Day Seven was intended to be spent in the mountains, but as a result of our premature descent, there was little else to do than prepare for the next day. On Day Eight, we were to embark to cities and villages all across the Dominican Republic to spend a week and a half with Dominican families and communities. After a group exercise we all went off to do our own thing, write in journals, sit around in the sun, pack, play cards, etc.
Five of us, however, drove to the Canadian Embassy in Santo Domingo, so we could cast our vote for the upcoming PEI Provincial Election. Now anyone who knows what a geek I am would somewhat understand how pumped I would be to go to a Canadian Embassy in a foreign country. I didn't even care that it was a small-ish building, an English/French bilingual service sign, a Canadian flag, a recruiting poster for the RCMP; I was home.
To back up a little, our ride into the city was quite different from any other previous. Usually as a group we would travel in a 15-passenger, air-conditioned van, but today, we had a 4-passenger truck, meaning 2 of us travelled in the back of the truck. The heat and sun are the first obvious differences to riding outside a vehicle in the Dominican, as are the whistles, waves, and above all, the lingering stares from the thousands of people we passed. After one week in this foreign country some of the different or once shocking things were already fading into the background: the sight and smell of pollution, the scores of street vendors at every intersection, horses in the middle of bumper to bumper traffic, live chickens on the backs of mopeds and motor cycles. But I continued to be constantly reminded of cultural cleavages that existed both between social classes, and between this country and our own. As we headed back to the centre we stopped at a gas station; arguably THE symbol of Western power, and while walking through the air-conditioned, security-protected store therein, I could see in the distance the shacks and sheds of a poor barrio crowded on the side of a mountain. No better analogy could illustrate the the contrast between the first and third world than in this physical proximity between wealth and poverty.
That night we were asked to think about the trip thus far and to write down a few things that we were touched by thus far. I'm not usually big on soul-searching exercises, but as I sat down to think up some acceptable answers, it was evident that we had seen a lot more positive initiatives than I had anticipated. Micro-credits helping out the empoverished in poor barrios, youth teaching their peers about HIV/AIDS, the building of schools in the batays, community re-investment by the coffee assocation, the youth street home getting kids off the street and on their feet. As we were given our marching orders for the next and told about where we would be living for the next ten days in various locations around the country, it honestly seemed like we had been there for far longer and learned far more than I had expected to over the course of the entire experience. I don't remember what time I got to bed that night, but I know that by the end of the next day, culture shock had me in bed by 9:00pm. Stay tuned.
Saturday, June 16, 2007
Thursday, June 14, 2007
The Dominican Republic Faith and Justice Experience 2007: Day Six
While most of our days had begun by traveling into Santo Domingo and surrounding areas, today we started our morning by heading into the mountains to the North-West of San Cristobal, to the community of Los Cacaos. There we were to meet with people from La Esperanza, a coffee-growers' association, and be billeted with a local family for the night, before trekking up a mountain trail near the village. In two days we would be placed with families in different communities across the country for a week and a half, and this one-night billet would be a chance for all of us to get our feet wet in Dominican culture.
The journey up the mountain was a couple hours long, up a windy road around steep curves, often feet from the edge of plunging cliffs. As we moved further into the mountains, the vista over-looking the surrounding valleys became more and more magnificent, with greenery flowing out into the distance, back dropped by the staggered peaks of mountains on the horizon.
I was astounded by the infrastructure in this incredibly remote area of the country, the roads were well-maintained, and an intricate system of rock and mortar ditches winded along with the road, while stone retaining walls held back erosion. Periodically we would pass groups of men working on the ditches and walls, collecting stones, building new sections, and repairing damage. It was evident that this was an on-going project, and that there was a constant and concerted effort to maintain this path into the wilderness in the best possible condition. And for good reason too. In 1979, Hurricane David, a Category 5 hurricane, ripped through the Dominican Republic, wreaking havoc and killing close to 2000 people. In this region, where coffee is the main industry, communities were devastated. This road was rendered impassable by the torrential rains that accompanied the storm and by thousands of felled trees, cutting off Los Cacaos from the world. A group of citizens from the community were forced to make the same trek we were now, on foot, to reach civilization and to get aid air-lifted into the village. Re-building efforts took an understandably long time, but for the coffee industry, recovery would take years.
This is where La Esperenza comes in. A group of young people gathered together shortly after the disaster, trying to pool together the resources to develop a coffee collective in the Los Cacaos area. Through the years, while facing the challenges of building a sustainable business model and sporadic lulls in the coffee market, the association developed their product, accreditation, and processing facility to the point that today there are nearly 900 members of the collective.
Aside from fostering an evolving operation, the association has begun to put resources towards supporting the community. Scholarships established by the group allow for capable students to attain post-secondary education, whether in the Dominican Republic or abroad in Cuba or Costa Rica. The hope is that these students will someday return to carry on growth and help re-vitalize their small and remote community. As the collective recognizes how taxing the cultivation of coffee and other agricultural processes can have on the environment, they are working to diversify the industrial base of the economy, and putting research and resources towards ecological preservation and tourism. From a progressive business perspective, their goals are to promote the Fair Trade brand, and to begin exporting more of their product.
As we ended our meeting with the management group of La Esperanza, I was stunned. Coming from PEI, where we are constantly wringing our hands worrying about the sustainability of communities and watching youth fly off out West or to the States to find new jobs; it was incredible to see a small community in the middle of the mountains of a developing country creating solutions to their own problems. This wasn't a rich business venture propped up by government; it was a small community effort, for the people and by the people, quite literally built out of the ashes, from the ground up. I lauded the group who presented to us about their company, some of them who had been there from the beginning, telling them that their passion and awareness was encouraging, and that I wished the people back home were as proactive and passionate about their communities as the people of Los Cacaos obviously were. The La Esperenza experience in Los Cacaos is a prime example of a small community creating and filling a need. It was certainly light years away from Polar Foods anyway.
After some more rice and beans, we toured the coffee processing facility where the beans were dried, roasted, separated, and packaged. In a room just off the main road through the village, women were seated at tables sorting through the beans, separating the 'good', basically beans with no blemishes or discolouration, from the 'bad' beans (those possessing the aforementioned defects). Seemed simple enough: sit around and sort beans. Wicked. So we sat down to try it out, and other than turning to the woman next to me to confirm if a bean was good or bad every 26 seconds, it was about as exciting as my days packing diagnostic kits at Diagnostic Chemicals. We sat there for about half an hour, and between the 8 of us, logged about a quarter crate, thus about a quarter box for a collective 2 hours. The women, we were told, could fill a crate in about the same amount of time. Of course instead of wandering in and messing around with a pile of beans for half an hour, most of them work 8 or 9 hour days, some of them doing the same thing everyday for the better part of the past few decades.
Our trip into the mountains was cut short at that point. The son of one of the Administrators had been in a motorcycle accident early that afternoon, and as we were sorting beans, the news arrived that he had since died from his injuries. The townspeople were obviously upset as we thanked our hosts and offered our condolences and piled in the van for a long and silent trip back down to San Cristobal. It was an abrupt and disappointing end to our excursion into the mountains, but it was clear that this community, so accustomed to coming together to face adversity, would be totally focused on embracing the family and friends of the young man, and they sure as hell didn't need a bunch of Canadian on-lookers wandering and gawking around.
Instead, some cheer-up ice cream and a trip to the call centre to call home marked the end of our day.
The journey up the mountain was a couple hours long, up a windy road around steep curves, often feet from the edge of plunging cliffs. As we moved further into the mountains, the vista over-looking the surrounding valleys became more and more magnificent, with greenery flowing out into the distance, back dropped by the staggered peaks of mountains on the horizon.
I was astounded by the infrastructure in this incredibly remote area of the country, the roads were well-maintained, and an intricate system of rock and mortar ditches winded along with the road, while stone retaining walls held back erosion. Periodically we would pass groups of men working on the ditches and walls, collecting stones, building new sections, and repairing damage. It was evident that this was an on-going project, and that there was a constant and concerted effort to maintain this path into the wilderness in the best possible condition. And for good reason too. In 1979, Hurricane David, a Category 5 hurricane, ripped through the Dominican Republic, wreaking havoc and killing close to 2000 people. In this region, where coffee is the main industry, communities were devastated. This road was rendered impassable by the torrential rains that accompanied the storm and by thousands of felled trees, cutting off Los Cacaos from the world. A group of citizens from the community were forced to make the same trek we were now, on foot, to reach civilization and to get aid air-lifted into the village. Re-building efforts took an understandably long time, but for the coffee industry, recovery would take years.
This is where La Esperenza comes in. A group of young people gathered together shortly after the disaster, trying to pool together the resources to develop a coffee collective in the Los Cacaos area. Through the years, while facing the challenges of building a sustainable business model and sporadic lulls in the coffee market, the association developed their product, accreditation, and processing facility to the point that today there are nearly 900 members of the collective.
Aside from fostering an evolving operation, the association has begun to put resources towards supporting the community. Scholarships established by the group allow for capable students to attain post-secondary education, whether in the Dominican Republic or abroad in Cuba or Costa Rica. The hope is that these students will someday return to carry on growth and help re-vitalize their small and remote community. As the collective recognizes how taxing the cultivation of coffee and other agricultural processes can have on the environment, they are working to diversify the industrial base of the economy, and putting research and resources towards ecological preservation and tourism. From a progressive business perspective, their goals are to promote the Fair Trade brand, and to begin exporting more of their product.
As we ended our meeting with the management group of La Esperanza, I was stunned. Coming from PEI, where we are constantly wringing our hands worrying about the sustainability of communities and watching youth fly off out West or to the States to find new jobs; it was incredible to see a small community in the middle of the mountains of a developing country creating solutions to their own problems. This wasn't a rich business venture propped up by government; it was a small community effort, for the people and by the people, quite literally built out of the ashes, from the ground up. I lauded the group who presented to us about their company, some of them who had been there from the beginning, telling them that their passion and awareness was encouraging, and that I wished the people back home were as proactive and passionate about their communities as the people of Los Cacaos obviously were. The La Esperenza experience in Los Cacaos is a prime example of a small community creating and filling a need. It was certainly light years away from Polar Foods anyway.
After some more rice and beans, we toured the coffee processing facility where the beans were dried, roasted, separated, and packaged. In a room just off the main road through the village, women were seated at tables sorting through the beans, separating the 'good', basically beans with no blemishes or discolouration, from the 'bad' beans (those possessing the aforementioned defects). Seemed simple enough: sit around and sort beans. Wicked. So we sat down to try it out, and other than turning to the woman next to me to confirm if a bean was good or bad every 26 seconds, it was about as exciting as my days packing diagnostic kits at Diagnostic Chemicals. We sat there for about half an hour, and between the 8 of us, logged about a quarter crate, thus about a quarter box for a collective 2 hours. The women, we were told, could fill a crate in about the same amount of time. Of course instead of wandering in and messing around with a pile of beans for half an hour, most of them work 8 or 9 hour days, some of them doing the same thing everyday for the better part of the past few decades.
Our trip into the mountains was cut short at that point. The son of one of the Administrators had been in a motorcycle accident early that afternoon, and as we were sorting beans, the news arrived that he had since died from his injuries. The townspeople were obviously upset as we thanked our hosts and offered our condolences and piled in the van for a long and silent trip back down to San Cristobal. It was an abrupt and disappointing end to our excursion into the mountains, but it was clear that this community, so accustomed to coming together to face adversity, would be totally focused on embracing the family and friends of the young man, and they sure as hell didn't need a bunch of Canadian on-lookers wandering and gawking around.
Instead, some cheer-up ice cream and a trip to the call centre to call home marked the end of our day.
Patty and Eugene Do UPEI: Episode 5
After nearly six weeks of no Patty & Eugene to entertain you, the newest installment of everyone's favorite campus duo is back. Episode 5: Girls Just Wanna Have Fun comes in at a whopping 15 minutes of pure Patty and Eugene entertainment.
Tuesday, June 12, 2007
The Dominican Republic Faith and Justice Experience 2007: Day Five
The wake-up call came 5:30am on Day Five, sparing me the joy of being awoken by the melody of the barking and crowing from the neighborhood animals. After a carb-orific breakfast of bread and cream of wheat (which I loved, but several others definitely did not), we were off to Santo Domingo for Sunday morning Mass. While one would expect a two and a half hour church service (with a pause of about 45 minutes to allow for the Baptism of about 70 parishioners) in a foreign language to be incredibly boring, the phenomenal music ministry made it seem like a concert, party, and celebration all at once. (And it certainly wasn't the longest Mass I've sat through, at World Youth Day in Germany in 2005 Mass was in German, and then had to be translated into English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian.)
One may also expect that in a country where poverty is rampant, that our group would be the best dressed of the bunch in the church. Not so. All of the parishioners were dressed to the nines, hair done, dresses, shirt and ties, sometimes full suits (which seemed a bit much on a hot Sunday morning). Meanwhile the tired looking 13 Canadians were sweating profusely, hair looking about as good as you'd expect after several days without proper care, and were sporting whatever wrinkled garb remained clean from our luggage. My bright green John Deere t-shirt, grey manpris, and hiking boots didn't quite cut it.
Afterwards, we gathered with the youth from the parish, ate some bananas (they're big on bananas down there), and ran through some random Ice Breakers and then showed us around their community. Seeing as this was our first opportunity to interact with some Dominicans that were our age, we were pretty much instant BFFs. As we made our way around the community, you would've seen us all laughing at each other and ourselves as we attempted to break down the language barriers. We hugged and waved bye as if we had known them for years instead of the better part of an hour, and jumped in the van, chewing on our new addiction; sugar cane.
On the way to the Casa de la Juventud (Youth Program for the Arch-Diocese), and in between us laughing our asses off while relating stories of home and doing impressions from Anchorman and MadTV, Cathy told us about the subway that they were building through the centre of Santo Domingo. As we drove, gaping holes were visible right through the centre of Av. Maximo Gomez, a major north-south thoroughfare of the city. Cathy related how many different contractors had been awarded tenders to build the metro, each allotted a couple hundred meters of the project. Without a whole lot of imagination, one could easily imagine the inconsistencies and costs that this could present to the project. Further to this, no compensation was afforded to the businesses along this main artery of the city to offset the consequences of the dwindling traffic as a result of the construction. Bankruptcies and closures were now commonplace along Maximo Gomez, adding to the mounting opposition to the costly project. In a country where we had seen crippling poverty and social services in dire need of attention, it seems the government may be in need of a priority shift. That, of course, will at least in part be up to the electorate in next year's Presidential election, for which there are already billboards erected everywhere across the country.
