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Republica Dominica x 100 (May 2006)
Friends from college moved down to the Dominican Republic in 2005 as volunteers for
DREAM, the Dominican Republic Education And Mentoring Project, a nonprofit organization
based out of Cabarete, a small town on the island's north coast, that provides "equitable access to quality
education for children born into poverty in rural areas and small communities of the Dominican Republic..." My experience there:
Day 1: Wake up at dawn, make my way to Newark Airport, and fly into San Juan, Puerto Rico before a
6.5 hour layover to Puerto Plata, Dominican Republic. Arrive in the DR ~10:30 p.m. Ride a pick-up 40 minutes to Cabarete
and check into a beachfront "luxury" hotel. It's blazing hot. Turns out my room (and the entire hotel) have no running water. There will be no shower.
I make do with a pitcher of water. In the middle of the night I wake up and my legs are covered with burning, itchy bites.
Bed bugs! @#$#@#! Rough start, but I find the whole thing kind of ridiculously amusing at some point. The next morning I go to the lobby
and after fending off a marriage proposal end up switching rooms (though also only after being locked in my room for 30 minutes
after waking up). The new room is nicer and an upgrade. Thank goodness. Let the island adventure really begin.
Day 2: After the morning fiasco, I go to breakfast at one of the local spots on the strip, Friends' Cafe. Rum & Banana crepes.
Delicious. Later there will be lots of rice and beans and chicken and drank Presidente, the beer of champions.
A fruit stand across the street.
I meet up with Liz. We go to Dick's Restaurant, another local favorite. Juice, cafe con leche,
eggs, pastries, all sorts of good stuff. This will become a staple during the week.
We go back to Liz's residence--a dorm-style house--to get towels and beach gear. There is a heart-shaped pool outside.
We catch a moto-taxi to neighboring Sosua to hit a quiet beach. There must be 8 of us in the car, one person sharing the seat with the driver.
It's about a mile walk from the road to the actual beach. There are donkeys, cows, ducks, and some houses on the way.
Beach. In the early morning, the surfers hit this beach, but during the day it's pretty quiet.
It's blazing hot out so we stick to the shade.
After a few hours, we head back.
We catch a Guagua, a taxi-van back to Kite Beach where all of the kiteboarders are practicing. I count 24 people
in the one van. The door won't even shut. People are sitting on each other every which way.
Kiteboarding. We hang out here for the rest of the afternoon then take a long stroll back to the main strip of Cabarete.
... just in time for the sunset.
Day 3: Meet Drew and Lydia and Liz at Cafe Pitu, right on the beach. More delicious breakfast.
After being hesistant to take photos for the first 36 hours, I take a walk and photograph some of the locals.
Later in the evening I run into Alex & Reid walking Buster the dog on the beach. Buster gets in a dogfight.
We get rice and beans and chicken and feast. It's about $3 for a huge amount of food.
Day 4: Go to the Puerto Cabarete elementary school where Liz, Drew, and Reid are working. Kids crowd
at the window to have their photos taken. The school is overcrowded, supplies are sparse, teacher
don't know English, how to use computers (which are rarely available), and books must be collected to form a library.
The curriculum is a mess, discipline is non-existant, attendance isn't mandatory.
It's rec time so the kids are playing in the schoolyard. On the right they are giving out snacks.
Liz is in the classroom tutoring kindergartners,
Classrooms are stifling hot.
Drew is in the schoolyard too, but normally keeps the donated computers in the computer lab operating.
After two trips to Puerto Cabarete I take a late afternoon stroll through El Callejon, the impoverished Dominican
neighborhood where most locals live. Houses are made up of clapboard and cement. Garbage is everwhere. Babies are naked.
Men, women, girls, boys, chickens, donkeys...are all in the streets, sitting on sidewalks, playing chess, hanging laundry.
Children wander shoe-less because they must save their one pair (if they have them) for school where shoes are required.
Men stand on Colombia Road on the left. Barbed wire protects a home on the right. I attract a lot of attention. I later learn that
Colombia Road is to be avoided--it is so named for the violence and drug-trading that goes on there.
Political posters and donkeys.
It's been a long day. That night there's a surfer/kite-boarding video/dance party on the beach.
The dj's are amazing and a dance-off gets underway. It is a late night.
Day 5: I get in a pickup truck with an older Dominican man named Bobo who doesn't speak a lick of
English. We drive school supplies out to the Montessori preschool built by DREAM at the Batey Caraballo, a sugar plantation
on the North Coast of the DR (in Montellano) mostly employing illegal Haitians and Haitian-Dominicans. Children without legal
documentation of their citizenship cannot attend Dominican public schools. They are left in a dire situation.
We have to drive out on the main road about 30 minutes, then another 20 minutes down the worst dirt road
you've neverbeen on. It twists and turns through mountains and sugar cane. Once arriving at the batey it is
obvious conditions are FAR, FAR worse than anything I've seen in my life. Tin shacks. Homes without doors.
Garbage garbage garbage.Babies in their own piss. Only rare instances of running water. First thing when I get there,
a boy with a bloodied face comes scurrying up to me. His mother is screaming. Turns out another boy has smashed
his forehead with a rock. I meet up with Donyan Shadions, a Montessori teacher originally from Ithaca, NY who
is sponsored by Peace Corps and DREAM. She first takes me to the Haitian "neighborhood," a group of houses
on one side of the plantation where I must meet the Voodoo leader of the Haitian community and get permission to take photos.
A group of men sits outside, some naked, mostly just trying to stay cool in the scorching heat.
Laundry, outside, dries on the roofs of houses.
A young boy and his sister see me walk by and come outside for a photo.
