Profe in the DR 39

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.