Profe in the DR 39
5-19-12
Today marks 21 months in country for
me. My life here in the batey has not
been easy, and I have had a lot of injuries, but the hardest thing has been not
having Kaori with me.
Peace Corps is
on Standfast because of the elections.
Things have been a little crazy this week, and I am told that things can
get violent after the elections with people getting upset if their candidate
doesn’t win. Yesterday the other major
political party, whose color is white, held rallies all over, including
marching on the capital. The US embassy sent
Peace Corps staff home early. Here in
the batey, a very large parade of hundreds of people in cars, vans, motorcycles
and on foot passed through the main streets and right by my house, everyone yelling,
waving white flags, revving motors, honking, and raising a ton of dust. The whole batey seemed to be in an excited
state after that for the rest of the day.
The white party
is the preferred party in the bateys by a ratio of 2:1. Their presidential candidate is predicted to
win. The other party has been in power
for some time and the people want change.
Yesterday
we received soccer nets from a donor in the states. Some doctors from the US who frequently
do medical missions to Batey 9 had found someone to donate the nets, and
brought them down with them on their visit Monday. Another volunteer then brought them here from
Batey 9 yesterday. We have been trying
to get nets for so long, so the boys and girls were extremely excited. They quickly laced them on the goals and
started to practice. It was great
playing with nets. We could easily tell
when a shot was a goal or not, no more arguing, and a lot less chasing after
balls. To whoever you are that donated
the nets: Muchísimas gracias!
Yesterday
I saw a young boy with an old bicycle who was using an upside down coffee can
as a seat. Now that’s hard core!
5-29-12
Well, the
elections are over. Sunday, the day of
the election was fairly quiet. I don’t
think that the bars were allowed to be open, so there wasn’t even any loud
music. As evening came on, people were
getting more and more excited, and wanted to know who won. Finally around 11pm, people started yelling
and chanting that the purple party candidate scored an upset win, and started
demanding that the bar next to me play music and sell beer, which they did
until midnight. The next morning, the
purple party supporters started celebrating at 8:30am in a big group, drinking
beer and continuing until midnight. The
white party supporters were also drinking early in the morning, but they were
drinking rum quietly and in small groups in the shade here and there. The white party candidate accused the purple
party of buying votes (not that the white party didn’t, just that the purple party
did it better.) There were talk of
problems, but so far nothing happened, and things seem to have calmed down.
It
seems that the discs in my back are herniated again. I didn’t lift anything or ride on the back of
a motorcycle with a loaded backpack or anything this time, so I don’t know why
they are out of place. I was quite
frustrated when I notice that my left side of my foot is numb again. I went
to see the doctor on Thursday. She wants
me to wait until I go back to the states to do physical therapy. She doesn’t trust any of the Dominican
physical therapists here. (She is a
Dominican as well.) So I am back wearing
the back support. It is extremely
uncomfortable, especially in the heat of the summer.
This weekend I
helped put on a 3 day conference on mobilizing marginalized populations. The conference went great, but I hardly
slept the whole time. The bed I had was
sagging in the middle and didn’t fair well with my back. Also, seems there was something with the
food, as just about everyone had stomach problems after the conference.
This is the last
week of classes for the students. The
school year doesn’t actually end for another week or two, but no one seems to
care what happens in the bateys, so the director is ending school early.
6-7-12
This weekend I
helped put on a 3 day soccer leadership conference, an idea I had for quite
some time. I am still trying to
recuperate from the conference the weekend before, and have had a cold all
week. This conference was for teenage
boys from nine different communities, four of which traveled some distance to
attend. In total we had 36 boys, 8
volunteers and one guest participate. We
taught about leadership, teamwork, positive attitudes and speech, etc. and also
about AIDS/HIV. We also taught some
soccer skills and drills they could take back to their teams. We held the conference in Batey 9, and for
the boys from non-batey communities, it was a bit of an eye-opening
experience. They were surprised by the
living conditions, and the fact that many of the boys from the bateys didn’t
have shoes. The difference in the
education levels was quite notable, for example when I asked the boys to sign a
card, the non-batey boys quickly wrote a well practiced signature, while the
batey boys struggled just to print their names.
It was quite expensive inviting the outside communities, but the
interchange of ideas it created was worth it.
My four boys came back from the conference all excited and quickly
started sharing what they had learned. I
have let them run the practices the last two days, letting them teach the rest
of the team the new drills they learned.
Papito began teaching younger boys about HIV/AIDS, and started back up
coaching the little boys’ team. Planning
and implementing the conference was a lot of work, and my back was killing me
the whole time, but it came out great, and I am very pleased at the results I
am already seeing. My team is already
working on creating a more positive environment within the team, and are trying
to support the girls team more.
Yesterday,
Shawn, a PCV living in Batey 7 came by and taught my kids karate. They loved it. Afterwards, he took on a few boys in
chess. He squeaked by one of the younger
boys, but was taken to town by the older boys.
Shawn considers himself a very good chess player, and was quite
impressed with the level of play of my boys.
Jairo and I are now trying to see if we can get a few boys to a regional
or national competition. We are also
trying to get a chess clock so they can prepare themselves for
tournaments. I have come across the
clocks in the capital, but they are quite pricey.
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