Happy Holidays from the Dominican Republic! (Month 30 in the D.R.)

Dear Friends and Family,

Happy Holidays from the Dominican Republic!

I put my Christmas letter in video form this year.  Click the square at the bottom right of the 

video box if you want to make it full-screen.

I'd love to hear about your 2013 as well! It's hard to receive mail here, but please email me your news at Christmas (or any other time of the year) at jkbiti@gmail.com  :)

May your Christmas be filled with Love, Hope, and Peace.

Isaiah 9:6

For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

Driving Across the River, A Kitten of our Own, and a Trip to the States -- Month 29 in the D.R.

After a great 2.5 week visit home to Raleigh, NC where I was glad to catch up on the lives of my friends from Raleigh Mennonite Church (a few pictured below), SCBWI and the Goalies (a few pictured above,) my old job friends from CAS, my family, and others, I have now returned to the Dominican Republic.  After almost another year in the D.R. without a visit home, it was wonderful to see you all, to smell the rain, enjoy the beginning of the fall leaves changing, and wear SWEATSHIRTS & SOCKS - something we rarely do in the D.R. Thanks to every one of you for your continued friendship and continued support in so many ways for my work and life here in Hispaniola! I would feel much farther from home than I actually am if it wasn't for all of yoU keeping in touch!

Upon returning to the D.R. I've been delighted to be greeted by my housemate Julienne, Missionary neighbors Sadrac and Leeann, Co-workers, and this little guy below. He's the one cat we have left from our litter of 5 mommy-less kittens that Julienne and I and our friend Elisabeth from Germany bottle-fed for 5 weeks in July after their mother died.  The others have all been parceled out to good homes in our town -- one even went to live at the local veterinarian's office (how lucky for him!)  We decided to keep little "Sol" ("Sun" in English -- pictured below) and are enjoying his fuzziness, antics and purring.

 

Here are a few more photos of life back in the D.R. again!

Above -  I'm sitting in Community Health Worker Coordinator Carlito's front yard where we're planning this past week's Community Health Worker Continuing Education class and discussing patients in need of doctor's appointments. 

Below - Carlito and his wife Claudia (also a Community Health Worker) are discussing patient's needs in their community of Pancho Mateo.

 

Their grandson, little Emmanuel, was born at the regional hospital last Christmas and he'll be a year old soon.  I think that's probably the best name ever chosen for a Christmas baby.  

"God with Us"

He's a great reminder of the 1st Emmanuel celebrated at Christmas after his birth many years ago -- a reminder of what's important as we head toward the Holiday season 2013!

Today I took a new staff member up the sugar cane road
to visit our 4 partner communities .

 

To get to our farthest out community, Arroyo de Leche, we had to drive across the river.  Luckily the water was very low today otherwise we wouldn't have attempted it. We would have gone up the steeper but dryer road on the other side of the mountain on motorcycles, as we usually do, to get there a different way. :)  But no worries. The river was very low today!

On our journey today we visited with 4 of HHI's Community Health Workers in 3 communities, including Dorka (in the purple shirt,) and her teenaged daughter Kaeila. We found them walking down the dirt road in their rural community, Severet, holding a bunch of notebooks.  They were on their way to a place across town where they have started a free afterschool tutoring program for 50 children from their community.  Dorka, the local pastor's wife, is a Community Health Worker with HHI, a full time high school math teacher, and she and her daughters started the tutoring program on the side (as volunteers) to help the kids in their village do better in school.  I really must say that all of my co-workers truly inspire me with their sense of volunteerism, and the way they put aside the fact that they may have worked or volunteered all day already, and have kids of their own to cook for at home, and despite all of the things that they're already doing, and the fact that they're tired, they put others ahead of themselves and volunteer their time to better their communities!  It's really very inspiring!

Here's a photo looking down from Dorka's rural community of Severet, looking away toward large Mount Isabel which towers over far away Puerto Plata city, the seat of Provincial government in our region.  To the left of the Mountain you can see the line of darker blue just below the sky -- the Atlantic Ocean. 

Truly - despite the hard work that we all do here, there are also many advantages to living in the Campo in the Dominican Republic -- not the least of which is the fabulous view!

Huge Thanks for your continued daily prayers for our work and lives here in the Dominican Republic! The notes, Skype-calls, and PRAYERS are always so very much appreciated!

Making Chocolate from a Tree - July 2013, Month 25 in the D.R.

While joining Community Health Worker Mercedes on rounds conducting home visits to our HHI patients with Hypertension, Diabetes and Asthma 45 minutes up the mountain in Arroyo de Leche earlier this summer I finally got the chance to fulfill a special non-work-related goal of mine for my time in the D.R.  I got to learn where chocolate REALLY comes from, and how to make it -- from Tree to Chocolate syrup!

