TravelStream™ news feed for member akb2ic on TravelPod's free travel blogs service http://www.travelpod.com/syndication/rss/akb2ic en-us Copyright ©2009 TravelPod.com Thu, 22 Jan 2009 18:09:38 -0500 http://www.travelpod.com http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/akb2ic/5/1232665440/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/akb2ic/5/1232665440/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/akb2ic/5/1232665440/tpod.html Thu, 22 Jan 2009 18:09:38 -0500 Inauguration Station

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Falls Church, Virginia, United States

Hello again,I have posted pictures from parts of the conference and at the inauguration. I do have a big report of my inauguration experience, but I would prefer not to post it publicly. If you would like to read it, please email me and I will happily send it to you. I believe everyone on my blog distribution list has my email address; if you don't, leave a comment that you'd like to see my post and I will email it to you.Once again, thanks for reading! Not sure what adventure will come my way next, but I'll be sure to let you know about it.Amanda
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/akb2ic/5/1232168460/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/akb2ic/5/1232168460/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/akb2ic/5/1232168460/tpod.html Sat, 17 Jan 2009 00:12:59 -0500 Inauguration Station

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Bethesda, Maryland, United States

Three days of training are complete! All 950 of us are as well prepared as we can be for the arrival of 15,300 scholars tomorrow. Years of planning have gone into this conference and I'm incredibly impressed at how well organized things seem to be. So how do you organize over 16,000 people at one of the biggest events in our nation's history? The conference is divided into three programs: one for college students, one for high schoolers, and one for middle schoolers.  I'll be working with the youngest group, and as you would imagine we have the biggest staff. Each program is divided into smaller groups identified by the name of a past president, and each group is then divided again across several hotels. My group, for example, is the Thomas Jefferson group at the Bethesda Hyatt and we operate as a unit. We have a group of faculty advisors (that's me) who are responsible for implementing the curriculum and keeping the group together, and then we also have a support staff that takes care of all our other needs.  This support staff is incredibly specialized and they have people designated to deal with homesickness issues, concerned parents, ushering us to our seats at big events, telling the buses when to leave, driving scholars to a pharmacy if they need it, and find lost scholars. 15,300 people divided like that brings my personal responsibility to only needing to worry about educating and keeping an eye on 16 or 17 scholars. With other people taking care of any other situations that might arise, I feel very confident that I can successfully fulfill my duties as a faculty advisor. Here are some numbers and other facts of the conference that I think will wow you:We have over 350 buses at our disposal.All 950 staff members have a Nextel phone with direct-connect capability.550 staff have radios.We rented National Stadium as an evacuation site in the event of an emergency on the mall.The conference purchased bandwidth on the cell phone grids so we won't lose cell signal like the public is expected to on inauguration day (too many people locking up too little space).Scholars and staff are staying in 46 hotel properties across Northern Virginia, Maryland and the District of Columbia. Conference speakers include Al Gore, Colin Powell and Desmond Tutu. Scholars will be flying into all three DC-area airports.We have over 60 rental cars.Scholars can opt into a text message system that will send conference updates or broadcast instructions in case of an emergency.The Air and Space Museum on the mall is open for us at a private reception prior to the inauguration with a crew of astronauts.We have five back-up driving routes for every place we visit.A lot of my concerns about moving such a large number of people and keeping younger scholars safe during the inauguration have been quelled thanks to all this information. All of our supervisors took part in a crisis drill several months ago, and they've worked with a crisis management consulting team. The threat of something awful happening on the mall is definitely a reality, but I think we're as prepared as we can be to face it if it happens. It's easier to be excited about the inauguration now and less fearful.The scholars arrive tomorrow and I'm incredibly excited to meet them all! It's an amazing opportunity for them to be a part of history, and it's an amazing opportunity for me to help them build the lens through which they will experience this event. My cousin Susan, who is also in the Thomas Jefferson group but at the Bethesda Marriott, is blogging as well. She's the Kodak Queen so you'll get to see some photos of us in her blog.  Here's the link: http://postponingadulthood101.blogspot.com/You'll hear from me again after the inauguration. Keep your fingers crossed for the arctic air to move out and the sunshine to move in on Tuesday! AmandaPS: Did I mention we're going to the concert at the opening ceremony? You know - the one with Beyoncé, U2, Usher, and Bruce Springsteen just to name a few.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/akb2ic/5/1231912260/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/akb2ic/5/1231912260/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/akb2ic/5/1231912260/tpod.html Wed, 14 Jan 2009 01:37:45 -0500 Inauguration Station

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Falls Church, Virginia, United States

I'm back on the travel blog sooner than I thought! Well, technically this isn't a travel blog as I can officially say that as of yesterday I am living in the Washington, DC area full time with my cousin Megan. The job hunt is still in progress, but my unemployed status has given me some interesting opportunities - like the reason I've revived the blog: I'll be at Obama's inauguration on Tuesday, January 20th. My number one blog fan asked me to document my experiences this week, so in honor of him and in recognition of the magnitude of the event I get to witness, the blog is back!As many of you know, there was a lottery system in place to get tickets in to the inauguration. I never heard this from an official source, but someone told me the waiting list just to get into the lottery was tens of thousands of people long. With those odds against me, I never even considered entering the lottery. I ended up with a much sweeter deal that means I'm in the fortunate position of being paid to attend the ceremony: my cousin Susan has recruited me to work temporarily with her company. She works for a group that provides leadership conferences for high-achieving youth.  Every inaugural year, the company hosts a special conference centered around the inauguration. With a record number of 15,300 scholars attending this year's conference, they needed to beef up their staff. So I'm joining 849 other staff members to serve as facilitators for the conference. While I'm sure you're all hearing news about what a crazy event the inauguration is going to be with so many people in attendance, the logistics of the conference alone are mind blowing. Housing and feeding over 16,000 people in a city that will be exponentially more congested than it usually is will be no easy feat. The conference has arranged to have us in hotels all over DC, Maryland andVirginia, and they have worked out a transportation system with busesto keep everybody moving from site to site. They also have to feed all of us three times a day. The event-planner part of me is just itching to crack into their organizational system and figure out how they planned it all. There are three programs within the conference: middle schoolers, high schoolers and college students. Susan and I are working with the youngest age group, the middle schoolers.  They will attend key note speeches by Al Gore and Colin Powell, visit the Newseum in DC (an amazing museum dedicated to the history of news), tour the World War II memorial, and cruise the Potomac. Our entire program on Tuesday is dedicated to the swearing-in ceremony and the inaugural parade. Rumor has it that we have a VIP spot in the public viewing area. While I'm thrilled to have the opportunity to go to what is one of the most historic events in our nation, there's definitely a very large part of me that is terrified to be there. While national security threats are at the back of my mind, the more prominent worry is that I'm responsible for the safety of a group of middle schoolers amidst crowds numbering in the millions. I'm contemplating how much legal trouble I could get in if I insisted on tying us together. DC has never faced an event so large. Reports coming out today say that there will only be one port-a-potty for every 6,000 inauguration attendees. And I am a witness to the port-a-potty city that is currently surrounding the Washington Monument. I'm used to seeing flags circled around it, but today when I accidentally drove by (still learning my way around the city that was designed to confuse invaders) all I noticed were the rows and rows of portable toilets. The Capitol is draped in American flags and roads are already closed surrounding the hotel Obama is living in until he takes residence at the White House. Nearly all the bridges and a large number of streets will be closed for the inauguration, which will make DC traffic nearly impossible to navigate - and it's already pretty terrible on normal days. Schools and offices are closing for the day because of the transportation difficulties. I've heard predictions that roads will be backed up for 20+ miles to get into the city and cell phones won't work because all the people concentrated in one area will overload the grids. Bush declared a state of emergency today because to free up more funds to help manage all the people. I've been trying to apartment-hunt on Craigslist, but the only postings for this area are people subletting their apartments to inauguration attendees desparate for a place to stay. Apartments are going for hundreds or thousands of dollars per night.So as the mayhem surrounding the inauguration continues to build in the city, I'm starting training tomorrow to hopefully prevent any chaos with the scholars. We'll all be in staff training through Friday evening, and the scholars arrive on Saturday to begin their program. We've been warned that we'll be working 17-hour days, so I'm not sure how frequently I'll be able to post. I will try to post one more time before the inauguration to update you on the state of the city, and of course again after the inauguration. And as always, please don't feel badly about unsubscribe from the list if you no longer want to receive updates from me. Amanda
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/akb2ic/4/1228683720/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/akb2ic/4/1228683720/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/akb2ic/4/1228683720/tpod.html Sun, 07 Dec 2008 16:03:35 -0500 Volunteering in the Dominican Republic

