On a tribute to the Montecristi crew

To get materials for groups, decent food options, a solid internet connection, or delicious fried chicken, I have to head to the nearest town - Montecristi. It's a beautiful beach town a motorcycle and bus ride away from me. Here are some shots of the big pueblo!

Salt mines - you can buy a 5lb bag of salt rocks for $1USD.

Ocean water is pumped into salt flats and the sun dries it out in a few days, leaving salt crystals for workers to shovel up in wheelbarrows and deposit in these storage huts.

Montecristi has beaches, but the best part, perhaps, are the seven sand bars just a 20 minute boat ride off the coast. 

Friends and beach, what could be better?

I took the path less traveled by...

And that has made all the difference. 

Sand bars off the coast of Montecristi!

Only one hour after this and we'd be gorging ourselves on tour guide Soraya's homemade cheese-filled yuca balls, rice, fish and natural seven-fruit juice.

Andy and I during carnival celebrations, don't leave me Andy!!!

The crew - Lauren, me and Andy...only missing Julie, who left us last August :( 

Beach selfie!

Julie! In a photo I resurrected from our last true beach day in August 2014.

Lilo - our favorite restaurant and the only place to go for solid, reliable internet in the entire province.

And sometimes I take youth here for an escape from the campo. 

And we take goofy pictures on the dock.

Oh yeah, and I do actual work like youth conferences here sometimes!

But I mostly just come for this, El Zapato, and the most beautiful view in the country!

There are currently only 4 volunteers in the entire Montecristi province, whereas some provinces close to the capital have upwards of 30. But - I have the best crew in the world and a beautiful site I wouldn't change for the world!

On interruptions...um rude.

¡Olé!

I live in a loud and obnoxious culture. Loud because there are motors, cars, horns, music, chickens, goats, dogs, babies and people yelling at every street corner at every hour of the day. For example, my friend lives in a house on main street right in front of the largest colmado in town. At least once a day, some car with a huge bass and amazing sound system (ways people choose to spend their money in a place with such poverty will be the subject of another mensaje entirely) parks in front of the house and spends 15 minutes with music blaring, much to the dismay of said friend. She told me the other day, “I’m pretty sure I could do all my work in half the time here if only there weren’t so many interruptions.” Oh girl...I feel you!

The top five most notable common interruptions are as follows:

1) In the middle of a meeting, someone will show up late and scream “SALUDOS/GREETINGS”  and walking from participant to participant kissing them on the cheek (sometimes catching up about families and children) while breaking everyone’s concentration and starting a waterfall of mumbled “hellos” and “good day my friends" and rendering it nearly impossible to get back on track, especially when the interruptions with people showing up late for meetings happens for at least an hour after said meeting starts. 

2) When you’re on the phone with someone, it’s more than acceptable to start and finish a conversation with someone face to face in the interim. This one doesn’t make sense to me because cellphone minutes are really expensive here and everyone is super stingy with their cellphone time, so I don’t really understand why people think it’s okay to interrupt and bombard other peoples minutes. This interruption has caused much headache to American callers who want to kill me when I say, “Hang on, one sec, someone’s calling me, be right back, lemme just finish this conversation, ah I can’t hear you, someone’s yelling at me.”

3) During class, a student from another course will walk in and say, “I need to talk to so and so” or “Can I borrow a pencil?” and just strut on in, interrupting whoever’s speaking with no care in the world for the lesson at hand, teachers present, or people doing their work. Also related, during at least 1 or 2 school days a week, something “important” will come up and the school lets out for the day a period or full afternoon early. Some of these important interruptions include: the food for the day wasn’t enough and 2 entire classes were left without food, the food sent from a nearby cafeteria for all the students is rotten, the teachers have to cash in their paychecks in the town over, it might rain, or the teachers need to discuss something as a group. 

4) When you really need electricity for something (laundry, internet, hair drying, cooking something, blending, ironing) and it goes out in the middle of your chore. They say we are on a lights schedule here in Manzanillo but I can’t tell what it is and sometimes I can get all my laundry done before it goes out, otherwise it’s an interrupted laundry day where I just have to leave wet, soggy, mushy clothes in the hot sun to get moldy and grody. Or, I'll be having a much needed conversation in English with a friend from home and all the sudden, boom, no internet! No electricity, take that! 

5) If my door is open, no matter what I’m doing, people can enter. Favorite moments include when I’m sweaty and doing a workout video and children just come and watch me from the balcony. Or when I’m working and tell kids to leave me in peace until the afternoon and they’re back in five minutes just checking in, “When can I come back, when are you going to be done, can I help, can I color on the floor, can I just watch you, can I interrupt you?” I still don't have a solution to this one because I hate to close the door because it’s a) rude and b) hot, but dayumm, sometimes I just have to to get things done!

