Regarding how I come and go...

You've all heard tell of many things that "half the fun is getting there." This saying certainly holds true of life in the Peace Corps. In the past few months I have used a variety of means to get from the various Point A's to Point B's. Here is a sampling...

Guagua - This is what you would most commonly refer to as a mini-bus. It's the most common way to move between large towns. Most of them are falling apart, and packed with people to the point of being a public health issue, but they are reasonably priced and relatively comfortable.

Passenger Bus - A lot like grey hound. This is what you use to travel very long distances. The bigger companies have buses that are very comfortable (air conditioning!!!), albeit a little festive for the taste of many Americans (they like to blast Meringue music).

Carro Publico - Translated = "Public Car". Used in the cities. They follow routes the same way that a bus would, and you pay based on how far you ride. These are normal sized four door cars, but they put up to four people in the back seat, and two in the passenger seat up front. Watch out for pick pockets.

Bola - In English we would call it hitch hiking. Basically you stand by the road and wave at whoever comes along, hoping they'll pick you up. In this part of the country most of the vehicles are pick up trucks so there is always enough room. You might have to sit next to a goat or a chicken, but at least the open air nature of the vehicle provides adequate ventilation. If the truck is REALLY full (like if you are headed toward a beach on a weekend, and there are a lot of people with the same idea as you) you will probably have to hang off of the bumper. This is not as bad as it sounds. The sense of adventure on the turns makes up for the discomfort.

Moto-concho - This is a motorcycle taxi, and it's the most common way to travel to remote locations in the countryside since the odds of catching a bola are often slim. This is how I get up the mountain to where I live. PCV's are required to wear helmets, so whenever I am out and about I am dragging along my sleek looking motorcycle helmet. It makes me feel cool. The motorcycle ride up a mountain is an interesting experience. A lot of these bikes are not in the best shape, so one spends the entire trip up the hill wondering if the engine will make it or not. On the downhill side there is another cause for worry. These drivers like to go FAST. I won't offer more details here, because I know my mother and grandmother are reading and I do not wish to cause them concern. Just be aware that I ALWAYS wear my helmet.

Mule - A common beast of burden on the farms around where I live. I have used them on a couple visits. They are not fast or flashy, but they get the job done and don't smell that bad.

Horse - Quick, loyal and glamorous. I spent a weekend toward the beginning riding a horse on mountain trails, and had a blast. My own horse should be arriving any week now. I am working on growing my cowboy moustache, and I am going shopping for a suitable hat as soon as I finish this entry.

Anyone who comes to visit me can rest assured that they will experience many of the types of transport on this list, and maybe more. I am sure the list will grow!

Regarding Food

An easy trap to stumble into when describing an experience like mine is to only share the stories that seem sensational, and forget about the everyday stuff. There is so much that has become commonplace for me, but that I forget would strike all of my readers as new and interesting. So from now on I will try to spend more time talking about some of the many routine and often repetitive elements of what it means to be in the Peace Corps.

My diet here is much less varied than it was back home, but still delicious. The big meal of the day is lunch, which almost always consists of white rice, beans (red or black), and some kind of meat (usually chicken). There is sometimes a salad too. This meal is popularly referred to as ¨La Bandera Dominicana¨ (the Dominican flag) because it offers all the colors that are present on the flag. It is nourishing and delicious, and I am starting to think it might be addictive. Around mid-day, every day of the week, I get a craving in my gut. If the menu happens to be different that day, or if I am on the road and not able to sit down to eat, I experience a wave of disappointment at not getting my bandera. I am actually starting to get hungry just writing this.

Breakfast and dinner are made up primarily of what they call ¨vivres¨, what we would usually call starches. Green bananas, plantain, yucca, squash, potatoe, and yam are all common features during these meals, usually boiled but sometimes fried. The vivre will usually come with some salami (basically summer sausage, but not as good as it is back home), fried cheese, or an egg.

