From Moca to La Romana Part 3

During the course of my youth group, Rafael invited his boss, Jose Bencosme, to observe. It turns out, Jose is the kind of public servant who gets things done. He oversees the Indotel computer labs of an area encompassing five provinces and was eager to put me to work training his employees to multiply my efforts throughout the greater Moca area. When I finished up with my students at the high school, he was ready and waiting for me with more than 30 adult students, all in charge of computer labs.

View Encargados Reach in a larger map

Each point represent a computer lab where one or two my students worked

For 8 weeks, I taught a morning group of about 12 and an evening group of about 20 for four hours each every Saturday. Some came from as far away as Gaspar Hernandez on the north coast and Sabana Iglesia in the country’s interior. During the week I keep hours at the lab to provide technical support there and help people who came in to use the computers. I also ended up running around to various labs run by my students and helping them reformat hard drives and troubleshoot problems. It was a very busy time for me. I would typically visit a lab for three or four whole days, talking my student through the various steps of Windows installation, system cloning, and so on. After all was said and done I must have done this at least 10 labs.

My buddy Max Podemski came to visit. Seen here in the
Monumento a los Héroes de la Restauración in Santiago

By the time Summer was coming to a close, I had taught an entire other group of 20 people at a public lab above the post office while simultaneously overhauling its 20 computers. The requests for one-on-one lab help were still rolling in and Jose Bencosme was bugging me to let him plan me a class in nearby Salcedo.

From Moca to La Romana Part 2

While things were falling apart with the scouts a and coming together at the library, I spent a lot of time networking with other volunteers and developing a secondary project to track Peace Corps volunteer history online. During spring 2012, a former volunteer named Derrick Lewis caught wind of me while describing his workplace’s data management needs to Nate Lohman, a friend of mine living near Punta Cana. I spoke with Derrick on the phone and it was clear that we were both very excited at the prospect of me going to La Romana to volunteer at Clinica de Familia La Romana. In my exasperation at my repeated lack of success in Moca, I told him I would move to La Romana, given the opportunity.

 

I pose with the family of one of my students in her father's finca

With the La Romana project far from certain, I proceeded in Moca as if I would be there until the end of my service. Together with Rafael, I planned and led a ten-week WordPress course for a group of adults at the library. One of my students, Yoryi Carvajal, was a teacher at the local high school. With his help, I formed a group of teenagers and led them in Encargados del Futuro a curriculum developed by Peace Corps volunteers in the DR the year before I arrived.

From Moca to La Romana Part 1

When last I submitted an update from Moca, things were on the mend with the Scouts. I explained to Pablo that I would possibly get moved to another city and that I wanted to take measures so that something was retained of my efforts to update and maintain the computers at the scout lab. He called a meeting of the caminantes (the older scouts), and made a schedule for each of them to come for a couple of hour-long training sessions during the next two weeks in how to manage the lab.

Me and Joel, a member of the youth group I formed at the library

This campaign went well for a few days until, as usual, the scouts discovered they were only being held accountable to me and quit showing up. Since this was what I had come to expect, I simply stopped going to the scout lab and invested the balance of my time in the growing list of tech support requests being made by Indotel students.

An example of a home in the Moca neighborhood where I was originally placed

Indotel is the Instituto Dominicano de las Telecomunicaciones, a Dominican Institution, I first encountered on my volunteer visit almost two years ago when I was less than a month into my Peace Corps training. Indotel sets up computer labs all over the country, and as fate would have it, I met a very motivated administrator named Rafael who was running Indotel lab in the Moca municipal library.

Hello 2013

It's been at least two months since I wrecked shop in Moca (surely, a whole other post unto itself) and moved on to bigger (and better?) things in La Romana. This time two weeks ago, I was I fresh off the plane in the apartment of the generous Brian and Kristy Humpheys. At the last minute, Mom planned me a trip home for the holidays.

The house I moved to in downtown Moca. My room is behind the upstairs window on the right.

