Half the Man I Used to Be

I just got back from a 5-day visit of my site in El Seybo where I will be living for the next 2 years and couldn’t be more ready to get started. After we arrived back in the capital following CBT, we had a quick turnaround before leaving once again. It was great to reunite with the trainees in other sectors who we hadn’t seen in 5 weeks, swap stories and learn where everyone was going to be living for 2 years. It was also good to get back out of the capital where it was too hot, too polluted, too busy and downright depressing compared to our mountain oasis.

On our first day back at the training center in the capital we received our official project plans which contained the information about our sites, communities, host families, project partners and any other pertinent information regarding the life we will be leading in the coming months. We also received long-awaited cell phones, attended our final Spanish class and weighed ourselves for the first time since entering the county. I am already down 22lbs and counting. Apparently the Peace Corps is the world’s greatest diet. Granted, I was sick for a couple weeks but other people lost even more than I did. Between the 15 Youth volunteers we could have created an entire human being with the pounds we dropped. I haven’t been this skinny since I was 16 and my host family in the capital was concerned about how flacito I had gotten. I’m pretty excited but kind of annoyed that my clothes no longer fit.

With project plans in hand and bags re-packed we were ready for Project Partner Day. The day when our project partners, those at our sites who solicited a volunteer, come to the capital to meet us and take us to our site and new homes for a 5-day visit. It was both exciting and awkward to finally meet our partners. Exciting to see who we will be working with in the months and years to come and awkward to make small talk for hours on end in a second language. My Spanish small talk was exhausted in about 8 minutes and I had about 8 more hours to fill with smiles and reassuring nods.

The drive to El Seybo was beautiful. We first drove along the Caribbean Sea before turning north into what looked a lot like Iowa, but the seemingly endless fields were filled with sugar cane rather than corn. When the terrain became a little more mountainous we had arrived in El Seybo and we dar-ed una vuelta of the community. There is one main avenue that passes through the city center and the many barrios jut off each side of the avenue. The specific barrio where I will be living and working is on the north side of the city and has a population of approximately 4,000 people. The entire city is home to about 50,000 depending on who you ask.

One of my project partners works for the international NGO World Vision and another is vice president of the local Sports League. Between the two partners I have a number of potential projects to start thinking about including teaching English, organizing athletic teams and tournaments and creating an after-school program for kids. The wheels are already turning in my head about all the potential projects I would be able to carry out here. There are a number of existing community groups for me to get to know and work with and an excellent community center with a computer lab and space for classes and charlas. Plus, an excellent play (baseball diamond) and the best cancha (basketball court) I have seen in the country. I have really great resources to work with.

My host family is fantastic. I have a Don (host dad) for the first time and baseball is currently our primary source of conversation. I’ll have to think of something else to talk about once October is over. My Doña is the director of a local elementary school and a super-educated Dominican woman. The walls are decorated with her numerous degrees. I also have a 15-year-old host sister and a 14-year-old host brother. The brother reminds me a bit of myself 10 years ago, often skipping dinner because he can’t find a good place to pause his video game. And, amazingly enough, the city has 24-hour luz (electricity), which is virtually unheard of in this country. This will definitely make for a good living arrangement in the next 3 months until I am able to move out on my own.

While the visit was both great and encouraging, it was at the same time very overwhelming. My project partners took me to more than a two-dozen local businesses and organizations and introduced me to countless people. It will take a lot of time to remember all the names and faces. I had been feeling pretty good about my Spanish before this week but had a reality-check on how much further I still have to go before feeling truly comfortable with the language.

With the visit over and done with it is back to the capital for one last week. We have some more training to do before getting sworn-in on the 28th by the ambassador and have a couple days to celebrate before heading back to our sites to begin our 2 years of service. It will be an odd feeling to be separated from the other Americans we have shared the training experience with and to say goodbye to daily usage of the English language we rely so heavily on, but good to get our work, service and path to language fluency started.

Adios Constanza

CBT is over. We head out at 9am Saturday and will be back in the sweatbox that is the capital until Tuesday when we leave yet again to visit our sites, meet the families we will live with for the next 3 months and get a glimpse into the life we will live for the next 2 years.

Leaving Constanza is easily one of the most bittersweet moments of my life. The past 5 weeks have been some of my greatest to date. I'm gonna miss the hippie lovefests on the loma with my fellow trainees and the community we have called home here. It's been bliss and it will be missed.

Celebrando la Juventud

We have entered our final week of Community-Based Training here in beautiful Constanza. We leave on Saturday to return to the capital and prepare to swear-in and move to our sites/new homes for the next 2 years.

It is muy agridulce (very bittersweet) to leave our mountain pueblo and the group of fellow Americans we have grown close with over the past month. At the same time it is exciting to reunite with the other trainees, swear-in as volunteers, see our new communities, begin our service and get to work. This past month in the mountains has been somewhat like a study abroad experience. We spend our days in class and our nights hanging out with fellow Americans in a strange, foreign land. Very study abroad. But the work aspect of service is just around the corner.

We are going out in a big way in our final week in Constanza. This is the week of Celebrando la Juventud (Celebrating the Youth). In conjunction with our local youth groups we are putting on a number of fundraising and community clean-up activities. Thus far we have put on a movie for the community, organized a domino tournament and cleaned the streets of two local barrios with more activities to come including a mural painting and basketball tournament. Hopefully some of what we do will have a lasting effect. One of the biggest frustrations of being a Youth volunteer is not being able to see the tangible results of service. Whereas Community Economic Development volunteers can see their business plans put into action and Water volunteers can see their aqueducts flowing, we have little in terms of tangible results. We teach, we educate, we have some fun and hope our efforts have lasting effects on the local youth.

