What to Make of It / Wrapping Up

Two months wasn’t enough time.

Only in this past week, the seventh of my eight, have I been feeling confident with my Spanish and with my relationships in the community. Just now, at the end of it all, I am seeing in myself the first signs of competence. Finally, I ask questions with the right pitch in my voice. Finally, I can talk trash at the basketball court. Finally, I am in on the jokes. Finally, I can tell people about my family. Finally, I can get through a story without pausing and reaching for the dictionary. Finally, I can not only ask but convince a girl to dance bachata with me. Finally, i can make a self-deprecating comment when I lose the beat. Finally, I can ask questions in Spanish about Spanish. Finally, I’ve stopped using my designation as “foreigner” as an excuse for confusion or bad manners. Finally, I started sharing everything: food, photos, books, rum. Finally, my host father talks to me about the old days. Finally, I don’t feel so exhausted from the constant discomfort, the constant straining to catch a familiar word. Finally, I can act like myself, with most of the bells and whistles that come with the American English version of me.

And yet I have to say goodbye in five days. To the people who helped me adjust. To the people who helped me learn to like adjusting. They just barely caught a glimpse of the fruits of their work. A glimpse of the day when the white guy hanging out at the corner store stopped being a nuisance and started becoming a participant, a co-conspirator. They were only able to see the inflection point. I am already thinking about how much further I could go from here. No just how much more I could help, but how much more I could join in. All of this is to say that I feel like I’ve reached an important checkpoint. I’m one the guys who plays basketball every day at 4 pm. I’m one of the guys who plays dominos outside Colmado Vitó. I’m one of the guys who goes to the farms three times a week. And all this counts for something here, believe it or not. Membership in groups is like cultural capital here. To use a fittingly Dominican metaphor, you have to be part of the team before you swing for the fences. Especially in a collective society like Rio Limpio, there is no service without camaraderie. No projects break ground unless you and your partners break bread.

But when I return to Washington and Lee University, I will be asked to justify my time here using metrics other than the kind I’ve tried to describe above. I will be asked to describe the projects I launched, the structures I built, the paperwork I completed. Something to show for myself. I knew this from the beginning and I made sure to have something ready when the time came to write necessary reports. What I didn’t know at the start was how insignificant this portion of the job would be. I’m almost positive that my legacy with the Río Limpians, however short-lived, will be a memory of a kind, curious, young American man. And this I think is an accomplishment in itself. Consider that the Peace Corps has three goals: to work with communities to develop problem-solving capacity, to share American culture with foreign people, and to share foreign culture with Americans. It looks like the “Washington and Lee deliverable” would only foot one-third of this bill. The most precarious third at that. What if the hiking maps I made get lost? What if the file gets deleted? What if my presentation on outdoor safety isn’t passed down to future guides? What if the regular basketball games stop happening because the ball pops? Of course the work component of my internship gave it the kind structure I am used to back home. But the success of my efforts is too contingent, too likely to fail, for me to stake all my hopes and cares on it. I’d rather frame this summer as an opportunity to represent my country and call another home. If only for a short while.

Explaining the Phenomenon of Dominican “Laziness”

That I’ve bumped into American volunteers on the same public transportation and chanced upon German volunteers at the same beach is a testament to two things: the size of this island and the size of its volunteer footprint. The “small world” feeling, as well as the “what are the chances…?” feeling, are pretty much staples here. My guidebook claims that a single Dominican can fill up an arena with his friends, and I think at least part of that is due to the inevitability of bumping into people on this island. Like a gas in pressurized conditions, people are colliding, rebounding, and colliding anew. Think about it: the Dominican Republic is about the size of Maryland with something like 10 million people. Imagine Isle Royale National Park, where a population of 4,000 moose share 40 miles by 15 miles of land. The case of volunteers is similar: the Peace Corps alone has more than 200 personnel stationed in communities all over the map. Even in a place like Río Limpio, kids are leaving for university on the weekends, and shop owners are frequently resupplying their inventories at regional markets. On paper, this place seems busy and bustling for a country that is still emerging from centuries of exploitation. And, to be sure, what the Dominicans lack in infrastructure proper, they make up for in informal networking. Insert variables like the expansiveness of Dominican familial relations, the custom of amicability between strangers, and the length of the average conversation. Suddenly, what you’re looking at is a picture of a society whose capacity to produce and consume, it would seem, could be powered by the sheer volume of human activity. Not to mention human collaboration.