Let's be real, I don’t really mind all the day’s little interruptions, they add flavor and spice to the day's happenings! I only ever feel bad when I’m on the phone talking to an American and I keep having to yell during our conversations. Apologies for all of you this has happened to! It’s just the way it is here, and it all boils down to culture.

Gotta go, being pulled out by little girls who want to color!

Until next time,

Bea

On smiling lots :)

¡Buen día mi gente! 

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about happiness. Something a friend said to me a while back really stuck with me and has acted as a guiding principle these past few months. He was describing driving home to Seattle from Idaho, a routine and mundane task, but explained that periodically throughout the drive he’d get an overwhelming sensation of happiness (especially when blasting “Uptown Funk”) . There was nothing especially happy or even special about the moment, but perhaps it was memories that welled up, the beauty of the drive or just the simple moment that brought a smile to his face.

Sure there are times when I’m frustrated here, but more and more lately, I find myself smiling. Just finding these beautiful moments and grinning to myself like I’m the only one who’s been told a secret. I have my own inside jokes that light me up inside and I spread an outward grin. Sometimes my grin comes out when I’m eating rice and beans and thinking to myself "Damn these are tasty", or when my little adopted daughter calls me Beita, which means “Little Bea,” an affectionate derivative of my name. It appears on my face when a doña gives me coffee and already knows I take it without sugar, when I learn all the words to a bachata song and sing it out loud to amazed spectators, when I spend the entire month of February memorizing the words to the DR’s national anthem and get it right just in time for Independence Day! I smile when watching kids invent baseball games with plastic bottles and dirty socks, being told I'm a good dancer, not feeling awkward at 24-hour funerals, bucket bathing, not washing my hair for five days and people still saying, “God bless your hair, Bea,” realizing how fully I can express myself in Spanish, saying something people think is really funny for an American to say, being called a tiguera. For these and so many more precious small moments everyday, I smile. And at the risk of sounding like the song “My Favorite Things” from The Sound of Music, I’ll stop there.

My best friend and fellow PCV, Dante, reminded me today – “Bea, appreciate every single day here because once you leave, there will never be anything else like it.” Every day I’m going to find something to smile about even if the only person I get to share my happiness with is myself. Christopher McCandless from Back to the Wild got it all wrong. His dying quote, “Happiness is only real when shared,” is only partly true. Yes, friends and family and society give us so much, but I’ve felt so much recently that I am the source and true appreciation for my own happiness.

I hope you find those simple moments of happiness and just smile and appreciate your surroundings and your own self. Because, after all, you are the only thing you get to take with you everywhere! To end with a quote: “When each day is the same as the next, it’s because people fail to recognize the good things that happen in their lives every day that the sun rises.” Also, it’s Monday so show your feelings, spread love and give someone special a big hug!

In other news this week: 

- My project implementing a rural 911 system is going swimmingly. Nine wonderful first responders have been trained and are now actively responding to emergencies in Manzanillo and the outskirts. It's a soft opening because we still need to do a lot of testing on our Beacon system, but the most important part is that the people are trained and responding. We had a beautiful graduation on the beach full of fried fish, tiny shrimp, conch, lots of fried plantains and plenty of dancing! (Photos below). 

- I am the town's new aerobics instructor thanks to a serendipitous phone call from the town mayor asking me to start on Monday. I've been trying to start a women's aerobics group for a while now, but the best part is he's been announcing it around town so hopefully there will be quite the group! 

- My grant to build 40 more improved cookstoves was approved. Now it's just a waiting game until Peace Corps HQ transfers the funds, but it will be a wonderful summer project. Thank you to all who already donated! The first 30 stoves are done and being well-used! 

- It's almost Semana Santa (Holy Week) so town is abuzz with visitors from afuera (abroad) coming or making plans to come. The beach is always full and the mood is jovial! It's a wonderful time to be a Manzaniellera! Special food for this time includes habichuela con dulce or sweet beans, a scrumptious pudding type thing only made during this time of year. 

- Four of my best friends from America are visiting this week! Queue vacation! We're off to the beach to relax but it will be a bittersweet visit before one of my friends (Alix) takes a job with the Clinton Health Access Initiative in SWAZILAND! Congratulations!!!! 

Sending all my hugs and kisses, 

Bea 

You can't even begin to imagine the amount of tostones I made with this bunch of plantains!

