Redefining Family

Luis Arturo, mi hermanito

Today I want to introduce you all to Luis Arturo. Despite being adorable and having a really lovable attitude once getting to know him, Arturo (as he is known because there is another Luis in his house) is also the child that my parents are sponsoring. Side Note: all the kids here have between 6 and 8 Padrinos, or Godparents, who pay to support them. Although the money all goes into one pot for the home, the kids get letters and photos and things from their Padrinos and are always writing back to them. It is pretty amazing the love and appreciation some of them have for people they´ve never met. Anyways, I´ve been spending a lot of time with Arturo the past few weeks as I think of him a bit like a little brother... he even answers to hermanito when I see him (spanish for little brother). He can be a bit finicky, and somethings standoffish... but when he is ready to play with you – its hours of hugging and laughing and all sorts of wonderful things. I think as he is getting more accostomed to my presence as well, the standoffishness is fading. At only 2 years old, I´m excited to see him grow up over the years J

MMMMM Cucumber! We have an abundance of cucumbers coming out of our greenhouse (we´ve passed 1000 harvested a few weeks ago), and the kids enjoy eating them whole in the afternons!

One of the boys in my house wanted hearts and the word ´familia´(family) painted on both arms when we were face painting!

A few of you may be wondering why I would title a post ´Redefining Family.´ Especially if you know how strong of a role my family plays in my life, with a pretty clearly defined definition. Well here it is, yesterday was Dia de Familia here at the home. An interesting concept for me as we are a home for orphaned and abandoned children. If they have family that exists, for me there better be a gosh darn good reason for them to be here instead of with those families. I had a few doubts throughout the day as many of the families appeared not to have insufficient money to take care of children, in fact many had numerous other children with them (be them cousins, children born after our kids were brough here, whatever). Those who I saw interacting treated the children well, and many children were so sad to see them go at the end of the day. I guess I just need to remind myself that we have trained social workers and psychologists that investigate every situation and make the decisions of who comes to the home. They must have good reason!

Danilo, one of the older boys serving up pizza made by the leadership group and sold to the families. They were making money to feed their chickens!

The day consisted of the families of about half of the children coming to visit, bringing parents, aunts, uncles, grandparents, cousins, nephews – a whole slew of people – dressed in their best, with gifts and food from outside for the kids. There were events all day, kids were sitting in the shade of trees spending time with their families, the Tias were sharing information about the kids lives with them – almost like mothers bragging with report cards and all, and there was also a whole lot of dissipointed/upset/lonely children. It was so interesting to see adults walking around and instantly being able to determine who they belong to. My favorite was when one of our sets of twins were walking with their father, all looking almost identical aside from the years aging the fathers face.

I spent quite a large part of the day painting the faces of kids who didnt have family there to keep them occupied, chatting about life and things. This is where the idea of redefining family comes in. I´ve always been amazed at the ability of one of my fellow volunteers, an ex-pequeño from the home in Haiti, to talk about his NPH family. Always in the form of brothers and sisters. Though he clarifies whether he is talking about an NPH brother or a blood brother – the sentiments are the same, the feeling of family never changes. I spent a lot of my day talking to those children, especially those who are newer to the home, about the idea of an NPH family. The fact that there are so many people here within these walls who love and care for them, the fact that no matter what family exists for them outside of the walls, they will always have their family here. These are some of the ideas I feel are so important for the children to be shown and told often as to help create those sentiments.

We had a retreat for the volunteers a few weeks ago and spent a lot of time thinking about various goals we have for our time here. One of the things I thought about was the importance of family in my life and how I can help the children to redefine the word and create that same sense of family importance with their fellow pequeños, tias, and all the others here. I know this weekend was just a start but I hope that by providing an example and talking with the kids, I can help to inspire that sentiment in them.

Tia Morena and Alberto (both from my house) showing that feeling of NPH family and dancing in the park to a bit of bachata!