However, no matter how prime the pump seems to be, there is one thing that seems to be holding back the Dominican Republic from economic prosperity. That thing is work ethic. Every volunteer I’ve met has told one of two things: either that Dominican people don’t work as hard as they should or that Dominican people don’t work hard. Of course, the former hinges on a normative statement about Dominican lifestyle, and the latter is just a evaluation of one people’s ways made by an outsider. Nonetheless, as problematic as those statements are, I find myself in agreement with at least the second one. At least in my experience here, I have seen employees desert their jobs mid-shift, egregiously neglect instructions and deadlines, and lie about their productivity when questioned. And these are the Dominicans who have jobs in the first place. There is another group of people (able-bodied too) who do not even participate in the workforce, who are supported by the rest of their household. You can find many of this sort in Río Limpio, chatting and drinking together. Before arriving here, I was aware that Dominicans had a bad habit of being late to meetings. But now, I suspect that there is something like laziness actually endemic in the country. I’ve met exceptional figures, men who have vision and aim and pride and purpose. But these few are crowded out in my mind by the abounding examples of blatant carelessness. Last week, I found a library in a nearby city called Restauración. Thrilled by such a rare sight in this country, I couldn’t wait to find out just what sort of selection it had for young adult readers. But the door was locked. On a Monday at noon. As it turns out, I found the lady with the key sitting on her porch directly across the street. She only opened the building to me after I inquired (begged). Of course, the library was full of top-notch fiction and nonfiction, all translated in Spanish, just waiting for a bright, young, curious person. Unfortunately, I can’t confirm that those books are getting read like they should be, because the door to them is closed with a padlock.

There are some reasons why Dominicans don’t punch the clock they way Americans do. The first is environmental. Like most other Equatorial countries, Dominican civilization is used to a cornucopia occurring in their backyard. Squash and passion fruit are littered on the ground, whether the Dominicans toil or whether they sit around in plastic chairs. The second reason is sociological. Working hard is often read as a sign of poverty. The sweaty, skinny people are seen as the neediest ones, the ones with the less. It’s sort of like medieval times, when fatness and idleness was a luxury, and labor was for the serfs. The third reason is socioeconomic. Especially where I live, there are almost zero professional occupations. Which means zero opportunity for upward mobility. That being said, why should Dominicans in my village work if there is no light at the end of the tunnel? Say what you will about the lack of education; I have come to believe that my Dominican friends have sharp minds for utilitarian calculation. They know when something is worth the effort. And when it isn’t. The fourth reason is political. It is also psychological. In the past, the grass-roots campaigns of the Dominican people have been oppressed by brutal dictators or corrupt bureaucrats. Projects have been erased or ruined by higher-ups at the local level, as well as the national. In other words, Dominican electorate has endured a lot of betrayal. And as a result, there is a learned sense of inefficacy. Which looks a lot like helplessness. What is more, the most obvious outlet for this disparagement – immigration to the United States – is prohibitive. Unless you have money and clearance, you can’t make it into the U.S. Not even for a visit. Considering the above factors, Dominican laziness seems long in the making. Still, as entrenched as it is, I wonder if I cannot be undone. Like I said, this place is teeming with the means of production. All it needs is an enterprising spirit.

Río Limpio: A Case Study in Community Development

There are plenty of reasons to come to the Dominican Republic. The beaches but it on the map. Santo Domingo is one of the oldest cities in the Western Hemisphere (La Isabela might actually be the oldest). There is an emerging ecotourism scene for those who like hiking, surfing, kayaking and cliff diving . You can even find some art museums scattered throughout the country. But the real treasure, for me, lies in the oral history you hear from local people. What you hear isn’t always accurate but it certainly makes you wonder what kind of changing world these folks have lived through.