I live in a very lush tropical valley where agriculture is the name of the game, so I also eat a lot of amazing fruit. There´s a giant mango tree right next to my house that the kids are always throwing rocks at to get down whatever fruit might be ready. There are THOUSANDS of them on this tree, just waiting to turn orange and drop. Delicious. There´s also a lot of oranges, lemons, bread fruit, banana, and an amazing fruit called ¨guanabana¨ which I never had before coming here, and don´t know the english for.

Despite the fact that my community is poor, the fact that they are farmers means that there is almost always plenty of food. The food shortages that have been striking much of the world have been felt here with rice being more expensive, but fortunately there is no emergency. There have been problems in the past, as we live right in the middle of hurricane alley. When a storm hits directly, it has the potential to wipe out any and all crops that are in the ground at the time. Some of my work is going to focus on growing a greater variety of food to 1) keep the soil healthy and happy and 2) reduce dependence on one or two kinds of crops for income. We will be starting a community vegetable garden project sometime soon here.

Stay tuned!

Regarding stomach problems...

WARNING: The following entry contains graphic and disturbing descriptions of the things that can happen to one's digestive tract when traveling in the developing world. Proceed with caution.
----

It all started very early on a Wednesday morning. I had been back in the city for a few days since visiting my site, and was getting ready to graduate on Thursday, and move out to the country on Friday. I had to get up around five thirty in order to make it all the way to the heart of the city for important meetings that were scheduled to last all day. My alarm clock sounded, I arose, and folded up my mosquito net. Suddenly I had a feeling that is best described as one of extremely urgent pressure in the lower regions of my intestines. I am not talking about the kind of pressure where you say "Oh, I should visit the bathroom in the next little while." No. This was the kind where I thought to myself "If I don't RUN to the bathroom I will soon have a situation on the floor that I would rather not try to explain to my host mother." So I ran, and made it to the commode.

The next few minutes involved a series of minor explosions that are not a regular part of my bodily cycle. Uh oh. Apparently I had eaten something that my body did not like. My assessment was proved correct when a few minutes later I found myself shedding liquid from the other end of my body.

You know a day is going to be rough when you both vomit and experience diarrhea before six oclock in the morning. I could have gone back to bed and avoided having to do anything that day. No meetings, no travel on packed and uncomfortable public transport. Just my bed, a toilet close by, and a concerned host family to keep me full of soda and saltines. I could have chosen that, but you've already probably guessed that I didn't. I am not very good at listening to my body when it tells me to rest. If there is work to be done, then gosh darn it I will roll up my sleeves and do it. Not snow, nor sleet, nor hurricanes, nor diarrhea will prevent me from doing my duty for Uncle Sam. Besides, what kind of a story would it have made if I'd just gone back to bed?

So I got dressed, filled my nalgene with oral rehydration fluid, and headed out into the world, despite the adamant protests of my host family. I had taken some pepto, so the forty five minute walk to the training center passed without incident, though I did visit the bathroom immediately upon arriving. The hour and a half ride into the city was a different story. I was packed onto a bus with thirty of my companions for a bumper to bumper, stop and go claustrophobic experience that might well have made me nauseous under normal circumstances. As I sat there with my gut sounding like a particularly morbid sort of orchestra I found myself thinking about those Buddhist monks who can concentrate to the point of making themselves immune to physical distractions. I have never before put more focused mental energy into controlling the actions of my body. It was exhausting, but I succeeded. I made it to the bathroom at the Peace Corps office in down town, and fortunately there was a doctor in the house. She gave me some pills that helped, but at the end of the day I had visited five different bathrooms for a total of nine individual trips.

It was four days until the flow subsided, with each day a little easier than the last. During this time I managed to finish my training, pass a bunch of exams, attend my swearing in ceremony, pack, and move ALL of my stuff to my new home in a remote village on the far side of the country (via public transport). I was ready to sleep for a week, and also very glad that I was now able to take solid food. A mountain of rice, beans, plantains, mangoes, and other assorted tropical goodies was waiting for me, so I am gaining back a little bit of the weight that the disease took from me. And avocado season is right around the corner so I will be eating much more. I recently tried describing the idea of guacamole to my family, and they thought it sounded weird. I guess I can do a little cultural exchange as soon as that fruit ripens.

As always, thanks for reading.

