9. Projects

I'm back! It has been an eventful few weeks and I have a busy schedule ahead of me as well.

I have moved into my house, completed 3 month IS, attended two conferences with juventud (youth) from my community and accomplished 6 months in the Dominican Republic. 

The completion of 3 month IST has started a new phase of my Peace Corps service, basically the part I have been patiently waiting for. As stated before, the first 3 months in country were spent training and living with host families and the next 3 months were spent in my community, gaining trust, completing interviews and figuring out the strengths/weaknesses of my community and what projects I want to take on. I then went and presented my results to my group and can now get to work! 

Here is a quick rundown of what I presented. My community is 360 people with 72 houses. About 90% of my community has electricity and zero have running water. The majority of the houses are made of wood and the rest are made of zinc or concrete blocks. The main source of income is agriculture, oranges, grapefruit, mango, guandule (pigeon pea;s) and tobacco. The men spend time working on their land and the women spend time in the house cooking and cleaning. When enough agriculture has been gathered they will go to a bigger city to sell it. There is a river at the end of the community and the community is surrounded by sugar cane fields. About 43% of the people are between the ages of 10-23. Many of the children live with their grandparents because there are not any opportunities for work so there parents go to bigger cities but leave their children with grandparents or aunts and uncles.
My community has an elementary school that stops at seventh grade and has two sessions, one in the morning for the younger students and one in the afternoon for the older students. There are 5 teachers and the students are only in class for 4 hours/day but much of that time is spent on breaks. After elementary school they have 3 options - stop attending, go to the public highschool or go to the Catholic school. The public school is in a neighboring town that is over an hour walk away. This school also has two sessions so the students are in class for less than 4 hours per day but this requires over a 2 hour commute. The Catholic school goes from 8 in the morning to 4 in the afternoon and it is about 10 miles away so transportation is necessary. It is difficult for the youth in my community to continue on with their education and many times they are asked to help around the house rather than continue on through school. There is no clinic in my community and the closest is in a neighboring community. The closest hospital is in Hato Mayor which is about 35 minutes away on a motorcycle. There are two churches in my community, one Catholic and one Evangelical - 63% of the people are Catholic and 30% are Evangelical.
The youth in my community spend their free time playing cricket, dominoes or hanging out "bajo el arbol" (under the tree). There are no organized activities and they have no space to play sports or a positive space to gather. After talking and spending time with the youth in my community these are the things we are planning/hoping to focus on in the next few months...

Playing drums & singing. 

 
Escojo mi Vida (I Choose my Life) is an initiative that has been very successful in the Dominican Republic. It focuses on sexual health topics, HIV/AIDS, drugs, alcohol etc. The youth participate in a series of charlas (short lessons/classes) and then move on to graduate which then makes them "multipliers". There was a volunteer in a neighboring community whom gave a session to my community so I am lucky enough to already have a group of multipliers. This month I took two of these boys to a regional conference where we learned how to form a new group, how to strengthen a group and participated in other Escojo activities. My boys had a great time at the conference and it was a great motivator to get started.

Chicas Brillantes is a group for girls from ages 12-18. It focuses on subjects such as self esteem, conflict resolution and women's health. It is a great opportunity for the girls to get out of the house and it provides a safe place to talk and ask questions. There was a regional conference this past weekend where we participated in charlas, played sports, made masks for Carnaval and even had a camp fire where we made s'mores! The girls came back to my community ready to get started and full of energy!

Me w/ my chicas @ the Chicas Brillantes Conference

I am also planning on holding English classes once or twice a week. This has been a struggle because everyone wants English classes and I am hesitant to do them because they aren't going to learn much more than "good morning" "how are you" "my name is..". I am going to make an attempt at it though and then hopefully form an advanced class that I can actually help.

Over the next few months I am also hoping to get information on building a "cancha" (basketball court) in my community and forming sports teams. In March, two youth from my community and I are going to a conference called "Deportes Para la Vida" (sports for life) which is an initiative that uses sports to teach youth about HIV/AIDS and other issues they may be faced with. I am really excited about this and I am looking forward to doing activities outside of a classroom setting.

So those are some of the first projects I am going to work on. I know some of these may fail or may not go as planned but it is great to actually get started and see where my youth thrive and spend more time getting to know them.

In other news....

I am in my own house. I am still eating lunch with my Dona and I am basically still on her property but it has been going very well so far. I feel as if people from my community are more comfortable coming to visit me and they have all had a good laugh at me living solo. It is extremely unusual for women to live and sleep alone in this country so I am still explaining that they do not need to send a 10 year old girl over to sleep in my bed with me. It has been nice for them to see me carrying my own water, sweeping and cleaning, they all think it is hilarious, especially when I mop. It has made them realize that I am actual part of their community, that I will be here awhile and that I am not an oblivious American that needs my Dona to do everything for me. I have a bed, a stove and a gas tank but there are still some things I am hoping to get over time, like some chairs. I bought pots, pans, plates and utensils but I didn't realize I needed to fill my gas tank with gas - maybe I am an oblivious American. That being said, I haven't done any cooking yet. I do have to say that carrying the water is much more work than I had thought. My Dona has this gutter system rigged up so all the rain water goes into this HUGE tank (this past week it rained quite a bit so I threw on my raincoat and stood in the rain with a bucket - goofy American) and then she makes a few trips to the creek every week. When I was living with her she would always have a bucket of water for me to bathe with and then she did all the cooking and cleaning so I never really had to fetch much water unless I did it for fun with the kids. Anyways, it is not that fun.

Frailin putting water in the tank

Getting water

The kids love coming over. If I go into my house and shut my door, they throw rocks at my tin roof so I will come out. The other afternoon, I decided to take a little break and shut/lock my door, I was lying in bed reading and I looked up and there was a little boy (Frailin) standing there. He climbed through my window and as much as I wanted to be angry at him, I couldn't stop laughing. It is tough having them all in my house because they want to touch everything and they are hard to control. Sometimes I make them do sit-ups, push-ups or wall sits.

Pushups in my house.

Resting after wall sits. 

My parents and my brother, Matt are coming to visit at the beginning of March, I am soo excited to see them. Next post I will put up some pictures of our little vacation!

Feel free to leave any questions in the comment area below and I will answer them next time!

Cheers!

My shower.

Friends.