Lesson 4: Dominican vocabulary

My favorite Dominicanism is "un chin." Un chin is a little. Un chin chin is just a little of a little!

Context: images!

How does it go, a picture is worth a thousand words? Before I waste too many more explaining how things are around here, please take some time to check out the photos I've posted to Snapfish.com. To access these albums, you'll have to create a Snapfish.com login, which is a free and unobtrusive service. Click here for Photos from the farm, here for The Library, here for images of Los Marranitos, Baseball, Flowers from around the farm, and images from Out Of Town (trips to Jarabacoa, to Bill Boykin-Morris' Peace Corps site near Nagua...). Please email me if you have trouble viewing the photos, and enjoy!

Context: ...when, where

I open the library Tuesday and Thursday at 9:00am, and weekday afternoons at 2:00pm. Kids here go to school for half a day in the next town over, Los Dajos. Their school's three classrooms are not large enough to hold all the area's students at once. Half-day school is common in the Dominican Republic, an effecient use of resources. Opening the library in the morning and afternoon ensures that everyone gets to come. Lately, fewer children attend than did when I first arrived, due in part to recent rains and the onset of coffee picking season. But I am still encouraged by the surprise arrival of kids who haven't been to the library before, which seems to happen when I least expect it to.

Los Marranitos "belongs to" Los Dajos, which is slightly bigger and more accessable to vehicles. It is approximately half an hour away from most of Los Marranitos by foot, considering that everywhere you go here is either up or down -- there is no flat walking in this mountainside. I admire students their dedication to the walk that takes them to school. Los Dajos is located to the west of Los Marranitos, just before Manabao, off the main road that runs between Jarabacoa and La Cienega. (La Cienega is best known for being the starting-off point for the celebrated Pico Duarte.) Jarabacoa, a thirty minute guagua ride down (and east) from Los Marranitos is "el pueblo," the town where I go to use the internet and make the occasional phone call. From there it is about half an hour east to the bigger town of La Vega, and from La Vega little more than half an hour north on the Autopista (Highway) Duarte to reach Santiago, the country's second city.

From a traveler's viewpoint, what I've written here describes where the Finca Alta Gracia is located. When I look around me, however, I can't see any road other than Los Marranitos' main dirt track (which itself sees few vehicles larger than motorcycles). To the west, if it's not cloudy, I see Pico Duarte and its foothills. Northeast are the houses of Jarabacoa and the valley beyond it. The most dominant features of the land surrounding the farm are the slope of the land Los Marranitos rests on, the Rio Yaque below, and the corresponding steep slope of the mountains across the river. The river itself is about a forty-five minute walk away at the easiest access point, and I've yet to go there. This time of year, green vistas alternate with white-grey, wet clouds to dominate the landscape.

Context: who, what...

I realize that, like my knowledge of IDIAF before arriving here in the D.R., and like my interactions with many people in Los Marranitos, Notes From Alta Gracia is lacking in context and important dtails. Therefore, in the following entries I hope to enlighten the reader as to more exactly who I am, what is going on here, when things take place, where we are, why we're here -- any why you should be interested.

I graduated from Middlebury College in February of 2004 with a degree in International Studies and a desire to learn first hand how that which is imprecisely labled "international development" really works. Bill Eichner and Julia Alvarez decided that spring that there could make an opportunity availble for me to work on the coffee farm they ran, and I took off for the Dominican Republic in October. Bill and Julia's farm, La Finca Alta Gracia,was founded on the principles of shade growth, organics, and air trade. The coffee is grown that way today, and sold exclusively in the United States by the Vermont Coffee Company, under the name Cafe Alta Gracia. Julia is the author of a parable of the couple's coffee farming experience, titled A Cafecito Story. It is apended by an informative Epilogue by Bill.

In 2001, Laura Marlow, a Middlebury graduate herself, spent a year at the farm. She initiated and built support for (Spanish) literacy classes for local residents. Less than half of the adults in Los Marranitos, the community in which the farm is located, are functionlly literate. The library and the presence of enthusiastic teachers on the farm offer many advantages to the youth of Los Marranitos. Since Laura's departure, there have been four relatively short term teachers in residence at the Biblioteca Alta Gracia. The most recent was Jason Simmons (another Middlebury graduate!), who developed a website about his experience.

The library itself is a small building situated on Los Marranitos' only road, between the farm's office and the entrance to the farm proper. It is painted pink and green outside, blue inside. There are approximately 500 volumes in the library, organized by categories of health, religion, training, reference, animals, nature, ABCs and 123s, and fiction. There are books of interest to adults and children of all reading levels. I am working on completing a more precise inventory. Raegan Joern and Jacob Shultz, two volunteers currently at the farm, identified three different reading levels and marked the books with three differenet colors of stickers. The kids are now challenged to read some of each level. They record the titles they've read in personal folders that Raegan and Jacob assembled. These volunteers have been busy during the time they've been at the farm, laboring to help create terraces for growing vegtables, digging a new garbage pit and reinvigorating the compost system. They've spent a month here as part of their year-long exploration of Latin America, and I appreciate their help and company very much!

Back to the subject, let me reveal that the library holds more than books. There is also a large chalkboard and supplies for drawing and painting. Despite my attempts at restraint, we go through paper quickly. These kids don't sit down to draw, or play frisbee, or jump rope, anywhere else. It's taken me a while, and the counsel of friends, to realize that the library, beyond being a place of learning, is more importantly a respite for everyone who uses it. It is a space outside of their normal frame of reference. In that alone, it is special.

