did not have running water. The food is great here in the country side, so great that I broke a zipper on a pair of jeans today. Anyway, although there are 15 of us in the CED program, we are all divided into different communities based on our language skills and we have a language instructor that also lives in the community with us for Spanish class each day. I am the only PCV girl in my community, with 3 other guy trainees so that always makes things interesting. I must admit, I feel a little silly when I am the only girl playing soccer-baseball with the Dominicans and 3 other PCV´s but you gotta live a little right? The other volunteers are all pretty far away but at least I get to see them when we have technical classes. It will be interesting to see how things will be when I am ALL ALONE in a community!

Besides all of this, my Spanish has improved from a 6 to a 7.5 out of 10 on the ACTFL scale which I am pretty happy with! I feel more confident with my Spanish now than when we first arrived in the capital, although the campo accent is tough getting used to I am understanding more each day. Bucket baths are actually not as bad as one would imagine either...and I´ve stopped wearing makeup. Besides that, all of us volunteers are having the most wild vivid dreams because of these darn anti malaria pills...I wake up every morning and its always something new. Its kind of like I have two lives.

Today was amazing. We went to 27 charcos and climbed the rocks-cliffs and jumped off of them into the refreshing blue turquoise water. I felt a little silly in the life jacket and helmet but it was still SO refreshing!! Especially after a long week of Spanish class and tech training, it was a well deserved trip.

Tonight I will spend the evening dancing merengue and bachata in the living room of my barn like new home celebrating my host dad and brothers birthdays. It should be an eventful evening, with our without electricity. Most likely without. Again, just like the bucket baths, not nearly as bad as you would imagine. Stay tuned, Peace and Love!

Visit to Los Cocoas

I just returned from a 4 day visit to a volunteer site in Los Cocoas, San Cristobal. Each trainee was assigned a different site in their specific sector (Health, Community Economic Development, Youth or Water Sanitation) so that we could see what the life of a volunteer is like. After taking a bus to San Cristobal, I had to take another bus to the Los Cocoas. I knew as soon as I took off in this bus I was headed for an adventure! The scenery on the ride up to the site was breathtaking. I felt like I was in a tropical jungle winding up to the top of a thousand beautiful mountains. When I pictured being a volunteer on the tropical island of Dominican Republic, I never could have dreamt of such a beautiful place. I mean I thought beaches and palm trees but I had not thought as much about the countryside. By the time I got to the site, I was exhausted from traveling because it took me about 6 hours to get there because the buses here do not leave at specific times, they just leave whenever they fill up. I learned a lot while I was there. The volunteer I visited was living by herself in a small simple shed like house with a tin roof. It was not anything glamorous. I am now an expert at bucket baths with ice cold water, so if anyone needs any pointers back home, let me know. The volunteer I visited is working with a coffee company called "Cafe Esperanza", which is a DELICIOUS coffee that should probably start exporting to the U.S.A. RIGHT NOW so that I can drink it all day everyday. I was able to see the how they process the coffee beans through the different stages until packaging. It was quite interesting and way more complicated than I ever thought it could be. She also was working with a hospital that was pretty much dormant before she got there. She has gotten several doctors to come work there and her mom donated and sent a bunch of hospital supplies to the community from the U.S. The government here makes med students do a year of free service after graduating, so she was able to get in contact with the right people for that. She also teaches English classes and does a workout group on the side 6 days a week.

Another volunteer that works as an environmental volunteer lived 20 minutes from her site, so we went to an inauguration of a stove project. It was really interesting to see how much Peace Corps volunteers mean to small communities because several important members of the community were there to give speeches and several Donas cooked for everyone. Basically her stove project was that she was able to get people in the community together to help them construct 40 stoves that do not use the wood and are bad for the environment and cause damage to lungs and so on.

Well, this week I have my first test for training thus far and will be heading out of Santo Domingo for CBT (Community Based Training) for CED (Community Economic Development) in Altamira in the north. I am super excited because our CED director, Tim, is going to plan an outing for us to visit 27 charcos (waterfalls) which is super beautiful, and you can watch a video of it on youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DwS6FTdtJOs

Well thats all I got for now, stay tuned for more :) Peace!

This is LA VIDA!!

I have to admit, overall I am having a great time here in the DR. I love my family, the training center is great, our training staff is excellent and I could not ask for a better group of trainees. Despite all of this, life in another culture can be extremely difficult. I had my first breakdown this morning which I am sure is only the first of many. Lets just say some female problems and not being able to find my keys this morning sent me into a fit of tears on and off for an hour. Sleeping in a bed of sweat last night didn't help matters. This is something one should know before ever living in the Dominican culture, is the saying "se fue la luz". Yes, that is Spanish for the lights went out. Happens AT LEAST 30 times a day. It really is a fantastic life, and I am not even being sarcastic. In the U.S. the majority of us would not dream of this. It is really weird because I don't think that half of us Americans realize how much we have in comparison to the developing world.

Also, most of us can remember times when there was more litter in the streets. And then the litter campaigns. And then the fines came. Just like seat belts being just an idea, and then were proven to save lives, and now a law. And the fines. So we obey because it is better for the environment and it is safer. We discussed these concepts in training today because people here do not wear seatbelts, although there is a law, it is not enforced. There is litter pooring out of the rivers here in Santo Domingo into the Carribean and it is very saddening to see this. We discussed how if the streets and the rivers were kept clean, tourism may go up here in Santo Domingo and help create more jobs and even better paying jobs for those living in poverty. 40% of Dominicans currently live in poverty.

Wherever I end up living for my 2 year community project, I would like to help create some kind of campaign to help clean up the area that I am living in. Get people involved and help them understand why it is important to treat the environment better.

Tomorrow night I think I might go to the "Car Wash" with several other volunteers. The car washes, yes actual car washes, are where people hang out and drink a few cervezas. :) I am excited to go and see what it is all about and spend some time getting to know the other volunteers outside of training.

*Ands*