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Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic

It's amazing how quickly eight weeks fly by.  I feel like I got here last week, but here I find myself in the airport two months later.  I'm currently watching one of the national baseball teams load up on a plane bound for San Juan, Puerto Rico.  I've never seen so many Louisville Slugger emblems in one place before.CSA picked me up in Neyba on Tuesday afternoon.  Luzlanda had a course she was attending at the national World Vision office in Santo Domingo on Wednesday and Thursday, so we were able to make the trip together.  We spent Tuesday night with Marla in her very nice apartment in the eastern part of Santo Domingo. I really enjoyed having that last bit of time with Marla and Luzlanda, but I think one of the best parts of that visit was an amazing, silent night of sleep without roosters or dogs.  (Watch this video clip of a morning in Neyba and you'll realize why silence really is golden: http://www.travelpod.com/travel-photo/akb2ic/4/1228163820/library_-_9217.avi/tpod.html)I spent Wednesday and Thursday at the CSA office completing evaluations and sharing my reports with Rigil, the boss, and Antoine, the program coordinator.  Everyone is really happy with the work I did and it sounds like some really good stuff can come out of my work.  Antoine told me that I did more with in six weeks than most people in Neyba do in a year.  That's great for my ego, but incredibly depressing for World Vision's prospects. Antoine wants to compile my work with the work of two previous interns to try to get funding to start a permanent, one- or two-person office in Neyba.  The purpose of the office there would be to carry out some of my recommendations and those of the previous interns.  While World Vision also has my recommendations, there's question of whether they will do anything to act on them or not.  CSA would be a much better guarantee that work would be done there.  I think both World Vision implementing my recommendations and CSA's new office there are probably long shots, but both are exciting prospects.  At the very least, CSA will use my recommendations as the basis of a short-term group project there in Neyba.  For example, send a group there to help families build and plant gardens to grow the vegetables they are so severely lacking.On Thursday I had a chance to see my Santo Domingo mom Ileana one last time.  (I've been staying with a CSA employee for the past few nights, not Ileana.)  The visit with her really made me realize how much my Spanish has improved. When I first arrived and was living with her, she could chat at me and I could understand a good portion of what she was saying but I didn't have the speaking skills to really actively chat back.  I had to concentrate on her voice only; any other noises or voices could throw off my comprehension.  During my visit on Thursday, we were able to chat together for an hour and a half.  There were still things I had to ask her to clarify, but I was able to hold up my own end of the conversation.  (CSA evaluated my Spanish again with the same written test they gave me when I got here, and I only scored just a little bit higher.  I think that proves I knew the grammar rules when I got here and I could write well if I had time to think about what I wanted to say.  The big difference now is that I have the ability - and more importantly the confidence - to speak, not just write.)Thursday night I had the chance to see Mark, one of the other volunteers who was living with Ileana when I was staying there.  We went out to a very cool, arty bar/club in Santo Domingo that Antoine had been recommending to me since I got here.  (You could tell it was a place that was a bit less Dominican because the volume of the music was approximately 2% lower than the music in colmados and discotecas.) It was great to catch up with him and have someone to share my experiences with in English.  Mark had been home for Thanksgiving, so he had some advice on what to expect in terms of reverse culture shock when heading back to the US.It was great to catch up with him, but the best part of the night was ending up in a photo with stilt walkers and a mime.  This little story just serves as further proof that you just never can predict what's going to happen in this country.  While we were waiting for a cab in the bar's little secluded parking lot - a place where tall people like stilt walkers should have a hard time hiding - a mime and his two stilt-walking buddies appeared.  (Still not sure exactly where they came from.) We weren't really phased by this - in fact I don't think we even broke conversation at first.  I guess you just get used to the bizarre.  Pretty soon a girl was hauled out of the bar by her friends, and the stilt walkers and mime wished her a happy birthday.  (Well, not the mime.)  The birthday girl, who was several drinks into her celebration, insisted that the American by-standers be a part of her photo.  So Mark and I are probably now on some Dominican girl's desktop wallpaper.These random events are among the things I'll miss when I return.  Random moments can happen anywhere, but the Dominican ones just seem to have something a little more special. Other things I'll miss: an amazing assortment of fresh, organic fruit; homemade juices from those fruits; Dominican kids; the clouds there; people who are friendly and hospitable no matter what the circumstance; rice and beans; and of course the sunshine and warmth.  I've decided I'm just too Type A to ever fully appreciate the lack of punctuality and organization in the Dominican Republic, so I'm happy to be leaving that behind.  While returning to upstate New York in the middle of December will be a tremendous shock to my very warm blood, I'm excited to come back in the thick of the Christmas season.  Dominicans take decorating for Christmas very seriously (two people at World Vision did nothing but decorate the office for a solid week), but I just couldn't get into it with Christmas trees next to palm trees and fake snowflakes hanging in tropical breezes.  Christmas has always been a cold weather event for me, so for it to truly be the holiday season in my mind I need chilly weather, incessant holiday music (in English), obnoxiously large down jackets, and mugs of hot cocoa.  Watch out Christmas  - here I come.So what's next for me now that my Dominican adventure is over?  After I manage to chip my frozen self off the plane in Rochester, I'm putting my head down and focusing on finding a job.  I'm planning to move to Washington, DC and find a communications-related position in the human services non-profit sector.  Given the state of the economy and that I can't imagine any organization hiring in the middle of the holiday season, I think it's going to take awhile. Figures were released yesterday stating that the US just experienced the highest one-month drop in employment in 34 years. (Mom? Dad? You missed me enough to let me keep living at home, right?  More quality family time?)  Please keep your fingers crossed for me, or send up a prayer, or fire someone in your own organization and give me a call.  I accept all types of support.While I'm talking about Christmas and non-profits and while I have you as a captive audience, I have a request to make for this holiday season.  If you find yourself stumped for what to buy a friend or a family member for a gift this year, please consider making a donation to a non-profit in that person's name.  This year more than ever non-profits need financial help.  With our lovely recession, the usual donors have less to give and as the unemployment rate goes up, more people are relying on social services that operate using donations.  Well, I think that's all for this blog. Thanks for joining me on my Dominican adventure and sharing your comments throughout my two months there.  I'm so happy so many people have enjoyed following along with me.  I feel like at times I had a tendency to report on the negatives, but I just want to reinforce that for every gripe you read about, there were a million more good things that I didn't write about.  This has definitely been one of the most valuable and most meaningful experiences I've had in my life.  Unfortunately, it will also probably be my last adventure for a while.  I don't have any trips planned for the near future, but I will revive the blog when I hit the road again.  (Next stop: China!) Time to adios!AmandaPS: My cut has finally closed up.  I'm returning home without medical tape or even a bandaid!
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/akb2ic/4/1228163820/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/akb2ic/4/1228163820/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/akb2ic/4/1228163820/tpod.html Tue, 02 Dec 2008 22:02:09 -0500 Volunteering in the Dominican Republic