This is a Cacao Fruit.  It's where Coco comes from to Make Chocolate.

Community Health Workers Mercedes and Carlito, and Mercedes' youngest daughter Marielis took me and two medical students into the woods near one of her patient's homes to find the ripe Cacao Fruit growing on the nearby trees. 

Here Marielis holds an open Cacao Fruit.  If you eat it fresh, there are small purple sweet sections you suck on.  The purple is covered by a layer of white skin, similar to the white skin inside the rind of an orange.  Here we are sucking the sweetness out of the Cacao. :)

(As a side note, yes, there are blonde Dominicans.  Marielis, the little blond girl, is Dominican through and through!)

Here Marielis shows off a Cacao fruit she expertly plucked off a nearby tree, while medical student Brad, in his "doctor scrubs" looks around for more.

I took a Cacao fruit home, to learn to make Chocolate.  It was yellow when they first plucked it, but because of a busy work week, it waited in my hot kitchen for almost a week before I could start the chocolate process, and it turned rather brown. Luckily the fruit inside was still good!

This is what the fruit looks like when you first take it out of the shell.  See the purple below? Those are the Cacao seeds! Yucky if you chew them! They have a sweet outer coating which is what you suck off if you wish to eat the fruit raw. :)

 
To make chocolate you separate the seeds.  They're a bit slimy, and a beautiful shade of purple inside.

Separate them into individual seeds...

 

Now they're ready to be dried so you can make Cocoa!  

So, onto the cookie sheet they go, and up onto the roof in the hot Dominican sun for a week or more.   Mine were drying for almost 2.5 weeks. That's partly because it kept raining and I kept having to bring them back into the house for a day or two to avoid the rain. :)

 *Note to self -- don't try to dry Cacao fruit on the roof during a rainy month! :)

In the end I didn't quite make it to the Chocolate stage. :(  I got to the "fruit is dry (see fruit in bowl) and smells like chocolate and is ready to be pounded into dust and turned into a liquid chocolate syrup" stage. Alas, I had to hurry into another busy work week and didn't have time to make the syrup before the hard, dry chocolate scented fruit seeds began to rot.  

*Note to self -- only try to make chocolate when you're own vacation for a week or have the time to really commit to the several week long project! : )

But still,  I am excited to now have first-hand knowledge of how chocolate is made and to be able to say I helped pick Cacao fruit off a tree and baked chocolate seeds on a cookie sheet on my roof!
Mmmmmm. The smell of baking chocolate!

Note the picture of the Cacao Fruit on the candy bar wrapper from Europe (via Ecuador) below!

So when I'm in Arroyo de Leche again I'll have to get another Cacao fruit 

and finish the whole process through to the eating stage next time!

 Here we all go - Me, two Community Health Workers, two Medical Students. and one  6 year old Marieli, crossing the river, off to visit patients in their colorful wooden homes 

in Arroyo de Leche.

Two Years in the D.R. -- Looking back and Ahead -- Month 24 in the D.R. (June 2013)

             Here's a photo of me in Pancho Mateo, one of the communities where I work.

Well, I initially signed up for one year of working at Health Horizons International (http://hhidr.org/), as the Clinical Programs Director, in Montellano, Dominican Republic, in June 2011.   I always assumed that that one year might turn into two years, and of course it did.

Now, as of June 11th, 2013, I've celebrated 2 full years of living in the D.R, and now I'm signing on for another (3rd) year.  

So this month I'm just going to share a few of my favorite photos and memories from the work and life I've experienced here over the past two years.

Still one of my favorite photos of the last 24 months, this picture above  shows 100 kids from Pancho Mateo (including one of my favorite groups of siblings standing in front -- my little friends Francia on the right, and her brother baby Alexandre being held by another sister on the left.)  This was during the kids camp that I and the Raleigh Mennonite Church teen girls, and the teen girls from a church in Pancho Mateo organized in Summer 2012. I love this photo because it shows one of the Dominican teen girls (Nina) taking a leadership role and sharing structure and God's love with the children of a local Hatian family -- her neighbors.  It is God's love that breaks the barriers of racial conflict in so many places, and it is love and structure and older mentors like these teens from the community who can help all these 100 kids grow up to be wonderful women and men who can be leaders in their communities for the future! (I love the RMC teen ladies working hard in the background loving-on the children as well!  I was so impressed with all the teen leaders from both countries! It was a hot, exhausting, and great week!)