After a tour of the Casa de la Juventud, which is the centre for administration and planning of Youth programming, we moved on to Yo También, a home for street kids. This home was run by volunteers of the Arch-Diocese Youth Ministry, and provides shelter for boys of all ages, as well as an opportunity for education and training before they adulthood. Coming from a family that used to take care of Foster children, I could only imagine the backgrounds each child came from as we went around the circle and introduced ourselves. Several were scarcely 10, but the age many of them wore in their attitude and posture was much more advanced than that. After introductions and explanations about how the home operated, we ate together in the dining room. Having seen the basketball court outside, Kurtiss scarfed down his rice and beans and hurriedly pumped up the basketball that he had brought for the kids there. The deadened eyes that had been bored throughout the introductions suddenly came alive with excitement as we took to the court in the blistering sun for some 4-on-4. Now being 6'2", I am doomed for the rest of my life to be asked whether I play basketball, and when I answer no, "Well why not? You're so tall!" Well, I don't play basketball because I suck. Yeah, I ran around the court and tried to make a couple plays, but after a few laughing fits at my expense, I retired to the shade. Kurt, however, being the borderline pro that he is, played until he had schooled every opponent and his clothes were soaked with sweat.
We gathered once again as a group to hear more about how the home operated and what type of schedules the boys abided by. The most effective feature, in my mind, was the fact that the directors of the home themselves were in their twenties and thirties, and therefore young enough to relate to the youth and to be considered somewhat "cool" in their eyes. Despite the tough facade and the joking back and forth, one director told us that their primary modus operandi was love. A boy named Johnny pulled out a guitar and played a few of his own songs. He was unreal, and each time a song ended, the room erupted into raucous applause. That being the Dominican contribution to the gathering, Kelsey stepped it up with tap-dancing, of all things. While I rolled my eyes, half of the young boys stared intently at her tap shoes, wondering where the noise was coming from, while the other half stared at Kelsey's hair, wondering if it was going to jump off her head and attack someone (This is kind of an inside joke, but you'd probably understand if you have ever seen her hair. For those of you who have not, imagine a lion's mane. Then multiply it by 12 and tangle it all together in a disorganized heap. That would be Kelsey's hair. On a good day.)
After we all got up and made an attempt at step dance, we had the opportunity to talk with the kids and take some time to get to know them. Kurtiss took to the basketball court again, Kady and Amy played guitar and sang with Johnny, and a few boys dragged Kelsey over to teach her how to 'really' dance. Everyone from the group has their own story of that afternoon, but we all really enjoyed the chance to actually spend some time with them, rather than just sitting around in a circle and boring them to death.
When we left, some people exchanged gifts, a young boy named Samuel taught me a new handshake, and Kurt posed for a pic with the guys on the basketball court. And as the van pulled away amid cheers of "Gringo!" and "Marry me!" (I think that was directed at the girls), we were all smiling ridiculously wide, goofy smiles.
We spent the balance of the afternoon along the Malecon Libre (basically a boardwalk or promenade) in Santo Domingo. Being a Sunday, families were out and a mini relay of some sort was being run along the Autopista 30 de Mayo. The City has a habit of naming streets after important dates and after prominent foreigners. In fact, the 30 de Mayo used to be a part of George Washington Avenue (There are also streets named for John F. Kennedy, Winston Churchill, Jonas Salk, etc.), but was renamed after the brutal dictator Rafael Leónidas Trujillo was gunned down along that stretch of highway in 1961.
Now a haven for tourists and dotted with hotels, bars, and shops, we were given a couple hours to see the sights and to relax. Kurtiss, Debbie, and I found the nearest bar, a few Presidente beers, and spent the time chatting, laughing, and watching the world pass us by. The perfect ending to what had been, by far, our best day to date in the Dominican Republic.
One may also expect that in a country where poverty is rampant, that our group would be the best dressed of the bunch in the church. Not so. All of the parishioners were dressed to the nines, hair done, dresses, shirt and ties, sometimes full suits (which seemed a bit much on a hot Sunday morning). Meanwhile the tired looking 13 Canadians were sweating profusely, hair looking about as good as you'd expect after several days without proper care, and were sporting whatever wrinkled garb remained clean from our luggage. My bright green John Deere t-shirt, grey manpris, and hiking boots didn't quite cut it.
Afterwards, we gathered with the youth from the parish, ate some bananas (they're big on bananas down there), and ran through some random Ice Breakers and then showed us around their community. Seeing as this was our first opportunity to interact with some Dominicans that were our age, we were pretty much instant BFFs. As we made our way around the community, you would've seen us all laughing at each other and ourselves as we attempted to break down the language barriers. We hugged and waved bye as if we had known them for years instead of the better part of an hour, and jumped in the van, chewing on our new addiction; sugar cane.
On the way to the Casa de la Juventud (Youth Program for the Arch-Diocese), and in between us laughing our asses off while relating stories of home and doing impressions from Anchorman and MadTV, Cathy told us about the subway that they were building through the centre of Santo Domingo. As we drove, gaping holes were visible right through the centre of Av. Maximo Gomez, a major north-south thoroughfare of the city. Cathy related how many different contractors had been awarded tenders to build the metro, each allotted a couple hundred meters of the project. Without a whole lot of imagination, one could easily imagine the inconsistencies and costs that this could present to the project. Further to this, no compensation was afforded to the businesses along this main artery of the city to offset the consequences of the dwindling traffic as a result of the construction. Bankruptcies and closures were now commonplace along Maximo Gomez, adding to the mounting opposition to the costly project. In a country where we had seen crippling poverty and social services in dire need of attention, it seems the government may be in need of a priority shift. That, of course, will at least in part be up to the electorate in next year's Presidential election, for which there are already billboards erected everywhere across the country.
After a tour of the Casa de la Juventud, which is the centre for administration and planning of Youth programming, we moved on to Yo También, a home for street kids. This home was run by volunteers of the Arch-Diocese Youth Ministry, and provides shelter for boys of all ages, as well as an opportunity for education and training before they adulthood. Coming from a family that used to take care of Foster children, I could only imagine the backgrounds each child came from as we went around the circle and introduced ourselves. Several were scarcely 10, but the age many of them wore in their attitude and posture was much more advanced than that. After introductions and explanations about how the home operated, we ate together in the dining room. Having seen the basketball court outside, Kurtiss scarfed down his rice and beans and hurriedly pumped up the basketball that he had brought for the kids there. The deadened eyes that had been bored throughout the introductions suddenly came alive with excitement as we took to the court in the blistering sun for some 4-on-4. Now being 6'2", I am doomed for the rest of my life to be asked whether I play basketball, and when I answer no, "Well why not? You're so tall!" Well, I don't play basketball because I suck. Yeah, I ran around the court and tried to make a couple plays, but after a few laughing fits at my expense, I retired to the shade. Kurt, however, being the borderline pro that he is, played until he had schooled every opponent and his clothes were soaked with sweat.