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Neyba, Dominican Republic

The stitches saga continues.My stitches were scheduled to come out Friday and I was pumped.  They looked really good and they were itching like crazy - a good sign my cut was healing.  I was sent to the clinic Friday morning by myself and as a nurse began to cut the stitches, it became very obvious that the stitches hadn't done what they were meant to do.  My cut looked exactly like it did when it happened minus all the blood.  I expressed my concern to the not-so-concerned nurse, but she just waved me out the door.  Luckily I brought a big bandaid with me, so I was at least able to cover my newly reopened wound before I left.  At the office, I showed it to the staff but no one seemed to think an open cut the length and width of a round toothpick was big deal, which, come to think of it, is probably why everyone here has giant scars.  In my relatively emergent situation, I was with no one to help me. The World Vision doctor was in Santo Domingo for the day, my boss Rigil from CSA was visiting but he was up in the mountains and hadn't come back down yet, and Luzlanda was at home. (I later found out she's on vacation now.  These are the kinds of things no one thinks to tell me here.)  I was finally able to get in touch with my mom online and we agreed that I either needed more stitches or butterfly bandages to pull the edges of the cut together.   The problem was no one else here thought so too, leaving me with a hole in my leg and no one to get me to a clinic.  When Rigil eventually showed up, we talked about it in English and he agreed that my cut needed medical attention.  He talked to Luzlanda and told her to take me back to the clinic.  An hour or so later she showed up at the office to use the internet and I had to invite her to look at my leg.  In classic Dominican fashion, she said we would go to the clinic in an hour or so, meaning my cut would have another hour to dry out and decrease the possibility of more stitches, and that I would miss my charla in Estero.  I was so frustrated that no one was listening to me that I just started crying.  Turns out that's what it takes to get things to happen around here.  I should have turned on the waterworks more often because as soon as people saw tears a vehicle and a driver appeared and we were ready to go to the clinic within two minutes.Unfortunately the clinic visit was equally frustrating.  The same nurses from my morning visit told me it was healed and insisted there was nothing else to be done.  (Sorry, but raw flesh does not equal healed in any country in any language.)   Luzlanda and Maritza, the other employee who was with us, beat down the doctor's door and got him to look at my leg.  He concurred that there was nothing else to be done.  I asked about "special tape" (the butterfly bandages) and he said the only place to get it was in Santo Domingo. Maritza called the World Vision doctor to get him to bring it back with him from Santo Domingo but luckily I have learned enough about this country to know when something is going to happen and when it's not going to happen.  I had doubts that the bandages would actually show up, so that afternoon I had Ana lead me to a pharmacy in search of sterile medical tape and gauze.   It took two pharmacies, but I found what I needed.  I've made improvised butterfly bandages and that's how I've managed to patch my leg back together.  I've decided that the adage here isn't, "If you want something done right, do it yourself."  It's, "If you want something to get done at all, do it yourself."The icing on the open-wound cake is that I think the stress from the situation managed to make me sick.  This weekend I was plagued with a perpetual stomach ache, what I think was a low-grade fever, and just general "I feel like crap" sentiments.  Nothing serious, but enough to make me want to just hang out in bed with movies and crossword puzzles (and wish I was home).Being sick and having a gaping hole in your leg is generally never a good time, but it's especially terrible when you're living with someone who has an answer for everything - particularly medically related things. And now I invite you to share in some of my suffering from this weekend.  Please let me regale you a small sampling of Luzlanda's medical advice regarding my cut and my mystery illness.  (Editorial note: Keep in mind that Luzlanda and I are very close and we really enjoy each other's company.  However, this weekend she sounded like what I would imagine to be the mother-in-law from hell.)Luzlanda: "I told you to leave your cut uncovered! That's why it didn't heal."Me: "I did leave it uncovered whenever I wasn't wearing long pants."Luzlanda: "Oh. Right."On Friday, the doctor tells me to keep it covered.  Luzlanda comes into my room and finds me and my leg with a big bandaid on it.Luzlanda: "Uncover it!"Me: "The doctor said to cover it!  And so did my mom!"Luzlanda: "Oh. Right."Luzlanda: "I have this aloe salve to put on your cut.  Put a new piece of the aloe gel on every twelve hours and keep it wrapped."Me: "But an hour ago you told me to keep it uncovered."Luzlanda: "Oh. Right. Well this is better."Me at lunch on Saturday: "I'm not going to eat much because I don't feel well."Luzlanda: "That's ok.  I understand."Luzlanda a few minutes later: "Why aren't you eating the broccoli?  You told me you liked broccoli so I made it for you.  You don't like it?"Me: "No, I like broccoli.  I just don't feel well."Luzlanda: "Oh. Right."Luzlanda on Friday: "Don't walk much until your cut heals. You just need to rest."Me: "Great.  I need a low-key weekend anyway."Luzlanda on Saturday: "You need to get out and get some exercise.  That's why you don't feel well."Luzlanda on Sunday: "You shouldn't go to the World AIDS Day march tomorrow.  Only walk when you need to."Me: "Great.  I can sleep an extra hour."Me on Monday morning: "So how are we getting to work this morning?"Luzlanda: "We're walking."Walking to the office is about 12 times farther than the one-block World AIDS Day march.Me on Friday: "I'm going to keep taking my antibiotics until my cut closes up."Luzlanda on Friday: "Yes. That is a good idea."Luzlanda on Saturday: "You need to stop taking those antibiotics. That's what's making you sick."Luzlanda comes into my room Saturday afternoon and finds one of the two windows closed.Luzlanda: "You don't have any ventilation!  That's why you're sick."Me: "No, they were all open before I didn't feel well.  I just closed a few of them this morning so I could watch a movie."Luzlanda later in the afternoon: "You're just sick because you don't have ventilation in your room."Me: "I told you the windows were only closed for a few hours while I was watching a movie."Luzlanda: "Oh. Right."Luzlanda: "I know!  The sweet potatoes from Thanksgiving made you sick.  They're acidic."Me in my head: "Sweet potatoes are acidic?"Luzlanda: "Here.  Drink this fresh lemonade. It will help your cut heal."Me in my head: "Lemons are definitely acidic."    And my absolute favorite came from my host dad Mario.Mario: "Drink a glass of wine.  That'll kill your sickness."So despite Luzlanda's many theories, I still don't know why I was sick but I'm fine now.  I'm also happy to report that with my medical tape and Luzlanda's  aloe salve (we compromised - 12 hours wrapped up with the salve and 12 hours without) the edges of my cut are now finally fused together and looking like they'll actually heal. While the weekend wasn't exactly a cup of tea, the few days before that of Thanksgiving and Thanksgiving preparation were absolutely awesome.  Luzlanda wanted to have an American Thanksgiving for me both at the office and at home with our family.  Together we planned a menu and took up a collection at the office to cover the cost of feeding more than 20 people.  It was definitely a Thanksgiving unlike any other I've experienced.  Instead of calmly filling a grocery cart with the produce and other items needed for dinner, Luzlanda and I spent an entire morning haggling for the best vegetables at the outdoor market.  I've never before sweat so much for the sake of groceries.  That experience alone made the two days' worth of cooking worth it. Everything turned out well in the end, but only the applesauce and mashed potato production went off without a hitch.  We wanted to make green bean casserole but there wasn't any cream of mushroom soup.  Solution: make something similar to cream of mushroom soup by putting canned mushrooms in the blender with flour and milk.  We wanted to make sweet potato casserole but what they call sweet potatoes here ("batatas") are hard, dry and kind of grainy.  Solution: invent something new that accounts for the differences in sweet potatoes.  We ended up with something that we called "batatas a la LA" (sweet potatoes a la Luzlanda and Amanda) that everyone really liked.  We wanted to have turkey, but people don't really eat turkey here plus it's really expensive to cook because of all the gas required to heat an oven for so many hours.  Solution:  use a different meat and call it turkey.  We had some amazing roast pork that everyone enjoyed calling "puerco pavo," or pork turkey.  We wanted to make pumpkin pie, but we realized we were lacking everything except the pumpkin (including a pie plate).  Solution: steam some pumpkin instead and mash it up with honey.  In typical Thanksgiving fashion, the food was devoured in a fraction of the time it took to make it.  I was afraid people wouldn't want to try the different foods, but in the end the only thing leftover was the one Dominican dish Luzlanda had prepared.  I was flattered!  The applesauce was an especially big hit.  Luzlanda, a woman constantly looking for new entrepreneurial opportunities, is thinking about starting a little business to make it at home and sell it as a semi-frozen treat at the office. Aside from worrying about my leg and preparing for Thanksgiving dinner, not much else has been happening in terms of my work.  I had the final charlas in Cachón Seco and Estero last week.  My charla in Las Clavellinas is doomed, and I wasn't able to make to my last charla there due to transportation issues once again.  Luzlanda has promised that she'll take my materials and give the final charla there after I'm gone.  I'm currently in Santo Domingo where I'll spend the rest of the week at the CSA office.  There I'll put the finishing touches on my final reports and debrief my experience with the staff.  My boss, Rigil, wants my Spanish instructor to give me another Spanish test to see how much my Spanish has improved since I left Santo Domingo.  It's definitely come a long way in six weeks!Enjoy the pictures in this post of Thanksgiving, a trip to the river and my final charlas.  I'll post one final time before I head back home.  Until then, keep your fingers crossed my cut heals up the rest of the way!Amanda
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/akb2ic/4/1227209940/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/akb2ic/4/1227209940/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/akb2ic/4/1227209940/tpod.html Mon, 24 Nov 2008 09:45:20 -0500 Volunteering in the Dominican Republic

