Move In

I just moved into my new house on Monday. It's still not done yet but they are just finishing and I figured I'd rather move and start organizing while they finish. (And be a constant reminder they need to finish the job already!)

The day I moved in Yesenia came over after working at the cooperative and started ordering me around to start cleaning. Minutes later my next door neighbor Altagracia came over and said she had a team of women ready to help us... in 5 minutes there are a half dozen women throwing buckets and buckets of water on my floor sweeping and mopping my new house. They just kept coming in, one by one, big smiles and a broom or mop in hand. I started thanking them and Margarita (a new neighbor) said "Of course! That's what neighbors are for."

This was a total Peace Corps moment. I started thinking about every apartment, dorm room, moving situation I've ever been in... Usually you get some of your friends to help you and everyone else in the building or area goes about their business. This was amazing. It gives me more than a definition of what solidarity is; it gave me a feeling, an experience, a genuine understanding. It was really amazing.

The house is made of cinder blocks with a zinc roof. It is a very nice house for the community with 2 spacious rooms and an indoor bathroom. (My personal request!) The walls only go part way up so it feels more like a big tent with block partitions. But it's fantastic! It's so nice to have my own place. I feel like I've regained a bit of the independence that one has when living in the States... I can cook veggies for dinner and not have anyone ask me why I'm not eating the boiled plantains that everyone else is eating with a fried egg for dinner...

In addition to independence I have acquired house guests....namely the local children. This is a picture of Piña and Nardelin (left to right). They come over in the mornings, around 8:30 or 9am and will spend the ENTIRE day at my house. At first I was worried they would be bored or want me to give them something to do. But they are quickly becoming great companions. Piña helps me sweep, wash dishes, and joins me in my walk to the local colmado for groceries... All the women joke that I have quickly added to my family... They also offer up their daughters to keep me company at night so I don't have to be alone- "But Kate, aren't you afraid sleeping alone in an empty house?" On the contrary, I couldn't be more ecstatic to have the privacy!

It's a new stage in my Peace Corps experience. I'm 8 months into my service and really starting to get moving with activities and feeling integrated. It also helps that a new group swore in a few weeks ago, their is nothing that makes you realize how far you've come like a brand new group of volunteers thirsty for any advice you can give them. (Advice? I thought I just got here too!)

Happy 6th Month Anniversary!

Today marks our sixth month anniversary in country. We arrived in Santo Domingo, tired, nervous and full of anticipation... Six months later I celebrated by heading to the beach with a group of fellow volunteers!

We went to Playa Grande on the north coast. Amazing! I've never swam in water this clear and crystal blue. (Coming from California I am a bit of a snob about beaches.) Nothing short of amazing... In the afternoon we talked about a place called Dudu Lagoon. Other than an entertaining name the lagoon is a freshwater oasis in between the towns of Cabrera and Nagua. We decided to make a stop on our way back from the beach. We discovered an absolutely beautiful lagoon with cliffs to dive from, ropes to swing from and the place was all ours. After I had jumped from the highest cliff Letizia told me that I actually screamed twice- once when I jumped, then again when I hadn't hit the water yet! After having our fill of the fresh water we hiked back out to the highway and hitched a ride back to Nagua in the back of a pickup truck. The road to Nagua is right along the coast; it definitely makes me thankful that my country of service is a) an island and b) IN THE CARIBBEAN!

History of Cooperative

This is part of a email explaining the history of the Cooperative and of the cacao market here in the DR... let me know if anyone has any questions...

Just to give you an idea of how cacao works over here:

In 2001, cacao was sold at 400 pesos, and by 2003, the price of cacao was less to nothing in the DR, and the quality wasn't any better. I am going to discuss the prices in pesos, which are 33 to the dollar. Cacao was worth 900-1500 pesos per 50 kilo sack in 2003, and the only people farmers sold to were local community members who had an empty house for storage. Then a domestic buyer would come by in a truck and buy it from the community members for about a 3-500 peso profit. At this point there was no market for fermentation, so all cacao was sold dry. Also, a lot of the more rural cacao farms were unable to get buyers for the cacao because there wasn't any way to get into the communities, and the price wasn't worth it to bring it down on horseback. The Red (meaning network) was created by a group of farmers to organize their cacao production and try and find a domestic buyer to help get more sales to the remote (and poorest) areas. In 2003, this was great for domestic buyers, because it was easier for them to get the cacao, and they were paying the same prices as they would anyway. Then in 2005, the Red was sponsored by USAID to go to an agricultural fair in Brazil, where they met cacao buyers from Europe and the USA, and started learning about high quality organic markets and the benefits. So in 2006, the Red got its first year of organic certification, paid for by one of the domestic buyers, Yacao. With this certification, it caused the prices to rise up to 2700 pesos per quintal (50 kilo increment), but all of the cacao was still sold to Yacao and Conocado. Then in the fall of 2006, USAID sent another group of farmers to the Biofach conference in Baltimore, where they made contacts with Taza Chocolate and Dagoba. Through these contacts, we began selling small increments through air freight to Taza, and began discussing financing options for a container shipment to Dagoba in conjunction with the World Bank. Dagoba is a big buyer from Conocado and Rizek, and it seems that upon making these contacts the domestic buyers began seeing the cooperative as a threat to the cacao system here in the DR. Apart from raising prices, many domestic buyers have attempted to get the Red to commit to an exclusive buying contract with them and have encouraged high-interest loan commitments to prevent large scale sales capabilities (we are too much in debt to afford to buy enough cacao independently to fill a container). However, the price wars are just starting in this harvest, beginning in December. The idea is that if the domestic buyers raise their buying price, we will be less likely to seek external exporting capabilities. Also, as we export more, the domestic buyers see us less as a supplier, and more as competition, and have started using other intermediaries to get the cacao out of the communities. This means that we have to meet their buying price for the farmers so that we don't lose cooperative members to the competition. However, these organizations are much bigger, have huge contracts and connections in the government to facilitate export and make exporting harder for us (we have recently run into a few previously unheard of paperwork fees) with the hopes of running us out of business or keeping us as a supplier. As of now, the price of unprocessed cacao in the community 4200 pesos per quintal plus a 500 peso fermenting cost, not including transportation costs.