 

Of course, most of the history is oral because Dominicans haven’t adopted the kinds of strict bookkeeping practices Americans are used to. You don’t get a receipt from the corner store in town. I have yet to meet a professional accountant. Suffice it to say that things work pretty unofficially here. No one uses street names to navigate. Which makes asking for directions a very patient undertaking. Even a person’s formal name is obscured by their shorter – and almost always unrelated – nickname. I’ve sat through stories where the who, where, and when were all unclear until the Q&A afterwards.

 

So this is, first and foremost, a reflection on the origins of local history. And just how precarious it is to pass anecdotes down instead of census bureau data. But there is still plenty of substance buried in the yarns that Dominicans love to spin. Albeit substance worth the hermeneutic of suspicion. For instance, I have been asking my friends and host family about the Americans who lived in Río Limpio in years past. So far, I have a clear mental timeline of the last 5 years: 3 cycles of Peace Corps volunteers who assisted in the creation of a coffee co-op and the construction of a basketball court. This seems like predictable stuff, to be sure. But once I expand the geographical radius of my question, I start to hear things that just don’t sound right. For instance, I have heard that a group of American Buddhists comes to a nearby town called Los Cerezos once a year and opens a agro-veterinarian clinic. This particular story was passed to me through a fellow volunteer, who is himself a Buddhist. He told me that the original story included the mention of Americans, service work, and part of the name of their organization. But the story contained no particulars concerning why or how this sect landed in the remote jungle of western DR. Only with his knowledge of American Buddhism was he able to deduce where these volunteers were from and what sort of mission they had. Without my colleague’s interpretation of the facts, the story would have remained the following: “some Americans showed up and helped out and left and come back once in a while.”
Unfortunately, it seems like a lot of folks here pay attention to cross-sections of time but not the durations of time that lead up to certain moments and explain them. Everybody remembers the arrival of volunteers and their eventual contribution (if any), but not the reason for their presence or the volunteer’s satisfaction with their result. And, to me, this is a sad thing. These volunteers aren’t spending years of their lives grinding away in the developing world for their own health. Their community counterparts should see the glaringly obvious – that, in a perfect world, volunteers would not be in their community in their capacity as volunteers -, and they should help to make their job obsolete.

After all, volunteer groups such as the Peace Corps aim to work with the community to build productive partnerships, as well as facilitating cultural exchange. But the community doesn’t seem to know that this is the aim. In my experience the people around town have little knowledge (perhaps little interest either) about the background of the many volunteer efforts occurring right before their eyes. One very scary implication of this ignorance is the following.

Suppose that Peace Corps is an organization devoted to serving communities in distress. And suppose that communities misunderstand the reason why Peace Corps personnel has put up shop down the street. Does this mean that the community remains in the dark about its own distress? Of course, most communities can see their own problems for themselves. Yet, it seems like many folks might not connect the dots between the presence of Peace Corps and the problems at hand.

The information asymmetry between service worker and client is something I want to write about in the future. Consider the preceding paragraphs, as disjointed as they are, a brainstorm.

Finding My Deliverable / Delivering My Findings

It is easy to forget that my time in the Dominican Republic is a form of summer school. Strictly speaking, I don’t have classes or teachers. It’s sort of a make-your-own-adventure type of gig. The 16-year-old Chase would have been anxious for more structure but the 20-year-old version loves to blaze a trail and improvise in real time. Makes me think of travel writer Paul Theroux’s famous saying: “tourists don’t know where they’ve been; travelers don’t know where they’re going.” In my case, you can substitute the word “going” for “doing.” But I do have some assignments here. The following is an excerpt from some writing I had to do for the academic component of this internship. I think it’s a good picture of the industriousness I’m up to.

