Las Hermanas Mirabal y Carnaval

Last Friday we went to visit the Mirabal Sisters Museum in Salcedo. The Mirabal sisters are 4 sisters who were revolutionaries who opposed the dictatorship of Rafael Trujillo who served (officially and unofficially) as president for about 30 years from 1930 until his assassination in 1961. Three of the sisters, Minerva, Patria, and María Teresa, were murdered in 1960 as a result of their political dissidence. They were strangled and beaten to death with their driver and then placed in their car and pushed of a mountain between Santiago and Puerto Plata to simulate a car crash. Dedé Mirabal is the only remaining sister alive today and lives in Salcedo in the house they grew up in, near the museum. Sadly she was not around when we went to visit, otherwise we could've had the chance to talk to her. But we toured the museum, which is basically the house they lived in for the 10 years before their death and an insight into a little bit of their lives. The tour guide gave us some of the history and we also saw the skeleton of the car that they were found in. It was a very powerful image to see and the whole museum itself with all of their pictures, belongings, and clothes still intact (and the long braid of one of the sisters) because it made everything very real. These were real young women who opposed to killings and corruption of Trujillo and they were taking action against his regime. Their death was the inspiration for the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women on November 25th (the day of their murder). I also bought a famous book called "In the Time of the Butterflies" ("butterflies" was their code name) in spanish, which tells the story of their lives and how they became involved in the anti-Trujillo movement, and their deaths. It's an amazing book and I pick it up every time I have free time, it's hard to put down. I had a talk with my host mom about it and about the Trujillo regime. It was really interesting because in the book, the sisters, just like the rest of the country, originally had no idea that Trujillo was committing atrocities. People used to hang a picture of Trujillo up right next to their picture of Jesus Christ. My host mom said it used to be that God was upstairs, and Trujillo was the God on Earth. It's so crazy. But his atrocities were eventually revealed and the people ended up assassinating him in 1961. Man, the DR has a crazyyy history. The 3 Mirabal Sisters' faces are now on the 500 peso bill.

On a lighter note, that Sunday we went to Carnaval in La Vega. Carnaval is a celebration that happens every Sunday in February (we have one in Santiago too, but the one in La Vega is supposed to be bigger). It's a day where people dress up in weird, elaborate, and kinda scary costumes and they carry around whips that are cow bladders filled with cow poop. They whip everyone in the butt with them (and it hurts the HELL!!!) and walk around in a parade being all scary. Lots of us left with big bruises on our butts, many of my friends still have their bruises. But it's like an agreement that by going to Carnaval you are accepting the fact that you are going to be whipped. The streets are closed off and it is PACKED and super loud, music blasting everywhere, people drinking and dancing. Very typical Dominican setting. The day is supposed to represent releasing all the devil in yourself before Easter and is associated mainly with Catholicism. It was an experience...haha...I like it for about the first hour, but we were there for like 6 hours and that was tooo much for me. I didn't think was that impressive that I needed to be there for 6 hours. But now I can say I saw it and I got whipped and everything! Oh and some guy put a bunch of snakes on me at one point, that was cool haha.There were people (mainly kids) waling around with this dried up mud all over them and these masks and they were asking for money. I'm not quite sure what the significance exactly was but I'm guessing it was just a creative way of showing their poverty at Carnaval.
One of the costumes, each group had different costumes. These costumes cost thousands of dollars.
Snakesssssss!!!


So that was last weekend. I also finally went shopping and got a few things to make me fit in more with the Dominicans haha. This week has been classes and finalizing things for my research project. Now I have to go write up a questionnaire to hand out next week. I'm evaluating how much the community members learn from the program by doing a before and after test. It's more complicated than just that, but I don't want to explain it all now bc my comp is going to die. But I feel better about that whole thing now. Next week we are headed to a campo called Río Limpio from Sunday to Friday and we'll be learning about organic farming. More to come when I get back!

Love y'all and miss you!

Paz y amor,
~Aysha~

To Hell With Good Intentions

The following is a speech given by Ivan Illich that we just read in one of my classes. It's pretty good and makes you think a lot and question what you are doing. I don't agree with him 100% but I agree with a lot of things he says. Take a look, it's interesting:

To Hell with Good Intentions
by Ivan Illich

An address by Monsignor Ivan Illich to the Conference on InterAmerican Student Projects (CIASP) in Cuernavaca, Mexico, on April 20, 1968. In his usual biting and sometimes sarcastic style, Illich goes to the heart of the deep dangers of paternalism inherent in any voluntary service activity, but especially in any international service "mission." Parts of the speech are outdated and must be viewed in the historical context of 1968 when it was delivered, but the entire speech is retained for the full impact of his point and at Ivan Illich's request.

IN THE CONVERSATIONS WHICH I HAVE HAD TODAY, I was impressed by two things, and I want to state them before I launch into my prepared talk.

