Better Things!

I promised, but ultimately it is you who will be deciding if these are indeed better things. :-)

As my research project starts to slowly drain the life out of me, my time here is becoming increasingly shorter and shorter.  Luckily, the CIEE program realizes that service learning is both intense and time-consuming, so they set aside a week-long rural stay in the middle of the semester.  This rural stay gave our group the opportunity to grow together, experientially learn about rural life in the Dominican Republic, and also to take a breather from our booked lives.  While I usually like to have fun with the format, there’s quite a bit of ground to cover, so I hope you can bear with me as I write a pretty ordinary blog post to describe an absolutely amazing experience.

Rio Limpio (Clean River) is not a river.  It may look like a town named after a river, but it’s not.  There is a river in Rio Limpio, but it’s not called Rio Limpio.  I just wanted to clarify that.  Rio Limpio is actually a small rural community in the southern region close to the border of Haiti.  Now, while it would be cool to have visited a small community that had never hosted Americans or Europeans, Rio Limpio had seen its share of foreign visitors before our arrival.  The institutions such as C.R.E.A.R. (Centro Regional de Estudios de Alternativas Rurales)  and Seddiel (Servicio Dominicano de Desarrollo Integral y Ecoturístico Local) that were already in place were examples of positive foreign influence, which is quite rare in the Dominican Republic.  We specifically worked alongside C.R.E.A.R., a two-year agricultural school which gives junior and senior students in need an opportunity to receive both a high school graduation and an organic farming license.  The school was founded in 1982 by Mark Feedman, a former Peace Corps volunteer.  There is a rich history….blah blah blah.  Look, if you want to learn about these AWESOME organizations, just follow these links.  I’m not really good at histories and such. 

Let’s begin, shall we?

Day 1 (Arrival):

4 ½ hour Guagua rides are not usually comfortable, and this one was, unsurprisingly, not comfortable.  Did you expect me to tell you that it was comfortable? Because if you did, you must be surprised to find out that it wasn’t.   Oh, and just wait for the return trip (no, that does not give you permission to skip the entire blog to Day 6, but it does provide incentive to take that speed-reading course you’ve been eyeing at your local community college). As I rolled out of the door, I was greeted by MOUNTAINS!!!  Not just mountains, but literally MOUNTAINS!!!  They were so close you felt like you were being smacked in the face every time you stole a glance at them. MOUNTAINS!!! Did that hurt? No? Then you didn’t quite understand what I just said.

We got settled in our cabin and prepared for our first day, which was to begin after a hearty lunch.  We were given a tour by some of the C.R.E.A.R. students, and proceeded to fall promptly asleep after our feet had fallen off and our brains had stopped.  After waking up and Kristina performing her master surgery skills once more to reattach our feet (see Alta Mira photo album on Facebook), we went to the restaurant for a nice, simple dinner of oil and carbs. We were then treated to a night of dance! Considering the fact that most of us do not have any idea of how to dance, it was a…observational experience.  Actually, almost everyone (including myself) was able to try a traditional dance with very African roots, and once the merengue broke out, the dance floor was a little more crowded. Going back to the traditional African dance, I actually had the opportunity to play with the drummers! They said I was pretty good, but they had also had their share of rum, so I wouldn’t necessarily take their word for it.  After some more drumming and dancing, I headed back to the cabin for some well-needed rest.

Day 2

We began our day at 7 AM with breakfast.  I was covered in mosquito bites, and I had a few spider bites on my neck and fingers.  My finger would later swell up to about 1 ½ times its normal girth, and my neck would later look like an oddly shaped hickey, but at the time, I pretty much just wanted to scratch myself constantly and call it a rare skin condition.  Anyways, after breakfast, we hopped, skipped, and jumped our way over to C.R.E.A.R. for our first lesson.  We made our way down the dirt path to the land of the Jaboneros: a covered area with cubic piles of…fertilizer.  Now, if you think that making fertilizer sounds disgusting or really boring, think again.  It was like riding a roller coaster at Cedar Point, except replace the long lines with wise advice and replace the awkward tummy aches with a tiramisu made out of organic material.  That’s how awesome it is.

Domingo was our main man during this first activity, and he deserves his own, separate, blog post.  The man is the Yoda of the Dominican Republic. He speaks slowly, and focuses on preparation and training before action, he has the balance and athleticism of a 20 year old, and he carries a lightsaber.  But in all seriousness, Domingo taught me far more than simple organic agricultural techniques during our week in Rio Limpio.  I was lucky enough to work with him on three separate occasions and simply talk to him for around forty-five minutes, and learned life lessons that I plan on carrying with me daily.  If you want to hear more about him, please ask.  As for now, let’s elaborate on how he taught us to construct a Jabonero.

Step One:

                Take your machete and create four big wooden stakes to use as guides.  Make a cubic structure, 4 ft. by 4 ft.  Proceed to take your pitchfork and loosen up the ground.

