Bacumí

My ten days in the campo, Bacumí was a very different experience than the one that I had in Gajo de la Yuca. First of all, this campo was surrounded by rice fields and was a down the road from a larger town, so many of the families had a lot more resources avaiable than the last campo. My family was very different as well considering that my siblings were closer to my age and my family had electricity and water available when they wanted it. The type and amount of work that we did was nothing like the last campo which was a hard adjustment for many members of our group.

My family was just as welcoming as my other family in the last campo. I had a mother, father and 2 sisters and a brother. My mom worked at home just like all of the other mothers in the campo. The women's job was to clean house and cook. Sometimes women in the campos will work in a local town if the husband is unable to, or they will have a side job that does not take away from their household duties. My brother was 19 and he worked in the rice fields. I saw him no more than 5 times because he would leave early in the morning so he could get to the fields when the sun rose and then he would come home late and head straight to bed. One of my sister's was 18 and she is going to college in a town 30 minutes away. She is about as typical a 18 year old could get in a campo. She surprisingly enough had a phone with texting and was constantly on it because she has a boyfriend who lives in Spain. I saw her a lot, but not too often because she was either at school, on the phone or at a friend's house or planning events for the youth group that she was a part of. My other sister is 16 and married. Yes, you read that correctly. She got married at 14 and has been living with her husband ever since. He is 24 years old and is currently not working because he was injured in a motorcycle accident in the spring. She still goes to school, but this is her last year because she is finishing up high school and has decided to not go to college. Surprisingly enough, they seem in love and not as if it was a forced marriage. But, out of every sibling, I saw her the most, even though she lived in a different house. Every night I would go to her house and play pool, and some consider me a professional now. My dad actually owned plantain fields and worked on those fields each day. Our house had electricity and a TV and a fridge and a generator. This was so weird for me because at the last campo, we didn't have electricity often and TV once or twice and no fridge.


Our latrine building group with our first completed latrine and its proud new owner.

During this campo, we built latrines, laid down cement floors and did some house repairs. We built 10 latrines, laid down 3 cement floors and worked on 5 houses. Latrine building is actually a very simple job. We nailed some wood together to make a square that would be the latrine, then we laid down cement and put in the concrete toilet. We would come back later and build the walls and roof. I found out that I am actually very good at mixing cement mix with the dirt and water in preparation for the cement laying. I also realized that if I cannot get a job in the hospital, then I will go work for a construction company and hammer nails into the sides of buildings. That was my job with the latrines. I would mix the cement and then I would nail up the aluminum walls of the latrine. For the cement laying in the houses, I also helped with mixing the cement powder, dirt and water with some of the other students while other students laid down the cement in the houses.


Me with my campo dad and his plantains.

After laying down the cement floors and building the latrines, we helped fix some houses. We actually did a lot of sitting around while the local men from the campo did all of the repairs. That was fine with me because I was able to sit around with the rest of the group and we bonded a lot and learned a lot about each other. I also was able to hand out with the little kids from the campo. The little kids followed us everywhere and were always calling out our names, holding our hands and carrying our water bottles as we walked from work site to work site. The house repairs did not go too well, so it ended up being good that we were not too involved in the repairs because we would have felt awful if some of the mistakes made were our faults. The first house that we helped out on was a complete mess. We started taking some of the wood off of the house (it was mainly made out of wood with the first foot or two being concrete blocks), but we realized that the house was infested with termites. The termites had eaten about 60% of the house. After looking around the property, the locals pointed out the trees that had the termite colonies. The ladies' home and property was termite central and there was no way to fix it because the termites are going to come back it we get chemicals to kill them and we were just replacing the wooden boards with new ones because it is a cheap resource to use. After taking some of the boards out, all of the sudden the house just collapsed. The support structures that were supposed to be holding the house up just collapsed bringing down the sides and the roof with it. Thankfully most of their belongings were out of the house. Only her bed was left and we got it out without it being destroyed. The workers definitely learned how to support the rest of the houses without them falling down.


This is one of the pieces of wood that was destroyed by the termites.

There were some health problems in this campo that we noticed from day one. There were quite a few members of the community (even children) who had eye problems. There were people with lazy eyes and many people who were cross eyed. These problems happened before the child was born. These deformities are because of all of the pesticides from the rice fields. The fields border the campo and they run off into the river and streams that the kids play in, the families sometimes bathe in and the women do the laundry in. Another health problem that quickly became evident during our time with all of the kids was the infections. Many kids had scrapes and cuts on their legs and feet and since they walked around barefoot, these injuries were infected and there maggots that were living inside of the cuts. These kids had so many scars on their legs and feet from such cuts that we saw and the kids were going to have so many more scars because there is no way to stop all of the infections. The kids are going to keep getting infections because they always are going to be in the dirty rivers, walking down the street barefoot and wearing sandals. Their feet are never covered by socks or closed toed shoes.


I am holding a roosted that is used in rooster fighting events.

This campo was very different from the last campo. I connected with my family a lot more than the other campo. It was a very welcoming community and my group was sad to leave, but we will return for a day during our final week here in the Dominican Republic.