The boys in my life. Love these lil dudes!

A forgotten photo from carnaval celebrations the 27th of February

Three girls waiting for Mama Julia to give a Catholicism class teaching the cross and hail Mary's to five year olds. I sit in on the class too, because it's embarrassing to go to church and not know how to say all the stuff in Spanish. 

My chaotic family! 

First Aid graduation at the beach! Dancing! 

Another proud moment, one of our graduates, Victor, gave a presentation to a group of 8th graders about the importance of first aid, community service and helping thy neighbor.

The graduates showing off their certificates. Proud teacher moment! 

On funerals and life lessons

¡Saludos mi gente! 

Sorry for such a delay since the last mensaje, I've had technical difficulties, my computer's been dead for a week now and the charger blew up due to a big 'ol power surge and mega high voltages. I know more about lowering and raising light now that I ever need to and I'm definitely going to think twice before plugging my computer into an unprotected socket. But such is life in a developing country. Since we last spoke, I've climbed a really big mountain, celebrated the DR's infamous carnaval celebrations and Independence Day on the 27th, turned 24(!!) on the 28th, and welcomed the newest group of volunteers to country! This week I want to chat about funerals and what death has taught me about life. 

Peace Corps Volunteers go to a lot of funerals. In small towns and villages, because everyone knows and is related to everyone, you must pay your respects at every death in town even if it’s fulano’s brother’s sister’s cousin’s mom that you only ever said hi to from the back row in church. Especially if you don't know the person who died but you know the family, you’re expected to go cumplir and sit for hours and hours in someone’s house talking to family members, seeing the dead person in their open casket and eating lots of food. Funerals and death work differently here than they do in America. While we are used to embalming the body or cremating someone and then having a celebration of life ceremony months later, everything here happens very quickly. 

Here’s a cheat sheet to death in the DR step by step:

1) Immediately after death: When someone dies, the family prepares the body and it’s ready and in a casket at the house within four or five hours. Friends, neighbors and distant relatives spend the day with the immediate family and pull an all-nighter to wake up with the family in the morning. This is known as the velorio and is done so that the close family doesn't have to wake up alone in their own grief. The community comes together to support the family. This part of death includes lots of porch sitting, food, coffee and story telling. 

2) The next day: The day after death, the body is taken to church for mass (if there is a church in town, if not, someone speaks words over the body and there's a ton of praying) and then on to the cemetery, usually led by a hearse and hundreds of community members walking behind. The body is then entered into the family’s plot while close family members scream, cry and touch the casket until the last possible moment. Instead of being buried underground, each family reserves a certain amount of space in the cemetery and they build a huge shrine with little shelves where the caskets go. If you run out of space, the family just keeps building cement shelves on top of the others. Then, the funeral organizers close up the shelf’s slot with cement. This is called the entierro.

3) Nueve días: For the first nine days after a person’s death, a vigil is held with close family members every night. On the ninth day, there is a large mass and more food/family time. This is called nueve días and is the second time (after the velorio) that the entire community comes together to pray and send the body safely to heaven.

4) Each month after death: Then, on the date of the death each month for the next year, the close family takes flowers to the grave site and has a vigil in the home with candles and prayer. This is the cunplemes.

5) Each year after death for seven years: On the anniversary of someone’s death each year for seven years, close family brings more flowers to the grave and eats more food in close company. This is the aniversario. Usually there is a huge mass in town on the 1st anniversary of death. 

Addendum: The close family members must wear black, gray and white for at least the first 9 days of mourning. Then, an individual will decide how long they wish to continue mourning, some choose to do so until the first month anniversary, others choose the full seven years (it's rare to mourn this long, but some do in the case of the loss of a child). This is called luto. During luto, you can't dance, drink or play loud music and community members have to respect the time you choose to mourn and not encourage you to dance, sing or dress up. People are in general, very respectful during this time. 

Last week, Máxima, one of my favorite old doñas who was about to turn 99 years old, died. Reflecting on her death makes has helped me understand just a little more about life. Here are three things doña Máxima taught me about life.

1) Life is long.

There’s plenty of cheesy sayings explaining how very short and precious life is, but I believe thinking about life in terms of it being long and full of adventures, relationships, experiences, etc. actually helps me live better. Máxima’s life was long and she lived every moment of it. She was the brightest and happiest doña I’ve ever met, even though she was 90% blind, had a croaky voice no one could understand and sat on the couch all day every day. She liked to sit right by the window overlooking main street and she’d yell and greet the people she knew walking by. Every time I walked into her house and greeted her with a big “HOLA MAXIMA” she would know it was me by voice and hug alone. She always offered up whatever she was eating and made sure to keep a spot on the couch open right next to her for visitors. She lived a long and good life, and I hope to live like she did up until the day I hopefully turn 99. Knowing how very long life can be, I would rather live it like Maxima, happily and kindly, making the most of every relationship that I can. So much time to learn and grow! 