Peace Corps... Really?

Some days I wonder if this is really Peace Corps. My job is to export cocoa beans. I spent the whole afternoon downloading accounting software. After 3 visits to Claro (mobile phone carrier) we finally purchased a wireless internet card so the Cooperative finally has internet. These things don't really mesh with my idea of "Peace Corps". But as I was riding back from Nagua I looked at the mountains that surround my village- they are breathtaking in the late afternoon light... and I'm totally content. They say that you can never judge one Peace Corps experience from another; each situation, country and person is different.

I just started reading The World is Flat and I couldn't be in a better position to see the evidence of flatness. My community is working on an aqueduct to bring water down from the mountain. A few weeks ago I went with a group of six men from the community to see the water source for the aqueduct. We hiked for about an hour through a small creek, most all of the men carried machetes and one man went without shoes. It was amazing to see how they were going to take the force of this small body of water and transport it to our community. It really makes one appreciate when you turn on the faucet. Other than a one of many hikes I've been on here, the point of this story is that on our way back we were walking through rain forest and one of the men got a call on his cell phone from his wife. That's probably the difference between the volunteer who was here years ago and me...

Typical Conversation

Dominican man: Hello. How are you?
Me: Well, thank you. How are you?
Dominican man: I'm fine. (1 minute pause) Are you married?
Me: Yes. (For female volunteers is better just to say yes regardless...)
Dominican man: Oh... do you have children?
Me: No.
Dominican man: Oh... you should find yourself a Dominican to marry.
Me: Ah... (polite chuckle) thank you but I'm fine with one husband, I don't want another.
Dominican man: But why? You can have one here and he can have one there in New York. (In the DR they refer to the entire U.S. as New York. They will ask "what part of New York are you from?" and I say "California.")

Funerals

On New Years Day the father of my host sister’s husband passed away. This afternoon I went to his funeral. Here in the DR there is typically always a funeral to go to. The DR tradition is that the day after someone dies, and the following nine days are dedicated to grieving. After the nine days are up they have the funeral. Because of the length (and the fact that 90% of the highway road traffic is comprised of motorcycles) it seems that funerals are constant activities within the community. Before I went I was talking to the secretary at the Cooperative, Yesenia, about funerals. She prefers the Haitian tradition that whenever a baby is born the community gathers together. They cry, howl and grieve for the difficult life, full of work and hardship that is to come in the newborn child’s life. They view life as work and strife. As a result, when someone dies they have a big party and celebrate because the suffering is finally over. The person who has died no longer endures difficulty, they are free.

I’m not sure I’d like to view life in the same way, but I would much prefer to celebrate the ending of a life well lived than to mourn the loss.

January 10, 2008

Tropical Storm Olga

I took 3 women from my Cooperative to an Artisan Fair that was held in the Capital from the 7-9^th of December. We sold cocoa powered and enjoyed our weekend. Monday morning the ladies headed back to La Peonia and I headed to a meeting at the Peace Corps office. That afternoon we received a message from our Emergency Coordinators that a Subtropical storm was approaching and to travel with caution; we were to contact Peace Corps on Tuesday morning for further instructions. Tuesday morning we were called into to “Consolidation”- that all volunteers are to consolidate into their small regional meeting points or into the general consolidation points i.e. Santo Domingo and Santiago. If I were to have been in my site I would have had to pack a bag and head for Santiago, but since I was in Santo Domingo I just stayed put. Now… consolidation is both good and bad. Bad for the obvious reasons associated with natural disasters; good because it means a hotel with hot showers and air conditioning. Volunteers often take advantage of situations like this to actually get clean and enjoy a meal of something other than rice, beans, yucca and plantains. Although I haven’t been a volunteer for long- it’s wasn’t hard to appreciate the opportunity. We spent Tuesday through Thursday relaxing in our hotel rooms watching television in English.

Tropical Storm Olga hit the north of the country hard. Many domestic food sources were damaged; countless people lost their lives and many communities dealt with flooding in their homes. Personally, it knocked down my host family’s kitchen and blew part of the drying tunnel at my cooperative away. In situations like this it is hard not to feel a little removed from your community. You are comfortable and safe while they are spending sleepless nights listening to the wind and rain and watching the water levels rise. It’s one of the many times you can’t help but feel guilty. As much as you integrate into your community and work alongside Dominicans you are still the American and your perspective of events within the country affect you differently.

December 20, 2007