We gathered once again as a group to hear more about how the home operated and what type of schedules the boys abided by. The most effective feature, in my mind, was the fact that the directors of the home themselves were in their twenties and thirties, and therefore young enough to relate to the youth and to be considered somewhat "cool" in their eyes. Despite the tough facade and the joking back and forth, one director told us that their primary modus operandi was love. A boy named Johnny pulled out a guitar and played a few of his own songs. He was unreal, and each time a song ended, the room erupted into raucous applause. That being the Dominican contribution to the gathering, Kelsey stepped it up with tap-dancing, of all things. While I rolled my eyes, half of the young boys stared intently at her tap shoes, wondering where the noise was coming from, while the other half stared at Kelsey's hair, wondering if it was going to jump off her head and attack someone (This is kind of an inside joke, but you'd probably understand if you have ever seen her hair. For those of you who have not, imagine a lion's mane. Then multiply it by 12 and tangle it all together in a disorganized heap. That would be Kelsey's hair. On a good day.)
After we all got up and made an attempt at step dance, we had the opportunity to talk with the kids and take some time to get to know them. Kurtiss took to the basketball court again, Kady and Amy played guitar and sang with Johnny, and a few boys dragged Kelsey over to teach her how to 'really' dance. Everyone from the group has their own story of that afternoon, but we all really enjoyed the chance to actually spend some time with them, rather than just sitting around in a circle and boring them to death.
When we left, some people exchanged gifts, a young boy named Samuel taught me a new handshake, and Kurt posed for a pic with the guys on the basketball court. And as the van pulled away amid cheers of "Gringo!" and "Marry me!" (I think that was directed at the girls), we were all smiling ridiculously wide, goofy smiles.
We spent the balance of the afternoon along the Malecon Libre (basically a boardwalk or promenade) in Santo Domingo. Being a Sunday, families were out and a mini relay of some sort was being run along the Autopista 30 de Mayo. The City has a habit of naming streets after important dates and after prominent foreigners. In fact, the 30 de Mayo used to be a part of George Washington Avenue (There are also streets named for John F. Kennedy, Winston Churchill, Jonas Salk, etc.), but was renamed after the brutal dictator Rafael Leónidas Trujillo was gunned down along that stretch of highway in 1961.
Now a haven for tourists and dotted with hotels, bars, and shops, we were given a couple hours to see the sights and to relax. Kurtiss, Debbie, and I found the nearest bar, a few Presidente beers, and spent the time chatting, laughing, and watching the world pass us by. The perfect ending to what had been, by far, our best day to date in the Dominican Republic.
Monday, June 11, 2007
The Dominican Republic Faith and Justice Experience 2007: Day Four
I wasn't exactly sure what to expect in visiting a Dominican Hospital, my limited visual indications of what to expect being from movies or TV shows. I was pleasantly surprised to find the facility that we toured on Day Four, The Robert Reid Cabral Children's Hospital; to be quite modern, and while Debbie (she's a nurse) had a few questions and concerns, for the most part, it was clean, well maintained and well staffed. As it turns out, the First Lady of the Dominican Republic had thus taken a special interest in that particular hospital after a tour of her own, and money had been earmarked to ensure that it was re-fitted and renovated properly to respond to current needs and specifications.
We toured several areas of the hospital, seeing children of all ages in all stages of treatment, from newborns to adolescent youth and everything in between. As one would expect, there were several kids bawling their eyes out as they were injected with needles or intravenous, others quietly slept in hospital beds or played busily with toys while hooked up to dialysis machines or respirators. Every child, whether crying, snoozing, babbling, etc. was accompanied by their parent, usually their mother, and each of them wore on their face and in their eyes the concern on their mind and the hope in their heart.
It was honestly difficult for me to walk through each room and see the children sitting with their parents, each struck by some disease or affliction, without averting my eyes and hurrying my pace out of the room. After four days in the DR, I was struggling with the feeling that these people saw me as nothing more than a tourist, someone coming to simply consume their poverty and pain, only to fly off back to my home of comfort after a brief stay. There is no comfort in admitting your own child into a hospital, though these families were lucky to be able to do so. And as heart wrenching as it was to watch children in pain while their parents looked on, there was little consolation in knowing that in leaving the hospital many of these children would return to the impoverished streets and communities that we had already seen. My glances into their eyes, as a result, remained brief and sheepish.
The highlight of our visit to this hospital for me was in touring the feeding area where newborns were being fed by their mothers. A new mother was bursting with pride as we entered, showing off her three-day old daughter, already sporting a full head of jet-black hair. When she told me how old her child was, I exclaimed to the rest of the group that she was precisely the same age as Madelyn Elizabeth, Jason and Steph's daughter, who had been born with hours of our departure from Canada.
As we moved back toward the entrance, we were shown the newly renovated kitchen that rivaled any in size or caliber that I have ever seen in Canada. It was a final example of progress being made, but also that great change could be initiated simply through a single act of political will. At the same time, while the children at this hospital received excellent care and benefited from the use of state-of-the-art equipment, if work was just beginning at this central hospital, it also suggested that there is more work to be done. This was in the centre of Santo Domingo, and while this hospital served a large area, this is a country of nearly 9 million residents, with many spread out in rural and remote areas.
The importance of this one hospital is reflected in the fact that while one entire floor is currently under renovation, the remainder of the hospital remains in operation, as there is simply no other facility capable of taking on its day-to-day operations. The progress being made was encouraging, but there were many indications that we would see in our own communities, that many Dominicans aren't able to seek proper medical attention, allowing for the worsening of what would otherwise be easily curable afflictions.
After briefly visiting a public session on HIV and AIDS put on by a NGO that works to support Dominican-Haitian women, we headed back towards the Santo Domingo Airport, near Boca Chica, where, off the main highway, we drove slowly down a dusty and bumpy trail between fields of sugar cane for what seemed like forever until we arrived at a collection of houses, clustered in what was, quite literally, the middle of nowhere. This community was built around the sugar cane fields, and the poverty we witnessed in this 'batey' was beyond anything I have ever witnessed or would care to witness again. As we walked among decrepit houses, a curious group of barefoot children followed our group from building to building, gnawing hungrily on mangoes from the trees above. Our host pointed out the single-rooms in which entire families lived, the pair of out-houses that serviced the entire community, the small pipe that served as running water for everyone who lived there. An elderly man on a wheel chair peered at us suspiciously before struggling to get back in his shack, out of sight. Another man in his fifties returning from the fields stopped and talked to us for awhile, telling us that someone had been burning the fields and destroying the crops. Apparently not fazed by the development, he smiled a toothless grin and nonchalantly swung the machete in his hand as he walked to his hut.
