Facts, Fun & Firsts

The Dominican Republic is a country well known for its beautiful white sand beaches. It is also a small country – ensuring that all Dominicans live within a relatively short distance from any number of the aforementioned beautiful white sand beaches. This would lead many to the assumption that all Dominicans have been to the beach. That assumption is, regrettably, incorrect.

Can you imagine living in Florida, Southern California or any of the Hawaiian Islands and having never been to the beach? I cannot. I can hardly imagine being from North Dakota and not having traveled to Florida, Southern California, Hawaii or elsewhere to visit a beach and catch a glimpse of an ocean. Lucky for some Dominicans who have been thus far in their lives deprived of swimming in the large bodies of water that surround their country, we Peace Corps Volunteers have Grant Money and we like the beach.

This past weekend myself and 5 other Youth Volunteers who live in bateys offered their girls volleyball teams a weekend of facts, fun and of firsts.

On Saturday, we 6 Volunteers and the 36 young voleibolistas met at a nearby retreat center for a day of learning. We Volunteers led charlas, games and activities dealing with Good Sportsmanship, HIV/AIDS, Teamwork and Dehydration. Lots of facts. At our last Volleyball tournament two girls fainted due to dehydration so we thought we’d drop some knowledge on the importance of pumping your body full of water.

On Sunday morning we all loaded onto buses and headed to nearby Guayacanes, located along the Eastern coast and home to a beautiful white sand beach. We strung up a net and played volleyball in the baking Caribbean sun all day long. Lots of fun.

For some of the girls, it was their first beach trip. That alone made the day worthwhile. I often feel as a Peace Corps Volunteer that what I really do here is offer opportunities. Opportunities for my community members to meet and know an American. Opportunities for my youth to learn about things they otherwise might never learn about. Or for them travel with me to Camps and Conferences in distant parts of their own country they otherwise would never go. Or to take someone to a beach they live less than 50 miles from but would never have seen had a strange white guy not been sent to live in their community for two years.

The day was nearly perfect. The girls thoroughly enjoyed the surf and the sand. The Volunteers thoroughly sun burned themselves. I say nearly perfect because our beach day was on a Sunday – and Sunday is the day people here tend get drunk – and drunk men on the beach are attracted to 36 volleyball playing teenage girls and their 6 white friends like moths to a flame. We spent large amounts of time chasing away persistent drunk men with a Herman Cain-like tendency to sexually harass any female in sight.

It is incredible to me how comfortable I have become in the past two years at scolding people. From children straight on up to adults. I have no reservations telling someone to get lost or stop being such an ass. Two years ago I didn’t even know how to say such things in Spanish. Now not a day goes by without it. Sadly, being blunt and/or short with people is effective here. If you simply ask the drunk assholes on the beach to “Please, go away. We’re trying to hold an activity. Thank you.” they’re simply going to persist. But if you are to say “Seriously dude, go away! How many times do we have to tell you no?” they might just get the picture and go harass someone else.

As a male Volunteer, my life here is exponentially easier than that of a female Volunteer. Female Volunteers here, and I imagine in many (most?)) other countries, have to deal with copious amounts of sexual harassment each and every day. It’s gotta get exhausting. Not to mention ugly and degrading and gross. I knew it was tough to be a female here but after more than two years in this country, it took me one day at the beach for it to really hit home. Dominican men can be gross. Men can be gross. People can be gross. Why do people insist on being gross?

But side rant on the occasional ways of Dominican men and hardship of female PCVs aside, the event was a major success. Our girls learned, they played, they enjoyed themselves and some of them had a major life experience of seeing/swimming in the ocean for the very first time. That’s big. And it’s all because we offered them a simple little opportunity.

Our Beautiful Court

Lunch Break

Bumping, Setting and Spiking for the Tiguere Spectators

Personal Development

October 28th marked the official end of my service as a Peace Corps Volunteer. Or it would have were I not extending my service and sticking around until June. While I and many others from my group have extended and, therefore, treated October 28th as any other day, a number of people did leave. Closing this chapter and moving on to a new, more American one.

I never expected that when November 2011 rolled around I would still find myself here in the DR. I didn’t expect to still be writing these blog posts by candlelight, awaiting the return of the electricity so I can type and upload it to the interwebs. For more than two years now the date, the numbers, 10/28/2011, have been so meaningful. They represented a goal. A milestone. And now it has come and gone with little fanfare.

This fall has been a strange one. September was undoubtedly my most busy and productive month as a PCV. It was followed by a major October slump. All peaks in Peace Corps seem to lead to an inevitable valley. And now November presents itself as another mountain to climb.

Aside from the return of numerous Peace Corps camps, conferences, trainings and more, I’m starting to finally start seriously looking towards my life post-Peace Corps. Attempting to do some personal development on top of the Grassroots development. This includes researching Grad School programs, filling out applications, writing personal statements and deciding where it is I want to live when my time in the Caribbean comes to a close.

America is big. It is home to many good schools. Lots of cool cities. How am I supposed to settle on just one place? Can’t people just commute from Denver to New York? Seattle and the Bay Area look close on a map. In the DR, mountains and cities and beaches and deserts are all just one uncomfortable bus ride away. I’m going from a country roughly the size of New Hampshire to a country in which New Hampshire is among the smallest of 50 fairly large states. America. It’s a daunting place.

An unfortunate accompaniment to applying to Graduate School is the GRE. Yet another godforsaken standardized test in the life of an American student which does nothing to reflect one’s true intelligence/abilities. It costs $200 and requires a fair amount of studying. Trying to study in what is easily one of the world’s loudest countries borders on tortuous. There is literally no where one can go to escape the noise.

I went to a large shopping center called Jumbo (think Latin American Target) last week to sit in the food court and take a GRE practice test. Jumbo is about 30 minutes away in the nearest city. It is glorious there. In the store I mean, not the city. The city, San Pedro de Macoris, is pretty awful. I sat amongst the bustle of people eating, shopping and getting wrapped up into the arms of commerce and even with all the noise and distraction, Jumbo provides a better learning environment than anywhere in my community. It's loud here. It's no wonder schoolchildren in the DR don't learn, they can't hear a god damn thing.

November 2011. Still here. Who woulda thunk it? This country certainly has a strange effect on people. They simply can't leave. And when the finally do, they suffer from chronic hearing loss. Seriously, it's really loud here.

The Homestretch

The end of September marked the end of my 26th month as a Peace Corps Volunteer. Peace Corps service is a 27-month commitment. You do the math.

The end is near. Or it would be anyway had I not made the decision to extend my service and stay on the island for another 7 or 8 months. I’ll be continuing work in my community while taking on leadership roles within Peace Corps DR with our Camp Superman and Deportes para la Vida initiatives.

Even as I’m sticking around for a while, the end of October marks a milestone. A number of Volunteers from my group, those who arrived together to the sweltering summer heat of the DR in August 2009, will be heading back to America to begin their lives as ‘Returned’ Peace Corps Volunteers.

The imminent finish line becomes more apparent and more realistic with every passing week. In early September, the 38 who remain from my group attended a 3-day Close of Service Conference intended to give us all the tools necessary to readjust back into American life.

Then a few weeks later the most recent edition of the PCDR Publication ‘Gringo Grita’ came out and featured surveys filled out by the 38 of us entering our final month of service. It is essentially a yearbook full of our funniest and most cherished experiences of the past two years.

Now we’re in October and people are starting to leave the island. Volunteers are hopping into taxis headed for the airport and simply disappearing off the island. The support system and family of Volunteers we have shared the past two years of our lives with are moving on to different and more American things. It is a strange and nostalgia-filled time of service.

How 27 months can pass by so damn fast I will never know. When someone first applies to the Peace Corps, they can’t help but think 27 months seems like a long time. A sizeable time commitment. It’s not. Well, it is, but it’s not.

It feels like just yesterday we stepped off a plane in Santo Domingo and were thrown headfirst into an endless cycle of cultural and linguistic misunderstanding. To sweat, mosquitoes & colmados. To rice, beans & viveres. To Dengue Fever, Intestinal Parasites & Scabies. To meeting Dominicans who treated you like family and to meeting 50 strange Americans who in two years you would recognize as family.

It’s almost impossible to believe that so many of us are now in our 27th and final month of service. It's strange. It's sad. It's exciting. It's unfathomable. It's here. It's now. It's happening.

Where does time go?

4%

It is September and in some northern parts of the world, summer is turning to fall. Children are back to school. Leafs will soon be changing their color. Weekends will soon be dominated by football.

Here in the DR, fall doesn’t exist. It’s as hot as ever and the Tropical Storms and Hurricanes that keep passing through have allowed mosquitoes to reproduce in alarming, Dengue Fever-inflicting numbers. There unfortunately is no football, though the Dominican Baseball League will start up again in October, which is better than nothing. And children will return to class whenever the hell they feel like it.

