El Seibo

El Toro del Seibo statue at the town's prinicipal intersection


On Thursday the time arrived at last to say goodbye to the capital and to two-thirds of the trainees as we went our separate ways to our various sites for Community-Based Training (CBT). My group, the ICT volunteers relocated to El Seibo, a charming little town that dates back to colonial times and was home to the mother of Duarte, father of the country's independence from Haiti in 1844.

Piracy is widespread an accepted. This guy made me buy something before I could
take his picture.

Our first morning in town we were given the task of finding and taking photos of as many things as we could from a list of 30 things. Examples included an entire family on a motorcycle and someone carrying things on his/her head. While I was hesitant at first, I found I rather enjoyed the scavenger hunt and that it was a good excuse to cruise around town for a bit and get the lay of the land.

Downtown El Seibo

My host family here is quite different from in the Capital. My host father runs a trucking syndicate and is actually a consistent presence in the home. He and Doña Daisy (my host mother) have three daughters, aged 22 to 26, and a grown son who is a doctor. The older two daughters have houses elsewhere in town. One of them has a baby of perhaps two or three months. The youngest daughter attends college in Santo Domingo and returns home to work during the weekends.

This truck drives around all day blaring advertisements from its enormous PA.

I spend most of my time with Daisy and her fun-loving maid Felicia learning about Dominican culture and making them laugh at my peculiar American responses to their questions and comments. In addition, they have another boarder, a development worker with KOICA, the Korean foreign aid agency. She is interesting, but speaks very limited Spanish and only sometime understands better when I repeat myself in English. Thankfully, there are no ear-splitting shouts of toddlers or children imploring me to join them to watch WWF and Kids' Network.


Wow is El Seibo's premier disco