2) Staying in bed is easy.

This isn't a comment so much about my good friend Maxima (who quite literally stayed in bed or in a rocker all day) but it's to say that Maxima’s death lit a fire under me to compartir more (which may sound funny to some of you who think that I literally compartir all day and don’t actually work – this is not the case). My whole community is out there and it's often much easier to just stay in bed/at home watching TV shows, reading good books or drinking vats of coffee and not visit neighbors. And I'd been rather good about visiting Maxima lately but there was a time when I avoided her house because it was the one with all the tigueres out front and I hated getting cat-called and hissed at. I rationalized not stopping by her house more than I motivated myself to get up and go. And when the news of her death came, I felt guilty. Yes I'd visited her six times in the last month, but I only ever stayed long enough to update her on life and then I rolled out. I know people always feel guilty about not visiting loved ones especially when they pass away, but most people don't have a community of old lovely people within a ten minute walk. Maxima’s death will remind me to visit my beloved community members with more regularity and take that part of my job just as seriously as I take the measurable "work" part.  

3) Just imagine how much life Maxima saw.

And by this I mean, it’s truly incredible how much doñas know about life. From secret remedies and weird concoctions to drama and town gossip, Maxima knew everything. She was the queen of her little perch on the couch and saw hundreds of people pass by her house everyday. She also probably had upwards of 10-15 visitors a day stopping by to besa mano, blow kisses, and update Maxima on their families, children, ailments, etc. Doñas are sage members of society, well versed in love, sadness, happiness and every other emotion on the spectrum. And Maxima carried her wisdom beautifully.

Maxima's death was sad, of course. But when there is so much death around me, it becomes less ominous and overwhelming. The most important take away I'll have from an endless stream of velorios is learning how to productively reflect and grow from each death. Maxima was a great teacher in life and even more so in her death. She will be forever missed!  

So there you have it, my reflection on life, death and my favorite doña Maxima. In the vein of talking about living life, I hiked the Caribbean’s tallest mountain, also known as Pico Duarte, the 79^th tallest mountain in the world, Mud Hell Mountain, or the hardest hike I’ve ever done. I didn’t believe other volunteers who said it was very difficult and they wished they’d trained. Phew, I thought, they’re just weak and out of shape. Well, needless to say, they were right, I should have trained! It was a grueling 55 kilometer, three day, mud filled adventure that just kept getting better! I went with three other volunteers and my best friend from America (thanks for all the snacks!). The only training I did was not wash my hair for five days in preparation for no showers. Como quiera it got greasy. I am really lucky to have been placed in this beautiful country with diverse geography, affording me the opportunities to climb mountains, sit on beaches and swim in river. If y’all haven’t visited, you really should!!!

On the coffee culture

Getting emails that are not from listservs, political campaign, daily newsletters or random articles from my mom is like getting a present on Christmas morning. My technological life is that dull. So, I was excited when, the other day, a Peace Corps friend of mine who also won the blog competition (currently serving in Thailand) wrote to me asking if her friend could interview me for her blog about food in the Peace Corps and if I had a specific theme I wanted to cover. I said I would love to, and that my area of expertise was coffee. Here's the interview below! 

Name: Bronwen Raff

Site: Dominican Republic (small town of 5,000)

Service dates: August 2013 – October 2015

If a visitor from America was coming to your site, where would you take them for their first meal in the Dominican Republic? 

Right when they land in the airport, I’d be waiting with plantain chips and a big Presidente beer to enjoy while adjusting to the heat and humidity. From there, we’d grab a street empanada in the city. I’d whisk my visitor away and we’d head to my site where I’d have a lineup of neighborhood doñas (old ladies) who would have prepared us a feast! We’d wander from neighbor to neighbor eating 1) mashed boiled green bananas (mangu) and fried cheese, 2) la bandera dominicana or rice, beans and chicken, 3) sambumbio, a delicious bean stew with meats, yucca, bananas and plantains or 4) arroz con leche, rice pudding. And no meal would be complete without sugared-up coffee to wash it all down.

What is a typical meal at site like for you? (Do you eat out or cook? Eat alone or with neighbors? What foods do you eat most often?)

