Well the hot summer here has made me lazy and a bad blogger, but I’m back and ready to write! In my last entry my Escojo group had graduated and I was hoping that they would begin to give presentations and multiply the information that I had taught them. Well I learned the hard way that summer is not really the time to start anything new or ambitious—here in Las Pajas, since a lot of kids live with their grandmothers or aunts, the kids leave for the summer to go spend time with their real parents in the cities. Almost as soon as my Escojo group graduated, about half of them took off to the cities, leaving the rest of us in Las Pajas, struggling to plan activities. The same happened with my volleyball team—about half the girls disappeared during the entire month of July! After adjusting to the initial shock of a town with half as many kids as there used to be, I decided to adjust my plans for the summer, this is what I ended up doing during these months:
--The Peace Corps assigned me and two other volunteers who lived near me to coordinate the sub-regional Escojo conference in July. This gave us plenty of work since we had to plan the agenda, rent the space, organize transportation and food, etc… We decided the conference theme would be discrimination; kids from ten different communities sat through four different presentations on stereotypes, homophobia, sexism and discrimination against those living with HIV/AIDS. I must say, I think we gave the kids something to think about, the discussions that took place during the homophobia presentation (a word most kids had never even heard of) and the sexism presentation were certainly interesting. In regards to homophobia, most kids ended up saying this: “If we can’t change them [meaning gay people] we should at least accept them and help them if they need it,” I guess we’re kind of getting somewhere….
--Volleyball, volleyball and more volleyball. Though a lot of the volleyball team took off to go visit mothers and fathers and aunts and uncles, the girls who stuck around over the summer were bored, which meant that they arrived at my house around 3:30 every day asking to play volleyball (practices were supposed to be twice a week at 5 pm). We ended up playing almost every afternoon, occasionally playing with the boys as well, the only problem was the boys (ages 15-17) had no mercy for the girls, and would end up hitting the ball as hard as they could at them, without thinking that those techniques didn’t necessarily provide for a fun game. Eventually the girls told me that they didn’t want to play any more with the boys, so I kicked them out and told them to form their own team (which they have yet to do).
--A group who did stay around over the summer were the young mothers that I had began to meet with in March and April. Our meetings were canceled the entire month of May because it rained every day, so in June I decided to start up again. The women didn’t have a clear idea of what they wanted to do as a group, so I decided I would give a small course on reproductive health. We had four classes discussing reproductive organs, pregnancy, family planning and condoms. I think they all really enjoyed learning about new things and sharing advice and stories with each other.
--Towards the middle of the summer I began to realize that the younger kids were really really bored, and decided to start tutoring a few kids at my house who were behind in school. A large group of kids began coming, so we moved the classes to the community center and I began classes focused on several books that we have—For three days in a row we would read the same book and then do educational activities related to that book, such as math problems, practicing with vocabulary words, and an art project. The first week was great, I had two groups of about six kids each, one older and one younger and we read The Hungry Caterpillar and did activities with the book. The next week, a lot of parents had heard I was giving classes and so I ended up with three groups of about 10 kids each. I got some of my volleyball players to help me give classes, but it was a struggle to keep all the kids under control. By the third week kids ages three to twelve were showing up, and my volleyball girls got sick of helping, so it was me, trying to control thirty children who were running around and shrieking. I understood why their parents had sent them to me, they couldn’t stand them in the house any more! But I couldn’t get anything done either. Luckily for me, during that week a group of Canadians donated about twenty large boxes of toiletries and clothes that took up the entire community center, so I canceled classes saying that there was no room to do anything in the community center (whew!).
--I was lucky that I could use the donations to cancel classes, but the donations also created a lot of work for me and my project partner. The group of Canadians came and asked us to hand out all the donations in the best way we thought possible. This meant that every day for about a week we sorted through toiletries and clothes, trying to make sure that every family in town received the proper amount of toiletries and clothes. Of course, it’s impossible to make everybody happy, and by the end of the week I was so sick of people coming to my house asking me to change what they had received or asking more for more things. When the time came for me to leave for vacation (Argentina to visit Rakaia!) I had a cold, was exhausted, and so grateful for the chance to get on a plane and fly far, far away!
So that was my summer, now I'm preparing for volleyball tournaments, sports camps and the school year to come, which will involve teaching literacy and math to fourth graders, training and new group of Escojo kids, and some other projects here and there, I'll keep you all updated!
