Foto Time

Hey how about that, two blog posts in one month, pretty good huh? This one'll be short on words and long on pictures which I'm sure you all will prefer anyway.

I finally got a camera, thanks to Alicia's mom Lorri. Thanks Lorri! In my now more than 18 months here I've taken maybe a half dozen pictures. My dad and Jen gave me their old camera to bring down, but it used AA batteries at an unbelievable rate; brand new duracells would literally last 5 minutes tops, so I just never took pictures because it was prohibitively expensive to use.

I'm also just not a very good picture taker. I feel like having a camera out takes me out of the moment sometimes. I'd prefer to just enjoy it, but then I always regret not having any pictures once time passes and my memory starts to fade so I'm determined now to chronicle my last 8 months as best I can to preserve the memories.

Also, Dominicans love taking and posing for pictures—I think my friends in my community are even more excited about my new camera than I am. Most of it is for reasons of vanity, but they have also pointed out that we can now take pictures of all the work we are doing. Nelson “el Chiquito” was out yesterday taking pictures of the girls soccer practice. Printed pictures also make great gifts I've learned.

Also, the newest group of volunteers arrived a couple weeks ago and I was asked to go to their training to share pictures of my house and community with them during the PCV Living Conditions presentation. I was one of 4 current volunteers to present. I represented a batey, and the others represented a campo, pueblo, and city. A batey is a rural mixed haitian-dominican community, a campo is a rural dominican community, a pueblo is a fairly large town, and a city is well, a city.

So for those of you who were wondering what it looked like, here are pictures of my house:

Front

Back

My Living Room

My Kitchen/Bathing Room

My shower

My Bedroom

My trash disposal

That's all the time I have for now, in the next post I will try to include some pictures of my community as well. Adios!

Blog 2.0

Hello all! It has been more than a year since I have updated my blog and for that I am deeply sorry. Many of you (members of my family) have mentioned to me how much you had enjoyed reading my blog and wondered why I haven't been updating it.

Well, I don't have a good excuse, but I have many excuses to make up for the lack of a good one. Quantity over quality has always been my motto. First and foremost I got lazy, no two ways about it. When there is electricity it is easier to just watch a movie or TV show on my laptop than actually think and reflect about my life in a blog entry. So if it was nighttime, and there was electricity, zoning-out won-out over taking the admittedly little amount of initiative required to write something and share it with those who are interested. I realize that was very selfish so again, my apologies.

My second excuse is that there isn't internet access in my community or in nearby communities. So even IF I would have had the initiative to write a blog entry, I wouldn't have had the ability to post it online. Using the internet requires a trip to Barahona about an hour and a half away. There are places with internet closer but in my experience those places either don't work, are too slow to get anything done, or getting permission and the password is such a fight every time that it isn't worth it (cough, cough, stupid World Vision Office, cough.) So the closest reliable internet is in Barahona, at a pizza place called Pala Pizza.

Don't be mistaken, I am able to use the internet at least every couple weeks, if not once a week. It is just that in my limited amount of internet time I have to prioritize, and email, facebook, news and sports have just been higher priorities over the past year. The internet is so vast and so much happens in the world, that trying to catch up on it all in one hour every couple weeks is just so overwhelming that having access to the internet often makes me more stressed out than relieved. Trying to get all my work stuff done and also use the web for enjoyment never seems to fit into the amount of time I have so every session feels kind of incomplete. This is actually a lame excuse for not updating my blog in a way because the amount of time it would take to copy and paste a blog entry written off-line to my blog is minimal; I offer it to you nonetheless.

My third is and final excuse is simple: duncanpeabody.blogspot.com. Duncan's blog is just so much funnier than mine could ever be, and he updates it pretty frequently, so it just made more sense in my (lazy) mind to direct any and all interested parties in that direction. Again, bad excuse since none you know him, but I will say that I have been successful in increasing the popularity of his blog. Our family makes up at least 50 percent of Duncan's readership and 100 percent of his fan club.