I was impressed by your insight that the motivation of U.S. volunteers overseas springs mostly from very alienated feelings and concepts. I was equally impressed, by what I interpret as a step forward among would-be volunteers like you: openness to the idea that the only thing you can legitimately volunteer for in Latin America might be voluntary powerlessness, voluntary presence as receivers, as such, as hopefully beloved or adopted ones without any way of returning the gift.

I was equally impressed by the hypocrisy of most of you: by the hypocrisy of the atmosphere prevailing here. I say this as a brother speaking to brothers and sisters. I say it against many resistances within me; but it must be said. Your very insight, your very openness to evaluations of past programs make you hypocrites because you - or at least most of you - have decided to spend this next summer in Mexico, and therefore, you are unwilling to go far enough in your reappraisal of your program. You close your eyes because you want to go ahead and could not do so if you looked at some facts.

It is quite possible that this hypocrisy is unconscious in most of you. Intellectually, you are ready to see that the motivations which could legitimate volunteer action overseas in 1963 cannot be invoked for the same action in 1968. "Mission-vacations" among poor Mexicans were "the thing" to do for well-off U.S. students earlier in this decade: sentimental concern for newly-discovered. poverty south of the border combined with total blindness to much worse poverty at home justified such benevolent excursions. Intellectual insight into the difficulties of fruitful volunteer action had not sobered the spirit of Peace Corps Papal-and-Self-Styled Volunteers.

Today, the existence of organizations like yours is offensive to Mexico. I wanted to make this statement in order to explain why I feel sick about it all and in order to make you aware that good intentions have not much to do with what we are discussing here. To hell with good intentions. This is a theological statement. You will not help anybody by your good intentions. There is an Irish saying that the road to hell is paved with good intentions; this sums up the same theological insight.

The very frustration which participation in CIASP programs might mean for you, could lead you to new awareness: the awareness that even North Americans can receive the gift of hospitality without the slightest ability to pay for it; the awareness that for some gifts one cannot even say "thank you."

Now to my prepared statement.

Ladies and Gentlemen:

For the past six years I have become known for my increasing opposition to the presence of any and all North American "dogooders" in Latin America. I am sure you know of my present efforts to obtain the voluntary withdrawal of all North American volunteer armies from Latin America - missionaries, Peace Corps members and groups like yours, a "division" organized for the benevolent invasion of Mexico. You were aware of these things when you invited me - of all people - to be the main speaker at your annual convention. This is amazing! I can only conclude that your invitation means one of at least three things:

Some among you might have reached the conclusion that CIASP should either dissolve altogether, or take the promotion of voluntary aid to the Mexican poor out of its institutional purpose. Therefore you might have invited me here to help others reach this same decision.

You might also have invited me because you want to learn how to deal with people who think the way I do - how to dispute them successfully. It has now become quite common to invite Black Power spokesmen to address Lions Clubs. A "dove" must always be included in a public dispute organized to increase U.S. belligerence.

And finally, you might have invited me here hoping that you would be able to agree with most of what I say, and then go ahead in good faith and work this summer in Mexican villages. This last possibility is only open to those who do not listen, or who cannot understand me.

I did not come here to argue. I am here to tell you, if possible to convince you, and hopefully, to stop you, from pretentiously imposing yourselves on Mexicans.

I do have deep faith in the enormous good will of the U.S. volunteer. However, his good faith can usually be explained only by an abysmal lack of intuitive delicacy. By definition, you cannot help being ultimately vacationing salesmen for the middle-class "American Way of Life," since that is really the only life you know. A group like this could not have developed unless a mood in the United States had supported it - the belief that any true American must share God's blessings with his poorer fellow men. The idea that every American has something to give, and at all times may, can and should give it, explains why it occurred to students that they could help Mexican peasants "develop" by spending a few months in their villages.

Of course, this surprising conviction was supported by members of a missionary order, who would have no reason to exist unless they had the same conviction - except a much stronger one. It is now high time to cure yourselves of this. You, like the values you carry, are the products of an American society of achievers and consumers, with its two-party system, its universal schooling, and its family-car affluence. You are ultimately-consciously or unconsciously - "salesmen" for a delusive ballet in the ideas of democracy, equal opportunity and free enterprise among people who haven't the possibility of profiting from these.

Next to money and guns, the third largest North American export is the U.S. idealist, who turns up in every theater of the world: the teacher, the volunteer, the missionary, the community organizer, the economic developer, and the vacationing do-gooders. Ideally, these people define their role as service. Actually, they frequently wind up alleviating the damage done by money and weapons, or "seducing" the "underdeveloped" to the benefits of the world of affluence and achievement. Perhaps this is the moment to instead bring home to the people of the U.S. the knowledge that the way of life they have chosen simply is not alive enough to be shared.

By now it should be evident to all America that the U.S. is engaged in a tremendous struggle to survive. The U.S. cannot survive if the rest of the world is not convinced that here we have Heaven-on-Earth. The survival of the U.S. depends on the acceptance by all so-called "free" men that the U.S. middle class has "made it." The U.S. way of life has become a religion which must be accepted by all those who do not want to die by the sword - or napalm. All over the globe the U.S. is fighting to protect and develop at least a minority who consume what the U.S. majority can afford. Such is the purpose of the Alliance for Progress of the middle-classes which the U.S. signed with Latin America some years ago. But increasingly this commercial alliance must be protected by weapons which allow the minority who can "make it" to protect their acquisitions and achievements.

