September 4,2008

These are the other volunteers that live with either a sister or daugther of my Dona. I guess we are sort of cousins by adoption. The rocking chairs here are incredible!

Me with a few of the family members.

From what the Peace Corps staff has told us, this is an unusual hurricane season for the DR. Not that there are necessarily more hurricanes than usual, but that it is rare to have so many hurricanes heading for the DR so close together. Though often very wet, I have been safe and sound. Hopefully Ike will veer away from Hispanola all together.

We were planning to visit a volunteer in the field this weekend, but it was cancelled due to all of the storms. Such a bummer! We have really been looking forward to getting out of the city and seeing a good tangible picture of what we may be doing. Hopefully, we will be able to do it next week. I believe our Spanish teacher felt bad for us, because we were able to convince him to take us to the store to buy groceries for rice crispy treats. And guess who was nominated to be the principle chef ……ME! I love to bake, but my experience isn’t too extensive and I loved that I was entrusted with this very important task. All came out well.

I definitely came in to the DR ignorant of the water and electricity situation. The electricity goes out daily and usually multiple times a day. In lower middle class barrios like the one I am living in, water would normally run once every 3 to 5 days. However, for some reason there have been more difficulties lately. My house did not receive water for nine days last week. The people have learned to adapt to this and on the days that water comes lots of buckets and barrels are filled. They also use barrels to catch the rain water, which we have had plenty of lately. While I such expected conditions in rural areas, I did not expect things to be so in the capital city. There are plenty of theories of why it is so bad and I would imagine that there is truth in each of them. The infrastructure is unable to keep up with the rapid growth in Santo Domingo, only about 35% of people actually pay for electricity or water, companies that sell generators would lose a lot of money if things worked as they should, and political neglect are among the top theories.

I really appreciate your emails and updates! Until next time!