¿Cuánto Tiempo?

2012 has not been good to my blog. I apologize to the 3 of you who regularly check in to see what is happening here in the DR. I didn’t fall off the face of the earth or the side of the island but I have been very busy in my third and final year as a PCV. To get us up to speed, I’m going to list and briefly explain the highlights of the past couple months.

International Women’s Day

March 8th marked International Women’s Day and to celebrate that day fellow Volunteer Phoebe arranged a sort of field trip for the volunteers living in the eastern region working with Chicas Brillantes girls groups.

10 Volunteers and teenaged girls from our communities boarded a bus early in the morning and headed north to Salcedo, the home of the Hermanas Mirabal. The Mirabal Sisters are cultural icons here in the DR. They acted as revolutionaries who stood up to and were eventually assassinated by Dictator Rafael Trujillo before his downfall.

We visited the museum their former home and learned about their lives. We watched a movie (a bad one starring Michelle Rodriguez) telling their story. And we were fortunate enough to hear from the one living Mirabal sister, Dede, who, at age 89, came out of her house, graced us with her presence, answered questions from our girls and inspired us all.

Our girls learned about strong, brave, inspiring Dominican female leaders and met a real life Mirabal sister and Dominican celebrity. A very empowering International Women’s Day.

Posing with Dede Mirabal outside her home in Salcedo

Deportes para la Vida

I’ve organized and facilitated a number of Deportes para la Vida events in the past year and after my final 5-day training in March, I’m just about ready to pass the baton for this initiative on to other volunteers.

The training, the fifth in which I’ve attended and third in which I’ve facilitated, was a success and we certified another 37 people to teach the DPV course in their communities. Since December 2010, 36 PCVs and 98 Dominican counterparts have been trained to teach the DPV curriculum. In just 18 months, well over 1,000 Dominican youth have learned to prevent, combat against and educate others about the spread of HIV/AIDS through this program.

It’s been very cool to see this program start just 1.5 years ago and expand rapidly into a highly successful Peace Corps initiative.

Newest group of Deportes para la Vida Trainers

Camp Superman

Speaking of last camps and baton passing, I organized, facilitated and attended my final Campamentos Superman. The Peace Corps boys’ gender empowerment initiative has also grown rapidly in my time here. What once was a summer camp is now a year-round initiative with a series of American-style camping trips and Volunteers working with boys groups in their communities.

These camps have provided many highlights throughout my service. Some of the highlights of these last two camps include seeing a number of Dominican boys experience the ocean for the first time in Las Galeras, Samaná, and watching boys overcome their fears to zipline through the trees at camp in San Cristóbal. Also in San Cristóbal, Volunteers and boys alike passed through an insanely fun, challenging and muddy obstacle course. The pictures are all kinds of epic.

Again, it’s been great to see this initiative grow in my time here and I’m excited to see how great it will become in the future.

My Superboys Alex, Raudy & Kikel on Playa Rincón

Sirve Con Fuerza

My second trip to Peace Corps’ annual girls volleyball tournament. 10 teams. 60 girls. 1 champion. We played lots of volleyball and learned valuable life lessons about gender, nutrition, proper condom use and more. I am proud to announce that the 6 girls from my community of Batey Cachena won the championship versus the favored-to-win team from Batey Las Pajas and went home as champions.

SCUBA

As I’ve been very busy above ground, I’ve been sure to reward myself with some weekends under the sea. A former Volunteer friend is interning at a SCUBA shop in the beach paradise of Las Galeras, Samaná. She has arranged a number of SCUBA ‘camps’ in which we PCVs have been able to get SCUBA certified for ridiculously low prices. In late February, I spent a 4-day weekend camping on the beach and learning SCUBA basics. In Las Galeras, we are able to suit up and walk right out to a coral reef – avoiding the costly boats and gasoline altogether.

Just last week I returned to seek my Advanced Certification. Now that we had the basics down, we could just dive. We returned to the reef. We dove at night. We dove to depths of 35 meters and explored a sunken cargo ship. It was an awesome weekend and I am now certified to dive anywhere on earth.

SCUBA certification – yet another perk of Peace Corps service on a tropical island.

The home base of SCUBA Camp. Life is rough.

That’s a quick rundown of the happenings here in the DR over the past 3 months. If I should disappear again anytime soon, please refer to my friend Dory’s blog, 27 Stories. She’s an incredible writer and does a brilliant job of capturing the emotional roller coaster of Peace Corps life. While my blog has devolved into little more than monthly recaps and stories of what I do, hers does a good job of explaining what we go through and how we feel. Check it out.