Work Feels Chill

I have made it to the mountains where the people know how to grow their food, mine for Amber, and keep it real. If you want to know what it really means to chill out them come to the La Cumbre and stay with Dona Carmen “Nenita and Freddy’s family. I’m not talking about remaining mute on the couch for two and a half hours while you watch the Warriors barely lose another b-ball game... I am talking about sitting on the front porch with my host families chatting it up until the sun sets and we decide it will rise again soon enough so we hit the sack early. I’m talking about wanting a sweet snack so I take 10 steps out of the house with a machette in hand and I find myself a sugar cane stalk and the rest is history.

Morning is for work and evening is family time. I haven’t met one organization, instituion, association, clan, whatever you want to call them...that can out sustain the bond of the Dominican family. I watch the young sister give here even younger brother a nice cold bucket bath, while the mother sends her 18 year old son out to the fields to collect another bunch of green bananas that she will boil for dinner, while the father sharpens his machette with a rock for another hard days work tomorrow in the family canuco.
In my morning studying Spanish with 5 other Peace Corps volunteers, returning home for a larger than life lunch (rice, spaghetti, beans, eggs, salad, and a papaya smoothie) and then by afternoon learning how make natural fertilizer from horse manure or compost from coffee shells and leaves. They days are long, but the weeks pass faster than I want them to and I’m not sweating nearly enough. However, I’m finding it plenty easy to dirty my clothes through a game of baseball with the millions of kids that are every where in this country. The longer you play the more the field fills up until you have to see if you can get two game going at the same time on a diamond that only has a left field. Right field is a hill that has been comendeared by roaming goats.
I guess the tropical heat will come in the summer, but for now there are no complaints with the beautiful weather and rich green scenery.

Go visit a long time friend. Hang out. It’s worth it.
Jared