Alternative Cookstove

Super crew aka family aka nut brigade

We had this really awesome (and exhausting) alternative cookstove training a few weeks ago. Cookstoves or fogones are traditional stoves that everyone uses here, for the most part. Unfortunately, they are super smokey and have caused a ton of respiratory illnesses. Therefore, a lot of PCVs have projects to build safer, less smoky, cookstove alternatives for their communities. Unfortunately, a lot of families that need one badly are unable to afford the popular model used by most PCVs. Well, recently PCVs partnered with a local NGO to create this nearly free cookstove that works just as great, though not as pretty, and cost just $4! It is made out of the very dirt/clay that the families live on, and though labor intensive and messy, it is easy to maintain and repair and works wonderfully.

I find a picture is worth a thousand more words (and speaks more eloquently than I can write) and so here is the process in pictures:

Rock gathering. Go Andrea!

We gathered the rocks to make this base, rolling them from a field nearby.

1. 
   

   Ripping and cutting the straw into smaller pieces so it acts like support beams in the dirt/clay mixture.

   

   Like that grape lady, I stomped and stomped that dirt with the freshly added straw and water and sand to make a nice, thick clay mixture that we can throw. Unlike the grape lady, I didn’t fall once.

   

   It’s ready! Stand modeling how when the mixture is ready it should not fall when you make a snake.

   

   All hands on deck to make the bricks.

   

   Pack and throw. Working that upper body.

   

   Ta-dah! We have a “brick” for our stove.

   

   Then we take those freshly made bricks and destroy them by literally throwing them as hard as we can onto the rock table to start building the stove. This was my favorite part.

   

   Then you keep building, using plastic buckets lathered with oil as the holes for your cooking pots and air duct system.

   

   The bottle on the left is for the Donas to add wood and the one on the top is going to be taken to and the hole is where they will set their pots on to cook.

   

   Horrible picture…but as you can see we used anything an everything for the molds. This President beer bottle will be for the chimney.

   

   DONE! Well, almost. The clay dries for a few days, then the families can smooth it, remove the molds, and decorate as they wish with paint, glass, etc.

   

   Sweaty and Satisfied with our work. 1.5 days of work created something that a family can use for years to come. xoxo

   xoxo

   B

 

The Dirty South

There are quite a few volunteers who inhabit the southern part of the country, and for whatever reason they love to call it the dirty south, not because it is dirty, but mainly I think because they are trouble-makers and it makes them sound cooler (they are pretty cool). The good thing about it is that for the most part, we can bola or (cough-cough) hitchhike throughout the south to almost every volunteer’s site. It is cheap, safe, and highly effective, all things a PCV loves. And, not to mention, the south is B-E-A-U-T-F-U-L.

Do you see that view? That’s what I woke up to for two days and that beach is where we sad goodby to one of our own, and said hello to some of the newbies. I slept in my hammock and everyone morning, this is what I saw when I woke up:

Those are my feet! PROOF! It was a wonderful despedida and even better to see some of the PC Family. Plus, San Rafael is not a horrible beach to visit. I mean, it’s really not that ugly. Right? Only downside, the waves a GINORMOUS and you better eat a bunch of spinach before you go out to tackle them. Or else you will end up like me, flopped on the shore coughing up saltwater.

I’m okay, mom.

When we had to go back to site, we decided to challenge ourselves and bola the entire way back as far as we could. it took us three bolas, but finally we did it. Not to mention we had lots of bonding time and fun car games. Just look how happy we are bumping along in the back of this monster truck:

Oh wait, you really can only see Michaela…oops!

Since I was already on that side of the country, I decided to aprovechar the moment and went to see Phil’s site all the way up on the border. We walked around his pueblo and Stan and Phil cooked dinner, while I did who knows what. We rode horse (I fell off, no saddle really) and trekked them up the beautiful mountain. Until my horse, a stallion, got too excited and we had to turn around…sorry guys.

We also had this cool alternative cookstove training in between, but I am going to post about that next. Hang tight!

For now, enjoy this last awkward photo from long ago when Meaghan, Phil, and I tried to take a selfie of the Salto Alto waterfall…so awkward…so great…

xoxo

B

 

Mountain Bliss

So a few weeks ago we had a Mini-VAC for our region, which is essentially a time for volunteers to complain share their thoughts/opinions on Peace Corps as a program and suggest changes. We had ours in the beautiful city of Constanza, which I have decided is the only livable place on the island. Mainly because it was high up in the mountains, cold, and beautiful. And did I mention mountainy? Just look at the view from the house we stayed at:

And this one too:

You see that house wayyyy up there all alone on the top of the hill? Yup, that’s where I could live. Constanza is also a big agricultural hub, with lots of vegetables all over the place. I was in heaven, to say the least. I mean, we passed by fields of lettuce. I haven’t seen lettuce looking that good in 11 months aka since I got here. We took a nice truck through the back way to our remote little house, and I attempted to take a photo without falling off, but just got this of Scott and Sam (and a little bit of Rob):

Do you see those mountains?!