I took this photo during one of my first weeks on the D.R. and it is still definitely one of my favorites.  It shows the road we take on motorcycle to get to Arroyo de Leche -- our farthest away community up the mountain -- to check on patients there.  The Dominican countryside is a beautiful place -- especially along this, the sugar cane road, flanked by acres of tall green sugar cane on either side.  But it is a difficult road, sometimes impassible, and sometimes I've had to walk up in rain and mud when trying to go up on moto was just not safe.  So this road reminds me of our journey in life. It can be difficult, sometimes next to impossible, almost impassable.  But there is beauty all around us on the journey -- if we look.

I love this photo of 6 of the 19 Community Health Workers who I supervise and who I have helped train, and who continually share their love, friendship, and knowledge with me.  I will always be proud to know them!  I'm so impressed with how they spend their time, energy, and resources without hesitation to help others in need in their communities, and I hope to grow to be more and more like them.

This photo shows a note that was stuck to the side of the fridge in the house we borrowed from missionary-from-Canada Rachel Stickley when I first arrived in the D.R.   I was glad to see this important reminder as I sat in the dark in the evenings those first few weeks here, with no electricity, (the generator broke while I was there,) being eaten by mosquitos, (I was still learning to use my mosquito net!) and trying to flush the toilet with just a bucket of water, and cook on a gas stove that I was sure was about to blow up in that borrowed house. : )

In this photo I'm visiting the river with my friend, Community Health Worker Dania, to learn about the dangers of unclean water in the river around the time of our cholera outbreak in fall 2011.

Here we are going door to door with co-workers, friends, and neighborhood children delivering cholera-prevention information and hand-soap called "Harmony" that same month, Fall 2011.

Here missionary women from the surrounding area gathered at my and my housemate Julienne's house in December 2012 for a Christmas party. We made ornaments and sharing stories.  We hope to do it again in December 2013!  It was great to have everyone over!

Here I and one of the medical students, Kate, are accompanying "Awesome Community Health Worker," Estela and her youngest daughter on home-visits to her patients in Negro Melo, on a rainy day when the roads had flooded. :)  That rain never stops US! :)

And...

I'll end with a video that is old -- it was actually made before I came to HHI -- but it shows a little bit of what we do here and some of the experiences that I've had the opportunity to be a part of here. (I'm now responsible for the field clinics, and for doing the work that "nicole" did -- working with the communities, patients, and community health workers. So this video definitely shows a lot of what I do).  Note: The address for donations in the video is wrong, so please disregard that and go to the link above for the HHI website if you want to learn more about where I work or feel like making a donation).:

Here's the Video: HHI Field Clinics Video

Thanks so much to all of you for the prayers, visits, and support over the past two years! And thanks for the continued support and prayers as I move forward into the 3rd year here in the Dominican Republic!  

Tu Nos Botaste? (Have you thrown us away?) -- Month 23 in the D.R.

FRIENDSHIPS

In the Dominican Republic, even more than in the U.S., relationships definitely make the world go round.  I've found that friendships are extremely important not just on weekends or in the evening after work, but they make or break you here, in the professional world as well.

 In the U.S. good friends or relatives may not talk to each other for months on end, and then one Friday night they can get together for coffee and feel fine about their relationship, and chat like they just saw each other yesterday.  Here, if I don't communicate with professional friends or neighbors from the other side of town for several weeks in a row they feel they've suddenly become unimportant to me, and they bluntly ask "Tu nos botaste?" "Have you thrown us away?"  This is a commonly-used expression here. "Hey - I haven't seen you in 3 weeks. What is the deal? Have you thrown me away?

In the U.S. we would probably never say such a thing. We have many friends who we rarely see but still love, and both sides of the friendship or professional relationship are ok with that. We just acknowledge "everybody's busy," and we don't take the sometimes limited contact as a problem in the relationship, necessarily.

In the D.R. I've learned to stretch myself a bit on that front; to really make sure that people know they are important to me. (For a person who is moderately introverted, and likes to have some evenings and Saturday mornings to myself at home, this can be a real challenge.)  But I've learned that relationships come first here -- and having friends and collaborative business colleagues here requires being "Friend-tentional."  Just a few minutes ago -- at 7pm after the sun had already gone down, while I was in the middle of dinner, a friend (colleague from another organization) of mine came by the house on her way to church to ask me "Hey, we haven't seen you down at the hospital in a couple of weeks trying to help us improve our medical services there.  Have you thrown us away?" I apologized and explained that I've been out in the countryside helping those in the communities that don't have clinics get medical consults. She said "Oh, ok." We hugged and I promised to come by the hospital within the next couple of days to move forward on the work she and I have been doing there together.  Similarly, the 19 Community Health Workers who I supervise often say "have you thrown us away, Janelle?" if I haven't been to eat dinner at their house within the last month. The 400 patients in our various medical programs see me on the street and say "Hey Janelle, I haven't seen you in my community or at my house in awhile.  Have you thrown us away?"  I tell them I've been trapped in the office writing grants to get more funding for HHI so we can help even more people with medical care in the local communities, and that I've been in meetings with D.R. health leaders trying to improve the medical system (all true). They shrug and acknowledge.  "Oh, ok. So we're still important to you?"  Then we hug and I say "I wouldl never throw you away," and I promise to come visit soon, and they say the same, and then we're all ok.

