Where did Eva go?

I'm here! It's been awhile, but here is what I have been up to (again in photos!!):

Spider Monkey aka Little Kitty and Shakira are best buds - they play all the time!

We built a 15,000 liter water storage tank. Some Water Systems Volunteers came and helped. It was a new way of making the cistern - the first one in the community. The family paid for the materials, and we supplied the labor.

During the summer I taught a class called "Cientificos y Ingenieros" (Scientists and Engineers). Not a very creative name, but we did some fun stuff. Here the kids are vinegar exploding the volcanoes they built with salt clay.

My neighbor/ best friend/Girls Club president turned 15.Your 15th birthday is called your Quincinera and it is the big birthday for girls. She had a big bash and we took about a gillion photos of her with her cake and dress.  I finally got rid of the gallons of corn wine I had accumulating in my house and served it to all the guests.

One of my Women's Centers organized a trash pick-up/bottle collection day. As I have probably mentioned before, no one uses trash barrels - they simply throw all trash on the ground. To clean up a house, one of the female residents has to periodically sweep up all the trash into a pile to burn it. In the meantime, the trash blows everywhere and the community gets dirty!

Trash management is difficult anywhere , but especially where there is no one picking it up and just making it disappear. There is just no good way to get rid of it. We have three options: burn it, bury it, or throw it in the dry riverbed. And there is no "whole foods I bring my own tote to the grocery store" mentality here. Everything goes in a plastic baggy! And that baggy ends up on the ground. Each management option has its pros and cons, but I encourage burning it out back behind your house, far away, when there is no breeze.

Celebrando el Cibao (Celebrating the Cibao): The Cibao is the northern middle region of the country, known for its fertile soils, menegue tipica music, and dialeect (I am not sure what it is, but you will hear it when I speak.). This was a conference that I co-coordinated with another volunteer. It talked about diversity - race, religion, language, sexual preference, food, music, you name it - everything that makes the human race diverse. We had guest speakers, played games, did activities, anything to promote respect and tolerance. This photo shows an activity called "Around the Word." The kids received "passports" and got to travel from poster to poster, each one representing a country.

It was a great weekend - probably one of my favorites. Some of the highlights were the following. A young Dominican guy  came to talk about being gay. Gay and lesbians do not enjoy the freedom and respect that they do in the states, especially in the rural areas. It is very much looked down upon, especially when being it so acceptable for a male to be a machismo tiguere (womanizer). I know that in the states there is still a lot of hate against gay people, but here it is scary. Most of the gay/lesbian volunteers never tell Dominicans for safety reasons. Working with young kids is great because they don't have all the stereotypes from their parents yet, so the kids were great and asked a lot of questions.

World Dance Party: On Saturday night we had a dance party that started out with the volunteers featuring dances from a around the world. Peace Corps Volunteers are generally pretty traveled, cultures, and all around awesome. Meg lived in India for a year and could dance some Indian dance, Andrew s Brazilian and danced Capoeira, another girl knew how to do an Hawaiian storytelling dance, Eli from Nebraska danced a country swing, and I showed them some South African gumboot. We taught the kids moves from each type of dance, but of course the night ended in a big menegue/bachata/reggaeton party.

Religion talk: A Lutheran priest came to discuss world religions and the fundamental values of each one. We had them meditate, prostrate towards Mecca, and sing a Spanish kum-bay-ah. I liked the lecture, I think they all left not really grasping that these are religions like their own Evangelicalism or Catholicism, but they know that something exists. Small steps.

Lunch. No seriously, and it's.... well.... good.... What you are seeing is a goat head and its mondongo: liver, kidneys, esophagus, etc. The Doña takes the edible parts off the face, chops it up with the mondongo, and then cooks it with spices, garlic, onions, and other delicious things. There is a lot of goat up in my region; Montecristi is known for its chivo picante (spicy goat).

The other day I attended a party in a neighboring site, and we ate another kind of head soup: pig head! This one was called a hervida (literally, "boiled"). It consisted of green bananas and plantains and pig head. My bowl had the ear (crunchy) and lots of thick pieces of fat. The broth was very flavorful!

Health group! This is us (minus 2). We're rockers. You rely on each other for project support, mental counseling, back massages and happiness.

The Centro de Madres in my community did an activity in which they got to color in a paper doll that represented themselves. I had them brainstorm all the things that they are - mother, sister, cook, teacher, agriculturist, friend, etc etc, just so they could see how much they do and how important they are to their family and their community. They got a kick out of it!

This is at a Conference for Escojo Mi Vida, the youth sexual education initiative. In groups, the youth had to present a topic such as abusive relationships, AIDS, early pregnancies, depression, etc using three mediums: art, mimicry and song. It led to some really creative thought and a lot of laughter. When youth are less scared to talk about a subject, say stds, and they understand it, they are less likely to screw it up. As I have said, the goal of Escojo is to reduce the number of early pregnancies and teach youth how they can avoid stds (including HIV). We did a lot of leadership-building activities with them that weekend.

Third and last day of Celebrando el Cibao. This is me with the two youth a brought to the conference - Nelfy and Yenni. It is not standard here to smile in your photo...so although they don't look happy, they were!! They had the time of their lives!

My friend Ryan was the head mason for the tank build. He built an aqueduct in his community, and is now helping out other volunteers with their projects. It took 5 days to build the tank.

Kids playing in the tank as we made it. They actually helped out a lot too!

Boys in the community helping out with the tank build.