But weapons are not enough to permit minority rule. The marginal masses become rambunctious unless they are given a "Creed," or belief which explains the status quo. This task is given to the U.S. volunteer - whether he be a member of CLASP or a worker in the so-called "Pacification Programs" in Viet Nam.

The United States is currently engaged in a three-front struggle to affirm its ideals of acquisitive and achievement-oriented "Democracy." I say "three" fronts, because three great areas of the world are challenging the validity of a political and social system which makes the rich ever richer, and the poor increasingly marginal to that system.

In Asia, the U.S. is threatened by an established power -China. The U.S. opposes China with three weapons: the tiny Asian elites who could not have it any better than in an alliance with the United States; a huge war machine to stop the Chinese from "taking over" as it is usually put in this country, and; forcible re-education of the so-called "Pacified" peoples. All three of these efforts seem to be failing.

In Chicago, poverty funds, the police force and preachers seem to be no more successful in their efforts to check the unwillingness of the black community to wait for graceful integration into the system.

And finally, in Latin America the Alliance for Progress has been quite successful in increasing the number of people who could not be better off - meaning the tiny, middle-class elites - and has created ideal conditions for military dictatorships. The dictators were formerly at the service of the plantation owners, but now they protect the new industrial complexes. And finally, you come to help the underdog accept his destiny within this process!

All you will do in a Mexican village is create disorder. At best, you can try to convince Mexican girls that they should marry a young man who is self-made, rich, a consumer, and as disrespectful of tradition as one of you. At worst, in your "community development" spirit you might create just enough problems to get someone shot after your vacation ends_ and you rush back to your middleclass neighborhoods where your friends make jokes about "spits" and "wetbacks."

You start on your task without any training. Even the Peace Corps spends around $10,000 on each corps member to help him adapt to his new environment and to guard him against culture shock. How odd that nobody ever thought about spending money to educate poor Mexicans in order to prevent them from the culture shock of meeting you?

In fact, you cannot even meet the majority which you pretend to serve in Latin America - even if you could speak their language, which most of you cannot. You can only dialogue with those like you - Latin American imitations of the North American middle class. There is no way for you to really meet with the underprivileged, since there is no common ground whatsoever for you to meet on.

Let me explain this statement, and also let me explain why most Latin Americans with whom you might be able to communicate would disagree with me.

Suppose you went to a U.S. ghetto this summer and tried to help the poor there "help themselves." Very soon you would be either spit upon or laughed at. People offended by your pretentiousness would hit or spit. People who understand that your own bad consciences push you to this gesture would laugh condescendingly. Soon you would be made aware of your irrelevance among the poor, of your status as middle-class college students on a summer assignment. You would be roundly rejected, no matter if your skin is white-as most of your faces here are-or brown or black, as a few exceptions who got in here somehow.

Your reports about your work in Mexico, which you so kindly sent me, exude self-complacency. Your reports on past summers prove that you are not even capable of understanding that your dogooding in a Mexican village is even less relevant than it would be in a U.S. ghetto. Not only is there a gulf between what you have and what others have which is much greater than the one existing between you and the poor in your own country, but there is also a gulf between what you feel and what the Mexican people feel that is incomparably greater. This gulf is so great that in a Mexican village you, as White Americans (or cultural white Americans) can imagine yourselves exactly the way a white preacher saw himself when he offered his life preaching to the black slaves on a plantation in Alabama. The fact that you live in huts and eat tortillas for a few weeks renders your well-intentioned group only a bit more picturesque.

The only people with whom you can hope to communicate with are some members of the middle class. And here please remember that I said "some" -by which I mean a tiny elite in Latin America.

You come from a country which industrialized early and which succeeded in incorporating the great majority of its citizens into the middle classes. It is no social distinction in the U.S. to have graduated from the second year of college. Indeed, most Americans now do. Anybody in this country who did not finish high school is considered underprivileged.

In Latin America the situation is quite different: 75% of all people drop out of school before they reach the sixth grade. Thus, people who have finished high school are members of a tiny minority. Then, a minority of that minority goes on for university training. It is only among these people that you will find your educational equals.

At the same time, a middle class in the United States is the majority. In Mexico, it is a tiny elite. Seven years ago your country began and financed a so-called "Alliance for Progress." This was an "Alliance" for the "Progress" of the middle class elites. Now. it is among the members of this middle class that you will find a few people who are willing to send their time with you_ And they are overwhelmingly those "nice kids" who would also like to soothe their troubled consciences by "doing something nice for the promotion of the poor Indians." Of course, when you and your middleclass Mexican counterparts meet, you will be told that you are doing something valuable, that you are "sacrificing" to help others.

