Clean Rivers (y otras cosas)

So since a couple of you insisted that I review (not resume) my stay in Río Limpio during the last week of February, I've complied.

Río Limpio is a small town close to the Haitian border, in Elías Piña province (the most isolated, deprived province of the D.R.), and in turn Río Limpio, for most of its existence, has been the most isolated and deprived municipality of the most isolated and deprived province. That's been changing, however. Ever since a few beneficent Peace Corps volunteers established CREAR, the agricultural-technical high school in 1980 (?), Río Limpio has surged forward (at a typically Dominican snail's pace, but nonetheless). The town is home to several NGO's, some international and some local, which have done a great job at involving a great deal of townies. Additionally, CEDDIEL (one of the Dominican NGO's, whose initials are so verbose I forget what they stand for) has established an ecotourism complex with several roomy and relatively comfortable cabins for foreigners, where I stayed with my group. The eight of us spread across four rooms of a large cabin made for an unforgettable bonding experience, with each other as well as with a multitude of frogs who call the bathrooms home.

During our six days there we learned how to make fertilizer (in a process that eerily resembled lasagna or shepherd's pie), learned different organically agricultural technqiues, under the tutelage of Don Domingo Alcántara, one of the first graduates of CREAR and now a wise old (err...middle-aged) sage in the field of organic, sustainable, renewable agriculture. On the fourth day (Wednesday), God (Elaine) divided each of us up with different NGOs, and I went with Don Juanito to the CEDDIEL cooperative farm, which was a thoroughly heartening experience - not only are a great many Río Limpienses employed by the cooperative, but they're also working under two female overseers (only after spending two months and a bit in the DR would that make any kind of impression). They have a timber plantation as well as a horticultural center, and they educate locals how to slash wood without burning it. Consequently slash-and-burn agriculture has been eradicated in the valley of Río Limpio, although it continues in the surrounding mountains. One of Don Juanito's major concerns, as head honcho of CEDDIEL, is to make sure people stop moving into the nearby national park (Nalgas de Maco ["Toad's Butt"] knocked out of commission by Hurricane Georges over ten years ago) and, well, slashing it down and burning it up.

Along with all that boring stuff, we got to know some of the CREAR students a little, who were shy but awfully friendly once they opened up. For once I felt like I could really share myself with people whose experience is so fundamentally different from my own.

Since returning to civilization, I've been busy. I've started my investigation in El Fracatán almost in earnest, going to many different people's homes and chatting it up (Dona Gloria, for example, served me the best coffee I've tasted here so far). It always amazes me how warm they are and how open and ready they are to receive us gringos/Spaniards/rich Dominicans.

Anywho, I hope this fulfills your expectations.

Hasta próximo!