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.

Where does the time go?

This past month has just flown by and it is a scary thought that in 40 days I will be gone from this beautiful and welcoming country and back home in the frozen tundra I like to call home. On Saturday, November 13, I will be going to my second campo, Bucami for 10 days to build latrines and cement floors in the houses in the community of 175 families. This campo will be a different experience from the first campo experience. In the first campo there were only about 30 to 40 families and we were in the mountains. This campo is not in the mountains, but settled in the fields south of Santiago. I am excited and not as nervous as last time because I know what to expect this time around.

Since I never got around to updating the blog after my first campo experience, this one will be dedicated to everything that I have been up to for the past month.

After the first campo, we had fall break and I went with 3 other students to the Samaná Peninsula for the week. We first stopped in Las Galeras for a couple of days. We stayed in a little bungalow about 2.5 km from the beach and town that we walked each day. This town is a very small one and it is considered not a very touristy place, which was awesome! I loved this town, but it might have to do with what we did during our time there. The first day we climbed and walked across these jagged rocks for about an hour to get to Playa Rincón which is considered one of the prettiest beaches in the Dominican Republic and even in the world. On our hike to the beach, a dog led us the whole way without any hesitance. This dog just started following us and when we would stop to figure out where we were going, the dog would continue walking, so we decided to just follow the dog, and eventually we found the beach. We were one of the only people on the beach for the day, which was perfect! You could walk out for about ½ mile while still walking on the sea floor and the water was crystal clear.


The next day we woke up at 4:30 in the morning and walked for an hour and a half to the top of the local mountain, El Firmamento to see the sunrise. This was not the easiest task though. First of all, it started pouring down rain for about half an hour and we did not know where we were going. We only had a drawn map from the hotel owner and the road to follow in the dark. Eventually we found it after treading through fields and past cows through mud and up slippery hills. Through the pain and the exhaustion, it was definitely worth it and one of the best things I have done here so far. The mountain had a 360 degree view of the whole peninsula (Las Galeras is a peninsula of the Samaná Peninsula). After watching the sunset and eating our breakfast, we fell asleep on the ground for an hour and then started our walk back down to the bottom.



On Wednesday, we left for Las Terrenas, which is another town in the Samaná Peninsula. This is a very touristy town and highly populated with Europeans. We got there with nowhere to stay and went into the tourist office and the lady told us of a little place down the road. We stayed in another little bungalow owned by a French woman, who was able to speak some Spanish. The Spanish was French-Spanish so that was definitely something that I have never heard before and it was surprisingly difficult to understand. In Las Terrenas we went to a beach called Playa Bonita, which definitely lived up to its name. Once again, we were one of the only people on the beach. The next day we went to the local beach and then went to a concert on the beach the last night we were there.


A couple of weekends ago, I went to a place called 27 Charcos (27charcos.com – watch the video to get an idea of the experience that I had) and jumped off of 27 waterfalls. It was extremely exhilarating and I would not histate to do it again! We hiked up to the waterfalls and climbed up rocks and we would crawl up little crevices to get to the other waterfalls sometimes the tour guide would grab our hands and fling us up to the next part of the waterfall. We jumped and slid down the rocks into pools of water and one of the jumps was even 40 feet high! I loved everything about it and would recommend it to other Dominican Republic travelers!

Last weekend we went to Jarabacoa and went to a little retreat center. We swam in the pool, ate a typical Dominican lunch and then rode horses to a waterfall and hung out at the waterfall for a while. The horseback riding was definitely different than the US riding. The saddles are very basic and the people in charge do not adjust your stirrups so on one horse my stirrups were two different lengths and sizes. It was fun to ride the horses at whatever speed I wanted though. Most of the time my horse would walk very slowly, but every once in a while he would start galloping, which I had to slow him down because my saddle was not on very securely so it would start sliding down the side, which was definitely frightening! In order to get to this waterfall, we had to cross 2 rivers and go up and down steep hills, so it was awesome that we were able to get off of the trails and do something different and be free to roam.


On a more serious note, I am sure that everyone reading this is aware of the current situation in Haiti. First off, a couple weeks ago, there was a cholera outbreak in Haiti. Because of this outbreak, the borders that separate Haiti and the Dominican Republic have been closed so the outbreak does not spread into the Dominican Republic. I am sure that it is also because the hospitals here in the DR do not want to have a massive increase in the number of patients. Because of the outbreak, we have had to postpone our weekend trip to Dajabón, which is a border city in the north of the Dominican Republic. The main reason that we go to Dajabón is to see the international market that is held in the city a couple of times a week. Our supervisors decided to not have us go, because the main reason that we go is to see the market with all of the Haitians selling their goods. But, since the market is closed, there is not much else we would do. We are hoping to go at a later date, because it would still be an amazing experience to be able to see the bridge that the Haitians cross over each day and to see Haiti from a distance.

Secondly, Haiti was just hit by Hurrican Tómas this past weekend. Originally it was supposed to hit the whole Hispaniola Island (Dominican Republic and Haiti), but it eventually moved west and hit only the western edge of Haiti. The border is closed still not just for the cholera outbreak, but for the hurricane as well. Even though the country did not get the powerful winds that they were planning on getting, they still got all of the rain. Even here in Santiago, with us being surrounded by mountains, we had constant rain from Tuesday to Saturday. The officials are worried that with the movement of all the refuge camps in Haiti and the new pools of rainwater, that the cholera outbreak will increase and spread rapidly. We are just thankful here that Haiti was not hit worse than it was. Haiti has had a rough year with the earthquake in January, the cholera outbreak and then the hurricane.

------New post to appear after Thanksgiving