Rest and Relaxation

Every month each volunteer gets two nights and three days of R&R days. These R&R days cannot be accumulated and if you do not use them every month they are lost, but volunteers can also accumulate 2 vacation days ever months as well. You can either use them in that same month or save them up for some big adventure. Many of my friends that are volunteers here for example have just saved enough vacation days to go back to the US for a little bit. Although I do not as of now plan on going back to the US during my service, just because I am nervous about the drastic change in cultures and my reassimilation back into work following this, it is comforting to know that travel back to the US is definitely an option in case. I have not used any vacation days left and plan to use them for when my mother and her friend Peggy comes and visit in June and then Margaret and Kirsten come visit right after that. I am incredibly excited for all these guys to come visit, I have been telling my community forever that they are coming. It is getting closer and closer and I can’t wait!

Even though I have not taken vacation days, I have used my R&R days every month. I have gone to the volunteer Thanksgiving celebration, Juan Dolio (a beach near the capital), a Romeo concert in the capital, San Rafi (one of the most beautiful beaches in the DR located in the south of the country), Herel’s site, C.S.’s site, and the capital. Even though I do love the R&R days when I get to go lay on a Carribean beach (I feel so lucky to be placed in the DR), some of my favorite times so far have been visiting other volunteers’ sites. Even though we all are Peace Corps volunteers and in the same country, the service we have and the communities we are placed in can be dramatically different.

One of my friends, Herel, for example lives in a batayee- a community that is based on sugar cane production, is small, often extremely impoverished and has a very high population of Hatians. I am so impressed with her because the majority of her community talks with a Creole and Spanish blend of languages. I can barely understand a sentence they say, but Herel has picked it up pretty well. The problems that Herel faces are often different than in my community. Her community has houses very close together, yet she has running water and more electricity than my community does. Due to the high population of Hatians in her community and especially with the change of Dominican law in this coming month, there are a lot of problems with immigration in her community. There have been police raids in her community where immigration officials come into her community at night and take people from their houses suspected to not have Dominican documentation and put in trunks and often imprisoned until they can prove they have official paperwork or they are send over the border to Haiti. Herel’s host mom on her birthday a couple of months ago was taken from the street in an immigration truck and put behind bars. She was kept there for several hours despite the fact that she has official Dominican documentation. They had just suspected she was Hatiian, mostly based on her skin color and perhaps on her use of Creole.

On the other hand, my boyfriend’s site is very well off. His community has running water all of the time and very nice houses. The majority of the income that the people receive in his community is from family in the United States. He lives in a guest house of his host parents, which is basically a mansion.

I also was just able to visit my friend Adrian, up in the mountains at the foot of Pico Duarte. He is very isolated and has no cell phone service. So little service in fact that he needs a satalite phone in case of emergencies, which he has to use to check in with Peace Corps once a week. It is often difficult to leave his community, yet his community has learned to fend for themselves with little help from the Dominican government. With help from an aid organization his community has built their own generator and acueduct up in the mountains. His site is beautiful. Here are some pictures of a waterfall that Herel, he, and I hiked to scrambling up rocks for nearly two hours. It was so worth it!