The Planting of the Land

It´s Friday. The picks and shovels are waiting in the sun. One Hundred small palm trees arrived to my Donas house. And The Kids are excited to plant. So after lunch at Mecho´s house I´m going to rally the rambuncious troops (Jairo my 10 year side kick is especially energetic) and off we shall march to odorn the entrance to our barrio with beautiful trees. Each kid will be responsible for taking care of each tree they plant for as long as they´re living here in Ojo de Aguas. I´m just imagining how this barrio will look when I return in 20 years with my own kids to show them where I spent two years of my life enjoying a family neighborhood of cousins, trees, and trash.

Basketball continues to flow through my mind as I enjoy time just relaxing with my favorite Dominican father, Pedro. Yesterday I played 5 games, and tonight I think I´m headed to watch a game under the lights. If I continue to live the life with the barrio kids I think I will continue to be a kid. I always dreamed of having the chance to go to ¨Never, Never, Land.¨ Perhaps it has arrived here in the barrio of Ojos de Aguas, at the base of the mountains, in La Republica Dominicana... far different than I imagined it to be, but none the less just as delicious and flavorful as a papaya smoothie.

Hoop Dreams

Obama was on Choco´s cell phone and Choco wanted me to talk with him.
¨Hola, soy Yarred¨ I say in my sloppy Spanish accent.
I listen, I listen while all my youth group is waiting patiently for me to say something more. ¨Okay pues, 3 meses, está bien.¨ I end the call adn let them know that Obama is going to pay our barrio, Ojo de Agua, a visit in three months to construct a basketball court. They all cheer, some laugh.

It´s all a game and they know it, but why not dream big. The thing is these kids dream big every day and every dream is attempted to be realized in the moment. The agenda planner doesn´t exist. The future vacation travel dates don´t exist. The year in which they will be able to read, pass all their exams, and graduate from high school doesn´t exist. So what do you do when everything is in the moment???? You build your own basketball court. The guama tree was chopped down, they took a piece of scrap rebar down to auto body shop to get it welded into a hoop for three and half dollars, and then they nailed it into the tree, dug a hole in the dirt road and within hours we were playing a two on two basketball tournament in our own neighborhood. Creativity has no end here and that is why my first week in site I have focused most all my time with the youth. Studying for Math exams which happen today, playing ¨pelota¨ until we lose the baseball over the cement wall of the foreigners gated summer home, and best of all just passing the entire day outside.

One week has passed fast. I´m in my own modest house next to my Power House Dona(Casa de Potencial) and eat a variety of food which is always served with white rice or plaintains. It rains every day around 2pm and that means I just chill... something I am still learning how to do correctly.

I´m trying not to use my planner much, but I do know in two days I will be talking it up with the kids about imortance of NO trash and LOTS of trees in their community.

Eat well every day because it´s worth it!
Jared

Leaving City Behind

Last of Dona Aton and Alcarrizos, the Santo Domingo barrio where the kids run wild and the elders bring their plastic chairs out onto the sidewalks to observe the urban climate and play dominos. I know I'll won't miss the noise, but it's always fun to be around such activity. Everyone knows when little barefooted Fernando ('Nando) is being called by his mom to get his butt home, and everyone knows that the garbage trucks has arrived when it blows its air horm 5 feet from your dinning room table, and everyone knows when a mango falls from above onto your neigbors tin roof in the middle of the night... It's the Barrio and everyone knows.

Now I'm off to the Campo where at the base of the mountains rests a small pueblo with incredibly humble people who know what good food is, especially casaba (yuca panacakes with garlic or penuts sprinkled on top.

Life is changing...I'm on my own.

Write is your jounal for 1 week straight. It's healthy to reflect

Houston we have landed… ohhh so Pretty!

We were at the base of the mountains within 4 hours and meeting with the leaders of the community within 24. The call it “Ojo de Agua” (Eye of Water), the oldest community in San Jose de Las Matas (SaJOMA). I think I counted one car in the neighborhood, a host of motor scooters, and children and chickens enough to fill the dirt paths. The houses sit almost on top of each other with narrow ally ways connecting one family compound to the next. Old fruit trees and calabaza vines stretch across the patches of soil where extended family members have not tried to cram in their own house on the Dona’s small piece of property. It’s a healthy rural slum barrio and I’m proud to call it my home for the next two years. The people life with what they have, and if that means unwinding close hangers to make a fence, then that’s what’s going to happen. If you come to visit we’ll find space and without a doubt we’ll find food. I’m in the richest agricultural region of the country, El Cibao…and that means Jared, or “Yarred” as they say here, is going to be eating more than his share of rice, beans, yucca, and all that other good news.

I will certainly miss my fellow Peace Corps Volunteers with whom I trained, but Dominican time is NOW. I am sworn in as an official Volunteer this Wednesday and I’m not looking back. I’ll be working closely with Plan Sierra, a well known local NGO, and playing with kids as much as possible. We already have a youth meeting scheduled for two days after I get back to my site. The 400 people of Ojo de Agua will be hoppin’!

“El que quiere hacer algo encuentra el camino. El que no quiere hacer nada encuentra una excusa.”

“He who wants to do something finds a way. He who does not want to do anything finds an excuse.”

(words written on the wall next to my project partner’s desk)

Yarred en las Montanas

DR Comes to Life

Last day of April, 2009

Two months came faster than I ever imagined. I’ve traveled and danced the Dominican Republic with comfort, smiles, and with enough home cooked food each night to feed three persons or one extra tall “Americano.” Coco sweets and mashed red beans with sugar and a host of other sweet ingredients rank among the top on my dessert list. All I have to say is that the Peace Corps has its act together. I don’t think I’ll be laid off and tomorrow my training group is going reef checking (aka. Snorkeling around the coral reefs near Santo Domingo). I am privileged to be part of an organization that has given me the opportunity to thoroughly question my definition of poverty. As a fellow volunteer reminded me today, “It is only when we have nothing, that we are free to have anything.” – Today was that example for me. We traveled to the urban slum of Las Casetas on the outskirts of the capital and held interviews with many households where the daily expenditures amounted to $2-3. Ones vision of transport, choices of food, or even purchasing children’s school uniforms is severely limited under such budget constraints. However, the people share the warmth of lots of face time and frequent sips of coffee on the plastic chairs of their front porch. One Dona even poured me (the stranger in the barrio) a fresh cup of tamarind juice to welcome me into a front porch conversation; a cup of juice that she would have ordinarily sold for 10 pesos (35 cents), but for me was welcoming refreshment from walking the humid and hot streets.
So I count down 6 more days before I receive my final placement. I’m hoping for the mountains, but good people grow like weeds here so they can plant me anywhere.

In the name of Tim Keifer, our environmental training director, “Feed your soils and let your soils fed your plants.

Love, Jared