I need to start this update off on a high and low note.
Here’s a story.
Pretty much as soon as we got to the base DJ, David, Jake and
Evan decided they were going to catch some geckoes. They caught three
with relative ease and named them: Pablo, Jorge and Carlos. They loved
these geckoes and treated them like children. They fed them and did
their best to care for them. They spent much time developing proper
harnesses and leashes for these geckoes so the boys could walk them
with greater ease.
It was a beautiful picture really.
Now, Carlos had heart issues. He went into cardiac arrest twice
but thankfully DJ knew some CPR techniques and pumped his heart back into action.
After the second heart attack, the boys decided that the stress of captivity was
too much for Carlos so they released him.
One day the boys decided that if they were a gecko, they would want to
fly...so they created a parachute fit for a gecko. At first Pablo was
going to be the guinea pig, but DJ would not let this happen since
Pablo was close to DJ’s heart. It was decided that Jorge would be
first. They duct taped him to the strings that were attached to the
parachute and they released him off the roof. (Attention: the boys did
multiple trial runs with various objects before attempting to use the
parachute on legit geckos. No animals were harmed during the testing).
Jorge made it down with ease and he enjoyed the ride: the boys were
stoked! They wanted to share the fun with the other gecko so they went
to detach Jorge from the parachute, but they ran into some issues.
Let’s just say that duct tape is a high quality product; it really
stuck to Jorge’s legs and it was not going to come off. Unfortunately
DJ and a cinder block completed the euthanasia. Don’t worry, a proper
funeral ensued.
But the saga doesn’t end here. One night DJ said good-night to Pablo,
his favourite pet. DJ made sure Pablo had food and water and he ensured
that Pablo’s leash was not too tight and he was tied to a tree so he
couldn’t escape. Unfortunately this leash ended up doing more harm than
good. We were heading to breakfast the next morning when Nicole
directed my attention to Pablo. Luckily he still had his leash on, but
unfortunately he did not have any eyes, skin or muscle to accompany the
leash. All that was left of him was a beautifully cleaned skeleton; but
attached to this meticulously cleaned skeleton was his leash, around
his neck and still tied to a tree.
Fire ants. Eaten alive. Couldn’t escape.
Quite the story.
On Saturday the children’s eyes were really “opened”.
This trip went to a whole new level as we entered Cercadillo (“Ina’s village”).
The transportation to Ina’s village is quite the operation.
First, we get two taxis to pick us up at the Ministry Centre (one of the drivers is
Domingues - who was our main driver last year as well). We fit 6 people
in one Toyota Corolla (as well as the driver - 7 total) and we put 5 in
the other Toyota. These taxis drive for a good 20 minutes until we get
to Villa Mella where they drop us off.
This past Saturday I was in Domingues’ taxi and he asked me where we needed to go.
I told him -Villa Mella, the same place as last year. He dropped us off at the
exact same spot as last March and April - to the centimetre.
Je suis impressed.
From here some of us went with Ina in her vehicle for the next 15 minute drive.
Ina actually took 10 Canadians in her new wheels - an SUV with only two benches...
yeah, we’re being Dominicanized quickly. Others went with the infamous David,
the same car we used last year to get us to the village.
Finally, after a good ninety minute process,
the entire group made it up to Cercadillo...only to start leaving in an hour.
Yeah DR.
Now you may be asking yourself, why doesn’t Domingues and the other
taxi driver just drive all the way? Why the hassle of switching vehicles?
Well, have I got a story for you.
They won’t.
They won’t travel up those roads to Cercadillo. These roads are steep and full of
craters. They have holes and divots the size of Mars. It is always an adventure
getting to Cercadillo. It really is, “the road less travelled”.
That’s why.
And that is why people in Villa Mella, a bustling town,
have no idea that this village exists just outside of their borders.
That is why the people of Cercadillo have so little.
That is why they have very little access to the “outside” world.
This is the road less travelled. Literally.
This is why we get picked up by David: a gentleman from Cercadillo who
owns a taxi and who loves to help Ina out. Before we go any further the
story must stop here. It is imperative that you know about David's
taxi. I drove with David last year and so I warned the children about
his car, but said that at some point we all had to go for a ride in it
and chalk it up to, “a cultural experience”. Some of us walked from
Ina’s house to meet David who is waiting at his car.
Are you familiar with smash-up derbies by any chance?
If so, think small-car derby.
Picture a little Toyota that looks as though it has entered the local
small-town fair's smash up derby for the last 17 years. There are few
straight edges on the car because it is so dented. When the folks got
in the back seat they realized they could see the earth through some
holes in the floor (they're really small holes, I promise). The front
passenger seat isn't attached securely to the floor so it resembles a
rocking chair. There are few (if any???) door handles on the inside:
built-in child locks, I guess.
It is good times in David’s car.
The ride from Villa Mella to Cercadillo is like a time warp: you leave
one world and 10 minutes later you're in a world that seems to be “20
years behind” (although I use these words loosely).
In David's taxi we climb the dirt road. He maneuvers over the craters
to try to limit the damage to the underbelly of his car.