Monday, August 17, 2009
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
June 6th, 2009--Graduation!
After twelve weeks of classes, my group of sex ed health promotors graduated from their course! The program is called “Escojo Mi Vida” which literally translates to “I choose my life”. The classes, which I taught once a week, covered subjects such as self-esteem, values, decision making, abstinence, STDs, HIV/AIDS and adolescent pregnancy. A lot of kids came at first, but the kids who graduated where the ones who came to ten out of the twelve classes and passed a test to prove that they knew the information.
At the beginning of the course there would be thirty kids in the classroom, some of which had come because they were interested in the material and others who came because they just wanted to hang out with the friends. Eventually the kids who weren’t all that dedicated or interested in the class stopped coming and we ended up with fifteen kids who prepared to graduate.
The days leading up to the graduation were a bit hectic but preparing for the graduation was good for the kids because they learned how to plan a big event. The kids had to break into committees to decide on the agenda, what food they were going to serve and how they were going to decorate the place. They also had to assign which graduates were going to talk at the graduation, and the last two days of the event, with the help of my dad, they did some acting exercises and planned a skit about adolescent pregnancy.
The day of the graduation the kids all showed up three hours early to decorate the community center and make last minute plans. An hour before it was supposed to start all the kids went home to get ready. At seven o’clock when the graduates were supposed to be there only about five kids had arrived, and by seven thirty when the event was supposed to start there were more little kids waiting for the graduation to begin than there were graduates in the community center. My parents kept asking me if we shouldn’t go round up the kids and other community members so that we could get started. Being used to Dominican time, I told them not to worry, and sure enough by about 8:15 everyone was in their seats and ready to go.
The graduation started off with a prayer, then I welcomed and thanked everyone for coming, then the students talked about what Escojo was, what they had learned and what their plans for the future were. They preformed their drama and then our community leader said a few “words of support”. The kids then had to do a type of “swearing in” where they each had to stand in front of the audience and say what they chose for their life, for example “I choose a healthy life” or “I choose to help and educate others” or “I choose to prevent STDs”. After that they received their certificates of completion and played a “Perico Ripiado” (a type of merengue) that they had composed about Escojo. Our community leader wanted us to march around town so that more people knew what this graduation was all about (this was the first graduation to ever happen in Las Pajas). We marched to another neighborhood chanting and cheering and then played the song again. We finished by going back to the community center, handing out a small snack and playing the song once more.
It was fun to have the graduation because it awarded the kids who had worked hard during the course and it allowed for the community to understand better what Escojo was and what we will be doing in the future. The kids also had a great time and were still talking about how much fun the graduation was several days later—that goes to show that they enjoyed it and were proud of themselves, probably the most important part of having the graduation!
At the beginning of the course there would be thirty kids in the classroom, some of which had come because they were interested in the material and others who came because they just wanted to hang out with the friends. Eventually the kids who weren’t all that dedicated or interested in the class stopped coming and we ended up with fifteen kids who prepared to graduate.
The days leading up to the graduation were a bit hectic but preparing for the graduation was good for the kids because they learned how to plan a big event. The kids had to break into committees to decide on the agenda, what food they were going to serve and how they were going to decorate the place. They also had to assign which graduates were going to talk at the graduation, and the last two days of the event, with the help of my dad, they did some acting exercises and planned a skit about adolescent pregnancy.
The day of the graduation the kids all showed up three hours early to decorate the community center and make last minute plans. An hour before it was supposed to start all the kids went home to get ready. At seven o’clock when the graduates were supposed to be there only about five kids had arrived, and by seven thirty when the event was supposed to start there were more little kids waiting for the graduation to begin than there were graduates in the community center. My parents kept asking me if we shouldn’t go round up the kids and other community members so that we could get started. Being used to Dominican time, I told them not to worry, and sure enough by about 8:15 everyone was in their seats and ready to go.
The graduation started off with a prayer, then I welcomed and thanked everyone for coming, then the students talked about what Escojo was, what they had learned and what their plans for the future were. They preformed their drama and then our community leader said a few “words of support”. The kids then had to do a type of “swearing in” where they each had to stand in front of the audience and say what they chose for their life, for example “I choose a healthy life” or “I choose to help and educate others” or “I choose to prevent STDs”. After that they received their certificates of completion and played a “Perico Ripiado” (a type of merengue) that they had composed about Escojo. Our community leader wanted us to march around town so that more people knew what this graduation was all about (this was the first graduation to ever happen in Las Pajas). We marched to another neighborhood chanting and cheering and then played the song again. We finished by going back to the community center, handing out a small snack and playing the song once more.
