I forgot to mention this in the last update: I am fine. My bee stings,
although mammoth at first, have all but disappeared. My arm and face
definitely swelled and throbbed. I still have indents where they
actually got me, but that’s no big deal.
Soon after the attacks the boys really took charge.
Peter and Jeremy started spraying the nest of the culprits with Muskol.
Following that DJ and David owned the task of exterminating the bees
and found every nest around the compound and found ways
to knock them out of the air - their prime option was throwing a coconut at it.
Then Evan also came to the rescue. There was one final nest
but it was too high to knock down. So Evan, using his Eblock/outdoorsy skills,
set up a trap using sticks, string, a syrup and part of a pop bottle.
The wasps got stuck in there, after being attracted to the sweet substance,
and then couldn’t get out. I’m proud to say that since last weekend
I have seen few, if any, wasps around.
Good job, boys!
Now, this is not to say that we have since been without injury or
illness. We have actually had quite our share of medical issues in our
first week here.
Last weekend Megan had a rough time as she caught an intense bug,
likely from some water. Her body fought through it and she
was good to go by Monday afternoon.
This past week the boys (and Kate) decided they’d have a wrestling match
to see who really was top dog around here.
Kate owned, just sayin’.
I was not around during this fiasco, but I left the crew in the capable hands
of Peter and Jeremy...who took the opportunity to join in ;)
Anyhow, the boys and Kate decided to have multiple wrestling matches.
Jake and DJ decided to man up.
DJ had Jake in a sweet headlock...but then the fun was over as
Jake laid wincing in pain, flat on his back.
Now, he comes to us with a history of back problems...but still.
That is #3. (He was completely fine within two days).
The following day Max and I took a trip to the local clinic with Josh
and Kate. We made many trips to the clinic last year so as soon as I
entered the waiting room I was greeted with a hug from the nurse. Josh
came to the Dominican with stitches on his thumb and the crazy
Dominican heat actually shrunk them - they were getting pretty
aggressive. This combined with doctor’s advice from back home, led us
to remove his stitches on Sunday night. Evan took the lead on this.
As he removed the last stitch it became quite evident that the cut had not
fully healed. We took Josh to the clinic to see if he needed to be
restitched - but there was nothing they could do. Josh went to one
office first before he got to see the doctor. As he switched offices he
looked at me with a face of sheer fear and panic...I felt bad. When
talking about it later he confessed that he had that look on his face
because when he was in the first office and showed the nurse his hand
she slapped him multiple times on the shoulder and admonished him in
Spanish.
If that was what the nurse would do - what on earth would the
doctor do?
After Josh went to see the doctor, Kate went into the nurse’s office.
We took Kate because she had a sore throat. The nurse asked Kate for
her dad (great understanding of Spanish, Kate!) so she went into the
waiting room to get Max ;) As she was going back in she had a big smile
on her face and pointed to her behind.
I laughed.
Last year I had two students who had to get needles in their behinds
and it was one of the funniest days.
[I told the kids there will be some sort of rewards for
whoever gets needles there]...so Kate thought she was going to win.
Unfortunately all she needed was antibiotics, but the nurse did say
that if the infection doesn’t go away Kate may have to come back ;)
The injuries don’t stop here.
The next day Olivia went to teach at Renacer.
She was playing duck, duck, goose with the children.
[Sidebar: duck, duck, goose is a scary and dangerous game. Last year my crew
played it on our first day back at TD and one of the team members
(Amanda) broke her hand. Keep this in mind.]
So Olivia is playing duck, duck, goose with the students
and she is running around the circle in shoes that meet Dominican
safety standards: she’s in Crocs.
She slips,falls and bashes her chin on the flat floor.
She checks her jaw: it still works. Checks her teeth: they’re still there.
Then she feels blood coming from her chin.
Jillayna (a chaperone) is in the room while this happens.
Jillayna whisks Olivia to the office and leaves Nicole alone
to continue teaching the class -
and she did a fabulous job!
In the office Jillayna is holding the gauze on the wound when all of a
sudden Jillayna turns whiter than Jeremy Baker’s skin and collapses to
the floor. She comes to while sitting on the floor.
She thinks to herself: “I gotta tend to Olivia”
and does what all good leaders should do in such a situation:
she faints again.
The teachers get her rubbing alcohol and have her start sniffing it
to wake her up.
