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
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