My visit to Portland was a whirlwind of emotions. I think it's safe to say that it altered the course of my Peace Corps service. Before going home, I was all set to take an extra year to finish the project I began last November. Now I'm not so sure. It looks more like I'll be asking Peace Corps for an extra couple of months beyond my scheduled Close of Service (COS).

The inside of my room in Moca. If I wanted to cool off, all it did was open the door and the windows.

It goes without saying that for almost a year, I neglected you, fair readers. Part of the reason for this has been the effort required to take and prepare photos for each of my posts. Well, I tell you now, I managed to return from the United States without the cable I was using to charge my camera's battery. Thus, I will be forced to make do with what images can be found on its memory card until such time as the cable can be replaced. Keep an eye out for new posts detailing recent developments.

Chateando, Not Chateando

"Estás chateando," remarks Hiralda, "You're chatting". It's not a question. The Dominican Republic is a country where acknowledging what someone is doing is a way of greeting them. Where I come from, Hiralda's abrupt entrance might be considered an intrusion; she simply walked into my apartment unannounced and sat down. It is just one of a series of interuptions while I try in vain to perform a database task related to a project that has emerged as an important part of my service.

A working, single mother in her middle years, Hiralda has little time to devote to leisure and is probably only vaguely familiar with the concept of internet chat. But I've learned from experience that it is pointless to try and explain that I almost never enable chat on any of the websites I visit as I consider it a waste of time and a potential harmer of relationships. Like most Dominican people I've met since I arrived eleven and an half months ago, she simply considers that chateo is what the internet is for. To suggest otherwise would be like trying to tell her that a TV isn't for watching movies, news, and soap operas.

This lack of mutual understanding is typical of most everyday interactions I have with people in my community. Despite my ongoing efforts in support of Peace Corps' second goal, I find that attempts to enlighten people concerning my lifestyle and views as an American are met with responses that reflect popular beliefs and opinions imported via American movies and television. However clear and contradictory my responses to statements like Hiralda's, it seems the people around me find ways to interpret what I say in ways that reinforce their respective worldviews.

A natural reaction to this phenomenon is to become frustrated and feel disgust toward people and in my weaker moments, I have been known to give in to such feelings. But when I appeal to myself with higher reasoning, I am reminded that there is no rule requiring that anyone around me should even so much as acknowledge me, let alone treat me nicely, and yet I have been met with practically nothing besides warm welcome. Surely, this sincere goodwill does not warrant my contempt.

When I ponder my reaction, I am reminded of the antics of controversial comedian Sasha Baren Cohen in the guise of his character Ali G, a member of England's so-called "chav" sub-culture who conducts interviews of high-profile figures in the idiom of a hopelessly confused, yet genuinely friendly television host. Despite the hilarity of Cohen's interview subjects as they struggle to be understood through his character's absurd lack of comprehension, there is a lesson to be learned about embracing one's fellow man in spite of his faults.

A particularly poignant example of the Ali G phenomenon can be found in comparing how he is recieved, respectively, by Andy Rooney and by Boutros Boutros-Ghali. When watching Ali G interact with Andy Rooney, it quickly becomes obvious that Rooney's self-importance and lack of worldliness will not allow him to overcome Ali's flaws. Boutros-Ghali, on the other hand, maintains a poise and friendliness that endure's his interviewer's confusion and provides for a reasonably successful interaction.

It was in this spirit of warmth and appreciation that I responded Hiralda's statement with a cheery, "Yes, well, sort of".

Finding One's Way in College and the Peace Corps

I was scanning the IE3 Alums Facebook group wall today when I noticed an interesting article posted by Giustina Pelosi. In Live and Learn: Why we have college, Louis Menand reviews two critiques of the current state of higher education while exploring different theories as to its purpose. Among other insightful ruminations, the article contrasts the ideas of college as society's proving grounds for specific career readiness and college as a means of gaining exposure to material that enlightens and empowers, whatever career one ends up choosing.