The workers in the sugar cane fields do not own their own land, and so, as is wont to happen in any like situation, they are at the mercy of the companies that employ them and to the markets that determine prices of the cane they produce. The result is extreme poverty, leaving the people to work on developing gardens and maintaining livestock, although at some points in the year, there is nothing to eat but the sugar cane from the fields or the mangoes that fall from the trees when they are in season. Obviously struck by the extreme conditions we were witnessing, a member of our group was prompted to ask our host: "What brings you joy?" The young woman named Natasha who had been escorting us from house to house and to the community's place of worship where we now sat, smiled her beautiful smile and told us that watching her children grow and having hope for their future brought her joy. I have never been as humbled as I was in that one moment.
Here too however, amidst the poorest of poor, there are signs of progress. A school that boasts attendance of over a hundred children of all ages stands at the edge of the community. The walls inside are lined with what you would see in any classroom, the alphabet, a map, a flag, and the names of each student. The teacher told us briefly about the instruction of the youth and of how they could move on to High School at communities further down the road. As Natasha had expressed, it seemed there was indeed hope for her five children and the others in the community to begin the process of ending the cycle of poverty in their community.
As we headed back to our van, the group gathered for a picture with our host and with the children of the community. I snapped the picture and then showed the image on the digital display to the children. As they realized what I was showing them, they were absolutely thrilled, flocking around me, nearly knocking me off my feet and tearing the camera from my hands as they pointed to themselves in the picture. It was almost a relief to be able to make them giggle and just be children in a place that seemed so forbidding. Children lose their innocence young here, and are often sent to the field before they ever get the chance to finish school. The path out of poverty for these communities will be a long-term battle, and the burdens and obstacles facing these children seem huge, almost insurmountable, but in that moment, they were just children.
We toured several areas of the hospital, seeing children of all ages in all stages of treatment, from newborns to adolescent youth and everything in between. As one would expect, there were several kids bawling their eyes out as they were injected with needles or intravenous, others quietly slept in hospital beds or played busily with toys while hooked up to dialysis machines or respirators. Every child, whether crying, snoozing, babbling, etc. was accompanied by their parent, usually their mother, and each of them wore on their face and in their eyes the concern on their mind and the hope in their heart.
It was honestly difficult for me to walk through each room and see the children sitting with their parents, each struck by some disease or affliction, without averting my eyes and hurrying my pace out of the room. After four days in the DR, I was struggling with the feeling that these people saw me as nothing more than a tourist, someone coming to simply consume their poverty and pain, only to fly off back to my home of comfort after a brief stay. There is no comfort in admitting your own child into a hospital, though these families were lucky to be able to do so. And as heart wrenching as it was to watch children in pain while their parents looked on, there was little consolation in knowing that in leaving the hospital many of these children would return to the impoverished streets and communities that we had already seen. My glances into their eyes, as a result, remained brief and sheepish.
The highlight of our visit to this hospital for me was in touring the feeding area where newborns were being fed by their mothers. A new mother was bursting with pride as we entered, showing off her three-day old daughter, already sporting a full head of jet-black hair. When she told me how old her child was, I exclaimed to the rest of the group that she was precisely the same age as Madelyn Elizabeth, Jason and Steph's daughter, who had been born with hours of our departure from Canada.
As we moved back toward the entrance, we were shown the newly renovated kitchen that rivaled any in size or caliber that I have ever seen in Canada. It was a final example of progress being made, but also that great change could be initiated simply through a single act of political will. At the same time, while the children at this hospital received excellent care and benefited from the use of state-of-the-art equipment, if work was just beginning at this central hospital, it also suggested that there is more work to be done. This was in the centre of Santo Domingo, and while this hospital served a large area, this is a country of nearly 9 million residents, with many spread out in rural and remote areas.
The importance of this one hospital is reflected in the fact that while one entire floor is currently under renovation, the remainder of the hospital remains in operation, as there is simply no other facility capable of taking on its day-to-day operations. The progress being made was encouraging, but there were many indications that we would see in our own communities, that many Dominicans aren't able to seek proper medical attention, allowing for the worsening of what would otherwise be easily curable afflictions.
After briefly visiting a public session on HIV and AIDS put on by a NGO that works to support Dominican-Haitian women, we headed back towards the Santo Domingo Airport, near Boca Chica, where, off the main highway, we drove slowly down a dusty and bumpy trail between fields of sugar cane for what seemed like forever until we arrived at a collection of houses, clustered in what was, quite literally, the middle of nowhere. This community was built around the sugar cane fields, and the poverty we witnessed in this 'batey' was beyond anything I have ever witnessed or would care to witness again. As we walked among decrepit houses, a curious group of barefoot children followed our group from building to building, gnawing hungrily on mangoes from the trees above. Our host pointed out the single-rooms in which entire families lived, the pair of out-houses that serviced the entire community, the small pipe that served as running water for everyone who lived there. An elderly man on a wheel chair peered at us suspiciously before struggling to get back in his shack, out of sight. Another man in his fifties returning from the fields stopped and talked to us for awhile, telling us that someone had been burning the fields and destroying the crops. Apparently not fazed by the development, he smiled a toothless grin and nonchalantly swung the machete in his hand as he walked to his hut.
The workers in the sugar cane fields do not own their own land, and so, as is wont to happen in any like situation, they are at the mercy of the companies that employ them and to the markets that determine prices of the cane they produce. The result is extreme poverty, leaving the people to work on developing gardens and maintaining livestock, although at some points in the year, there is nothing to eat but the sugar cane from the fields or the mangoes that fall from the trees when they are in season. Obviously struck by the extreme conditions we were witnessing, a member of our group was prompted to ask our host: "What brings you joy?" The young woman named Natasha who had been escorting us from house to house and to the community's place of worship where we now sat, smiled her beautiful smile and told us that watching her children grow and having hope for their future brought her joy. I have never been as humbled as I was in that one moment.
Here too however, amidst the poorest of poor, there are signs of progress. A school that boasts attendance of over a hundred children of all ages stands at the edge of the community. The walls inside are lined with what you would see in any classroom, the alphabet, a map, a flag, and the names of each student. The teacher told us briefly about the instruction of the youth and of how they could move on to High School at communities further down the road. As Natasha had expressed, it seemed there was indeed hope for her five children and the others in the community to begin the process of ending the cycle of poverty in their community.
As we headed back to our van, the group gathered for a picture with our host and with the children of the community. I snapped the picture and then showed the image on the digital display to the children. As they realized what I was showing them, they were absolutely thrilled, flocking around me, nearly knocking me off my feet and tearing the camera from my hands as they pointed to themselves in the picture. It was almost a relief to be able to make them giggle and just be children in a place that seemed so forbidding. Children lose their innocence young here, and are often sent to the field before they ever get the chance to finish school. The path out of poverty for these communities will be a long-term battle, and the burdens and obstacles facing these children seem huge, almost insurmountable, but in that moment, they were just children.
The Dominican Republic Faith and Justice Experience 2007: Day Three
It seems that after three days events and routines that once seemed mundane become habitual. This rule was no different during our stay in the Dominican; crazy traffic jams, annoyingly loud roosters, stares from randoms on the street were now as normal and commonplace as red soil is to Islanders. Even the habits of the group, Kelsey's near-narcoleptic sleeping tendencies, Kurt's t-shirt/do-rag, Debbie's frequent bathroom breaks, became, while perhaps not normal, at least familiar tendencies.