And it will be the foreign priest who will especially confirm your self-image for you. After all, his livelihood and sense of purpose depends on his firm belief in a year-round mission which is of the same type as your summer vacation-mission.

There exists the argument that some returned volunteers have gained insight into the damage they have done to others - and thus become more mature people. Yet it is less frequently stated that most of them are ridiculously proud of their "summer sacrifices." Perhaps there is also something to the argument that young men should be promiscuous for awhile in order to find out that sexual love is most beautiful in a monogamous relationship. Or that the best way to leave LSD alone is to try it for awhile -or even that the best way of understanding that your help in the ghetto is neither needed nor wanted is to try, and fail. I do not agree with this argument. The damage which volunteers do willy-nilly is too high a price for the belated insight that they shouldn't have been volunteers in the first place.

If you have any sense of responsibility at all, stay with your riots here at home. Work for the coming elections: You will know what you are doing, why you are doing it, and how to communicate with those to whom you speak. And you will know when you fail. If you insist on working with the poor, if this is your vocation, then at least work among the poor who can tell you to go to hell. It is incredibly unfair for you to impose yourselves on a village where you are so linguistically deaf and dumb that you don't even understand what you are doing, or what people think of you. And it is profoundly damaging to yourselves when you define something that you want to do as "good," a "sacrifice" and "help."

I am here to suggest that you voluntarily renounce exercising the power which being an American gives you. I am here to entreat you to freely, consciously and humbly give up the legal right you have to impose your benevolence on Mexico. I am here to challenge you to recognize your inability, your powerlessness and your incapacity to do the "good" which you intended to do.

I am here to entreat you to use your money, your status and your education to travel in Latin America. Come to look, come to climb our mountains, to enjoy our flowers. Come to study. But do not come to help.

Se fue la luz

We spent this past thursday to sunday in a campo called "Río Grande Abajo" where we stayed two people to one host family and worked with this awesome group of youth in the community called "Brigada Verde". Their mission is to promote a more green lifestyle in their community. We helped them out this weekend by giving some charlas (talks) at some schools about cholera, dengue, and garbage disposal and how they are all interconnected. We did this with posters, dramas, and candy =P We also provided the community with garbage cans that we painted since they don't have any and throw the garbage on the ground. Then we painted a couple murals in the community center with the Brigada Verde. It was an amazing time, I didn't want to leave. The people there are so wonderful and there is such a strong sense of community. Everyone knows everyone else and it has that small town feel. The environment is beautiful and so green. It's in the mountains near Puerto Plata and and the views are gorgeous. The lifestyle is so simple. Most people are farmers and everyone lives very modestly. My host mom was great, very sweet, and said I can come back any time. I know living there would be hard because they lack basic necessities, but I almost wish we lived there rather than the crazy city. There isn't a ton of pollution or sounds of cars honking all the time. But they also often don't have electricity and sometimes no running water. Definitely no warm water. One time I was in the middle of washing my face and the water stopped running haha. Showers are from a bucket of water. Inside the houses there are no doors, just curtains separating the rooms. Lots of mosquitoes and my mosquito net had holes in it so i got eaten alive. I swear i have the biggest mosquito bite in existence, it covers my whole thigh. Because of all the animals and the not so great waste system, it smelled like poop or barf a lot of the time. Etc etc...
Us in front of our murals that we painted that you can't see... haha. Check facebook for more and better pictures of everything.

One of the charlas at one of the schools.

Me eating cacao (cocoa) in the fruit form. It tastes nothing like chocolate but is very sweet and delicious. You sucks on the little white balls until all the flavor is gone and then spit it out.



And yet with all these little things that make me appreciate my living situation in Santiago so much more, I still love the campo and find myself feeling more at home there than I ever have in the city. Everyone treats you like family and all the youth are really fun to hang around. And they really care about trying to improve their environment and wanting to help. I felt safe there, whereas in the city it's hard to ever feel safe. I mean, there were definitely a few creepy old men who I did not like very much, but for the most part people were great.


I'm not sure what it was, but it was really great to get away from the city for four days and be in the campo. On the last day none of us wanted to leave. But I didn't stay sad too long because we went directly to this place called "27 Charcos" which means "27 waterfalls" and yes, I JUMPED OFF OF TWENTY-SEVEN WATERFALLS! It was pretty awesome. So much fun. Some of them actually terrified me and I just did it but it was soo scary! I took some pictures with a waterproof disposable camera so hopefully they turn out and I can post them later. That was great. Now I'm feeling pretty good and happy, not looking forward to going back to classes tomorrow, but I just keep telling myself to get through the next two weeks because then we have a week long rural stay in another campo! Im trying really hard to just have fun and not take things too seriously, especially with stressful things like academics and the big research capstone. I need to figure out what I'm going to research asap because I've fallen behind and so that's been a point of stress and unhappiness, but I'm trying to tell myself that I know it will get done and stressing is worthless. I don't have much time here so I really need to enjoy it and be happy about what I'm doing rather than stress out.

