So I finally got myself some Campesina hands this week! Milking cows, peeling guandules (beans that leave stains on your hands), welding machetes, and carrying buckets of water. I’m just about at the end of my 3 months of service, which means I can move out of my host family’s house and into my own. I found a lovely little 2-room wooden house (also the only vacant house in my village) and I’ve been prepping to move in (moved in yesterday, the 15th). But of course it wasn’t as simple as just moving in. There is a letrine, but the outhouse around it was taken down, so it was really just a hole…. which just wasn’t gonna cut it for me. So my landlord hired a guy to build a little house around it, and my host dad and I helped with the whole process, thus the machete-welding (to peel the bark off of sticks used to support it). And with a few other repairs (door hinges; the water tap was broken- now it is fixed and water comes from the aquaduct every 4 days). It was also pretty stressful buying the things I needed for the house- namely a table-top stove w/gas tank, bed, and a mini fridge. Negotiating for appliances when you stand out as a gringo is pretty rough. But bueno, it’s all done. I still have to buy some basics, like plates, cups, utensils, oh and food, but I’ll get to that soon enough. Peace Corps gives us a “settling in allowance” at your 3-month point that’s supposed to go to buying stuff you need for your house, which is awesome, but it’s not quite enough. Unfortunately, I had to pull some $ from home to cover some of the expenses, which most PCVs end up doing. One-time expense. Quick note about milking cows- I’ve been going out almost every morning with my neighbor Wincito to milk his cow. And I don’t mind saying that I’m getting pretty good at it- I’ve even got the two-handed-double-teet-milking thing going on. It’s pretty awesome. And Wincito loves it because 1. He’s teaching the American girl how to do something new 2. He can’t believe that someone would actually enjoy it, and 3. It’s less work for him! He’s really great, and he gives me a big pail of milk right after we finish every day. I think now he thinks I’m down for anything though, because the other day he took me to see a bee hive that they keep to make honey, and he says the next time they go in to get it, I’m gonna gear up in a big suit and help out. I’m kind of sad to be moving out in this sense, because I have an awesome little barrio of about 5 houses. But I’m definitely going to come visit a lot. I told Wincito that when I come running in the morning, I’ll stop by to milk the cow.
In addition to fixing up my house and moving in (for which I got a ton of help from my neighbors and other wonderful people in my campo), I also have been working on finishing up my Community Diagnostic report & presentation. Our 3-month In-Service Training is in the beginning of February, and there we have to submit our reports and give a presentation to PC with someone from the community (I’m bringing my friend Navil who came with me on a lot of the home visits). Another part of the whole Community Diagnostic process is that we have to present the results to our community. I decided to present to a community group that happens to have all the key leader-ish people in it. I was a little nervous to present everything, in Spanish on what I, the outsider, saw to be the “needs and wants” of the community. At the end of the presentation of data, I gave a list of suggestions of what I thought would be great projects to do. Everyone seemed to agree with me 100%, and we discussed each potential project to some detail. But then, I asked for volunteers of people who would be especially interested in working on each project. For example, I wanted a partner for, say, a latrine project, who would accompany me to the hardware store to pick up materials, etc. No one volunteered. No one said a word! For a minute I was really bummed and thought I was basically going to be on my own for this. Then someone asked me what exactly I meant, and that no, I wasn’t going to have 1 or 2 partners for each project, that everyone wanted to help with everything, that we would talk about project progress at every meeting, and that we are all in this together. Let’s just say it was a true Peace Corps moment, with me feeling silly for trying to go about it in an American way, and realizing that we were going to do this the Dominican way- very inclusive. It might take a little longer this way, but that’s the Republica Dominicana, and I guess development in general. That sounded so cliché, and I hope my PCV friends don’t read that and make fun of me... J
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