fun day in Santo Domingo

One of the hightlights of our time in the village was a family fun day the Canadians organized for the whole village. On Thursday, they put on a huge push and got all the construction work completed by lunchtime, and then the afternoon was devoted to just fun. Everybody gathered together in a big open area, and sent out the word to bring all the family along. And people came, dozens of kids, mothers, fathers, grandmothers! They were divided into 3 groups which went to 3 different areas and played games. Silly games, fun games, like finger fencing, rock, paper, scissors, and many others. And everybody, adults included joined in and had a blast. You never saw such hilarity. After awhile the groups rotated and played some more. Then when the games were over, they all gathered back together in the main "square" to do a craft that someone in Canada had organized into many ziplock bags. A very simple craft, glue a picture cut out from a greeting card onto a piece of cardstock, along with some little foam shapes, tie a ribbon into 2 holes at the top, and there you have something to hang up in your house. Well, I'm telling you, you have to have seen it to believe it. EVERYBODY did this craft. I got the biggest kick out of seeing the men, big strong men, even the toughest of those guys, sitting on the ground intently gluing little foam shapes into place. Unfortunately my battery had died by then so I didn't get any pictures of that, but it's a sight I'll never forget.
Then there was a snack for everybody. The day before, under Nikki''s direction, we had made about 500 scones, using the oven of the local bread bakery. So we gave those out and someone in the village had also made a local specialty - a rice and coconut mixture, almost like rice pudding. And only then did it rain. A highly successful afternoon.

A word on rain - Can it ever rain there! Hot and sunny one minute, and the next there's a rumbling of thunder, a lovely cool breeze springs up, a black cloud rolls in, and the heavens open. Rivers of water pour out of the sky. And then it becomes clear as to why you need to take boots to the jungle. The mud is something else.

And a word on insects. I've always felt pretty good about the apparent lack of scary bugs here, only some cockroaches, and ohter non-threatening creatures. It's another story in the jungle. HUGE spiders on the wall, and the biggest cockroach you ever saw. I learned to shine my flashlight around the walls of my room before I went to bed and tuck my bug net VERY tightly.
But I lived through it, and everything else more than made up for the wildlife.