It was fun to have the graduation because it awarded the kids who had worked hard during the course and it allowed for the community to understand better what Escojo was and what we will be doing in the future. The kids also had a great time and were still talking about how much fun the graduation was several days later—that goes to show that they enjoyed it and were proud of themselves, probably the most important part of having the graduation!
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
May 23rd, 2009--VOLLEYBALL TRIP!!!
THE PREPARATION:
One of my big projects in the past couple months has been forming a volleyball team and preparing to take them on a trip to visit another volunteer who also has a volleyball team. The twelve girls on my team are between ten and fourteen years, and one of the main reasons I have been able to convince them to practice twice a week and be good sports is that I told them that we would go on a trip. In the month before the tournament the girls came to practice religiously twice a week, and wanted to practice more but I put a limit on the amount of times a week we could practice. They also arranged to have a raffle to raise money for the trip. While they were busy selling raffle tickets I took no more than five trips to the capital city of our province (about an hour away) to beg the politicians for money to pay for the costs of our transportation to the camp/tournament (which was what we were calling it). Here in the DR if you want something done in your town (such as a road paved, building built, etc) or you just want something (like a job, or money to pay for a car rental to take 12 girls on a trip) the standard procedure is to go ask one of the many “local” politicians to give you whatever you want. So I began by taking an hour long motorcycle ride to our “mayor”’s office in the capital city. By the time I arrived there were twenty people waiting to talk to him, and I didn’t have time to sit and wait as well. So I left him a letter with his secretary who told me to call back every couple of days to see if he had received it. I did just that, but in the end she basically told me that he wouldn’t grant any request unless you talked to him in person.
After several more unfruitful trips to his office and the Senator’s office (they both were never in their offices) to ask the same thing, I finally got lucky and called one day when I was in the city, talked to the secretary and was told to hurry in, because the mayor was finally in the office taking requests. I went to the town hall and waited outside his office with about fifteen others. People were being called in one by one to talk to him, and then suddenly the secretary came and told everyone to go into his office. Now there were about fifteen of us all in his office, all vying to get his attention. I decided to go shake his hand, to let him know that I was there (I had met him several other times at various events, so I was pretty sure he recognized me) and then sit back and let some other people fight over his for attention. After three groups talked to him, I got closer and sat down in a chair next to his desk. The girl in front of him was asking him for a job, he told her to come back on Thursday and talk to his secretary. Then he turned to me. I explained to him that we were going on a trip to participate in a volleyball tournament/camp and that we were asking him to donate some money to help us pay the car rental. He said, "Oh no, I can just send one of our buses to take you". And that was that, after a month of trying to contact him, and contact the car rental company and find a driver from our town, he had solved all my problems. I tried to get him to give me a phone number that I could call to confirm the day before to make sure the bus would come, and he gave me his personal cell phone number and then sent me on my way.
During the week I tried calling that number several times, but of course he never picked up, so the day before I made several calls to make sure that the bus was coming, and finally talked to the right people, who told me that they would arrive at 8am (a little later than I had hoped). Meanwhile, my team had raised 500 pesos (fifteen dollars) which was enough to buy everybody ham and bread to eat for breakfast in the morning and bake three cakes to share with the other team. The girls were all super excited, borrowing clothes from different sisters and friends to make sure they all had the same uniform, and claiming that they were going to wake up at 5 am to do their chores and get ready. I told them they could not arrive at my house until 730.
THE CAMP
Almost all of the girls arrived at my house at 7am, the same time that the bus arrived. The girls were pleased to point out that I had told them to come at 730 because I thought that the bus wouldn’t come until eight, but I was wrong and they actually came at the right time. There was a flurry of bread and ham cutting and serving and then we all piled in the bus. Before we even left town the girls wanted to stop at a small store to buy candy and soda with the money that their parents had given them. We arrived pretty quickly to where we had to go, and were greeted there by the other team.
We had the camp in the elementary school, using their outdoor concrete court and the facilities the school had. We began by introducing ourselves to the other team, then we did some relay races and warm up drills. After that we practiced passing, setting, hitting and serving. We forced the girls to make groups so that there were half girls from my team and half girls from the other team. When we finished with the drills the girls were absolutely exhausted, so we took a break, ate some cake and then just rested and hung out. The girls from the other team went home for lunch while my team stayed and ate food which some of the mothers of the other team had prepared for us.
