On Manzanillo: it's not an apple, it's my home!

Guess what?!?! I found out my site and home for the next two years! It's a small pueblo (town) in the province of Monte Cristi in the northwest corner of the Dominican Republic in a site called Manzanillo. It's situated on the edge of a quiet beach with an unbeatable view of Haiti and an abundance of seafood. It's a port town with huge shipping boats entering and leaving with bananas on the daily (The next time you bite into a banana, think of me down here in Manzanillo because odds are it came from here!). We have minimal electricity and unreliable running water - but it's home!!!!! 

Last week everything happened rey rapido. Monday we showed up to work in the capital and were given folders with information for our future homes/sites! That afternoon I packed up my life and on Tuesday morning I left Pantoja with my two enormous suitcases and met my project partners, two Dominicans who came down from Manzanillo to pick me up and whom I will be working closely with to start education groups, health initiatives, nutrition classes etc. My project partners whisked me away (I made us stop for fried chicken and pasta salad on the go) and we hopped on a bus to my site. Six hours and three bus changes later (nothing happens as planned in the DR), we arrived in Manzanillo and I met my newest host family! And on Wednesday the adventure officially began and I was touted around and introduced to anyone and everyone in my new site. I've been here since Wednesday but am currently writing this on the bus as I head back to the capital to wrap up training and turn into a real Volunteer in three days!

Back to Manzanillo - I can't believe that this beautiful town in the top corner of the DR is my home now. I love my new host mom, Wendy, who is around 40, a great cook, childless, hilarious, a manicurist, and easy to talk to. She's campo married (meaning she's lived with her "husband" for a bunch of years so by default they're considered married) to a guy named Moreno who is chubby and loves to dance. We live in a quiet part of town and we've got awesome digs. Wendy was married to this Danish guy who built them this kick ass modern house then cheated on her and left her with the house and dogs (shes also unbelievably open with this information and doesn't mind that I'm sharing with yall). I have mixed emotions about all this. On the one hand I am glad this woman has a home to herself an a beautiful location especially when the majority of her family lives in shacks in the poorer part of Manzanillo, but on the other hand, she doesn't even have enough money to pay the monthly electricity bill of less than $15/month. Her family members seem to take advantage of her because they have some idea that her wealth is connected to the fact she has nice house. So it's a tough situation for Momma Wendy. But she's a bad ass with a tough character and great energy. She's been introducing me as her to everyone as her daughter but since her ex-husband was white, people actually think I'm her long-lost daughter. Awk. 

Last week was awesome for a number of reasons. 

1- Everyone in Manzanillo is warm and welcoming. 

Like in the campo, I have an awesome host grandma who always gives me juice when I come over! Her family is massive and I've been introduced to most of them so I feel like a welcome part of their home, which gives me a warm tingly feeling and the sentiment that I'm going to enjoy getting used to this place. 

2- I live on the border of Haiti and it's fascinating anthropological stuff up here. 

The majority of Haitians here are people who still live in Haiti and cross the border daily to make a living by selling fruit, clothing, shoes, jewelry etc. They can also be attended to at the hospital and the United Nations gives the hospital $2 for every Haitian seen so there is an incentive for Dominican medics to provide care. I point out this all out because the Haitians I've met so far in the capital and farther inland from the border are actually Dominican Haitians (Haitians born and raised here and haven't been back or set foot ever on Haitian soil). I have found that Haitians who grew up in the DR more inland were almost desperate to associate with Dominicans and reject their Haitian roots (probably because the racism here in the capital is so overt). I haven't encountered nearly as much racism up here by the border but I have yet to figure out if that's because they really are less racist on the border or if its just a different type of relationship. I asked my host dad and he just replied, "Theres not bad relations between us, we are all just people." I hope I find this kind of attitude all over, but we will see though. Up here, it's normal for a conversation to end with, "Okay I'm heading back to Haiti now, see you tomorrow." Casual. 

3- I live on the beach! 

And it's a quiet and tranquil and not tourist beach and it's beautiful! 

4- I understand why I am here. 

