A Race from Top to Bottom

Our first few weeks have mostly been concerned with getting to know our way around but we've already been able to participate in a satisfying project. It was not just technically outside of my site but also technically out of my province and far outside of my assigned project. Though it took place just up the mountain road from our pueblo when we hopped out of the pickup bed we were no longer in Elias Piña but Dajabon. And just as I don't live in the hot and dry Elias Piña of the south, this was not the busy and bustling Dajabon of the famed international market. We were in a small hillside village and we were there to plant trees.

The project was coordinated in part by another PCV and an NGO but most of the work was done by locals. The trees had been grown in a vivero (plant nursery) owned by the local Asociación de Producción de Bosques (Reforestaction Association) and the lion's share of the labor was done by local high school students.

The land was steep and the day was hot and the bosquedores had grown some 2000 pines and other native trees for us to plant. We worked the entire hillside from the bottom to the top and back down again. The jovenes (youth) approached the job with the uneven effort of teenagers everywhere. Some worked, but the kids who were literally too cool for school (they got the day off for volunteering) chatted in the shade. My work with troubled youth in the States has taught me skills rooted in positive reinforcement to challenge and motivate the disengaged. This worked with some of them, but the doña's approach was more effective. "Look at me! I'm over 60 years old and I'm dripping with sweat! What are you, flowers?"

Dominicans, generally speaking, are more direct with their children than American parents but slightly less so than American drill sargents. They worry about delincuencía (juvenile delinquency) but this to me seemed more like garden variety laziness. Also, some of the muchachos would likely be working in the fincas (agritultural tracts of land) later that week and possibly for the rest of their lives so I can't blame them for lack of enthusiasm. Still, we got the work done in time for lunch. We were assisted by a kicky mule who dutifully hauled saddlebags of matitas (seedlings) from the bottom of the slope to the top. He was a huge help but you had to steer clear of his hindlegs.

The land we planted was owned by the bosquedores so we know the trees won't be cut down but in the national parks it's a different story. The slopes of nearby Nalga de Maco are steadily being denuded of their timber. Some blame Haitians coming over the border to harvest carbón (charcoal) but more often than not it is poor Dominicans. Without better prospects the best way to make a living along the border is to plant beans in the hillside and sell them at market.

They lack land and opportunities but not consciencia. Dominicans are well-educated on the problem of deforestation. Haiti is so badly deforested you can see the difference from space. During the years of dictatorship and caudillisimo the Dominican forestry service was militarized and illegal loggers and farmers were jailed. Today, enforcement is lax. I imagine it is a grim business. Just barely getting by and knowing you're not doing yourself any favors them in the long run.

Every time it rains the water washes loose clay from the hillside where it runs into the valley where it runs in a ruddy band in the river. The locals tell me that the river is wider and deeper than it used to be. Without trees to drink it it the water flows into the valley. Without trees to retain the moisture and release it as mist it rains less and each season grows hotter. Climate change is real.

One local I talked to likened it to a race between deforestation and reforestation. It remains to be seen which side will win but I got back in the pickup proud, tired, and happy to have carried the baton a little further in the right direction.

A Tale of Two Murals

Two friends of mine in San Francisco are landscape designers. When, about this time last year, I was asked to oversee the installation of an educational garden at an underserved school I went to them first. They are at the top of their game, well-respected and well-connected, and were generous with their time and talents and their network. They not only worked for free but recruited a well-known local artist to paint a mural at the school and got them to work for free, too.

It was an exciting project. My friends put together an innovative design with several unique features, almost all of which never got off the drawing board. There was a permit that we had to sign, you see. It was over 20 pages and had very specific guidelines about what could and couldn't happen. Must of what we wanted fell into the "couldn't" category. The mural was one of these things. It wasn't exactly prohibited by the garden permit but was subject to it's own 10 page permit. This required the artist to, among other things, submit the proposed design to the Design Approval Committee for review and sign away all rights to their work while at the same time agreeing to maintain the mural if it was damaged.

They didn't sign it and I can't blame them. I wouldn't have signed it, either, though I did sign the other permit. The kids didn't get a mural but they did get the garden, even if it was a pale imitation of the original vision. The permitting process dragged on for months and was so dispiriting that one of my designer friends literally broke down in tears at one point.

What does this have to do with the DR, you ask? Well, despite having been here for less time than the aforementioned permitting process, my fellow volunteers and I have already completed a mural at the wall of a school. This was another project of my "advanced" Spanish class. Here's a picture of it:



I am (almost) not exagerrating when I say that we were able to complete this world map in less time than it took me to read the permits for the San Francisco project. The "permit" here was a simple conversation with the directora of the school. Instead of bureacratic obstructionism the process was marked by trust and flexibility. When the project was delayed (twice) by political actions and (once) by weather we had only to make a simple phone call to change plans.

In a previous entry of this blog, I used the phrase "Third World" when reflecting upon the Dominican Republic. A fellow volunteer has since told me that "developing nation" it a more accurate phrase. As I noted, it's not that the DR doesn't have the stuff of modernity it's just that it's not always evenly distributed or hasn't reached same height of complexity. In that vein, it's not that don't Dominicans have bureaucracy but it hasn't invaded all levels of society in the way it has in "developed" countries like my own.

Sometimes, this is a good thing.