the beginning of the end

Close of Service Conference. Say whaaaat?!

Seriously, I never thought this day would come. When I applied for Peace Corps and then landed on this island six months later, 27 months seemed like an eternity. But although the days are long, the weeks and months and years (!!!) have truly sped by. Time flies when you’re having fun and love what you do. I’m extending for a few months so my service isn’t quite ending yet, and my entire group has two more months before our time is up but we just finished our Close of Service Conference and oh man, real life feels extra real right now. The conference was three days in a nice hotel/conference center with our entire group of 47 volunteers (the first time our entire group has been together since we swore in!) and the focus was on reflecting on our two years here and learning how to represent our time here as we begin planning for life after Peace Corps. I have been skimming job descriptions casually for a while now but I made a deal with myself a while ago that I would get serious about it after COS Conference. These past couple days have made me realize that as much as I’m excited to return to America, that prospect is also completely terrifying! On a whim I began researching international positions too, including Peace Corps Response which is a program to send returned volunteers and other professionals with relevant experience on shorter term, very specific assignments. And although I have no idea what I plan to do when I leave the DR late this summer, I must admit that this position in Peru has me way more excited than any US-based job description I’ve found. Funny that continuing in the Peace Corps in another country is way less daunting to me than coming back to America! One piece of advice I took from our conference is to not let fear stop you from applying for any job – applying doesn’t mean you have to take the job if you get it so even if you’re unsure, just apply. So that’s what I’m doing. Applying to work in the US, Peru and Panama to start. We’ll see what else I find in my job search. But I sure hope Peru wants to give me a shot!

It’s a weird mix of emotions when Peace Corps is coming to a close. Excitement to return home, uncertainty of what’s next and how you’ll feel in your own culture again, sadness and sentimentality over leaving a place and people you’ve grown to love. I’m glad I have a few extra months to let it all sink in. And I’m especially glad that a large portion of my group is sticking around a bit longer too. It speaks a lot to this place and this program that many of us don’t want to leave quite yet. All I know is that this has been the experience of a lifetime and I’m infinitely grateful that I went through it with this fine group. It’s a bizarre kind of love that comes from doing Peace Corps together but this group sure has a lot of it. Here’s to what’s next for all of us. 517-11-01 is going to do big things, I know it.

Thanks for the picture David Richie!

mi casa es su casa

Welcome to my new campo house tour! I realize I never actually did a tour like this of my old house, but believe me when I say this is quite an improvement. I really loved my cozy little house with few amenities in my old site and thought it would be hard to beat but with my site change, I’m moving on up in the world of Peace Corps living!

View from the road. Blue, pink, red, and white. Yep.

It’s about twice the size of my old house.

Laundry day.

My living room. The house came mostly furnished! The rocking chairs are my favorite part. And the ridiculous color combos.

My kitchen. Yes, that’s a sink with running water and everything! And I have a refrigerator now! And a water filter (the stacked buckets)! And no rats (yet) and my cat that I got just before the site change ordeal is coming to live with me soon so hopefully he’ll keep this a rat-free zone! Overall, a serious upgrade from my old no-water, tiny, rat-infested kitchen.

Another kitchen shot. Food and dishes are all stored in/on the yellow table.

My bedroom. It was originally unpainted so the walls were gross old wood so I chose to paint them really pale green to lighten things up. Shoutout to Lucia for the tablecloth and the bedspread-turned-wall-hanging! It’s covering up a mighty ugly rotting cardboard divider wall. Also notice all the cards hanging at the top of the purple wall… those are cards, notes and postcards you guys have sent me over the past two years – thanks! Keep ‘em coming… I’m here for about 6 more months.

The other side of my room. Shoutout to Barbi for the scarf-turned-bathroom door/curtain! Note the super tall bed… I have an extra mattress for visitors, hint hint! And yes, that is a sleeping bag and yes, I sleep in it every night. It’s cold in the mountains, at least by Caribbean standards!

My closet, which is awesome and so organized compared to the stick with hangers on it for hanging clothes plus plastic chair stacked with folded clothes at my old house.

Organization! Let’s see how long this lasts…

My desk/picture wall.

This is what happens when you don’t do laundry early enough in the day and nothing is dry by nighttime… oops!

A REAL BATHROOM!!! With a shower and a toilet and everything!

Just to compare: here’s my old house. That structure of scrap fabric/metal? That was my bathing area where I took bucket baths. I fixed it up by wrapping it with a tarp since I was taller than the fabric in some places. And my toilet? The gross latrine at my neighbor’s house (or if it was #1 and at night, a chamber pot. No, I’m not kidding. They sell plastic chamber pots here that people use at night so they don’t have to walk out to the latrine).

The latrine at my new house. Nice, clean, totally acceptable, just missing a door/curtain. But I don’t even have to use it because Peace Corps insisted my landlord install a toilet inside so I wouldn’t ever have to go outside at night. I guess that the perk of moving after a security incident?

The back of my house. The cinder block part is the kitchen and bathroom, which was a more recent addition to the half block, half wood front part of the house. And the stone masonry circle you see there is the start of the base for a clay oven I’m building with a few nearby volunteer friends! More pictures of the oven to come soon. We’re all really looking forward to making clay oven pizza but it’s a slow process since we have to haul all the sand and clay and rocks ourselves.

So that’s my new home. Visitors welcome – mi casa es su casa!

