Scale and Degree

A typical lunch: arroz blanco, pollo gisado, guandole gisado con jama, Coca-Cola

My state of mind in the last three days has alternated between varying levels of acceptance and disbelief. While I am no stranger to some of the sights and sounds of Latin America's developing countries, the comparisons between my past experiences and this overwhelm me in scale and degree. Whereas there were roosters in Honduras, there are as many roosters here times three. If the hour at which they crow is early, their calls are twice as early here. If in Guatemala the stereos and engines of cars and loudspeakers of vendors were loud, here they shake the walls.

A gecko

Scarcely an acre in each block of my barrio is free of asphalt, cement, cinderblock structures, enormous mango trees. On every block there is a building whose walls announce in foot-high neon-colored lettering that it is a banca, a kind of gambling establishment. Another Oregonian could not be blamed for mistaking the noise outside my window on this Saturday afternoon for a parade, fair, or rodeo, complete with booming music, announcer's voice, and the chatter of crowds, both on television and in person. The illusion is only broken by the occaisional table saw, jackhammer, or bomba (motor for pumping water into a rooftop reservoir).

My enormous bed with mosquito net. I heard through the grapevine that this room usually belongs to the don and doña.

Training: Week One

The barrio (neighborhood) where I reside, about half an hour from Santo Domingo's city center is a short walk from the Autopista Duarte, a busy thoroughfare with between three and five lanes in each direction, depending on the time of day and whether or not you're waiting at an intersection. For 20 Pesos (less than a dollar) you can take a carro publico to the guarded entryway of our training center, a mere five or ten minutes away.

Training sesh. Sabine approves!

Our days in training begin at 7:00 and end around 5:00. Typically, a day is divided between three or four sessions. Examples of training sessions have included ways of identifying safe public transit and information concerning how to stay healthy and address health situations that may arise.

Training Manager Jennifer McGowan droppin science

Although it is difficult to gauge after only two days, it appears to me that the staff has found a good balance between holding our hands and a giving us freedom. For example, I had help getting to my host home from the training center yesterday and returning in the morning. Then, today I had a member of the language faculty (a native Dominican named Tonya) walk me through the process of taking a carro publico home with the four other volunteers who live near me. From this point forward it will be up to us how we get to and from training.

My Santo Domingo Host Family

Before I describe my host family, it's important to know that I live in a grouping of three dwellings which together contain no fewer than four generations. My host mother, a grandmother, is second-oldest. Her name is Doña Ramona and she is a grand woman, quietly astute and refreshingly casual. Her mother, Doña Ana, is a lady of profound faith who, at 108 years of age, displays remarkable presence of mind when scolding her great-grandchildren or explaining to me the divine love of the Espiritu Santo.

These two never slow down (Isis & Yoelito)

A few steps from my room is the bedroom where four of the little ones watch Cartoon Network and sleep; Isis and Yoelito and their cousins Margarita, and Luisito. Wendy, the mother of the former two, lives upstairs from us with her other son and daughter. Her sister, Mari lives upstairs in the building behind us where she makes cakes and juices to sell in front of the nearby Sirena supermarket. Downstairs can be found the teenage girls, Daly and Michelle in one room and my host mother and father in another.

My barrio friends hang with some of my host family. From left to right: Doña Ana, Doña Ramona, Dory, Margarita, Amanda, Dora.

Staging

Peace Corps DR trainees wait in the DC hotel lobby at 4:00 a.m.

Outside my room, a fellow trainee strums his guitar while members of an American Christian high school mission trip sing Katie Perry and Gnarls Barkley against the backdrop of Santo Domingo traffic noise, engines and horns that echo down the halls of the San Pablo retreat center. A few hours ago, we met some members of the medical staff and recieved an injection, the first of eleven we're required to have before we become volunteers.

The last 48 hours went by in a blur. After a tearful goodbye at PDX and a day of travel rendered breif by passing through two time zones, I found myself with two new Peace Corps friends, Ryan and Scott, gawking from Scott's parents' car at the Washington Monument and the White House, all lit up in the night. After a dinner graciously paid for by them, I struggled through jet lag and anticipation to get a decent night's rest.

The next day held a whirlwind of workshop sessions called staging that gave us trainees an opportunity to get to knows one-another and go over some training material pertinent to our experience across the gamut of Peace Corps countries, whether in the Dominican Republic, Burkina Faso, Peru, or elsewhere. For seven hours we did things like perform skits about proper volunteer conduct and illustrate aspirations and anxieties about the coming two years. Sleep came easily.

Preparing to depart for the training center on our first morning in-country

In the DR at Last

Greetings, loyal readers. It took me almost a couple of weeks, but I've finally managed to settle in and find an internet cafe near the busy intersection of the freeway that runs by the suburb of Santo Domingo where I live during training. Power outages here happen literally every day. Internet service is spotty and there is seldom running water. Fortunately, I have been successful at charging my computer and having been journaling faithfully while offline.

While I got here today without the SD card that houses my mobile blog software, I have a number of posts already in the queue waiting to be uploaded. Unfortunately, in the beginning, their timing will be characterized by a two-week delay. However, as time goes on, my hope is this will erode until my posts are no more than a few days old when posted.

Also, if you've been trying to reach me via email, please be patient. A couple of weeks without access have rewarded me with no fewer than 200 unread emails. Needless to say, things are a little bit different here.

Peace Corps Book Club Part 2: River Town

On a Valentine's day unlike any other, I spent another ninety minutes with the CRPCA book club, this time in the welcome company of Peter Hessler. He is author of River Town, a book about the time he spent teaching English at a college in China's Sichuan Province. As I began to read Hessler's book, it's understated charm slowly began to infect me until the reading of it became a careful indulgence, something to be savored. I found myself poring over it's pages, often re-reading sentences to be sure that no edifying morsel of stark, expressive prose was left unexamined.

Perhaps what stands out to me most about Hessler's stories in River Town is the compassion with which he manages to capture the people and events of his time overseas despite countless baffling, often humorous examples of what makes the Chinese culture so inscrutible to the American mind. What makes the book even more interesting is the fact, we learned, that it was written in just eight months during Hessler's difficult reentry period following his time in the Peace Corps.

In a delightful turn of events, my good friend Stephanie Austin turned out for the book club and we proceeded to have a Valentine's day evening, conspicuously free of flowers and lovers' sighs.

Taxes, and Flight Plans, and Cars, Oh My!

Well, as my March 1 departure looms ever nearer, it's beginning to seem as if this Peace Corps thing isn't just something I've been hallucinating for the last year and a half. The first thing that really made it seem real was getting rid of my car. I've had my '93 Toyota Camry since about 2003. As of last week I no longer have it. It's an odd feeling knowing that a constant, faithful presence in my life for 7 years is gone and I won't see it anymore.

I did my taxes on February 1 so I'll have time to receive my refund from the IRS and mail a check to the Oregon Revenue Department before I leave. I have to give my mom the power of attorney so she can do this for me while I'm gone. Even after spending more than 3/4 of my AmeriCorps education award (which counts as earned income), I still have a refund larger than what I owe the state (hooray for not finding work!) such that my net refund is $371. That get's me most of the way to buying a ticket home for Mom and Rich's wedding!

What really made me reckon with my future, though, was an email I got yesterday saying it was time to call the government contractor that would make my travel arrangements to staging in Washington, D.C. A phone call later and I was booked on a flight out of Portland on the morning of February 28, bound for the capital via Chicago. Yet another threshold crossed.

The Peace Corps has given me a document to share with friends and family who wish to keep in touch with me during my service. In addition to hosting it here, I'll be attaching it to a big email I send out when I'm about to go: