Week 2

Birthday

We remember to throw our trash in the trash can!

Take Care of Life: Don't Throw Trash!

Kite Surfer

 I feel like I have been here much longer than two weeks- so much has happened! The week began with a kite surfing competition. We all bused up to La Playa Blancha and hung out at the beach watching the surfers. They were incredible- they’d fly up 20-30 feet, do some crazy flip and land effortlessly. The girls decided we may have to consider taking some lessons. Red Bull hosted the whole thing so there was a big party and people handing out free stuff everywhere. I got some Men’s Dove Deodorant. Score. Monday was our first ocean dive! My group went first and we plopped backward into the ocean. Salt water makes you much more buoyant so we deflated our jackets and sank down. I was immediately overwhelmed by how beautiful everything was and the pressure in my ears. After we stabilized, we swam around and got to explore. We saw a huge school of these long metallic fish, a giant conch shell, two flounder, and a big stingray. The coral, fish, and water was amazing, really felt like a different world. We also swam over to the nursery to see the cages and coral gardens that we’ll be working with. We have three more ocean dives to go before we are certified. We were hoping to get them all done this week but its been really windy, making the current too strong for diving. We also started our fishing project this week. The Ecological Foundation was finally granted oversight of the entire Punta Cana coastline just this past month. It has been extremely overfished and polluted for years, and the scientists here asked us to assist them in taking samples each day, measuring the fish and tallying how much of each kind they are bringing in to get an idea of the populations they are working with. The fishermen are not very fond of us as they never had to do this before, but I liked meeting people outside of the resort. We weighed and measured the fish, from barracudas to grouper to red snapper. The big, expensive fish is put into Group A, which is sold to the resorts and restaurants for tourists. Everything else goes to Dominican markets, which made me sad. It was fun but we smelled terrible afterwards. Wednesday was my 20^th birthday. We all stayed up late Tuesday night working on projects so the girls were wonderful and brought in my birthday at midnight with oreo icecream and cupcakes. I ate 5 of them… Don’t judge me it was my birthday and I haven’t had dessert since coming here.  It was a chill bday, spent it with everyone reading for class on the beach and writing papers at the pool. So much work but its impossible to feel stressed when you’re doing it under a palm tree. Our professor wasn’t able to come this week so we had a skype lecture in the mornings and he gives us our readings and assignments for the day. Hidalgo calls himself the slave driver and has definitely kept us busy, but I am loving the material. We are learning about Caribbean history and current events, looking especially at globalization’s (mostly negative) effects on these developing countries. I have especially loved learning the history of Haiti, it is incredible. On my birthday one of our assignments was to write a song about the history of pirates in the Caribbean. We recorded a rap to the tune of Fresh Prince and Hidalgo loved it so much he asked us to video tape us performing it. When we all said absolutely not he made it a graded assignment that he is going to post to the program website. Ben heard about it and promptly bought us pirate costumes to wear for the occasion. We all want to die and keep putting it off in hopes he’ll forget about it. He hasn’t. I got to go into Veron this week. I volunteered in Nate’s Sex Ed classroom and will become his teaching assistant once he returns from the capital on February 27^th. We played AIDS dodgeball with the kids. You have a white ball and a red ball to represent the different blood cells and slowly AIDS takes over. It was strange that it was so fun. We also went to VCOMM, Virginia Tech’s free medical clinic in Veron. Medical students from Tech work there for a month at a time and I am helping out in the pharmacy, organizing medications and medical paperwork. They need all the help they can get- it is a tiny clinic, probably the size of my basement and it provides care to over 80,000 people in Veron when it should really only be used as a first care center. Women who give birth there are forced to leave within a few hours, sent on a bus back home with their new babies because there simply is not enough room for them to stay. I was pretty shaken up but the perspective it gave me only makes me want to go back. I know I can’t handle blood and many of the things that come through the clinic, but am happy that I can still assist in some way. It has been difficult going back and forth between these two worlds. When I arrived in Sierra Leone, I was overwhelmed by the amount of poverty. Coming home was an even bigger culture shock, as I realized the extent of the disparity between the US and Sierra Leone. It scared me that the world was set up like this and that those two worlds were only separated