Embedded in Tim's garden

March 28, 2006 It's been awhile since we've heard anything about the garden project. So what's going on? Let's go live to our hard-hitting correspondent in the field, Steve Aji. Steve-o? Well, Dan, it's not easy being embedded with the 1st Green Pepper Division. There are torrential downpours, colonies of ants, sandstorms... Sandstorms, Steve?

See more photos

Oh, you're right. Heh heh. No sandstorms. But there are these tiny little lizards, and they crawl all over the place, and they really tickle.

Steve, the folks at home are anxious to know: What's the status of the War on Empty Patios?

Well, Dan, I have to say the outlook is optimistic. We've got a lot of great peppers and eggplant out here doing their country proud. The original Tomato Battallion has split into three squads, with deployments in the Northeast, Southeast, and Hallway regions of the Patio. And the Mountain Reserves have given a terrific boost to our tea production.

You produce tea? Steve?

That's right, Dan. A plant army cannot live on water alone. We carry an ample supply of manure tea with us at all times – pure, unadulturated goat manure leeching out through a bag into a bucket of water. That's how we get our nutrients in the field, Dan.

Sounds like you're really roughing it out there, Steve. Remind me not to invite you into the studio anytime soon, ha ha.

Good one, Dan. But it's true. The War on Empty Patios is a dirty job. The compost, the worms, the horrific sandstorms...

Steve. Sandstorms?

Ah. Ahem. I'm relatively new here in the Patio. On my last assignment there were sandstorms. I still have flashbacks.

Right. We got word here that there were pineapple lurking in the outskirts. Can you corroborate that?

That's classified, Dan, but I will say that we're always looking to win the hearts and minds of the locals and diversify our interests in new markets.

Could you say more about the hearts and minds, Steve? The folks watching at home are anxious to know.

The Patio is safer and stronger every day, Dan. We're clearing weeds, we're watering the local species -- these plant soldiers are fighting bravely to bring democracy to every corner of the Patio.

Did you say democracy, Steve? Can plants vote?

Oh, they will, Dan. They will. We've got a contract with the people who made the electronic voting machines in Florida. They're working on a system that turns chlorophyll into a hanging chad.

Amazing, Steve. Simply amazing. What'll they think of next? Privatization of sunlight? Ha ha.

Actually, Dan, that's also classified, ha ha ha.

Ha ha ha! Touche. Well, that's all the time we have. Thank you so much, Steve. You're a true patriot.

Thank you, Dan. It's been my pleasure.

You've been listening to Steve Aji, embedded reporter in the heart of the Patio. First-hand news, folks. It doesn't get any truer than that.

See some more photos of the garden

Rocky Mountain High

March 21, 2006

I'm just back from several days up in the mountains of the Bonao province – newly humbled, newly energized, and newly sunburned.

I was working with a Federation of campesinos [people of the countryside; small farmers], lending a hand with a construction project they're working on. I mixed cement, lugged around cement blocks, fed the rabbits, and drank a lot of coffee. These people drink coffee every chance they get.

I also got to hear about what's important to the people in the Federation. Judging by the content of many of the conversations, genitalia and pooping are fairly important, but they also care passionately about the state of their world.

The Federation was formed in 1992 to address poverty in the area and to protect la cuenca, the source of several rivers that supply water to a great deal of the nation. They do agricultural work, reforestation, environmental education through a group of local Young Ecologists, and are starting an eco-tourism project.

They have stopped a mining company from entering the region, held strikes for improvements in social services, and reforested hundreds of acres to protect their water source. Esteban, one of the founding members, says, "One of our biggest achievements is getting people to care about issues that are bigger than themselves."
Read more about the Federation

Esteban and the other Federation members are very aware of how international politics directly affect them. In a meeting with rice farmers who live in the valley and use the water from la cuenca, Esteban was adamant. "If we as national producers don't get organized, in five years estamos todos jodidos [we'll all be in a real bad way]. The G8 wants to convert us into a society of total dependency."

This is straight out of the articles on dependency theory I've been reading, except for them it's real life. Since the 1929 Stock Market Crash, which caused a Great Depression not only in the US but worldwide, Westerners have been talking about the need to minimize the concentration on agriculture in the Third World and industrialize. This, argued the rational minds of the developed world, will bring prosperity to the world's poor.