Jake ably takes over the situation, but he isn’t aware of what is in the glass
that is in front of Jillayna’s face.
But he is a superstar who continues to talk to her to help her wake up.
He says, “take deep breaths and drink. It’ll help you.”
Jillayna will admit that for half a second she contemplated it,
but then was able to realize that drinking rubbing alcohol would not be wise.
So Jillayna is back in the picture now which means that Jake
can transfer his attention elsewhere - to Olivia.
He says he’s going with her to the hospital. They go with one of the
senior students to the front of the school to get transportation. They
went to the hospital Dominican style: on motorcycles. Jake went with
one guy and Olivia, while holding gauze to her chin, is on the back of
another motorcycle along with the senior student (there’s three folks
on this one). Within 40 minutes Olivia was stitched up (4 of them) and
back at the school for lunch.
What a trooper!
It’s been a couple of days since the incident and
thankfully Jillayna hasn’t fainted since.
Aside from all the incidents (FYI - absolutely everyone is fine!) we
were able to manage getting out on site.
Each day there was a group of four students at the shop cleaning,
organizing, sorting nails and screws and repairing desks.
The nails and screws need to be sorted because in the DR
you don’t throw your junk in a bin for removal, you keep and reuse everything.
Well, it is difficult to reuse nails and screws when they are all together
in one bucket, so this is where the children come in.
If they items are sorted, they can be reused which, in the long run,
saves money. The desks that were worked on are from various Christian schools.
With a little bit of new wood, sanding and paint these desks look great!
Last year the crew fixed 250 desks during our stay
and we are hoping to surpass that total this year. On one of
our shop days we really started motoring with the desks: Mitch spent
most of his day on the router, a brand new experience for him, rounding
the corners of the new backs to the desks. Rachel and Karina were able
to try their hand at the jigsaw as they cut out the top part of the
desk. We are quickly learning that power tools can be our friends!
In addition to the folks at the shop I had fourteen students teaching
each day.
They were separated into four different schools.
The school on site, Emmanuel, had two of our kids.
Karina owned this position. She had a fantastic attitude throughout the week.
On Tuesday everyone else was itching to get off site
but she and Olivia willingly “stayed behind” at this local school.
The clincher with this school is that they also work longer hours
because they don’t have the transportation time.
Karina had a new partner for each of the three days that she
taught there (Olivia, David and Kate) but she was the constant. In the
morning she’d teach high school, often kids her own age or close to it,
and in the afternoon she’d help out in the classes of the younger kids.
The kids here all know her now so she is kind of a celebrity around
here.
Each of the leaders took over a school for the rest of the week (for
the most part). The conclusion at the end of the week was that the
local students at Jeremy’s school were by far the least behaved.
God sure does move in mysterious ways.
Various students were at Jeremy’s school in Guaricano
and this is where a lot of crazy things happened.
Nathan and Evan were teaching a class about adjectives and things were
going pretty well.
Nathan decided to teach fat and skinny.
He is trying his best to describe fat using hand motions etc...
Eventually the teacher catches on to what Nathan is trying to say.
This teacher goes over to a girl in the class and gets her to stand up
and be an example for 'fat (gordo/a)'.
Nathan and Evan were absolutely floored...
the things you can “get away with” here.
The school has also become the “Chicken Dance School”.
[Sidebar...here is how we were reminded about the chicken dance.
Last Sunday the leaders decided that we needed to force the children
to learn some Spanish. The word of the day to learn was chicken
(pollo en espanol).
At dinner if anyone said ‘chicken’ instead of ‘pollo’ then they had to
stand up and do the Chicken Pollo dance. Jillayna was definitely the
most frequent victim. This then translated into the classroom whenever
Nathan, Rachel, Ian or John-Mark had to stall they’d bust out the Pollo
Dance until they thought of something else to do.
The students LOVED it!
Later on in the week Nicole saw the Principal of the school doing
the Chicken Dance on his own...and he even brought in the Canadians to
random classes spontaneously to lead the Chicken Dance.
What a hoot!]
Yesterday Stacey, Kate and Juliet decided to take their class outside
to play Duck, Duck Goose for the last class of the day. Then David and
Jake saw them outside and decided that their class would also play the
game outside. Soon it turned into an all out school recess. The entire
school was hanging out outside for the rest of the day. As the
Canadians were about to leave they all stood on a bench and busted out
the grand finale in front of all of the students: the Chicken Dance.
