The Sports Equipment Deal

Update: I have since recieved more info about shipping. This is what it should look like:

You should send all packages to this address:

Peace Corps Director (Please do not put my name on the outside of the box)
Av Bolivar 451, Gazcue
Apartado 1412
Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic

Please put my name on a sheet inside of the box in addition to the best address for me to send feedback such as pictures to.

And here is a standard letter asking for help...

Dear Family & Friends,

Greetings from the Dominican Republic! I would like to send this letter to inform everyone of a new youth initiative in which we could use your support.

What is it? Serve and Play (Servir Y Jugar) is a Peace Corps initiative serving the Dominican Republic. It's goal is to stimulate volunteering while simultaneously providing the children and young people of communities of limited resources the opportunities to learn leadership and to participate in healthy activities. Serve and Play aids to promote Sirve Quisqueya, a national initiative to promote volunteer service by all Dominican youth.

How It works: The Peace Corps Volunteers will work with young people in the communities, having taught them the importance and effective methods to plan and execute community development projects. They will also help young people and children to track the hours that they have done. For their community service, Peace Corps Volunteers reward the youth with Sports Equipment available through Serve and Play. We have had great success with the program and therefore our inventory is rapidly diminishing.

What we need: We could use sports equipment of any type, Dominican youth love baseball, softball, basketball, and volleyball. In particular I could use (all kinds of soccer stuff!!)

How to send it: You should send all packages to this address:
Peace Corps Director (Please do not put my name on the outside of the box)
Av Bolivar 451, Gazcue
Apartado 1412
Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic
Please put my name on a sheet inside of the box in addition to the best address for me to send feedback such as pictures to.

Thank you so much for your continued support.

This was my origional post...

So I have this idea. And I need some help with it. I’ve got this soccer team going here. There’s between 20 and 30 kids, sometimes up to 40, practicing 3 times a week. They are totally psyched about soccer and we played our first game last weekend. The day before they went out in the woods and found six poles, (I know poles sounds weird but I can’t think of the right word) and hammered together their goals. We cut the outfield grass with machetes the day before too, which resulted in a big blood blister on my index finger, and we lined the field with sand. The games the next day were a lot of fun. They played all morning and everyone from Pedro Sánchez took a kid from the opposite team home to eat lunch with their family. Then we all went to the local watering hole for a swim. Ok, this is where I need your help. Half of these kids play in bare feet. We have two balls to practice with, which significantly limits the things I can teach. That is saying nothing about shin-guards and goals. But there is an up side. Peace Corps DR has this program called servir y jugar (to serve and play) which gets kids involved in doing community service projects and as a reward they earn sporting equipment depending on the amount of hours they put in. The equipment comes from donations from the states; both new and used stuff. So my thought was to ask you guys for donations. Not so much individually but maybe you could take this idea to your soccer team or club. And maybe everyone could get together all their old gear, it doesn’t even have to be old if you don’t want, and send it down here to the DR. Once it gets here it goes into the pot, up for grabs to all the other volunteers and their kids, although I would get first pick for my kids. So what is needed? Cleats, shin guards, and balls are needed most. Jerseys, pennies, cones or disks, mini-goals, and goalie gloves would not be turned away either. And if you want to take this further, other sporting equipment especially baseball stuff would be put to good use by kids all over this country. And remember this is not just handouts. These kids may be learning about community service for the very first time and may even earn their very first pair of cleats in the deal too. To get it here just mail it in a big box to me at the address on the side of this page. It’s actually the address to the PC office in the capital but that’s where I pick up all my mail. And if you wanted t throw some religious signs and symbols on the package for surer and safer delivery that wouldn’t be a bad idea either. Or you could address it to Pastor or Padre or even Hermana Matthew Ferner. If you have any questions about this proposition just let me know. I am planning on sending Calvin a more formal letter and if you think any other schools athletic departments would be interested let me know too. That’s it. Much love. Matt

So speaking of that air conditioned, englished speaking, fluffy couch sitting, home away from home...I came into the capital today to turn some surveys into my boss at the office. I'll have you know that this is the first post I've written from the office. And the computers here are free! I can spend all day on the internet if I want and not have to pay a peso. Imaginate. I've tried to write something from here before and can't. I've started things and then said to myself, "this is dry, nobody wants to hear about that." I was thinking about it on my way in today, and I think the reason why I haven't been able to write anything from here is that it's too comfy and too easy. I think the message gets accross better when I'm dripping sweat on the keyboard and my shirt is soaked and I am packed into a 8x12 ft with about 15 computers. Anyway, here's comming straight from the PC office.

What's the first thing I do when I get into the office? Check my mail. And it's great! Imagine not being able to walk out to your mail box for a few weeks or months at a time and then that excited you would have when you open your mailbox. And what made it even better this time is that I got something. A letter from my Grandma. She's doing good too. One of the things she mentioned was about how she is fortunate to be able to read and write me letters. Not because she is old but because she is educated. And I don't know if she was touching at something I wrote her before or hinting at something she wants to hear about, but it made me think about education. And then I thought about the sign in sheet I passed around at soccer practice the other day. I remember watching the kids, over half of them, struggle to sign themselves in. And one or two of them practicaly couldn't do it. I just stopped and stared. Caughten off gaurd once again by what would be a trivial event in the states, but here has so much more meaning. How can they even get through a day at school? What do they even do at school? These kids were between 8 and 13 too. Then there was the other time when I visited a family and their kids where in the middle of doing math homework when I walked in. They were 12 or so and still counting on their fingers.