In other news, I´ve really starting my work in the farm! I´m spending about 10 hours there every week working lots with plant reproduction as well as helping with the classes taught there. In these classes the kids each have their own row in the garden where they can grow and care for whatever they please as well as their own fruit tree to care for. As with everything here, it doesnt always work out perfectly, but it has been really exciting to see the kids who get into it. Last week I helped one of the boys harvest pounds and pounds of peanuts!!! It was the first time I had ever seen them growing and had me really excited. I´m also learning a lot from the Hatian workers we have there. I love the Hatian people, they are so kind and ready to share their knowlege. Slowly I´m learning the processes for planting and caring for plantains, bananas, yuca, batata (similar to a sweet potato but white in color, and different in shape), and many other tropical fruits and vegetables!

I think thats about it for now, I´m feeling more settled in a routine and work here, sometimes I can´t even figure how how the weeks are passing they go so fast, I feel like I´m living my life here not just visiting some foreign place. And this weekend, it´s off to visit a little town in the mountains and do a bit of exploring!

Birding Expert visits NPH-DR

Below is an article that I wrote for NPH publications... just thought I would share it with you!

Birding Expert visits NPH-DR

This week, numerous children here at the NPH home in the Dominican Republic had the opportunity to learn a little more about the birds around the property on which our home lies. As a part of the Naturalismo y El Medio Ambiente (Naturalism and the Environment) course taught to students fourth grade and down, each class spent an hour attempting to quietly walk through less developed areas of the property, taking notice of the perches, flight, and sounds of nearby birds.

It all began with a visit from bird expert and owner of Tody Tours (a bird tour company here in the DR), Kate Wallace. Kate led bird walks around our property this Monday for both the second and fourth grade classes, lovingly sharing her knowledge of Dominican birds with the children. At one point, she even had all of the children laying in the grass playing dead to see if the vulture above would believe they were food!

Kate also lead an early morning bird walk for some of the older children with specific interest in the topic. As the sun was rising and the tropical air was still brisk, the group was able to see and hear many more of the property´s numerous bird species. From this walk has stemmed the start of a bird club here at the home, who will be creating posters to help teach the rest of the children to identify our many birds, and sharing their excitement with fellow pequeños!

The events of the week were organized by Project Green volunteers Christina Carson and Ingrid Hannan with help from employee Marijo Rozycki who hope it will spark continued interest in appreciation for the wild birds and animals of our home.

Photo Mania!

Just thought that I would put up a few photos from my weekend off for you all! My camera had a bit of a problem and I spent a month waiting for a part to be shipped here to fi it... so finally having it back had me playing photographer all weekend!

The view from the window of the 19th floor high class apartment were we spent a few nights in the capitol (belonging to a donor who kindly welcomes poor volunteers into her home)

Rusting car weaiting to be loved

My fellow project green volunteer, Ingrid, adventuring in a Santo Domingo park

colorful buildings are never far from sight here! something i love about this country

we stumbled upon a little barrio in the city, and in turn this oven

More to come soon! As many of you know, photography as recently become a passion of mine... id love your feedback!

Sending Down My Roots And Spreading My Branches

It’s amazing how the time passes in my dear home here in the Dominican Republic. For me, it seems only yesterday that I was posting photos and sharing my excitement about various adventures had… yet a week has passed and so many things have happened, so many things have changed. It’s been quite the rollercoaster and quite the journey the past few weeks… and I’ve come out of it with a bit of a change in my job and a new outlook on my time here. And that is all to come in this addition! But first, I’ve been thinking about ways I could start my blog entries, and what I’ve come to is this – I shall begin each entry introducing you to one of the kids here. A little about who they are, a little about my relationship with them, and hopefully a photo as well. And soon you’ll know a little more about a lot of my kids!

I love this photo of him because it shows that exact moment when he is about to burst into a big smile from his often serious look!