Heaven.

But don’t worry, Taylor also captured this beaut of a photo of us as we slide around the back of the truck, just so you know that I do exist in photos sometimes.

Up close and personal ,with hair going wild. Just how it should be 🙂

[this was also around the time I lost my hairbrush for 12 days, so imagine that mess of a mane after these truck rides. Still worth it.]

We cooked delicious food, sat by a fire, soaked in the Jacuzzi (I swear, we are actually in Peace Corps), and relaxed for a few days. It was a much needed reboot for use and always great to get together with more than the people who live closest to you.

Scott and I prepping the Kabobs

All smiles before my belly ache later from devouring too much delicious food.

After I got back, I received the wonderful the news that the grant was APPROVED and we are receiving funding soon! That means hopefully we will be able to start building latrines really soon! I am very excited about this, as you can imagine, and I can’t wait to share photos with you guys.

For now, I am enjoying the last few days of social freedom, taking a few backroad trips with J, andaring with community members, going to a few birthday parties, and making some house repairs. Coby, the escape artist he is, is a bit upset with me now that I added a “baby gate” for the doors. These are actually what people use here in the houses as baby gates. They are made from a specific tree, which has flexible wood, but it is also incredibly sturdy, not to mention grows everywhere here.

J working hard. I was helping by sitting and giving directions as I sipped coffee, of course.

The final product! We soon found right after this that he could jussstt slip out, so we had to add even more branches.

I have also been getting back to cooking and baking. I’ve realized that art of the reason why I have been having so many funks lately is because I have been uninspired. Cooking and baking have always made me feel happy, creative, inventive, and refreshed. But due to lack of access and even more excuses, I haven’t done it in such a long time. So, the other day, I pushed myself to make something delicious. I made a yummy spaghetti and “meatballs” made from black beans, along with chocolate fudge cake for dessert. All things were bought from the local colmado! I felt super accomplished and inspired. For me cooking is a form of experimentation and a nice challenge for me. It’s important to not loose sight of the things that make you happy, after all, they will keep you going through the toughest times.

YUMMMYYYYY.

Next up is a vegetable pot pie, so fingers-crossed.

I am hoping my next blog post will be a day in the life of me through photos (Katie’s request) so hang tight for that. And be thankful for all the delicious and (easy access) food you have and realize how lucky you are 🙂

xoxo

B

 

A Month of Celebrating

HAPPY FOURTH OF JULY, EVERYONE!

(I know, I am a little behind, but just pretend I said that three days ago.)

So, per-tradition, a bunch of volunteers headed to the beach to spend the day together celebrating this beautiful day of american independence. Like these photos here where Ellis was reincarnated as Captain America and we all just got to be crazy normal tourists for the day in obnoxious outfits.

Cohort 15-02! “Estoy Con Ella”/”I’m With Her”

Ellis, The New (and improved) Captain America (PHOTO BY: Claire Dal Nogare)

I spent the day swimming, reading, and being lazy. Oh, and eating the most amount of PB&Js as possible. It was a glorious little vacation 🙂 And for my family members who know me best: yes, you can bet your bottom dollar I was in the shade reading with my SPF 50+ heavily applied.

Immediately after this celebration of greatness, I jetted back to my campo for J’s birthday. The old geezer turned 28 on the 6th. Coincidentally, this is roughly (what we guess to be) the 4 month anniversary of Coby. He even lost his first baby tooth, too! I screamed and jumped around so unbelievably excited he lost a tooth while J looked at me in horror and confusion and probably wondering why he was still with this loca. For his birthday, we went to La Playita, which is essential a pool park, complete with dancing, music, drinking, food, endless amounts of pools, and a huge river nearby if you hate pools. We even were able to spontaneously surprise Meaghan in her house as we passed by, which is always wonderful. We had to travel about an hour by moto, which was a little rough on my tush, but so beautiful to see the country. There is nothing like seeing a country from the back of a motorcycle…

J 🙂

Blurry, but you get the idea 🙂

Later, I surprised him by decorating the house and cooking him one of his favorite dinners-dumplings and salami-and cooked a yummy cake. We celebrated with the cake at his mom’s house, and as per traditional Dominican tradition, his family at a quarter of the cake, and then we spent the next half hour brindaring the rest to nearby neighbors/family/friends. Everything is shared with everyone, even birthday cake. The best part is that now people think I am so incredibly gifted baker (I’m not, I just dumped a pound of sugar in the cake and put on store bought frosting). But, at least I am getting a reputation I can live with hehe 😉

In other news, Rei killed a rat and was eating it (disturbing) and two more cacata were killed in my house. Lovely.