A little girl walks to school through the neighborhood.
The few kids who have shown up at school all pose for a picture. There is no teacher present.
While the kids are there, there are no materials aside from a couple of desks and chairs -- no books, no chalk,
literally nothing to teach with.
I leave the school and meet Jonathan (seated) and Johnny (red pants), his brother. This is common: siblings
often all have derivative names of their parents.
A soccer field in the distance, also built by DREAM, separates the Haitian and Dominican communities.
Two young children from the primarily Dominican school stop outside their schoolhouse.
As does a man outside the local "convenience" store.
Two young girls follow me for 100 yards or so until I take their picture. The girl at right tries to
give me her lollipop afterwards, which I politely turn down.
The Montessori Preschool, built by DREAM, where Donyan runs two classes. She later explains that of the 35 registered students
in one class, only 11 show up regularly since parents forget, or children have been beaten so badly they cannot come. Sometimes she
must go door-to-door and demand that the children are brought to school. Many/all of their materials have been provided DREAM.
Now, head over to the mostly Dominican side of the Batey. I love the textures of this house.
Briefly, I chat with this man who is washing up outside. Keep in mind it is hotter than an oven out here.
He leads travel tours through the country 3 days a week and spends the other 4 days here.
The woman on the left is sitting in a doorway while her granddaughters play outside. The daughters bashfully
want to have their photo taken and then insist I take one of the grandmother also. I show her the image on the LCD panel.
A man and his wife sit inside in silence. After showing the woman the picture, she smiles and asks where I'm
from. New York, I say.
Then she asks if she can have a picture with her son.
She takes my hand and brings me to the neighbors' house yelling for them to come outside for a photo. A photo! They stand for me in the doorway.
Crossroads, a Christian Ministry, has in recent years purchased land and built a number of houses on a hilltop
at the batey. The homes have running water and flushing toilets, a rarity. At first, Dominican and Haitians
were given homes on the hilltop at the price of converting to Christianity, but now there are different
requirements. Some of the poorest have moved to the hilltop in order to simply have homes. Some of the
Haitians/Dominicans who have NOT moved to the hilltop feel a lot of antagonism towards this community. The
hilltop community is often exploited as the icon of poverty being combatted by the face of religion. On the
bright side, a missionary from the organization also helped found a self-sustaining women's craft group that
produces beautiful beaded jewelry, hairpins, tie-dye products, candles, hand-made cards and paper. The crafts
are sold online and the profits pay the salaries of the working women. I visit the women who are beading. One
woman tends to pots of dye boiling on burners. Broken sewing machines (they don't know how to use them) that
were donated sit on a table in the back of the room.
It has been a grueling day. I'm drenched in sweat and tired. To get back to Cabarete I jump on the back of a motoconcho,
a moped driven by one of the local Dominican men. We weave down the dirt road for at least 20 minutes before he drops me
off at the local gas station. I pay him 30 pesos, less than a dollar. I switch into a Guagua, one of the taxi-buses for another 40
minute ride back to Cabarete. Then, off to the beach for a swim and some food and drink.
Day 6: After breakfast I head back over to the school in the Callejon (Dominican neighborhood), also a project site
for DREAM. The school is called La Colonia Nueva. Conditions are similar to the other elementary school I visited,
lacking in basic supplies, order, and any educational infrastructure.
The school director's office.
Jonathan stands for a picture. He is supposed to be at the above school, but has decided he just doesn't want to
go anymore. There is nobody to enforce attendance.
Instead, we go to El Choco National Park. The entrance to the lush grounds are just behind the school.
Americans and tourists are charged a $15 entry. Guided by a few local friends, we get in for free. First stop is a natural
swimming hole. It's scorching. I dive in, as does Jonathan.
We continue through the park. There are homes scattered throughout the grounds. Sometimes residents will come
out and ask for money from tourists who don't know better. Note Jonathan and friend Jason(?) make the trek barefooted.
Shoes = for school. The kids' feet seem immune to rocks, dirt, and pain.
We make our way to another swimming hole, embedded in caves. Jonathan and Jason jump right in.
We slip through a narrow passageway and grip our way down into the caves. Throwing rocks down into the
crevices, we discover there is more water down below.
We emerge and trek back an hour or so to the Callejon. Along the way we stop at one of the houses and a woman
feeds us rice, beans, and chicken that must've been killed within the hour. Water is offered in rusty cans.
I walk around the Callejon, exploring once more.
Fruit and water are available here. Afterwards, back to the beach for another swim, some food, and more reading.
That night we cook steak, potatoes, and grean beans for dinner along with a big bottle of red wine.
Day 7: One last day at the beach...
The man on the right sells homemade brittle-like peanut/coconut candies, 2 for 10 pesos (~30 cents). In the afternoon I rent
out a kayak and go for a spin on the Atlantic. On the water, I run into a few of the guys who are out windsurfing.
Lounge in the street at the bar/restaurant next door to Alex & Reid's house with a number of other expats. It's much cooler outside than in.
Scooby, the almost-human wonder dog, graces us with his presence.
Mandatory final group picture before we hit the bars and the dance floor.
[From L-->R, me, Drew, David, Reid, Alex, Lydia, and Caitlin...my hosts for the week.]
Up again for the flight back at 5:30 the next morning. The greatest thing about the plane ride and 8 hour
layover is experiencing the sensation of being cold for the first time in 8 days. Leave with utmost respect for people above ...
working in those schools, on the plantation, dealing with bed bugs, rats, break-ins, blistering heat, cockroaches, and the
daily ins and outs of a world without readily available conveniences are just parts of their everyday lives.
The End.