Tierra Prieta - My Site Full of Possibilities

Tierra Prieta. These two words literally mean brown earth. Tierra Preita is the name of my site in the moutains outside of San Juan, Dominican Republic for the next two years. The “brown earth” this name describes entails a fertile deep brown earth that is filled with nutrients covered in lushious fruit trees that often seem to come from some other planet. This brown earth seems to be full of so many possibilities, sometimes hard to hoe and needs love and care, but full of so much potential ready to burst with life.

Tierra Prieta is the name of my small campo of 99 houses outside of the larger campo, Hato del Padre, and approximately a half an hour ride outside of the city of San Juan. Riding by myself with everything I will use for the next two years of my life with me in my bus I did not really have a freak-out moment. I was surprised by how calm I had really kept just trying to take everything in. To get to my site I took a taxi at 5:30 in the morning from my host family’s house outside of Santo Domingo to the downtown bus station. Three other volunteers and I all squished into this small car with all of our luggage (including at least 8 bags). Driving down the main high ways people laughed and even took pictures of our packed ride. Once at the bus station, I then took a bus by myself for approximately 4 hours to my site in San Juan. Gazing out my window I saw the landscape get farther away from the capital and stretch out into beautiful green fields, rolling, hills, mountains. Lushious fruit trees and catcuses all passed by my view. When finally arriving in the city of San Juan I had already been awed by the beautiful mountains that this city was tucked in between. I stepped off the bus, entering into a city that I had once visited before on my volunteer visit. A hoard of moto drivers and taxi drivers greet me at the door, “taxi, taxi? “, “Americana, moto, moto?”. I responded with the classic Dominican finger wag, I was waiting for my host mother and project partner to pick me up at this station. After standing and waiting for my bags to be unloaded from under the bus for about 5 minutes, a young man comes up to me to help me put my oversized backpacking backpack on my back. He was accompanied by a small statured woman. “Where are you going?” She says (in Spanish of course). I blank, I have not been too incredibly nervous until this point, but I think being thrown into the heat and warding off drivers, has put me slightly off kilter and I couldn’t for the life of me remember the name of the town I would be living in for the next to years. I just star at her and smile nervously for a good to minutes as she repeats the question two more times. Finally I find my voice and respond, “Tierra Prieta”. Well this was the right answer because she nearly leaps on top of me, hugging me and patting my back, rocking me back and foreth with her hugs and celebrating that she had found the right American she had solicitated many months before. Confirming that this is “Chicha”, my new host mother and after meeting her son, we hop on motoconchos with my ginormous helmet and one bag balanced per moto. We begai to ride out of San Juan, up the mountain to my site.

The view is breathtaking. We began to ride on unpaved roads and are surrounded on either side by open rich green fields filled with peanut, corn, bean, and pea crops and more. The mountains stretch on either side of the road. When we finally arrive at my new house for at least the next four months, I am greeted by my host father, two more brothers, their two wives, and their three daughters who all live right next to eachother in three small houses. The house that is perched on the edge of these fields is a bright bubble-gum pink (I love the colors of Dominican houses). My house does not have running water or an indoor toilet and rarely has electricity, though it does come in the afternoon usually for about two hours and sometimes at night after it gets dark. My host family has a latrine in the back of the house where I use the bathroom and shower. I bucket shower squeezed in between the cement structure of the latrine and bending under my hanging clothes. The water then runs out the back of the latrine.

At night it can be hazardous to leave the house in pitch dark, with creepy crawlies around everyone in the house has their own pee bucket in their room, in case they have to pee at night. My Doña is always very excited, making me feel like I’m 5 years old when I use this bucket at night. She calls to me in the morning after I have woken up and walk to dump my pee bucket next to the latrine, “Oh hiciste mucho pee-pee anoche. Ay que bueno”.

There is also a small structure made out of tin in the back of the house that acts as the kitchen. It has storage space for some potatoes and yucca and has a larger table where the cook burns a few pieces of wood to start a fire to cook pots over. This fire is started by burning an old piece plastic. Once the fire is started, smoke fills this little building, where kids often are hanging around and the cook breathes this smoke in continually, for a large part of the day while she is cooking for the entire family or more three large meals a day. The community seems very interested in stove projects to improve this dangerous situation for one’s health and so I hope to some day in my two years build a stove for my host family as well.

These are some views of where I live. Although I have not taken advantage of using my camera very often, I have few pictures of the beautiful scenery, but when I become more comfortable with my community I am excited to take more pictures of the people, the rolling hills of fields, and the beautiful expansive mountains.