First Impressions of Santo Domingo

I made it to Santo Domingo!  I arrived on Sunday night, right in the middle of presidential elections.  Danilo Medina, from a conservative party, and Margarita Cedeño, his wife the wife of the current president, as vice-president won the elections, and although his opponents accused Danilo of vote-buying and fraud, nobody seems to care very much about it one way or the other. The only reminder of the elections are the ubiquitous purple Danilo billboards throughout the city.  Today, the city shut off the water, which I'm told happens frequently, so everyone who has them are using their water reserves.  No problem, because everyone just drinks beer!  El Presidente, very fittingly, is the local beer.

I've been staying with a very gracious Spanish host near IDDI's office in the central part of the city, and everyone at IDDI has been very welcoming and kind.  Several people I've had the opportunity to get to know a bit better have been pretty astounded by the americana with a Caribbean attitude; I'm just going with the flow and flying by the seat of my pants at the moment, and I'm very happy to do so.  I'd say that this mentality has been serving me well here - nothing is very planned out.  I only have a vague idea of what I will be doing from one given point in time to another; for example, I'm pretty sure they're sending me to the campo near Bonao on Friday, but I'm not sure if I'm staying for a day, a week, a month, or the whole time.  Or even if this will actually occur on Friday at all. 

Another interesting shift is in entering into a more collectivist society.  The only alone time I have is when I am asleep, which is obviously very different from my lifestyle stateside.  And while I've consciously decided to embrace this, collectivism certainly has its upsides.  I feel very well taken care of, and I have been left to fend for myself in literally no situations thus far.  Dominicanos are very open and easy to talk to, and I've already made a few friends I feel close with.

Anyway, I am not sure yet what I will do for my project.  IDDI has a network of youth mediators (ages 18-24) in Santo Domingo (about 30) who work with low levels of conflict and conflict prevention in their communities.  I met with one of them today to ask him about the process, what he does, and his general impressions.  I'm still waiting to look at training materials to get a better idea of their capacity, but it seems really interesting.  Of course, they can't work in some of the poorer barrios, because their priorities are in preventing/treating cholera, improving sanitation and health, and dealing with youth delinquency and lack of education.  I will get into it more later, but we drove through a few barrios today, and to say the least, they were pretty astoundingly bad.  The Ozama river that flows through Santo Domingo is one of the most contaminated in Latin America, I'm told, and some of the worst barrios are right next to it.  Here's a preview:

 
(Not my photo - I haven't taken any since I've been here - and the photo does not show the worst of it.)

Anyway, Bonao does not have the same types of problems as in the city, and from what I've been told, the level of conflict is somewhat lower.  Nonetheless, it might be interesting to develop a youth mediator capacity in the campo.  Or to spread their network in some other way.  I'm also going to have the opportunity to travel to Haiti with IDDI with someone who heads up their projects over there, which I am really excited about.  Another idea we discussed is that with going to a few places, I could write up a flexible framework that they could use on the island, Hispaniola, to deal with a low level of conflict.  (Anything that becomes violent goes to relevant authorities, like police and courts.)

 We shall see how my project begins to shape up!  I'm hoping for the internet to be connected in my house so that I can read up a bit and access resources.  They keep saying tomorrow, but tomorrow never comes.