She ha her own food bowl, but she insists on always drinking his water and attempting to eat his food. He is a gentleman and lets her get away with it.

Project news update: Latrine Grant is being processed and approved as we speak! Plus, I am going to a training to learn how to make a cookstove using natural soil and essentially no other resources. This means I can teach my families how to make their own cookstove for their house, thereby greatly reducing their smoke inhalation, without them having to spend any money! I am so excited, and my community is too. It is a method that was developed by a NGO and worked on with Peace Corps Volunteers, so I am super excited about it and cannot wait to learn about it and actually start the project in my community.

More updates coming, but for now, I hope everyone had a wonderful 4th!

xoxo

B

P.S. Cacata Kill Count: 8 (+2)

 

 

 

Life in Photos

My mom sent me a camera and this was the only photo on it. I love her 🙂

Preciosa

Meeting time! There were fifty plus people but I couldn’t take the photo until the very end.

It’s bicycle season and that means lots of repairs from the bad roads.

Milagros

Squishy ❤

Natural scenery

The Chicas Group

I’m growing vegetables!!

Cooking with Jaiya 🙂

I Had a Visitor!

I had a visitor! And I am for once not talking about the creepy-crawlies kind (all those are frequent). Nope, Julia, the previous volunteer in my community came and visited! She was here for four days or so, and I think we collectively blew our community’s mind. She is tall and white…I am tall and white…so as you can imagine the people who didn’t know us really well would call her B and me Julia. It was slightly entertaining…but really it was just great to talk to someone who was in my shoes just a year ago. She understood the community, the people, the life better than anyone else, and it felt good to talk to her. She made me feel better about a lot of things, and cleared up even more (fact: she did not visit every person every day).

Julia! And Julie and Milagros and Connie and my Chicas girls!

It’s hard to be compared, but she helped make me feel better about being different, and how no one is perfect. As a second generation volunteer, you are held up to sometimes daunting standards and expectations and its hard for the community that is so traditional to bend and change and realize that each volunteer is different. But we are learning.

We had a nice time andaring together, had a nice little party with some close friends, and then she left. It was too short but very sweet and even though at first I was hesitant for her to come, I am really glad she did.

Chicas girls!

In other news, my Chicas group is taking off! We are learning about the scary and terrifying and uncomfortable topic of adolescence and body changes and the girls are slightly terrified of the idea, but are even more curious. And to celebrate the end of the topic we are going to have a nice picnic by the river for no reason at all but simply because its fun.

My child.

In other frustrating news, we are so close to submitting our grant for the latrine project. We just had our final committee meeting yesterday to make the final family selection and go over some more logistics, but now we have hit yet another obstacle. It is common to have a million things go wrong with your projects as a PCV, but it never makes it any less frustrating. But, we persevere. The women coordinating the project with me are fiery and I have seen them bring grown men down a few notches. I have also seen them somehow coordinate to have fifty people show up at the same place at the right time. It was like witnessing a miracle, I swear.

Stand-off.

Oh! I almost forgot! I got a cat. A kitten, actually, though age is TBD. J just randomly showed up with the kitten a few weeks ago and goes ,”her you go!”. he told me her name was Meirusa, which roughly means “Bad American Cat/Rat Killer”, which is confusing and since my mom can’t say that name, I just call her Rei (Ray). Her and Coby are now actually having fun playing together compared to hating each other before and trying to attack each other (kind of like me and my brother…). She likes to do drop attacks on him from the bed when he runs into the bedroom–it’s wonderful.

Meirusa aka Rei aka Coby’s sister

 

Anyway, I will end this post now so it doesn’t become too jumbled, but don’t worry, I am about to continue in another one 🙂

xoxo

B

It’s One of Those Bad Days

Coby is 3 Months old today!

I warned you, I would like to state for the record, that I was going to post all the good, bad, and ugly here in this blog. And this is one of those ugly days.

Now, I hate to be a Debbie-downer, or more like a super sad sally, so I have put in some good things in between here. The reality is that we have to always keep our eye on the good parts when we are in the middle of the ugly ones.

Here we go.

First, I want to update you all on the love of my life AKA my little fluffernutter Coby, who has grown exponentially in a terrifyingly fast manner and is eating and biting everything. He likes to think that my legs are play toys and that he can bite me like he is playing with other dogs. We are rapidly trying to break the habit. Anyway, he has recently learned to sit and now lie down! Such an accomplishment. Not to mention he is coming almost always when I can for him. And let me tell you, the sight of him running full speed for me, ears flying back, tongue falling out his mouth, and his little gordito self sprinting full head just makes me melt with happiness every time.

He keeps me happy. And he always drives me insane. It must be love, right?

The gorgeous Mela.

