Profe in the DR 26

Profe in the DR 26

            Right now Yosi is sitting across the table from me practicing subtraction flash cards.  (The mother of fellow volunteer Heidi sent me a package of math flash cards, foam clocks, granola bars, and propel drink mix.  Other than having my tax forms sent to me, this is the only package I have received here.)  Getting back to Yosi, he is an overweight 17 year old who would be in the fifth grade should he finally start school this year.  He has been waiting for his father who lives in the capital with another wife, to send him money to buy his uniform.  He comes by my house everyday all excited telling me how his dad will send him money for his uniform and a cell phone on the 15^th, then it’s the 30^th, then the 15^th of the next month.  This has been going on since mid August.  Sometimes his dad promises to buy him a bicycle, or new clothes, and he always has a good reason why he can’t send the money.  Maybe next time.  So since he is not going to school, I have been working with him a little.  He couldn’t subtract simple numbers when I started; today he only missed one card in the pack.  We are now working on multiplication.   Yosi also started playing soccer with the team in July.  At first everyone just laughed at him.  At his first game, the crowd was laughing at him, as well as the other team; especially when he crashed into a teammate and fell on top of him.  However, Yosi has a lot of power in his legs, and when he gets a hold of the ball, he can launch it ¾ the length of the field.  This has helped him earn a little respect, and people aren’t laughing at him (much) anymore.  Soccer has been very good for him.

            It’s almost 11am now, and several boys just entered the house and are waiting to go to the refugio for our art club.  I managed to get some old women’s magazines from the PC office, and we use them for art club.  One of the boys, 12 year old Mistelin, has become quite good at drawing women’s faces.  His mother hung one of his pictures up in her little store.  She wishes there were somewhere he could study art.

            It’s the end of the day now.  I had about a dozen kids including three girls join us today for art club.  After lunch, I spent a few hours working with a dozen kids on math, and taught one kid how to play chess.  The young Haitian man I teach English to at 4pm never showed up.  Several kids were absent from soccer, and others just late.  We worked on defense today.  I had several people drop by the house after that to talk about this or that, including two members from the computer center committee, and Jairo who is working on his presentation for the business competition.  At 8pm I headed back to the refugio so the kids could play chess till 9:30pm.  I finished the day off with a little me time.  I watched an episode of the HBO series “Game of Thrones” on my laptop.  Jason, a fellow volunteer downloaded it for me.  It’s after 11pm, and I am heading to bed, serenaded to sleep by the yelling and singing of an evangelical group behind the house, and bachata music played in a colmado down the street. 

            It’s Sunday afternoon now.  The colmado next door is playing bachata at full blast like always, and several people are sitting around enjoying cold Presidente.  Yesterday I met up with PCV Justin, in Barahona and we then rode mt. bikes south down the coast.  The views are incredibly beautiful with the mountains running right down to the sea.  A large part of the mountains are still virgin forest, never been cut.  The road is full of long steep climbs, and fast descents, in some places passing under a canopy of branches and vines.  We set out in a light rain, which soon turned to a heavy downpour  that soaked us to the bone.  It also turned the road into a fast flowing river in places, and giant puddles in others.  After an hour or so, the rain let off.  We stopped after 2 ½ hours in Los Patos, meeting up with Jason who was spending some time at the beach.  We had lunch down by a river right on the coast, some excellent fish with rice and beans, tostados, and sliced tomatoes.  We then continued up the coast another hour to Enriquillo and stopped by PCV Melody’s house where I said good-bye to Justin and headed back alone to Los Patos.  I shared a room with Jason.  In the morning I put on my still damp riding clothes and headed back to Barahona, making much better time riding alone (only two hours).  I had something to eat, and then decided I had earned a frozen yogurt (cherries, strawberries, and peach).  The frozen yogurt sure must have empowered me, because I made the 44 kilometers from Barahona back to my site in only an hour and fifteen minutes.  I was flying.  I’m sure the tailwind didn’t hurt either.  I arrived about five minutes before it started to rain again.