I lived with a host family for the first 7 months of my service, 3 months in training and 4 when I first arrived at my site. Every morning without fail, I would have two hotdog white bread buns with two boiled eggs and a cup of hot chocolate with real cows milk (after two cups of coffee, that is). For lunch, it was rice, beans and chicken (sometimes a salad if I was really lucky). And dinner would be a plate of mangu (mashed bananas) with fried salami, fried cheese or fried chicken on top. That was it, without fail. I like to call that period of my life “214 days of the same old vaina (s*&#)” and probably gained a solid ten pounds. As soon as I moved out on my own I started cooking my own breakfast (oatmeal) and dinner (vegetables, boiled pumpkin, scrambled eggs, or whatever else the nearest colmado (bodega) has). I still eat a nice hearty lunch (rice, beans, meat) cooked by my favorite doña because I’m a working girl and ain’t nobody got time to start cooking lunch at 10:30am every day!

Tell me about coffee culture in your region!

Ahhhh coffee. I could go on for days, Dominicans love their coffee! Coffee is typically prepared in a greca, I’m not really sure what it translates to in English – maybe percolator? Sounds right. Anyway, the beans are often toasted on an open three-stone fire, sometimes with hazelnut, cinnamon or sugar roasted. Then the beans are ground, prepared in the greca and boil up through the percolater. Tiny little thimble-sized cups will be waiting on the counter and one greca can prepare coffee for up to five Dominican guests or one American (if you drink as much coffee as I do). Dominicans will scoop one or two tablespoons, yup tablespoons, of sugar into the cup and fill it only enough to wet the sugar.

To be social here, one must drink coffee. Dominicans take time to sit on their porches, colar un cafecito and spend time in the company of friends, neighbors and family. Dominicans will drink coffee in the morning, twice...directly after lunch, around five, six and seven in the afternoon and any other time a visitor comes over to the house. At first, my personal coffee preferences (I drink an entire greca by myself and take coffee without sugar) got some serious stares and maybe even made me enemies as Dominicans are entirely confused why I would ever drink coffee without sugar and fill my (big) mug all the way to the top. But word spread fast and now the whole town knows that whenever Bea comes over, they better not put a drop of sugar in my cup!

On your blog, you wrote about the cultural concept of compartir, or sharing time and food with those around you. Have you shared American foods with people in your community? What was the reaction?

Compartir is a central value to families here in the DR. Spending time with people often revolves around food, or at the very least, coffee. People are always gifting a portion of their daily meal to neighbors and friends, even more so if it’s a birthday or special occasion. I share a kitchen with a family and unfortunately, I don’t get to do much American cooking. I never really was much of a chef, nor do I really like cooking, so that’s fine by me. However, I have introduced baking to my community. Whenever someone comes to visit or sends me a package, I request easy-bake brownie, cake and muffin mixes that I can make with families around town. Sometimes (when I get paid), we make pizza. Our biggest problem stopping a lot of these cooking endeavors is the price of propane, it’s super expensive and most families don’t like to use/don’t have ovens. I just finished a project in which I constructed clay cookstoves for families and I wanted to try out some soup recipes out on that.

Surprisingly (or perhaps not given all the American media presence here), most people in my town have a perception of Americans as eating only chips and drinking soda. They think its nuts that I don’t drink soda and hardly ever buy chips. I try to eat healthy, or at least talk about food in a healthy way. I try to lead by example and have spent a lot of time convincing women to add more vegetables into their daily meals. In that way, I hope that I’ve shown them a different kind of culture around food that they may have never thought of before. But how can the American not drink soda, that’s insane, that’s not what we saw in that one movie!

As a health volunteer, part of your job is to promote healthy eating and good nutrition, as well as safe cooking practices. What kinds of nutrition and cooking projects have you worked on with your community? 

One of my main projects is an in-depth course for women called “Healthy Homes” and a major part of the curriculum focuses on nutrition and obesity prevention (surprisingly, obesity is one of the worst health problems facing Dominicans, unlike many other Peace Corps countries who face opposite issues of malnourishment). I encourage women to incorporate leafy greens in their rice and beans, use less oil in all areas of cooking, cut back on added salt, and exercise thirty minutes daily! We had a breakthough moment when a group of women and I were cooking a pasta and one woman was supposed to bring the oil. She brought just the tiniest amount and the entire group began to yell at her telling her she messed up and didn’t bring enough. “LOOK!” I said, “She brought just enough to fry up these onions and garlic...I’ll show you.” They were in agreement; it wasn’t so bad after all! It is a little thing, but just watching how little oil we used might (fingers crossed) help them make a change the next time they go to fry up some onions. Small steps! And speaking of steps, I’ve noticed more women out walking in the morning since this time last year when I started educating them about the benefits of exercise, so that’s another win right there! Little by little...

