Caroline Gormley- Official Peace Corps Volunteer- Dominican Republic Health Sector

I am officially a Peace Corps volunteer! On Wednesday I took my oath of service in English and in Spanish as a Peace Corps volunteer. In the few days before the ceremony everyone had to pass a few tests to determine our readiness to serve. I passed all of my tests and ended up at a language level of 6. I started off as a 4, half way through training was a 5, and then finished off with a consistent 6. I really did want a higher number, but 6 is definitely nothing to be ashamed of and I hope that after my first three months in site and I come back to the capital for another evaluation I will be at least at a 7. (Level 8 is considered fluent, while 9-10 is mastery). For the swearing in service we all dressed up, ate cake, watched slide-shows of our training time together, and chatted with our host families, staff, and friends. Following the ceremony the newly sworn-in volunteers headed off the remainder of our bags to the capital where we stayed in a hotel, enjoyed my last burger, running water, and electricity for a very long time. On Friday we all said our sad/yet excited goodbyes and headed off in various directions to serve throughout the country. Upon arriving at my community, I settled into my new housing arrangement. I will not be living with my project partner’s family any longer, but will now be living in a house in the next town over where a previous volunteer used to live. I will be sleeping in this sweet family’s house, while taking a moto ride every morning into my site of Tierra Prieta and returning every evening. This new house has a Don and Dona as well as a teenage son. They are very kind and very welcoming into their home. It will be a slight hassle to travel back and foreth every day, but this way I can separate work and my host family a little bit more and also I will be slightly closer to internet in Hato del Padre, and this family trusts me enough to let me run in the mornings which is great!

Anyways as I am settling I am trying to wrestle with some negatives about the culture that I am dealing with as well as taking in some of the incredible positives of the new campo culture that surrounds me. Yesterday, the first day that I arrived in my community following my first visit, I witness the classic punishment of children here. My younger host sister who is two was hit with a stick repeatedly by her father until her calves had welts for playing in the dirt, yet she has no toys. My other host sister who is 9 was hit with her grandfather’s belt later that day because she did not listen to him right away about taking the gallons of water from the well to her house. Constantly the parents and grandparents take off their shoe and threaten the children to do something or they will hit them or will quickly snatch a branch from a nearby tree or bush and threaten to hit the children if they do not listen right away and follow directions. It is really disheartening when I feel like a really am starting to connect with a young mother who is my age, we have common interests, attempt to communicate jokes and stories, but then I feel like my ability to relate to her is diminished when I see how quickly she is to take off her shoe and start slapping her young daughter with it and then laughing when her daughter cries. I have only lived with a few families so far and obviously there is a great discreprency between discipline with Dominican families, but it is an extremely common practice here to use corporal punishment. I am not allowed to intervene in circumstances of child punishment or domestic violence (I have not yet seen cases beyond child punishment) because it could interfere with my integration and could be dangerous for me. Because of this, I try to not think about too much how people punish their children and try to focus on the kind, unbelievably hospitable and welcoming side of people. I try to put punishment into cultural context and to realized that I have never had children and have never had to raise children myself and so do not know how difficult it can be. Even though I try to remind myself of these things it is still very hard for me to see and for this reason I am very thankful I am able to sleep in a different house if anything to escape my internal battle with the morality of corporal punishment.

Another negative that I will definitely deal with in my site is racism. Haitian and Dominican interactions are often very strained, stereotyped, and harsh. For example the other day I was at a wedding (which was very fun and different than in the United States) and a woman next to me was saying that I should go to the river one day to go wading, but that I must be careful of the Haitians who bathe their because they are very dangerous and mean people. I have also been told that Haitains are lazy, dirty, poor, stick to themselves and steal. This will be interesting especially when trying to include Haitians who live and work in my community in my charlas. I hope I can connect with the handful of Haitain families that live here. It also is more difficult because some Haitians that live here do understand Spanish entirely and instead speak Creole (a dialect close to French), but a chance to learn Creole would be so interesting, so I hope I get that chance.

Thirdly, the disposal of trash is off-putting for me. People just throw plastic, paper, glass, everything into the street, outside, anywhere. This country is so beautiful with so many amazing plants and animals and I hate seeing the streets and plants tangled in trash. I hope I can do an initiative to help combat the problem of trash not being disposed of properly. Also most of the time this trash is burned to dispose of if (often this burning includes a lot of plastic as well-sending toxic fumes into the air sometimes near main and streets or busy neighborhoods).. I also hope to use a lot of the trash from trash pickups perhaps and recycle them to decorate my future house I will live in alone. I also hope to make crafts like plastic bag purses. Despite these three main issues I forsee myself having to deal with I am so thankful nearly every minute I am here for the generosity and kindness and incredible personalities and perseverance of the Dominican people and their lifestyles that I have witnessed so far. For example, last night as I was waiting for my host mother to return from San Juan, I was waiting outside perfectly comfortable, but my host brother would not leave me alone. Then two women who I had not even met yet walked by with their children from a meeting and simply offered to stay with me until my host mom arrived. I insisted they go do what they needed to do, but instead they stayed with me, bringing me a chair and letting me sit before them and not showing to move a muscle until my host mom arrived, which they didn’t. People are constantly looking out for me, making sure I’m safe, and really catering to my every need, often thinking of things I would need or want or had forgotten before I am even near thinking about these things. My host mom always reminds me to lock my door, people point out the mud in the roads to watch my feet, I have still only been allowed to walk around town by myself one time and even then a swarm of 5 pre-teen girls escorted me back to my house after my walk was over. I feel so incredible lucky to be here look forward to continue learning so much in the next few weeks, the first few weeks separated from fellow Americans, separated from English most days, and surrounded by newfound friends and family. I am going to try to use a local internet café once a week in the town where I am sleeping and with luck this is blog will still be updated with consistency. Until next week.

A picture of me after my graduation to an official Peace Corps volunteer.