Step Two:

                Set down a bed of dry banana leaves and other dry materials. Cover bed with wet materials. Rinse and repeat as desired.  Wondering where the wet materials come from? Well, you can get them from the pig pen, cut down a banana tree in an unsustainable location, or take some pre-fallen banana trees.  Proceed to cut all materials with a machete.  Lots of times.  Because it’s fun…

Step Three:

                  Trim the sides of the cubic structure with a machete. It looks nice and provides the proper structure for decomposition.

Step Four:

                Wait three-five days for the temperature to heat up to around 40-50 degrees Celsius.

Step Five: Flip the Jabonero in order to make the bottom feel better about itself and the top more humble.

So, after we created the Jabonero, we made our way to the main building for lunch.  It was Rice and Beans.  Surprise!

After lunch, we split up into four groups.  I was lucky enough to work with Dominigo again, and Rachael and I built steps and dead barriers to halt erosion.  Words don’t do this experience justice, but let’s just say that after spending a few hours gathering sticks and putting them into rows doesn’t really make any sense until you climb the extremely steep mountainside that you’ve been working on and look down on an actual organic erosion stopping process.  And if you don’t believe me about the steep part, if I would have slipped in the wrong place, I could have easily gone tumbling to my death.  Agriculture is not for the weak of mind (nor for those who don’t know how to use a machete…I really have to make sure to get a quality one over here before I leave).

Day 3

After making an amazing French toast breakfast, we waddled our way down to the local Haitian primary school.  A bilingual primary school built to educate Hatian immigrants in the community, the funding is scarce, and the school is only able to meet twice a week.  To work with these kids for just 3 hours was not nearly enough to get to know them and understand their situations, but the simple tasks we held with them, like making paper airplanes, clay figures, and fingerpainting, definitely allowed us to interact and more fully realize the limitations that they were facing in the Dominican Republic.  At the end, we were fortunate enough to sing some songs (Row Row Row your boat), do some drum circles (gotta love the rhythm exercises!) and play some games (POISON DART FROG!!!).  Again, an experience that I can hardly describe, but one that had a profound impact on my week.

Following a hearty lunch of…Rice and Beans, we learned the lesson of patience as we watched Domingo create a double bed.  While we did get to practice, our time limitations forced us to learn through observation.  As some of the group began to get antsy, Domingo explained his reasoning through his seemingly infinite wisdom: While practicing is where you will gain the most information, you need to fully understand your task in order to practice correctly.  Once you have the foundation, you can practice wherever you like, while if you have no foundation, you will forget your practice and know as little as you did at the start (paraphrased, but that’s what I got out of it).  And then we fertilized.

Day 4

During this day, we were all able to split up and interact with community members who were involved with subjects that we were doing our research on.  My meeting was in the afternoon, so I was able to float around.  I began my trip with Dan, who demonstrated his balance skills by promptly falling into the deepest part of the river.  While waiting for him to dry, I headed back to the Haitian school to take part in an awesome Duck Duck Goose game (I lost).  I then continued with Dan and Juanito to the Agroforestry part of Rio Limpio, where we were shown the ins and outs of sustainable agroforestry and the management required to maintain this sustainability.  After returning, I met up with Ashley for three seconds and then headed to the Taller (workshop) of a local artisan.  His work is gorgeous, and Olivia was creating her own spoon, which is the staple of the artisan’s work.  Don’t worry Tim, I got you one.

As the afternoon rolled along, I witnessed the greatest thirteen year old bachata musician I’ve ever seen.  He played the guitar with more soul and spunk than I’ve seen in a long time, so I hope he is able to make it big someday.  I fiddled around with the bongos and guitar too, but the chat I had with the owner of the restaurant was the highlight of the afternoon.  We talked about the limited resources would-be musicians have in rural areas such as Rio Limpio, and how he personally was able to follow his passion.

And then, BASEBALL.   I hit a Grand Slam. That’s all you need to know.

Day 5

Lots of talking. Comedy Acts. Bachata Kid makes his return. Crossdressing and Don’t Stop Believin’.  Take all of those things and construct whatever day you can imagine with them.  That’s pretty much how the day went.

Day 6

 Our final day of the trip (don’t worry, I’ll get to the guagua part soon), We began pretty early by creating a clay stove.  It involved a lot of playing with mud and pushing wheelbarrows and such. I had a clay face and my fingernails still have mud in them.

After the stove was completed, we found out that the rain had prevented Raphael, Guagualympic champion, from coming up the mountain. No worries, we just hopped in a truck and made our way down…wait, did I mention that it was raining? And that the road was muddy? And that there were seven of us in the back of a truck with most of our luggage? And that the road was really bumpy? And that there was a metal thing sticking into my back? And that the mud splattered all over me to the point  that I looked like the Swamp Thing?  Great times…great times.  It was by far the most uncomfortable and rewarding experience that I have ever had in the back of a truck. Oh, and the girls were singing Party in the USA and Lady Gaga.  Ten times better.

Thanks for sticking with this one! Believe it or not, there are only two months left, so enjoy the blog while you can!

-Chris

Comments

Posted on 2/28/2010 by

Chris Vazquez

Sorry I repeated myself a bit. It was a long entry...

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