Great -- bring in the machinery! Latin America will now be able to produce its own clothing, its own shoes, its own Pet Rocks. Wonderful! But who are they going to buy all this machinery from? Who's going to teach the people how to use it? And if the machines break down, then what? On top of that, well, it looks like we're going to have to buy a whole lot more petroleum to power all of these things.

So what has happened is that Latin America has become more dependent on the North rather than less. Why is that bad? The more a developing country is dependent on the developed world, the more it will be subject to the whim of an increasingly powerful and increasingly distant few.

That's what's awaiting the Dominican Republic and several Central American countries beginning later this year as DR-CAFTA goes into effect. The campesinos of the Federation know this well. It literally comes down to life or death for them -- they as small farmers will soon have to compete with the huge, mechanized, subsidized farming corporations in the US.

Free trade? It's like letting loose a pack of free wolves on a farm of free chickens. I'm not saying the chickens won't peck and scratch and even organize, as we saw documented so brilliantly in the film "Chicken Run." I'm just saying it's not a fair fight.

Hmm. Sometimes I feel a little foolish getting all worked up about this stuff. Middle-class white indignance at the world's injustices? How passe. And Latin American activism is, like, soooo 1980s. There are new emergencies every day, new issues to care about from Chiapas to Tanzania to Washington. What makes the campesinos in Bonao so special?

Maybe it's not that they're special. Maybe the issue here is that it's all connected, that the poorest and most vulnerable all over the world always take it on the chin. Maybe for you all who won't get to meet Esteban or the Young Ecologists, the rich-poor struggle in the mountains of Bonao will serve as more anecdotal evidence of the larger structures at work in our world. For me, as I get to know these people better, I imagine this particular issue will only continue to get more personal.

Our week with Chomsky

March 10, 2006

Yes, you read right. Dr. Noam Chomsky, one of the world's sharpest political minds (or "the short, pale man," as local newspapers referred to him), spent several days in Santo Domingo giving various talks and being wined and dined by the nation's finest.

It was a strange week among strange weeks. I finally got to talk to him, briefly, though we were all rather upset by this time and it was too late to change anything anyway.

I'll start at the beginning, or nearer to it. Dr. Chomsky, social anarchist, voice crying in the wilderness against U.S. imperialist tactics for decades, accepted an invitation from the Fundación Global Democracia y Desarrollo to speak on politics and/or linguistics. The Fundación Global is akin to the political right-wing think tanks of the U.S. where neoliberalist thought is sold in the cafeteria and pumped intravenously into the collective bloodstream.

(For a better idea about what exactly is neoliberalism, look no further than this eye-opening essay by Robert McChesney. Click here to see it.)

The Fundación Global is a place where the ruling class (in the Dominican Republic, it's only a few dozen families who run most of the country) sends their best and brightest to write policy and create public opinion. It's their job to make sure we keep ingesting things that are good for big business and bad for us -- free trade agreements, IMF loans, Coca-Cola, etc.

So Chomsky accepts an invitation to give some closed lectures there. Moderating the lectures: Dominican President Leonel Fernández. Needless to say, Justicia Global is not invited. We're not up there with León Jiménez yet, the folks who own Presidente beer, magazines, newspapers, radio and TV, most of the cigarette industry, and recently a bank. (What a combination. Really, what more do you need?)

Anyone else smell something funny? The guy who's been railing against U.S. foreign policy for decades, exposing the media for its role as lapdog for the elite, is being whisked around like a trophy by the Dominican equivalents of Bush and Cheney.

Lucero, a professor closely connected with Justicia Global, talks with Carol Chomsky, the good Doctor's wife, about setting up a meeting with young activists, people who have read Noam's political work but who weren't invited to hear him speak at the Fundación Global. So we get a call the next morning -- Noam wants to meet with students.

Thursday afternoon several of us finally find our way to where he's staying. (His people had given us the wrong hotel originally.) The U.S. Ambassador for Science and Technology is there instead. He's a former student of Chomsky's and is accompanying the doctor this week.

Sorry. You won't be able to see him after all. Change of plans. But there will be an open lecture tomorrow at the university, Intec, on biolinguistics. You can see him then.

We go. That's this morning. We get there and they've changed their minds. Only professors will be able to sit in on the lecture; students must go to another auditorium and watch on TV. There will be a meeting with students afterward. Watching him on TV is a slap in the face, and what's more, the simultaneous Spanish translation is dubbed right over top so you can't really hear either the English or the Spanish.