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Neyba, Dominican Republic

All I wanted was some cookies.  After work on Friday, Luzlanda told me she was headed for the grocery store.  I handed her 30 pesos and asked her if she would please buy me the kind of cookies she and I both like.  She invited me to go with her and here's where three fateful decisions were made.  Fateful decision number 1: I agree to go to the store.  I asked her if I should change out of house-lounging shorts I was wearing (I attract attention anyway because I'm white and I'm female, so dispel any additional attention I usually wear long pants whenever I go out of the house).  Fateful decision number 2: she says I'm fine to go as I am and I leave the house with bare legs.  Luzlanda headed to get the key for the motorbike, and here's fateful decision number 3: I suggested we walk instead of ride.  We walked the few blocks to the grocery store without incident, and together we enjoyed an unusually long shopping experience.  Most trips are quick pick-up-a-box-of-pasta-and-a-roll-of-toilet-paper kind of trips, but since it was Friday and Luzlanda was in the mood for home improvement, we spent quite a bit of time comparing the quality of the curtains she wanted to buy, debating the sugar content of the Dominican versions of Frosted Flakes versus Cocoa Puffs, naming items in the store in Spanish for me and English for her, and picking out some new dishes and silverware.  Note the purchase of silverware as it will soon play a major role in this story.We ended up filling a small shopping cart and two baskets full of stuff, so when we checked out we had six giant, heavy grocery bags (think of a bag three times the size of a US grocery bag) and we didn't have an easy way to get them home since we came on foot.  (They wouldn't have made it with one trip with the motorbike either, but we probably could have done it in two.)  While Luzlanda was asking around for anyone with a car or truck who could drop us off, I decided that we could manage three bags each if we walked home slowly.  As I hefted up a bag, I felt something scrape my left shin.  I looked down expecting to see a superficial scrape from something sharp in the bag; instead I saw a superficial two-inch long gash open up and start bleeding.  I also happened to notice the tip of the steak knife we purchased poking out of the grocery bag.  I don't remember exactly what I said to Luzlanda, but it was something along the lines of "Umm. I think I need to be sewed."  (I now know the word for stitches: puntos.  Remember that just in case you're ever in a Spanish-speaking country and have an encounter with a steak knife.)  I, the bleeding white girl, quickly drew a crowd.  Amongst the gawkers, someone produced some napkins and someone else produced a plastic bag and someone else tied the napkins to my leg with the plastic bag.  Luckily the clinic was across the street, so I didn't have to go too far with my McGuiver bandage.  My experience at the clinic was equally McGuiver-esque.  No one asked my name.  No one inquired about allergies.  No one had me sign anything.  So now I, the nameless bleeding white girl, was taken to a little room with an exam table and a lamp containing the only incandescent light I've seen in this country.  In the one situation a bright, fluorescent light would actually be better, I get to be stitched up in light that's easy on the eyes but illuminates poorly.  After I hopped up on the table and my wound was inspected, an IV bag of saline solution was produced.  Two things could happen with this IV bag, neither of which would really give me any more confidence in this clinic: the clinic staff could be crazy and think I needed IV fluids to replace the tablespoon of blood I had lost, or they could use this gigantic bag of solution to flush out my relatively small cut.  They chose the latter, which I'll agree was a creative, and good first step.  However, since saline lacks antiseptic properties, in my humble medical opinion, they needed to go a bit further and dump a bag of iodine on me, too.  Instead, a syringe, Novocain, and a suture kit were produced and mi doctora got to town sewing me back together.  I think she did a pretty decent job.  She gave me one big running stitch that loops around the cut thirteen times instead of individual stitches like I've had before.  However, I was more worried about infection than what my souvenir from the DR will look like when it heals.  After she finished, I told her as politely as I could that she needed to disinfect me.  A Dasani water bottle full of what I think was iodine appeared and she put a good dab or two on her sewing project. After I was gauzed and medical taped, Luzlanda paid the 800 pesos (less than USD$25) for my treatment since I had only brought the 30 pesos I needed for my cookies.  We left the clinic and realized that we were still facing the predicament of what to do with all our grocery bags that were waiting for us outside the now-closed supermarket.  With my fresh stitches we walked back to the store, found our shopping bags under the watchful eye of the store's armed guard, picked them up and hauled them back home on foot.  At least Luzlanda carried the knife. Now that I'm safely stitched up and my infection fears have been quelled by a week-long dose of strong antibiotics, I actually think this makes for a pretty funny story (and I'll have the scar to prove it really happened). Aside from a teeny bit of pain and the annoyance of having to keep stitches clean for a week, my steak knife run-in has been pretty innocuous. It's an experience that has made me feel very loved by the people I'm living with and working with.  The doctor at World Vision stopped by the house on Saturday and expressed his concern in the form of little bags full of pills: he brought me two kinds of antibiotics, ibuprofen, acetaminophen, vitamin A, calcium tablets and ice cream.  I graciously accepted one type of antibiotics and the ice cream.  The previous two weeks haven't been nearly as eventful as this weekend, though they have also been filled with new and interesting experiences.  As I receive reports of the cold, snowy weather back home, I'm happy to be here in the heat and the humidity.  I haven't seen a thermometer, but I would guess the daily average is close to 90˚F with about 80% humidity.  It was uncomfortable when I was out walking around in the communities every day, but now that I'm spending more time out of the sun I'm really enjoying the weather.  Sweating is definitely a part of daily life, but it's just one of those things you get used to.  I didn't bring many shirts with me, so I've learned to just bring whatever I wore during the day into the shower with me for a good rinse.  If I rinse my clothes out, it means I can wear them more them once without being a hazard to the health of those around me.  Laundry is done half by hand at our house and it's a ton of work, so we only do it once a week. We have a washing machine but it's kind of broken.  Clothes go through the soap cycle in the machine, and then Luzlanda rinses and treats with fabric softener and rinses again by hand in a big wash tub. I've had a great break from the heat for several days in la loma, which translates as "the hill" but I think they're more mountains than hills.  Neyba is situated on a big, flat plain and it's surrounded by the lomas on the northern and southern sides.  I suppose the elevation of the lomas here are similar to the elevations of some of the hills in Western New York State, but because they jump steeply out of a flat plain they seem much higher.  