Also, because he constantly cries about being overshadowed by Duncan, I would like to send you all in the direction of Justin Hitchcock's blog, justinsexcellentadventure.blogpot.com. Justin is best known for getting his front tooth knocked out by Duncan on the 4^th of July.

But seriously, Justin's blog is very good as well. I highly recommend it, especially for the story about the time he, Amy, and Duncan drunkenly adopted three abandoned puppies one night and then regretted it in the morning. Here is your second place sticker Justin.

And for those of you who know me—which I assume anybody reading this does, otherwise you are weirdly interested in the meandering stories of a nobody living on an island—then you know that if I can't be the best at something, in my own mind at least, then I don't do it. Hence my subconscious resistance to writing a blog. Fear of having my writing pale in comparison to Duncan's, or even worse, Justin's, has prompted my mind to construct the artificial barriers to updating my blog mentioned above.

But no! I am here to say that fear of inadequacy will no longer hold me back from sharing my life with the nearly half dozen members of my extended family who are interested in reading about it. Wi, nou kapab!

One of my New Year Resolutions is to write more, or at least write something, and that includes this blog. So I am resolving, here and now, to update my blog more frequently, ideally at least once a month.

I'm back, if you'll have me. It only took me 18 months to figure out that writing about my life and work on a regular basis is a good idea, both for myself and for my friends and family at home. Better late than never I say!

While we are on the subject of new year resolutions, I'd like to share mine with you to let you know where I'm at heading into this next year and also to keep me accountable to my resolutions.

Personal

Eat better (cook, organize lunch with a family)

Exercise at least 3 x a week (running, soccer, basketball)

Push-ups, crunches, lunges, squats at least 3 x a week

Stretching, yoga, and relaxation for at least 20 minutes a day

Study Kreyol or Spanish 30 minutes daily

Write (blog, journal, Gringo Grita, etc.)

Professional

Stay in my site

Cogelo suave (take it easy), hang out and talk to people, compartir (spend time with my neighbors)

Lesson plan and execute the Sala de Tarea (after-school program)

Solicit books for the library with a library committee—form a library committee!

Kick ass with Actas (birth certificates), find a dependable lawyer to help with rectifications

Organize the committees and write grants for water & latrine projects

Meet with the mayor and get school transportation solved

Stay engaged & don't work alone

Checking In

Well it has been a long while since I’ve updated everyone; this whole not-having-internet thing is really killing my blogging output. Let’s get to it.

The biggest news to develop of late is that I finished my community interviews and put together a list of potential projects for the next year. I split them up into an “us” category—meaning we have control over starting them, we just need to be organized—and a “help from outside” category—larger scale projects that require resources we don’t have here in the batey.

Us
Sexual Health Course
Organized Sports/Girls’ Sports
Hygiene Demonstrations
Environment Clean-Up and Education
Talent Show/Music and Dance Club
Book Club
Sala de Tarea
Chess Club
Business Plan Course
Parent-Teacher Group
Dominican-Haitian Relations
World Map Mural
Handwashing Bottles
Money Management

Help from Outside
School Transportation
Citizenship Declarations
Computer Lab
Extend School to 8th Grade
English Course
Latrine Project
Water Access in Every House
Paved Streets
Clinic/Medical Mission
Reduced Smoke Stove Project
University Assistance

Last Sunday at our youth group meeting I presented these potential projects and had each youth vote for their three favorite “us” projects and two “help from outside” projects. The winners were Sexual Health, Organized Sports/Girls’ Sports, English Class, Music & Dance Club/Talent Show, Computer Lab, and University Assistance.

I also added three very important projects to the list, a Sala de Tarea, basically an after-school program with alternative teaching methods for struggling students, a Latrine Project, and a Citizenship Declarations project, because the majority of people in the community are not Dominican citizens despite being born here and in some cases being part of a family that has lived in the country for generations.

