Haiti is Alive

Need a little inspiration?  Hungry for a dose of hard-hitting reality?  Then you need to read my friend's, Stacie's blog about her work at a relief hospital on the Haitian-Dominican border... She's just one of the AMAZING people I work with, and it's spirit and dedication like hers that keep me going...

http://blcstace.blogspot.com/2010/02/from-jimani.html

Girls, Girls, Girls!

I spent this weekend with 20 lovely young ladies and 10 other Volunteers at a girls empowerment camp.  We had a lot of fun doing charlas about teen pregnancy, HIV/AIDS, gender roles, gossip as well as a mask painting art activity, dancing, swimming, and singing around a campfire while cooking S’mores.  Yum!

I was inspired by the camp.  I taught the charla on teen pregnancy, emphasizing to these girls that they have the power to say “No,” to demand contraceptives, to wait to have sex.  I gave each girl a “pregnancy test” (a popsicle stick with either a plus or minus) and told them that their lives were about to change.  What are they going to do if they’re pregnant?  After the results were handed out, we had a discussion about the consequences of one mistake, one night, and we discussed how they would care for a baby, how their futures would change, and then we discussed how they can prevent pregnancy for real.  As I was telling them how strong they are, how beautiful and powerful they are, I realized that this is what I want to do.  I want to start some youth groups and really help inspire teenagers in my community to make healthy decisions.  

I brought two girls, and I asked them if they had fun after the camp.  They both smiled widely.  I asked my host-cousin, who was a little reluctant about going because she's so shy, if she made any new friends.  She said she made 18 good, new friends... Mission accomplished.

I had spent the weekend laughing and feeling a sense of purpose.  I really cared, and it was magical.

(Pics to come soon, I hope!  Si Dios quiere...)

Last Fall

In Santiago and Playa Grande.

  

  

  

Photos by Sasha Santiago

The DR is a Strange Place

February is the month for change, for making decisions, for getting back to work, so say I!  I spent January reconnecting with my Dominican and Peace Corps friends, celebrating my birthday, and restarting my fledgling English class.  I feel like I’m starting over again.  I need to reassess my project and decide what’s going to fulfill me for the next 15 months.  My head is full of project ideas, but where to begin?

I was anxious about coming back to this little island.  Perhaps I was frustrated, tired of feeling alienated and alone – alone in my social network, alone in my work here.  But I’ve been thinking a lot lately, and I think I just have to let it all go and have fun with it.  I can’t worry about what others think of me, whether I’m going to fail, and I can’t let my shyness get the better of me.  Gotta get out there and do it, already!  Yah!

So I’m trying to be more observant.  It really is therapeutic when you just admire your surroundings.  When I am squished in a guagua (think of sardines in a can… can you imagine it?  Yep, that’s how it is when they pack you in a guagua or public car), I look out the window, and wow, the drives are so stunning – the rolling green hills, the tranquil palms, the white cranes fluttering about, the cows grazing.  Sometimes I smile to myself, and though people are talking loudly and the guagua poorly navigates the uncomfortably bumpy roads, I can’t help but feel at ease when I look out those windows. 

When ever in my life again will I have this much freedom?  I can change my schedule from one day to the next.  I can get up and go.  I can decide what I want to work on and with whom.  And I can just say whatever I want.  Everyone else does.  The DR is just one big intimate mess of people, tangled up in each other’s lives.  You know about everything, and people know about you, and there is never this divide among people.  Everyone is one and the same.  Conformists most of them, and at times, that can be disabling, especially from a development perspective.

And though there is so much routine – beans, rice and meat for lunch almost always, 12 – 2 pm siestas, the same kind of clothing, the same way of entering and exiting a car, the same party drinks, the same music, the same dance steps and always with a partner, the same cheesy political slogans and posters – there is quite a bit of spontaneity and chaos as well because things happen si Dios quiere (if God wills it).  I say I’ll be back tomorrow, but the person I’m leaving always says the same thing – si Dios quiere – giving me that opportunity to be spontaneous.  Who in the U.S. lives and thinks like that??  It’s really refreshing.

Always there are oddities.  A couple that come to mind: Last night I was in front of a colmado with some friends and in walks this little boy of about 3 years with a shirt, shoes, and no pants!  Naked babies are quite common here, but I was stunned that the kid had enough sense to put on his shoes, but what about his pants?  It was quite funny.  Or there was another time when I had a bunch of visitors spending the night at my house for my birthday, and at four in the morning, a marching band (which actually sounded quite good) paraded through my town.  I was not hallucinating it, because my visitors confirmed the occurrence as well. 

This experience is a lifestyle change for sure.  I didn’t realize how much I had adjusted to life here until I went back to America.  ¡Imaginate!  I could walk the sidewalks there without worrying I would fall in a manhole!  I have a specific way about doing things now, a special routine, and I will be interested to see how my American visitors react to such changes when they visit.

Times are a changing.  Things are beginning to move.  It’s political season here in the DR.   In my town, the mayor wants to be re-elected in May so she’s working feverishly now to improve the structural problems of town – new roads, a renovated hospital (that’s another story.  Let’s just say the hospital here is scary to people and is thought of a place to go and die…).  The dust is rising, the trucks are out, and everybody is trabajando, and so should I.