Recalling the Dominican Republic

The world is filled with ironies.  Every time I feel inspired to write by some event, circumstance or emotion, I’m too busy being wrapped up in that thing, or I’m too mentally drained by it, to actually sit down and type.  And then, when I actually have free time to write, I lack inspiration. 

At the moment, I’d like to say something about the Dominican Republic and my time there.  I’d like to write about the thick and beautiful greenery that billowed up from below the airplane as we descended into Santo Domingo on the way in.  I’d like to tell you about the warm evenings, when the mosquitoes would appear and begin biting at almost exactly the same time every day.  And that despite that, I loved the hot days followed by heavy, warm rain and thunder and lightning.

I’d like to say something about each of the slums we visited, and how there was such a marked difference between the physical appearance of those places and the rest of the city.  About how people shouldn’t have to live in wood-and-sheet metal shanties, with piss running through the muddy streets around them, simply because their parents were born on the wrong side of the island or because the sugarcane plantation owners could make a few extra pesos by letting someone else do the work.  I’d like to get a little angry at the Dominican government leaders, who deny citizenship to people of Haitian descent who were born in those slums, simply because their parents or grandparents overstayed their welcome. 

I’d like to talk about how glad I am that at least some of the people there aren’t willing to just let that kind of injustice go.  And that several of the kids from those slums are aware of the ways in which those people have helped them, and they see the continued need around them, and want to help others.  I’d like to say that, despite the depressing conditions of those slums, seeing that small ripple effect begin to grow gives me a reason to be at least a tiny bit optimistic. 

I’d like to say all of that, and say it well.  With flourishes and moving language and insightful observations and humor, laid out in a page full of engaging prose.  But unfortunately I’m two weeks removed from the Dominican Republic and I simply cannot muster the inspiration.  At least not until I sit and think for a while about all those banana trees, sugarcane spears, friendly faces, the bright sun overhead .... 

Haiti in Photos

As I mentioned before, I didn't take many photos of the Dominican Republic and Haiti, since I had professional and semi-pro photographers with me and I was focused on other responsibilities.  Here though, are some of my favorite shots from the few I took during my three short days in Haiti.

One of many tent cities.

Back of a bus.

At the Respire site, where a school is being built by Americans and Haitians.

The foundation of the Respire school. 

The market set up by the Venezuelans (or the Hugo Chavez Market, as I like to call it). 

Mountains of used clothes, mostly donated from other countries. 

Underwear for sale in Port-au-Prince. 

View from one of the less-shabby neighborhoods.

A makeshift bus?

Filth in the canals.

A common sight.

Haiti in Hindsight

It turns out I'd built up my apprehensions about Haiti more than I’d needed to.  Don't get me wrong, Haiti is in a bad way.  But my anxiousness about going there was unnecessary.  The poverty and filth was similar to the kinds I've seen in other underdeveloped countries.  It was just broader in Haiti.  We saw it everywhere.  When we entered the country from the Dominican Republic, we did so on a dirt road.  The main highway leading west into Port-au-Prince – the Haitian interstate, as I called it – was barely wide enough for two cars, had no lines painted on it, and was speckled with holes, ruts, and bumps.  

In Port-au-Prince, so much still lay in disrepair.  The unemployment number I’ve heard quoted for the country as a whole is 80 percent.  Thousands of men and women in the city and in Gresier, the suburb where we stayed, shuffled through the streets or sat near their houses and tents with nothing to do, while scores of construction projects remained unfinished or not yet started.  The government certainly can’t afford to pay for the public works that are needed, and the international aid organizations that crowd the country aren’t hiring.  The Haitian economy was ailing long before the earthquake, and now it’s nearly dead.  Is there such thing as an economic defibrillator?  Our host, Daniel, asked what I thought.  I didn’t know what to tell him.  Set up a protectionist economy, to encourage local businesses?  I don’t know.  Ask someone else. 

In addition to the completely jobless, thousands more people displayed fruits, vegetables, DVDs, and clothes, enormous heaps of clothes, all along the sidewalks in town.  These people are counted among the unemployed, because this type of informal-sector hawking cannot be relied upon for income.  “In Haiti, there are more vendors than buyers,” said Daniel. 

