In the Moutains

We were one with nature. On the first day I was there, we went for a walk to the local health clinic (which is incidentally right next door to the brothel). To get there were got to walk through a river. I got dirty. I lost my flip flops in the dirt about 3 times and they snapped apart twice. Both times the volunteer was able to fix them for me. It rained on our walk, a big, fat, Caribbean rain. For those of us who haven’t experienced too many Caribbean rains, it’s the kind that splatters on your skin when it lands. And of course it’s warm.

Everyone recognized her and loved her. And by default, they loved me too. They told us we were sisters and didn’t believe us when we said we weren’t. They wanted me to come work with them. I would have loved it, the community was so welcoming. And there’s plenty of work to be done there. But I also like the idea that she works there, and I’ll work in my own community, and will be adopted by that community the way she has been in hers.

She has a health promoters group, local women and men that meet every so often to discuss getting the messages of good health out to the community of about 3,000. She has art classes with the kids in her neighborhood every Friday night. I was glad that I got to observe one of those classes. The kids were a little shy with me until I brought my camera out. Then they wanted to pose and act goofy, and then look at themselves having done so. They were in stitches over those pictures. She’s hoping to turn that art group into a sex ed class at some point. She passes out condoms but they mostly get turned into balloons by the little kids, so that will be a process. The task that I found most interesting was working with the community and Dominican government bureaucracy to get the people in her community their birth certificates. Without a Dominican birth certificate they can’t benefit from social aid, take the high school entrance exam or go to high school, get a state-id, a passport, own property, get legally married, and many other things. Many people in her community don’t have them, and I got to go with a group of 4 people and her to work on the process. They needed to compile a lot of paper work which took many trips to the little city near the community. The ride costs about 1.50 $US one way, which is far too expensive for many people to make, in fact one of the people we went with has only been once before. He accompanied the volunteer to get his photo taken a few weeks ago. She told me he didn’t know how to cross the street.

We were supposed to go in a truck that belongs to someone in the community so that we wouldn’t have to pay. The guy didn’t show and we ended up having to take the motorcycles down the mountains. Adults can only have their documents processed on Saturdays and only between 8AM and noon. What we didn’t know was that in order to have one’s documents processed, a person needs to get a ticket, of which there are 15 handed out on Saturdays. We had missed the mark on that. The volunteer and I went back to speak to someone about the misunderstanding and we found a woman who was not so helpful at first. She acted like she was doing us favors, explaining the process to us repeatedly, each time leaving out details that she had told us before. We offered to help with the processing, showing ourselves back into the record room. That was interesting; it consisted of 2 men sitting in front of a ton of big bookshelves filled with huge old books which contained scraps of paper resembling what might have once been coherent pages. In order to get a birth certificate they need to look through those books to ensure the person hasn’t already tried to get one. Unsurprisingly they wouldn’t let us look through the books. I’m sure they thought we were nuts for offering. Basically, the process is long, complicated, and the staff is underpaid and doesn’t care to help those who really don’t understand. I can’t imagine the people in the volunteer’s community being able to understand it without her there to fight for them. They were disappointed they’d paid to come down the mountain for nothing, gotten all dressed up for nothing. But honestly, they didn’t seem too surprised, which almost made it sadder. Many of those people haven’t been to that small city, let alone the capital, let alone another country.

So back to being one with nature… we went swimming in the river. It was cold, which was great. But we didn’t just swim. There’s no running water in this community so the river supplies the water for many things, cooking, swimming, laundry, and of course bathing. So, we bathed. It was hysterical because as soon as we got to the watering hole a group of about 15 boys showed up to watch. The volunteer kept insisting that they come in a join us, and they did eventually. As soon as we were done, they all took off. It’s so lovely to be the weekend entertainment for the locals.

The community is working on getting an aqueduct to their area. I was fortunate enough to be around when the community leaders who have been working on the project came over with a document in English that they wanted the volunteer to translate. We both weren’t quite sure what it was we were looking at. It was a report put together by some Catholic relief organization neither of us had heard of, and it described the work which had been done on the aqueduct up to this point. Eventually we got to the part where it detailed what is to come. The organization was more or less informing the community that it had plans to finish the project in the spring of 2008. This made the men extremely happy. But what was especially touching was when the volunteer translated one part of the text, a quote by the community leader. He was so touched that this relief organization had reported what he had said about the project, that the community was prepared to work hand in hand, arm with arm, and head with head, to bring water to all. He, and the volunteer, began to cry.

The volunteer later told me that that moment was one of 2 of her favorite moments since arriving in her community. I am so excited for them to get water, and promised that community leader that I would come back to visit when they initiate the aqueduct. He told me there would be 3 days of parties. Let’s hope that it gets there soon.

After we took the people into town to try to get their paperwork processed went to the market which was loud, big, and smelly, and then we met up with another volunteer and the trainee who was visiting her. We ate, and then did something I honestly wasn’t sure I ever wanted to do. We entered a legitimate Dominican women’s clothing store. We all tried on Dominican clothing and I insisted on taking photos because the clothes are meant to be seen, and because I didn’t think anyone would believe that I actually tried them on. (The volunteer I visited isn’t pregnant-you might notice her in a big green top, we just thought those shirts that fit like that are funny because they could hide a preggers tummy so well.) These clothes were the kind you see all the time in the capital and in that little city, but honestly, never ever in the campo, what I’ve been referring to as the volunteer’s community. There people wear hand me downs and lots of shirts from the U.S. It’s funny to see an older man in a shirt that says “Jump Rope for Heart” or little boy in a shirt that says “brat.”

So a question for you to ponder, would you like to live in a place with no running water, where you had to bathe in the river, and without a birth certificate? Think about it. If you answer yes to either of those 1st two, you might want to think about joining Peace Corps. And honestly, you all, no matter what you think now, you all could live like that.