So, without delay – meet Jonathan, a boy of 8 years who lives in my house of new arrivals. Some of you may remember a story from another entry about the boy who had refused to talk to me for my first few weeks here, and one day drew him sticking his tongue out at me and me crying on the chalkboard, then let me play with him all afternoon… this is that boy. And since then we have created quite an interesting relationship. Jonathan is still a bit of a trouble for me as he can be so incredibly loving and friendly one minute, and after one little thing happens he can be upset with me for the rest of the day. But when times are good between us, they really are great. If given a task, he is willing to help me with whatever little thing I need. He will sit with me for hours coloring. He gets really excited when I am coming to his class to teach my course. He is in a place where sitting to talk, playing kids games, and hugging are all accepted as great ways to pass the time. And best of all, if he is in a bit of a bad mood, it can often be completely turned around with something as simple as a hug and a little tickling (definitely not true for most of the kids).

And here is that great big smile!

Let me know what you think of this plan, and I’ll decide whether to continue with it or not! And now for some bullets/stories of what I’ve been up to!

-First of all, my work. A few of you might be aware of the somewhat crazy rollercoaster of events related to my actual work since I’ve been here. Essentially, in true Dominican fashion, no real solid work was planned for the three “Proyecto Verde” volunteers before we arrived… and everyone (including us) seemed to have a bit of a different idea as to what our job was going to be. So now, two months into my year here, a solid plan has been created! First, I am going to get involved in the farm project started by the couple of Spanish agronomists! For now, I’ll start spending a few mornings and a few afternoons with them each week, helping out and hopefully learning a lot about how their farm functions (and how the heck growing works in a tropical climate)! They’ll be leaving in a few months, and hopefully then I’ll be able to help take a little more responsibility alongside the Haitian they are training to take over. I’ve also taken on the responsibility of overseeing the care of our animals, which includes 2 sheep, 6 pigs, 4 cows, 1 bull, and a slew of chickens all belonging to various kids. I find this rather amusing as I have net to zero knowledge of exactly what farm animals need – so aside from keeping them fed, watered, and clean… ill be learning the ropes! And learning the ropes includes everything from ensuring they get their vaccinations to helping move the cows from one pasture to the other! In addition to this, I’ll be continuing with the younger kids classes, planning environment related excursions, and implementing a program in which when kids go to the beach they’ll spend a half an hour or so picking up a bit of garbage!

Reading the following section of a poem by Tibetan Activist Tenzin Tsundue helped me to look at my work here in a new way. I’m living in a borrowed garden, my time here is finite. But I still have the opportunity to send down roots through all the difficulties, to reach for goals that may be a little out of reach, and to leave behind a strong presence, a healthy plant.

Though in a borrowed garden
you grow, grow well my sister.

Send your roots
through the bricks,
stones, tiles and sand.
Spread your branches wide
and rise
above the hedges high.

-Another REALLY exciting project Ingrid and I are just beginning to plan is the idea of bringing some of the kids to the market in san Pedro to sell some of the food they have grown themselves here on the terreno. This past weekend we went to the market early Saturday morning to check it out and talk to those in charge. It is your typical Dominican market (not a tourist market, a solid, almost nothing but food, market), with the streets outside filled with vendors selling fruit and veggies and an indoor area here more established vendors have their own little store. And in the center of the indoor part is a huge area for the selling of meat. In every direction you look there are tables of dead animals. Whole and waiting to be butchered, every part you could possibly make use of laying out for purchase, heads, feet, intestines, everything. For those of you who know how queasy raw meat makes me… I’m sure you can figure out how I felt hanging out in this room waiting for our friend Tomas to make his purchases. A man with a mountain of chickens, quickly breaking their legs, taking out the insides and setting them on the table, and tossing the rest in a bucket to be bought noticed me watching his smooth movements and couldn’t understand why I didn’t want to purchase some of his chicken. That’s besides the point – the managers of the market are wonderfully kind and excited for us to start selling! Now to work out the details and get approval from the director.