I am connecting all day long. Connecting myself to members of the community and members of the community to each other. So far, my time in Río Limpio has been one long conversation between volunteers, companies, and miscellaneous people with knowledge. For example, there are two Peace Corps volunteers living in the pueblo who developed an initiative: revitalize the nearby hiking trails. As soon as I learned of their idea, I wanted to get involved. Not only because I am enthusiastic about the the outdoors but because I realized how feasible the implementation could be. After inquiring around town for a week, I was able to find a group of men who knew the routes to various landmarks in the countryside: waterfalls, caves, peaks, etc. What is more, I learned that most of these places were situated on protected land that had recently been designated a national park. Of course, given my agency’s ecotouristic vision for Río Limpio, I saw many opportunities here. If this village can somehow develop and maintain the proper infrastructure – lodging, trails, maps, guides, tours, etc – then it will see a lot more commerce. To my knowledge, this seems like the way Jackson Hole and Vail got on the map. Why not Río Limpio?

But even more connections took place after I found the amateur guides. I talked to different volunteers from a German organization called Ecoselva who are teaching English at a trade school in town. They wanted to find out just how much these guides really knew before anything else. Also, in a complete stroke of luck, they happened to find GPS devices at their school. So far, our best guess is that the school uses them to teach orienteering to the people who farm far from home. Anyhow, with the help of GPS and the experience of the guides, I have been able to make detailed maps of some of the trail routes in the area. In fact, I just got back from a 3-day trip to a cave called La Sidra. It is an amazing place that few know about and almost no one has visited. In the future, I want to work with my agency to connect with UNESCO to find out how this place can be better shared with the world.

But there are still more connections to make right here in Río Limpio. The Peace Corps volunteers have insisted that I teach the guides how to map the trails themselves, so that when I’m gone they can carry on the process of formalizing (and hopefully delivering) their knowledge of the wilderness. To do this, I will have to walk the guides through the functions of the devices themselves as well as the computer programs that can compile the data collected. No easy task, given that most of these men do not have any technological background. And some of them have very low levels of literacy. But the other volunteers are hopeful. Especially since these men are starting to see the immense potential of the project. Of course, connecting the guides and the map to tourists will be another difficult task, since none of the men know English. Nonetheless, this social process of connecting has proven very successful for me here in the Dominican Republic. I suppose this makes sense, given that the friendliness of Dominicans is the stuff of legend.

Working Hard / Hardly Working

So far, so good! Yes, I’m still butchering the language. But I think I’m doing it with more confidence than I was before. And I think I’m starting to seem friendly to people and not just terrified. Another big step. Eventually, I hope these people get to know the same person my friends and family already know (and love?). What I’ve realized is that it’s hard to be yourself using a foreign language.

Río Limpio is such a weird place. And I’m compelled to write about it today because I want to put some of the narrative pieces together.

A good place to start its story is with a man named Joaquin Balaguer. He was the president of the Dominican Republic in the ’70s and ’80s. He was also the right hand man of Rafael Trujillo, the brutal dictator of the DR during the ’30s, ’40s, and ’50s. Balaguer might have been elected, but he wielded the power of an autocrat. There were still thousands of politically motivated killings during his tenure. As well as vote-buying and nepotistic appointments, but unfortunately those forms of corruption are exactly in the category of “things past” here. Politics here – like politics everywhere – is fierce and dirty competition. Well, Joaquin Balaguer managed to maintain favor with the Dominicans by making some smart strategic moves. First, he subsidized fuel imports, in order to curb deforestation. Now, when you look at a satellite image on Hispaniola, Haiti is barren and the DR is lush. The Haitians cut down all their trees for cooking and warming, while the Dominicans enjoy shade and fallen avocados in their yards. The second thing Balaguer did was instigate the tourism industry. Before 1980, Punta Cana wasn’t on anybody’s map. But thanks to foreign investment and a cooperative government, “Cane Point” became a world-class resort town. The same happened in Puerto Plata. As of today, tourism is the biggest industry in the country. Think about the sheer number of jobs there must be at an Iberostar all-inclusive. The third thing that Balaguer did has the most immediate bearing on my life here. Sometime in the ’80s, he renovated the towns on the Haitian border by building concrete homes where there had previously been wooden huts. Río Limpio was one of these projects. Of course, this was a strategy to keep people protecting the border. But for Río Limpians, this meant better homes for free. Even decades later, the people here are proud to live in a mountain hamlet with paved roads and sidewalks. They are still roughing it, but I think they are roughing it in style.