Anyway, it's late and I'm soooo beyond tired. Waking up tomorrow is gonna suckkk! I love you all and miss you! Hope all is well wherever in the world you are =)

Paz y amor,
~Aysha~

One Month Mark

I can't believe I've been here for a month already! Less than 4 months to go. The program ends on May 1st, but I'm staying until the 21st to do some exploring with my parents when they come visit. We just had our one month check-in retreat on Friday and we all went to this place in the mountains called Jarabacoa. It was beautiful, green, lush, lots of flowers, and the sounds of birds rather than the city sounds of cars, car alarms, roosters, and dogs. It was a really relaxing environment and we did some group activities and reflections on what we have experienced so far. It was a nice little check-in. Time is going to go by so fast here. The weekdays fly by because we are so busy and it will only get busier as we become more involved with our organizations and start our research. I'll be home before I know it.

I love it here and I sometimes don't like it, but overall I have no regrets and my goal is to stay happy and positive here even when things get tough. There are a lot of challenges I have to face here but it's all a great experience and I just need to take a step back and not take anything too seriously.

Let's see, what have I done since I last posted? Well, we had a four day weekend last weekend and my friends and I went to the beach in Las Terranas, Samaná to relax. We sneaked 6 of us in a room meant for 3 people and stayed there for three nights, chilling on the beach, drinking piña coladas, sun bathing, swimming in the warm beautiful water, and eating good food at the nearby restaurants. I promise I'll do a food post soon! So that was a nice relaxing weekend, very much needed.

Other than that our weekly routine has started. We have classes in the mornings and then go home for lunch if we have time and then leave for our organizations at 1:30pm and stay there until about 6pm. Then we go home, eat dinner, do homework, and go to bed. I've been having trouble staying awake past 8:30pm here, that's how exhausting everything is. There is no time to do anything during the week, not even go to the bank. I went 4 days without any money because I literally had no time to walk to the bank and change money. The only time I have is when it's dark and it's not smart to go change money on the streets by yourself when it's dark. I actually went to the bank when it was dark though because I knew I wouldn't have any other time until the weekend, but the bank was closed by then anyway. I ended up asking my director to trade me dollars for pesos so I didn't have to keep borrowing from other people. That's just an example, but we literally have zero minutes of free time during the week. It kinda sucks. And Sunday everything is closed, literally. So Saturday is the only day to do everything. But I'm learning how to plan my schedule and what I need to do, it's just stressful during the week sometimes, especially with homework. I don't always have internet, so sometimes homework is hard to plan. But it's alright, I'm getting used to it, and it makes time go by fast when we're so busy.

Someone (I'm 98% sure it was my maid) stole $400 from my room, so that has been a not so fun ordeal lately. I told my host mom and she was really good about the whole situation and when she asked the maid about it, she ended up getting really offended and decided to leave, so now we're looking for a new maid. I feel really bad about the whole situation, but I know I had to do something about it. This had never happened to my host mom in the 20 years that she's had exchange students stay with her so she was really shocked and said she will pay me back incrementally. I feel bad though because it's not her fault, but I do need the money back. Anyway, now I have my suitcase locked and I lock the door to my room whenever I leave.

So that's what I've been up to lately, I think I'll try to post more throughout the week about specific topics: host family, food, academics, community organizations, conchos, noises, piropos, water, etc. Lots of topics deserve their own little post. I hope everyone is doing well! I miss you guys! Now I'm gonna take a nap....

Bipolar

It's been officially over two weeks since I've been here and the pace is going to pick up pretty fast. This is all gonna be over before I know it. And then I'll wonder if it ever even happened.

So overall I'm enjoying this experience a lot, but I have to admit I've been pretty bipolar since I've been here. A lot of it has to deal with personal issues, but a good portion of it is dependent on whether or not I'm drenched in sweat and whether or not I'm being harassed by tigeres (the name for creepy men who think women are their playtoys). So basically I tend to be in a good mood when I'm on campus or inside my house or something, but as soon as I walk outside, I sweat bullets and get harassed non-stop. This is also why I've started waking up at 5 or 6am every morning to go running because it's the only time the creeps aren't out, and for those of you who know me well, you know I would never wake up that early unless I had no other option. I was talking to Elaine about all this earlier (she's the super awesome director of the program) and she gave me some advice, but it's going to be really hard for me to get used to. I hate being passive about it. Usually I start off by ignoring the first few men, then i get really angry and usually flip off a few people, but after multiple men honking their horns, staring incessantly with hungry eyes (sometimes i feel violated just by the way they stare at me), hissing, and yelling obscenities, i start to feel resigned, defeated, and powerless. Maybe that's what they want. Women to feel powerless. It's hard for me to understand and it makes me really sad, especially when boys who look about 7 years old start imitating the older men. Yes, I've been hissed at by men of all ages, from 7 years to about 70 years old. There is always at least one part of the day where I end up going through this sequence of feelings when i walk outside--happy, then i get yelled at and at first im passive, then aggressive, and then feel defeated and drained of all my fight. And I end up in such a bad mood and all I can think is "fuck this godforsaken country and everyone in it!" I know I shouldn't let it get to me so much and I'm trying, but it's not easy and it's not something I want to "get used to". I know I can't really do anything about it though. Maybe I'm being culturally insensitive or something, but I can tolerate many different beliefs and customs, just not this one. And I don't hate the country and everyone in it, I just get in that mood sometimes (well usually once every day haha). There are a lot of things I love and hate about the DR.