Like other poverty-stricken cities, though, there were areas where systems and people were working.  Port-au-Prince is not all tent cities, potholes, rebar, and broken cinderblock.  It has a handful of clean, modern shopping centers and even a few restaurants.  Up on the hill, in Pétionville, the wealthy still have their comfortable houses.  Now and again, I even saw men dressed in suits.  Still, the poverty and brokenness tend to blot out the bright spots.  The giant market by the port, set up with help from the Venezuelan government, is a filthy mess of used clothing and discarded banana branches.  The city’s canals are filled with Styrofoam, plastic bottles, and sludge.  Hundreds of thousands of people still live in tent cities.  The UN and most of the other aid organizations that seem to be around every corner are only trying to patch up the country’s damages, not get to the root causes of poverty. 

After two days of seeing so much darkness in Haiti, I was feeling like the whole place should be scrapped and started over.  Then a couple of patches of light started to shine through.  Our hosts showed us a site where a school was being built by a nonprofit organization set up by an ambitious 24-year-old Louisiana girl who partnered with locals in the endeavor.  Later, I was encouraged even more when we visited with the board of directors for the organization I work for.  I was inspired to meet and hear optimistic words from this group of Haitian leaders who are sacrificing time and energy to set up and oversee the development of long-term initiatives that do more than merely put a Band-Aid on Haiti’s troubles.  I couldn’t stop their enthusiasm from rubbing off on me at least a little bit.

I know I’m biased, but I really do think my employers have set things up in the best way possible to bring about lasting improvement.  The only discouraging thing is that it will probably take a generation or two before any substantial change is visible.  The plan in Haiti, as it has been in the other countries where we’re more established, is to start small, by educating children and ensuring them a positive upbringing by providing food, medical care, and other necessities.  The hope – and we’re starting to see this become a reality in the Dominican Republic, where we’ve been working for over a decade – is that these kids will grow up to become doctors, teachers, etc., who find gainful employment and give back to their communities to help future generations out of poverty.  Maybe then, 10, 20, 30 years down the road, Haiti will have a crop of new leaders who can employ and educate others, creating a positive sort of domino effect.  It’s a slow process, but long-term change always is. 

Our First Glimpses of Haiti

I've been terrible about taking photos on this trip.  My role here is to organize things, write, edit, and just plain see what's going on on this island.  I have other people in my group who are much better at taking photos, and who are assigned to do so.  So I've been relying on them to capture the images of this trip.  I tried to be better about taking photos in Haiti, but I mostly ended up taking some videos and stills from our van as we rode through the streets of Port-au-Prince.  Here are my first few images from Haiti.

The spot where our Haitian hosts' van broke down, along the main road into Haiti from the Dominican crossing at Jimani.

Daniel, one of our Haitian hosts, trying to figure out what's wrong with his van.  The lake here continues to encroach on the highway, and work crews are constantly dumping new dirt to keep the water from flowing over the road.

Outskirts of Port-au-Prince.

Rush hour traffic in Port-au-Prince.

Eating Ants

I may have eaten a couple of ants today.  There’s really no way of knowing for sure. 

Ants seem to have a presence in every room in every building on this island.  They’re the tiny little sugar ants that form thin lines in your kitchen sometimes, when you spill juice and forget to clean it up.  Here in the Dominican Republic and Haiti, they march along the walls of the bathrooms, kitchens, bedrooms, and anywhere else you can imagine.  You see them outside too, along the edge of the patio or pool, filing one after the other in perfect formation, on a mission to bring crumbs, dead bees or flies back to a crack in the concrete, where their queen is surely waiting. 

Today a few unfortunate little soldiers got stuck in the peanut butter and died there.  I discovered their bodies when I went to make a sandwich.  I tried to scoop out as many of them as I could before spreading the peanut butter on my bread, but there’s really no way to be sure I got them all. 

If I did indeed eat some ants, it wouldn’t be the worst thing I’ve eaten on this trip.  Two days ago, in Port-au-Prince, we stopped at a fast food place that serves white people food like hamburgers and French fries.  Frankly, I enjoy eating the local cuisine when I travel.  And a lot of times, a foreign attempt on an American classic like the hamburger misses the mark. 

