Wednesday, August 12, 2009

Regarding just another afternoon...

Things happen differently around here than they do back home. Take the example of a late afternoon a few weeks ago. I was sitting on my porch, thinking about what to cook for dinner. A friend of mine pulled up to the house on a motorcycle, and asked if I would be interested in traveling waaaaay up the mountain to a community I'd never visited to meet a group of American volunteers who were there for the week. I told him sure, and asked when we would be going (figuring it would be tomorrow). He said "right now."



So I went and threw an extra tshirt, a sweatshirt, a blanket, pocket knife, and flashlight into a bag and hopped on the motorcycle. I called the peace corps and my girlfriend, to let them know where I was disappearing to, then off we went.



About half a mile up the road my friend turned back to me and asked if the chickens were still there. I wasn't sure what chickens he meant, but I quickly figured out why there was a cardboard box hanging off the back bumper. I peaked inside and reported that yes, there were three live chickens in the box. He brought the bike to a quick stop, telling me that there were supposed to be four. We had lost one.



I got off, and waited by the road for him to go back and find our lost friend. He returned after about fifteen minutes with the chicken, and a sack to stow them in (since the cardboard was at the point of falling apart). It is also important to mention that night is starting to fall, and we have another hour to go on this motorcycle trip.

We took to the road again, with the chickens tightly bound in the sack. Just as we were getting to the steepest part of the road, the chickens decided they were not going to take any more. They started squawking and flapping violently, almost dislodging the sack from the back of the motorcycle. My friend stopped the bike, swore a couple times, and wondered out loud how on earth we were going to to finish the journey with these chickens. I suggested, part jokingly, that I did have my pocket knife with me, and that we could use it to shut the chickens up permanently. He said that was as good an idea as he could think of.

So there, on the side of the road in the middle of the woods, we quickly slaughtered four chickens with a pocket knife and shoved them back in their sack. Now all we had to worry about was blood dripping, which is actually a much less annoying problem than flapping and squawking. We figured the chickens only had a couple hours of life left anyway before they hit the frying pan, so what´s the big deal?

We had to travel the last several miles in the dark, which was a shame given how neat the view is up there. We arrived at the camp, and I gave this group of Americans the surprise of their life. They had been on this mountain top for three days, building a school. Only one out of the twelve spoke Spanish. I think the last thing they expected to see emerging from the darkened wood was a tall white man in an MSU tshirt, speaking with a Dominican accent, all splattered with chicken blood. But all told, I had a very pleasant visit with them.

In which Tim begins to clean...

I am supposed to be an environment volunteer, which means that the focus of my projects is supposed to be on protecting the little piece of the planet that I've been assigned to. For better or worse I have gotten myself into the middle of helping with lots of grand and complicated projects, some of which are environmental in nature, and some of which aren't. Sometimes, though, I find it refreshing to do something very basic with my community that helps them think about earth stewardship.

Last week we decided to do a trash clean up. I live in a small neigborhood of about thirty houses, and we have no public trash removal system. Some people carry their garbage down to the city. Some people burn it. But an awful lot of people just dump their trash into the woods, or on the street. My friends and I are trying to do something about this. I acquired a few hundred big black bags, and went around inviting people to join me on the next Monday at 9 AM to do some cleaning.

9 AM came and went. The only people who showed up were a group of about eight kids between the ages of 4 and 11. I was disappointed at the lack of strong arms (a little kid can't very well lift up a bag completely full of garbage) but forward we went. The nine of us worked for about three hours, and filled somewhere in the neigborhood of twenty five bags. It was a big success.

Now the kids are going around the neigborhood asking the adults why they don't care enough about the community to help pick up trash. I have had some adults promise to join me next time we do a pick up! It is exciting, and I am hoping we can make a weekly thing out of it. Maybe we can even install some barrels and work out a permanent removal system. That would be awesome. But in the mean time, my friends and I will be scooping trash every Monday. Feel free to come join in!
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