Love: my host family, my university, my professors, the people in my program, the support students, some cool dominicans i've met, the nightlife, the exchange rate =P , the beaches, the environment, the organizations, the fact that i walked into a bathroom one night and ended up getting a mini make-over by another woman who decided she needed to do my hair and makeup, the people (except for the tigeres), the kids, the communities, the culture, the food (well, not all of it, i'll make a post just dedicated to food one of these days, and i've decided not to be veggie here), the traditions, etc. too many things to list.

Hate: the constant harassment, the humidity, the double-standards on women, the incredible socio-economic class differences, the racism, the pollution, the crazy drivers who just barely missed running me over yesterday, the government.

So it's a mezcla of love and hate. I just needed to vent a little about the whole tigere thing because it was driving me nuts earlier. I'm all good now though, but I know the cycle will start again tomorrow. I think I would be enjoying myself so much more if that aspect was not included.

Bueno, other than that I'm doing really well. I just found out yesterday that I'm working with an organization called "Fundación Cuidado Infantil Dominicano" which in english is roughly "Dominican foundation for infant care" or something like that. It's actually not just about infant care anymore, they just never changed their name. I'm working there with my friend Lexa from Clark, but we're in different programs in the organization. I'm working in the PITS program (prevention of STDs) and I'm not 100% sure what my role will be, but this week and next week I am basically shadowing "my people" and watching what they do and how it all works, and then I will become more integrated. They mainly do visits to the communities and they work with what are probably the top 3 largest and poorest ghettos in Santiago. We'll be doing house visits and holding community meetings to teach a curriculum regarding the prevention of STDs. We will also be doing research and collecting survey data and doing office work. I'll be working on my own research project that is related to the topic and I will eventually add my own extension to the program based on my results.

I'll be going to my organization at least 3 days a week for 3 hours, but that will most likely increase as the semester goes on. I'm SOOOOO EXCITEDDD! This week my group in the PITS program is doing some office work and curriculum planning, so there isn't much for me to do yet, so I'll be going around and observing other aspects of the organization in order to get a better idea of what they do as a whole. I can't wait to see everything and get started in my program!!! I know there will be a lot of challenges especially with the communities I'll be working in, but as we are continually told, "guilt is a useless emotion". It's hard to remember this and stick to it, but i know I have to because it's reality, it's life, and right now I just need to focus on dealing with people as people and not as things to be pitied. This weekend I was hanging out at the monument at night with some friends (the monument is the highest point in the city center and is there to recognize the heroes of the restoration) and a man walked up to us asking for money so he could go to the hospital. His showed us his arm. His humerus bone was completely snapped in half and part of the bone was sticking out. One day jsut walking around I saw two legless people and someone whose leg was completely dislocated sideways. But these are normal images. There is only one public hospital in Santiago and it's always packed and many people don't have the money to be treated. Also, the nearby city Puerta Plata doesn't have a hospital, so they all flood into the Santiago one. It's so sad and frustrating, but it's reality, it's life.



Well, even though this was kind of a negative/depressing entry, trust me when I say I am having an amazing time here! I just needed a space to vent about the bad stuff, sorry guys. I'm sooo psyched to start with my organization tomorrow! This weekend we went out and explored the vibrant nightlife in Santiago and it was really fun. We danced some bachata and merengue and went to a discoteca. Compared to Dominican women though, I feel superrr underdressed even in my nicer clothes. They're always super fancy. That girl in the bathroom who gave me the mini make-over was probably thinking "ay dios mio, she needs help, she can't go out looking like that!" I think I should go shopping soon...haha. This weekend I also finally caught up on some sleep, only to start losing it again today, but it's okay, I'm having fun, who needs sleep anyway? Although, I do go to bed much earlier here. It's almost 10pm and I'm about to crash any second. I'm starting to get used to the farm animal noises at night, but I'm not quite there.

I think I need to have different entries for different themes instead of writing about everything in one post, I can't believe how long this got. I bet no one is even reading this far lol. Oh well, if nothing it's good for my personal sanity. Next post will be shorter, I SWEAR! =P Love you all and hope everything is going great wherever in the world you may be!

Paz y amor,
~Aysha~

Bienvenidos a la República Dominicana!

