Profe in the DR 08

Profe in the DR 08

I finally moved into my own place at the end of January.  The house is quite nice by batey standards.  It has block walls, cement floors, corrugated metal roof, bars on the window (no glass), two bedrooms and an indoor bathroom.  That’s as nice as it gets here.  It was used as an office by an NGO prior.  It’s in a pretty central part of the batey, and unfortunately right next to a colmado where they play music on the weekends and sell beverages.  The music is so loud I can barely talk to anyone in the house.  The music goes until very late at night, and is mostly bachata with an occasional Haitian reggae song now and then.   People sit on the rocks outside my door at night.

Since moving in, I have painted the walls in the main room and plan to paint the bathroom.  I have built a table and a desk, and soon will make some shelves.  I have also bumped my head on the bathroom doorframe numerous times because they built it only 5 feet 7 inches tall. 

I get lots of visitors, especially the teenage boys who play soccer, who come over and play cards.  However it is not uncommon for someone I have never met before to just walk in my house and sit-down and talk to me.  I had to make a rule about all the little children coming into my house however; otherwise it would be a zoo. 

            My Creole is coming along slowly.  I study by myself everyday and with a teacher on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.  He is a 25 year old Haitian who was attending the university in Haiti up until the earthquake last year.  He speaks Creole, French, Spanish, and I have been teaching him English in return for the Creole classes.  Even though the majority of the people here speak Spanish as well, they always seem to appreciate it when I speak Creole. 

              I have been working with a youth community group.  The group lost some key members and hadn’t met in a long time.  We are working at putting new life back into the group, electing new board members, carrying out regular meetings, setting priorities, and trying to raise money. 

            I am still trying to get the girls group off the ground.  They had a problem with one particular girl being part of the group, and got into arguments over it.  One mother said she would not allow her two daughters to participate if the girl was in the group, and the 21 year old woman who is helping me said she would quit if I didn’t throw this girl out.  When I asked what was so horrible about this girl, they said she thought she was better than everyone else.  After thinking on it long and hard, I decided not to throw the girl out, and told those who were opposed to her that it was too bad if they chose not to participate because of her, but I guess I would have to find others to take their place.   Despite their threats however, no one chose to quit.  

            I applied for and received a grant to put on an overnight girl’s conference involving 30 girls from six bateys for March 12-13^th.  The theme is “Girls of Science”.   We will have several workshops, experiments, problems to solve, all having to do with science.  We are trying to combat the idea that the sciences are a boy’s domain.

            I thought it would be cool to have a men’s soccer tournament between the bateys, and so I took the idea to the representative of the Department of Sports, for the province.  With his help, and that of the regional representative of the League of Soccer, we have formed a committee to plan a tournament between 12 bateys.  We are currently trying to find sponsors for the two day event.  The sugar company (that owns and runs everything around here) said they were interested in sponsoring since both their Haitian workers, and their Guatemalan owners were soccer fans.  We are now waiting to see how much they will give.

            The boy’s soccer team just had their first game ever against Batey 2, who was also playing their first game.  The boys from here won 2-1.  I was particularly pleased with how the captain of the team managed things during the game.  Tons of the fans were yelling at him, trying to tell him what to do.  He stuck to his guns however and did what he thought was right, including not letting a rather good player play because he did not show up for practice all week.   Leadership is new to this boy, and I have been working with him a lot on his skills.  I was also pleased that the team was able to stay positive even when they were down 1-0.  We have been working on that a lot as well.  We have are next game on March 6^th.

            The girl’s team lost half their members to softball.   I can’t complain since the team was too big to begin with.  Also, part of my job is to get youth more involved in sports.  No one was playing softball here for quite some time, and it started back up as a result of the girls being out on the field playing soccer.  So now there are two sports for girls to do. 

            I fixed up an old bike, and have been taking out different people mt. biking.  Rides have been short however, seldom longer than 1 ½ hours, since they are not used to riding. We have been riding two tracks and paths between the sugar cane and the asphalt road up the mountains.