I chose my order carefully.  I figured the quality of Haitian beef couldn’t be all that great, so I ordered the dish I thought would be the most difficult to foul up: chicken nuggets.  Boy was I surprised.  But maybe I shouldn’t have been.  One of our hosts had previously informed us that because North Americans eat so much more white meat than dark meat, countries like Haiti take a lot of the leg and thigh leftovers.  But it wasn’t the dark meat that killed my appetite.  It was the fact that they were so processed and pressed into spongy little patties and then deep fried in oil that looked like it hadn’t been changed in a week or more.  The fries didn’t help either.  They could’ve been good, if they’d had about half as much salt.  

All this is not to say I haven’t eaten well here on Hispaniola.  In fact, the home cooking of our hosts has been delicious.  And I’m incredibly thankful for that, especially considering what millions of people here eat.  Or don’t eat, for that matter.  We’re lucky to have plenty of peanut butter and chicken and other varieties of foods, whether they include ants or not. 

Photos From the Dominican Republic, Part 1

Flags from the Dominican Republic, USA, Uganda and Malawi at the Children of the Nations office in the DR.

The Children of the Nations office where my Dominican counterparts work, in Barahona, Dominican Republic.

Perla, the little girl I sponsor (ensure her school fees are paid, etc.) in the community of Don Bosco, a Dominican slum in the city of Barahona.

Taking a drink from the roadside spigot in the Dominican slum of Don Bosco.

Charinson, the first university graduate from the batey (Haitian slum) of Algodon, where Children of the Nations built its first school in Barahona, Dominican Republic.

Estrella, a little girl from the Dominican slum of Don Bosco.

Some of Estrella's family.

That fruit must be sour.

Another Thought on Haiti

Something I realized as I wrote my previous post is that my nerves always calm down sooner or later, and I’ve become very comfortable in poor countries.  After that first trip to Mexico, which lasted two weeks, I returned the following summer for eight weeks.  I got used to living in a cabin in the hills outside Ensenada, where I would hear mice scurrying along the rafters above my bunk.  Even now, it’s hard to imagine being OK with that.  But I managed, just like I did in other ways, and just like I’ll have to do during my four days in Haiti.

I also got used to eating the local food in Mexico, whether it was at a restaurant or a taco stand.  But I remained vigilant with the water, always using the bottled stuff to brush my teeth.  I ventured out of my comfort zone by going there in the first place, and it paid off.  I love Mexico now.  I’ve been back on short visits a handful of times, and I always enjoy it.  I don’t feel uncomfortable in the least when I’m there. 

This week, in the Dominican Republic, the only things bugging me are the mosquitoes and the heat.  Over the past few days, we’ve spent a significant amount of time in the slums on the outskirts of the city, where my employers have schools.  I haven’t felt out of place or uneasy.  I think part of the reason is that I’m used to being in areas like this.  And another big part is the people I’m with.  The local staff members are in these slums daily, and the Americans with me are just as accustomed to seeing this kind of deep poverty as I am, if not more so.  Everyone is surprisingly nonplussed by the sight of palm wood and sheet metal shanties with naked toddlers running around in front of them, through rutted dirt roads strewn with trash and other, more fluid types of waste. 

Maybe part of it, too, is that the families who live in these conditions know our organization is there to help, and so they’re friendly toward us.  I’ll try and post photos of some of the folks I’ve met.  But right now, I need sleep.

Preparing for Haiti

Tomorrow I go to Haiti.  I’ve been looking forward to it for a while, but now that it’s upon me, I’m nervous.  I tend to get like that before trips that I know will stretch me.  And usually those are trips to very poor countries. 

The first time I went to Mexico, I was excited but afraid of everything.  When we drove through downtown Ensenada that night, on our way to the camp we were staying at in the hills outside of the city, I was afraid to eat the food at Burger King.  Yes, Burger King.  Not some street-side taco stand, but a reputable, international restaurant chain.  My stomach was in knots that only untied slowly, over the course of a few days.