In which Tim updates you...

I descend from my mountain abode to update my faithful readers. I rode on the back of a motorcycle through a rain storm, and waited on a street corner for half an hour to squeeze myself into a van to ride along the sea shore for another hour, and now I am here. I have been living on my mountain for about two and a half weeks now, and I am learning how to adjust to life way out there in the country. Forgive me if my English is a little sticky. I have not used it for about a week.

Many of you have asked for more details regarding the work I will be doing, so here it goes. I am partnered with a small NGO that tries to help poor rural farming communities improve their situations a little bit. I am living in one of the main communities where they work, and I think my job will be to sort of serve as the eyes and ears of the organization, looking for new opportunities to help them do what they do. I am connected with a local farming association, and will probably use that as a jumping off point for work with soil erosion, organic fertilizers, and environmental youth activism.

For the first few months I am working on a diagnostic project. I am trying to go door to door in my community, meeting with each family to introduce myself and get to know them. In the process I am tabulating things like level of income, source of income, number of kids, level of education, etc. When I finish getting the numbers together I will probably post it all so that you get some kind of idea of what the basic situation is here.

Most days I get up around seven, drink some strong coffee, and visit with the family for a bit. Then I might go for a walk, or out with some of the farmers to learn about pruning coffee trees or harvesting cocoa. I have seen a few pigs butchered already. When the sun is nice and high I go back to my house and try to get some work done. At night there is usually a game of dominoes to be won. It´s not a bad little routine. We´ll see how it evolves as I find things to do.

Stay tuned!

In which Tim reveals his location...

I have beheld the location where I will be spending the next two years of my life, and it is good.

But before I get into the description, there's a funny little bit of irony. My close friends and family back home will remember that during the months before I came here I had a special way of describing my upcoming Peace Corps service. Instead of prefacing statements with "When I am in the Dominican Republic..." or "When I am in the Peace Corps..." I started saying "When I live in the jungle...". This turn of phrase was usually in jest. I did NOT actually expect to be living in the jungle. But it turns out that either I have a gift of prophecy, or God has a sense of humor, because Tim REALLY is moving to the jungle.

My site is in a small forested valley with a river running down the middle of it. To get to my village you have drive down dirt roads, and straight through the river. It's not possible to get there without a good motorcycle, or a pretty powerful four wheel drive truck. Then you go up some rough, rocky track and you are at my front door. I live in a cement brick house in the middle of a cluster of houses that I believe were built by habitat for humanity. The houses are cement-gray, and the inside of my bedroom looks a bit like a prison cell, but the walls are solid and the roof keeps the rain out so I am happy. And the boringness of the house is more than made up for by the view and the sounds. The surrounding slopes are covered in more kinds of trees than I know the names for, and there are birds everywhere. At night I hear the crickets singing and river flowing. It's a very beautiful place.

I haven't yet figured out exactly what work I will be doing. It will probably have something to do with helping coffee farmers to figure out cheap and environmentally friendly ways to improve their productivity. There is a lot of soil erosion, and problems associated with the more and more frequent hurricanes that like to batter this part of the country. The people are very poor. Most of the houses I see are little more than wooden shacks with tin sheets for roofs. I've been told that a lot of the adults are illiterate. Many are Haitian refugees, so they don't speak the Spanish that they would need to really do well here. Of course, even if they did speak good Spanish they would still have to deal with the massive discrimination this society has against Haitians.

So here I am. I live in a cement house in the jungle, and I am trying to help desperately poor people help themselves and the earth. It's a big job, and I would be lying if I said I didn't feel a little bit overwhelmed. This fun little trip in the Caribbean just became serious. Please keep me in your thoughts and prayers, and I will try to keep the stories coming!

P.S. Security regulations prohibit me from revealing my exact location on the blog. If you want the GPS coordinates, feel free to email me and ask.

In which Tim meets with the Japanese...

