Days IV, V and V.V

Camila and Cailyn Sweeping Water

Pickin' up Trash and Mud

Rey and Company

Lots to report as the tropical storm that blew through the Caribbean this weekend knocked out electricity and  internet for awhile. Which is really just an excuse for me being lazy. Because I have so much to report, I think I'll work backwards from today. Tanya's friend Rey, one of the community and youth organizing leaders, led us in a neighborhood cleaning project. Rey bought some bleach, and arranged for water and trash trucks to come by. Jacoby, Tanya's nephew, bought some brooms and trash bags and we set out to clean the streets around the school. We being a whole bunch of people from the neighborhood and about 15 of our campers. Here's how it worked: The water truck came by and sprayed a bunch of water in the gutters of the streets. Then we all swept the water down the gutters along with all the trash and mud that was in them. This resulted in piles of trash that we scooped into trash bags with some shovels. Then the trash truck came by and picked up all the bags. We were at this for about two hours. Here's the thing. If you walked around the school right now, you would have a hard time seeing that a major cleaning project had just taken place. We did our best, but there was a lot of trash and mud and we couldn't get all of it. Camila was pretty frustrated as we walked back to the house, asking me what had we actually accomplished. I share her frustration as the act of cleaning the streets in the DR is quite sysiphisian (I just love when I get to use that word even if I can't spell it). But, somehow, I think it's the act of cleaning that's important and, not necessarily the results. I send that message to my kids all the time; that it's the road that we choose to take that's of value, not really what's at the end of the road. Even though we didn't make a huge dent in the cleanliness (or lack thereof) of the streets, the fact that so many people worked together on the cleaning project is meaningful. There is an expression in Spanish, "mano a la obra", which basically means, "it's time to get to work." It's the work that's of value as well as the fact that more and more Dominicans are beginning to care about what their streets are looking like.

Working backwards, this brings us to Friday, Day V. This was our big, field trip day as Samuel and Nelly made all of the arrangements for us to visit The National Botanical Gardens in Santo Doming. They rented a bus for us and made a reservation with a private guide. So, we met at 9:00 in front of the school (It's of note that everyone with the exception of Nicol had arrived at the school before we did. I guess they were just a tad excited.), loaded into the bus and thirty minutes later arrived at the gardens. We had a guide take us through a museum of sorts, had some lunch and then got on a train/car that would take us through the park. It really was quite beautiful as the diversity of flora on this island is quite stunning. Many of the campers had never been there before, even though it's only about 1/2 an hour away and were taken aback by what they saw (at least, I hope, deep inside, they were).

One thing I would add about the train/car ride: There was a driver and a guide that spoke to us via a microphone. She spoke extremely slowly, whereas the driver drove very quickly, the result being that by the time the guide finished telling us what we were looking at we were looking at something else. This is another example of  the vagaries of the tourist industry here. The government has been able to construct a beautiful park showcasing, as I mentioned, the incredible diversity of the flora on the island. And they even set up a car/train ride to give you access to it. Then they fly you through as quickly as possible, as far as I can tell, solely because that's how they drive here. I mean at one point we must've been going 40 miles per hour down a hill and around a corner. I think I spotted some bamboo at one point, but I was never quite sure.

Anin y Su Posia

Which, in this time travelling backwards post, brings us to Thursday. I think in the last post, I spoke of the lack of creativity of the campers; the result of their not having many opportunities to be creative. We took this issue head on on Thursday. We started off by giving each student a small tub of playdough (pictures to follow for that product placement idea I was talking about) and asked them to create anything they liked. Then we gave them a good 20 minutes to do so. Many of the campers started slowly, not really knowing what to make, but, slowly but surely they got going, eventually creating objects such as dumbells, fashion show walkways, a garden, etc.. Next up was Maria Victoria, Tanya's cousin known more affectionately as Anin. Anin is a published poet and she spoke to the campers about poetry and then had them create, and then recite, their own poems. What she did was write down a short poem that she had written and then asked the students to create their own poem by replacing some of the key words with images of their own creation. Again, the campers had a diffucult time at first, but, eventually, they did pretty well. Here's a student reading her poem:

Not that I'm used to doing such things, but I have to confess. We really just set out on Thursday to expose the students to poetry and to show them that they can all be poets. We hadn't really planned on a full day of creativity, it just kinda worked out that way. However, I do think the campers now have a different impression of poetry than they had before Anin's lesson. As Irene, one of our more "vocal" and controversial campers said after Anin's lesson: "This is poetry? I thought poetry was always about love."