It's Been Over 9 Months...

…since I left home for DC and then for the DR. Time goes really fast, doesn’t it? A full school year has gone by and I know this summer is going to race by, and soon another school year will be starting. After 9 months, my opinions of the land, the people, the job, the PC and whatnot are pretty much the same. I remember a few months ago coming to a realization, but to describe it fully I need to begin by telling you all that sometimes it seems like my life here is living from time away from my town to time away from my town. That might be conference to conference (all of which are either required by PC or I feel are necessary for me to participate in), or conference to committee weekend (all of us volunteers can be on committees of volunteers that have special interests. I’m on the batey and border committee because of the Haitian population in my town, as well as the Celebrating the Cibao committee which plans a youth conference in August that celebrates the diversity within the region of the Cibao, where I live), or a short break away (such as trips to the beach, of which I’ve taken two since getting here, or trips to volunteers sites) to trips for work (making copies, using internet, getting forms signed, medical appointments, reimbursement stuff) to Santiago or Santo Domingo. Because it’s so expensive for me to get in and out of my town, I often compile these trips which is why I’ll often go 1 or 2 weeks without internet or cell phone signal, etc.

So, it sometimes feels like I go from one of those to the other. Which is to say, sometimes it feels like I spend my life here largely looking forward to the next time I get to leave my town. Now, sometimes it’s not such a bad thing: early on in my service I have had the opportunity to bring members from my community to conferences outside of the community 3 times which has served both them and me as incredible learning opportunities. Other times, even if it’s just me leaving, the trips are incredibly necessary to get stuff done to benefit the community. But sometimes the work isn’t the main reason for leaving and doesn’t bring me nearly as much satisfaction as seeing other volunteers and speaking English. I try not to be too hard on myself, and try to remind myself that perhaps if I had cell phone signal, as almost everyone of the other volunteers do, these opportunities to see other volunteers wouldn’t seem like such an escape.
This idea first dawned on me when I flipped through my journal and realized that after a time away from my town (a 3 day conference for example) I will fill pages and pages of the details of the days, whereas on any random 3 days in my town, I’ll likely not have nearly as much. Obviously part of the reason is that a conference is a change in pace, a part of the country I likely haven’t seen yet, and so there’s more to report. But that can’t be all. I’m working on describing the details of my daily life better in my journal, and will try in blogs as well.

The trips back from these events away from my town, I think, pose an incredible opportunity for reflection because the events usually can act like something of a security blanket, a chance to see very familiar faces and whatnot. I remember the first few times going back to my town from an event and asking myself how I felt about it. I was always relieved and happy to realize that at worst I felt fine about going back and at best I sometimes even felt a little homesick for the town. Lately I always feel fine, except if I’ve gotten some great news to report in town in which case I am ecstatic to share.
So a few months ago, as the novelty started to wear off of both the campo life of my town and the thrill of leaving to take part in whatever was going on elsewhere, I realized that these feelings (all that I feel in my town on a daily basis to some extent, and to a much larger extent, all that I feel on the way in and out of activities in other places) are going to be the feelings of my life for the next two years. When that realization hit, I must say, I was a bit less thrilled then when all was still new, different, and seemingly constantly changing.

If I live from time away to time away, then that means I’m living for travel (which is being alone on obnoxious, expensive buses), for the chance that someone I know is in the PC office in Santo Domingo (but there’s always a chance that no one is), for packing and unpacking (two of my least-favorite activities because there’s always pressure to keep it to a minimum (because of the obnoxious buses) and consolidate, and because I constantly forget things), and for the chances to get together with other volunteers to hear them gripe about things here, and worse still, gripe myself. So while it’s great to have internet, phone signal, a chance to talk to English-speakers, it’s also lonely, frustrating, costly, and can leave me with a bad taste in my mouth if I’m not careful about how much complaining I allow to take place around me or allow myself to engage in.

It’s hard not to live from time away to time away though. I feel so much more productive out of my town. That’s where I’m able to communicate, get stuff to bring back for the community, and take care of buckets of stuff just for me. On my best days in my town I have a meeting where I get to teach a lesson to a hopefully attentive audience, but 4 days of the week I don’t have meetings and spend a lot of time sitting around feeling bored, whether or not I’m home alone or in a group where others are talking and I either don’t understand what they’re saying or have stopped listening for a second and lost the context (or never had it to begin with, which is the most common.)

What helps is the incredible realization that I’m still pretty early on in my service and before long I will have a lot more going on here to keep me busy. For example, the biggest day of this month is the 25th, a graduation of the youth group and the nutrition class. Over the summer I hope to train the youth group, now that they’ve learned the facts about HIV, pregnancy, birth control and family planning, healthy decision making, etc., in how they can best replicate this information among their peers and when school begins again, have a plan to start a group (or a few groups) at the high school they attend and then move out to the other communities in the area. With the women from the nutrition my plan is to give them the option about where we go from here. So far all they’ve learned is the facts about nutrition, but they too would benefit from a class on how to spread the information. After that a gardening class would be great, or women’s health, or first aid, or child care… I’d also like to have a chicken coop project and a clean/efficient burning stove project. The enthusiasm among the women is much less so than among the youths, so these next few weeks will be interesting.