If you aren’t a citizen you can’t go to school past 8th grade, you can’t vote, you can’t get a bank account, a loan, or a real job. You’re basically screwed and guaranteed a life of poverty from which you can’t escape no matter how hard you work. And it is a vicious cycle because kids can’t be declared if their parents aren’t declared, and parents can’t be declared if their parents aren’t declared, etc. etc. The problem is that declarations are basically a bureaucratic and xenophobic clusterfuck for anybody who looks Haitian or has a Haitian last name, which is pretty much everyone in my site. Trying to help people get declared is very arduous, but so important that I will undoubtedly be working on it throughout my two years of service.

So the first projects I will be starting on in mid-February are:

Us
Sexual Health Course
Organized Sports/Girls' Sports
Talent Show/Music & Dance Club
English Class
Sala de Tarea

Help from Outside
Citizenship Declarations
Computer Lab
University Assistance

Over the next two weeks I will write a community diagnostic report, using all the information I’ve learned about the community over the past three months through informal conversations, formal interviews, and youth group meetings. Then, based off the report, I have to prepare a presentation in collaboration with one of my project partners and present if first to the community and then in front my bosses and the other youth volunteers during our 3-month In-Service Training that is happening the first week of February in San Cristobal.

So that’s how the “professional” part of my life is coming along here in the Dominican Republic. I’m excited to be done thinking about the community diagnostic and presentation and actually start working on the things I’m here to do.

On the personal side of things, everything is pretty good. I can move out of my host family’s house at the end of January so I’ve been looking around for places to live, though that has been kind of disappointing. I have one place available if I want it, really it’s the only option, but it doesn’t have a latrine or place to bucket bathe. I have a good situation with my host family so I could continue to stay with them, but I am ready to have a little more space and a little more privacy, and a lot more time away from 9-month-old baby, so I would really like to move out on my own. I have been living with host families for the past five months!

Don’t get me wrong, all three have been great, but I couldn’t even live with my own family for five months. So I will probably move into the only option place, and then continue to do my business in my host family’s latrine on the other side of the batey and bathe in my boxers outside my house. Though one potential problem I foresee with that plan is if I get hit with a bout of stomach problems in the middle of the night and have to try and run across the community while trying not to shit my boxers, a very real possibility.

Though actually my health has been great, knock-on-wood. After a rough start it seems as if my body has settled in here very nicely.

Let’s see, what else is there to report… well I spent Christmas Eve here in my site, Eve is the big deal here, not Day. My host “mom,” she’s only 21-years-old, made me a special dinner that was very good, fried chicken, fried plantains, and spaghetti. Then I met up with a bunch of volunteers in Cabarete on the northern coast for New Year’s Eve, which was amazing. Other than that it’s been same old, same old here in the site; a lot of reading, basketball when I’m not being lazy, growing a beard that I have since shaved, English class, and trying in vain to learn Kreyol. Mwen pa kapab aprann Aysian! That means I can’t learn Haitian, which is what they call Kreyol in my community. And they call Spanish Dominicano, apparently forgetting the 15 or so other countries that speak Spanish.

That’s all I have for now, I hope everyone is well. And if you have any extra resources, i.e. blood, money, clothing, food; try and find some way to get it to Haiti. I assume the Red Cross and other similar organizations have a way you can direct where your donation goes. Man is that place cursed. If you want to be depressed, read the Wikipedia entry on the history of Haiti.

On that cheery note, I bid you all adieu!

Batey Nef

Hey all, I found the internet but I don't have a lot of time so I am going to make this quick... Bullet points go!

• The cancha inauguration was amazing, our youth and the community of El Chorro made us look so good, they didn't really need us at all but it was nice of them to give us some of the credit.
  