In the article, Menand reviews a book entitled "Academically Adrift" by Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa, which offers research that supports the thesis that completion of college is proving ever less sufficient as a measure of having progressed intellectually. While he does not hasten to agree, Menand does engage in a more fine-grained analysis of Arum and Roksa's findings, and he points out some interesting distinctions. Of particular interest to me was the comparison between students who major in liberal-arts fields (sciences, social sciences, and arts and humanities) and those who major in non-liberal-arts fields such as business, education and social work, communications, engineering and computer science, and health.

Arum and Roksa found that liberal arts students tend to show more improvement on a test that measures critical thinking and problem-solving skills than did non-liberal-arts students. Despite suggesting that there may be flaws in Arum and Roksa's research, Menand goes on to relate the (admittedly anecdotal) findings of another author who goes so far as to suggest that students who aren't majoring in a liberal arts field shouldn’t be exposed to subjects such as literature and creative writing. In the end, as one might expect from an article in the The New Yorker, the place of the liberal arts education as the great bastion of intellectual development is afirmed.

As I read the article, and the many fascinating statistics it cites, I couldn't help but reflect on how its conjecture and the arguments of the books it reviews might be applied when considering the motivation and relative success of volunteers in the Peace Corps. While the obvious reason to give for Peace Corps service is to have a try at improving lives and to promote mutual understanding between the United States and the peoples of the world, it is perhaps equally valid to acknowledge the opportunity it gives the volunteer to become a more complete person who has a variety of life experiences.

Neither of these motivations is specifically in keeping with either the more vocational path of college education suggested by Menand or, conversely, with his supposed intellectual enrichment path, but it seems reasonable to imagine that someone more interested in what joining the Peace Corps would do for him or her in the context of a specific career might fit more neatly into the former category while a person who is more of an open-ended seeker of adventure might be more closely aligned with the latter.

What makes the Peace Corps interesting in this context is that it treats both types of volunteers the same. Whether you join because you are giving serious thought to a career in international development or because you want to take a couple of years to examine your life and interactions with others, the result is the same. After ten weeks of training, you are assigned a community and tasked with doing whatever needs done to improve the lives of its members. After two years, the status you have to show for it is no different from any other person who has chosen to spend two years of their life in this way.

For my own part, I think this lack of differentiation played a major role in my decision to join. At some point during my college career I came to understand that a liberal arts degree from a small private college was the ticket to a peer group to which I wanted to belong. Unlike the the Groton boys in the article, however, I did not belong to a priveleged class inhereting the legacy of their fathers. Likewise, I was not the beneficiary of the GI Bill or part of the first generation in my family to attend college. I was merely an obedient kid who did as he was told and enrolled myself at a university. Like so many things in life, it wasn't until I had already begun that I discovered the path I wished I had taken.

In the end, it was probably for the better. I wound up in a cooperative program that afforded me some work experience in my major which in turn financed a six month trip to Guatemala to finish my Spanish language minor and experience life in another country. I took my life in a rewarding direction that would not have been available to me without the college career I had chosen. And I did it without saddling myself with a lifetime's worth of debt. It is in the same spirit of intrepid pragmatism that I have taken the leap of faith into the Peace Corps.

Like my college experience, the two years of service ahead of me offer a kind of promise that is open-ended and exploratory. Unlike in college, though, my decision not to analyze classic literature or debate finer points of philosophy will not come to bear on the opportunities available to me when I am finished. This time I proceed with the expectation that I will change during years to come in ways that I cannot anticipate. What purpose it serves is up to me.

Reflection

The crystals hanging in the window over the sink cast rainbows in the warm, late-morning sunlight. It is a welcome repose from the gloom, yet somehow no less comforting. The sounds of Espers and Avey Tare & Kría Brekkan drift drowsily into my living room office, accompanied by the sounds of starlings bickering as they muscle for territory on the fig tree in the garden.

My heart grows weary at the thought that my tour is more than halfway through. My December 20 return looms a mere 17 days away. It’s hard to believe six whole weeks have passed since my trip to Tillamook with the OMEN VISTAs. As I near the point of one week at the Artbarn, I feel great satisfaction in my progress, working decent hours from about day two onward at developing Lynne a tiny web application that will allow her to develop her web presence and continue to change an update it after I am gone.