It was 10:30 on a humid Santo Domingo morning, and my assignment was simple. I was to meet the director of the organization to which I have been assigned at the office of a group called JICA. JICA is more or less the Japanese equivalent of the Peace Corps. Japanese professionals volunteer to live for two years in a developing country, sharing their culture along with various technical expertise. A JICA volunteer had been assigned to the same organization as me, so I assumed that my director and I were just going to be picking the guy up and high tailing it for the countryside. Because it would just be an in and out affair, I figured there would be no problem with the fact that I had sweated through my shirt on the walk across the city and looked a little bit like I had forgotten to dry off from my morning shower before getting dressed that morning.

I got off the elevator at the seventh floor, and felt like I had been teleported to a part of the world quite far from the North Caribbean. The hallways were full of Japanese people running this way and that, and the decor had the sleek silverish look that I have come to associate with twenty first century Tokyo. I was ushered into a waiting room where I sat down in chair that looked like it could have come from a spaceship, and I was soon met by my director. Far from simply meeting the Japanese volunteer, we were actually about to attend their swearing in ceremony that was to be officiated by none other than the Japanese ambassador. There would also be in attendance a number of very important people in the world of Dominican development.

Great. Here I am about to hob knob with the cream of NGO society, and I am in a sweaty shirt. On top of that, the Peace Corps has a lot of very strict rules governing everything from what I am allowed to post on my blog, right down to the food I put in my body. I wasn't quite sure how they would feel about me representing the Corps, as well as the entire U.S of A. at a semi-diplomatic function. And there was really no way around this since I came into the building wearing my standard issue Peace Corps ID badge, and couldn't very well take it off and stow it in my pocket while sitting in the spaceship chair in the quickly filling room. Then I remembered that one of the things that my Peace Corps drill sergeants are big on is the art of improvisation. When one finds oneself in an ambiguous situation, just keep on rolling.

So I did what I do best. I put on a smile and turned up the charm. Fortunately the powerful air conditioner was able to take care of my sweat situation before it came time to mix and mingle. Since my Japanese is a little rusty, and most Japanese living in the Dominican Republic have little to no reason to be fluent in English, the language of conversation was Spanish. More specifically, my conversation partners were speaking Spanish with fairly heavy Japanese accents. I had never before paused to wonder what Spanish would sound like when combined with the East Asian manner of speaking, but now I know. If you, dear reader, ever have the opportunity to speak Spanish with a Japanese person, please use it and use it well.

I also discovered very quickly that the Japanese people around here really like the Peace Corps. A lot. When I met the deputy director of JICA, I thought he was going to bounce through the roof. We engaged in an extended hand shake and series of bows that lasted a very long time, with him continually saying "Peace Corps!! USA!! Very good!! Muy bien, muy bien!!" And when he left the room at the end he came up to me, smiled ear to ear, and said in his heavy Japanese accent "Estados Unidos y Japon. Juntos siempre!" ("The United States, and Japan. Always together!"). He bowed deeply, turned around, and quickly marched from the room.

After the program with speeches, there was a reception complete with sushi and a bunch of those amazing cookie and cracker concoctions that the Japanese have invented. The Dominicans present did not think much of the sushi, but loved the cookies and the chicken terriyaki. So I got to eat a little extra sushi. I was as happy as a pig in mud.

At the reception I met the volunteer who will be a part of my program, and he's a stellar guy. Smart and excited to get started with his volunteer work. We spent the next couple of days together, travelling to our site and meeting a lot of new people who's names we've probably both forgotten by now. But despite the fact that he and I come from totally different cultures and can only communicate in a language that is native to neither of us, there was a tremendous spirit of shared adventure. We've both left home and family to come to this tiny island, and try to do something that will make the world a little bit better.

It's neat to know that no matter what ambiguous, random, or strange cultural situation I find myself in, there are some things that persist. Like people everywhere loving good food. And decent people recognizing the fact that our world has a lot of problems, and being willing to work hard to fix it. It was a cool day.

In which Tim announces the big news...

This will be a whirlwind entry due to lack of time. Today we received our project site assignments, so I know where I will be living the for the next two years. I will be in a very small community in the mountains above a town called Paraiso, in the South of the country. Do a google search for images, and I guarantee you will want to visit.

I have to run now, but expect a longer entry next week because I will be visiting my site for the remainder of the week.