When everybody returned after lunch we talked about good sportsmanship and then did a team building activity where we blindfolded each team member and put out object on the court. The teammates had to guide their blinded teammate from the sidelines through the court without her stepping on any of the objects set out. The girls loved the activity and were disappointed that we didn’t have time for every single girl to try being blindfolded.
Then we began the tournament. My team had twelve girls and the other team had eleven. Since we wanted everybody to get a chance to play, and everybody was already exhausted, we played four games to just eleven points. My team won every single games, and boy were they excited!!!! Throughout all four games they were chanting and cheering (we had to stop several of the cheers because they did not quite show “good sportsmanship”) and celebrated every win as if it were the national championships. After that we mixed the teams and had them play several more games, and then of course the coaches had to play! Let me just say, the Las Pajas team won that game as well…
We finished the day off with some song and dance and then started packing up to go home. My girls were very tired, but insisted on passing by a local store on the way home to by more candy and small gifts for their families. We drove home in the pouring rain (it has rained almost every day this month). When we arrived on the dirt road that leads to our town all the girls started pretending they were crying, wailing that they wanted to go back to the camp. When we arrived in town they started singing and chanting to make sure that the entire town knew that they won. I was exhausted by the time we got back, but it had been a successful day and my girls were proud to say that they had won!
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
Bits and Pieces
"Why is it raining?"
"BECAUSE GOD WANTS THE MANGOES TO RIPEN!"
Yes friends, it's mango season, and every day little boys have brought me mangos for breakfast, I must say, I can't complain! Of course, the beginning of mango season also means that it's the beginning of the rainy season, and for about two weeks it has rained every afternoon, making the roads impassable, especially on motorcycles! Every time I travel I have to plan my returns for the morning so that I don't get stranded in the rain.
An exciting trip
So I have a volleyball team of twelve girls between the ages of ten and fourteen years old, and we are planning to visit another volunteer's team where we will have a little camp in the morning, and a workshop on nutrition and sportsmanship and then a tournament in the afternoon. The girls are so excited because they have very few opportunities to leave Las Pajas. They have begun to sell raffle tickets to help pay for the trip, and though many people have signed up to buy them, here people have the bad habit of not paying for things. If the girls keep up the good work, we probably will raise about forty-five American dollars which is a good chunk of money here! Even though the girls at times have ehm, shall we say, poor sportsmanship, they are trying very hard to work together as a team and go on this trip, which I think will be good for them.
"Teacher, you are beautiful"
--Say the 11 year olds I am teaching English to. I have been teaching English in the school as well as to a group of high school and college students, and I must admit I like it more than I thought I would. It is one thing that everybody is very enthusiastic about and wants to learn. Since here the kids address their teachers as "profesor" in Spanish, they address me as "teacher" in English. It cracks me up every time when they say things such as "teacher, you are beautiful" or "teacher no tengo pen" (i don't have a pen). I also really enjoy inventing fun games for the kids to play in order to practice English--when trying to teach classroom objects I placed all the objects on the floor and had the kids race to see which team could find the object I named first--they ended up on the floor trying to hold one another back from reaching the object. I can't say how much they actually learned, but it was a lot of fun to watch grown men grab onto each other's legs and be pulled across the floor when trying to reach an object!
That's what's going on with me for the most part. I hope you all are doing well. Keep in touch!
"BECAUSE GOD WANTS THE MANGOES TO RIPEN!"
Yes friends, it's mango season, and every day little boys have brought me mangos for breakfast, I must say, I can't complain! Of course, the beginning of mango season also means that it's the beginning of the rainy season, and for about two weeks it has rained every afternoon, making the roads impassable, especially on motorcycles! Every time I travel I have to plan my returns for the morning so that I don't get stranded in the rain.
An exciting trip
So I have a volleyball team of twelve girls between the ages of ten and fourteen years old, and we are planning to visit another volunteer's team where we will have a little camp in the morning, and a workshop on nutrition and sportsmanship and then a tournament in the afternoon. The girls are so excited because they have very few opportunities to leave Las Pajas. They have begun to sell raffle tickets to help pay for the trip, and though many people have signed up to buy them, here people have the bad habit of not paying for things. If the girls keep up the good work, we probably will raise about forty-five American dollars which is a good chunk of money here! Even though the girls at times have ehm, shall we say, poor sportsmanship, they are trying very hard to work together as a team and go on this trip, which I think will be good for them.
