La Travesia

After a long journey including 2.5 weeks of training in the capital, .5 weeks of a volunteer visit, and 5.5 weeks of community based training I am finally in my site! Now, don’t get too excited, I’m only here for a 4 day visit, but at least I’m here!

Tuesday November 13th, exactly 2 months after we arrived in country was our project partner day. What that means is that the people we all, now 50 of us, are working with, came into the capital to meet us and take us home. I was told that it would be one of the scariest days of my experience in this country, and as you can probably imagine it was a day full of many emotions for many people. Those emotions ranged from stressful excitement, to emotionally nerve-wracking for just about everyone. I wouldn’t say it was super scary, and felt nervous for about 1 minute. Lately I’ve just been doing pretty darn well at talking myself out of feeling anything but happy. My project partners arrived on time, though they had one of the furthest journeys of anyone; they were wise and came in a day early. We met when I looked over and saw a familiar name on the name tag of a well-dressed, friendly-looking woman. She soon introduced me to another woman from our town and we fell into conversation very soon after.

After some Peace Corps-organized activities we were able to take off for our sites. We took a taxi to the bus station, then took a bus to Santiago. From there we took a taxi to another bus station. After that bus ride we got into the car belonging to my new host brother. This all took about 5 hours. After about a 45 minute drive in his car we arrived at my new host family’s house. It was after dark, but I could tell it was a very lovely home and I was extremely well-greeted by everyone. As I was eating dinner and conversing with my host mother I started to hear the sound of singing voices and turned around to see a group of neighbors who had gathered with my project partners to welcome me to the town in song. Although I was very tired, I was of course, very touched. My project partners were the most enthusiastic during all of the Peace Corps activities and seem very enthusiastic to have me here now. I feel quite blessed and think I have every reason to hope that this continues. I feel certain that it will.
From what I can tell of the north so far, it is as beautiful as everyone describes. As we were driving towards the site I saw the greatest sunset over white clouds and a flat mountain range, which were framed by fields of palm trees. My house is situated near the town school. Up the road from my house is a road that is situated just below a beautiful set of rolling hills covered in trees and tall grass. The town consists of approximately 100 houses, with an estimated 400 inhabitants. They are mostly Dominicans, but there is a Haitian population as well, including one family that lives right next door. When I asked my host mother about them, she told me they speak Spanish, work in agriculture around here, and pretty much keep to themselves.
The town in general seems pretty well off economically. From what I’ve seen, I live in one of the fanciest homes here, and it’s nicer than either of the homes I’ve lived in so far in this country. Of course we have neighbors that live in not much more than glorified shacks as well, just as exist all over the country. But this might be the first time I’ve seen such a nice house that belongs to someone who isn’t a foreigner, a politician, or rumored to be a drug dealer. The only reason I can see so far for the wealth is a cheese factory (yes I know, you’re totally jealous of me right now). I’ve been a few times to visit it and it’s pretty nifty. They make 3 kinds of cheese that they seal in red wax and cover in red paper with a black and yellow sticker. I’ll be sure to find out if any of it makes its way to the US so you can all try some. My host father owns some land where he and his son graze cattle for milk (and probably cheese as well) and my host mother is a school teacher at the school in our town and in the nearby larger town.

When I say nearby, I don’t actually mean it. We are a good 45 minute bumpy ride from the nearest highway to the big city near here (Santiago), and a good 25 minute bumpy ride from the nearest town. That town, truth be told, is a beach town. Poor me, I know. I got to go and visit it the other day with another volunteer who is stationed there. Poor her, I know. She is an environment volunteer and was very adventurous and hopped on a moto to come find me in my town even though she’d never been up this way before and didn’t know where I lived or where I’d be. So of course I had to reciprocate with joining her for an exersion to the beach. It was beautiful. She said the water was colder than usual but let me tell you it couldn’t have been lower than 85 degrees. It was my first time in the Caribbean Sea since arriving here and it was gorgeous! The only downside was that I stepped on a very large sea creature of some sort which I am praying was a large fish, but which the volunteer told me was likely a baby shark. Yikes.

