April's Travels

Jarabacoa


at the hotel: Thanks USAID!





Development Professionals

I just found a blog I wrote back in April, so I guess I should publish it.

I feel that each day could be a blog entry because every day is so full of amusing, unsettling, and downright unexpected occurrences. After a year in country, the people of the island of Hispaniola have not lost their ability to shock me with their words and actions.

The month of April held a few interesting excursions for me. I took advantage of the USAID conference location to pay fellow volunteer and good friend Jenn’s community a visit. I have been to her site once before and it is one of my favorite places I have been in the country, mainly because it is so different from my community. When I conjure up images of the Caribbean I do not think of lush mountainous villages where greenery and flowing rivers mingle with guava and coconut trees, but this is the reality of the area of the country around Jarabacoa, known as the adventure capital of the Dominican Republic. Tourists come to this centrally located high altitude pueblo to go white-water rafting, to scale gorgeous waterfalls, and to breathe in the fresh mountain air. After a relaxing weekend spent nourishing body and soul cooking great food (think thai peanut sauces and tons of vegetables), hiking, and swimming in mountain rivers, I remembered the things in life that I cherish and that are often hard to obtain as a poor volunteer trying to survive on the border with Haiti: exercise, recreation, and healthy food. Sigh…I suppose my brother did warn me that part of Peace Corps life is becoming a porker as you eat carb heavy meals and your diet spins out of control with stressful situations while everyone plays the let’s see if we can make the Americana eat until she is in pain and then tell her she is looking fuerte (euphemism for gorda)…It is all a part of the experience I suppose because dino kale, almond butter, rice milk, and countless of my other favorite foods I just cannot seem to fit within my peace corps budget, nor are they readily available at my local colmado.

After the weekend in Manaboa (Jenn’s community) I went on down to attend the USAID conference in Jarabacoa. Representing Peace Corps at the conference made me feel rather out of my element because it was obvious to all involved that one of these people was doing the wrong thing, one of these people just did not belong…me! The seventy some-odd people that attended the conference were USAID employees, employees from various Dominican NGOs and other international NGOs such as Save the Children, The Nature Conservancy, etc. All present were development professionals with fancy cars, a nice wardrobe and hot water in their homes. I guess I was serving as the link to what these agents of change had lost touch with: poverty.

The conference focused on how to mitigate and manage environmental impact from USAID funded projects in the Dom. Republic. Basically if a building project is funded by USAID money then a long and detailed monitoring report needs to be filled out by the organization using USAID grant money. I was attending because Peace Corps volunteers fund many of our projects with Small Project Assistance Grants (SPA grants) from USAID and because they often fund stove and latrine projects, we should technically be filling out these forms. However, we don’t and I suppose that is where my role came in. I learned lots of new things about how to prepare these detailed MPR’s (Mitigation Plan Reports) and how to assess environmental impact and did lots of networking and schmoozing over copious snacks and hor-dourves but so far not too much has materialized from my attendance at said conference. Hopefully when our new country director comes in a few months I will explain the legal importance that Peace Corps comply with these standards and we will begin to add more paperwork to the quarterly reports volunteers fill out.