"Teacher, you are beautiful"
--Say the 11 year olds I am teaching English to. I have been teaching English in the school as well as to a group of high school and college students, and I must admit I like it more than I thought I would. It is one thing that everybody is very enthusiastic about and wants to learn. Since here the kids address their teachers as "profesor" in Spanish, they address me as "teacher" in English. It cracks me up every time when they say things such as "teacher, you are beautiful" or "teacher no tengo pen" (i don't have a pen). I also really enjoy inventing fun games for the kids to play in order to practice English--when trying to teach classroom objects I placed all the objects on the floor and had the kids race to see which team could find the object I named first--they ended up on the floor trying to hold one another back from reaching the object. I can't say how much they actually learned, but it was a lot of fun to watch grown men grab onto each other's legs and be pulled across the floor when trying to reach an object!
That's what's going on with me for the most part. I hope you all are doing well. Keep in touch!
Monday, April 27, 2009
A little begging and pleading
Hello everyone,
So right now I am involved in organizing several summer camps that involve youth and Peace Corps Volunteers throughout the country.
In order to fund these camps, which are great ways to get youth out of their communities and give them an opportunity to travel and meet other people, we need help from the US. There isn't much money here in the DR to finance youth camps, so what PCVs do is set up a online link through Peace Corps Washington where people can go online and donate to our cause. Right now I am working with 9 other volunteers to organize a 3-day sports camp where each volunteer will bring two kids from their community to participate in different sports and workshops about sportsmanship, leadership and how to take care of their bodies. It's shaping up to be a ton of fun and a great experience for the kids! However, we still don't have quite enough money to pull it off. If you are interested in helping us out, you can make a donation by going to this link: https://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=resources.donors.contribute.projDetail&projdesc=517-296 It would be greatly appreciated, and I will be sure to post pictures and a full report after we have the camp in August!
So right now I am involved in organizing several summer camps that involve youth and Peace Corps Volunteers throughout the country.
In order to fund these camps, which are great ways to get youth out of their communities and give them an opportunity to travel and meet other people, we need help from the US. There isn't much money here in the DR to finance youth camps, so what PCVs do is set up a online link through Peace Corps Washington where people can go online and donate to our cause. Right now I am working with 9 other volunteers to organize a 3-day sports camp where each volunteer will bring two kids from their community to participate in different sports and workshops about sportsmanship, leadership and how to take care of their bodies. It's shaping up to be a ton of fun and a great experience for the kids! However, we still don't have quite enough money to pull it off. If you are interested in helping us out, you can make a donation by going to this link: https://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=resources.donors.contribute.projDetail&projdesc=517-296 It would be greatly appreciated, and I will be sure to post pictures and a full report after we have the camp in August!
April 20th, 2009--How (Not) to Build a House in the DR
So if you have been following my blog with any regularity recently you might have noticed that I have not been very consistent in writing lately. That's because I've been busy trying to make a house out of an abandoned classroom in a condemned building. Yup, you read right! Let me explain:
For the past three months I have been living in a little apartment attached to a house where some Canadian nuns live. They are leaving in the next couple days to go back to Canada for six months, and for various reasons I decided about a month and a half ago that I would like to move out before they left (I felt uncomfortable about having to look after the whole house while they were gone, and it is slightly removed from the rest of the community). There is a building in my town that used to be a rural hospital, but it was abandoned about ten years ago because the structure wasn't sound (the foundation was not sturdy and rain filtered through the roof at times). Two different families recently have fixed up parts of it to live in, and between their two parts there was a large room that my project partner at one point had used as a classroom for his before-school program but had not been used in about a year. There was tile through most of it, however a side part was missing a bit of floor, and in the far back where there used to be a room to do washing my project partner swore that there were tubes that we could use for a bathroom. So I decided to fix it up—the things that Peace Corps required me to do was fill in an open wall with cement that was currently only covered with tin, put a door on the other side of the room, secure the windows and doors, and of course fix the bathroom. My project partner told me to hire my neighbor to do all the carpentry work and I decided to hire a friend of mine who works in construction to fill in the wall and the small amount of floor that needed to be covered. One day I went and bought about 200 dollars worth of materials, thinking that this would be all the materials that I would have to buy in order to fix up the house, since it was the list that my “workers” had given me. HAHAHA!