• CBT ended, very sad, good times with good people. Definitely won't forget it.
• We had our swearing-in ceremony, the acting U.S. Ambassador was there, as was the Peace Corps country director and all our host families, technical trainers, and language facilitators. Lots of words of encouragement for our two years of service and a nice way to wrap up training.
• Had two days in the capital after swearing-in to wrap up things, pack our stuff, and say goodbye to our host families. Everyone stayed in hotels the last night before departing to our sites, we (the youth crew) found a great one: cheap with balconies everywhere and roof access. We spent our last night together as a group drinking, dancing, eating pizza and basically being loud drunk Americans with an amazing Caribbean breeze blowing and keeping us cool. It was great. We also swam at the embassy pool the next day, unbelievable.
• Then we departed to our sites. I like my site a lot, great people and I found a great little park area with a bench where I can read. Love it. Have had 5 youth group meetings already and am starting English classes this week. Soccer everyday and co-ed volleyball this friday. Not going to have time to do my community diagnostic but oh well.
  
• Got bed bug bites all over my body, not so fun.
  
• Had a week of Kreyol training, starting over with a new language also isn't very fun, but hopefully someday I will be as functionally bad at Kreyol as I currently am at Spanish.
• I have the world's worst farmer's tan, lots of sun+t-shirt= not a good look for me. No beach days in sight to fix it either.
• Batey 9 is surrounded by sugarcane fields, with mountains in the distance. It is actually very pretty. Sorry no pictures yet, gotta get on that.
• Better update to come, gotta write the post before I get to the internet next time.

P.S.

1. I have a cell phone! and I have service at my site most of the time! Those who are interested can call me at 1.809.723.2761. Simple, no country code or anything like that.
   
2. Here is another link to some more of Kerri's pictures from CBT... http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2225887&id=1615070&l=73e448ac65
3. I am not funny when I write, quite the opposite in fact. I apologize but I am afraid that I am just a boring writer. But the good news is my friend Duncan is a hilarious writer. So read his blog and just know that that is how I wish I could convey my experience down here to you all. Seriously, go to his blog right now and read all the posts. You won't regret it. http://duncanpeabody.blogspot.com/
   

Photos

Hey all, so we left Constanza yesterday and are now back in the capital. It was quite a sad send off, a lot of tears, a lot of hugs, and a lot of love. I will write more about the inauguration and the goodbye party with our families and youth soon, and also upload pictures from both. Also, it recently came to my attention that all the pictures I have on facebook cannot be seen because Kerri´s profile is private, so here are some photos from Constanza up to two weeks ago.

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2222082&id=1615070&l=8b95cf2de3

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2223338&id=1615070&l=f9dbd5944d

Hope these work, adios!

La Cancha

I mentioned briefly in my last post that I, along with three other volunteers, have been working with our youth group on building a basketball court, or “cancha.” Well I have great news to report.

At the end of last week the project’s prospects were looking pretty dismal. The mayor blew off our meeting, and the letter we gave to his assistants must not have been as persuasive as we thought because we kept getting the run around when our youth asked about the funding.

In the letter we basically said that our barrio, El Chorro, did not have a basketball court or play (baseball field) for kids to do recreational activities, but they did have more than half the concrete already completed for a mini-cancha as well as a broken hoop. The community also had motivated youth that had the knowledge and ability to finish the court and the support of the neighborhood association. All we needed was 15 bags of cement, red, blue and white paint, and two meters of sand.

The estimates we got for the materials put the cost around 8,000 pesos, about 220 dollars. We thought it would be an easy sell to the mayor because it was just a one time expense for a barrio without a court and he wouldn’t need to do anything but sign the check. Our youth seemed optimistic as well.

Well when we went down to his office to make our pitch last Monday we were told that the mayor had an “emergency meeting” and wouldn’t be able to meet with us. So we made the pitch to his aides and gave them our letter with pictures of the unfinished cancha, and they gave us positive feedback and looks that said “all you’re asking for is 15 bags of cement?” So we waited all week to hear back and never did, and our youth kept saying they were going to find out tomorrow, then tomorrow, then tomorrow. Finally by Thursday we all knew we weren’t getting anything from the mayor, not even a no.

