It was Just a Dream Some of us Had

The Cubs. Sigh.

I have started my community based training. The health volunteers have been broken into 3 groups in 3 little suburbs outside of a small city in the southwest of the country. The southwest of this country is similar to the southwest of the US, climate wise. It’s dry here, and it doesn’t rain here as much as the rest of the country, but it’s also pretty humid. And beautiful. I have a lovely view of the mountains on my walk to and from my house.

I adore my new host family. I live with a dona, her daughter and her son. Her daughter is 17 years old and stunningly beautiful. Her son is 25 and has super intense eyes as many Dominicans do. They treat me well, feed me well, and don’t insist that I eat more than I want to, the latter being a nice change of pace. The price of having the good mountain views are the cat calls I get on the street. Unfortunately I’m getting a lot more of those here than I did in the capital. It’s disappointing, but also understandable as there are no Americans here, let alone any people who aren’t Dominican. I’m hoping the frequency with which I experience that will dissipate as more people get to know me and the other volunteers and get to see that we’re here for a while. And as I’m experimenting with my walks down the street in methods to decrease the frequency of them, I’m finding the two most successful methods are also the best for me. One is of course, walking down the street with a Dominican. And when that’s not an option, the other is smiling at everyone and saying hello. Other options I’m still not sure will work are wearing glasses and long pants. Some other volunteers noted that when they wore their glasses they were less likely to get bothered and that this was also the case when they traded their skirts for pants. That works well for me as I hate to wear skirts.

The general pace of life, unsurprisingly, is much slower here. For those of us that are used to living in a college apartment, in a home of 6 people, or more recently, in a barrio with an awesome host family, some incredible new friends nearby, and lots of training and busy evenings, the slower pace hasn’t necessarily been a natural progression. But, I’ve decided to be positive and become friends with all of neighborhood kids. So far it’s been going pretty well. Another volunteer is living at the house attached to the town fire station and a ton of super friendly kids hang out there all the time. They’ve adopted us and it’s wonderful. I haven’t been friends with an eight year old in about 16 years, and I’d forgotten how fun they are.

A few days ago the kids took us on a walk around town, looked at some cool stuff including the oldest home in this town, which is almost 200 years old. Then we worked on a project with them. It was to demonstrate one of the community diagnostic tools us volunteers are supposed to use here. We had the kids draw a map of their community in 2 groups, boys and girls, and then compare the maps. What is probably supposed to happen is that the boys would include their houses, the baseball field, the park, and the girls would include their houses, and probably leave out the baseball field. Well, that was more or less what happened. The girls drew the school (and made it look gigantic) and drew just one baseball field. The boys drew 2 baseball fields, all of the corner stores and the cemetery. Interesting, eh?

My little 8 year old friend saw me coming up the street today and she ran to greet me. I’m popular here. Who wouldn’t love the Dominican Republic ? You too can be popular. Come join us.