It’s my eighth day in the Dominican Republic and I still haven’t had time to stop and take everything. Many of you have asked about my blog, so here it is! I’m actually typing this first entry in segments because I’ve realized that I’m never going to have a stretch of time long enough to type everything….and it’s only going to get busier. Okay this is gonna be superrrr long…

For those of you who don’t really know what I’m doing here, let me explain. I’m here on a study abroad program focused on service learning. There are 9 of us gringos in this program and we take classes at the university here in Santiago. All the classes are focused on this idea of service learning and are in spanish. We are also spending this week visiting 6 different NGOs and at the end of the week we are going to each choose one NGO that we would like to work with. They all deal with different issues in community development like education, public health, etc. And they all work with certain local communities that are caught in the brutal cycle of poverty. So once we figure out which one we’re working with, our schedule will be: get up wayyy too early, walk to school, go to classes, go home for lunch, go to our community organization, go home, eat dinner, and crashhh from exhaustion. It’s a pretty intense program in that you don’t have much free time. Which I guess is a good and bad thing. This is my schedule of classes:

Monday:

9-10am: Social Methods (a research methods class, bleh)

11-12pm: Independent Research and Capstone (this class involves preparing us to do research in the communities. Part of it is research on the issues they deal with and the second part is developing and implementing our own sustainable development project that has to do with these issues and then write a 50 page paper on it…in Spanish.)

-then home for lunch and straight to my organization for the rest of the day, same with all the other days

Tuesday:

8-10am: Social Methods

10-12pm: Español

Wednesday:

8-10am: Poverty and Development

10-11am: Community Participation

11-1pm: Independent Research and Capstone

Thursday:

8-9am: Poverty and Development

10-12pm: Español

And Friday we don’t have classes, but it may be filled with community work.

So yeah, that’s my daily schedule for the semester. Today was the first day of classes and so far I like them. My only worry is that it’s easy to space out (especially this early), and because it’s in Spanish I can’t just space out and still understand, I always have to be actively listening and thinking so I understand. I’ve already caught myself going in and out of listening and then I get lost. But I’m sure it will get easier. It’s not only going to be exhausting because of the packed schedule and that I have to walk everywhere, but also because my mind has to be working really hard the whole time to communicate with everyone in Spanish. I’ve been so tired and busy that I haven’t had a chance to really let reality sink in.

So what have I been doing for the past 8 days? Well, on the first day we got dropped off at our host families’ houses for a few hours to drop off our bags and meet the people we’ll be living with for the next 4 months. I live with a 67 year old woman named Rafaela who is sooo wonderful! I love her. She’s adorable and super nice and talks to me slowly so I can understand her haha. And she lives here with her “husband”, Victor, who is in his 30s….don’t ask, I still don’t get it. She was married before and he died but they had 3 kids who are old and out of the house. Victor is nice too, but he doesn’t say much. I have my own room and bathroom with occasional hot water, so it’s nice. It’s so hard to sleep though because the roosters call all night and the dogs bark constantly, and the cats are always fighting, so it sounds like a farm outside all night. My earplugs only block out so much…But I’ve been told that pretty soon I won’t even notice the sounds.

So after having a meet and greet with our fams, we all left to drive to this place about 2 hours away called Tubagua. It’s in the mountains and overlooks Puerto Plata and the north coast. And it’s GORGEOUS. We slept in canopies under mosquito nets outside and the view that I woke up to the next morning was one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen. The pictures don’t do it justice. Even the view from the bathroom was incredible!

We started orientation there and did some activities and get-to-know-you things. There are 3 other people from Clark University there so it’s nice to have familiar faces around. The rest are all really awesome people from different US universities.

The next day we did an insanely treacherous hike up the mountains to the waterfalls (I’m pretty sure Marcos, one of the program directors that guided us, was trying to kill some of us off). But when we finally made it to the waterfalls, it was all worth it. And I jumped off of one! It wasn’t that high, but it was still scary. They were beautiful.

The next day we got up early and went to the university (it’s called Pontificia Universitaria Católica Madre y Maestra (PUCMM) but we call it “pucamyma” for short). There we took a spanish language test to see if we were in level II or III. Surprisingly I was placed in level III even though I thought it went horribly. Then we had a bunch of meetings with “important people” and then got a tour of the campus, which is beautiful. We also had a “treasure hunt” around the city where we had to learn to use the concho routes (they’re basically taxi’s that have a certain route the follow) and find certain places so we could start learning our way around the city.

This past weekend we went to Santo Domingo (the capital in the south) and we got to see a bunch of really old stuff from like the 1500s, it was pretty cool. The theme was race and identity, because there is a lot of racism here and it goes back to colonization.

We went to a little bar/club full of old couples in the evening and danced merengue and salsa with a bunch of old men, it was fun though haha. And then we had the day off on Monday so we all went to the beach in Cabarete (the north coast), and it was BEAUTIFUL. We just sat in chairs right on the beach and sipped delicious tropical drinks, swam in the super warm water, and got sunburned. It was truly paradise.