Peter’s school was a little bit tamer. He brought his crew to Nueva
Creacion for two days but then manned the shop for the next two days.
This is the school where the infamous “Circle Game” gained crazy
credibility. It was Jake’s brainchild. He taught it to one of his
classes and it went over magnificently so he taught it in the rest of
his classes. He then shared it with his group at lunch, they played it
in the afternoon and it soon became a schoolwide hit. Then we shared it
at circle time and it took the rest of the schools by storm for the
following couple of days.
It is a simple game, but it is competitive therefore the Dominicans enjoy it.
There are two circles on the board with numbers
(or verbs, adjectives...whatever you want to review at the
time) in each circle. There are two teams and each team “owns” a
circle. The leader calls out the word/number in Spanish and the kids
run up to erase or circle the item on the board. This game has worked
for 6 year olds and 17 year olds. It has definitely also resulted in
some fights. One day Jake had to physically break up to boys and hold
them back from each other. Another day Evan and Josh literally ran out
of the room because it was out of control and they had no more tactics
for controlling the kids.
As previously mentioned, Jillayna was at Renacer all week. On Friday
afternoon she decided to spice things up a bit. As Josh and Ian were
about to teach, Jillayna went in first and told the entire class that
these two guys were from Canada and that Josh was friends with Justin
Beiber! They kids went nuts! They made Josh sing some of Beiber’s
songs.
The best part?
Josh didn’t know any lyrics, he isn’t a Beiberite.
Thankfully Ian came to his rescue :)
Talk about awkward...
At the beginning of the week the work at the shop consisted of
cleaning up, organizing and some simple tasks. It wasn’t always the
prized place to be. As the week progressed, and as Max became more
available, construction started. Peter was needed to man the shop and
I was still working out details with Max so we didn’t have enough
leaders to go around. The children have really stepped up to the plate
in a lot of ways and so I had no issues sending them to a school by
themselves. We had also been using the same taxi driver all week so
transportation was a non-issue. The first group to go leaderless was
Rachel, Stacey, DJ and Josh. The next day it was Miraya, Nathan, JM,
Nicole and DJ. They owned their tasks and did what they needed to do -
without direct supervision. This included teaching a two and a half
hour class!
Well done!
In January Max, his wife Kina, Ina (who “runs” the village we
volunteer at on Saturdays) and myself had a brainstorming session.
During this session Max shared a new construction idea that he had seen
in Colombia. Instead of making block structures, there is a new system
using various forms and hand-made slabs. This will create all the
pieces one would need to build a structure. The residents of Cercadillo
(“Ina’s Village”) do not all have any washrooms. Their options? A piece
of cardboard, a hole or a forest - this applies to the entire village.
Some folks have tin structures but their bathrooms are full. Many also
do not have private structures where they can take their bucket showers
(for they do not have running water either).
At this brainstorming session in January we decided that one of the tasks
our children would complete would be to build shower/bathroom structures
for the villagers. Instead of doing so out of block right off the bat, we were
going to try to implement this new system in Cercadillo. Peter’s job
for the last two days was to get the children to make mini models, mix
concrete by hand, pour it into the forms and see if we had the
logistics right. The first day JM, David and Juliet were integral in
the planning/drafting and creating of the first forms.
Juliet used an electric saw for the first time!
You go girl!
We are reevaluating the original forms and seeing how they need
to be adjusted - but we are excited to be able to implement something
from the ground up!
This brought us to Friday afternoon. Saturday was a whole new
adventure as we went to Cercadillo and met Ina for the first time...but
stories from this day are going to have to wait ;)
Why the title you may ask?
Because it’s true.
The leaders are owning our responsibility
and we constantly refer to these 18 students as “our kids”.
Thanks for lending them to us!
Many of these kids have done incredible things over this past 10 days.
They’ve stepped up, taken initiative (biggest key word of our trip),
owned tasks, did things despite fear, looked out for others
and engaged in culture.
Every single on of them have taught classes.
Every single one of them has ridden in a taxi
(sometimes 7 people in a Toyota Corolla).
Very few are complaining.
Most are able to look at the world with a fantastic positive attitude.
Some are still working on this.
They are growing “up”, although I use this term loosely.
They are becoming better.
It is good.
~Update from Rachael~
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