El Batey

My first day Verona takes me to visit the school where pre-kinder through grade 8 stand to chorus “buenas tardes” each time we enter a classroom to introduce me to the teachers. Some classes applaud when they hear I’ll work with them on letters to their sponsors and the little ones crowd me with hugs. Later we stroll through the dirt paths of the village lined with brightly painted leaning wooden houses and a few equally bright concrete ones. People are equally warm here, inviting me to come anytime into their small front rooms cramped with sets of plastic covered formal furniture. Spanish is mixed with kreyol as nearly everyone here is of Haitian decent though many have been in the Dominican for generations. Because we are not officially hooked up to the power lines, electricity comes in 6 hour bursts which are sometimes (but not always) predictable I am told. Cows, chickens, goats, dogs and a horse are joined in the street by kids who have school in the morning shift playing in oversized t-shirts and men in plastic chairs playing dominos.

(My yard/barnyard)

Saturday is independence day as well as carnival but the festivities are tempered as there have been 3 tragic deaths in the last week. There are however, assemblies at school on Friday, so I attend the one in Bombita in the morning and then visit La Hoya, where COPA has its other school in the afternoon. La Hoya look more like other Dominican towns with mostly concrete houses set back from the road. Here too the mood is sedated because there has been an accident while paving the roads that injured a man.

(My little house)

Saturday is the COPA staff day to shop in Barahona but before picking up vegetables in the market we stop by a refugee center where Haitians too ill to return to Haiti yet stay as they recover from treatment in Dominican hospitals. Many have casts of some kind on one or more limbs but seem in good enough spirits, especially as we help a girl who has been paralyzed from the waist down into a wheelchair for the first time. She has told me that she lost her immediate family and about how she practices English and how many hundreds of friends from around the world she has on Hi5 (a social networking website).

After an intense hour we drive into Barahona for our groceries then on to a small hotel on the beach where we eat lunch and then relax in the sun for the afternoon. Connie, the director who lives in La Hoya, and Verona nap while I take some time to get to know Amy, the health advisor who manages the clinics in both Bombita and La Hoya. At the end of the day Verona and I drop her and Connie in La Hoya and return to Bombita. We wander in the village a bit before turning in and I meet dozens more people whose names I will not remember. They all invite me to church on Sunday as that is the principal entertainment in the batey. There are 3 small churches, each with services nearly every night full of music and dancing.

On Sunday I do laundry and cook before joining Verona in a stroll into the village. We visit 2 girls who have had their tonsils out by a visiting medical team last week, watch silly video clips with the group of young guys who make up the church bands, then walk with them past people of all ages bathing in the canal and into the fields to cut some sugar cane. Walking back with our snack, I am made fun of for how slowly I chew through the long, sweet stick. Later we go to the joint church service where the children from all 3 churches perform dances to upbeat hymns.

Monday is my first day of work officially but it starts off with a scooter lesson. Guillermo, the maintenance guy who will be my right hand man sits behind me at first then lets me ride on my own as a bump up and down the length of the village avoiding roosters and naked children running across the road and practice shifting. A few more rounds and then I’ll be ready to ride on the highway!