But it’s not all beautiful. We’ve been visiting the various organizations that we might work with and they are all located in some of the poorest barrios around. Yesterday we went to visit an organization called Niños con Una Esperanza (children with a hope) and it was located in the poorest ghetto of Santiago, called Cien Fuegos (100 fires). Here the roads are all dirt and rocks, there are holes everywhere, there are little children running around barefoot without any adults in sight, no running water, no electricity, huge garbage dumps that smell really bad, and the houses look like little shacks that are about to collapse. There is a lot of malnutrition here, lots of disease, no access to sanitation or medicine, lots of diseases, drug addiction, theft, and domestic abuse. But the kids are sooo adorable! I love them. We also went to a public hospital and it was really crowded, not very clean, and if you don’t have money you can’t be seen. It’s crazy because we live in middle class families and there are some really rich families near us too that all have fancy cars, automatic gates, huge houses with maids, fancy clothes, manicured lawns, hot water, food, access to education and doctors, and they live a completely different life just a few minutes away. The class differences are really crazy. We just had a movie night with some of the support students here and it was about two boys in Santo Domingo who are friends and one is poor and the other really rich and they end up seeing each other’s houses and neighborhoods and how different their lives are. And it’s actually really accurate according to what I’ve seen so far and what the students told us. It was ironic because the student’s house that we were at was like a mansion and we watched the movie on a huge projector in the backyard next to the big swimming pool and hot tub.

So that’s gonna be something I’ll be talking about more later once I’m more immersed. Let’s see what else….The driving here is craziness, it’s like Libya, lanes don’t exist and traffic signs are just a suggestion. There are lots of motorcycles and the pollution is terrible, it’s hard to breathe. When we go places as a group we use a guagua (like a van) and our driver is hilarious and crazy, his name is Rafael, he’s great. Another thing with driving is that when you are walking, every time a guy drives by, he honks at you, either to be flirtatious or because he wants to give you a ride. Men in general here suck. I’m getting so fed up with them. They’re always hissing, whistling, and saying disturbing things to women every time we walk by. Yesterday I just flipped someone off and swore under my breath because I couldn’t handle it anymore (mind you, he was an armed guard so it probs wasn’t the best idea but I was so mad I didn’t care). It’s ironic because it’s a super catholic country and women have to dress somewhat conservatively and everything, but then the men treat them like a piece of meat that they can play with. Assholes. Anyway, it’s gonna take me awhile to get used to. Along with gender inequality, there is a lot of racism against black people because they are associated with being Haitian and there is racism against Haitians here. Hair is actually an indicator of race here, so if you have really curly hair of African decent it’s seen as “bad hair”, that’s why a lot of people straighten their hair here to have “good hair”.

Let’s see, what other random things can I share? Baseball is the most popular sport here and is seen as “a way out”. Kids practice with sticks and rocks on the streets. Dominoes is a really popular game and people just play it randomly in the streets and parks. It’s super humid here so I sweat a ton and it’s in the 80s every day, but my host mom insists it’s cold because it’s winter here right now. This morning she was like, don’t go outside with you’re hair wet, you’ll be so cold! I don’t even want to know what it’s going to be like in april and may. I’ve already managed to lose my waterbottle with all my cool stickers =( but my friend Lila let me use her extra one, let’s hope I don’t lose this one any time soon. I drink lots of water, but I’m still dehydrated. Dominicans don’t carry water bottles and don’t drink much water so they always make fun of us. You can’t drink the tap water because of parasites and cholera so everything has to be filtered and you have to make sure the restaurants are ligit before drinking their water. I’ve been having some diarrheal issues for the past week, so I’m taking traveler’s diarrhea pills for it now, but I may have a parasite already haha, oops. We’re lucky if we get hot water for showers, I’ve had one hot shower so far. But it’s so hot outside that it doesn’t really bother me. We haven’t really explored nightlife here yet because we’ve been so busy and tired, but this weekend we’ll finally have some down time to check things out. It’s dangerous to walk at night, so we’ll be taking taxis. Robbery is really common no matter what time of day. Lila was robbed the other day and she walked into the office while we were eating pizza and was like “oh yeah so I just got robbed, anyway so we’re having pizza?” She’s been here for four months already so she’s used to all of this. You just have to be really careful.

I need to figure out how to get exercise here because even though we have to walk a tonn, we eat sooo much and everything is so greasy and stuff that I’ve already gained weight. But it’s kind of weird to go running, and the men will really bother you if you’re out running. I’ll probably either try running in the morning when it’s cooler and less people are around, or just do some stuff in my room. It’s good to be una gordita here, being skinny is bad. I feel like there is a lot more pressure on men to be in shape than women here.

Anyway, this post is way too long. But now you all know what I’m up to! There’s still so much I left out. We’ve been so busy. If you want to talk with me individually, send me a message and we can try to figure out a time when I’ll have internet access. And I have a bunch of pictures up on facebook, so check them out. Overall I’m having a great time and love my program. But there are definitely ups and downs. Like yesterday I was just super grumpy and just didn’t want to be here. It was probably because I was really tired and sweaty and the men were getting on my nerves. It’s definitely hard adjusting. Sometimes I feel like I’m on a rollercoaster. But I’ve been connecting with people on the program who feel the same so that helps a lot. Alright, I’ll keep y’all updated. Love you all and I miss you guys!

Paz y amor,

~Aysha~