Week Fame and Hurricanes

Huge week for the Buffalo Bills and the Bills Bar in Dominica! I hope everyone enjoyed the Buffalo Bills making Tom Brady cry like a little girl as much as we did in Dominica. The only thing that came close to rivaling that this week was being quoted on the front page of the Buffalo News about Tom Brady’s girly hair http://www.buffalonews.com/incoming/article568402.ece

That’s right. The Buffalo Bills Backers Bar in Dominica was featured on the front page of the Buffalo News on Saturday morning with a big picture of Ma Clem, Glen John (my neighbor) and myself. I am still quite excited about it. There will be nothing better than giving Ma Clem a huge framed picture of herself on the front page of the newspaper!

Since I wrote this on Tuesday I have not had electricity or water. Dominica was brushed by Hurricane Ophelia and it was ugly. Flooding, landslides and unpassable roads were the norm for the past two days. Being incredibly lucky I didn’t have to leave my village and avoided spending countless hours stuck in a bus or walking through knee deep mud.

I have been better about storing water for times when the water goes out (about once a week for around 18 -24 hours) but I was absolutely not prepared for 48 hours. I had plenty of drinking water but no cleaning water. I had to step up my indoor survival skills by doing things like collecting rainwater and manually pouring it in the toilet tank to flush my toilet, screaming at anyone who approached my refrigerator to make sure NO coldness got out (luckily I have a Dominican style refrigerator which has an icebox that has to be defrosted which I whine about but because of it the 5 pounds of chicken wings I purchased are still frozen), putting up a mosquito net at 3 am while holding a flashlight, and most importantly making sure that your faucet is closed even when the water is off lest you come home to an entirely flooded kitchen that makes the straw mat, handmade by your landlady, smell like a moldy barn.

Luckily everyone is safe in Dominica and all of the damage was to property and not people.

But still- this is some rough damage:

Stolen photo of Massacre- a town south of me

Dominican Phrase Book: “Current” is used instead of electricity and it is referred to as an object.

Example:

Adorable Grade 3 student when the lights went out: “Miss! Miss! They took the current!”

Neighbor: “Air-een, did they give your current back yet?”

Week 33

I had both a Buffalo miracle and a Buffalo whatever-the-word-for-uncertainty-about-whether-it-is-a-good-or-bad-thing this week.

First and foremost, the Buffalo Bills Backers Bar in Dominica had access to NFL on NBC for the first time ever for exactly 32 minutes on Sunday afternoon. Those 32 minutes were the crucial 4^th quarter of the Bills embarrassing the Raiders. For clarification, that was the miracle.

The uncertainty was on Monday afternoon when I got a call from a number I didn’t recognize. I have not “topped up” my phone this month so I have almost no credit. Dominicans don’t leave voicemails so call screening is irrelevant. As it will cost me money to call people back, I now answer every phone call regardless of whether I know who is calling. The gentleman calling was none other than the towel guy (TG) from my post about networking in March (to refresh your memory he came out to a networking session in just a towel and mimed to sit down at us before he returned to yell at everyone about their Godlessness and only liked me because his children live in Buffalo). He informed me that he had a project to be written up and had requested assistance from a Peace Corps. He was directed to me by the Peace Corps office and was “pleased that is was the girl from Buffalo”.

I met with TG on Tuesday and while I was more prepared for the meeting it was still just as ridiculous. He showed up in a full boy scout uniform. I complimented him on how nice the building looked, windows and doors had been put in and it had been painted. This was the wrong thing to say. The group that owns the building had decided that they want to use it again after TG and his group repaired it. The project TG wants to work on is building a new rehab center because they have been asked to leave the building. I asked if they needed to leave soon, TG told me they need to leave in March. I explained that there was no way to get funding and build by March. He informed me that they had to leave by March 31, 2011.

The project he wants to work on will be incredible if he is successful. He donated a plot of land adjacent to a river in the south of Dominica and wants to build an eco-friendly, organic farm/sustainable rehab center. His idea is to have a center, which improves and protects the land around it while providing a rehab program. He wants to clean the river and reintroduce native species that are endangered, plant trees to increase the water level and maintain an organic farm, which will provide work therapy for the clients and sustain the center financially.

The need is extreme (there is not a single alcohol or drug rehab center in the nation) and his program is already quite successful (they have reintegrated into society 12 out of the 60 people who have come through the program). The project will be enormous though. The land is not yet “accessible by transport” thus a bridge will need to be built before anything begins, there have been no surveys of the land and while he wants a building that “flows with the landscape” no such building prototype or architect has been identified making it impossible to produce any sort of budget.

So the idealist in me agreed to come on board of the now two-person team as the grant writer.

No Dominican Phrase Book this week. Check back next time.

Week Bills are going to the Superbowl!

Let’s go BUFFALO! The Bills Bar in Dominica was open this week (although the bar did not actually have access to the Bills game but I wore my Bills shirt and booed for every team on TV). We kicked off the season with the Dominican equivalent of chicken wings- spicy chicken back stew. It was delicious.

School started again last week. I had a double ear infection (both of my ears had swimmer’s ear that became an infection because the water stuck in them was dirty and then infected my ear drums) so I only went on Thursday. I’m working on many of the same projects I was doing last year; tutoring children who are very behind in classes, working with Hands Across the Sea (you can still donate to get us more books and art supplies for this year!) to set up the library, cleaning up the computer room, etc.

I’ve added on two projects that I am incredibly excited about. I’m working with a young woman in Salisbury to set up a resource center in the unused building above the school. There are some Salisburians living abroad who came back for Reunion and offered to collect donations to send down for the center. We’re envisioning a big open room with a reading corner, tables for tutoring and homework help, a craft area and using the stage that is already in the room to have some theatre programs. Currently there are no consistent after school activities (there are sports that happen on and off one day a week after school) and its clear that some structure would behoove many of the children. I’m hoping to incorporate a peer tutoring program (like the one I had last year) into the after school program as well.