World Vision has a center in the mountains north of Neyba to give employees a base of operations closer to the rural communities they work with up there (see pictures of the center in the previous post).  Since I'm no longer spending every day out in the communities collecting my own data, I've had time to accompany Luzlanda on two work trips there.  We've been distributing anti-parasite medication at schools and by going house to house.  The first trip took us to an incredibly remote community.  It took about 20 minutes on the main road from Neyba and then about another half an hour on something that could barely be called a road to reach the community.  The scenery as we climbed up and up and up was absolutely breathtaking.  It looked a lot like the scene in Jurassic Park when you first see the dinosaurs (the happy ones, not the raptors and the T­Rex) roaming in the semi­jungle­like hills.  I tried to take some photos, but the bumps in the road prohibited any high quality pictures.  At the end of the steep road, we reached a school which served as our worksite for the day.  There was a team of about six of us and we collected information on the families and distributed parasite medication.  My job once again was to weigh and measure the kids under age five.  However, in typical Dominican fashion, our effectiveness was limited by a lack of planning.  It was a 12-hour day from the time I was ready to leave the house to the time we actually returned, and in the end we only really worked for about an hour and a half.  First of all, we were supposed to leave at 7:30 in the morning, and didn't actually leave until closer to 10.  We first drove to the World Vision center to have breakfast (even though we had already eaten before leaving for work) and after eating, we then had to backtrack over part of the route we had just come by to get to the community.  We showed up at the school unannounced so we could only give medication to the families who had children there for the morning session of school, or to the families who lived close enough to the school to hear that we were there. (Kids go to school for half a day here; there's a session in the morning and a session in the afternoon.)  We waited for the afternoon session of school to start, but only four children showed up.  After sitting around for three hours with no kids to give pills to, our driver finally reappeared to take us back to the center for lunch and then back to Neyba.  On the way back down the steepest part of the hill, the driver got into a discussion about something we were listening to on the radio.  I think he forgot to downshift and the next thing we knew the clutch wouldn't work in our brand new truck (so new that the visors still had their protective plastic around them).  We pulled over, pushed the truck about a quarter of a mile to a safe spot in the very curvy road (at least we were on the flat part when we stopped!), sent someone back to the office with a passing motorist, and waited for another World Vision truck to come and rescue us.  World Vision has a fleet of Nissan pickup trucks of varying ages, so it was pretty funny to watch our brand new, broken pickup being towed by a beat up, older pickup.  It's been more than a week now since the truck broke, and it's still sitting in the parking lot waiting to be hauled to Santo Domingo for repairs.The lack of punctuality in the previous story and that I've mentioned in other blog posts has started to impede my ability to do what I came here to do.  When a meeting starts at 2:00, it's not unusual for people to come at 2:20 or 2:40 and the expectation is that the meeting won't actually start until 3:00.  When I host the workshops for women in the communities, my preference is to be there the time we agreed to start and I am happy to wait the "requisite" hour for my moms to show up. However, some of the people at World Vision don't share my view that I need to be there at the time the meeting is supposed to start.  This is compounded by the fact that I rely on World Vision for transportation.  I'm at their mercy to get me where I need to be by the time stated, and differences in opinion, a lack of drivers or a lack of trucks has prohibited me from being at the meeting site on time on several occasions now. Twice this week I arrived half an hour or thirty minutes late (thank you World Vision) to find no one at the meeting site.  Mothers who were at the meeting reasonably on time decided to leave the meeting before I arrived because they thought that I wasn't going to come. Cachón Seco is small enough that word spread that I was there and I had a small group of moms come back, but in Las Clavellinas the word-of-mouth system isn't as good and I ended up making the trip out there for nothing. This has been incredibly frustrating.  I tried to argue my points as best I could to the people at World Vision responsible for transportation, but I didn't get anywhere.  On Thursday I called in the help of CSA, where I was able to explain my problem English, and the boss at CSA called World Vision and argued for me in proficient Spanish.  The talking-to was put to the test on Friday when I needed to be at another meeting by 2:30 in nearby Estero.  At 11:00, I started rattling chains to make sure people knew when I needed to be there.  The agreement was to leave at 2:00, which would actually put me there 20 minutes early (yay!).  A few minutes before 2:00 I was at the door ready to go and (giant surprise) my driver, Enriquillo, was nowhere to be found.  No one seemed particularly concerned about this as cups of coffee were passed around.  At 2:10 I started squawking again and Luzlanda said she would take me on her motorbike.  We were just leaving the parking lot when Enriquillo pulled in.  Luzlanda kicked me off the motorbike because she had other places to be, and she took off.  I told Enriquillo we had ten minutes to get there and we needed to go now please, and he told me that he was hungry and needed to eat.  I told him no, we are going right now, and he told me that he was hungry and needed to eat.  I actually got in the truck and shut the door and he just marched into the kitchen.  I think steam was actually coming out of my ears.  I asked another staff member to help me get Enriquillo back into the truck, but she was equally ineffective.  Luckily Luzlanda came back from her quick errand and we sped to Estero.  I was only five minutes late, but there were still 10 women waiting for me when I got there.  I only have four charlas left, so I'm hoping I can be punctual for the remaining four.It's hard to believe that I have less than two weeks left to go here.  I've started writing my final reports and putting the finishing touches on the brochures that I will leave here.  Things are definitely winding down.  The only other big event coming up is our Thanksgiving celebration.  It's not a holiday Dominicans celebrate, but Luzlanda wanted to have a "truly American" Thanksgiving dinner in honor of me, so we will be having a big feast at the office on Thursday.  We're replacing turkey with pork since turkeys are hard to come by here, but Luzlanda and I have developed the other parts of the menu to reflect what my family usually eats at Thanksgiving (and yes - there will be applesauce). After an obscenely long post, I'm signing off to go eat the cookies and ice cream that cost me thirteen stitches!Lots of Thanksgiving love from the DR,Amanda
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/akb2ic/4/1226496300/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/akb2ic/4/1226496300/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/akb2ic/4/1226496300/tpod.html Wed, 12 Nov 2008 08:25:46 -0500 Volunteering in the Dominican Republic