- Just one other story of life at the home this past week for you! The discussion has been going on of moving the location of the kids homes and moving the children in a few of the coed homes around so that we would have the 6 houses on one side of the park/basketball court be all girls and the 6 on the other side be all boys. I think it was mostly decided but nothing had been finalized… until last Friday. As with anything here, rumors get out and people talk. So without any final decision ever being made, the Tias got it in their heads that they were supposed to move last Friday. The house director started her morning that day seeing the contents of 4 houses slowly being moved across the park! It turned into a crazy hectic day of moving every last thing in all of those 4 homes… including any and all things that are Exactly the same in both houses, and with no plan of how to execute the move whatsoever. Kids were carrying piles of mattresses on their heads, and bed frames in wheelbarrows! Despite the hecticness of the move, and my want for the kids to have more contact with kids of the other sex to create brother/sister relationships (which by looking at the relationship I have with my on brother I’m sure you can tell are important to me), I’m also content with the move. My boys have moved into a home with a beautiful view over the wall of rolling hills scattered with trees and a nice view of our farm, they are excited to have a covered porch in the back, and although a neighborhood filled with boys is a bit overwhelming, they are getting more interaction with the older boys who hopefully will be good role models for them!

My work noted on the NPH website!!

Just a quick note to inform you all that there is a story on the NPH website about the beach clean up day Ingrid and I organized! I as so happy to find it today hen i stopped by the website looking for something for work!

Check it out here:
http://www.nph.org/
there is a link to the story on the main page!

Beaches Batays and Bienvenidos

Disclaimer: This looks REALLY long because of all the photos... it is in fact long, but not overwhelmingly! so don't be scared, read on!

A nice opening of Antony and Antonio playing around one evening

So my infrequent writing has created a problem for me in that whenever I do sit down to write something, I am such a loss for what I should write in that there are so so so many things to choose from and I know that if I included even half of them, you would all be bored to tears by the time you could read it all! So for the sake of your boredom, I think I ill keep it to just a few stories

But first a bit of an overview – As before, every day is still quite the rollercoaster. For the sake of openness, I admit the fact that almost every day the thought of going home has crossed my mind. It can really be a rough life here in the sense that I am always trying to figure out exactly what my place is within the home and almost nothing can be done without at least a bit of frustration. That said, although the frustration and difficulties at times seem to outweigh the other stuff, some moments of the day are one hundred percent joy and happiness. Excitement and fun. Our classes are continuing slowly but surely, having only one hour with each class each week means we teach just about the same lesson 6 times during the week – so by the end of the week we’re experts at it! Lucky kids ho get us last ☺ Yesterday we got the wonderful news that we will be getting our very own classroom to teach in!!!!! You couldn’t believe how excited we are to decorate our area, set up the room in the way that we want, have our very own rules of the room and so many other things!!! Hopefully we’ll be getting some keys to the room and can get to work setting things up to teach in there! I’ve also been spending a TON of my time preparing for a big fun event we have coming this Sunday! It is the day of san Francisco who is the patron saint of all things natural, so there will be a bunch of fun things during the day including all the kids dressing up a bit, bringing out our horse and cart, eating lunch in our new park, and a treasure hunt… all themed toward the natural world.

Antony, one of the boys in my house planting tomatoes in the back yard

And now for a few stories… notable events in the past two weeks!

-I can’t believe I haven’t written since this as it seems like it was ages ago, but we took close to 30 of the kids of all ages to a beach cleanup one Saturday – it was an international event in which people all over the world were cleaning the beach that day, and recording what sort of trash was picked up so that the organization can then work to address diminishing the trash coming from those sources. Despite some typical Dominican experiences in the morning, it was a great day! It felt so great to have planned our first excursion and for everything to have gone pretty smoothly. Plus to be taking the children out of the home to do something good for the community and to open their eyes to the amount of litter in their country – because it is truly amazing. We’re hoping to plan lots of other events that involve both some service to the community and exposure to the natural world!