It's been an interesting learning experience -- living in a country where every person emphasizes relationships and friendships as the most important element of life, and where sitting on your neighbor's porch chatting is not so much a fun vacation activity but rather a daily expectation, privilege, and responsibility.



It's a challenge for the introverts. But it's also a beautiful thing. And I'm glad to know that the many friends I have here -- whether co-workers, local partnering agency personnel, patients, neighbors, church friends, and even quasi strangers -- will also try hard not to ever "throw me away."  They'll be here if I need them.  That's a wonderful gift - especially for a single person living abroad. (Although I have many life-long tried and true, will drop everything for each-other friends in the U.S. too,) I still think that many of us from the U.S. can perhaps learn a bit more from this "friend-tentional" way of life...

So this month I want to share some photos of a few of the friends (Dominicans and also foreigners living here) who offer such essential "friend-tentional" support to me in the D.R., and in the work that I am doing here.

Here are some of the Community Health Workers' kids in the Community of Arroyo de Leche.

They always yell at me when I don't come 45 minutes up the mountain on a motorcycle to visit them often enough. :)

Here are some of the 19 Community Health Workers who I love and who I work with every day.

They are an inspiration and consistently extend true friendship to me (and also many lunch invites) for both of which I am eternally grateful!



Here (above and below) are some of my Clinical Programs Team Co-Workers who I work with in the office.  We have a wonderful team and I'm honored to work with them! They teach me new things every day -- even though I am the one whose supposed to be teaching them :). (Above and Below).



My office and CHW Co-workers : )

Then there are the Neighbors... : ) who always want me to sit down on their porch if I pass by -- even if I'm in a hurry to head off to "an important meeting for work..."

 

 More Neighbors :)
Since I work in 4 different communities, live in a 5th, and go to church in a 6th, I am delighted to say I have "neighbors" living in each and every one of them!  I am always humbled when families in our farthest-away communities see me on their streets and call out "Hey Janelle, it's great to see you," and they welcome me into their homes with open
hearts and arms.

I also want to take this opportunity to share photos of 2 groups of international volunteers/missionaries living here who are wonderful "friend-tentional" friends to me and who I regularly thank God for.

 First, (above) are some of the women of the New Life Church Women's Bible Study which I have had the privilege to co-lead over the past 8 months.  They are such a huge support and blessing to me - sharing their lives, their stories, their experience, and their wisdom as we study the Bible and pray together every Thursday night, and attend church together on Sundays.  I love having an inter-generational, and intercultural group of women to fellowship with.  This group has been such an unexpected blessing in my life over the past 8 months and I can't stop thanking God for their friendship and honesty.

And here's one group that should not be left out at all -- They are some of my closest friends in the D.R. (though not everyone in the group is actually pictured here).   These are some of the other missionaries and humanitarian workers who I know through church and a local Bible Study that I've been privileged to be a part of on Wednesday nights for the past almost 2 years.  We support each other spiritually, emotionally, socially, and in whatever other way is needed -- giving each other advice when complicated questions or ethical issues come up in our lives and our work here.  I spent much of my day on Sunday with one of the women pictured above, helping her get treatment at a local hospital because she's come down with an unfortunate case of Dengue. But hanging out with her in that context was a pleasure because she's my friend, of course. It is a reciprocal relationship. Many of the other people in this photo have also done 8 hour shifts at the hospital with that same friend over the past 4 days as well -- making sure she's ok there in the hospital; or they've given advice from their own prior experiences with Dengue. We live our lives together -- week in and week out -- even though we all work in different places. Each one of us benefits from the support of the others, which is indescribably wonderful, especially for a group of people like us living and serving others in Jesus' name, while far from our "home countries," our original languages, and the friends, family members, and churches we left behind at "home" to come and serve here.

In the style of the old Visa commercials I might say
1.) Living and serving in the Dominican Republic = $400-600 a month.
2.) Having other foreign missionaries living near you who can support you, pray with you, and understand you in your daily struggles here -- PRICELESS.