Anything else?

It is often extremely difficult to be a health promoter in the Peace Corps. Sometimes I (we) feel like, “How am I ever going to change these people habits when they’ve cooked with oil for years and years,” or “Why would someone listen to me about the health benefits of exclusive breast-feeding when I’m not a mother myself.” But the sooner I realized that the information I had to give was valuable, the quicker I found success in my projects and at my site. There is no way I’m going to get an entire country to stop adding salt to their ramen noodles, or adding sugar to natural juices, or drenching salads with soybean oil, but I can make a dent and the information we have to impart is of extreme value.

See the actual blog post here: http://cookinginthecorps.tumblr.com/post/109531038508/dominican-republic

On making money and mangaring visas

How do people make money here? I often have no idea. In my campo, there are the main industries like the two banana packing factories, the sea port, and the government’s banana farm project. There are colmados (corner stores), three barber shops, a few home delivered nail services, two salons, three bars and four restaurants. Other than that, I literally have no idea how people make money. There are volunteers who live in towns where the economy revolves solely around one cassabe factory, one yogurt and cheese making business, or sparse tobacco farms which are all highly dependent on rainwater for growing crops, feeding cows and seeding new varieties. So how do people feed themselves when their is no rain, it's not cassabe season, or the tobacco doesn't grow? I set out to investigate.

I found that almost 10% of the DR’s economy ($3.9 billion) is remittances, or money sent here from abroad, most commonly through Western Union, Caribe Express or other wire transfers. This is quite a high percentage, but for comparisons sake, in Haiti, remittances account for an estimated half of the national income. An online article I found explains remittances as "keeping the homeland afloat."

Another way people survive is through the a welfare type debit card called the “Tarjeta de Solidaridad.” This card comes stocked every month with 800 pesos for food, two gallons of propane, money for the electricity bill and extra money for each child a family has in the school system. I estimate that 50% of my campo is on the card, and have heard estimates of up to 90% in other volunteers’ sites. To receive this card, beneficiaries must comply with education and health component, cardholders must go for monthly checkups at the local clinic and attend educational presentations on topics ranging from family values to the importance of reading to the prevention of domestic violence. I give this part a big thumbs up. The problem with the card? Many people sell their card benefits to others for profit. This is not new or novel for governments who have welfare program (we have similar issues in the US), but it's difficult to police. 

What do these two major sources of income (remittances and the tarjeta) mean for the DR and it’s people? It creates a lot of problems. Add in the long history of foreign aid coming into campos and (mostly) white people “giving” stoves, medicines, schools, paint etc and you’ve got a pervasive attitude of “getting." The ways this mentality (of getting) manifests itself are complicated and I can in no way explain it adequately without writing also writing an anthropology, history and sociology textbook to accompany it. However, from my small sliver of experience here, I will make a few observations. 

I see a great deal of is young women who spend their days searching Facebook or other social media sites looking for a boyfriend, sugar daddy or American that they can meet, chat with and eventually ask for money, fall in love with (or not) and marry. For example, I have a friend who happens to be my exact age. Three years ago, she was living with her parents and they ended up splurging on Internet for the house. She immediately set up her own Facebook page and told me she would spend countless hours at home on the Internet just chatting with men from America because she was bored and odds were, she told me, if she spent enough time chatting, eventually one would become her boyfriend. Well, three years later, she has a two-year old daughter and just officially married to her baby daddy, a 61-year old Romanian American who lives in Orlando, Florida. He pays her rent, Internet and food, buys her and daughter clothes and sends money for cell phone minutes and trips to the salon. He comes to Manzanillo two or three times a year and each time he comes, they are whisked off to a resort for a few days, making her the subject of much envy in town. “She won,” a friend told me, “She got what we all want.” This is not an unusual/outlier case. 

Another problem with this remittances thing is that it gives people an idea of America as this jackpot of money. There is a huge misconception that if you can “make it” to America, you will be rich and live a great life. Therefore, everyone is trying to move to New York, legally or illegally, no importa. I’ve been asked countless times to “mangar la visa” a semi-rude term people will yell to gringos ordering them to “get me a visa.” When I teach class, students will interrupt in the middle of a lesson and say, “Bea, when are you gonna get me that visa, huh blondie?” I’ve also been propositioned with a legitimate offer of $5,000 if I marry my neighbor’s son and then divorce him when he gets to America. I tend laugh it off as a joke even though they're absolutely serious. The culture of “mangaring a visa” is pervasive. I've come to understand how growing up in this culture would lead one to believe the will only be successful if they make it to Nueva Yol. Everyone has a primo, uncle, abuela, amiga or relative in Nueva Yol and they're just trying to make it, too. It is an undeniable stamp of victory.

