I think now would be a good time for me to say a few things about my actual internship. There are four DSTA projects in the Jarabacoa region where I am working: One art gallery/artisan store/art school, one waterfall excursion and two cabin projects. The waterfall project is one of my favorites. You would never guess that tucked into one of the ridges right above Jarabacoa, with a 20 minute hike straight down into a hidden canyon, you would find this beautiful waterfall surrounded by colorful boulders and swimming holes. I’ve made the trip down there four times already and every time I fall more in love with the place. The only issue is the hike back up, which qualifies as a Hike with a capital H because it is NOT easy.
The trail there is in a bit of disrepair and is going to need a lot of help if it’s going to be marketed to a wider audience (particularly Dominicans, who are notorious for their distaste of walking). It’s funny to think about the first time I visited the project. I spent the entire hike making suggestions and giving advice (“see, all you need to do is put some steps here, a handrail here, clean out the rocks there”). In my non-expert opinion the solutions seemed so obvious. In the past few weeks I have become familiar with the endless supply of hoops to jump through and walls to ram against before getting the OK to move a single branch off the trial (in case you actually want to know, there are two main obstacles: (1) the area is a national forest and even thought the community is registered as its conservation partner, the ministry of environment requires an absurd amount of paperwork only to keep everyone waiting around until they are willing to send a representative to supervise changes, (2) on top of that USAID regulations require that all materials be purchased either in the US or the DR – very limiting). So now, when I hear other foreigners making all those same suggestions as we hike down the trail, I just nod and smile and feel bad for whoever had to deal with me my first time around.
Getting some rainbow time in
Even though for the most part the Jimenoa leadership is an adult crowd, the project really depends on youth participation, as without the youth there wouldn’t be any guides for the trail. It is impressive to me that these kids are willing to invest so much in this project when the community really has very little to offer them. Besides some construction work and even less agricultural work, there is little to no employment or educational opportunities for youth in the community of El Salto. Most end up moving to the big cities and the community is left with what is called a “brain drain.” But the waterfall project has these kids coming out on their days off from work in the city to spend the entire day at the waterfall, even when some days there are no visitors. That is very impressive to me and part of why I enjoy working with this group.
Another part of the charm of this project is the way it exudes Dominican-ness. I have been working with the waterfall project the most because they have very little help with the administrative and organization component and there is a lot to work on. On one of the nights when we had planned to outline job descriptions I made the trip up to the community to find that the person with the keys to the school where we were going to meet had gone out of town without telling anyone, so we can’t get in. We postpone the workshop a few days. I come back. This time we have the key, but the power has gone out and there’s no electricity. Being americana I was determined to get some work done this time, so we scrounge up some candles and had everyone crowd around my notebook while someone held the candle over us. An hour later I get up to leave which causes everyone to protest, “but the baseball game is about to start!” It turns out the guides at the project have a baseball team called “the waterfall”, so we all walk out to the field to cheer. You’ve gotta love community-based eco-tourism when a project doesn’t even have a brochure, but they sponsor a baseball team. Now that’s promotion. I don’t know if this series of events is as amusing to other people as it was to me, but having grown up in Venezuela it just felt SO typical. So I sat in the stands (stands? pile of cement bricks?) with my coworkers cheering around me and laughed to myself thinking, “you know you’re in Latin America when…”
A pair of guides taking a break
The Salto de Jimenoa project brings to light several questions about development that have been running through my head lately. At the moment the DSTA/USAID is directing most of it’s funds for this project towards construction of a restaurant with the idea that it will diversify the products the community has to offer tourists, and create another source of income. Great idea USAID, that sounds awesome. However, I can’t get over the fact that what is being invested in is a business, and the organization doesn’t have a business plan. They don’t even have an operational manual. They’ve been getting a little support from other local organizations, but for the most part this community is expected to fill out USAID forms and have administrative capacities that are just not realistic in a community with a one-room schoolhouse that only teaches up to fourth grade. There is almost no investment in bringing capacity training to the project members and the community. What’s up with that? It seems like an enormous flaw from my point of view. I’ve had to sit down with the president a few times in her kitchen to try to figure out why their association registration papers aren’t being approved, when neither of us knows the first thing about law. I just don’t understand how these projects are expected to succeed without administrative training.
The other two projects I’ve been working with lately are both very impressive in their goals and vision for the community, even if they also lack the capacity training needed for a successful business. One of the cabin projects, Sonido del Yaque, is an eco-paradise - an environmentally sustainable hippie dream hidden in the mountains of the Dominican Republic. The project has six cabins, a restaurant and a conference room, all created under the leadership of a local women’s cooperative. Where before the community had no electricity and lived in poor health conditions, they have managed to bring electricity to everyone in the area by way of a hydroelectric system using power from the river. They also have a bio-digestor for wastewater treatment, greenhouses to grow food for the restaurant and they are working on a fishery next the river. But even though US funds have left the restaurant and cabins almost completed, there is still a big need to capacitate the community to be able to run the business. And the truth of the matter is that people are still struggling to have enough food to eat and very few kids are able to go to school past fourth grade. The other project is the art school – so much vision! The front portion of the building serves as a commerce center for local artists. The art gallery buys art from local artists and then sells it, providing a more steady income for said artists. Out of the back they run an art school. Many of the artists there remember having to shine shoes in the park when they were young, and they have made it their goal to give these kids scholarships so that they can take the art classes and develop a different source of income for their family and to support themselves to go to actual school. Talk about a creative business approach to a social issue. And yet the revenue aspect is missing and can use a lot of help.
A blossoming artist at work
The women's coop during a weekly meeting
In working with Jimenoa and the other projects I have become very aware of my role as an intern in the grand scheme of people and organizations that have come through and made promises to these communities. Especially in light of the recent AED suspension where for four months the projects received nothing, many of these projects are suffering morally and financially from the promises they were given that were not followed up on (AED is the organization that disperses USAID funding in development projects around the world and one of the main components of the DSTA. They recently had their USAID funds suspended while corruption was investigated in the projects in the afpak region). On one occasion in the past few weeks I was feeling frustrated that one of the projects was not being very responsive in answering my questions, and I was talking to someone associated with the DSTA about it, at which point they sat me down and said, “you have to understand, there is an ongoing pattern in these communities where they have been promised something by a foreign aid organization or entity, asked to put their energy and time behind it, and then left behind. You have to be sensitive that there are people that may not feel very excited to be promised more help.” Ever since I have been very careful to think twice before making any suggestions or offering any extra help – is what I’m saying or offering realistic? Or am I just adding another burden?
I leave you with this: Last night the power went out as it often does around here (se fue la luz!). But this time it happened in the middle of cooking dinner. I was still a little disoriented by the dark, so it was a surprise to me when my host mom came riding into the kitchen on the family motorcycle, shined the headlights toward the stove, and kept cooking dinner. I think that pretty much sums up the kind of creativity and flexibility you have to live in this part of the world.
Good morning Jarabacoa!
