Gaining Some Traction

Success!  After several failed attempts, I was able to convene the teachers and directors of the school, about 25 in total, to discuss the peace curriculum.  The participation of teachers, students, and community members in the development of this project is crucial both to make the curriculum work in this context and to develop a sense of local ownership.  I will be here for only just over a month more, which makes the issue of collaboration even more pressing. 

When I walked into the room where we were to have the meeting, I saw that they set it up like a formal classroom - teacher at the front of the room and pupils sitting in rows - so I asked people to help me to rearrange the room in a circle to facilitate a more participative dialogue.  I started off the meeting by reiterating that it was meant to be an informal discussion about ideas, perspectives, and personal experiences, but when I started asking questions to get the meeting going, people looked at me with a mixture of blankness and confusion.  At first, I was concerned that what I was trying to say was unintelligible, so I apologized and thanked them for their patience with my Spanish, to which people replied that they could understand me perfectly.   

I realized that people were expecting me to tell them what I would be doing and then dismiss them.  However, after a half hour of pulling responses out of people, they started to get more into it.  At some point, the interest level rose to such a point that every teacher wanted to incorporate peace into their subjects, including mathematics and foreign language, and when I indicated that the pilot curriculum would be focused on high school students, primary school teachers argued fervently about how we needed to start with the younger children.  As a middle ground, I suggested that the older students could lead activities that would integrate the younger students as well. 

At any rate, after talking for a surprising two hours, we broke for lunch, and several teachers indicated again their sincere interest in this project and offered their individual help.  The level of enthusiasm and interest in a peace curriculum definitely took me by surprise.  

At this point, I'm working to adapt the United States Institute of Peace's online peace curriculum toolkit with the school mission and national curriculum.  I've also been considering how to design a mechanism to measure potential attitude or behavior change as a result of the curriculum.  If anyone has any ideas, definitely send them my way.

Part of the school campus.  The school is powered on 100% solar energy!

In terms of personal experiences, I won't lie: adjusting to the campo way of life has had its hiccups.  The heat, the bugs, and the poverty in its many iterations have been a challenge.  However, the people are so kind and wonderful, and I'm surrounded by beautiful mountains and rivers.  

When it's hot, all you need is a coconut and a machete.  It hovers around 100 degrees, inside as well; things are melting that I didn't know could melt.  For example, part of my hairbrush.

Cacatas...tarantulas.  These are real, and I look for them everywhere.  They look terrifying.

I’m starting to establish my identity in the community, which is grand entertainment for both me and everyone else.  I started running in the evenings when the temperature cools to 90 degrees or so, hah, which got everyone’s attention.  People are absolutely astonished by my speed and endurance, and word traveled even faster…within a day or so, it seemed that everyone in the community heard tales of my running.  My ultimate test was when a group of athletic 15-year old boys then asked me to run with them (I passed), and now I workout with a former international baseball player who is now a trainer.  Hilarious.  And, of course, children are always waiting for me when I near the house, and they race the last bit home with me.  This has turned out to be a great way to gain exposure, and...  

...when people tell me I need to eat meat to be strong, which is often, I challenge them to a race…and then they retract their statement and concede that vegetarians too can be strong.   

I also started challenging people when they call me rubia.  I point out the obvious, that I’m not blonde, and then they invariably say something like, “but you’re not brown either,” because that carries a skin tone connotation.  After I let them go back and forth between the two for a few moments, I suggest that since I don’t fit into these categories, they should just call me what I am – Laura.  So yes, my identity is being established as the tall white girl who’s not blonde or brown, does something with peace, who runs, and races with the neighborhood children.  I'll take it.

Tropical farmlands.  This is where I live.

Waterfalled hikes.  Also where I live.

Fighting Cocks, Fierce Bugs, and Classism in the DR

I bat away a melange of insects as I write this on the lawn of a school, the only place where I have internet access. On Monday, I moved to Caribe, a small rural village near the small town of Bonao; it’s about an hour and a half northwest of Santo Domingo. I live with a single family, but across the path is where her parents and sister’s family live, which makes it a very social living environment. Also, there are a lot of gregarious young children, each of which wants to show me everything they know, haha. The family’s most, shall we say, unexpected hobby is that they breed fighting cocks, and I accepted (perhaps foolishly) an invitation to observe a fight on Sunday.

The one on the left is alive, which means that he won his last fight.  The one on the right doesn't fight...yet.

The Pied Piper of Caribe.  Only I'm the one being led.

It’s been my personal quest to accept all invitations that come my way. Because of this mantra, I have had some pretty awesome experiences throughout the three weeks I’ve been here, and I have met loads of people from different extremes of society and everything in between. Because I’m here to work in a social sciences capacity, I’ve also used this as an opportunity to ask and listen; because of a range of factors (i.e., my age, my occupation, my gender, my ethnicity, my approach - I'm not viewed as very threatening) people are generally very open to sharing their thoughts and feelings.  The disparate perspectives are starting to come together to paint a bigger picture of the social landscape of the Dominican Republic.

One thing that’s been very noticeable is the general lack of trust in others. Government and police are generally very corrupt, and social services are largely dysfunctional, from water and electricity to public schools. I think that this, in addition to a history of authoritarian rule, has contributed to a sense of competitive self dependency, which has spilled over into intergroup relationships as well. For example, Dominicans are very quick to stereotype people from different ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds, imagining each group to be a homogenous and threatening entity. The “Other” seems to loom formidably in every conversation about social issues. What’s more is that there’s an unveiled hatred for the “Other:” stereotyping is typically pared with verbal dehumanization. When I softly challenge people’s assumptions, sometimes they rephrase, sometimes they don’t…it’s just an interesting manifestation of deeply ingrained classism that moves in all directions. People are very proud to be Dominican, but many don’t like to imagine that they share this country with other Dominicans unlike them in some way.

I’m definitely going to try to incorporate some of this observation into the peace curriculum I’m creating for the school out here. Although the levels of direct violence outside of the family are not extremely high, structural violence (i.e., inequality and inequity built into the structure of society) is a big issue here. I’m taking more of a transformational approach in both the curriculum and the workshops I'm designing, so this could work itself into the programming relatively easily. This week, I’ve been meeting with some directors and students, and I’m hoping to also meet with teachers. I’d like to progress the project with as much collaboration as possible, which I’m hoping will make the program contextually appropriate and increase its chances of sticking when I leave in eight weeks. There's a lot to do but not a lot of time to do it!

Switching gears, a couple weekends ago I traveled with some friends I made here to Isla Saona. It’s a beautiful island off the southeast coast of the Hispaniola near Bayahibe. It was a little bit of a ride to get there, but definitely worth it.

Isla Saona.

This past weekend, I went to Parque de los Tres Ojos (Park of Three Eyes) located near Santo Domingo; it’s a park with cenotes (or cave pools fed by underground rivers).

At the cenotes with Catherine, my Chilean friend.