Classes were to officially begin nationwide on the 17th of August. That was three weeks ago. But neither the teachers nor the students had any interest in holding class so early in August. It’s hot after all.

The overwhelming majority of children in this country attend public school (if they attend school at all). Public school is held in sessions, or tandas, taking place in the morning from 8-12 or in the afternoon from 2-6. The tanda system lessens the inevitable issue of overcrowded classrooms and the limited number of trained teachers in the country. The tanda system also allows for just 4 hours of class time per day. Of those 4 hours, maybe 2 are actually devoted to education. The other two involve arriving late, leaving early, idly sitting and throwing rocks at one another.

The education system is a problem. A big one. For my money, it is the biggest issue this country faces.

There is a big push here to bump federal spending for K-12 Education up to 4%. Currently, the government devotes just 2.3% of the GDP to K-12 Ed. This is one of the lowest percentages in the Americas and in the world and goes a long way to explain how the school system here can be so abysmal.

For reference: the US gives 5.8%, placing us 37th internationally. Socialist Scandinavia gives the most of all developed countries (naturally) with Denmark giving the most at 8.5%, ranking 8th internationally. Fellow Caribbean nation Cuba gives the most at 18.7%.

With Presidential elections upcoming in 2012, this push for 4% has gained a lot of traction and presidential candidates are hopping on the 4% bandwagon. Meanwhile, the city of Santo Domingo is building a second line on their Subway system, the Metro. Yes, here in a country that suffers from daily power outages and where millions have no access to potable water, there exists a beautiful and well-functioning Subway system in the Capital city. The new line of the Metro is under construction and receiving a whopping 6% of the GDP this year.

6% for one stretch of subway tracks in one city. 2.3% for K-12 Education across the entire country.

I don’t mean to suggest for one second that money is the one single ingredient that makes for a functioning education system. It is one of many factors. But if a country places such little value and such little investment into education and its society’s future, it should expect little results.

I would also argue that the United States should offer a far higher percentage of its GDP to education. The richest, most powerful country on Earth shouldn’t be 37th at anything. Students in Denmark receive free, high level education through college. American students receive an education of varying quality depending on whether they live in a suburb, an inner city or somewhere in between before entering a university system that will leave them under a mountain of debt. The education system in the US has all kinds of problems but looks positively ideal next the DR’s system.

Kids in my community have finally decided it is time to go back to school this week. They have dusted off their uniforms, donned their new backpacks and braved the sun's rays to walk down the dirt road to their modest school. Maybe they'll keep going every day. Maybe they'll learn something. Maybe someday their government will invest as much in their future as it will for one Metro line stretching a few short miles. Maybe.

Off to school

Eliecel heads to his first day of Kindergarten

Melinda & Loren look to beat the heat under the shade of an umbrella

Celebrating Education

Dominicans generally have little knowledge of the world outside this small island. While I recognize this to be a generalization, after two years here I also recognize it to be accurate. This is especially true for Dominicans living in the more marginalized communities where Peace Corps Volunteers live and work. I obviously don’t expect people in developing countries to jet set across the globe, but I would expect the local education system to offer, well, some basic education. I’ve also been here long enough to know this is too much to ask.

In order to educate our Youth about the world outside the island, some volunteers teach world geography courses. Another way we teach our youth about the world is through annual regional diversity conferences. These conferences take place in the Northern part of the DR (Celebrando el Cibao), the Southern region (Celebrando el Sur), and here in the Eastern region (Celebrando el Este). These conferences bring youth from around the DR together to discuss their diversity, their communities, their country and to learn about important themes like discrimination, immigration, culture and religion in the world.

This year, along with another volunteer, I planned and organized the Celebrando el Este conference. In mid-August, 35 Dominican youth aged 12-20 got together to do a number of activities and learn about the region, the country and the planet they call home.

Like most human beings, Dominican youth learn best by doing. So instead of simply talking at the kids, we got interactive. The kids learned about DR culture and history by playing Jeopardy. They painted a giant map of the world and learned some facts about World Geography. They used that same map to discuss immigration patterns and treatment of immigrants in the world; a very pertinent topic with the DR’s own immigration issues with Haiti.

Learning an Irish Jig as we Dance Around the World

The kids exercised by doing Yoga, learned new dances by ‘Dancing Around the World’ and made Hummus, Pesto & Bruschetta in our ‘Dips Around the World’ activity. They traveled around the globe and ‘visited’ 9 countries, learning about each one and earning a stamp in their Passport. They saw discrimination firsthand in a powerful activity known in the Peace Corps DR World as ‘Archie Bunker’s Neighborhood’.