by an ocean. But here, those two worlds exist only a 15 minute bus ride away. I watched the slums of Veron disappear out the window, passing trucks full of migrant workers returning from their day of work on the resort. We enter the security gates of the resort community, passing the golf course, vacation homes, and palm trees planted nicely in a row along the median of road, which is no longer gravel, but paved. It feels so surreal, but I am so thankful for the my time spent there this week. Another highlight has been this Australian research duo that is staying here. They are studying this endangered species of nocturnal rats and go out every night at 3 am to locate their nests and plant food for them. We were all eating breakfast yesterday morning and they burst in saying “WE FOUND THEIR SHIT! WE FINALLY GOT SOME SHIT!” and showing off their little box of rat prized terds, their faces expressions of pure joy. I guess everyone has their calling in life- someones gotta save the rats and test their poop. I was walking to lunch with one yesterday and we walked out the door and he pointed out a gecko, told me all about the particular species until we got downstairs and he spotted a dead bird on the awning. To my horror, he went to go pick it up and tell me about that species of bird. I was suppressing laughter as we continued to walk when he picks up a tarantula and is shoving it in my face, pointing out the 8 eyeballs and these blue dots while I then fought the urge to cry and sprint in the opposite direction.  He released it and we continued when he bends over to pick up a fourth time. I couldn’t make this up. He picked up a giant beetle, saying “Oh would you look at that frontal prong! Enormous! Just beautiful isn’t it?” That one did me in, I started laughing so hard, the guy is absolutely nuts. The Australian accent only makes it that much better. Hidalgo got in last night and he is awesome. He is one of those people who is so passionate about what he is teaching and insanely intelligent. Makes me excited to learn. He knows the history of everything. We were eating French fries at dinner and he suddenly asked me “Berlin, imagine a world without potatos. What would it be like? How would that effect the world?” and went into the history of potatoes and their role in the Columbian Exchange. When that conversation was over he suddenly asks, “Berlin, what does culture mean to you?” I don’t know Hidalgo, I’m just trying to enjoy my fries. This morning Jenna and I got to go back into Veron for a mural painting project with Sabine. We were there by 8:00 to get started. Sabine looked so relieved to see us, they had made recycled art for a contest and it was windy so the projects were blowing everywhere. After moving the tables inside, we let the kids in through the gate and chaos began. I was wearing a shirt that said “Reebok” on the back, and the kids changed my name from “Catarina”, to “Reebok”. At first, we were pretty good at having the kids wait in line for their paint, sharing brushes, cleaning them, etc. But after about 45 minutes, we were all covered head to toe in paint, the kids were painting each others faces, and four mural spaces were painted white instead of just two. The 120 kids and gallons of paint were victorious over Sabine, Nate, Jenna and I, and there was nothing we could do about it but laugh. The murals took all afternoon and turned out awesome. The kids are incredible. I made a special friend in Elia, a little boy who followed me around and was quick to help with whatever needed doing. The older girls are only around 13-15 but are so mature, most of them take care of many younger children at home and the kids do not mess around with them. I would be speaking in Spanish, desperately asking the kids to line up and stay in order, don’t stick their hands in the paint buckets, please stop painting mustaches on each other, etc., and Maria, Ava or Diana would shoot them a single look and they’d all scramble in line. I couldn’t understand one of the older girls names, but we joked that she was Chica Cuchilla- Knife Girl. We didn’t have a screw driver to open the paint and found this butchers knife. The girl told me she cooks at home and volunteered to do it. I felt like a nervous mom I was getting so paranoid but she opened them all like it was nothing. I worked with Maria and Ava most of the day painting the more detailed parts of the murals while Sabine directed the little kids with the handprints. I kept telling them how thankful I was for their help, it was such a chaotic morning and I may have gone insane without them to help me. They were so sweet and encouraging of my Spanish, cracking jokes with me and teaching me slang. The older girls are all in Sabine’s “Brigada Verde”, which is her girls environmental awareness club. They invited Jenna and I to come to the beach with them tomorrow, and I was so bummed to decline because of our trip. However, I am SO excited to spend this upcoming week traveling around the country. I have been dying to see the real Dominican Republic- beyond the confines of the resort and am looking forward to gaining a broader understanding of this country and its beautiful people!