But back to my village… we are pretty isolated being so far from other towns and we don’t have a cell phone signal. We do have electricity about half of the time and running water most of the time (and my family even has a faucet above my head in the shower! I haven’t had that before in this country.) There is plenty of room to move around in the house as well, we even have a hallway. I have a room with 2 beds (although one is a crib, I use it for storage and could probably have a visitor spend the night there) and we have 2 bathrooms in the house. There are a few places to sit and gather indoors but it is much more pleasant to sit outside especially because my host family has a yard with grass and bushes and trees and flowers and everything. There is one tree in particular that is huge and old and provides a ton of shade that I know I’m going to love.

What all of this means for me is that in addition to feeling pretty comfortable for the time being, I can only move down from here, which might help me to change my mind about living in my own home at the end of the 3 required months of a homestay. It might also prove difficult to find a home. The volunteer I visited lived in a much larger community and she had only 2 homes to pick from to live in. The volunteer who I just recently visited who lives on the beach lives in a community about the size of mine, or perhaps a bit larger and there were no homes for her to live in so she decided to stay with her host mother. There are positives and negatives to both living with a host family for the whole 2 years and living alone , but it is certainly not something I need to decide anytime soon.

After living with 2 incredible host families I was beginning to get nervous that my luck would run up. Well I am so pleased to say that it hasn’t. This host family is different from the others in that they seem to be a lot more enthusiastic and are a lot less shy, for lack of a better word. I have my dona, my don, and a host brother who is 23, and who used to play for the Washington Nationals summer league here in the DR. We also have a cooking and cleaning helper who is pretty friendly as well. My dona hurt her back a while ago and hired this woman to help out around the house. Sadly, who don’t have any pets, but my dona did tell me that there’s a horse somewhere and that they’d like to get another pet sometime soon. I have seen quite a few cute animals here, so perhaps I can talk them into letting me get one. Having a pet here, as I’ve mentioned, is not only a huge responsibility in terms of money and time, and in finding someone to look after the pet when you leave the site (which is usually at least once a month,) but also in terms of the risk involved. Dogs fight almost constantly, and the ones that are able to survive the fights and the lack of ever being fed are doing all they can to survive and are likely ruthless. Cats are seen as mouse, rat, cockroach, and tarantula killers and dogs aren’t seen as much besides food-stealers. (Cats are seen as food-stealers too.) For that, it isn’t uncommon for someone to poison an animal if they repeatedly, or even just one time, get into human food. It seems terrible I know, and perhaps it is, but consider that a lot of people exist day to day here and if some dog keeps coming around and snatching your chicken, and if that was the lunch for the day, and you have 6 hungry children to feed… For that, it isn’t uncommon for Peace Corps volunteers to tell their communities that if anything should happen to their pets, they will leave the community. Being in a position like that, where I might have to threaten the community I am trying to build good relationships with, or face the potential of losing an animal so tragically seems terrible, so you can see why it is such a large investment.

A health community has been formed as a prerequisite for my being here. There is also an active neighborhood group and 2 churches, one Catholic, where my host family goes, and one Evangelical. On my visit the health community met, but I wasn’t able to attend any of the other functions. For the first 3 months I am required to interview the community in its entirety in what is called a Community Diagnostic. I will ask questions about general health, and health practices, test them on things like if they know the difference between HIV and AIDS, and use the experience to get to know everyone. Ordinarily I would have to go to 150 houses, but because my community is so small, I only have to go to the 104 houses here. After the Community Diagnostic I can begin working with the health promoters, giving classes from which they will graduate so that they can give classes. I will also work with a group of youth and train them in much of the same ways with a focus on sexual health and healthy decision making. I am very excited to get to work because the youth and health group seem very enthusiastic and I’m ready to get to know everyone and become friends.

In addition to touring the community on my visit, I also played a lot of dominoes and sat and talked to some community members. Unfortunately for me the people I’ve been playing with here are much more talented at dominoes than anyone I’ve played with before, but I’ve been holding my own ground somewhat, struggling mercilessly to do so, but doing so. I look forward to many more lazy afternoons and evenings of playing dominoes in this community.