Alta Gracia slide show and chat

I'm back in the US and will be giving a presentation about my time at Alta Gracia in Ellsworth, Maine on Tuesday, the 18th of January. The Ellsworth Rotary Club was generous in their financial support of the library and my time there, and deserves much appreciation. For anyone in the area, the presentation will be at 7:00pm at the Hilltop House restaurant.

Lesson 6: Proximity and sharing

I moved into the Casita de los Maestros one week ago yesterday. This house is a cement-and-wood construction with a large main room, small kitchen, bedroom, and a cold-water shower. Attached is a room that houses the town's tools, a collection left over from the residency of a Peace Corps couple. A new outhouse serves as the bathroom. It is spartan but comfortable, and I enjoy the luxury of cooking for myself. Future teachers at Alta Gracia will be housed here. For pictures, check out the beginning of the Photos From the Farm album, where I've added some new images.

What's most important about the Casita is that it is located right in Los Marranitos along the path where a majority of the community's families also have their home. It is built on a piece of farm land that is cut off from the rest of the farm by a road, and doesn't feel like the rest of the farm. Living "down below," on the farm, for the first two and a half months of my time here, I was isolated from the community simply because I did not live with them. I could pass through on walks ten times a day (which was not likely to happen, given the steep hill that the houses are located on!) and still be seen as an outsider. Living in the Casita, I instantly feel more a part of the community. I have neighbors! My neighbors watch out for me, and always remind me that they're here to help me as much as I am here to help them. It's fun to have kids wander in and enjoy the snowflakes I've cut to put up on my walls. I feel like the Pied Piper when I go down to the library trailed by a bunch of kids! I even enjoy hearing "Julie, vas a abrir la biblioteca hoy?!" being shouted at my open windows at least five times a day. Every time I hear it I think, didn't they always know the schedule of the library? Why do I have to tell them every day now? But I realize that it is the power of proximity that makes this question so urgent in the minds of some of the children: before they suspected they knew the schedule and they figured they would go down sometime in the afternoon; now they know that when I leave, I'm headed down. I stop to pick up regulars at their houses, they shout for me to wait so that they won't be left behind (mothers don't like their younger children to walk even the short distance to the library alone). It's great!

The Casita will be a great asset to future teachers at Alta Gracia. I am sad that I only have three weeks to live in it: I leave for the States on December 22nd, and leave behind the Casita (and the library, and Marranitos). Our latest hope is that, between teachers, the Casita will be used for more directly community-oriented Fundacion-Finca Alta Gracia projects, such as the host site of a traveling clinic.

Lesson 5: La jefa de la biblioteca

I am here in Los Marranitos as a volunteer teacher. I am not, by any stretch of the imagination, in charge of the library. Oh yes, I do have a degree of control over what goes on within the four walls of our bright building. But do have any sense of being in charge? Hardly. One thing I've learned in the two months I've been here is that my primary goal, and, I believe, that of the library, should be to provide positive opportunities for the children and young adults of Los Marranitos, Finca Alta Gracia's community. However, I haven't been here long enough, don't know people and their circumstances well enough, and haven't penetrated the surface of encouraging people to take advantage of the resources the Fundacion-Finca offers them. In this local respect, I feel far from "in charge" of how people use the library.

The Fundacion-Finca Alta Gracia has an international aspect, too, and in this respect I also don't dream of carrying the responsibility of being "in charge." Sarah DiCandio, who until now has been in charge of sales of Cafe Alta Gracia, has recently taken on the role of directing the Fundacion (congratulations, Sarah!). She's working on various projects, including 501(c)(3) certification, all in the interest of developing the Fundacion's structure and capacity to work in the farm community. It will be she who monitors the progress of the library and manages its development over the years, as both teachers and students pass through these mountains. Saying this, and also that I have great confidence in Sarah's enthusiasm and dedication, allow me to admit that I don't think that Sara is "in charge" of the library, either. She answers to the true jefa (boss). I know that this person exists, because I saw her in action yesterday, right here in the library. That jefa is Julia Alvarez, author, enterpriser, dreamer.

Julia and Bill visited the farm this week and were busy from the minute their truck pulled down the drive. When they stopped in the library, they were on their way to pay a visit elsewhere. However, while Bill sat quitely reading one of the magazines that the kids were cutting up for collages, Julia set down her backpack and began entertaining. In the midst of the chaotic reality of this farm project, Julia slipped automatically into her place as teacher, role model, and source of inspiration. It seemed completely natural and fulfilling to her to burst into a silly song in relation to one of the children's drawings, and to challenge others to a math practice session (inspiring one girl to boast that she knew division -- when she doesn't -- and another to make me pledge to tell Julia that she'd received no help on her mulitplication problems). I stayed in the background, fussing with materials and watching as she captured their attention in a way that I've rarely done, even when I was new here. I don't pretend to be a teacher, which Julia clearly is, but I think she's got much more than that going for her. Julia Alvarez is in charge of the Biblioteca Alta Gracia.

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.