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Neyba, Dominican Republic

I'm now past the halfway point in my time here.  The days that were initially dragging are now flying by and I'm finding myself really enjoying what I'm doing.  There are still moments where I'm ready to throw in the towel but they are greatly outnumbered by moments where I'm just really happy to be here. On Thursday I finished my work in the three communities weighing and measuring kids and interviewing the mothers (or occasionally a grandmother).  The degree of malnutrition is not as bad as I had expected, but it's still not good.  Between 132 children in three communities, 5% are overweight, 69% are normal, 23% are lightly malnourished, 2% are moderately malnourished and .06% are severely malnourished.  The problem seems to be that there isn't a lack of food, but rather a lack of access to food.  There is only one market that sells vegetables on Wednesdays and Saturdays and it's located in Neyba.  It costs 100 Dominican pesos (a bit less than USD$3) to travel the 14km from Las Clavellinas to Neyba and back, which for some of the poorer families is half or a third of their food budget for the week.  Not surprisingly, the levels of malnutrition get higher and higher the farther you get from Neyba.  All of the communities have colmados, which are like little general stores but they don't usually sell fresh food.  You can get the Dominican staples of rice and beans, a few canned goods and occasionally some bread there, but colmados rarely stock vegetables.  If they do have vegetables, they're usually vegetables used for seasoning (cilantro, onions or little hot peppers) and not the kind of vegetables that contain the necessary vitamins and nutrients.  A few families have small gardens with banana trees, the local version of pumpkins or corn, but poor soil conditions and lack of easy access to the necessary amounts water limits any bigger-scale subsistence farming.  My recommendations to World Vision will second the previous intern's recommendations: develop community gardens so multiple people can work together to prepare the soil, haul water and maintain the crops.  Not many people have day jobs here, so free time is definitely not a limiting factor. Life at home continues to go well and we've all settled into a routine with me here.  Edwin and I run in the mornings and lately my host dad Mario has joined us for the post-run ab workout.  After that, there's just enough time to shower and eat breakfast before hopping on Luzlanda's motorbike to head for the office.  Someone else from World Vision usually drives me to my worksite for the day, so I don't see her again until after she comes home from work around 5:00 or 5:30.  I come right home after I'm done in the communities, which means I end my day around 4:00.  In the evenings, I see more of my host sister Ana than any other member of the family.  Luzlanda and Mario spend most of their time watching television in their room and Edwin isn't around much in the evenings when I'm home.  Even at mealtime I don't see much of them.  Meals in this house aren't really a big social affair, so I usually eat at the dining room table by myself or with Ana if she's around for dinner.  Mario usually eats in his room and Luzlanda will join him or sit in front of the television in the kitchen.  I grew up in a family that took great pride in eating meals together, so that's definitely been something I've needed to adjust to here.  Luzlanda and Ana split dinner-cooking duties, and if Ana doesn't like what Luzlanda has planned for dinner she'll take over and make what she wants.  I certainly wasn't able to prepare a full meal at the age of 13! The critters here continue to keep my life interesting.  I saw a mouse in the kitchen last week, and couldn't remember the word for mouse so I called it a Mickey.  My family thought that was pretty funny so now all the mice in the house are now referred to as Mickeys.  (And yes.  There is more than one.  I've watched two meet their death so far - once by broom and once by killer flip-flop).  The ants and mosquitoes here seem to have paranormal powers that even I, as a human with a developed brain and a Bachelor's degree, cannot seem to outsmart.  Multiple full body applications of Deep Woods Off, several layers of clothing, and a mosquito net at night still doesn't deter the mosquitoes.  They must be able to bite through clothing because I have bites in places that even underwear covers.  The ants, however, are the craftiest creatures of all.  I think they could probably take on the CIA and win.  I had a box of individually wrapped Ritz peanut butter crackers that I had zipped into a compartment of my suitcase. I figured the airtight cellophane wrapper around each pack of crackers plus the zipper on my suitcase would be enough to keep any ants away, but sure enough one day I found ants crawling all over the outside of the package.  They hadn't been able to get to the crackers themselves, but I knew they were probably just a few ant nibbles away from chewing through the plastic.  I put the crackers in a sealed Ziploc bag (the real Ziploc brand - not even a knockoff!) and zipped them back into my suitcase, and the next day they were back again crawling on the cracker package. The third day, I put the cellophane-protected crackers into the Ziplock bag, put the Ziploc bag in a black plastic trash bag, twisted it close once and wrapped it again with the extra plastic, sealed the whole thing back into my suitcase and sprayed the seams with bug killer.  And I'm sure you can guess what happened on the fourth day.  I opened the bag(s) and the ants had found their way through the layers of bug killer, suitcase zipper, two sheets of plastic, a Ziploc bag, and finally through the cellophane and into my crackers.  The ants won and got to eat the rest of the pack they had broken into (in the garbage though, not in my suitcase) and I locked the remaining crackers in the refrigerator.  So far the fridge has proved impenetrable, but I sincerely believe at this very moment the ants are holding covert meetings to plot their break-in. Monday was a public holiday here (el día de la constitución) so I was able to enjoy a three-day weekend.  Ana and I watched Finding Nemo on my computer on Friday night with Spanish subtitles.  It's great Spanish practice for me to read in Spanish something I already know well in English.  On Saturday, I spent the night in Las Clavellinas with my friend and fellow World Vision employee, Patricia.  I took the public bus to Las Clavellinas, which is called a guagua.  Guaguas range from nicely maintained, air-conditioned minibuses with appropriate signage indicating their destination to beat up minivans with no distinguishing marks whatsoever to tell you that it is in fact a guagua and not someone's personal vehicle.  I took the latter to Patricia's.  This particular guagua was already packed with people returning from the Saturday market and I had to ask if there was enough room for me.  The answer to that question here is always yes.  If there isn't room in a vehicle, you make room.  In my case, that entailed the driver removing a small chair that had been mounted on the front of the van, wedging it between the middle row of seats and the half-closed sliding door and telling the women in the middle seats to move over.  And so I traveled to Las Clavellinas safely smushed between a fat lady and the first six inches of the sliding door, watching the road whiz by at my feet. You know you're getting used to a place when something totally absurd in your home country doesn't even begin to faze you.  I made it to Patricia's house without incident.  I can't say I had a blast at her house, but it was a nice change of pace and change of scenery.  I felt kind of like a doll that Patricia and her two friends were sharing, and I think they really enjoyed feeding me, giving me a pedicure, and hauling me around with them. Before we went to bed on Saturday night the girls told me to sleep as long as I wanted on Sunday morning, but my phone started mysteriously ringing around 8:30 with no one on the other line.  Strangely enough when I got up after the third call, all three girls had congregated and were waiting to feed me breakfast.  We went out on Saturday night and it was pretty fun.  There aren't any discotecas in Las Clavellinas, so we settled for the colmadon which is a bigger version of the previously described colmado.  These colmadons serve really cold beer (chilled to maximum point before freezing - I've had beer here with ice slush in  it), usually have a patio area with lots of plastic chairs and the requisite loud Dominican music.  The Dominicans absolutely love music here, and they firmly believe that music must be played at the highest possible volume in order to enjoy it.  I would have a hard time hearing and understanding people in English with loud music blaring, but here it removes any possible chance of me understanding what someone is saying to me in Spanish.  Despite my inability to understand anything, I still enjoyed myself and learned a little meringue.  Sunday and Monday were low-key days and I had time to finish up preparations for the first real workshop.  The first workshop in each community is just for introductions and Tuesday I presented the second charla with actual information.  26 women between the ages of 18 and 62 attended and I think everyone learned a thing or two.  It seemed weird to be talking to a group of women about breastfeeding and infant nutrition when I was the absolute only person in the group without a child.  I'm in a very small minority here to be 22, unmarried and without at least one or two children.   While my Spanish is definitely improving, communication in the communities is twice as difficult because the population is very uneducated. I pass around an attendance sheet that only requires the women to write their full name, age and the number of children they have.  The majority of the women (usually the older women) struggle to accomplish even that simple task.  They also have trouble understanding my accent and I think some of the words I use, even though I try to speak as simply as possible.  Even Luzlanda, a native Spanish speaker who is used to working within the communities, says that people don't understand her at times.  The lesson I learned from Tuesday's charla was to rely heavily on pictures.  I have a series of posters that I made with simple pictures that get my points across without words. I also designed a brochure for the women to take home with the same simple, heavily illustrated information.  It took me more than a week to put together with Third World resourcefulness.  Without the internet to get illustrations, I ended up making a little lighting studio with my fluorescent lantern and taking pictures of other publications and my own drawings that I then edited with Photoshop.  With InDesign (and the fact that copyright law doesn't exist here) I was able to put together a brochure good enough that World Vision wants to distribute it nationally.  That's all for now from the Dominican Republic!  There are now photos in the previous post of my work weighing and measuring kids, my family and of a weekend trip to the river with a co-worker.  I'll try to post some pictures in this post if the internet will hold out long enough.  Amanda
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/akb2ic/4/1225824300/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/akb2ic/4/1225824300/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/akb2ic/4/1225824300/tpod.html Fri, 07 Nov 2008 13:30:50 -0500 Volunteering in the Dominican Republic