It wasn’t unexpected, we had always assumed we would be rejected by the mayor and had been trying to get our jovenes to walk the beat and make similar pitches to the hardware stores, businesses, and political candidates. But the whole week they had said we would get it from the mayor so we waited and waited, and then when we had wasted the whole week we finally were able to get a group organized to hit up businesses on Friday morning.

But by then we were really under the gun. It was October 9th and all the volunteers had to have their projects done by the following week. Basically we were starting from scratch, and as we walked downtown to meet our youth to go from business to business I was pretty pessimistic that we would get anything from anybody. I was mad we had waited to hear from the mayor instead of fundraising and had wasted the whole week and was disappointed that we had apparently failed in our admittedly ambitious attempt to help build a basketball court.

But something amazing happened once we hit the pavement. It started slow, the first politician blew us off, and then some hardware stores said the boss wasn’t in but they would deliver our letter and call us back, not very promising. Then our luck started to change. A couple of our youth knew someone who worked at another hardware store, and he said we should come back in the afternoon to talk to his boss, so we had an in. Then while standing on the street writing down the name of a political candidate whose face was plastered on a truck, the candidate walked up, it was his truck! He was unshaven and clearly just a regular working man during the day, and one of our youth started talking to him and showed him our letter, and he just reached in his pocket and gave us 500 pesos, about 15 bucks. It wasn’t a lot but it was something, our first donation.

From there we went out and met another candidate who promised to donate something, then a water distribution plant that promised a couple bags of cement and all the sand we wanted. The ball was rolling. From there we went to another hardware stuff who said they would call us, but while we were waiting one of your youth recognized the ex-mayor and told him about the court and he just bought us four bags of cement on the spot. Later that day we got some paint from the owner of the hardware store we had visited earlier, and two bags of cement from the water place, and our group got six more bags and some paint plus 1,000 pesos from other sources.

The day was a complete 180, we had gone from nothing to everything and could actually build the court. We started to plan things out and after preparing we started building the court on Sunday morning. It was hard work, we didn’t have a cement mixer so we had to mix the gravel,
sand, cement and water by hand. We also had to get the sand from a disgusting river and bags of wet sand are about the heaviest thing I have ever tried to lift. But our youth were incredible, they had all the connections. The brother of Kelvin works in construction so he led the laying down of cement, and a guy they knew had a backhoe so he ripped up the broken rim and also dumped sand for us to mix. We worked all morning on Sunday, then the youth finished the laying down the cement that afternoon.

We let the court dry on Monday and then on Tuesday went over there early to put the lines down and paint. Dean and I printed international court dimensions from the internet and tried to make an official court while Jenni and Alicia painted the backboard and cleaned the surrounding area with some neighborhood kids. Putting the lines down was much more complicated than we had envisioned, we had to measure and place tape 5 cm apart at perfect angles 6.25 meters from the non-existent rim for the 3 point line, and make perfect circles with nothing but a measuring tape and string. It was extremely tedious work and took a long time, but we got the lines painted in yellow and they finished painting the court red, blue and white. And I also got the world's worst farmer's tan to show for it.

Now we just need to install the hoop and then on Thursday we have our inauguration/bball tournament so that should be a lot of fun. All in all I'm really happy with the work we've done here in Constanza over the past five weeks. It was just supposed to be training but because we were paired with such an incredible youth group we were able to complete a project that we can all be proud of. Not a bad start at all and now I'm really excited to get to my site and do work in the place I will be calling home for the next two years.

(more pictures of the cancha can be seen here and there will be more to come)

Winding Down and Starting Over

The community-based portion of our training is nearing its end; we have less than two weeks remaining in beautiful Constanza. It has been great, I think everyone was beaten down by the weather in the capital when we first arrived, many volunteers have told us that they don’t understand why they have this training group arrive at the absolute hottest part of the year. But I guess it was good because the rest of the year will seem cooler and less suffocating in comparison.

