Collares Rojos

When I moved to Bayahibe in April, I started walking Rosalinda every morning with a lady named Yanela who has six dogs. I learned more and more about a local foundation called “Collares Rojos” or Red Collars, of which Yanela is the director. It is a non-profit organization working to help abused and abandoned dogs and street dogs. Their main mission is to fix all the street dogs so that the dogs are less aggressive and, of course, cannot reproduce. However, they also look after street dogs that have been in an accident (get hit by a car, etc.), and try to get dogs adopted. Here there are not very many laws against dog abuse, and Dominicans, in general, have a bad attitude against dogs. For example: when I adopted Rosalinda, she would bark at children because the kids in the neighborhood where she was born would throw rocks at her.

When I lived in Mano Juan, the community always complained about how the dogs were a huge problem because they always bothered the tourists. In an effort to help, in May I worked with Collares Rojos to get three veterinarians to go out to Mano Juan and fix the street dogs there. There were four dogs already pregnant, so they planned to go out a couple of months later to finish the job.

A couple of weeks ago the new volunteer in Mano Juan, who had just gotten back from a trip, called me and said that she could not her dog, Mandy, and was worried about her. Later that day, I was walking down the street and ran into my friend that works with a tourist company that goes to Mano Juan. He said that that day when they went, a community member had met him on the beach and told him that they had taken care of the dog problem for the tourist companies. They had killed eight dogs the day before. My friend and all of the other workers were furious; they had not wanted this to happen.
I called the volunteer in Mano Juan back to confirm her worries; Mandy was dead.

The order to kill the dogs had come through a community member who had just become the local governmental official. However, there is a law against killing dogs in such a way so Collares Rojos and the tourist companies that go to Mano Juan were very upset and the whole town of Bayahibe was talking about the incident for several days.

Now the community members of Mano Juan understand what they did was wrong but the incident still has a lasting effect. One of the dogs they killed had eight puppies. Four of the puppies have died, one the volunteer at Mano Juan adopted, and three are awaiting adoption at Collares Rojos.

Since this incident, I started volunteering at the Collares Rojos’ new pound where they have abused and abandoned puppies and dogs awaiting adoption. There are always going to be bad stories like this but they don’t have to end there because there will also always be individuals that strive to make a difference. If anyone would still like to donate to one of my projects, please donate to this one! The foundation is always looking for money for dog-food and medicine. You can donate at collaresrojos.org; be sure to say that you know me!

Collares Rojos' pound:




Puppies at pound:


***When I was on vacation in June, Rosalinda got out of the yard and was hit by a car. A friend of Yanela’s saw Rosa and called Yanela. When Yanela recognized that it was my dog, she took her straight to the vet in La Romana. Rosalinda had a broken rib, bruised jaw, and a dislocated shoulder. Now she will always have a limp, but she is alive. A special thank you to Yanela and Santiago for taking such good care of her!

Summer Vacation

At the beginning of July, I went on vacation to Boston and New York City, and then I spent a week home in Texas. I left Santo Domingo 3am on May 31st and arrived in Boston at 9am. Katie Apone, a friend from my Peace Corps group who wasn’t crazy enough to extend had returned home there and so I went for a couple of days to visit her.

It was quite strange being with another Peace Corps volunteer in the states. Especially when we went to WalMart and she drove. What? You mean that we don’t have to wait for the public guagua (bus) and drive through crazy, noisy traffic for a half an hour longer than it should be to get to the supermercado and then take all our bags back on the crowded, hot guagua back to site? Weird!

We had a great time…we walked all over Boston, I learned the train system (which helped out a lot in NYC), we had a picnic in the park, took a tour around Harvard University, and went to a Boston Improv show.

Next, I took a bus through Connecticut to NYC to meet with my sister, Liz, for five days. We got to see all of the touristy sites including…





Central Park which was beautiful and so weird because it’s a HUGE park stuck in one of biggest cities.



Times Square





The Statue of Liberty


The Empire State Building (We did not go up to the top because neither of us wanted to pay $25 to ride an elevator but it was pretty from the outside.)


Phantom of the Opera on Broadway at the Majestic Theatre.

So much for a mud hut in Africa

On Monday Charles Beeker, the professor I'm working with, told me that a TV show wanted to interview him, me, and a couple of other people about the work that we have been doing. I honestly thought he was joking until the next day!

It didn't really hit me until Wednesday morning when we left at 4am from Bayahibe to the capital. I was in the back seat typing a letter to the Ministry of Environment, whom we had a meeting with later that day. We pulled up to the station, got our make up done, and walked on to the set.

Of course, I was really nervous. Then I found out that the show would be live, so I got a little more nervous. Then I found out that it would not only be playing here in the DR, but also in parts of the US and in Europe, so then I was super nervous!!!! Oh yeah, and I forgot to mention that it was all in Spanish.

In the end, I think I did really well. I answered about six questions. They are going to send us copies of the tape.

On another note, go to iu.edu to see an article about what we are doing. It is currently the "Spotlight" article. (Yes that is me as the "scientific diver".) When that gets taken down, you can go to...
http://newsinfo.iu.edu/news/page/normal/18401.html.


When I joined the Peace Corps, I never expected to be doing things like this. I feel really blessed to be a part of this project.

Living Museums

I will be extending to Bayahibe to work on the Living Museums project, which was created by Indiana University and USAID. It will extend for three to six months but not sure exactly the time length.
They need someone to run checks on three Living Museums project sites: Guadalupe, Morales, and Captain Kidd. At each site they want to check the following things every two to three months.
1. The three sites are ship wrecks with items such as cannons, anchors, etc. some of the items they found there and some of the items they placed. They need to check if the items are still there and if there is any damage to the items.
2. Some of the items have biology or soft coral growing on them. For example, one cannon at the William Kidd wreck has two sea fans at the end of it. They need to check this biology, if it is still there or if there is new biology and the health of the biology.
3. At the William Kidd wreck there are two types of endangered coral, Staghorn and Elkhorn. They need to make sure that the coral is still there and is healthy. Also, if there are any pieces of live coral that we can save, we received training in this procedure. With two zip ties, we put broken off pieces of Elkhorn coral to an Elkhorn coral base. If done correctly the two will grow together and become one coral and continue to live.
4. Also, we would check on any other damage at the site. For example, any anchor damage or damage to the buoys, and any signs of overfishing.

The thing that I am most excited about is saving the endangered coral. Also, they would like me to work on community outreach to get the locals involved. However, we are still making plans and arrangements about what I will specifically be doing.
Last month we did training for checking and maintaining the sites. Also, how to zip tie the coral together…