As you all know, construction and house repairs can be frusterating in any country, but what my project partner claimed would be a week long project turned into a month and a half of trips to the hardware store, pestering the people I needed to do the work, and fretting about my ever-growing costs. Here were several of the problems:
1. The supposed “tubes” that we would be able to connect to the toilet and use as drains did not exist, so we I had to buy new tubes to put in the house. Then we went to find the tubes that lead to the septic tank, and couldn't find them, which made me think that we would have to put in all new tubes. So I paid someone to dig a ditch towards the septic tank, and we left it for a while while trying to fix other things and waiting for April to come so that I could get paid again and buy the tubes. When April came someone else started digging and we found some of the tubes that we needed! However, it also meant that the ditch that the first guy had dug needed to be filled in and a different ditch had to be dug.
2. The guys who did the floor and wall for me worked really fast, but my neighbor who was going to do the “woodwork” took about a month to do a job that could have been done in less than two days.
3. Every time someone came to work in the house they realized they needed some other kind of nail, or piece of plastic, or wire, and so I had to take an expensive ride to the nearest hardware store (30 minutes a way) in order to buy it.
4. Domincans like to give advice and get involved even if nobody asked them to; though some suggestions helped a lot, most of the time when someone came in to tell me what I had to do or how I should have done it, I just smiled and nodded and tried to tune out.
Finally, a month and a half after starting, I moved in with the help of several teenage boys and lots of little kids. It was a frustrating process but once I moved in I felt at home. Even if a lot of people did want to come in and give too many opinions, I also have to give a lot of people credit because so many people came to my rescue during the process and helped out immensely. Here is a list of all the people who helped:
2 Catholic nuns (furniture donations and moral support)
1 Evangelical pastor (electricity installation, ideas for how to fix the house up, the only one who could actually motivate some people to work on it)
1 carpinter (doors, windows, the division to make my bedroom)
2 guys who have worked on the construction of hotels in tourist areas (plumbing installation on the inside—note that they are not actually plumbers—filling in of the wall and floor)
2 Haitian men in their 60s who dug the ditch while all the teenagers lounged around and watched (believe me, I gave those teenagers plenty of grief about the fact that these older men worked harder and were stronger than them)
The man who presides over the parish here (wood donation)
2 drivers for the NGO I work with (they installed the toilet and were able to get the right tubes for me)
6 14-18 year old boys (two would take me to the pueblo when I needed to buy things, two covered up an open window with tin, two helped me move my furniture and paint)
1 2 year old, 1 three year old, 2 five year olds (they helped me put rocks in the yard to make a path and moved the last of my belongings from my old house to the new one—gotta love willing child labor!)
2 preteen girls who helped me clean the patio and the floor
As of right now my house still isn't completely finished—I still need to put lights in the bathroom and we need to connect the tubes for the toilet (I've been using other people's bathrooms when necessary—thank goodness for the sharing, open culture of Dominicans!), but those things will hopefully be done soon. The kids in my town love that I have a house right in the middle of the town where they can come and play, so I've had to set down some rules. First, if there are more than two kids they have to play in the yard—they can't come in my house. Also, they have to wear shoes (kids here have bad habits of running around barefoot everywhere, which is dangerous because not only can they cut themselves easily but there is a lot of animal waste around town, and plenty of diseases can be spread if kids are stepping on cow or goat poop). Finally, if they make a mess, they have to clean it up—the picture below is of two six year olds who were trying to climb up my wall and peek in my window. They left footprints on the wall so I told them that they had to scrub the wall as a punishment—they actually loved it and ended up fighting over who could use the scrub brush! Here are some photos of the construction of the house and my little helpers--Í'll post more pix later.