And here’s another problem with remittances. Let’s say, for example, someone sent me 4,000 pesos (or $100USD) for my remittances one week. I would go to Western Union and sign for it, and spend it...all of it. Dominicans are not accustomed to saving money and almost no one I know has a bank account. Even though 4,000 pesos could feed a family of four for almost a month, many of the young women I see getting their remittances spend it within a weekend. On what? On the salon, clothes, baby formula, cell phone minutes, makeup, perfume, you name it. This is a culture very preoccupied with appearances and 4,000 pesos can do a lot to propel that image. 

I can sympathize with Dominicans who feel that they have nothing because quite honestly, much of the time there literally is no way to feed their families. The immediate and simple solution has been to ask families in America for money, look for American men/husbands/boyfriends who will send money over, and any other way of getting money and food on the table. People are often shocked that I don't have a sugar daddy/boyfriend sending me over money , "But Bea, how do pay your rent, do you not go to the salon because he doesn't send you money, who's buying your clothes?"

I see the job of Peace Corps Volunteers (and other international aid organizations) is to help these young women (and men) acquire skills that will decrease their independence on remittances. In this day in the technological age, finding a boyfriend and eventually husband online is relatively easy, especially if you have no job and all the time in the world to sit on the street and fish for one. The question of “where do people get their money” is a complicated one without a simple solution, but investing in education, micro-finance loans for women and healthy after school activities (aka Escojo Mi Vida) are a good start and one where I can personally make a dent. The world is a much bigger and complicated place than I ever could have imagined. 

Disclaimer: This was my first attempt at investigative reporting! It started with an email from a former boss/friend from back home asking how people here make money. It was meant to be a combination of my own (limited) observations and a series of facts about the DR's economy. If you have topics you're curious about for the future, send an email! 

On spending pesos and living life

As Jay-Z once said, “Another day, another dolla. In my case, the lyrics go, “Another week, another compilation of stories and too many spent pesos.”

Here’s the highlights.

1) Crashing a fancy Dominican wedding

Last weekend, my mom and dad were invited to a wedding (between the richest family in town and a Dominican from New York) so like any Dominican would, I tagged along sin invitación. I knew it was going to be fancy because all week long people had been gossiping about how much the cake, decorations, buffet, invitations, etc cost. True or not, rumors were spreading that the couple spent (in pesos) $35,000 on the cake, $93,000 on decorations, $64,000 on the buffet and no one could even speculate on how much the chocolate fountain must have cost! In total, the couple spent around $7,000 US dollars on the event, not a shocking figure by American standards, but buys you a hell of a lot here! From the moment we sat down, we were drinking rum, eating chocolates, munching on meringues (smuggled in from America), dipping marshmallows in a tiny chocolate fountain, and watching the couple take thousands of pictures in front of the four story cake. It really was a beautiful wedding, and has since been the talk of the town. Good times were had by all.

2) Participating in a 5k running race

At 8:30 in the morning last Saturday, a bus full of children, the school’s P.E. teacher and I went to a nearby town called Loma de Cabrera for a “maratón” aka a running race. We rolled in around 10am and I thought the race must start around 11. Nope. We ended up splashing around in the local river, eating pounds of rice, going back again to swim in the river (haven’t they heard of the wait 30 minutes rule) and finally heading to the race course (a 1.25km loop around the town) and starting around 4:30pm. It was one of my favorite experiences in this country because a) thousands of spectators were out watching the race while drinking rum and beer and b) every 1km people would be handing out water and throwing water on the competitors and c) there was loud music and people cheering everywhere and d) cash prizes for the top three in each category including 9-year-olds. I got 4^th place, bummer!

3) A morning spent shucking beans and killing cows

On Sunday, I trucked into the capital to visit my old host family from El Portón, the campo where I spent six weeks during Community Based Training. It was so great to see my family again as it’d been more than 7 months since I’ve been back. I got to see my little nephew, my favorite grandma, my 38-year old pregnant neighbor who’s “way too old” to be pregnant, God bless her, and the rest of my favorite families. I also got to help them prepare for their patronales, or a day celebrating the patron saint Altagracia. In the DR, each town/city has it’s own patron, a saint guiding the city to greatness or something like that. And each year, when it’s that community's patron saint day, big festivities (traditional and not) are held to celebrate, drink, dance and worship. For this celebration in El Portón, a town of 40 that was expecting a crowd of over 200, we had some serious food prep to do. The men (and me taking pictures) spent the morning killing a cow and hanging it to cure while the women spent the entire day shucking beans. It took ten women eight hours to shuck an entire sack full of beans. UEPA! And then the women cleaned the church while the men played dominoes. And gender roles were perpetuated...