My second project is expanding the House competition. The students are divided into four houses that currently only compete on the biannual Sports Days. They have house assemblies once a week, where instead of coming together as a whole school they meet by house. The summer camp lover in me saw this as a waste of potential competitive spirit. Where are the cheers? The songs? The inappropriately serious rivalries? Most importantly, why are we not using this to con children into cleaning and participating in activities that they would otherwise not care about? Thus I have worked with the principal to create a much expanded house competition system to encourage academics, cleanliness, school spirit, sports and active participation in all my future projects. If you know any good cheers please send them this way! Next week I’ll begin teaching house chants and the Bear Song.

Dominican Phrase Book:

Waist pain. When I was a child I was painfully dramatic, a hypochondriac and a whiner. Apparently everything that came out of my mouth was in a whine until I was around 7. My mom still teases me about my waist pains. I used to complain that my waist hurt all the time, which was due to my waist cancer. I’ve found my people. Dominicans all have waist pain and they talk about it incessantly.

Strong, grown man: “Air-een, my waist is so bad. I been taking rum all day and the pain in my waist not leaving me.”

Middle-aged woman: “You know when you start bleedin’ and you waist does hurt you all the time.”

Small child: “Miss Air-een, my waist is broken!!!”

Adorable children anecdote:

The children have begun calling every interaction they have with me a “club”. Some children came over and played UNO the other day, everyone wants to join the UNO club. A little girl borrowed a book and I have had many requests to be part of the book club. There is also a baking club, a bay club, a slinky club and, my favorite, an essay writing club.

Week 31

EMERGENCY UPDATE: I completely forgot to mention that last week I ate accra, a pancake made out of tiny fish without bones, and over the weekend I ate black pudding, sausage made out of congealed blood. I am using these as my two biggest integration steps for my Peace Corps report. BLOOD SAUSAGE!

Most of the moments when I want to laugh out loud by myself happen on the bus. This is quite troublesome because there is nothing to pretend I am laughing at. I’ll table bus stories for a couple weeks after this.

Yesterday morning I heard the bus pass up the hill so I grabbed my partially packed bag and a banana for breakfast. I got on the bus and ate my banana before we left Salisbury. The bus was not full and I had nothing to put my banana peel in so I held it curled up in my hand. As we left Salisbury the woman next to me who I have never seen before yelled at the driver, “Aaron, stop a while at the trash!” Aaron pulled up alongside the trash and I thought, how lucky, now I can throw away my banana peel. Before I had a chance to the woman next to me strongly advised, “Throw that ripe (as opposed to green bananas with are a starch Dominicans eat) banana peel in the trash now!” I threw it and turned to see if she wanted me to throw anything but she did not. She stopped the bus to allow me to throw away my banana peel. I was not sure if this was incredibly kind or rather rude that my banana peel was so offensive to her and she was so bossy.

During training the Dominica Associate Director (Patrick- who is outstanding) told us a story/joke. Two men leave their respective villages, separately, to find a new place to live. The first man reaches a new village and finds an old man sitting at the entry to the village. He asks the old man, “I’ve left my old village in search of a new place to live. What are the people here like?” The old man responds, “What were the people in your old village like?” “They were all a** holes, that’s why I left!” The old man spends a moment thinking, “They are exactly the same here!” The man mutters about jerks and walks off. A bit later the other man looking for a new village to live in sees the old man and says “I’ve left my old village in search of a new place to live. What are the people here like?” The old man responds, “What were the people in your old village like?” “They were wonderful! They were so kind and generous. Leaving my village was very hard.” The old man doesn’t hesitate and says, “They are exactly the same here!”

I try to remember this story whenever I’m unsure about whether I should be offended or not.

Dominican phrase book: “Where da road be?” The Chinese Government has a large rather complicated agreement with the Dominican Government to donate/lend the money for several big infrastructural projects. There are many political issues that I do not completely understand but if you like developing country politics be sure to look into it.

One of the projects is the repaving and building of a road down the west coast of Dominica. The road before was painfully terrible, with so many potholes that you weren’t quite sure what level the road should be at. The repaving has just reached Salisbury. Salisbury is perpendicular to this road with one main road and 2 feeder roads coming off of it. Starting last week each time I leave Salisbury and come back someone asks, “Where da road be?” meaning “Where are they currently paving the road?”

Favorite usage:

Teacher at my school: “Air-een, where da road be now?”

Me: “Ummm… in front of the school? Which road? What?”

Other teacher: “The road is just so, I saw it this morning. Where Frederick for Sylvia’s son lives. Just so by the church.”

1^st teacher: “Frederick’s son with the green van?”

Other teacher: “Wi. Air-een, you must have seen that coming down from town.”

Me: “Oh yes, it was just so.” (Just so is the correct answer for any direction question. You point in the general direction and say “Just so.”)

Here are lots of pictures of my friend Kyle’s visit. Luckily he takes pictures.

Kyle in front of the waterfall we will climb tooth and nail to reach.

The treacherous ascent to the waterfall.

Kyle made it to the waterfall!

Kyle trying to heal his scrapes and bug bites in a natural, hot sulpher pool. I'm not sure why he looks so uncomfortable. Maybe because this was the 7th picture I took trying to make him not look blurry.

Bubbles coming up volcanic fissures in the Sea at Champagne Beach

A fish

Scott's Head- I think I've already included a picture but we snorkeled to the shelf (where the water gets darker is a HUGE underwater cliff) that day

Me- snorkeling at Champagne, although it also looks a little bit like I've drowned

Coral snorkeling at Scott's Head