For the past three months I have been living in a little apartment attached to a house where some Canadian nuns live. They are leaving in the next couple days to go back to Canada for six months, and for various reasons I decided about a month and a half ago that I would like to move out before they left (I felt uncomfortable about having to look after the whole house while they were gone, and it is slightly removed from the rest of the community). There is a building in my town that used to be a rural hospital, but it was abandoned about ten years ago because the structure wasn't sound (the foundation was not sturdy and rain filtered through the roof at times). Two different families recently have fixed up parts of it to live in, and between their two parts there was a large room that my project partner at one point had used as a classroom for his before-school program but had not been used in about a year. There was tile through most of it, however a side part was missing a bit of floor, and in the far back where there used to be a room to do washing my project partner swore that there were tubes that we could use for a bathroom. So I decided to fix it up—the things that Peace Corps required me to do was fill in an open wall with cement that was currently only covered with tin, put a door on the other side of the room, secure the windows and doors, and of course fix the bathroom. My project partner told me to hire my neighbor to do all the carpentry work and I decided to hire a friend of mine who works in construction to fill in the wall and the small amount of floor that needed to be covered. One day I went and bought about 200 dollars worth of materials, thinking that this would be all the materials that I would have to buy in order to fix up the house, since it was the list that my “workers” had given me. HAHAHA!
As you all know, construction and house repairs can be frusterating in any country, but what my project partner claimed would be a week long project turned into a month and a half of trips to the hardware store, pestering the people I needed to do the work, and fretting about my ever-growing costs. Here were several of the problems:
1. The supposed “tubes” that we would be able to connect to the toilet and use as drains did not exist, so we I had to buy new tubes to put in the house. Then we went to find the tubes that lead to the septic tank, and couldn't find them, which made me think that we would have to put in all new tubes. So I paid someone to dig a ditch towards the septic tank, and we left it for a while while trying to fix other things and waiting for April to come so that I could get paid again and buy the tubes. When April came someone else started digging and we found some of the tubes that we needed! However, it also meant that the ditch that the first guy had dug needed to be filled in and a different ditch had to be dug.
2. The guys who did the floor and wall for me worked really fast, but my neighbor who was going to do the “woodwork” took about a month to do a job that could have been done in less than two days.
3. Every time someone came to work in the house they realized they needed some other kind of nail, or piece of plastic, or wire, and so I had to take an expensive ride to the nearest hardware store (30 minutes a way) in order to buy it.
4. Domincans like to give advice and get involved even if nobody asked them to; though some suggestions helped a lot, most of the time when someone came in to tell me what I had to do or how I should have done it, I just smiled and nodded and tried to tune out.
Finally, a month and a half after starting, I moved in with the help of several teenage boys and lots of little kids. It was a frustrating process but once I moved in I felt at home. Even if a lot of people did want to come in and give too many opinions, I also have to give a lot of people credit because so many people came to my rescue during the process and helped out immensely. Here is a list of all the people who helped:
2 Catholic nuns (furniture donations and moral support)
1 Evangelical pastor (electricity installation, ideas for how to fix the house up, the only one who could actually motivate some people to work on it)
1 carpinter (doors, windows, the division to make my bedroom)
2 guys who have worked on the construction of hotels in tourist areas (plumbing installation on the inside—note that they are not actually plumbers—filling in of the wall and floor)
2 Haitian men in their 60s who dug the ditch while all the teenagers lounged around and watched (believe me, I gave those teenagers plenty of grief about the fact that these older men worked harder and were stronger than them)
The man who presides over the parish here (wood donation)
2 drivers for the NGO I work with (they installed the toilet and were able to get the right tubes for me)
6 14-18 year old boys (two would take me to the pueblo when I needed to buy things, two covered up an open window with tin, two helped me move my furniture and paint)
1 2 year old, 1 three year old, 2 five year olds (they helped me put rocks in the yard to make a path and moved the last of my belongings from my old house to the new one—gotta love willing child labor!)
2 preteen girls who helped me clean the patio and the floor
As of right now my house still isn't completely finished—I still need to put lights in the bathroom and we need to connect the tubes for the toilet (I've been using other people's bathrooms when necessary—thank goodness for the sharing, open culture of Dominicans!), but those things will hopefully be done soon. The kids in my town love that I have a house right in the middle of the town where they can come and play, so I've had to set down some rules. First, if there are more than two kids they have to play in the yard—they can't come in my house. Also, they have to wear shoes (kids here have bad habits of running around barefoot everywhere, which is dangerous because not only can they cut themselves easily but there is a lot of animal waste around town, and plenty of diseases can be spread if kids are stepping on cow or goat poop). Finally, if they make a mess, they have to clean it up—the picture below is of two six year olds who were trying to climb up my wall and peek in my window. They left footprints on the wall so I told them that they had to scrub the wall as a punishment—they actually loved it and ended up fighting over who could use the scrub brush! Here are some photos of the construction of the house and my little helpers--Í'll post more pix later.
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