While this week is busy and entertaining, it is also serving as a small glimpse into how difficult and oftentimes random working with Dominicans might be. For example, during the middle of the movie we put on for approximately 50 children and youth, the entire group began cheering and applauding midway through the film (when the Polar Express pulls into the North Pole) and promptly stood up and exited the building. Regardless of the fact that there was still an hour left of the movie, they just got up and left. The first hour of the domino tournament was somewhat of a disorganized shit-show as well with the locals not understanding we had a bracket and a system for who would play and when. They just sat down and went for it. Cultural differences can lead to frustration, but in the end it all worked itself out and was successful. A current volunteer came to visit with us a few weeks back and informed us of the difference between being right and being effective. Even if we don't always think what they are doing is right, we are raising money, cleaning streets and getting things done. Effective.

One of the single greatest accomplishments of my weeks here has been my integration into the language of Spanglish. It is the greatest language ever and seems to be the primary means of communication between volunteers in the DR. It's not quite English but certainly not Spanish either. It's great. In two years I will be more than fluent in Spanglish and foresee having trouble readjusting to life without randomly slipping Spanish vocab into English sentences and adding -ing to the end of Spanish verbs.

It's always hard to leave a place. We say our awkward goodbyes to our host families this week and our see-you-laters to all the fellow Youth volunteers. We've had somewhat of a love fest up here (in a completely platonic way) and have developed really great group cohesion that is hard to let go of but will be very beneficial throughout our service when we need ideas, support, resources, ears to complain to or shoulders to cry on.

Another downside of leaving is a return to life without frequent internet access. My posting will be far less regular in the weeks to come as I swear-in, get settled in my new site and figure out what type of internet access I will have out East. For now, I can prepare to close this first chapter of my Peace Corps days as a trainee and start the next as a volunteer.

Moving East

It has been a crazy week full of ups and downs.

I had to make an unplanned and unfortunate trip to the capital this past week to spend some quality time with the PC Medical Staff. I came down with a fever on Monday and it was continuing to climb upwards of 103 Tuesday morning when I was directed to head into the capital. I had a number of blood tests done to in order to determine whether I had Dengue, H1N1, Mono or any number of other potential illnesses. Once I was cleared of all these and it was decided that I simply had a nagging virus and was not dying or highly contagious, I was put up in a local pensión that PCVs often call home while in the capital.

My 2.5 days in the pensión were very bittersweet. I was ill and feeling miserable. I was back in the very hot and very humid capital. I was missing all the technical and language training in the mountains. But at the same time I had AC, cable TV and a hot shower. It was hard to feel quite so bad knowing that CNN, Seinfeld or Sportscenter were one click away. Once my fever finally dipped down to around the 100 mark on Thursday, I was able to make the trip back up the mountain to Constanza.

What awaited me in Constanza was a whirlwind 24 hours in which I learned where it is I will be living for the next 2 years. Our boss paid us a visit on Friday morning to give us all the preliminary details of the sites we will be moving to and the projects we will begin working on at the end of the month. The only true nerves/anxiety/shit-my-pants fear I have had in this entire Peace Corps process has been over site placement. Where you go and who you work with can have positive or negative effects on service. Ultimately, as a volunteer, you have to make it work no matter where you are or who you are working with. But having a good site with positive project partners is a big plus.

Our boss went one-by-one through each of our fifteen placements and gave us the basics as to where we're going, what we'll be focusing on, why we were placed there, etc. We then got to see a map of the DR with thumbtacks representing all the Youth volunteers in their respective sites. I'm heading out East and couldn't be more excited about it. I will be living in a barrio in the pueblo of El Seibo. There is another Youth volunteer in the same city and he was instrumental in setting up the site I will be working in. There are 3 others from my training group heading to the east and a handful of current volunteers living there already.

What I know of the east (almost nothing) is that it is fairly flat and agricultural. Not unlike the Midwest but in a tropical way, with sugar cane and pineapple in place of corn and beans. My city has pretty good access to electricity and water, which is a plus. It's about 2.5-3 hours from the capital by bus. It's hot (Naturally). Great beaches and some places as yet untouched by all-inclusive resorts and droves of tourists. And best of all, a great project site with an eager project partner. I can't wait to head out there for my first visit in just under 3 weeks.

It was hard to concentrate on much of anything after the emotional high that was learning of our sites. The anticipation had been building for weeks and then was released with one glimpse of a map. We had to turn around quickly and host a talent show Friday night. It was put on for our host families and community members who have made us feel at home here in our barrio of Constanza for the past 3 weeks. We sang. We danced. There were puppets, bad Spanish jokes and Michael Jackson impersonators involved. The Dominicans loved it. Plus, the baker extraordinaire of our group baked cookies, which was the cherry on top of a long day.

I've had a pretty roller coaster week. They weren't lying when they said the Peace Corps was about peaks and valleys. As usual, everything at the end of the day is fantastic. I know where I'll be living for the next 24 months. I am pretty well back to health. And I still have 2 more weeks to enjoy here in Constanza.