Reality Bytes

September 21, 2008
(Our one month anniversary in-country!)

¡Saludos!

As today marks the one month anniversary of our arrival in-country and the 10 day marker of our five weeks in “community-based training,” I feel like it is a good time to share some of what I have been digesting recently - literally and figuratively.

Sink your teeth into this…

I take a bite out of my community…

Where in the world are Alanna and her fellow Community Economic Development trainees? About a week and a half ago, the 17 of us left the “big city” we called home for 3 weeks and settled into new homestays in a northern farming town. For the duration of our time here, we will undergo more sector-specific training and fine-tune the business and personal skills we will need to be effective volunteers in the field.

Among the first of our assignments fell the task of familiarizing ourselves with our neighborhoods through a “community diagnostic.” Although it sounds simple enough, and this was only the practice for the real thing months 0-3 of service brings, the project was not exactly a piece of cake. Knocking on doors and asking to interview new neighbors, compiling daily activities schedules and oral histories, and conducting a SWOT (Strengths, Opportunities, Weaknesses, and Threats) analysis was nothing compared to having to actually draw out a map of streets, houses, businesses, and farmland – whatever vestige of visual/spatial talent acquired through middle school art classes did not exactly reveal itself through flipchart paper and travel-size magic markers.

Although the project confirmed my suspicion that art is not my calling (check that post-service possible career path off the list), it did help the other trainees and I gain more confidence and experience compiling and analyzing community data and condensing it into a technical presentation. For that matter, it also pushed us to fine-tune our professional Spanish and put ourselves out there in our new neighborhoods. As a result, I now feel more fit to assess and integrate into my permanent community – and already nostalgic to leave the new friends I have made by being that inquisitive gringa they invited in for juice.


…and their delicious fruit.

Speaking of juice, let it be known that I might as well have turned into a banana or an orange at this point. The diet changes that come with life in a new country have thus far been bittersweet. Although my calcium now comes from an unidentifiable type of cheese fried in some artery-clogging oil and my coffee is practically syrup from all the sugar “mixed” in, I have readily embraced the abundance of local fruits that make it to my breakfast, lunch, and dinner plates. While you too might be able to acquire the aforementioned types of produce at your local Safeway or Stop and Shop, does your family blend you goiaba and passionfruit juices on a daily basis? Does a new acquaintance extend an olive branch in the form of a pitahaya? (please google this fruit...I will be sure to put up a photo when I finally get the opportunity to upload pictures). If so, remind me to ask you where you live when I’m finally ready to re-locate back to the states.

Take a bite out of crime?

From my entries thus far, I’m guessing that two things have become apparent: 1. I enjoy themes (often maintained through expressions and figures of speech) and 2. I am a glass-half-full kind of gal (please see point #1). In spite of the latter, I have reached the point where I must make the disclaimer: the point of maintaining this blog is not for readers to see everything I am experiencing through rose-colored lenses.

As the title of this section implies, I was recently forced to confront a rather dark universality: no matter where in the world you are, bad things can happen to otherwise innocent people. Just a few days ago, a local robbery that went awry left a man in my neighborhood dead and another two in the hospital with bullet wounds. After enduring so many training sessions on identifying signs of dengue and the importance of wearing a helmet on a motorcycle, crime had fallen toward the back of my “Peace Corps fears” list. I do recognize that the tragedy that inflicted my host community could have just as easily have occurred while I was living in Sao Paulo, Brazil, or Washington, D.C. Nonetheless, as someone who happened to be walking down the same street just minutes after the culprits sped off, I could not help but briefly rethink what risks I have subjected myself to in choosing to live in an unfamiliar place.

Bugs take a bite out of me.

To close on a lighter and yet more immediate “threat,” I must admit to being attacked on a daily basis – by one of the signatures of Dominican wildlife, something we refer to in English as the “no see ‘ems”. Yes, I breathed a sigh of relief when my supervisor told me the swellings on my legs did not come from malaria-carrying mosquitos. However, comfort quickly turned to cursing as the inexpressible itching set in. So far I’ve tried bug sprays, long pants, special soaps, and an interviewee’s ointment she supposedly imports from Milan, and I still look like I have chicken pox from the knee down. Excelente.