Quick update before I go to the Motherland!

So this will probably be my last blog post for a week or two and I'll warn ya, the next post will be all the food I eat in the US...

It's weird, a week in half ago I was totally checked out from work and all things Peace Corps related because I was so excited to go home. Then I started making a slideshow of pictures from my service so far and it almost brought me to tears!! Wtf!!!
No but in all seriousness I do love it here and my new site is totally to thank for that. I had dozens of people tell me that everyone who gets a site change loves their new site and I somehow couldn't believe them. Guilty.
I am nonetheless ecstatic to be going home even though theres a lot of snow. It's only 2 weeks, right?! and then I'll be joining all of my fellow PCVs in Cabarete for a few days at the beach to ring in the new year.


So real quick, on Thursday we participated in an activity in Santo Domingo put on the PNUD, which is the United Nations development agency. The objective of the activity was awesome- instead of just throwing money at what they thought was necessary, the invited actual cacao producers, the farmers, to the activity to get their opinion on what is needed to make the cacao industry successful and sustainable. In addition to producers there were buyers, development workers (like myself), cooperatives and management companies, among others. We chose what theme we wanted to work with, broke up into groups and created objectives, goals and indicators. I obviously chose social and economic sustainability. At the end, we presented our findings and agreed to continue meeting monthly in Santo Domingo until July in order to put together the framework for the platform of the project. Super exciting.

Andres, Ramon and Juana (cacao producers) participating in the activity.

Frank (the new president of the cooperative) and Angel (our accounting/sales guy and my project partner) participating in the accounting activities. 

That night I stayed with Lucija, our FSO that we stayed with on Thanksgiving. With the little time we were together we went down to the park on Bolivar to check out the Christmas lights. I have NEVER seen lights like this!

Obviously Presidente sponsored like, all of it. And what DOESN'T a giant can of beer have to do with Christmas?! 

blurry iphone pics. always a treat!

Happy Holidays!! Kaley

Mayuli's visit

Mayuli is the safety and security coordinator for all of the peace corps volunteers in the DR. I think it's safe to say that her job is extremely important and let me tell you, she does it well. 

If it wasn't for how she handled all of my security incidents, I probably wouldn't still be here, even though sometimes I wanted to scream. Sigh. 

Anyway so her plan was to visit Jackson on Thursday and to do so she has to pass thru my site, so naturally I went too. Jackson lives in a small campo called Vuelta Larga. By chance, my host dad is his project partner and my host family is from there. So we have some good connections going on, plus my pueblo is the closest civilization to Jax. 

To get up to Vuelta Larga is not exactly easy. It's about 45 minutes into the mountainside crossing 5 rivers that do not have bridges and then one hell of an uphill climb. For Jackson to come down he has to walk about an hour and then get on a motorcycle for another 30ish minutes just to get to the highway. 

The first time I went we had to walk (about 2 hours) because the road wasn't in any condition to be passed. I woke up Thursday morning multiple times between 3am and 7am to pounding rain. When you have a zinc roof it gets pretty loud. Hard rain in this country means 2 things. Rising rivers and mud. Since there is zero cell phone service in Vuelta Larga, I called Mayuli to let her know that I doubted we'd be able to get up there because of the rain. She said they were coming anyway. 15 minutes later a drenched Jackson arrived to my house on a motorcycle. Shortly after Mayuli arrived with the peace corps driver and we decided we were going to give it a go, much to my host family's dismay. Mayuli shared with us tht recently in another Latin American country two piece corps volunteers and 2 staff members were killed after being swept away while trying to cross a torrent river after heavy rain. It was going to be an adenture! 

The boss inspecting river #1 to be crossed. 

This is probably the easiest one we crossed. I'm not posting the pics of the last one because I don't need to worry my mother who religiously reads this blog (probably the only person). 

On the way up!

Yes, that pile of rocks is what the entire "road" looks like. 