We pass random piles of garbage, a makeshift baseball diamond,
the river where the village used to have to get their water etc...
and then we get to a place that reminds me of the slum areas of Richmond, South Africa.
It is hot, dry and dusty. The main purpose of the dirt roads is to transport people,
not vehicles. There are few vehicles in this village. There are some
Motorbikes/mopeds but the most common form of transportation is feet.
This road exists solely for Cercadillo. Both ends of this road lead
to/come from the main Villa Mella road. As one walks along the road
the, untrained eye sees chaos and disorganization with respect to the
yards of Cercadillo's patrons. There are some houses close to the road
and these houses are surrounded by other houses behind and to all
sides. Lots and boundary lines do not follow the typical North American
clean-cut, square fashion. However, if one takes the time to follow the
paths of stick and barbed wire fences it becomes obvious that
boundaries between neighbours are completely clear. It's not our way of
organizing a village, but it's a way. We are learning that other ways
of doing things often make a lot of sense.
As mentioned previously there are two ways to enter this village. If
you have the opportunity to enter the village with Ina, you are privy
to something special. She drives to the village using a route that
allows her to drive through the entire village. Whenever she enters the
village in this manner she reenacts the Pied Piper, but in a vehicle as opposed
to on foot.
Children see her, yell her name in an adorable Spanish accent, and run after her car.
They come to her window and she talks to each one.
She greets everyone she sees.
She intentionally invites children to the programs she organizes.
As she drives she hollers out her announcements.
She's a Dominican Mother Teresa, reaching out to a group of people
who do not have access to a lot of the simple things that we take for granted.
It sounds like such a common cliché statement and I struggle with this.
At the same time, it's flippin' reality and although I've seen such world disparity
in multiple different countries, in multiple different villages and affecting multiple
different people, it still intrigues me.
The imbalance of the world still intrigues me.
This is yet another real-life example of what we study in classes.
Ina first came across this village while on a short-term mission trip.
After a while she committed to spending an entire year here. She gave
up a sweet position as a Reading/Literacy coordinator for a public
school board in Massachusetts (I think). She loved the Dominican and
never returned. She sold everything and moved here permanently. She's
been here for 4ish years now.
“See what happens when you go on these kinds of trips?” she told my students last year,
and I am sure she’ll tell this year’s students the same thing.
Ina is convinced that some of our children are going to intern with her.
Last year her dreams for me to move to the DR with her didn’t work out,
but she has made it clear that she is still convinced that come this summer I will sell
everything I own and move to the Dominican to work with her full-time.
She says that I know more about community development than she does.
It is difficult for her to keep up with everything, so she has been praying
for full-time help and she is sure that I'm that answer to prayer,
I just needed one more year of teaching to prepare.
Hmm...why wait until July?
Ina's first project with this village was to help them with their
water situation.
Think of a typical World Vision episode.
Women and children used to have to walk many kilometres to the closest water
source: a river.
To get to this river they had to walk down the crater-filled, hilly, road
I wrote about earlier. The river is on the outskirts of the village
so the trek could be a dangerous one as there are no houses/people around.
When you get to the river you have to climb down an extremely steep bank
to reach the water. Right now the river is extremely low,
and that is without the village fully relying on it.
The water is green.
Picture living in this village.
Think about what you need water for: Bathing.
(but keep in mind you will NEVER have water fall on your head.
You bath each part at a time. There is no hope of a shower-like experience
and there are no tubs to actually sit/lay in).
Cooking.
Drinking.
Watering the show garden behind your white picket fence.
You are a mom trying to run a house. You've lived your whole life supporting
your family off of the ground or from the resources of the village.
You need a new water jug/container but you have never bought something
that comes in a container.
Where do you get the jug from?
You need water to run the house.
You send your 7 year old daughter kilometres down the road to a steep bank
to a green, nearly dry river. She fills a jug or two and treks up the bank,
balances one jug on her head, carries the other in her hand
and begins the uphill walk back to the village.
A family member bathes and a meal is cooked and the process must begin again.
Thankfully this no longer represents life in this village.
Ina arranged to get two wells dug so now they do not have to walk as far,
their water is cleaner and all they need to do to get it is pump it by hand.
But what about those in villages elsewhere in the world?
On Saturday our job for the afternoon, because we were there for just
about two hours, was to love on the kids. The sports crew was in
charge. I got up there before Ina so we went walking through the
village Pied Piper style.
I saw a whole slew of kids from last year so I’d greet them by name:
Jennimel, Johnson, Christopher, Eduarlin, Cha-Cha, Gloneli, Ninola.
It was exciting.
I’d say their name and they’d give me a funny look,
because clearly they couldn’t recognize me or they didn’t remember me.
With Jennimel specifically, I greeted her and kept walking.
When I saw her again, I greeted her again.
Then she grabbed my hand and walked with me for a while.
Eventually, with her hand clenched tight, she looked up at me with her big eyes
and asked, en Espanol, “how do you know me?”
As we walked through the village Christopher came up and asked what we
were doing. I told him we wanted more of the kids so we could play
games with them.
That was all we needed - to have one of the locals on our side.
He ran up ahead and gathered the village kids. Soon we were
turned around and walking back to our “base” with plenty of locals.