Now, things go from strange to totally bizarre. In the 20th century, there was a man named Rudolf Steiner. He was a European intellectual with alternative ideas about institutions like education, entertainment, and public health. One of his ideas that persists today is the basic programming of Waldorf schools. Although he didn’t achieve much of a following in the Western world, he did inspire a group called the Anthroposophical Society, a Finnish organization of alternative thinkers. These men wanted to implement Steiner’s teachings in a remote community. Somehow, they found Río Limpio and set up shop. I think this happened sometime in the late ’80s/ early ’90s. But it sounds like Brook Farm or Jim Jones, right? Sure enough, these Finnish guys built an extremely nice resort on the hillside just outside of the Río Limpio pueblo. There are enough cabañas to house 30-40 people. There is electricity. There is even a sauna. And to my knowledge, this place saw a lot of action back in the day. Student groups would come to this place – known as the “centro verde” – and take waterfall tours and practice mindfulness and learn herbal remedies and whatnot. I’ve seen pictures to prove it. But now, just like my own center, times aren’t good for the place. It has a staff but it doesn’t have the presence it needs on tourism platforms. But I’m hopeful. If a Finn found this place before the Internet, tourists will discover it soon. All it needs is some aggressive marketing.

This is what some of the local history buffs have told me. I couldn’t make up that last part if I tried. I really hope it’s true.

Honeymooning / Adjusting Earnestly

I’ve had some really amazing days here in Río Limpio. One after the other. And I have felt both lucky and proud at the end of them all. Lucky to have landed on this side of paradise. Proud to have thrown myself into the ring in the first place. Let me show you a highlight reel of my last few days, some of the very best I’ve ever had.

On Wednesday, I awoke to the sound of the roosters in the shed behind my house. It is really more of a holler than a “sqwuak” or a “cock-a-doodle-doo.” Really disconcerting actually until you get used to it. Because of the ubiquity of backyard chickens here, the community is pretty much up-and-at-em by six or seven in the morning, whether they like it or not. But that doesn’t mean the workday starts early or temprano. Oh no, this is when most folks open their front doors, put out their lawn chairs, and resume their sedentary, hypersocial posts. Sitting around and chatting is like a sport or an art form around here. And the Dominicans can do it ad nasseum. Luckily, they also have awesome coffee which gets them started and keeps them attentive and animated, even when I’m stumbling through a story in broken Spanish. Anyhow, I got up (me levanté) and went to my job site, which is known locally as “the center.” It is one of two ecotourism outfits in town, designed to provide lodging and packaged excursions for volunteer/student groups. At least, that is the elevator pitch. For now, the place is sort of struggling to build a clientele. I am working on a project right now that will hopefully make the place more attractive to future vacationers. It is still in the pipeline, but I’m pretty stoked to fill you in later. Once more of the building blocks come together. Fingers crossed.

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At the center, I found the manager whose name is pronounced “HIGH-row.” This is a good example of the phonetic learning I have to do here, since almost nothing gets written down – and since most people can’t spell. For this reason, learning here is literally a repetitive exercise. Once I’ve got a name – of person, place, thing, dance move, hair style, body part – I’ve gotta use it a few more times in the same conversation to commit it to memory. Luckily, the Dominicans are forgiving to me when my word-associations run wild.

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But I digress. “HIGH-row” and I chatted for a while over super sweet coffee. (What I get for doing as the Romans do… ) He talks carefully and takes a break every six or seven words to allow time for my comprehension to catch up. This is by far my favorite form of communication here, and the older Dominicans are very considerate for playing along. After some time, “HIGH-row” told me that a gardener was coming to take care of the property that day, leaving me free time to explore the area. He recommended that I check out the trails on the edge of town, which is right up my alley. As I left, the two dogs that lounge around the center followed me and ended up my companions for some really great hiking. The views here are out of control. Think Jurassic Park. Think Appalachia crossed with Kilimanjaro. Even the soil here is pretty; it varies from blood red to the color of a Dreamsicle. And I’m not a mineralogist but I’m guessing that there is something special going on in the ground here, cuz stuff grows everywhere. No green thumb necessary. If there is room for foliage, you can expect to find mangú trees, oyama vines, and bichuela plants aplenty. There is abundance like that one scene from Willy Wonka’s Chocolate factory, but the foods aren’t exactly candy. Almost all of the agricultural byproducts are starchy and energy-dense, perfect for the people who pick them. Once again, it dawns on me that this village persists so resiliently because of a very specific set of conditions.

