It wasn´t really the trip to the beach this past weekend that made for a nice break from the mountain barrio of Ojo de Aguas. Taxi driver Wilson and 21 year old Haitian immigrant Manuelito welcomed me into their world with their stories of adventure, hard work, and friendships. You just have to start talking to a stranger and once they find out you´re a friendly english speaker they want to hear your story and they start to test out the little English they know. Wilson happened to be good friends with another Peace Corp Volunteer I know in the mountains. He spoke of his admiration for the adventurous personalities peace corps gringos roaming the island countryside with funky hats and plain worn out clothes. Manuelito took a long walk down the beach in Nagua with me as my curious self proceed to hold a news conference with him. As he divulged his riveting autobiography to me of leaving Haiti alone at age 14 to find work in the DR, we managed to test out 4 different languages, Spanish, English, French, and most fun Creole. ¨Papimal¨ means you are doing well.
I meet new fiends because there is always something precious and invigorating in the story of a stranger. Just listening has helped put my Peace Corps project into perpective. A Project of LISTENING, if nothing else. I want to accomplish a lot, but for now I shall am at peace with just listening.
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
Monday, June 15, 2009
5 Gallons of Cold Water
That’s all I get and that’s all I need to clean my lanky body every morning. After returning home from my sunrise walk with Pedro I run out to the 60 gallon oil drum, dip my 5 gallon bucket in and I’m off to douse myself in fresh chilling rain water. ¨At least I have water,¨ I tell myself when I start to dream about the comfort of a hot shower. The idea of comfort is all in my head, and I’m not draining an unnecessary 35 gallons of heated water with that of my 5 minute customary shower back home.
So sure my community has kilometers to go before they change their conscience and poor practices of littering trash in their own yards and rivers, but at least they are using 7 times less water than I was using 3 months ago. I’m starting to understand that poverty means fewer resources, which also often means fewer opportunities, but it also means people are living within their means. They use what they need and the rest is left to someone else to enjoy.
Just a few observations of a beautiful occurrence here know as reusing:
-The bird cage is salvaged rebar and chicken wire from a demolished building in town.
-The flower pots are all large coffee cans or the bottom half of a Clorox jug.
-Instead of buying paint to color the cement walls of their dining room, Pedro and Mecho have created a colorful collage of reused bed sheets to decorate their home.
It’s not that these Dominicans are trying to win some abstract, recycled art contest at the Museum of Modern Art... rather it’s how they make use of the resources they have. I thought my concentration in Environmental Science at Williams had prepared me to understand Sustainability in this 21st century, but I find myself being schooled every day in the art of ¨Living with what you have.¨ (Not with what someone else has or with what someone is trying to sell you). I don’t need to purchase something more to be happy. Maybe I’ll look around my house for that strand of extra phone line to help me hang a picture and maybe I won’t fill that 5 gallon bucket all the way to the top when the rainy season stops.
Reuse it to Recreate.
Paz, Jared
So sure my community has kilometers to go before they change their conscience and poor practices of littering trash in their own yards and rivers, but at least they are using 7 times less water than I was using 3 months ago. I’m starting to understand that poverty means fewer resources, which also often means fewer opportunities, but it also means people are living within their means. They use what they need and the rest is left to someone else to enjoy.
Just a few observations of a beautiful occurrence here know as reusing:
-The bird cage is salvaged rebar and chicken wire from a demolished building in town.
-The flower pots are all large coffee cans or the bottom half of a Clorox jug.
-Instead of buying paint to color the cement walls of their dining room, Pedro and Mecho have created a colorful collage of reused bed sheets to decorate their home.
It’s not that these Dominicans are trying to win some abstract, recycled art contest at the Museum of Modern Art... rather it’s how they make use of the resources they have. I thought my concentration in Environmental Science at Williams had prepared me to understand Sustainability in this 21st century, but I find myself being schooled every day in the art of ¨Living with what you have.¨ (Not with what someone else has or with what someone is trying to sell you). I don’t need to purchase something more to be happy. Maybe I’ll look around my house for that strand of extra phone line to help me hang a picture and maybe I won’t fill that 5 gallon bucket all the way to the top when the rainy season stops.
Reuse it to Recreate.
Paz, Jared
Friday, May 29, 2009
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.
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.
Monday, May 25, 2009
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
¨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
Sunday, May 17, 2009
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
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
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
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
Monday, May 4, 2009
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
