A Big, Long Update

It has been a long, long time since I’ve updated my blog. I used to encourage other volunteers to do better updating theirs, always sure I’d never let more than a few weeks go by without updating mine. The truth is, I’ve been pretty darn busy and haven’t been spending as long on reliable internet as I would like.

So, to begin a proper update on my life:

June was pretty much taken up by my being sick and having my mom here to take care of me.

July was pretty much taken up by my trip to St. Kitts and having my sister come to visit.

August was pretty much taken up by my family coming to join me and my sister for a week, followed by me giving a class (and spending 2 nights) at the site of 2 friends of mine, followed by a few days in my site, followed by my the Close Of Service training in the capital for my whole training group, followed by 2 nights at a resort in Punta Cana with some people from that training group, followed by a few days in the capital to see 2 friends off (they were both leaving early from service), followed by lots of efforts in fundraising for the library/community center in my site, followed by the “Celebrating the Cibao” diversity conference that a bunch of us volunteers put on for some of the teens of our sites in the mountains, followed by more fundraising efforts in my site.

That brings us to September. On a work level, aka: not the time I was traveling or had visitors in my site, this summer hasn’t been so easy. Why? Fundraising for the land for the library/community center. Being reminded by other volunteers repeatedly that land has never been an issue for their construction projects, either because it was public land that they built upon or because someone donated the land, was very disappointing. It seemed like everyone I talked to was working on some sort of a construction project and that I was the only one with land issues. PC visitors have come to my site and remarked that people tend to be cheaper here than in other sites, ie: not offering coffee or juice to my visitors immediately upon our arrival to their homes. I didn’t really think it was such a big deal, and I always still loved my site and the people in it, but this was pretty ridiculous. (I still love the people in my site.) So, in addition to our need to purchase land, we were met with the obstacle of needing to pay a lot for land that my entire community told me wasn’t worth that much. A few weeks ago we were finally able to get the price of a piece of land next to the school down to about US$3,333. We have had about half of that raised and in the bank since April, but started to run out of ideas for fundraising. The price astounded all of us, but we were determined to get it all. Since April we’ve gotten money from a few community donors and a politician from our area. We hope to have the rest of the money by the end of this week so that we can begin construction next week. This was the date that I decided would be the very last day we could begin, if construction was going to be completed by the time I leave here.

The stoves project has been moving along slowly, with a couple of bumps delaying construction such as storms, sickness of both construction workers and my own, families not being able to pay the half-labor fee of $15 and being quite good at avoiding me when I’ve come to collect, and finally, running out of some of our supplies. (I did calculations repeatedly so the lack of supplies means that some people took too many of certain supplies or that the hardware store ripped me off.) There are 3 stoves left and they could be finished this week. We’ll see!

Escojo has been pretty weak this summer. Volunteers often decide to suspend meetings for the summer since its pretty common for kids to visit their relatives in other cities and for kids from those cities to come to the campo. I decided we should keep holding meetings because we did, with some success, last year. But, meetings this summer conflicted with baseball games and practices and with a group that’s more than 50% male, I rarely had more than 10 participants at a meeting. When we did meet we talked about fundraising, library organization, field trips, conferences, etc. Since the school year started up a few weeks ago, more kids have been coming to the meetings and we’re hoping to form a new group in another town not too far from here. Mostly though, we’ve been pretty busy with the library. I wonder what will happen to Escojo when I leave. I used to think it had the potential to keep going so long as an adult leader could attend meetings and help with logistics. Now I wonder if someone will ever step up and if we haven’t exhausted the topics that Escojo deals with in this area.

I was giving a course to the women’s community bank on women’s health until I got sick in June. They stopped holding meetings for a few weeks and it seemed like every time I was around there was no meeting, and every time I was gone they had meetings. Their interest in the course was okay, but they certainly have been fine without it. In general they are a group with a lot of potential, but they are missing some of the basics, like attendance and consistency.
So I certainly won’t remember this summer for huge work successes. I’ll remember wonderful visits. Perhaps if we’d been able to begin construction, regardless of having had the money to pay for the land or not, in May or June as was our original plan I would have thought differently about work successes these last 3 months… but, we’ll get there. A lot of people who talk to me with some regularity have been asking me lately what I would do if I couldn’t figure out the mess with the land. It was sad to realize that people were beginning to prepare me for Plan B, even when I wasn’t thinking about it. The truth was, and still is, that I wouldn’t take no for an answer with this project. I wouldn’t let the greedy parents of this community ruin this opportunity for their children. At the very least my project partner, my host mom and I would figure something out so that the books were utilized. But if it had been necessary, or if it is necessary someday soon, to call these land-owners out on the fact that they will singlehandedly destroy this opportunity for the community, I would, and I’m sure I’d have the support of the entire community. Everyone sees the necessity of this community center and people have been coming to read the books in my house for months. There is so much support for this project, that I know it will be successful, as long as we all decide not to take no for an answer.