After breakfast at the Centre, we headed back into Santo Domingo for the day. We began the morning at INTEC, a University within the Capital, for a discussion on Gender Issues. The talk covered areas of concern for Dominicans, most specifically within poorer communities of the country where sexual and physical abuse are rampant problems, exacerbated by high levels of HIV and AIDS. Worse, in the minds of many, this domestic abuse is considered the business of the household and of no one else. The abuse endured by many people within the country is absolutely atrocious, and stories were related to us about spouses who had their hands cut off, acid thrown in their faces, or whom were murdered, often for little or no reason. While the two hours spent on this topic were certainly enlightening to the plight facing the country in terms of domestic violence, it was difficult for me to remain focused on the issues at hand. When any type of domestic abuse comes up in discussion it often turns into a generalizing and man-bashing fiesta, which in my opinion is totally counter-productive. Violence is a societal problem and thus requires a society-wide solution. It is crucial that everyone be included in working against cultural and political beliefs that allow for it to continue. This will not be accomplished so long as narrow opinions and ideologies continue to characterize and generalize all men as the source of the problem. As soon as discussions attempt to make me feel ashamed for being a man, my interest checks out.
Following a short tour of the INTEC Gender Studies Department, we traveled to the Botanical Gardens, where lunch and a tour allowed us to re-charge and to take some time among the trees and ponds to process some of what we had heard and seen over the past couple days. Indeed, after several tours and sessions, it was beginning to seem that a myriad of insurmountable obstacles faced this developing country. Every facet of society that we had seen contained a plethora of issues and problems, and solutions seemed few and far between. Our visit that afternoon would be the first ray of hope that we would see in the work of Dominicans to build a better society.
In a poor barrio outside of the city, we rolled through dusty and dry streets, lined with poorly constructed houses, with mangy dogs on their last leg staggering around, and infants happily playing wearing nothing but a smile. We were headed for a school in this community where students had organized and coordinated a day-long session on AIDS and HIV for their peers and classmates. When we arrived, we sat down across from the room from them and introduced ourselves before they began to barrage us with questions. While the laughter and joy of these children was exhilarating enough in this, our first direct contact as a group with Dominicans, there were also two very important undercurrents to remember. First of all, these were kids teaching other kids about the hazards of unprotected sex in a country over-run by sexually transmitted diseases. As many are aware, it is both incredibly daunting and empowering for youth to take on such a task and succeed. The fact that youth had taken such a strong interest in this issue and recognized it as important enough to devote time and effort to was commendable. Second, while the community surrounding this building was falling apart in many ways, this school was well established. As we would see over the coming weeks, schools are one institution that even the smallest of the small and poorest of the poor communities contained. It seems somewhat cliché to mention the ancient adage 'scientia est potentia' (knowledge is power), but in the development of this country and in the throwing off of the chains of poverty, I see little that is more important than this advancement of education.
It was a brief and exhilarating encounter, but within those 30 minutes spent at the school, coupled with the work of the micro-credit NGO the day before, I began to see the parts of the puzzle coming together, the first signs of stepping-stones out of the mire of poverty and injustice.
We made it back to the Centre considerably early, and used the additional time to decompress with a game of Frisbee down at the community baseball field. While some of the children who flocked to us as we began to play had a bit of a rough time throwing the Frisbee for the first time, and others seemed hell-bent on beating the sense out of each other for a turn with it, the smiles on their faces seemed to indicate it was all a welcome escape from everyday monotony. When we left the field to return for supper, we got some pics with the incredibly cute kids and told them in our broken Spanish that it was great to meet them. Except that little punk that stole my Frisbee.
After breakfast at the Centre, we headed back into Santo Domingo for the day. We began the morning at INTEC, a University within the Capital, for a discussion on Gender Issues. The talk covered areas of concern for Dominicans, most specifically within poorer communities of the country where sexual and physical abuse are rampant problems, exacerbated by high levels of HIV and AIDS. Worse, in the minds of many, this domestic abuse is considered the business of the household and of no one else. The abuse endured by many people within the country is absolutely atrocious, and stories were related to us about spouses who had their hands cut off, acid thrown in their faces, or whom were murdered, often for little or no reason. While the two hours spent on this topic were certainly enlightening to the plight facing the country in terms of domestic violence, it was difficult for me to remain focused on the issues at hand. When any type of domestic abuse comes up in discussion it often turns into a generalizing and man-bashing fiesta, which in my opinion is totally counter-productive. Violence is a societal problem and thus requires a society-wide solution. It is crucial that everyone be included in working against cultural and political beliefs that allow for it to continue. This will not be accomplished so long as narrow opinions and ideologies continue to characterize and generalize all men as the source of the problem. As soon as discussions attempt to make me feel ashamed for being a man, my interest checks out.
Following a short tour of the INTEC Gender Studies Department, we traveled to the Botanical Gardens, where lunch and a tour allowed us to re-charge and to take some time among the trees and ponds to process some of what we had heard and seen over the past couple days. Indeed, after several tours and sessions, it was beginning to seem that a myriad of insurmountable obstacles faced this developing country. Every facet of society that we had seen contained a plethora of issues and problems, and solutions seemed few and far between. Our visit that afternoon would be the first ray of hope that we would see in the work of Dominicans to build a better society.
In a poor barrio outside of the city, we rolled through dusty and dry streets, lined with poorly constructed houses, with mangy dogs on their last leg staggering around, and infants happily playing wearing nothing but a smile. We were headed for a school in this community where students had organized and coordinated a day-long session on AIDS and HIV for their peers and classmates. When we arrived, we sat down across from the room from them and introduced ourselves before they began to barrage us with questions. While the laughter and joy of these children was exhilarating enough in this, our first direct contact as a group with Dominicans, there were also two very important undercurrents to remember. First of all, these were kids teaching other kids about the hazards of unprotected sex in a country over-run by sexually transmitted diseases. As many are aware, it is both incredibly daunting and empowering for youth to take on such a task and succeed. The fact that youth had taken such a strong interest in this issue and recognized it as important enough to devote time and effort to was commendable. Second, while the community surrounding this building was falling apart in many ways, this school was well established. As we would see over the coming weeks, schools are one institution that even the smallest of the small and poorest of the poor communities contained. It seems somewhat cliché to mention the ancient adage 'scientia est potentia' (knowledge is power), but in the development of this country and in the throwing off of the chains of poverty, I see little that is more important than this advancement of education.
It was a brief and exhilarating encounter, but within those 30 minutes spent at the school, coupled with the work of the micro-credit NGO the day before, I began to see the parts of the puzzle coming together, the first signs of stepping-stones out of the mire of poverty and injustice.
We made it back to the Centre considerably early, and used the additional time to decompress with a game of Frisbee down at the community baseball field. While some of the children who flocked to us as we began to play had a bit of a rough time throwing the Frisbee for the first time, and others seemed hell-bent on beating the sense out of each other for a turn with it, the smiles on their faces seemed to indicate it was all a welcome escape from everyday monotony. When we left the field to return for supper, we got some pics with the incredibly cute kids and told them in our broken Spanish that it was great to meet them. Except that little punk that stole my Frisbee.