But after three weeks of hell (I actually imagine hell must feel a lot like Santo Domingo in August) arriving in Constanza was a blessing. I immediately fell in love with it. It is so green, with mountains in every direction and crops covering every valley and hillside. It looks a lot more like Oregon than an island in the Caribbean.

Also, after the unbelievable amounts of trash everywhere in Santo Domingo, Constanza looks like Pleasantville. There are still some places that trash just kind of gets dumped out of sight, but you actually see garbage trucks on the streets here, something I only saw once in three weeks in the capital.

As part of our training in Constanza the 15 of us were divided into smaller groups and each group was partnered with a local youth group. This was great to get to know some Dominican youth and start figuring out how to work within screwed up system to get things done. My youth group, along with Jenni, Alicia, and now Dean, is an environment-focused youth group from the barrio of El Chorro, a poorer barrio on the outskirts of town. The group was amazing and really had their stuff figured out, we definitely learned a lot more from them than they did from us but they like us so I think it’s okay. We are still in the process of trying to get some cement and paint from the mayor or some other source to finish a little basketball court in their barrio before we leave, so keep your fingers crossed.

Throw in the fact that all us volunteers lived within two blocks of each other and hung out all day during training and then every night made CBT a really great experience. “Loma Time” was amazing. Instead of going to clubs or bars to spend money we didn’t have, we would just take some ipod speakers, blankets, and sometimes drinks up the hill near our barrio. Up on the loma we would just sit in a group, talk and get to know each other, listen to music and stare out at the city lights and stars above. It was a blast and was the perfect way to unwind after long days. Part of me is kind of sad to see it go honestly, but now it’s on to the Big Show!

We got our placements in a big meeting with our assistant peace corps director (APCD) Adele Williams. She has been working on developing possible project sites since February and during her explanation of each site and who was going where it was obvious she had thought about it a lot and put each person in the site that most matched their skills, desires, and experience. I think to a person everyone is really happy about their site placements so that's pretty awesome.

(Here is a map to the youth development group's site placements)

I am going to Batey 9 in the southwest of the country. This is the desert area and it is supposed be really hot, really dusty, and not a whole lot of fun in terms of climate. She said there are a lot of youth excited to have a volunteer and I will be working with sexual health and sports and recreation. We didn't really find out anything more than where we are going so I will have to wait until we get our project descriptions in a couple weeks and also visit our sites. Like I said Adele put a lot of work in and had good reasons for sending people where she sent them, and I feel like it is a really good fit for me. The only downside is that I am really far from all the friends I've made in CBT--I am the only one from our youth development group going to the southwest. But there are some second year volunteers in the region so I won't be totally alone.

So yeah, that's the lowdown. We are almost done here, then we go back to the capital for a couple days, then go visit our site and take our stuff, then go back to the capital to swear-in and then we will be returning to our sites for good around October 29th. I also have a week of Creole training in there somewhere but I'm not sure exactly when.

My internet access is most assuredly never going to be like it has been here in Constanza for the rest of my two years, so I will try and write a lot before I leave. Once I get to my site I have no idea what kind of access I'll have, I'm pretty sure I won't have any in the Batey and I don't know what the closest town is that will have access. So start sending that snail mail, letters would be greatly appreciated. The mail goes to the capital and I'm pretty far away, so I'll probably only be able to pick it up every month or so. Nevertheless, here is my mailing address for the rest of my two years:

Cameron Jones PCV
Cuerpo de Paz
Av. Bolivar 451 Gazcue
Apartado Postal 1412
Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic

Letters are safe and easy, packages perhaps less so, but since it is going to the Peace Corps it should be fine. Don't send boxes or anything via UPS or FedEx, they go to customs and cost a lot to get out and get messed with. So letters and padded envelopes via regular mail is they way to go I've been told. Several people have received stuff already in large padded envelopes and they said it takes about two weeks to arrive. Love you and miss you all, adios!