I will tell you, it sure is pretty up there. But this has got to be one of the most desolate volunteer sites out there. 

Main road through the community. 

Jackson's host family's house an my host family's old house. 

Looking at the river below that was extremely swollen. 

Mayuli and Jackson 

Peeling me an orange like a pro. 

View out Jackson's back door of his new house! 

Each time I go up to Vuelta Larga I appreciate living in a pueblo oh so much more, but I give Jackson a lot of credit. No electricity at all, no cell phone service and basically no way to get out. 

I will admit as will other volunteers and Dominicans alike, sometimes you just have to escape to the campo!

That's all for now, kaley 

#selfie

So I hear the selfie is like a thing in the developed world too, in fact I think I saw the Today Show hosts taking selfies one morning while I was in Santo Domingo, proclaiming that the term "selfie" has been added to the dictionary. 

Dominicans have taken the selfie to a whole new level. We'll wait let's back up. For me, when I arrive to a new place I gravitate to the pop culture. I did a post about Dominican fashion awhile back and I think I'm due for a music post. This post however, will be dedicated to the (tackless) art of selfie taking and photo posing. 

First thing a guy asks you when he's hitting on you? If you have feyboo. Also known as Facebook. Why? Because what better way to get to know someone (and not waste cell phone minutes)?!

So this post could get real interesting because all of the photos you are about to see are straight off my feyboo news feed. But these ppl are my friends (including my boyfriend and that of another volunteer, host sisters and coworkers) and I'm merely complimenting them on their impressive ability to take a photo of themselves. Duh. 

We can start easy with a selfie of yours truly taken in true Dominican form (no smile). Why do I have this photo? I think you already know why. 

Yep. Putting myself on blast. 

But then we have a few different kinds of selfies. Those taken with mirrors, but the catch is most Dominicans don't have mirrors in their house so this means the pics are taken at someone else's house or in a bathroom usually. Exhibits A:

So there's that. Then there's the sans mirror variety:

Then there are the pics that are not selfies for the sole reason that their pose will not allow them to take the selfie because their arms are not like gumby's and the whole body needs to be seen. Thus, the help of someone else is solicited. 

And they learn young, let me tell ya. 

Look at the left foot all popped for hip emphasis. Sheesh. 

I'll end the post with this and my greatest appreciation to this culture and their love for photographing themselves. 

#selfiesforlife 

Kaley

Pavo Bravo

Stuff I'm thankful for in the DR:
Dembow and bachata
The beach
Motorcycles
Mosquito nets (saving my life one centipede/dengue/tarantula bite at a time)
Internet

Stuff I'm thankful for in the US:

Ehm, that's a joke right? We'd be here all night. But just for starters-

Electricity

Running water

Air conditioning

Reliable transportation 

Overall life conveiences 

My family. 

This is stuff maybe I wouldn't have said before, but there it is. In all reality I didn't actually think about any of this until I got back to site yesterday and had to take a cold bucket bath after staying in a 5 bedroom 6 bathroom ocean view apartment in Santo Domingo for the week...but it's the thought that counts right?

I hope all of you in the US of A (see you in 2 weeks) had a fabulous thanksgiving. Here a little peak at mine in case you didn't see the pics I posted on Facebook while sucking down rum punch from my lounge chair:

Tyler and Yvette going hard in our embassy family's kitchen to make 200 brownies for our fellow volunteers. 

Booze n brownies. 

Living room view...

Sam making stuffin'. 

Then we got to the party spot. 

Getting downnnn. 

A good time was had by all. 

Annnnnnd Merry Christmas from Lauren and I :)

Paz, kaley 

This one's for all my fellow volunteers who are more than ready to go home for Christmas, who want to kill their project partners, who are frustrated with this culture, who want to go quit, who don't know if they're making a difference, who are sick of speaking Spanish 24/7, who miss their families... 

I have met so many people here who have made an incredible difference in my life, who have inspired me to be a better volunteer and above all, to not give up.