Saturday, June 09, 2007
The Dominican Republic Faith and Justice Experience 2007: Day Two
Awoken by a melody of crowing roosters, barking dogs, and passing street venders blaring their horns, I dragged myself out of my bunk, checked the floor for bugs before stepping down, and had my first of many cold showers.
One cultural nuance left me a bit amiss my whole time in the hot southern country, and that was everyone's tendency to always pants. On PEI, at the first sight of spring (any day after February that is above 3 degrees), people are done with pants until the cold winds of November. I therefore expected Dominicans, who endure temperatures in excess of 40 and 50 degrees to opt for shorts (or 'short pants', as my father calls them.) Instead, shorts are frowned upon, even strictly prohibited in many areas. Not wanting to die in the heat, Kurtiss and I, the only two guys on the trip, opted instead for 'manpris'. Laugh if you will, but would far rather be called metrosexual (as I was many times) then to slowly roast in jeans.
After a hearty Dominican breakfast, we headed off to Santo Domingo for the day, about 45 minutes to an hour from our Centre, depending on traffic. I need not repeat the state of traffic as covered in my initial post, but our first foray into morning traffic gave us a whole new respect for the car horn. Our first couple experiences of crossing multiple lines of on-coming traffic made for a few nervous passengers and generated a fair number of yelps, mostly out of Christine.
Our day consisted of touring some areas of the city where more wealthy residents lived, impressive houses that rival anything here on the Island, several guarded by an assortment of attack dogs and men carrying massive shot guns. This was starkly contrasted by the heaps of houses crowded onto the hillsides that we would visit later that afternoon.
In the late a.m. we had a walking tour of the Colonial Zone of Santo Domingo. The Zone is a designated UNESCO World Heritage site, and for good reason. As the landing point of Christopher Columbus in the New World in 1492, and established in 1496, it is the oldest European city in the Americas. It is also heavily steeped in history, starting from the Spanish conquering and decimation of the aboriginal population, the enslavement of Africans, and the military involvement of several conquering nations, from Spain to France, Britain, to the United States.
Our afternoon included visiting an NGO that works with poorer entrepreneurs and small business owners, primarily women, in helping them get back on their feet by means of low interest loans, educational seminars, and support. After speaking with some workers within this organization, we went for a tour of a poor barrio (community) to visit some of the entrepreneurs they had aided. This walk-through was our first immersion into the poverty on the streets. It was tempting to focus on the children who were incredibly cute and very excited at the novelty of having white people in their community, but there was a lot more to mentally process in this single experience.
The houses were built on a steep incline, sometimes a 45-degree angle, and were of simple construction; mostly cinder blocks and corrugated metal roofs. The narrow streets and stairways were filled with people, and though there was a lot of garbage, filth, and poverty surrounding us, another presence was clearly evident, and that was the sheer vibrancy of this community. Though they had very little, the people we visited were fiercely proud of their accomplishments and their homes. It was slightly humbling; these weren't people that wanted us to come build their houses, indeed, they had built their own houses and businesses from the ground up, brick-by-brick, wall-by-wall. They wanted only to share their story of successes, the pride in their families, and their hopes for the future. It was also light years away from our Island home, only about 6 hours away as the jumbo jet flies, where people were no doubt going about their lives a usual in our suburban, fenced-in lives of isolationist luxury. On the way back to the Centre I realized that in this, my first day in the DR, I had discovered many of the things I expected: poverty and an extreme shortage of what we would call essential services, but also something I did not expect, an aspect of society within that poor barrio that I envied: true community.
It had been an exhausting and ridiculously hot day. By 10:00pm I was snoring loudly from my bunk, much to the chagrin of Kurtiss, my roommate.
One cultural nuance left me a bit amiss my whole time in the hot southern country, and that was everyone's tendency to always pants. On PEI, at the first sight of spring (any day after February that is above 3 degrees), people are done with pants until the cold winds of November. I therefore expected Dominicans, who endure temperatures in excess of 40 and 50 degrees to opt for shorts (or 'short pants', as my father calls them.) Instead, shorts are frowned upon, even strictly prohibited in many areas. Not wanting to die in the heat, Kurtiss and I, the only two guys on the trip, opted instead for 'manpris'. Laugh if you will, but would far rather be called metrosexual (as I was many times) then to slowly roast in jeans.
After a hearty Dominican breakfast, we headed off to Santo Domingo for the day, about 45 minutes to an hour from our Centre, depending on traffic. I need not repeat the state of traffic as covered in my initial post, but our first foray into morning traffic gave us a whole new respect for the car horn. Our first couple experiences of crossing multiple lines of on-coming traffic made for a few nervous passengers and generated a fair number of yelps, mostly out of Christine.
Our day consisted of touring some areas of the city where more wealthy residents lived, impressive houses that rival anything here on the Island, several guarded by an assortment of attack dogs and men carrying massive shot guns. This was starkly contrasted by the heaps of houses crowded onto the hillsides that we would visit later that afternoon.
In the late a.m. we had a walking tour of the Colonial Zone of Santo Domingo. The Zone is a designated UNESCO World Heritage site, and for good reason. As the landing point of Christopher Columbus in the New World in 1492, and established in 1496, it is the oldest European city in the Americas. It is also heavily steeped in history, starting from the Spanish conquering and decimation of the aboriginal population, the enslavement of Africans, and the military involvement of several conquering nations, from Spain to France, Britain, to the United States.
Our afternoon included visiting an NGO that works with poorer entrepreneurs and small business owners, primarily women, in helping them get back on their feet by means of low interest loans, educational seminars, and support. After speaking with some workers within this organization, we went for a tour of a poor barrio (community) to visit some of the entrepreneurs they had aided. This walk-through was our first immersion into the poverty on the streets. It was tempting to focus on the children who were incredibly cute and very excited at the novelty of having white people in their community, but there was a lot more to mentally process in this single experience.
The houses were built on a steep incline, sometimes a 45-degree angle, and were of simple construction; mostly cinder blocks and corrugated metal roofs. The narrow streets and stairways were filled with people, and though there was a lot of garbage, filth, and poverty surrounding us, another presence was clearly evident, and that was the sheer vibrancy of this community. Though they had very little, the people we visited were fiercely proud of their accomplishments and their homes. It was slightly humbling; these weren't people that wanted us to come build their houses, indeed, they had built their own houses and businesses from the ground up, brick-by-brick, wall-by-wall. They wanted only to share their story of successes, the pride in their families, and their hopes for the future. It was also light years away from our Island home, only about 6 hours away as the jumbo jet flies, where people were no doubt going about their lives a usual in our suburban, fenced-in lives of isolationist luxury. On the way back to the Centre I realized that in this, my first day in the DR, I had discovered many of the things I expected: poverty and an extreme shortage of what we would call essential services, but also something I did not expect, an aspect of society within that poor barrio that I envied: true community.
It had been an exhausting and ridiculously hot day. By 10:00pm I was snoring loudly from my bunk, much to the chagrin of Kurtiss, my roommate.
Friday, June 08, 2007
The Dominican Republic Faith and Justice Experience 2007: Day One
With the Provincial Leaders' Debate that I helped coordinate at UPEI over with at about 9:00pm on Tuesday May 15th, I headed home to pack and prepare for our three-week trip to the Dominican. It was a rather daunting task, but with an incredibly busy week under my belt, I was more concerned that I was about to embark on a 15-hour journey to San Cristobel, Dominican Republic, having only had about 6 hours of sleep in the previous three days.