Before I went to Bolivia, I was similarly anxious.  I had to visit the doctor in Argentina, where I was living at the time, and get a tetanus shot, a hepatitis shot, and a yellow fever vaccination.  It all seemed like a big deal.  I was nervous about eating the food in Bolivia, nervous about accidentally contracting something and ending up in a hospital or wrapped around a toilet.  And yet, the only place I got sick during my seven months in South America that year was in Argentina, one of the wealthiest, most comfortable countries on the continent.  I guess that’s what I get for trusting the quality of meat at “the end of the world” in Tierra del Fuego.

Now, like the first time I went to Mexico and the first time I went to Bolivia, I’m going to a country that’s poorer than any other I’ve been to.  “The poorest country in the Western Hemisphere,” is the oft-quoted phrase that follows Haiti like a voodoo curse.  I’m uneasy any time I’m entering a place that’s poorer than any other I’ve been to.  Bolivia is still holds the title of the poorest place I’ve been.  But after tomorrow, that label will belong to Haiti. 

I talked briefly with Mark—one of the people joining me for the trip—about my nervousness.  And it helped.  Just like writing this helps.  Now, maybe the only thing I really have to dread is the 4+ hour drive from here in the Dominican Republic to Gressier, just west of Port-au-Prince. 

In the Air Again

Here I am, back on a plane, and I’m reminded off all the things I love and hate about air travel.  It’s a red-eye flight with a 10:35 departure from SeaTac, heading to Newark.  I’ve got plenty of time to muse, which brings up the first thing I hate about the red-eye flight in particular: my difficulty sleeping on airplanes.  But let’s start with something more positive: the peacefulness of the red-eye.

On this flight, as on most of the other overnighters I’ve been on, it’s quiet.  No crying children, no loud talkers, the drink cart passed once, almost silently, and I was able to use the bathroom without waiting in line.  Which reminds me of something else I hate: airplane bathrooms.  I’m skinny and even I have trouble turning around in those places.  I can only imagine the tiny corner of hell the 350-pound guy across the aisle walks into when he enters that miniscule closet.

But let’s continue with the positive points again.  Tonight I lucked out enough to get an entire row to myself, so I don’t have to worry about anyone crawling past me to take a leak or grab something from the overhead.  And who knows, maybe I’ll be able to stretch out and catch a few winks later.  In the meantime, I’ll sit here and write while listening to my iPod.  Which are two more things I love.  

I’ve had the same songs on my iPod for over a year.  That’s lazy and pathetic, I know.  I’ve had plenty of time to change my lineup—I just haven’t gotten around to it.  But right now, that’s OK with me.  Because now, whenever I’m on an airplane and I turn on my iPod, I’m reminded of the nine weeks I spent on the road in the southern United States and Europe last fall.  At the moment, I’m making my way through my collection of The Black Keys, just as I did on so many airplanes and buses a year ago.  I already listened to Death in Vegas’ “Scorpio Rising,” just as I did on that wobbly train from Dallas to Austin last September.  I can never get enough of Liam Gallagher’s voice, and that song has become a ubiquitous travel companion, along with a handful of Liam’s better-known Oasis hits. 

Another indispensable album is Cornershop’s When I Was Born for the 7^th Time, which puts me back on that train platform in Bilbao, waiting to ride from my hotel into the center of town.  Later tonight, or perhaps on my connecting flight from Newark to Santo Domingo, I’ll probably listen to some Bishop Allen.  “Flight 180” is a tough song to do without when you’re on a plane, after all.  So are a pair of songs from the Foo Fighters’ There is Nothing Left to Lose album: “Next Year” and “M.I.A.”  Which reminds me, I’d love to hear “Paper Planes” right now, but unfortunately it’s not on my playlist. 

These songs and others are comforting when I’m on the road.  They’re the voices of old familiar friends.  They remind me of the trips I’ve taken and the sites I’ve seen, because they’ve been around for so many of them. 

As I said earlier, I’m also glad for the chance to write during this flight.  I’ve done that now, so I’ll move on to something else enjoyable: reading.  Maybe when I’m halfway through the next chapter, I’ll luck out again and sleep will seize me for long enough to make tomorrow bearable.