My dad came to visit in February. He didn’t bring Lisa this time, which means he spent a fair amount of time alone, waiting out or following me to meetings, being left out of conversations in Spanish, and just trying to understand my life here, which can definitely be shocking for a parent, I’m sure. It also means that I had a date for Valentine’s Day and Lisa didn’t (sorry for stealing your man, Lisa!). We had a delicious dinner at sunset in a restaurant right on the water, with a view of the Bayahibe Bay. It was such a nice treat.
As usual, Dad helped me fix up my house with interesting inventions, like a extending a shower curtain rod from a random piece of metal, sticking out of my wall to make a “closet” and hanging a piece of pipe from the ceiling rafters to make a towel rack! So inventive, that dad of mine! He
also did a few odd jobs around the neighborhood, like transferring a cabinet from one wall to another in my neighbor’s house. Probably the toughest day though was the day we spent on Lenis’ artisan taller (workshop). Dad is accustomed to having good tools or at least a good hardware store where you can buy good tools, but of course, both of those are difficult to find in my little fishing village. So we worked with what we could find, which meant the job took probably ten times longer than it would have otherwise.What? You mean the resources were scarce or took forever to find, and even when you did find them, they weren’t want you were expecting, making the job more challenging than it should have been, and causing you to want to pull our your hair? Hmmm. Yep, that’s sounds about right for work in this country. Welcome to my everyday life, Dad! Glad you got a taste of it.
March saw the start of the project that I’ve most enjoyed in my Peace Corps service as well as a surprise trip home for Mom’s birthday, in which I surprised my mother by “working” behind a glassed-in counter in a random sketchy gas station that she visited in North Little Rock on her
way down from Fayetteville to New Orleans… it was a riot! We had a great time in New Orleans, especially at the St. Patrick’s Day Parade on Bourbon. Let’s just say my mom and I are the Queens of Beads.So, on to the project I’ve most enjoyed so far… Escojo Mi Vida (I choose my life). Because of the difficulty I’ve had with getting the youth in this town to show up for anything I try to do, I tried a different route to trap them into this much-needed course. The course focuses on teaching youth to make healthy decisions in regards to some of the pubescent excitement they might face at this time in their adolescent lives – sex, drugs, and alcohol. I worked out a schedule with the teachers in both 7th and 8th grade so that I could come for an hour and half once a week to each class and give a charla (a talk) on these subjects. The 2-month course consisted of imparting information to about 40 students, rebutting local myths (like you can’t get pregnant if you have sex in the water), and teaching them important things like how to use condoms and the possible consequences if they don’t. I think they appreciated having the opportunity to have a forum in which they could talk openly about these subjects and have their questions answered and doubts cleared. The teachers were excellent to work with as well. They’d help whenever I would get stuck on a word or explanation and were also open to share their knowledge with the students on such matters; that, in itself, was surprising and a unique stroke of luck – most people in this country aren’t as open-minded. I think it was also beneficial that the teachers learned the material as well. Now they are better prepared to teach this information to future classes. In the end, I was very proud of all those involved. I held a small graduation to celebrate their participation, complete with cake and certificates. They loved it. And so did I.
Escojo Mi Vida has really gotten me through the past few months of Peace Corps, as I have faced many challenges and grown discouraged with my main projects – the artisans and the ecotourism route. One thing we have accomplished is building talleres (workshops) for each artisan. Now 4 individual artisans have their own places to work. These talleres will be essential in creating our tourist route Descubre Bayahibe (Discover Bayahibe), which will include the two ecotourism routes, a tour through Bayahibe, a stop at the manatiales (natural fresh water pools), and a visit to each artisan taller. We’ve started selling this package to some of the universities in the country and began giving successful tours, but we still have a good deal of planning and organization to do before we promote the route nationwide and eventually h internationally. Unfortunately, only one person in the community is currently dedicating her time to working on this project, which is why it is taking a while to get up and running.
A part from Escojo and Descubre Bayahibe, my work has been scattered between youth activities, attending and planning summer youth camps, volunteering in an HIV/AIDS clinic, and giving various English classes. I’ve also helped plan and host celebrations for Mother’s Day, Easter, International Women’s Day, and a few birthdays. On the side, I have attended conferences for volunteers and on ecotourism, borders and bateys (focusing on DR-Haitian relations), etc. I hope to go into more detail about those events in another blog, but I’m running out of time.
My spare time, if I have it, I spend compartiring with friends in the community, hanging out with my Dominican boyfriend (a blog topic for another day), going fishing, swimming in the manatiales, going to the beach, playing with Abbie, shooing kids out of my house, experimenting with cooking, waking up with yoga, reading, and planning my future… which brings me to my next topic… the future.
As you know my service is quickly coming to an end and lucky for me, I finally figured out what I want to do with the rest of my life (even though I’ve known it for at least 10 years). I finally decided that I am going to be a doctor. Finally. The details I will talk about in a later blog (I promise), but for now at least, you (and I) have the answer to the frequently-asked question, “What next?” And I am very excited about the response.
I’ll write soon.
Love and peace to all,
Tarita
Posts
0 comments:
Post a Comment