Yeah, yeah I know it's cliche and stupid but it's true. You guys are the bomb.com.

In other news, I'm currently in an FSO officer's apartment cooking' brownies for Thanksgiving. Pics to come from our rooftop pool party!

New again

Wanna know the truth? I can't believe I'm still here. 

But that's what all this development work/Peace Corps stuff is about right? Testing your limits and learning how much bullshit one person can handle? It sure seems like it lately. 

After almost two months without a site or job (see previous posts on being a PC gypsy) I'm 2 weeks into my new site. 

Yep. Starting over. Living with a family again (ayy yi yi) and eating lots of food that I don't want. But do not worry, I have a firm list of all of the food that I will be eating when I return to the US in a month. Ask my family. They have already received my emails. 

ANYWAY. So you're probably wondering what I'm doing up here. And the project is actually really cool, if I can get the business up and running again...

I am working with a very well known Cacao (chocolate plant) Cooperative called Cooperative La Red Guaconejo. Why are they well known? Well, here in the DR (and in most places in the world) cacao farmers have been poor since anyone can remember. However it make no sense because in developed countries, chocolate is an extremely lucrative business (people here don't eat chocolate. I rest my case about Dominican food habits). Why are they poor? Because intermediaries buy their crop for basically nothing (they are country folk with very little education and are taken advantage of) and then turn around and export it for a sky high price. My organization strives to be a direct trade operation; meaning that the farmers are selling directly to the customer without an intermediary. It's still a business and they still turn profit but the object is for the farmers to see some of the money made for their organic chocolate plants. You see, organic cacao sells for up to $400 per ton more than the market price for non organic. 

This is what ripe cacao looks like. 

Here you can see cacao beans on a sun dryer. That's a rice field in the background. 

On the tree!

Who buys their product? The main customer is Taza Chocolate, located in Massachusetts. Check out their site!http://www.tazachocolate.com 

There's also a short documentary about my project and you can see a preview here http://www.viewchange.org/videos/chocolate-country

The problem? They're damn near broke and they have quite a few delinquent accounts receivable. As a cooperative, they offer credit to their members to invest into their farms in order to produce better cacao.  There debts can usually be paid in cacao but in the last two years they have had some collection issues. Part of the problem was that the members who borrows money were not properly investigated for their eligibility to borrow. The other problem is that the administration was/is a complete disaster. One member took it upon herself to make all of the decisions for the coop, most of which were terrible for the business. 

So now I'm working the development organization that helped them get started to prepare for an assembly on November 30th.In this assembly a financial summary will be presented to the members and we will hold elections. From there I can only hope we can move forward with making the business profitable again. Unlike many operations, La Red already has their niche market and customers who are waiting to snatch up their product as soon as its available. The problem is on their end, specifically in administration. The bottom line? If they can get their shit together they could be an extremely profitable and sustainable business. Vamos a ver. 

The cooperative also has a women's group who makes organic cocoa powder and sells it. It's absolutely phenomenal in chocolate sauce and for baking. I will be working with them on the accounting and market development of their product. We need to get them registered and able to export because this is how almost all small chocolatiers make chocolate when they're first starting out, with cocoa. 

Next Sunday I will be headed to Santo Domingo to stay with an embassy family for the week and bake my ass off with my backing team (brownies4lyfe) for our Thanksgiving celebration. Volunteers will come from far and wide to hang out on a rooftop pool, sip some cocktails, run in the turkey trot (not this turkey) and stuff their faces with the traditional Thanksgiving food we all cherish so much. I cannot wait. 

Then just 2 1/2 short weeks after tday I AM RETURNING TO THE US OF A TO SPEND CHRISTMAS WITH MY FAMILY AND FRIENDS. Again, super excited. Oh, and I turn 26 somewhere in there too. 

Oh also, today my friend Jackson and I went to the beach. It was rough but I really needed it. We both did. 

Besos, Kaley