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The next day, I went with Paulino, my host dad, to his farm (la finca). It is a 20 minute walk uphill from the house and he makes the trip twice daily, sometimes three times. And he is 73 years old. This man is an indefatigable machine. He is also, unlike many adult men here, a soft-spoken, gentle, forgiving, and instructive character. Speaking of adult masculinity, now seems like a good time to mention machismo. This is as much an anthropological concept as an ongoing Dominican conversation, something people argue about and readily admit to. Historically, which is to say traditionally, men play a pretty dominating role in Dominican society. Of course, this has some very problematic implications for the Dominican women. Mistreatment, abuse, and cheating are very ingrained in the culture. But the rub is that these are permissible, negligible, basically inconsequential manners of conduct. Having multiple girlfriends is not just custom but oftentimes public information. I’m certainly not the most progressive person anybody knows, but this machismo stuff is definitely a tough pill to swallow.

I’ve run a little long on this one, so I’ll cut myself off. Here are just a couple of great days recounted. Really great days.

Touching Down / Warming Up

I’m fairly sure that people who use the term “culture shock” really mean “language shock.” As far as I know, cultures around the world do the same handful of things: eat, drink, work, relax, socialize. With some variance, to be sure, but no real outliers. That being said, as soon as I got off the plane in Santo Domingo on Friday nothing seemed the same. But not because the Dominicans around me were doing anything particularly strange. No, they were laughing and hugging and ordering food and talking gossip. I’m almost positive that foreign people and their culture only feel unfamiliar because they are unintelligible. (not unintelligent!) The point of all this becomes more apparent when you find out that people in the DR actually call their language “Dominican,” not Spanish. It is, to a huge extent,  their own invention. And it also marked the initial boundary of my comfort zone. On a similar note, it may also be true that knowledge, or conocimiento, of Dominican tradition, custom, not to mention history, is only formed in their own words.

Nonetheless, I’m learning. Even with 5 years of classes (8th through 12th grade), it feels like I am starting all over again, learning greetings and words for the foods I like.  Which brings me to my next reflection. Río Limpio is a town of about 2000 people and yet it is not near any city, coast, or industrial hotbed. So a good economist would ask the following: how in the world do these people make it? And it is a good question, one that the Peace Corps has been investigating on site for 20+ years. However, the answer — just as so many matters of history for the Dominicans — is complicated. For years, there was a good coffee crop that was harvested from the area and that supported the town. But the crop has withered in the twentieth century due to two different plagues. Acting quickly, and with the help of a development organization known as CREAR, the community diversified their farming, planting fruits and vegetables that I had never heard of till now. At the present moment, folks have food, but they don’t have that much money. Which should make sense since they essentially subsist, on their own, together.

Finally, a report on my whereabouts. Well, today might be called (in hindsight) the day for “transportation education.” Which is necessary if not all that pleasant. Since I live in el campo or the countryside, I might want to make the most of my days off and visit the beach/the city/ a different countryside. To make any of that possible, I need to learn the systematic — and yet totally undocumented — schedules of the buses, vans,and trucks that take Dominicans from place to place everyday. Amenities on these vehicles range from complimentary WiFi to an extra handhold on the bed of the pickup. This place really is really a juxtaposition of developed and developing. so today, I rode and had all of the above, cruising from Río Limpio through nearby Loma de Cabrera to Dajabón. From Dajabón I rode to Santiago de Los Caballeros. Then, I took a different way back to Dajabón and called it a day. After checking out the aftermath of the biweekly, binational market, I got a room with a view and tried to reinforce the habit of writing whatever I’m thinking.