A few days ago, Meghan came to visit and she brought another addition to our family, Mela, this adorable two-month old kitten that I have been waiting for now for over two months. She was beautiful and had these big blue eyes and gorgeous coloring. I noticed soon after I got her that she had a nasty parasite that was preventing her from eating and making her lethargic, and her hair was falling out. So, I took her to the woman in our community who sells animal medicine and the anti-parasite medication. Without getting into details, Mela accidentally received the anti-parasite medication for a horse, not a two pound kitten. By the time I noticed it, it was too late. She died last night, after three long days of giving her saline injections and feeding her milk with a syringe. I have never cried so much.

For those who know me, I get incredibly emotional over animals for some reason now. I have cried over fish my brother caught and put alive in our sink to eat. I have balled over my mom killing moles that were tearing up our yard. So imagine how upset I am over this beautiful kitten that was my responsibility, that was given to me, and died over a mistake that I could have prevented. I have mentioned a million times before Peace Corps emotionally compromises you, and let me tell you, like Spock in Star Trek after the Vulcan Planet was destroyed, I was/am emotionally compromised so much that I had to take a me day today and get away. I could’t deal with do my job today. It is even harder when everyone views it as nothing because pets and animals are not a thing here. J even said right after she died that he will just get me another one. Needless to say, I cried harder.

That is the ugly part. I know what you’re thinking, “B, that’s not that bad”, but trust me, small things like that are crushing. And she wasn’t a small thing. I lied. She was a living being.

Anyway, I don’t want to talk about it anymore, so I am going to push forward to end with a good thing. I have been doing a young girls group, that I am in love with. The photo here is of a core group of my girls who are just so unbelievably bright and beautiful. They are infectious and eager and full of adventure. This week, we talked a lot about what it means to be “unique” for a girl, and how each of them is a unique person, unlike anyone else. It took a bit for them to really understand it, especially since they are at the age where they love their friends and want to emulate them in all ways. We made books about ourselves and how we are unique, made chocolate chip pancakes, and then had a talent show. I love being around young girls, when they are still young enough to not be jaded and are always smiling and happy. One of the girls told me in one of our groups talks that one of the reasons she loved our group was because it was the one place where people didn’t tell her “No, you can’t do that” and instead we tell her, “You can do anything”.

The Brilliant and Beautiful Girls! ❤

That’s why I love what I do.

Because the truth is, there isn’t anything we can’t do, especially when we are surrounded by people who love and support us.

I am here, after all.

xoxo

B

P.S. Cacata Kill Count: 6

P.P.S. All within the last month.

P.P.P.S. All in my house.

P.P.P.P.S. All killed by someone else.

P.P.P.P.P.S. Yes, I literally ran out of the house and down the road to find some muchacho to kill them.

Celebration Photos

Here are some photos from our 6-Month mini-celebration we had in Bayahibe. And some other randoms from the past few weeks. Enjoy 🙂

Volleyball with the team!

Ive’s first time at good ‘ol Krispy Kreme. Obviously, the hat was a necessity.

The crew! We on a boattt!

Mom, I told you Bayahibe with gorgeous. I enjoyed the view from under a coconut tree, por su puesto…

Bet you didn’t know we had a H&M model in our midst.

Ugh I love this photo. 

Hot Springs stop!

Valetine’s Day Love

I always miss them.

Ann and me! Probably around the time I got lice from her…oops…

Attitude.

THEY ARE BUILDING ME A TABLE! I asked and I am receiving! Pedro put this together in under an hour, I would say. It’s for my stove and cooking in my little house. More photos and updates to come!

The Original 42

So fortunate to be serving with these people. They are family, whether they are still on this island or ventured off on other journeys. This photo was taken right before we all left for CBT way back in September.

A Week (Or Two!) In Pictures

The group about to head to the city! Well, most of us anyway.

This is all of us packed on a “Guagua”, or public bus. Yes, thjere are six people sitting in each row thanks to some foldable benches. As you can see, not happy faces for everyone. It was gettin’ hot in theereee.

The Cathedral in Santo Domingo

Stacie and Jocelynn at where we always are: someone’s (Scott’s) porch. It’s right next to the families barbershop, so we girls like to give inputs on the haircuts.

We randomly will just show up at someone’s host family’s house for manicure parties in this case. Here is Po’s house, but he wasn’t even home. His Dona love us ladies 🙂

Boys club of the neighborhood. They were not invited to the nail party so they had to sit outside after their basketball game waiting for us to be done so we could all go out. Don’t worry, they entertained themselves with music and neighbors.

Hanging out with Phillip and got caught in weird mid-sentence by Eva who took this. We were trespassing in this really fancy place, looking for water during the long tour.

Such a good shot of Scott. This was post 3 HOUR walking tour.

Post walking tour in the dead heat at the top of this historic hill next to a Monastery drinking the classic Presidente beer and enjoying it all. This is most of our clan and we spend too much time together 🙂