The thing is I know what they do at school. I know how many days school gets cancelled a week. I've seen the "library" and the bathrooms and the classrooms. I've talked with teachers and the director. I remember complaining to my parents and teachers during highschool about how I was going to have back problems when I got older because of the weight of all the school books I had to carry around. And it was legit, it was heavy. At least the kids here don't have that problem. They don't even have a single book. The teachers have the book. And class is composed of the teacher dictating and students copying. There are no art classes, or a work shop, or a gymnasium. There are two different daily sessions. One for the older kids in the morning from 8 to 12 and one in the afternoon for the younger ones 2 to 4.30. And those hours really are negotiable. I'll let you imagine the rest of the story. So my grandma is fortunate to be educated. As am I. And I think so many other Americans.

I don´t think I´ve written much about poverty on this here blog yet. And that´s mainly for two reasons. One is that I just didn´t know what to say about it in the beginning because I was totally new to it. I could have described the houses or talked about the trash but that really wouldn´t have been good enough for me. The second is that about the time I began to understand it a little more and could maybe talk about a life lived in poverty, I became immune to it. Nothing was sticking far out of the norm for me and I kind of just began to get used to it all. It has been about 7 or 8 months now. But it´s been in the last few weeks that I´ve been noticing how poor things can be and really been thinking about it. So, I kind of touched on it in my journal the other day and I figured I´d share it.

May 7

...I´m getting addicted to sugar straight out of the bottle. It´s the darker big grained stuff. I really have to stop it. This morning I decided I take a bike ride. It was the fourth I´ve taken up the road towards Miches and each time I´m getting closer. Today I met the limit, at least until I am prepared to go all the way down into Miches. I began to realized I was doing a lot of breaking so I decided to turn around. That climb out of Miches is going to be tough, at least from what I saw today. I enjoy being up there on the top of all those hills and being able to look out over the Samana Bay and see the Samana pennnisula jutting out behind the bay. It seems mornings are more hazy then afternoons, at least from what I remember. I enjoyed the sound of the wind filling my head with a sort of empowering and freeing kind of noise. It added to the feeling of being on top of everything.

I was feeling so good I forgot the poverty and hardship I was riding through. Houses completly made of tin were lined up along the road and women were outside hand washing their clothes. There were no electric washing machines here to mask how poor these people are. I let slip a great big happy “Buenos Días” to a lady walking up as I was going down. She looked much more aged then she probably was. And when she gave me back a warn out sounding “buen día” for a moment I wondered why. Then I came back to my senses and saw the 5 gallon bucket of water on her head; she had one hand stabalizing the bucket and the other holding the hand of her completly naked little boy. Too poor to buy diapers and not wanting the extra work of washing soiled clothes each day, she just leaves her boy naked (this is very common here). I also realized there probably weren’t many trips to the well before this 5 gallon bucket or will there be many after and her family will be using this bucket of water for all of today’s watering needs. Most likely there isn’t 35 pesos to buy the giant blue bottle of drinking water either.

As I continue down the hill, lightly breaking so as not to fly by these people and at least giving them the curtosy of a slow acknowledging ride through I catch the eyes of some kids happily playing and waving to me. Then I notice Mom looking at me from the doorway of their one room shack. For the first few moments I am watching her as she is obviouly trying to figure out who I am. Not but an instant after she realizes I am a foreigner she puts her hand out and quickly, maybe despertly, before I am gone down the hill, rubs her thumb back and forth over her first two fingers. After 7 or 8 months here these situations still make me feel awkward and I still haven’t found the appropriate response to the request. When it’s face to face, which it is about one a week, I sort of awkwardly mumble something out about how I don’t do that. I can’t say I can’t or that I don’t have cinco pesos because I would be lying so instead I just leave them with an answer that almost always evidently puts the person off balance a bit. I see them sort of wondering, “what does he mean he doesn’t do that?” Anyway, I was on my bike and had the slope and distance between myself and this mother in my favor, if easily saying no to poverty is any type of favor, and so I just shifted my glance back to the road in front of me.

I decided to turn back for two reasons. One I didn’t feel like having to peddle the whole way back up out of Miches and two I didn’t know if I could handle entering Miches right then. I knew what was ahead as I have been to Miches in the comfort and seperate space of a private truck but this morning I was closer to it being on my bike. By it I mean that Miches is poor, and it shows. It’s also the number one take off spot for the old wooden boats known as yolas that cross the sea to Puerto Rico, with a price tag around 20,000 pesos for those desperate enough to risk their life for a chance at a different one.

As for me I peddled back a little ways until I reached the summit and let the downhill take me back to Pedro Sanchez. I’ve been realizing lately that El Cuerpo de Paz can let me see this life and even require me at times to live it, but I will never entirely know the feeling of it. And if I’m ever doubthing that, the comfy Peace Corps office and emaculte U.S. Embessy are just an easy 140 peso guagua trip away. Well at least for me, the holder of a blue passport.