I survived my first week there

After my first week in my site, I’m relieved to come back to Santo Domingo for a week more of orientation and planning, and being with friends who are just now becoming good friends instead of acquaintances. It’s stressful to be in a new community all by yourself but never alone, meeting everyone important and in the neighborhood and trying to figure out how you’re going to have a life for two whole years in this new place. Overwhelming! And then to have to adjust to yet another host family that you’re paying your rent and food money to and counting on for help in integration to the community – it was a hard week. At least I wasn’t in a parade and didn’t have everybody in the community at a big reception for me on the day I arrived like some of my friends had happen!

It all began on Project Partner Day last Tuesday, when we all brought our luggage and spent a half a day getting to know our project partners through group activities. I noticed my partner was not the norm for here when I offered for him to sit and he didn’t want to. No Dominican ever chooses to stand over sitting! He is a ball of energy in the world of school principals, and had a lot of connections with the other school directors that were there that day. He walks fast and can talk forever, and everybody knows him. He’s a nice guy, and is looking forward to his retirement in a couple years.

We got to my site pretty early, since it’s only a couple hours away from the capital. We’re fairly close to the big city of San Francisco de Macorís. La Joya is my campo (country) site that is pretty beautiful. There are trees and shade and flowers everywhere, and in my community, cacao is the predominant crop along with plátanos. My new host family that I’ll be living with for my first three months there is really nice. The people living in the house are the doña (VERY Catholic) and her three sons still in the country, as well as a granddaughter whose parents are in the US. Then there is a woman Cecilia who comes over every day to help cook and clean, and her three little kids are fun and cute. There are also about ten guys who came over to work cutting down the cacao all week and taking the seeds out to dry. The husband of Cecilia fell off a horse while transporting some cacao on Friday and was bleeding from his lower back badly on Friday night, so my host brother ran him to the hospital in the city. It ended up being fine, but makes you think about the lack of insurance and job-related injuries here. My family also has a bunch of chickens – one of which I found sitting on my pillow on my bed the other day and shooed out – a pig that we feed all the food scraps to that smells pretty bad, and a big dog that’s mean because it stays in its little cage most of the day. Sometimes there’s a horse around too.

I spent the week visiting the high school, meeting the teachers, the students (introducing myself to every single class), and checking out the computer lab. I also visited the elementary school as well as the high and elementary schools in the next community over, and went to an inauguration of a university library close by one morning. In the libraries here there are never that many books, though. I can maybe see how elementary and high school students get by without resources of books, but can’t fathom university without any. The priest is maybe the most important person I met all week. The whole community loves him, and he’s perhaps the most active organizer around. He has a long grey beard and cropped hair, is a vegetarian and a big advocate of organic gardening, goes around promoting non-chemical pesticides to farmers and discourages burning of trash, encourages walking by the older people around especially, and has the youth very active and involved in the community. I think he’s my new partner for any activity outside of computer stuff from here on out. Good news is that he wants to help organize a camp this summer J He was a big promoter of the day of clean air this last Sunday, that the community tried to celebrate with less driving.

My biggest problems this week were that I got bored a couple times and felt very out-of-place and directionless. I think that will not be such the case in the future when I figure out more of a schedule for myself and get a BIKE. I also question the need for a volunteer in this community that seems to have its act together a lot more than other places I’ve seen. I suppose that there is always more to be done and I shouldn’t make any judgments quite yet, though. One thing that is great is that there are lots of places to run around there, including the big hill we live right by. That will help me stay sane as I learn how to effectively use my time and get to know everybody and turn down offers of pop and coffee at every house I visit!