Leading up to this experience, I was not sure what to tell people, and was reluctant to call this trip a 'mission,' because everyone I met expected us to be building houses or churches or schools or to be working somewhere for the duration of our stay. Instead, our group would be attending info sessions, visiting NGOs (Non-Governmental Organizations), and living with Dominican families for a portion of our stay. Frankly, I was not entirely sure that this was the most fulfilling way to spend three-weeks in a third world country, but as I came to know, and hopefully as you will understand through this series of blog entries, our trip was one wherein we learned that the Dominican people are not in need of our pity and charity. Nor do they need me to go down and build houses; they can build houses much better than I will ever be able to. As we were told many times, the challenge is to understand what the obstacles are for individuals in impoverished countries; to hear their stories and as Westerners, to work in whatever capacity we are able to ensure that the injustices of our own culture, in our own communities and around the world are not propagated in the future.
So with these and more questions in mind, I packed my clothes, along with some toys and gifts for the people I would meet, while my roomies cooked me my final Canadian dinner for 21 days. Shortly before midnight Gillis picked me up and we headed to the Charlottetown Diocesan Centre, from where our group assembled, some friends came to say goodbye, and we departed via van for Halifax Airport. After 15 hours of travel, we had been through three provinces, three airports, and three countries, and were on our way through Santo Domingo, the capital of the Dominican Republic (also the landing site of Christopher Columbus and the oldest Eurpoean settlement in the Americas) on our way to San Cristobel.
The traffic in the DR is almost beyond explanation. In a city of about 2.2 million people, I would guess that maybe 3 of them have read the actual traffic laws of the city. Rush hour consists of thousands of cars weaving in and out of lines at high speed with inches to spare, and with apparently no notice whatsoever of the lines on the road, nor of the hundreds of motorbikes, mopeds and scooters that zip in between the already volatile lines of cars. Being from PEI, where honking your horn is either used to greet someone on the street or as the equivalent of telling someone off, the constant symphony of blasting horns was a bit over-whelming. Several times I caught myself looking to see the honker, fully expecting someone I knew or someone waving at us. After awhile the honking would meld into the other thousands of sounds in this incredibly loud country. One will also notice once they leave the Santo Domingo airport that many vans and trucks have bars mounter on the front and rear of the vehicle. After scoffing at these seemingly unnecessary accessories, after being hit or hitting other vehicles on three separate occasions within our first week we soon discovered that their are two types of vehicles in the Dominican; those that have these bars, and those that are severely dented or missing parts.
Seatbelts are, however, little more than an accesory in these vehicles. In a country where a full Public Car (Dominican version of the Taxi) is anywhere between 5 and 10 people, motor bikes often have 4+ passengers, and the beds of trucks are additional passenger space, seatbelts are few and far between. Our group was driven around in a very nice air-conditioned van by an unreal driver/body guard names Anez. Within my individual community, however, I had little choice but to abide by the 'When in Rome...' adage, as my choices consisted of accepting a certain degree of risk, or being left wherever I was, alone in a city I didn't fully understand, and in a country where my 6'2" frame and freakishly pale white skin made me stand out like a Conservative in the new PEI Legislature, thus attracting the stares of pretty much everyone I came with a half mile of.
By 9:30pm on May 16th, I was exhausted, and as I laid in bed trying to overcome the heat, I thought of how different a world I was in than the one I had left only that morning. Somewhere between imagining how I could single-handedly fix a broken world and going over Spanish phrases in my head, I drifted off to sleep. And there was evening, and there was morning. The first day.
Leading up to this experience, I was not sure what to tell people, and was reluctant to call this trip a 'mission,' because everyone I met expected us to be building houses or churches or schools or to be working somewhere for the duration of our stay. Instead, our group would be attending info sessions, visiting NGOs (Non-Governmental Organizations), and living with Dominican families for a portion of our stay. Frankly, I was not entirely sure that this was the most fulfilling way to spend three-weeks in a third world country, but as I came to know, and hopefully as you will understand through this series of blog entries, our trip was one wherein we learned that the Dominican people are not in need of our pity and charity. Nor do they need me to go down and build houses; they can build houses much better than I will ever be able to. As we were told many times, the challenge is to understand what the obstacles are for individuals in impoverished countries; to hear their stories and as Westerners, to work in whatever capacity we are able to ensure that the injustices of our own culture, in our own communities and around the world are not propagated in the future.
So with these and more questions in mind, I packed my clothes, along with some toys and gifts for the people I would meet, while my roomies cooked me my final Canadian dinner for 21 days. Shortly before midnight Gillis picked me up and we headed to the Charlottetown Diocesan Centre, from where our group assembled, some friends came to say goodbye, and we departed via van for Halifax Airport. After 15 hours of travel, we had been through three provinces, three airports, and three countries, and were on our way through Santo Domingo, the capital of the Dominican Republic (also the landing site of Christopher Columbus and the oldest Eurpoean settlement in the Americas) on our way to San Cristobel.
The traffic in the DR is almost beyond explanation. In a city of about 2.2 million people, I would guess that maybe 3 of them have read the actual traffic laws of the city. Rush hour consists of thousands of cars weaving in and out of lines at high speed with inches to spare, and with apparently no notice whatsoever of the lines on the road, nor of the hundreds of motorbikes, mopeds and scooters that zip in between the already volatile lines of cars. Being from PEI, where honking your horn is either used to greet someone on the street or as the equivalent of telling someone off, the constant symphony of blasting horns was a bit over-whelming. Several times I caught myself looking to see the honker, fully expecting someone I knew or someone waving at us. After awhile the honking would meld into the other thousands of sounds in this incredibly loud country. One will also notice once they leave the Santo Domingo airport that many vans and trucks have bars mounter on the front and rear of the vehicle. After scoffing at these seemingly unnecessary accessories, after being hit or hitting other vehicles on three separate occasions within our first week we soon discovered that their are two types of vehicles in the Dominican; those that have these bars, and those that are severely dented or missing parts.
Seatbelts are, however, little more than an accesory in these vehicles. In a country where a full Public Car (Dominican version of the Taxi) is anywhere between 5 and 10 people, motor bikes often have 4+ passengers, and the beds of trucks are additional passenger space, seatbelts are few and far between. Our group was driven around in a very nice air-conditioned van by an unreal driver/body guard names Anez. Within my individual community, however, I had little choice but to abide by the 'When in Rome...' adage, as my choices consisted of accepting a certain degree of risk, or being left wherever I was, alone in a city I didn't fully understand, and in a country where my 6'2" frame and freakishly pale white skin made me stand out like a Conservative in the new PEI Legislature, thus attracting the stares of pretty much everyone I came with a half mile of.
By 9:30pm on May 16th, I was exhausted, and as I laid in bed trying to overcome the heat, I thought of how different a world I was in than the one I had left only that morning. Somewhere between imagining how I could single-handedly fix a broken world and going over Spanish phrases in my head, I drifted off to sleep. And there was evening, and there was morning. The first day.
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