Color Brings Life

The breeze made for a refreshing week here in Ojo de Agua. It is tonight that I will celebrate 3 weeks in the country. My good friend and fellow Peace Corps Volunteer, Kevin, from small town Indiana, just came to visit me. My plate is full of project ideas as well as mounds of ¨habichuelas and arroz¨ (beans and rice). On Good Friday every kitchen and Dona in the Dominican Republic was busy stirring together their favorite sweet ingredients to ¨Habichuelas con Dulce.¨ Four mugs were delivered to my home within a couple of hours and my stomach was more than blessed. However, perhaps the most beautiful scene thus far in my return to Ojo de Agua was the faces of 500 plus Dominicans lit by candle light the night that we celebrated Jesus´s resurrection, or Easter Sunday. Their smooth skin gleaned inside the packed church, different shades of brown, light and dark (This is a country filled with mulattos, diverse in appearance but certainly all very much sharing the same loud and happy Dominican culture). Little girls sat on the laps of their fathers fresh in their new dresses and hair straighten and neatly pulled back. Grandpa and grandmas were tightly sandwiched alongside children and children in law, perhaps uncomfortable, but they didn´t have to stand along the walls. Everyone connected through the beautiful light of God, holding candles to celebrate the bright example Jesus gave the world. I felt part of something special, part of a spiritual moment.

And then the most classic of Latin American scenes… the congregation offered water as a blessing to Christ for having given his life to teach humanity the power of the healing Spirit. Together the 500 plus Dominicans and I raised water containers above our heads furnishing a shiny sea of plastic before the crucifix. One can only imagine the dozens of different brand names displayed on the sides of the recycled and reused plastic containers. Two liter Coke-Cola bottles, 20 oz. Dasani water bottles, Clorox, Cristol Corn Oil, and Apple Juice gallon jugs raised high above the church pews. Some even furnished old tupper-wear with water, while others had nicely pealed the plastic bands glued to the sides of the bottles allowing for a more cleaned up look at church. Everyone had water or perhaps a large framed painting of Mary, but for that moment we were again united, different colors, different brand names on out containers, and different amounts of water, but still united. It was a day to colorfully celebrate one of the most admired and humble persons to walk this earth. It was a Latin American day.

The colorful ideas and desire to invent always bring fresh perspective to each and every day here.

Go celebrate with something colorful and recycled today.

Peace,

Jared