Last thought. I’ve driven plenty in the U.S., especially in the last year. And the transit in the two countries is incomparable for many reasons: convenience, number of lanes, abundance of signs, risk of hitting a motorcycle, etc. And yet what I think is most interesting is the geographical sweep  of the roads. For example, nobody lives on most of the highway in America. At least I think that’s the way it is designed. To get to towns, you get off the highway and find a point of entry. In the DR, everything is on the few roads they’ve got. Which makes buses sort of like really time-consuming subway trains. Since nearly every city has a bus pass through it, nearly every city gets in on the action. Imagine a tree that has branches but the branches don’t have any littler branches. Streamlined? Sure. Noisy? Horrible. It is, after all, infrastructure on a tight budget. Of course, my temporary hometown of Río Limpio is one exception; it is tucked away (via dirt road) because of the mountains in between it and roadside communities. This is but one more reason why Río Limpio is exceptional. There is so much more to its story that I can’t wait to tell.

Taking Off / Setting Sights

Getting this blog started is sort of awkward for me, since I don’t know where to begin. There are a handful of possible beginnings, events that might be said to have caused me to be here at home in Libertyville, Illinois, packing bags and saying goodbyes. Being open and interested in travel is certainly a factor in all of this. But this isn’t like trips past; if anything, it is an exaggeration of the backpacking, the AirBnBing, and the Amtraking I’m used to doing. Somehow, I don’t think the months ahead will be as related to these “rugged, minimalistic, seeking, etc…” experiences as I suspected. It’s not that there won’t be serious challenges to come but that the challenges will be of a different order of magnitude. And these challenges aren’t the sort I can whiteknuckle through or wait out resiliently, if for no other reason than the simple duration of them. Two months is a long time to deal with something inconclusively. No, I think the upcoming trip or, more immediately, tomorrow’s departure is not just another way to leave home and see the world. It doesn’t come from the curious place in me or even the daring place in me, and I know this because this trip is actually unnerving me a little bit.

 

 

All of this is to say that really is more to this than sheer adventure. But I can’t neatly insert this trip into my “wandering, roaming, observing, flâneur” narrative either. After all, I will be stationed somewhere with something resembling a job. Instead of watching the world go by, I’ll be hard at work. I hear there is even some manual labor involved. The following is the most official description I can give you of said job, something I probably should’ve provided at the beginning, now that I think about it — I warned you about my beginning anxiety.

 

Thanks to Washington and Lee’s Shepherd Program and its generous internship program, I am leaving tomorrow for the Dominican Republic where I will be living and working in a small, remote village called Río Limpio. Alongside a handful of local Dominicans, I will be trying to establish business models for sustainable — commercially and environmentally — tourism enterprises. There is very little information about this place on the Internet, and I’ve only found a brief mention of it in Rough Guides: Dominican Republic.

Courtesy of Google Earth // my own pictures are imminent

Río Limpio is at the end of a large mountain range known as the Cordillera Central (the most prominent in the Caribbean) and lies just east of the Haitian border. Imagine the furtherest point from Punta Cana. The agency I am officially representing is Onwards Inc. Bottom line, this company’s goal is to bring more people to the village with the idea being that more people equals more business for the local firms. Of course, bringing more people means making the village more attractive in the first place. As the pair of boots on the ground, it is my responsibility to coordinate plans with the villagers to do just that. Combining a background in economics, a painfully rust command of Spanish,  and a creative streak for entrepreneurship, I plan to leave things a little more organized, if not more lucrative, for the folks in Río Limpio.

I promise to keep posts to 500 words or so and to include good media-asides (probably thinkpieces) whenever I can. Hopefully, I can get enough content up here by the summer’s end to make the story navigable and enjoyable no matter where a reader picks it up. One solution to my problem with beginnings is that I make this a serial, but not continuous, sort of online rollout. That way, order doesn’t matter. Which seems like a pretty good attitude to have as I leave the middle of nowhere.