4) Teaching sex-ed class after the professor cheats on her husband and with the local bus driver

I was on a morning run, when I kindly got invited to dinner with one of the professors I work with in the high school. He’s a great guy and I’ve been to his house lots to eat with him and his family so I accepted right away. “I’ll meet you at your house, I said.” He responded, “No I’ll pick you up,” which I thought was strange. Turns out, he took me out to dinner mostly because he needed an ear since he recently learned his wife was cheating on him with the bus driver. The real kicker though, is that I work closely with him but even closer with his wife, as she’s the sex-ed teacher in the high school. Awkward! And talk about chisme (gossip), the whole town’s been speculating about it for weeks now and it sounds like their lives are kind of in shambles. Anyway, as we are munching away on fried chicken and green bananas, I’m trying to give him advice like, “God’s the only one who knows what will happen, I promise he will take care of you.” Umm...who am I? I felt really bad but we somehow got through dinner without him crying. He took me home and I couldn’t wait to snuggle up in bed and read the rest of the book She’s Come Undone (such a great read). At 11pm, I heard a knock at my door and it was the director of the high school asking me if I could teach sex-ed class alone for a while. “Ya tu sabes, nadie va a cojer clase de un cuernuero,” which translate to, “You know why, no one is going to take class from a cheating whore.” 1) Aggressive language on the director's part, 2) Teaching alone to Dominican youth? God save me and 3) I feel so bad for their family this is the worst place for gossip. 

5) The Peace Corps Volunteer “Gossip Network”

Speaking of gossip...It's not unusual to be staying in the capital at our Peace Corps approved hostel fondly known as the “Bella” and see one two or forty other volunteers there for various medical, personal or work related events. Last night, I happened to be staying there with some ladies in my group and a business volunteer from a region north of the capital. She spotted us and looked like she needed to talk. “Let us have it girl, what's up?” As it turns out, she has been semi-permanently evacuated from her site with four months left to go in her service. Turns out her Dominican boyfriend is a loan shark (loans money to people who can't get them from the bank and has high interest rates) who at some point or another got mixed up with narcotraffickers and owes big kahuna drug dealers $20,000 USD. WHATTTT? So, fearing for her safety should the drug lords ever chose to go after her, she's on permanent evacuation. Hearing her story surreal, we live and learn among Dominicans and it can be so easy to forget the serious problems out there. I intellectually know that drug trafficking is a huge problem here, but it’s easy to forget when you can’t directly see it. Interesting how sometimes the closer you get to a community or a culture, the harder it is to see its problems.

6) Traveling 12 hours to get to my friends site and celebrate the patron saint day in her community

This is a relatively small island. The size of NH and VT combined, okay it’s actually tiny. And somehow, it took me 12 hours to get home on Wednesday. Tuesday, four of my good friends and I went to the province just north of the capital (Monte Plata) to visit our friend Laura’s site an celebrate her patronales because her town’s patron saint also happens to be la Altagracia. I’ve had this date marked on my calendar for over six months because she said, “It’s pretty much the only time my community is fun.” We did end up having a great time, but in general, I love seeing other people’s site and realizing how diverse this country is and how different volunteers make their sites work for them. She’s created a wonderful life for herself in a town without internet or cell service and less than 200 people. And my site couldn’t be more different but we both make it work for us. So we ended up dancing palos a traditional Dominican dance, eating freshly killed pork, hitting the one discoteca to dance bachata, merengue, salsa and dembow and ended up staying out until 6am. We woke up at 8am, made breakfast and I lamented the fact that we needed to be off because I couldn’t miss my 2:30 bus. Well, we were waiting for a bus on the side of the road that only passes once every hour and decided hitch hiking was the way to go. A great ride we got, but the driver ended up getting lost, I missed by bus and the next one broke down...the travel saga continues...I had to call a friend to pick me up from the town over...and I ended up making it back to the ‘Zillo a mere twelve hours after I started. Inefficiency at it’s very best = multiple hours spent reading The Brief Wonderous Life of Oscar Wao, another must read.

So there you have it, another few weeks in the life! When the going gets nuts/rough, here's to chalking it up to adventure and giving it your all.