Back Home

Got back from Santo Domingo last night and it's nice to be "home". I guess its interesting how your mindset changes when you spend an extended period of time somewhere. I don't think I'll ever really think of Cabarete as home, but compared to anywhere else on this island, it certainly has that feel. A brief summary of Santo Domingo, for those who may not know: Santo Domingo is the capital of the Dominican Republic and has somewhere around 2.5-3 million people. It was the center of the Spanish colony during that era (although Columbus actually first landed on the North Coast a little West of where I am) and has contintued to be the focal point of the country since the country won its independence. Santo Domingo is a bit like Cabarete in that it has extreme poverty, but also a group of affluent people. The difference is that the people with money here seem to all be foreigners, while in Santo Domingo there are upper class Dominicans. One evening we went to a mall to watch a movie and have a little taste of being an American again (I saw Pirates of the Carribbean) and it was a little odd to see Dominicans shopping at all these boutique type clothing stores and whatnot. We stayed in the colonial zone which is contains many old buildings and remnants of the colonial era. I could actually walk around the corner from my hostal and see the 500 year old house where Diego Columbus, Christopher's son, lived. Christopher didn't really spend much time in SD, but his son Diego was, I believe, the 3rd or 4th governor of the colony and had a much more substantial role in the early years fo the colony. Also near there, is a large cathedral which is the oldest still opperating cathedral in the western hemisphere (there was one in Mexico City that was built a few years before this one, but it was destroyed after a few decades). There are also various other smaller churches, colonial buildings, and remanants of the old city wall that protected the city from actack by land and sea. Outside of the colonial zone there are some interesting things to see, but SD is by and large a sprawling mass of people and uninteresting city environments. One thing outside the colonial zone that all mention is the Columbus Lighthouse. This is a monument that was finished in 1992 to coincide with the 500 year anniversary of the "discover" of the new world. It supposedly contains Columbus's remains, but Italy and Spain also claim to have those. The best part is that this building has the ability to shoot an enormous beam of light into the night sky that takes the shape of a cross that can be seen for many miles. In a country that has chronic power outages, it was decided that a good idea would be to build a monument that would require an ungodly amount of energy to display. Brilliant. The end result is that the light beam is almost never turned on. So, after 5 nights in SD, I was definitely ready for the 5 hour bus ride back here to Sweet Home Cabarete. I may go back again sometime in the winter to see a baseball game, but I'm not even sure about that because I could also do that in Santiago, which is 2 hours away. So that may be my only trip to el capital. We'll see.

This Week

The expanded census has consisted of two main parts: (1) going to the other neighborhoods that consist primarily of (but not all) Dominicans and (2) going back over what we did last week and collecting more information. The latter part is information we "missed" last week. "Missed" meaning things we neglected to collect according to our director's perspective, and "missed" meaning things she told us not to collect before we started, but this week she says she wanted us to to collect, from our perspective. In either case, we've completed both parts now as of Thursday evening. This really ought to do it for the data collection portion of the project. Tomorrow I think we may be tabulating some of the data. If the census is expanded again or anything else needs to be corrected it's going to have to wait because the four of us are planning on taking off for Santo Domingo (the capital) next week. Now, mind you, this isn't us being insolent, we we're told in advance we would have this week off. It'll be nice to have an extended period of R&R. I'm sure I'll check in again before I go. Until then.

Faster Than I Thought

As it turns out we were able to finish the census Thursday afternoon. This happened for two reasons: we split into four teams in order to cover more ground and the streets became much less dense as we worked our way to the end of the neighborhood. This was quite exciting for us, as this was interesting work, but not something I would want to do for an extended period of time. Our elation was short lived, however, as the reward for finishing so quickly is that we are now going to include some other neighborhoods. ("It's a problem of motivation, Bob. If I work my ass off so that Initech ships a few extra units each month, I don't see another dime. So where's the motivation in that?") I'm not sure exactly which neighborhoods this will include or how large they will be. Hopefully it won't be all that much more work. Anyhow, it's been a nice relaxing weekend thus far. I stayed in and read last night, and got up early to go surfing this morning. After this I'm headed to the beach. Hopefully none of you are flying anywhere soon, that sounds like a real headache right now.

Harkins, out.

The Interim

We're in a bit of a strange period here at the DREAM Project, as the summer camp is over and most of those volunteers have left, but the regular school year hasn't started and most of the full year volunteers aren't here yet. For the next couple of weeks the four of us that are carryovers from the summer are conducting a census of sorts. This began on Monday and will continue until it's finished, which we really don't know at this point. Monday we went to the DREAM office and all sat down and hashed out what we were going to do with the director on speaker phone. What we concluded was that we are going to ask a series of questions to every household in the Callejon neighborhood. Helping us in this endeavor have been two Dominican teachers and a Dominican college student. This may not sound like it should've taken much time, but most of Monday was spent figuring this out. We had to decided exactly what questions to ask, what kind of teams to break up into, how to make sure we weren't double counting houses, etc. etc. Tuesday we began the real work. We initially broke up into three teams, each with a Dominican in the mix. We believed, and proved to be correct, that this would put the people at ease and eliminate the tension and suspicion that can arrise from a bunch of strange foreiners knocking on doors and asking questions. We made a lot more progress on Tuesday than I thought we would, which gave us encouragement that we could finish the data collection in about two weeks. Today was a little discouraging at the beginning as we found ourselves in a downpour for much of the early morning. It rained through breakfast and the walk to the Callejon, which takes about 30 minutes. It continued to rain as we waited under cover for it to lighten up. After it lessened to a drizzle, we finally hit the streets. Periodically, however, it would switch back to a downpour and we'd have to find cover. Things weren't looking good. After about an hour, however, the sky cleared and the sun appeared. This made things a lot easier as we didn't have to worry about our papers and supplies getting wet, not to mention the nuisance to us. With the sun out, however, it turned the whole area into a hot, humid, swampy bog. So we got to slog around in mud and garbage the rest of the day. We did end up making good progress, though, which is the most important thing. Most of the time, I don't do much talking during the interviews, but just try to listen and follow the conversation. I also try to make up for this by following our map (which was put together by one of the teachers' husbands--and has been quite useful) and making sure we know where we are and where we need to go. A couple times I did do the questioning, which usually resulted in some success, but also some confused stares. I was always with one or two other people, however, who could clean up my mess and get the point across. I think this whole activity is a good way to help my Spanish. Well, that's where I stand this afternoon, it's off to dinner now. I'll tell you about that situation some other time.

El fin del campamento

Well, the summer camp is finally over. The past week was a little different than the previous four, and was referred to as Olympic Week. There were basically no trips, and the original groups were disbanded. In place we mixed all the different ages together and divided them up into 6 groups named after the 6 continents (sans Antarctica). Then we had various competitions and awarded points for each place. At the end of the week all of the points were tallied up and the top three groups were given medals. I was a part of Autralia and had a pretty good group all in all. It was nice to have some older kids who were generally more well behaved. Unfortunately, however, team Australia came in sixth place, or, fifth runner up as I preferred to call it.

There are a lot of changes going on with the organization in general now, as most of the volunteers have left or are leaving in the next couple days. It'll certainly be different with only four of us, as opposed to 40. In a couple weeks, though, we'll get the rest of the full year volunteers in the mix. Starting monday, those of us who are here are going to be doing a census of sorts in the poor neighborhood where the camp was. Were going to be collecting data mainly on the kids and their levels of education, as well as the parents and their levels of education. It'll be interesting, to say the least, to see how this all works out.

I don't know if I'll be able to get any pictures up for a while, but I'll try. Hope everything is going well for all of you out there.