We wait. The student meeting turns out to be more of a photo shoot than anything else. The Ambassador recognizes us and promises me a question -- me, because the questions are in English. Then the President of Intec takes over the session and calls on everyone who isn't me.

I go up afterward as he's being led away through the crowd. They're dedicating a plaque in his name. Here is our conversation.

Justicia Global begins course in Haitian Kreyol; welcomes two new housemates

March 6, 2006

Dear friends,

It's a fabulous time to be a part of Justicia Global, the community-based/international organization based in the Dominican Republic. (It's always a fabulous time, isn't it, Tim? When have you ever written about an exceedingly depressing time or even a semi-dull time?)

Yesterday we opened our first free course in the Haitian Kreyol language, which will continue meeting on Sundays from 2-4 p.m. In this two-month course, we will learn to speak Kreyol through various cultural activities: cooking Haitian food, listening to Haitian music, and learning about the history and religious practices of our sister nation.

Our organization is going through a restructuring process of names. We've brought together all of our international, student and community work under one name, a name that is at once our vision, our dream, and our challenge: Justicia Global.

We've finally got all of our information and photos online from our January visits to Goshen College and Earlham College. Thanks again to everyone who helped make "Justicia Global Indiana" a smashing success!

Read more about these events on our revamped website: www.escueladeformacion.org.

The organizational community house is proud to welcome its newest resident, Anne Liechty of Goshen, Indiana, arriving today. She has expressed interest in working with children, with the women's group, Perla, and with Haitian-Dominican issues.

Anne has also expressed interest in bringing us Nutella. Welcome, Anne!

The community house has reservations about its other new arrival, Tim Shenk, who in his first few days of residence has already managed to break off the iron faucet in the kitchen while "trying to fix it." That's right. Broke it clean off.

Serves me right to have to do the dishes in the bathroom for awhile.

Preparations for the 2nd International Summit of Justicia Global are well underway. We've confirmed the participation of celebrated Venezuelan author and social critic Luis Britto Garcia, and we've received pre-registration forms from friends in Ecuador, Venezuela, Mexico, Canada, United States, and Nigeria. In addition, we're in contact with folks from France, Germany, Norway, South Africa, Argentina, and Mongolia.

If you're considering making the trip, send us your registration (available here), as space is limited.

Well, I guess that's it for now. If this email seemed too short for you, you are welcome to visit www.escueladeformacion.org/timindr.htm to see more personal accounts from me, and as always, pictures of celebrities. If it seemed too long, you could have chosen to stop reading a little further up. If it was juuuust right, hurry and hide, because the three bears will be home soon to eat their porrige.

La paz sea contigo
Peace be with you
Tim

 Misidentification of the third kind

March 3, 2006

In my first five weeks in Santo Domingo, I've been mistaken for or compared to an impressive amount of people.

I've also been correctly identified by quite a number of people (including a portly fellow on the street yesterday whom I don't ever recall having met), but those are less interesting stories. The person will say, Hola, Tim, ¿cómo estás? And then I say muy bien, and then I ask them how they are, and then usually there's a hug or a kiss on the cheek thrown in there somewhere.

But back to the mix-ups. It turns out that my two best disguises, "wearing a Dominican baseball cap" and "speaking Spanish," aren't fooling anyone. People know I'm not from here. The funny thing to me, though, is the number of people who think I'm not from here and famous.

The other day I was in Helados Bon [translation: "The Ice Cream Shop of the Gods"] attempting to purchase some ice cream. Two young women approached me and asked, ¿es Miguel Angel? Are you [formal] Miguel Angel? I think Miguel Angel is either a light-skinned pop star or a light-skinned soap opera star. Instead of saying something witty, I just sort of stared at them. One of them asked the question again, and I stuttered something about wanting some strawberry ice cream. They went back to where they had been sitting.

I'll move on to some comparisons. My friends here seem to think that I look exactly like every white guy with a beard they see on TV. Two that come to mind at the moment are Jesus from The Passion of the Christ and Spike, the crazy roommate from Notting Hill. Here are our photos. You be the judge.

None of these instances, however, can top my moment of misidentification last year in Miami. I was grocery shopping in the local Winn-Dixie. I can't remember if I was in the sweet tea aisle or the fried things aisle, but there I was, eyeing the packaged goods.

Around the corner comes an older gentleman. He approaches me, pen and paper in hand, and says the seven sweetest words anybody has ever said to me: "Excuse me -- are you Dale Earnhart Junior?"