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.

Profe in the DR 25

Profe in the DR 25

 October 5, 2011

The cry can be heard through out the batey, yeaaaaaaaaah!  The electricity has come back on.  I had better take advantage of this and write a bit before it goes back off again. 

The 19^th of September marked 13 months in country.  On the 20^th, they finally hooked up the internet to our computer center.  Unfortunately the electricity was still not hooked up.  Our computer center entered the 21^st century before it entered the 20^th. 

On the 21^st I headed to the capital for meetings on Thursday and Friday.  I stayed with a friend, a former volunteer now working for an NGO.  He has a nice apartment in the colonial zone.  Friday night we tried to barbeque but the charcoal was super cheap and hardly burned so we gave up and ordered a pizza.  The next day we tried again with different charcoal and it turned out great.  It was nice to have a little taste from home. 

            I got back to my site on Sunday.  Some of the guys here were already using the internet; they had run an extension cord from a nearby house, powering 3 computers.  On Thursday and Friday, they finally came out and replaced the transformer that led to the computer center.  (I was told it burned out 5 years ago.)  So now all 10 computers have power.  The commotion that followed was crazy.  Everyone and their brother wanted to use the internet, the place was packed, lots of noise, and people arguing and yelling. (Why would this be any different from anything else here in the batey.)   And of course almost no one knows how to use the computers so I was being bombarded with questions. Everyone wanted to get to facebook (or Fasbuk as some where spelling it) but didn’t have accounts or email accounts to form an account.  The kids were all coming to me begging me to let them go use the computers since they know I have keys to the center.  Today, a fellow volunteer came over and set up the computers, with a master computer to control the others.  Starting tomorrow we will begin to charge to use the internet.  We are going to use the money to maintain the center.  (Classes using the computers will be free.)  Hopefully this will end all the problems we have been having, since one’s wallet will regulate how much one can use the computer.  We are also going to (try to) regulate the number of people who can enter at one time.  This is far more difficult than in the US, since everyone here just walks freely into everyone else’s homes, and thinks nothing of it.

The speed of the internet here is slower than dial up but it’s better than nothing. 

            This morning I woke to the sound of a small airplane circling around the batey.  It appears that the sugar consorcio has started working on the next sugar harvest.  The plane sprays a chemical on the sugar cane fields that makes the sugar cane plants dry up so they can burn the leaves, making it easier to cut.  This plane flies right over people and animals, and the fields are all around the bateys, so I have to ask myself what affect the chemical has on humans.  I am told it kills fish, and plants that people are trying to grow in their conucos.  I just can’t imagine it’s too good for us.

            Oops, did it again.  I always forget when I am boiling water to cook noodles, and end up boiling away all the water and have to start over.  Late dinner tonight.

            Elections are coming up in 2012, and campaigns are in full swing.  Current mayors and governors are starting to work on public works projects such as fixing roads, etc. to get votes.  Most of these projects have laid half finished since the last election.  Here in the batey, the mayor is fixing the park.  The park had been built some years past by some other mayor trying to get votes.  He didn’t involve the community at all, and when he was done building it, people here ripped it apart to rob the electric wire to the lights.   Children and goats took care of the rest.  I’ve been asking people here what is going to be different this time.  No one seems to know.  Some hope that remorse over what happened the last time will keep people from destroying the park again.  Hopefully it will be finished before the election.  Hopefully the community will take care of it.

            About a dozen men were loading up a truck in front of my house.  Once they finished they all began to argue.  I can’t hear what they are arguing, or for that matter in which language they are arguing.   My best guess would be over money, since one of the men came in to ask me what was 28 x 2.  If someone were to ask me what the national past time in the DR is, I would have to say “arguing” (that and sitting all day watching cars go by.)

            Now I just had a dozen or so boys come in my house bombarding me with questions about soccer, chess, English, and computers.  I think they just don’t have anything else to do right now. After more than an hour, I finally booted them out.  (It’s after 9pm.)   I am trying to get this, and several other bits of work that require the laptop, done before the electricity goes out again.

            I am having problems with rats this week.  On Sunday a rat came scurrying out into the main room, saw me and ran under the little refrigerator.   I grabbed a broom and went after it.  Two rats came running out.  It was actually quite amazing watching them flee.  They jumped from one thing to the other, jumped up, grabbed some wires and escaped where the tin roof meets the house.  They are very talented.  Tuesday night I put some rat poison in several piles around the house.  The rats ate all of the poison, and half of a bar of soap that smelled like fruit.  I figured that would be the end of my rat problems, but the next night they came back again.  It was raining that night, so the rats left mud everywhere they went.  They finished off the other half of the bar of soap, and got into the garbage.  I’m thinking about asking to borrow a cat or something.

            We just had to fill out our VRF (Volunteer Reporting Forms) again.  The computerized form just asks for numbers of participants in primary projects, and is used in Washington D.C.  It always depresses me when we have to fill these out because it does not reflect all that we do here.  (It doesn’t even come close.)  So much of what I do on a daily basis can not be measured, and my work and influence goes way beyond my primary projects. 

            Jairo is participating in a business plan competition.  After taking a course on how to write a plan, he wrote up a 12 page plan on a business he would like to start.  The winner of the competition gets 60,000 pesos to start their business.  The competition is funded by Plan International and Peace Corps Volunteers run it.  I spent countless hours, over several months helping Jairo with the course and with the plan.  When I was in the capital, I found out he was selected as one of the 24 finalists.  They returned his plan with some suggested changes to improve it, and he had until the following Tuesday to re-submit it.  Since I couldn’t read my email for two weeks, I didn’t know he had been selected until a week and a half later, and by the time I got back to my site, it was Sunday and he had only two days to make all the corrections and re-submit the plan.  The two of us worked on it until late in the night Sunday and Monday, and all day Tuesday, and sent it in a half hour before the deadline.  Now Jairo is preparing his presentation.  He has to speak for ten minutes in front of a panel of judges made up of prominent business people.  He then has to field five minutes of questions.  Jairo is a good public speaker so I am hopeful.

            Jairo hasn’t been waiting to win this competition to start his business.  He is starting a cleaning products company.  He first took classes on how to make cleaning products.  He then took a class on how to run a business, and then the course on how to write a business plan.  He started little by little buying the things he needs.  And a few months ago he started selling his products right here in the batey.  He then started little by little selling them in nearby towns.  He is doing all of this outside of the hours of his current job.  Each month his sales are growing.  He needs a small truck, and is hoping to win the business plan competition so he can buy one.  He just showed me last night the new labels he had printed up for his products, very professional.  He hopes to increase sales enough by the end of December that he can quit his current job and devote all his time to his new company.