-Three new volunteers arrived this weekend, which has been oh so exciting! They are a guy from Spain and two girls from Switzerland and Germany. It is so grand to have some new faces and more importantly a wonderfully excited and fun group! Last night we went out to Batay Montecristi – a small village of about 300 people that is a twenty minute walk from here. YOWZA! It was such a grand night of dancing and fun! We have a volunteer who grew up in the home in Haiti and is no lie one of the best dancers I have EVER seen! He spends much of his free time learning Michael Jackson dances and could really give MJ a run for his money. To say the least – he gave it his all last night! Although most of the night, as always, was dedicated to dancing bachata (the dance of the DR); at one point most of the 15-30 year olds in the batay along with all of us were around the dance floor with a few in the middle at a time dancing some seriousness to reggaeton – words can’t describe it but it as like something from a movie! I’m hoping the night was a sign of what is to come this year in our free time!!

-Today Ingrid and I tagged along for part of the new volunteers’ orientation for which they were going on an excursion to visit a few Batays. First for clarification – a Batay is what most of the small villages here are known as. I’ve heard the translation as a Haitian migrant camp but was also told that they are simply the areas built up to house the workers of the sugar cane industry. That said, the people there never actually own the land they live on and most live in homes that in the states would not even be considered houses. It as such an inspiring afternoon as we were able to see the countryside I have been imagining exists here but have yet to see much of. Miles of sugar cane fields seeming to end in the far off mountains, winding roads through beautifully vegetated areas thriving in the tropical sun and moisture, a river with beautiful sloping green banks!!!!!! Of course all of this was simply seen from the back of the pickup truck on the drives between the batays. These themselves were interesting in that we could see a bit more of the life of your typical rural Dominican. Living in either a small room as a part of a building having just one long row of doors to single rooms each holding an entire family or in homes built of whatever materials could be found at the time – tin, cardboard, bricks, fences of plants (which to me are beautiful). We even visited the area’s premier homemade booze ‘factory.’ A small room in a shack of tin in which a charismatic old man had set up 6 or so little contraptions to make this alcohol (Tricoline sp?). These were jerryrigged charcoal fires with old metal cans on top and a home invented system of collecting the boiled off alcohol in a small plastic container, transferring it bit by bit into reused plastic gallon jugs. (lots of boiling liquids in plastic..mmm) That gallon container will cost you the equivalent of 8 dollars and the man insisted it as at least 50% abv… or more. I tasted a bit and it as surprisingly good, made of sugar cane juice with a really distinct flavor.

sugar cane and dirt roads all the way to the mountains


Nothing like having a cold one on the hood of the truck in the middle of nowhere.
(Jose, the volunteer from Spain, and Ingrid)

-As for the kids (because after all, that is why I am here, right) though days bring so many challenges – mostly in the school but in the homes as well – I am getting more and more comfortable with a lot of them. I’m starting to feel much more accepted in my house (the tia even called me ‘mi hija’ or ‘my daughter’ today which really touched me). The kids pick on me like I am an older sister or something, and seem to be slowly feeling comfortable with my presence. They worry when I don’t show up for lunch or dinner and never fail to express their sadness when I am not around much for a day. One of my favorite kids, Jose, who is new to the home since I have been here, will come up to me if I haven’t been to a meal or more and tell me that my food is piling up in the house and I better come quick because I have a lot of food to get through. I love that he thinks every meal I don’t eat is waiting for me, even though in reality as long as I tell the tia I won’t be there no food I even put aside for me (although at times I forget or don’t realize I won’t be there). He always looks so worried for me, thinking there I no way I could possibly eat all that food in one sitting. And here are some of those kids :)

Jose - the new boy who is always warning me about my food piling up

Jhon Luis - probably the most beautiful boy in the home, but oh so shy

I suppose I should leave you with a few parting words of wisdom. This quote recently fell into my life while I as reading the Life of Pi and has forced me to think about my reasons for doing what I do… something that can be both very inspiring and troubling. I’d love to hear your thoughts as well.

“Why do people move? What makes them uproot and leave everything they’ve known for a great unknown beyond the horizon? ... Why enter this jungle of foreignness where everything is new, strange, and difficult?”

And I leave you with a kiss from Sebastian, a favorite in my house for his amazing personality!