El Djomba: January 2011

Saturday, January 15, 2011

5 Months in 3 days

Hi friends and family! Dan and I are both working hard on our initial community diagnostic. For Dan, this looks like meeting after meeting with different sects of the orphanage to seek information about NPH. For me, it includes a lot of walking around to different houses, informal introductions, visiting and an array of different styles of coffee or cold drinks. We are learning more about our community, eliminating generalizations and making connections. I am learning to slow down because time is definitely necessary for this process. For example, yesterday my goal was to execute 5 interviews with 5 different families. I completed 3 and an organizational interview. Through the process, I learned about specific family relations, the full names and ages of the family members, and what programs and curricula the family is interested in. Sometimes I learn more; one of the families I interviewed keeps bees, another family makes 30,000 pesos a month which is great for a rural Batey, another family has two daughters with scholarships studying in the Batey. In general, I have learned hurricane George displaced many families and demolished most of the houses in the Batey. I have also learned that most of the employment is not in the Batey, most families commute to San Pedro de Macoris or Juan Dolio to find work. Every interview and going around the community makes it feel like this is my barrio, this is my community, and this is my home.

Saturday, January 1, 2011

Happy Holidays...Felicidades

Our first and quite possibly our only Christmas in the Dominican Republic was a new and exciting experience. For the three days leading up to Christmas Eve, we woke up at 4am and sang Christmas carols with a group of 30-40 people throughout the Batey. It was a fun tradition, we would go from house to house and went through this tradition of, "Open the door, open the door" and the person in the house would open the door and turn on the light and everyone would cheer and say, "Feliz Navidad." After the carols at 6am we would all have tea or hot chocolate and then go back to bed. It was a DR tradition that just made us both feel happy to live here. On Christmas Eve, A pig, 3 chickens, and a goat were slaughtered and butchered in our back patio. Post-Christmas there are only mother's with baby animals around the Batey, every other animal has been sacrificed for the annual meal. For Christmas dinner, we went to the orphanage and feasted outside on the basketball court with a house of boys. Following the dinner we had more food and a host family gift exchange extravaganza back in the Batey (with our adopted host family, they adopted us). We watched Love Actually with subtitles and passed out quickly for the night.

When we woke up, nearly every single person with the exception of us on Christmas day was dressed in new Christmas duds, this is a DR tradition. The local colmado (convienence store) was blasting bachata tunes for three days straight, and apples and grapes were being exchanged for the Christmas celebration. a slew of strangers showed up in the Batey from many different families from many different locations. There were several full trucks of families driving in and out of the Batey all day with lots of smiles, tears and hugs.

We missed our family and friends terribly and realized that next year we will probably go back to the States; however, we are so glad we had a chance to experience this rich cultural tradition here in the DR.

Feliz Navidad, Merry Chrismas, Feliz Nuevo Año y Happy New Year!

With Love, Health and Peace,

Phoebe and Dan