I'm so very thankful to God for each of these missionary friends above, and for those not pictured. Together this group of friends consists of Christian missionaries serving in the following organizations here in the Dominican Republic:

La Tienda -- Standing Behind the Dignity of the Poor
Makarios International - International Educational Development
The Samaritan Foundation  --  Building Communities
Christian Surfers International -- Surfers Reaching surfers
Health Horizons International -- Health Care/Health Education -- where I (Janelle) serve and work
Kids Alive International -- "Rescuing Kids Around the World."
Mission Direct - Volunteers helping the World's Poor
A Serving Heart - Spiritual, Educational, and Economic Growth in Haiti and the Dominican Republic
Go Mad Ministries -- Fighting Human Exploitation
and more.

So, as a final thought, I encourage us all to do what the Dominicans as a culture do.  Let's be "friend-tentional" with our friends, colleagues, and neighbors. 

It's easy to "Understand" the importance of this idea, but harder to "Do" it, (though certainly some of us are better at this than others). Whether it comes easy for us or not, putting our relationships with others at the very top of our priority list -- even though it takes time that we might otherwise have used for something else -- can make our little corners of the world  better, more supportive, and more supported places -- places where less and less people feel abandoned or alone :)  At least that's what I'm finding here in the Dominican Republic!

Medical Students, Community Health Workers, and Green Hills and Music -- April, 2013 -- Month 22 in the D.R.

April, has come around again -- a time of flowers, humming birds, medical students, patient home visits, and preparing for the field clinics we'll be doing in 4 communities during the 1st week of May.

I've had 2 medical students here working with me and with the 19 Community Health Workers for the past 2 weeks.  They're here for a month total and we've been walking house to house to see patients.  It's been fun for me to get out of the office and back out into the communities more frequently this month. I've been stuck in the office more and more lately with administrative tasks and grant-writing. But in the past two week's I've enjoyed being back in the communities where we've helped the Community Health Workers bandage injuries, check in on patients who have been having trouble with side effects to meds, etc.  I've been glad to see how quickly the medical students have come to understand the sense of community that exists in each of our villages. They've made fast friends with many Community Health Workers and neighbors already!

                             Here the medical students Brad and Meg sort charts with Community Health Worker Dorka, in front of her home in Severet, before heading off with her on visits to her patients.

This month has also been the month of preparing for the May 2013 mobile Field Clinics.  We have 3 MDs and one more medical student from the States coming to see patients with us during those field clinics. 

In the photo above, I and my colleage Tracy and the 19 Community Health Worker from 4 communities all came together to plan and divide up appointments to give out to sick residents in the four communities. 




 Here, Community Health Worker Catherine in the rural community of Severet, heads out of her door, with patient medical charts in hand, to go visit her patients and to give out appointment cards to sick neighbors, inviting them to next week's field clinics.



Below (in a scene that made me accidentally start singing ..."The hills are alive with the sound of music...") Community Health Workers Fones and Yajaira and Yajaira's toddler aged son, take Medical Student Brad and I around to check in on their patients.

The hills are alive.... la la la...  la la ....la... :)

They paused to pick some fruit along the way to share it with Brad, and to teach him about local trees. 

Below Fones and Brad are checking pulse on my friend Sipuen (in Severet).

Brad and Meg, the medical students, also helped us do a refresher course on first aid (Wound Care and Burn Care) for the Community Health Worker Class. 

Here Meg is drawing our different types of "wounds" on our hands with a red marker...

We had great fun (and learned great skills) bandaging fake wounds and burns all over each others heads and appendages! : )

 Nice bandage job, there, Yudi!

Here I am (yes, I'm the one pasty one with no tan,) with friends during our day in Severet. My friends are (right to left): Community Health Worker Catherine, Our two motorcycle taxi drivers Alex and Chubadu who brought me up the mountain, and Pastro Pedro of the Evangelical church of Severet, in the back yard of Pastor Pedro, CHWs' Dorka and CHW Catherine's home.

As you can see, Severet is Beautiful.

It's been a beautiful, very busy, but also fun month at HHI.

One a separate note, I want to leave you with one more thing this month:

I wanted to share with you one of the sounds of the D.R. that I hear every day. Here is a Batchata song called El Golpe Aviso! By a singer named El Chavel. This song was apparently released in 2012 but over the past month has become one of the most popular songs that I hear playing in public transportation vehicles and in homes and business here in our part of the D.R. I spend half of my days singing "Sigue, Sigue, Sigue Caminando" Which means -- keep going, keep walking. :)

So, I'm sharing this with you so you can "hear" some of my daily life. : ) Enjoy.