Settling In

Since I've only been here a little over a week I don't know that I can say that I'm completely settled, but I have my bearings a little more in the city, and I’m slowly getting into my community (in my neighborhood and at the batey). On Friday we walked around the batey with some fellow teachers to pass out information about uniforms. First—what is a batey? Bateys in this country were once migrant worker camps for Haitians coming in to work on sugar plantations. Needless to say, Haitians were fooled into thinking that they would have a better life and receive better wages on the other side of the island. Instead, they became slaves, living in cramped quarters without essential utilities. The sugar business has pretty much gone bust, one of the reasons being that our main buyer (the U.S.) switched over from sugar to high fructose corn syrup. Now most (but not all) of the bateys are defunct, but former workers continue to live there. Most of the men now work in construction or drive motoconchos (motorcycle taxis)—and other low-paying work—while some of the women work cleaning houses. There are about four generations living in the batey now, so most of the adults and all of the children speak Spanish, while some of the older people who only speak Creole. They call it “Haitian” and (I’m told, although I haven’t been here long enough to experience this) most of the children don’t learn it or are ashamed to speak it. I could go on and on about how Haitians and Haitian-Dominicans are heavily discriminated against in this country, but there’s a great article related to this in the New York Times (Dominican Crackdown Leaves Children of Haitian Immigrants in Legal Limbo, May 25, 2008--it won't let me post the link for some reason). I haven’t been here long enough to experience much of this, although I’m sure I will—I’ll give you examples as I witness them.

SO we walked around the batey. Most people live in one-room shacks, although there is a variety of housing. Some (very few) people live in little concrete houses almost comparable to those in our neighborhood. Their electricity/water situation is similar to ours, except that they can’t afford to buy big bottles of purified water to drink (like we do), so they drink the street water. The kids constantly have parasites and amoebas. We saw a pretty dirty young girl (about 18 months) and I saw what I thought were pieces of rice on her belly, but my co-worker tells me they were worms. One of the children was carrying a small, colorful, dead bird in his hands. I asked one of his friends why he killed it, and he said, matter-of-factly “to eat.” Mary Alice, one of the sisters, says people in the batey eat dogs and (more commonly) cats as well. That’s if they eat. Mary Alice says you never know the last time a child has eaten when they come to the school. The sisters also run a clinic (side note: they also have an AIDS clinic that the Clinton Foundation helped set up—pretty neat) and they are keeping track of the most malnutritioned children or children with HIV. In addition to giving them vitamins, they give the children “plumpynut.” It’s a popular combatant of famine and malnutrition in Africa—it’s a mix of milk, peanuts, sugar, and vitamins that comes in a little plastic bag. Apparently it’s pretty tasty, so it’s easy to get the kids to eat them. BUT many times they don’t get to the kids. Por ejemplo, Ricardo, the most mal-nutritioned child in the batey (and soooo sweet), receives one plumpynut a day at the clinic, but is given two more to take home, and they found out that he was being forced to sell them. These families are so desperate. So far I’ve mostly seen happy, although dirty, children excited to meet us. But I’m sure as I get to know their families and home situation, their stories will prove much more complex.

On Saturday we accompanied Mary Alice on a grocery store run, and we visited some malls in the city. First of all, let’s talk about the ride there. Mary Alice pointed out all of the street wires (rampant) and how people hot wire the street electricity to bring it into their homes. I saw how dangerous this was when directly in front of our bus a live wire started going CRAZY. At first I just heard loud noises and saw people running—I thought it was a shooting! Either way, very dangerous. We ended up visiting a couple malls and it was such a shock. We saw tons of white people (it felt strange not standing out) and lots of American stores. It was weird being only an hour away from the batey (and much closer if it weren’t for the horrendous traffic) and yet WORLDS removed. It was nice to get out (and I got frozen yogurt for 50 pesos!), but I am so grateful for where I am living and the side of the Dominican Republic that I am experiencing.

Sorry this was so long--we had a free day today and I'm trying to communicate as much as possible before school starts, because when it does (Monday, Aug. 24) I'm going to be a lot busier! Much love...