This is definitely a town that needs a health volunteer. Many people are overweight, almost every teenage girl I met had a child, none of the mothers had or were breastfeeding their infants, sexual health doesn't seem to be very prevalently taught in the high school, vegetables are extremely difficult to locate, and doñas don't have a great sense of hygiene when cooking and cleaning. And those are just things I've noticed  over the past five days. I've got my work cut out for me!

5- I went to a weekly doñas meeting at the Centro de Madre and felt so welcome!

I asked around and found out that Manzanillo already has a weekly meeting for the women in town. So I went all by myself and was warmly welcomed by women of all ages. They already want me to start teaching then about nutrition, sexual health, breast feeding, HIV/AIDS, hygiene. I feel supported by them already!

While last week was awesome for a lot of reasons, it was also overwhelming for a number of reasons. 

1- I left my comfort zone. 

To date, training has been pretty fun and very rewarding as I've spent everyday with fellow Americans and on a strict schedule learning technical health skills I knew I would be applying someday soon in the vague future. Since arriving in Manzanillo, I've been the only American around which leaves me exhausted and brain dead from continuously sticking my hand out and introducing myself to crowds of strangers and thinking in another language. The lack of schedule has given me an abundance of free time with which I've gone on runs, done yoga, read two books, sat on doñas' porches and drank more coffee than any human should ever ingest (even more than during finals period in college). It's now up to me to make my own schedule but its proving difficult when being new in town doesn't exactly lend itself to knowing where to go and who to meet. I'm not worried about finding my groove here though, I'm cut out for awkward small talk!

2- I will spend three months exclusively getting to know this community before I start forming groups and teaching official Peace Corps material. 

My first three months at site is meant exclusively for me to assess the needs of my community and built confianza (trust) with the people here. This means for three months I will be going house to house drinking coffee (which is hard because I drink it black without sugar and here they'll serve it to you with loads of sugar and I usually forget to remind them so I might get diabetes after these three months from all the sugar I'm downing on these porches) and conducting informal interviews to question about family, religion, education, environment, health, politics, etc. In these three months, I will be attending as many groups, church ceremonies, weddings, funerals, parties, reunions, etc as I can to show the community that I'm here and really trying to become a Manzaniera. I can teach cooking classes (gulp!), hold English lessons, form an exercise group, or another informal activity to get to know my community but my official projects will begin in February. It's a great system the Peace Corps has- they push for us to achieve true cultural understanding and integration before we try to impart our western/American wisdom into a community. Conducting this interviews and meeting my community members is going to be awesome (and rich, rewarding, fulfilling, integral) but my town is kind of big (5,000 people) so I am having a hard time deciding where to begin. I guess there's a silver lining here in that I can literally chose one of 700 houses to start with! 

3- My project partners rock, but they're super busy. 

As the new kid in town, it's nice to have a helpful friend to show me around. On Day One and Two, Licelot, my 21-year old Dominican counterpart/friend/work partner showed me around town introducing me to the high school principal, town mayor, hospital director, my grandma, the supermarket owner, among other integral community members. Licelot, however, has a 2-year old kid and goes to university in Santiago from Thursday through Sunday, rendering our productivity slightly lower than I had expected. My other counterpart, Richard, is a 21-year old guy who's just about to graduate high school and leave town in a month to study film in the capital rendering his investment in my integration null. But it's cool, I'm just gonna start to channel my internal bad ass/extrovert and start walking up to houses, sticking out my hand, and asking them to let me in for coffee and an interview. 

So, even though I admit I am a bit overwhelmed by this extreme life change I've just gone through (I know that moving to the Dominican Republic which was a whole new country and culture over two months ago might seem like a bigger deal, but to me, moving up here to Manzanillo and finally finally arriving at my site for two years was in fact more shocking to me), I am ready to swear in as a Volunteer and start the work I came here to do! I now have the unique opportunity to put the goals and objectives of the Peace Corps into action and form my own health projects in a small town in the northern part of the DR. And my god did I get an awesome site!!!

Until next time!