And to answer the question I’m sure some are wondering: How am I a water volunteer with running water in my house? Well, it’s not the norm but I sure am glad to have it. Don’t judge, but I will admit that my hygiene has immensely improved with a shower in my life. No more itchy head from only washing my hair once a week! But anyways, the community I’m working in now has an existing water system that runs from a river in the mountains up above down to the town below and all the campo communities along the way cut into the pipeline. But the purification system isn’t until you get to town so the water is horribly contaminated when it reaches all the houses in my community. The water often runs visibly dirty from the taps but even when it appears clean it’s still not suitable for drinking, cooking, etc. We got the water tested and it has 54,000 parts per million contaminates, of which 45,000 parts per million are fecal contaminates. Gross right? I bathe in that. And do my dishes and my laundry in that. It’s just straight river water with cow pastures surrounding the source so there’s no surprise it’s contaminated but putting a number on it sure made me feel a bit grody. But I keep reminding myself that it’s no worse than the river I bathed in at my old site. Luckily the community I live in now is very proactive and despite not having to struggle to carry water from a well or the river for daily chores like in my old community, they decided they had had enough of all the health issues associated with this bad water so they solicited a water volunteer. We are still waiting for funding but luckily we found a spring source nearby that has minimal contamination so we’re working hard to plan for construction and management of a new aqueduct that will provide clean water from a backyard tap to the 100 participating homes. This won’t replace the old water system, but rather compliment it by providing water for drinking and cooking while the old tap water can still be used for household cleaning and laundry.

Also, the aqueduct in my old site is underway and going great! They have been working for 6 weeks now and have more than half the pipeline installed. 4+ kilometers of 80cm deep trenches all dug by hand in a month and a half – that’s seriously impressive speed digging! The entire system should be done in May if funding rolls in as scheduled.

winter in pictures

i realized i haven’t posted a single photo in months so here are some shots from november through new years – mostly of baking and crafting for PC parties and events though, i’ve been slacking on the picture-taking of my regular life lately. i’ll take some campo/real life shots this week so check back next week for another picture post from january to present day (including my new house!).

love and miss you all,

E

thanksgiving baking

team pecan – 2 days, 20 pies, 4 volunteers, 1 mansion!

how we do turkey day in the caribbean

happy thanksgiving!

4 kinds of pie = my kind of thanksgiving

baking team for the peace corps christmas party

a small example of how i entertained myself while living in the capital during my site change

christmas photo shoot at dora’s site

paper bag stockings

why yes, that is an apple pie covered with oatmeal raisin cookie. merry christmas!

photoshoot props were best idea i’ve ever had

mustached pcvs on new years eve in cabarete

view from my beach chair while ringing in my 25th bday and new years at the beach

my host family’s house where i lived for the month of january. it’s waaay up on a hill above the community

view of the surrounding mountains from my host family’s house – quite a change from my old site which was flat and hot!

baseball playoffs in santiago with other cibao-region pcvs

out celebrating a friend’s birthday while in the capital translating for a medical mission

New year, new site.

Hi there. Things are crazy right now so here’s a quick post to tide y’all over until I can really get into everything that’s been going on this past month. It’s been a whirlwind!

Things are good.  I’m living with a host family in my new site but I found a house so after a few repairs I’ll be moving in soon, yay! For now I’m just trying to get things rolling on the water system there while still trying to help out with the project in my old site. The good news is that about US$7,000 of materials (about 1/4 of the entire project) were delivered there yesterday so La Guamita is about to start digging trenches and laying the pipeline! A big shout out to my PCVL (third year volunteer for my sector) who has taken on the on-the-ground part of the project since I can no longer be in the site. We met up in the big city last week to spend some pesos on PVC pipes, picks, shovels, etc and he’s going there tomorrow to get started on construction. I’m also finishing up all the prep and planning for the new project (I’ve spent a total of less than 2 weeks in this new site and managed to do what took 3+ months for my first project… I guess building aqueducts really does get easier the more you do it!) and finally got the budget sent off today to a Mormon group who plans to buy the materials for the project. So now we wait for materials and work on community organization, although this community is way more on top of things than either of the other communities I’ve worked in and I have 2 other volunteers working with me so things are looking to go a lot smoother this time around. That is very promising since really, in the scheme of Peace Corps, I should be cruising at this point and closing out projects rather than starting a huge new one! It all depends on when we receive the materials for the project but at this point I’m hoping to be stateside for good (or at least for a while) sometime this summer. So that’s that. I’ll send more details, pictures, etc when I can. Hope all is well at home!

 

Happy Holidays!

Merry (late) Christmas from the DR! I’m in the northwest part of the country visiting a friend’s site for a few days before we head to the beach for my 25th birthday and New Years Eve festivities. This week a group of my volunteer friends who didn’t go home for the holidays got together for a rather nontraditional but super fun Christmas Eve and Christmas Day that included decorating a tree that we painted on the wall, making spiced apple cider, baking and eating lots of desserts (cranberry bread, chocolate cake, banana coconut bread and apple pie with oatmeal raisin cookie dough baked on top!), listening to lots of Christmas music, making “stockings” on paper bags for exchanging cards among the group, and eating a traditional Dominican holiday meal of puerco asado (a whole roasted pig!) with my friend’s host family. I’ll be sure to share pictures soon. I hope you all had a wonderful holiday as well!

Que pasan una feliz Navidad y un próspero año nuevo!