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Neyba, Dominican Republic

Hello from Neyba! My posts from now on will be less frequent but longer as I no longer have regular access to the internet.  I type all my emails (and blog posts) at home, and then bring them to the office on my flash drive.  I usually spend a bit of time at the World Vision office in the mornings, but it's hit or miss if the internet will be working.  When it does work, it's not unusual for it to take several minutes for a page to load.  I'm feeling deprived of world news since I spend precious internet time emailing instead of reading news stories! All things considered, I'd say I'm enjoying it here in Neyba.  Every day I have moments where I absolutely love it and want to extend my stay, and I have moments where I'm ready to book the next ticket home.  Most of my frustrations revolve around communication. I'm definitely a lover of details and I always prefer to know exactly what's going on around me.  When I can't all the parts of a conversation, I feel incredibly lost.  The accents here in Neyba are different than they are in Santo Domingo, which compounds the comprehension problem. It's also tricky because I've learned Spanish pretty academically, and out here in the country it's a very different kind of Spanish. When I'm working out in the communities with uneducated Dominicans, I've figured out that if I say things really quickly and stop enunciating, people can understand me better.  So much for learning things the "right" way!   I'm also having to adjust to the cultural differences in work style.  "Punctualidad" exists in the Dominican vocabulary but it's not a word that is put into practice with much frequency.  Being an hour or an hour-and-a-half later than originally stated is no big deal; it's just how it is here.  It was the same way in Fiji (commonly known around the island as "Fiji time") but when I was there, I didn't have work to do.  Here in an office setting, it's frustrating.  When we go out to the communities, we just show up unannounced and hope that the people we need to work with will be there.  On Thursday we drove 14 kilometers (which is far on a motorbike) to a community in the hills in hopes of connecting with World Vision's local health promoter.  She wasn't there, so we asked someone else in the community to tell her we'd be back the next day.  We showed up again on Friday and she still wasn't there.  I was able to go with someone else so it wasn't a second wasted trip, but it's a good example of how spontaneously things can happen here.  I arrived in Neyba on Monday morning after about a three-hour drive from Santo Domingo.  I came with Deybi, one of CSA's project coordinators.  I met Luzlanda, who is both my boss and my new mom.  The first thing she said to me was something to the effect of, "You're bigger than I thought."  I didn't know how to respond to that so I just pretended to not understand.  (I'm chalking it up to the Dominican culture - I think that was just some of the Dominican blunt honesty coming through.  They just tell it like it is here.  There's no such thing as sugar-coating anything.) After that introduction, I also met Luis Emilio who is a doctor who works for World Vision here.  Both he and Luzlanda are overseeing my work.  Deybi, Luzlanda, Luis Emilio and I talked about what I will be doing for the next six weeks and laid out a work plan.  We agreed that I'd be weighing and measuring kids under age five in three communities for the first three weeks, and then start mothers' clubs in those three communities in the remaining three weeks.  I started work on Tuesday morning and made it to all three communities during the week.  The first community is called Cachón Seco.  It's very small and practically in Neyba.  The second, called Estero, is a bit bigger and several kilometers away but still easily accessible from Neyba.  The third is called Las Clavellinas and it's a really huge community in the foothills of the mountains.  To give you an idea of the sizes of the communities, I completed weighing and measuring kids under age five in one day in Cachón Seco. Estero will take three days, and Las Clavellinas will take four of five days.  The first day Luzlanda came with me, but since then I've been going alone.  She takes me on her motorbike (I think I'm the only person within a 100km radius of Neyba who wears a helmet) and then she drops me off with the community health promoter.  These are people (almost always women) who have received some training from World Vision and serve as a local contact for the organization.  I really like working with the promoters because they know which houses have children under age five and they can help introduce why I'm there.  I know enough Spanish to complete the family interview totally on my own, but it's still nice to have someone else to help. We go to every house that has children under age five. The questions I ask the mothers (occasionally grandmothers or dads if the mom isn't there, but that is very rare) range from where do you get your water to what kinds of food do you cook to how many beds do you have.  I also walk through every house and note the condition of the beds or other things that might be contributing to poor health.  The goal is to get information to fund future projects.  It took several interviews for me to get the hang of it, but now I can do them pretty quickly. People are incredibly eager to talk with an American.  I was prepared to have introduce myself, explain World Vision's work and convince the moms that I needed to hang their youngest children from a scale, but no formal introduction is never necessary.  The families (usually just the moms and the kids) see us coming, chairs appear, and the mom is usually waiting for me by the time I get up to the house.  I interview the mom, then start weighing and measuring the kids.  We have a scale that you hang from a tree or a beam in a house.  You put the child in this sling (it looks like a giant pair of underwear) and hang them on the scale.  It's kind of crude and the kids definitely don't like it, but it gets the job done.  I've definitely seen a range of poverty, health and sanitation in the 80 families I've interviewed so far.  Most houses are made of cement, have cement floors, and have tin roofs.  Only a few houses have bathrooms in house; the rest have latrines outside or nothing at all.  Everyone has to go to the community "llave" or tap to get water.  Not many people can afford to buy water to drink, so anyone who drinks water from the llave is supposed to treat it with bleach (5 drops per gallon).  However, many kids still have parasites from dirty water.  In terms of weight, roughly 75% of the kids rate "normal" on UNICEF's age/weight growth chart and 20% rate "lightly malnourished." So far only two kids have been overweight and two kids have been "moderately malnourished."  The worst house I've seen made me cry after I left.  The mom says she's 19, but she has three kids ages 7, 5 and 14 months.  She told me she got married when she was 13.  The math doesn't quite work, so I don't think she knows her exact age.  I asked her age three times just be sure I heard it correctly.  Regardless of her actual age, she couldn't be older than me.  Her family of five lives in a single room with only a door - they don't even have windows for ventilation.  Five people share two beds that are in terrible condition.  There is no latrine and she cooks over a small fire on the ground outside.  I don't even know what to begin to think about that.  It's scary just to visit a home like that, but it's absolutely terrifying to know that people eat, sleep and live in conditions like that on a daily basis for their entire lives.   In my own home, things are going well. I live in a nice house in the outskirts of town.  We have a great view of the mountains and we live next to the community baseball field.  We can sit on the roof and watch games at night.  My host dad Mario plays there and the first night here I sat in the stands while he played.  A pack of kids accumulated and I really enjoyed talking with them.  We had fun learning to count to five in English on our fingers then high-fiving when all our fingers were up.  Some of them remember my name and call out "Hola Amanda!" when they see me in town.   I have two siblings here.  Ana will turn 14 this month and Edwin is 23.  Ana is awesome and I spend a lot of time with her.  We really enjoy each other's company.  She has stepped in as my new Spanish teacher and she has the patience and the sense of humor to make her an excellent instructor.  I have a few songs on my computer that she knows the words to in English (but doesn't know what the English words mean), so we've been translating them into Spanish.  I usually don't see too much of Edwin during the day or in the evenings.  He invited me to run with him in the mornings, so we've been pounding the pavement through the streets of Neyba at 6am every day.  There are roosters that live under my bedroom window that start crowing around 4am, so I'm usually happy to get up early in order to escape them. The power and water situations here are pretty good.  Electricity comes and goes, but we have an inversor (a giant battery) that automatically comes on when the power goes out.  Power is out frequently, but with the inversor it doesn't hamper the daily routine.  Once again, figuring out how the water works in the bathroom has been interesting.  We have a nice, tiled bathroom with a shower, toilet and sink.  Water runs in the toilet and sink (when there is water), but not in the shower.  In order to shower, you have to run the garden hose through the bathroom window.  It's somehow connected to a pump that you can turn on which bumps up the water volume coming through the hose.  I think the water in the sink and toilet come from the tank on the roof, and the water from the hose comes from another tank at ground level.  I don't have the Spanish vocabulary to discuss about the intricacies of indoor plumbing, so I'll just settle for the fact that I know I drink water from the big blue gallons, shower with a garden hose, and water appears in the sink about 7 out of 10 times.  Meals here have been interesting.  It's strange to think that I'm here to help teach people how to select healthy foods and how to prepare local vegetables, but I don't feel like what I eat here usually fits into either category.  A few example dinners: Mangu, which is a local food consisting of boiled plantain (like a really big, tough banana) mashed up with onions and sometimes garlic or oil, and a fried egg; oatmeal (soupy enough that we drank it out of mugs) and grilled bread with garlic butter; a bread roll with a couple of tablespoons of scrambled eggs with salami and onion in it.  Breakfast here has been a nice change to familiar foods from home.  Luzlanda bought some corn flakes for me and I've had the first milk since I've been in the country.  She makes milk every couple of days from powder, so every other morning I have near-boiling milk in my cereal. Nothing like boiling hot corn flakes in boiling hot weather. Lunch is definitely my most favorite meal of the day.  It's the same thing every day, but it's very traditional and delicious: rice, beans in soupy sauce and chicken.  I've tried to reinforce that I love vegetables ("Me encanta vegetales!") and throughout the week more and more have been appearing in meals.  I'm up to about a salad a day and bananas are now available to me on a regular basis.  The very best part living here though are the juices the Dominicans make.  Every juice is made from fresh fruit.  My favorite is the limonada, which is made from golf-ball size, green citrus fruits the Dominicans call lemons. At a grocery store in the US, I would have identified them as key limes.  But, regardless of what you call them, when they are squeezed into cold water with a little sugar it tastes like heaven and its a refreshing reprieve from the heat. That's more than enough for the first post from Neyba! I posted some photos from Santo Domingo in the previous blog entry that include pictures of the Colonial Zone and last weekend's trip to Juan Dolio.  I went with another volunteer and her friend that I met at CSA.  If the internet connection here will allow it, I'll try to post some pictures from Neyba (but don't hold your breath). I'm definitely thinking of home on election day!  I'll be glued to the television here tonight watching election results in Spanish. Amanda
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/akb2ic/4/1224811020/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/akb2ic/4/1224811020/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/akb2ic/4/1224811020/tpod.html Thu, 23 Oct 2008 21:38:50 -0400 Volunteering in the Dominican Republic

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Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic

Greetings once again from la Republica Dominicana!Tomorrow marks my last day of classes in Santo Domingo before heading off to "el campo" (the country) to start my work with World Vision.  I'm leaving Santo Domingo with mixed emotions: I'm happy to be starting my assignment, but I'm sad to be leaving the friends I've made here in Santo Domingo.  I've really enjoyed the time with the CSA staff at the office and I'll definitely miss seeing them on a daily basis.  My final week of classes has gone well and I definitely feel like I've made more progress.  I only had Spanish lessons for four hours per day this week, leaving me time in the afternoon to work on my "charlas," or workshops, that I'll be giving in Neyba.  Today's class included a trip to market to help me learn the names of local fruits and vegetables. These are the same foods that I'll be showing the women in Neyba how to prepare in a nutritious way (i.e. steaming or baking instead of frying or boiling).  My fellow North Americans would recognize most foods at the market with the exception of a few: batatas, which translate as sweet potatoes but look nothing like any North American sweet potato I've ever seen; auyama, a green-shelled type of pumpkin; yucca, a root plant that looks like a long, kind of hairy potato; and several others that I can't remember the Domincan names for at the moment (oops).  So far I haven't had a very Dominican eating experience because Illeana doesn't serve much in the way of traditional Dominican food.  The fees I pay to stay here include breakfast and dinner, and lunch is on my own.  Breakfast is usually oatmeal, or fresh fruit with yogurt.  The yogurt here is more like really thick milk; you're better off trying to drink it than eat it with a spoon.  For dinner we've had everything from hamburgers to lasagna to Asian-style stir-fry.  I feel a bit deprived in the area of traditional Dominican food, but six weeks in el campo will quickly remedy that!  For lunch, I usually take a sandwich to CSA, and it took the staff several days to adjust to my sandwich eating.  Lunch in the DR is typically a pretty gigantic meal of arroz con habichuelas y carne.  Translated: a giant serving of rice (like a cup and a half to two cups), red beans in a soupy sauce that you spoon onto the rice, and then some form of meat.  At CSA, it's usually fried chicken. The staff kept giving me portions of their lunches for the first few days thinking that just a sandwich couldn't possibly be enough!    Yesterday provided me with my first Dominican lunch.  Rigil, the boss at CSA, interrupted my Spanish lesson around 10am and asked if I wanted to attend a meeting with him in Puerto Plata.  Eager for a new experience, I said yes.  Puerto Plata is on the northern coast of the country and it took just about four hours to drive there with a couple of stops.  It was an absolutely gorgeous drive through the mountains in the middle of the island.  The mountains here are incredibly striking; they aren't very tall but they definitely have a majestic quality to them.  They look like mini-Rockies draped with a carpet of very jungle-esque greenery. From Santo Domingo we traveled on nicely paved highways through Santiago, the second largest city in the DR, and then started climbing into the mountains themselves.  The higher we got, the rougher the road became and the poorer the communities became.  It started to look more like the impoverished part of the Dominican Republic I'll be seeing in Neyba.  After about 40 minutes we reached our destination: a community center for the Catholic church in Puerto Plata. CSA isn't a parochial organization, but their model is to work within existing community structures.   In Puerto Plata for example, CSA has relied on the Catholic priests' knowledge of the need in the community to identify projects that CSA could provide volunteers for.  This ensures local support for each project. The goal of the day's meeting was to meet with leaders from surrounding communities to try to expand the work CSA is doing in the area.  After lunch, we sat down with about a dozen leaders the priest had selected.  Interestingly, they were all women.  We explained how CSA works and what types of projects CSA takes on.  It was great for me to see the culture of an informal community meeting, which is the exact type of thing I'll be doing in Neyba.  It's important to start with friendly chat for a few minutes before launching into business.  At this meeting and in Neyba as well, we start with prayer (World Vision is a Christian organization).  Since the meeting was only intended to introduce leaders to what CSA can do and to get them thinking about potential projects in the communities, the meeting only lasted about 20 minutes.  It was a long way to go for a brief meeting, but it was really an invaluable experience for me!On Sunday I went to a baseball game in Santo Domingo with Rigil, Luis (both CSA staff members), Marla and her boyfriend.  Baseball is huge here. Scores of Major League Baseball players have come from the Dominican Republic, with Sammy Sosa and David Ortiz as just a small example.  There are six national teams, two of which are here in Santo Domingo.  The season just started last week so baseball fever is alive and well.  In preparation for the game, I was warned to wear long pants and sneakers to protect against flying beer, and to be careful of "los fanáticos locos," which you can probably understand means "the crazy fans."  Getting into the stadium definitely put the loco into the experience.  It was a crush of cars turning into the stadium and then an absolute free-for-all to park.  We just found the nearest empty piece of territory and parked there.  This involved four-wheeling over the median and across the oncoming traffic to beat other cars to it. Since the open space wasn't really a parking space but rather just a raised piece of sidewalk between roads, we had to back up over the curb to park on it.  The parking process concluded by tipping a kid a few pesos to watch the car (the meter must have run out because he was nowhere to be seen after the game).  After the parking adventure, the game itself was a bit of a disappointment after all the hype.  The two Santo Domingo teams were playing each other so I was expecting some intense fan interaction.  Unfortunately, Lisey - the team we were rooting for - was getting crushed so badly that it kind of took the spirit out of the game.  Lisey fans ended up getting more worked up about the cheerleaders than the game itself.  I'm not sure what the final score was, but when we left in the eighth inning we were losing by eight points. Despite the loss, it was still a really cool experience!There's not much else to report on from here.  A few other random tidbits: We now have water regularly, but the power is sporadic.  Today on the walk to CSA I saw a pigeon fall out of the sky and splat on the sidewalk in front of me (which makes this the second time in a month - Mom and I watched a pigeon drop into a café in Siena, Italy). The video from last weekend's project with Mark and Santiago is now posted on YouTube.  Check it out here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qch3G40SK50That's all for now!  Sorry for the lack of pictures - hopefully I'll have some for the next post!Amanda
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/akb2ic/4/1224374760/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/akb2ic/4/1224374760/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/akb2ic/4/1224374760/tpod.html Mon, 20 Oct 2008 23:24:19 -0400 Volunteering in the Dominican Republic

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Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic

Hello once again,Things continue to go well down here in the Dominican Republic.  Since the last update, I've acquired many more Spanish words and many more mosquito bites.  The mosquitoes here are crafty: I can't hear them or see them.  The only evidence of their existence are the new itchy spots I wake up with every morning!The streets continue to flood every time it rains.  A bit of Hurricane Omar passed through yesterday evening, and within minutes after the rain started the water was covering the streets.  Despite all the rain, we have a water supply problem in this apartment.  Apparently the cistern we draw water from is close to empty, so to restrict water use it is only turned on in the morning and evening.  Every afternoon as Santiago, Mark and I come home from our various daily activities, the question "Hay agua?" ("Is there water?") is flying around the apartment.  The toilets are also an interesting situation.  The toilet in my room runs constantly, so to keep it from running I have to turn on the water supply valve after every flush, wait for the tank to fill, then turn it back off again.  There is no such thing as a quick trip to the bathroom.  I've gotten very good at planning my bathroom stops so I have something to do that fills the exact amount of time it takes for the tank to fill.  This morning, for example: flush toilet, turn on water valve, wash hands, put contacts in, braid hair, turn off water.  Dominican multi-tasking at its finest.I'm plodding along with my Spanish lessons.  Six hours is a really long time to be focused on one subject, but my two teachers have done a really great job trying to keep it interesting.  My listening comprehension has improved immensely in the week I've been here.  I'm still deeply lacking in my speaking ability though.  I am really frustrated with my inability to recall words quickly enough to be conversational. I have a hard time dredging up the right verb and conjugating it in the proper tense fast enough to keep the flow of conversation going.  Luckily everyone at CSA and at home is patient with me!  The biggest news of the week was that on Wednesday I received my specific volunteer assignment with World Vision in Neyba and Wednesday night I got to meet Marla, the previous volunteer with World Vision.  There are multiple components to the work I'll be doing: First, I'll be continuing the work of the previous CSA intern by going house to house in three communities weighing and measuring children under age five and investigating what foods are available to people.  The way I understand it, the data collected are being used in grant applications to provide quantitative proof that children are malnourished. The second part of my assignment is to form three mothers' groups each addressing a different topic.  The current proposed topics are "salud preventiva, lactancia infantile y vacunas," or in English, preventative health, nursing infants and vaccines.  But wait - there's more.  In addition to the mothers' groups, I am to host one workshop to teach 20 mothers about the importance of breastfeeding and another workshop to teach 50 mothers about which foods they can incorporate into their infant's diet after six months. That would be a lot to take on in English back at home, let alone in the rural countryside of a Spanish-speaking country.  I'm definitely feeling very overwhelmed at the moment between having to research the ins and outs of breastfeeding and infant health (topics I know very little about) and then be able to communicate it all in Spanish.   The CSA staff has been really supportive in helping me prepare.  My language lessons have now shifted to incorporate detailed vocabulary related to breastfeeding and food preparation.  Yesterday I delivered a practice workshop on breastfeeding to the staff. It helped generate some questions that I hadn't prepared answers for.  I need to use this last week in Santo Domingo to answer all of my own questions about the topics, develop teaching tools (posters, brochures, handouts) and master the Spanish that goes along with the topics.  I'm so incredibly grateful to have 24-hour internet access!The time with Marla was really great on Wednesday night.  She is now living in the western part of Santo Domingo teaching in a bilingual private school.  We met at the mall near where I live.  I really appreciated having the opportunity to get hear her firsthand perspective on what to expect in Neyba.  She lived with the same family I will be living with, and also weighed and measured children.  The work I'll be doing in Neyba is the next step in the project after her work. Today provided quite the Dominican adventure.  Mark is entering a contest sponsored by Google, and today he enlisted Santiago and I as his project staff.  The contest is in honor of Google's 10th birthday and the company is seeking ideas that will change the world (http://www.project10tothe100.com/).  In January, the public gets to vote on the top 100 entries, and the top five finalists will receive funding to turn the idea into reality.  Mark's idea is to take plastic waste (the plastics that currently can't be recycled since they are undesirable to turn into consumer products) and develop a way to recycle it into inexpensive building materials for people in need of shelter.  Santo Domingo is absolutely full of the types of unrecycled plastics Mark's plan needs.  So we trekked to one of Santo Domingo's dirtiest beaches to use the plastic refuse to create giant words in the sand that spelled out Mark's plan.  We photographed them, and we edited the pictures into a movie that will serve as Mark's entry into the contest.  Here's a link to the final product: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qch3G40SK50  We made quite the scene: three very non-Dominicans playing with beach garbage in the heat of the day! Tomorrow it's more studying, more breastfeeding research and hopefully a break from the work with a trip to the historical Zona Colonial.  Wish me luck in my last week of classes!  I definitely need all the extra help I can get to fill the gaps of what my lessons and studying doesn't cover.Amanda 
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