UC Davis Blum Center for Developing Economies

Will I leave the country and this system not be complete? As I stated before, I had the great realization that things would not be done at my time, that I could l keep trying to fight the system, but eventually things would be done at Dominican time, and that meant slowly. So, I just say that it was with much effort and commitment from everyone that the system was finished before I left!!!! It was such a feeling of relief and amazement. Thanks to the collaboration from everyone that went, and from Nadya all the way skyping from California we turned the pump on and the sprinklers looked majestically! I have to skip over the part where it took 7 men, and 6 hours to get the pump to prime, and having to get into the river to adjust the check valve and filter and hose, and then having to bring buckets of water from the river to the pump….because I would need six pages to describe the madness. But within the madness there was glory, and all the step backs and challenges made seeing that w...

          Viviana and I planned this project for months, but as often happens with international development projects, nothing went according to plan! After rearranging our schedule a couple times so the trip would take place at the perfect point in my pregnancy (month 5!), Zika virus swept through the Caribbean and Dominican Republic was placed on the CDC no-fly list. The recommendation across the board at the time was that I shouldn’t travel to any country with Zika, and so Viviana had to take the lead on the field design part of the project with me assisting from back in California.                         Besides being disappointed to miss the trip (and the chance to meet with other UC Davis International Agricultural Development friends working in Haiti!), this situation introduced a lot of challenges. My job as the irrigation engineer was to make sure all th...