Keeping in mind how the transportation works, at this point we only
have half of our crew. We didn’t want to get started on the larger
organized games so I told the Canadian kids to have at ‘er - have fun.
They started the infamous “Pato, Pato, Ganso” (Duck, Duck, Goose). We
were all sitting in a circle together when Ina pulled up. As soon as
the kids saw her vehicle they started clapping and chanting in the
cutest Dominican accent, “Ina, Ina, Ina!”
She is STILL a celebrity in this village!
The afternoon started with a game of soccer: boys against girls.
The organization necessary for a typical soccer game did not last
long...ten minutes max. Despite the planning of the sports crew:
Rachel, Mitch, Ian, Jake, Josh, Stacey and Evan, the next two hours was
pretty much mayhem. The Canadians pulled out any tricks they could to
entertain the Dominicans. It was a lot of loving on and interacting and
all using simple tools, if any at all. A soccer ball provided fun
through a soccer baseball game since baseball equipment was hard to come by.
That’s all; the rest was simple fun.
The group was on a large open field so there was plenty of space
and there was plenty of Dominican energy.
Fortunately for the leaders these little Dominicans exhausted our children.
Every night here we have circle time where we go around the circle and
each person in the group shares their roses and thorns of the day -
their high and their low.
At circle time that night the overwhelming theme of the thorns
was that the kids were wild and misbehaved.
In general, the Dominican children were described in a frustrated,
negative light. This isn’t to say that they didn’t have fun: it was
just that my group was shocked at the behaviour of the kids, especially
in comparison to the students they had taught earlier in the week.
I wanted to comment, but I held back.
I am sure that as our time here continues and as we interact more with the village kids,
the students will be able to see a larger picture of the village kids:
beyond this mere two hour window.
I am sure that as our time here continues, our Canadian children will begin
to understand some of the behaviours of these children who live at the end
of the road less travelled.
Sunday was a regular day - except at church this week they had “the
Canadians” stand up - but this was because there was also an American
group (Joni and friends) there as well. They had each group stand up
and then the pastor talked about how neat it was that there were at
least three different countries represented. For the second week in a
row we sang part of a song in English.
We are happy here.
Monday brought a move to another base - in Sabana Grande de Boya,
about an hour and a half away. Max dropped me and thirteen students off
on the side of the road :) in Santo Domingo and got a bus to take us to
the other base. He drove the rest of the children. On the bus we were
quite the spectacle and were watched by the locals for almost the
entire time - especially Rachel. She was so exhausted from taking in
the gorgeous view that she fell asleep partly through the ride. She was
sharing a seat with a local woman. As Rachel was sleeping she did the
head nod-thing and hit her chin on the lady’s shoulder. The lady smiled.
We heart Dominicans.
The first day of work at this new base, Tuesday, Jake was left at the
base working on concrete under the supervision of Max. Jake got really
itchy as the day progressed. He had a rash for a couple of days before
this but it went in ebbs and flows so we weren’t overly concerned, but
this day it got really frustrating for Jake. I was working at another
site so I was unaware of the issues. At lunch when my group and I
returned Max told me he was quite concerned with Jake. Max needed to
get tools from Santo Domingo, the other base, and so we should kill two
birds with one stone. We packed up the van, Max, Jake and I, and we set
off for the more than an hour drive back.
We took Jake to the clinic first.
As Max was in the room with Jake and the nurse I had another
nurse ask if Max was my dad. Last time this nurse asked if Max was Josh
and Kate’s dad. I laughed and proceeded to explain to her, en espanol,
who we were and why Max and I kept coming back with different kids ;)
Max comes out of the room, puts out his hand for a high five and says,
“We have a winner!”
To which I reply, “Jake is getting a needle in his behind? He is so lucky!
The rest are going to be so jealous!”
Max and I laugh hysterically, in the lobby, as the other nurses look at us with
wonder and intrigue. They aren’t sure what to do with us. Jake comes
out of the room with the biggest smile I’ve ever seen him with!
“I win! I got it!” he says.
Max was such a proud father at that moment!
On the drive home we discussed the best way of telling the group about
the win. The three of us decided it would be best to keep it completely
hushed until circle time.
Challenge accepted.
We got back in Sabana at about 4:30 so there was quite a bit of time
before we could share the good news of the day.
But soon enough circle time came. Peter was in charge of who started
and he mysteriously, because he had absolutely no idea,
organized the circle to go in such a way that Jake was last.
I was laughing inside.
Finally it gets to Jake.
He started with his thorns.
He moved on to his roses and talked about different events of the day.
Casually at the end of his speel he said, “and I went to the
clinic and I got a needle in my behind. I win.”
Super casual.
Super effective.
Super fun.
The circle erupted in jealousy and excitement!
Kate was especially jealous - she was so close to taking the trophy
when she went to the clinic but she couldn’t pull through.
Well done, Jake.
You’re the champion.
Not that we want more illnesses, but the challenge for the group
now is to see who can join you on your team ;)
We spent the rest of this week doing construction at this new base -
details of which will be shared in the next update.
‘tis all for now.
~Update from Rachael~
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