Enjoying freshly self-prepared Hummus, Pesto and Bruschetta

Celebrando el Este was the most educational Conference I have been part of in Peace Corps. Our kids not only learned a great deal in one weekend, but retained the information as well. The two girls I brought to the Conference couldn’t stop talking about how much they enjoyed themselves and are inspired to paint a World Map Mural in our community. The Conference has also inspired me to teach a Celebrando el Mundo course to my Boys Club.

My girls from Cachena receiving their certificates in front of our beautifully painted World Map

Just as a lack of access to books leads to lower literacy rates, a lack of maps and no knowledge of geography can lead to a lesser curiosity of the world. I hope a large map mural in the community and some educated youngsters will spark the interest of others to learn more about the DR and the world we live in.

Celebrando an Educational Weekend

Emily

The first Tropical Storm of the season has come and gone. Here in the Eastern region of the DR the storm, named Emily, brought some wind gusts and about 24 hours of rain but nothing too fuerte. My site resembled a lake through Thursday afternoon but now things are drying up and the mosquitoes (and probably the cholera too) are coming out in record numbers.

I’ve been very fortunate in my now two years here in the Caribbean to avoid any major Tropical Storms or Hurricanes. In 2009 there were no notable storms and in 2010 one hurricane passed through but did most of its damage in Haiti, naturally. I think we won’t be so fortunate in 2011. August begins the height of the storm season and already we’ve had a named storm and many more predicted.

I am generally one of those people who kind of enjoys storms. The claps of thunder. The smell of wet grass. And here in the DR, rainy days allow for socially acceptable laziness and exorbitant amounts of sleep and/or good reading. Win Win Win. On rainy days, meetings are cancelled, classes are unattended and humans are indoors. You see, the only things Dominicans like less than direct sunlight (see recent post) is rain and being wet. I am also generally one of those people who like to try everything or experience everything at least once. So part of me wants to be able to say I experienced a hurricane, earthquake or other natural disaster that occasionally wreaks havoc on this part of the planet.

That being said, I am also accustomed to experiencing storms from inside a structurally sound house or even a basement if the occasion calls for it. Here I have neither a structurally sound house nor a basement (nor anything resembling either, for that matter). Even Emily’s modest wind gusts had the zinc roof trembling and the rains leaked through it all day. A mild hurricane could lift my house a la The Wizard of Oz and carry it far from Kansas.

So while I would love to one day say I have lived through a hurricane, I would prefer it happened in a post-Peace Corps stage of my life. Maybe in my retirement years when I live in a beachfront, hurricane-proof fortress. Or when Richard Branson invites me to holiday on his private island; he surely has a storm shelter. Until either of those absurdly unrealistic dreams becomes a reality, I'd prefer the hurricanes keep a safe distance from this island.

The Dream Team

Barcelona, Spain. 1992. The best basketball team ever and one of the most illustrious collections of talent assembled in the history of international sport wins an Olympic Gold Medal and brings pride to a nation.

Puerto Plata, Dominican Republic. 2011. An extremely mediocre group of PCVs competes against a city’s best ballers and brings pride to no one.

A Volunteer friend & fellow Iowan just put on a weeklong basketball tournament in his urban barrio in the city of Puerto Plata, on the DR’s north coast. This past Saturday, a compilation of the best local Dominican players in the tournament was invited to test their skills versus a team of Peace Corps Volunteers. The Peace Corps Dominican Republic Dream Team, if you will. A number of the best players among the Volunteers were unable to make the trip, but we liked our chances nonetheless.

Due to transport issues (read: Santo Domingo traffic), myself and two other Dream Team members arrived late and missed the entire 1st Quarter of the game. After emptying our bladders following the 5-hour car ride and quickly lacing up our sneakers, we erased a 6-20 deficit and took a halftime lead into the nonexistent locker-room. We had averted disaster and a win by the Americans looked inevitable. In the 4th Quarter, the younger Dominicans caught fire, regained the lead and defeated the mighty Americanos.

It was not the Dream Team’s best showing. We won no medals. There was no national anthem. Our pride took a hit. But after the game the Dominican players were taught a few things about HIV/AIDS and were filled with self-confidence and pride of their own after defeating an American Equipo de Sueños. I suppose that's an acceptable consolation prize. And the beer we bought afterwards, used to regenerate our deflated self-esteem, that was a good consolation too.