This educational telenovela I’ve mentioned in passing has gotten big. We’ve recently been awarded 15,000 dollars to cover filming costs. Over the course of a year the project has reminded me of my neighbor escorting his cow from field to field. Sometimes it’s a patient determination, other times a more desperate pleading, often they walk side by side, and occasionally the cow strides willingly and with direction to the greener grass.

Prompted by Jean, I’ve found it valuable to look back on how far we’ve come. It’s made me think about the stuff that initiative is made of and how that elusive cultural ingredient is so essential to community.

Initiative can be powerful, scary, and satisfying. A big gutsy push. The motive, direction, and outcome could be anything from: “I’m getting out of bed and taking the dog on a walk” TO “I’m professing my love” TO “I’m going to be an advocate for peace in the Middle East”.

Aside from the novela, initiative is something I think about a lot as I feel the pressure of the risks I dare to take coupled by what I see as a dominican acceptance of status quo.

With 8 months left in these Caribbean foothills, I’ve been trying to shift responsibility, pull initiative out of my counterparts. And the process frustrates me. I give what I think is good communication and proper tools to create new things or just simply take a step forward. The plans sound something like: “When you’ve done this, begin this/call me/...” Then time passes and my compañeros ask me where I’ve been and why I haven’t finished the project. They’ve tossed aside our plan, their part, and refuse to move forward without constant nagging. It’s a skill only the most overprotective of mothers could properly execute. The process makes me crave and disdain that blessed goal of sustainability.

It makes me feel inadequate. But here’s the new realization: that’s nothing new. In the Peace Corps, everyday something says, “I dare you”. And I can either shrink away in fear or give everything I’ve got to a certain failure or certain greatness. It’s thrilling and exhausting. And I’m tempted to think that my culture has prepared me for it. That quilted in our culture is the earnest belief and confidence in building “better”. In the US we call senators, start non-profits, write books, march down streets in determined search for better. Could be better medical care for transgender people, better schooling for refugees, or more funding for that cure. We’re all in that search for whole community or as King would say “beloved community”.

I too have pieces of that vision and the courage to either fail or succeed. If there is one thing I could give to Imbert it would be that courage. And I honestly believe it takes more here. There are no helpful institutions or extra money in the bank. The gamble is big, the odds suck. But initiative thankfully doesn’t come from reason. It’s time for this pueblo to actively demand more from the patria. And what’s stopping them is not ignorance or laziness. It’s fear. Why are we so crippled by it? And is that fear worth risking greatness, risking “better”?