4th of July, DR style and trash clean-up crew.

Every 4th of July, Peace Corps volunteers from around the country get together to celebrate America’s birthday. This year, the festivities were held in a small, sleepy tourist town called Las Galeras in Samana. Samana is a peninsula on the east side of the island. It is beautiful and if anyone is interested in visiting and staying in an all-inclusive resort, I think we should go there.

The hotel we stayed at was called Hotel Marcos and was owned by a Canadian with a tattoo of an American bald eagle on his arm. The hotel, which was actually more like cabana style rooms, was right off the beach. On Saturday, the 4th, we took a boat trip to Playa Rincon, which apparently is one of the most beautiful beaches in the country. I can see how it has this reputation. By the time the day was through, there were probably over 60 Peace Corps Volunteers at the beach, playing football, relaxing in the sun and celebrating America’s birthday Caribbean style. It definitely didn’t feel like Peace Corps, more like a college spring break vacation.

That night our Canadian host had a bbq at the hotel with hamburgers, hot dogs, fries and potato salad. It felt sort of surreal to be there, on a beautiful beach, eating American food, speaking English and hanging out with other Americans my age. But overall, I am really glad I went, because Samana is beautiful and it was a nice change of pace.

I returned to La Caya on Sunday afternoon, after about seven hours of traveling in a mini-van, a mini-bus and finally a motorcycle. The motorcycle ride up to my site is my favorite. It is 5 km of a road in between farms. Inevitably there are cows coming down the road, being moved from one field to the next, or a couple of men of horses either trotting down the road or in the middle of it talking. The trees here in La Caya sort of remind me of Africa. Not that I’ve ever been to Africa, but they are the big flat top kind that you see in pictures of the African Safari. Every time I am on that road I feel like if someone blind folded me and put me there, I would have no idea where I was. I mean, just the surroundings with the tress, the farms, the animals, you could be anywhere in the world. Who knew the DR could look like this?

Anyway, the next day, Monday was our trash clean-up day. We were supposed to start at 8 a.m., but as I am learning, 8 a.m. Dominican time really means 9 (usually later). My Doña and I actually got started at 8 and by the time the rest of my team met up with us we had covered some good ground. It started off with seven of us, slowly moving up the main drag of La Caya, picking up trash in the street. All the people walking along the road would stop and stare at us and ask us what we were doing. Most of them commented on how they got the American girl working hard.

My Doña gave me an XX-L bright Green T-shirt to wear, because I didn’t have a green shirt and if we’re going to be saving the environment, then duh! we need to be wearing green! We made it all the way up to the main point in town (have I mentioned how there are basically only two streets here in La Caya. The main one runs north and south and is the same from the highway. The other hits it perpendicularly, running east to west. Where the roads meet is sort of the central meeting point in town, although the east to west road continues in both directions to other houses and neighborhoods in town). At the corner of the roads meeting is a small open lot where plastic bottles come to die. No joke. We worked on this field for over an hour, and by this time we had recruited more people from the street, so there were 10 of us or so. We worked for over an hour, filled 10 big black garbage bags, and barely made a dent in the plastic bottles, glass bottles and trash covering the ground.

My sort of boss here at the centro stopped us, saying it was “demasiado,” or too much. Then we decided to go to the Sindico, or the mayor and city hall to ask if we could use a pick up truck on Friday to finish the job. The government officials were supportive, so our work will continue on Friday.

Except, I won’t be here. Remi comes in TOMORROW (yes I am just a little excited) and him and I are heading up to Puerto Plata for the weekend. I feel guilty for not being here, and I want to be here, but at the same time, if they can do this without me- all the better.

My goal is to have trash clean-up days once a week in different parts of La Caya, and to get more of the youth involved instead of just the workers from my centro. I was also thinking it would be really cool to turn that empty lot that is the burial ground for trash into a mini-park. Maybe then people would want to take care of it and throw their trash in garbage cans just down the road.

Lots to do. Lots to work for. In the meantime, I am wrapping up my diagnostic. August 4-8, my training class will get together in Santo Domingo with our project partners (we each have a Dominican counterpart we are supposed to be working with in our communities) to present what we have learned this summer and what our plans are for the next year, in Spanish. It will be a good feeling to get it done, especially since it is in Spanish. And then the work really starts. English classes, computer classes, youth groups… lots to do, lots to work for.