Lesson 3(b): IDIAF!

Yesterday the Director General of the IDIAF visited the farm. Raegan and Jacob, the two volunteers sharing this month with me at Alta Gracia, and I ate lunch with the Director, Hector, Pedro Juan, and some other important people down in the kiosk. The sun came out just long enough to illuminate the valley beautifully while we ate. It was fun; we chatted about the IDIAF's projects, the farm, and their country. The Director General, new as he is since this summer's change in government, impressed me favorably. He reminded me more of my father than any other person: quiet and respectful, reserved, thinking his own ideas based on his own knowledge, and, most of all, in his own way eager to listen and learn. He seemed to me an interesting specimenof Dominican society, which is as a whole quite exuberant and outgoing.

Lesson 3(a): IDIAF?

What is this IDIAF, anyway? It was a question that I wondered about a lot as I prepared to come to the farm: the IDIAF was a mystery organization who had taken over management of the Finca Alta Gracia during the summer of 2004. I've since educated myself as to who they are, in general Dominican terms, and would like to offer this brief summary of key players at the farm and what, exactly, this IDIAF is doing at Alta Gracia.

First of all, IDIAF stands for Instituto Dominicano de Investigaciones Agropecuarias y Forestales (Dominican Institute for Agriculture and Forestry Research). To view their (Spanish language) website, click here. IDIAF is, to my knowledge, a semi-independent organization of the Dominican government, which means that most of the staff changes every four years with the president's administration. One who did not change, however, is a man called Pedro Juan: he is the well-liked and much-respected regional director of IDIAF and, ultimately, the overseer of the Alta Gracia project. The more immediate director of Alta Gracia is Hector, who seems like a great guy, has most experience dealing with coffee, and has been at the farm a couple of times since I've been here. IDIAF's weekday "technician in residence" at the farm is a a man by the name of Filomeno, who returns to his home in San Cristobal (in the southern part of the country) each weekend. It is interesting to me, and I'm sure to the farm's workers (although in a different sense), to see these directors come and go. Filomeno is the one they interact with the most, on a daily basis; the others are infrequent visitors.

Workers on the farm are responsible for maintaining coffee plants and, during this time of year, harvesting, husking, and drying the ripe coffee fruit. They are mainly from the area's Haitian community, which lives self-consciously separately, to an extent, from Los Marranitos' Dominican population (as the harvest approaches, however, more Dominicans show up to pick). Below Filomeno works twenty-year old Piti, who lives on the farm and does most of the direct overseeing of workers (most of whom are older than him and his friends). He plays the guitar with grace and style. Two employees of Bill and Julia's round out the farm community: Lupe, who cleans, cooks, and maintains flowers for Bill and Julia and IDIAF. She also caters to the needs of those who come to stay at the farm, such as myself and groups who come to the Centro. The last farm resident is Pablo, who takes care of Bill and Julia's house and works canucos (terraced gardens) on various parts of the farm property.

The interweaving of institutional bureaucracy and community life that the farm now embodies is still working out quirks as people discover new ways to relate to each other and the land. The farm itself has taken on a much more research-based focus. Filomeno sat down with me recently and went through IDIAF's five currently underway projects.

1) Cafe: IDIAF is testing various varieties of coffee to find out which grow best in this region as well as maintaining organic, environmentally sustainable growing practices on both the experimental plots and and the 300 tareas that are now in production for commercial purposes. There is also a project to test the fiscal benefits of picking only ripe, red coffee (which takes more time initially but saves labor of taking out unripe green fruit later in the process and creates a much higher quality product).
2) Ecotourism: IDIAF is in control of the whole of the farm's property, including the Centro. While Bill and Julia have priority to host groups at the farm, IDIAF also plans to host groups in the Centro.
3) Agroforesteria: IDIAF is studying the adaptation capacity of various plants to this region's climate. This means growing various crops, including cinnamon, nutmeg, and mint, that have not been traditionally grown here. Additionally, a study of the utility of bamboo for reforestation and later use in crafts has just been initiated.
4) Gardens: This project deals with kitchen gardens, gardens that grow food for the table. Diet in the Dominican campo is not incredibly varied, but with a little effort gardens like this could improve daily consumption with the addition of such new/more accessible vegetables as broccoli, cabbage, tomatoes, and squash.
5) Roots and tubers: A special IDIAF group comes up every week to experiment with growing sweet potatoes, potatoes, and other root vegetables between rows of coffee -- another way to supply growers with either additional income or more table food, and to mix the nutrients in the soil.

Different groups from IDIAF come to work on each of these five projects; they are all "technicians" and do work that requires their experience in the field. Each time a group from "the institution" visits the farm, I hear of new plans and grand visions -- perhaps too grand to even outline here! Okay, I'll give you a couple tantalizing hints: computers and secretaries in the coffee house/office (complete with telephone and even internet?!), a Centro expansion including a bathing pool.... But the reality of these designs I cannot attempt to verify. I can only do my best in this crazy country, sorting through the five opinions I hear about every subject just to find some sort of middle ground that approximates the truth of the situation. And of course, friend or coffee aficionado, I will do my best to pass on that truth to you through this newsletter!