Pastel hints of sunrise seeped into winter sky, revealing the familiar banks of the river as we drove toward our monthly reunion with facilitators. The faraway black figure of a man emerged from the trees carrying a baby bundled in fleece as he picked his way, carefully yet determinedly, over the rocks, heading in the direction of the town. As we rounded the gravel curves of the path more figures appeared on foot, skirting the truck. “What are they doing out here?” I asked Yennis. “They have to travel hidden and they have no transportation so they have to walk to work I suppose.”
***
The plainclothes authorities boarded the bus and scanned the passengers, I felt the heat of their stares, or maybe it was the uncomfortable embarrassment burning in my belly as they signaled to see the cedulas of certain passengers for who knows what kind of information, glancing over the laminated identification card that some passengers had taken to wearing on lanyards around their neck for easy access when singled out repeatedly. I wondered how they were trained for such an assignment, these men with “G-2” loudly embroidered on their caps; if they had studied the profiles of hundreds of Haitians until they could pick them out efficiently from a cluster of passengers bound for the capital from Tamayo while the others sat, oppressed into a very un-Dominican like silence, until the comadante finished, or was paid to finish, one of several brief checks along the highway from the southern provinces to the capital, meant to flush the cholera and it’s loathed hosts, out of the DR. The amiable culture however permitted the passengers to rebound quickly from the confrontation—buying cakes, candies and cassava bread from the vendors who mounted bus and murmuring about the officers after their departure.
***
Having several other programs to mount and only one pickup to carry us through the mountain passes, my project partners divided and conquered. “I’m staying here to do the evaluation” Yennis told me, taking off her jacket and backpack to set them on one of the ubiquitous plastic chairs that was settled next to a plastic ponchera full of newborn piglets. “And I’ll go on to the next?” I asked tentatively, stepping down from the truck to embrace one of my facilitators who was surrounded by her brood of children and looked to be carrying yet another in her belly. I knew the peck on the cheek pleased her, but she was one of the many women of the campo whose gorgeously full, brown features had been hardened to a permanent frown from hard work and squinting into the southern sun. I was nervous going alone but like many experiences here, I used momentum to sling myself back up in the pickup’s cab before thoughts of doubt could filter in. Edy pulled the truck up to a shade tree where a cluster of people watched the powerful truck emblazoned with the foundation logo with hazy afternoon interest. Edy greeted those seated and I followed suit, grasping hands and kissing the cheeks of women and men. Edy accepted the seat they offered and put his feet up on a bench as I finally realized not only were these not the people we were looking for, but that had he ever met them in his life. Have you all seen “Richard, Dulce and Maria?” Edy wanted to know. “Oh we’ll find them,” one woman assured me, while simultaneously turning to shout at a child hanging around the cluster of houses lining the dusty path—“SHE WANTS TO SEE RICHARD—GO GET HIM.” Edy got up from his seat, having to leave to another activity and asked me if I would be alright waiting here alone. “Of course,” I assured him. Why would I not want to wait under a pleasant shade tree in a mountain town called “Beautiful View” with 6 newly made Dominican family members? “Treat her like the queen she is,” Edy warned—“and if I hear otherwise I’m coming after all of you, you understand?” “Of course, we’ll make sure she feels at home” they all chimed in. After several minutes of sitting in silence, I began to chat with a woman affectionately named Ura, (like all Dominicans, she was known by her apodo) who, as providence had it, happened to be a literacy participant in our program. “I want to continue studying, I always tell people how important to keep learning and I’m interested in business too, I was told that the foundation gives loans to small businesses…” She continued about how she was literacy advocate in the community and I sat dumbfounded. How are these people created? Are they born like this? How can a woman who believes so much in education fail to learn how to read and write? Millions of questions materialized in my mind as every time I meet a Dominican in my project area and depending on my comfort level and time limit, I probe for the hidden keys to development. I thanked her as best I knew how for what she had done for her fellow community members and told her I hoped she would keep up the good work as Richard appeared to lead me away from my group of friends—“A pleasure to meet you!” I called over my shoulder as I followed the lanky boy. Richard is a marvel. Through my monthly training sessions and his almost religious participation in every single foundation program for which he qualifies, I’ve come to admire him as one of the strongest youths, one of the strongest people, I have ever met. Being left without his father and having a mother that worked to keep them fed, he worked as he raised his baby sister from an infant. The dark skin of his tall, lean frame is mottled with pink pock marks and rough patches that is just one of the differences he claims has made him special. He finished his education up till eighth grade but his community has no high school. Not being able or willing to leave their communities like so many other young people had, he, Dulce and Maria decided to stay in Buena Vista, without their diplomas, waiting for someone to recognize their request to bring the required education to the community. Over his impeccably clean t-shirt that he wore tucked into black, belted slacks he wore a sunshine yellow crucifix that he himself had strung in a craft class he had taken through the foundation. He embraced me and I was left smelling strongly of his clean, cologne scent. We walked toward the primary school, where the three young people imparted literacy courses to community members. I sat in a circle as we waited for people to arrive. As the timid women and youth filled the classroom I watched the three facilitators work together to do the literacy work as well as anyone could—lovingly and patiently. I made tons of notes, knowing that if I shared them over lunch at the next training that their young, open minds and their attitudes toward community service would take the comments and run with them. They had wonderful planning tools (heck, I was overjoyed that they did ANY planning), and I thanked the lord for yet more wonderful facilitators in my program. I have come into contact with so many amazing, kind Dominicans and many of them I have encountered through the foundation, where I know I have come for a reason.
***
I mounted my second carro of the night as the sun abandoned the busiest street in Santo Domingo and scooted till my body was plastered against the door of the car’s right-hand side, using the handle on the roof for leverage as the others quickly filled in every inch of the rest of the cab. A large bald man who sat to my left squabbled with the spitfire, waif of a doña who occupied the third seat about who would have to be the one to perch forward on the edge to allow the fourth fare to squeeze into the back of the dented Toyota’s compact back seat. After being defeated by her impossible and illogical stubbornness (even the gringa knows that the third person, not to mention the skinniest, should volunteer to move forward!) the bulky man almost comically inched toward the front of the car as much as humanly possible as a lanky youth in a baseball cap, texting on his Blackberry, filled in the opposite window seat. After the large man had settled himself against our legs, his attention shifted to me—“Lower your bag and grip it tight—this area is dangerous didn’t you know that? This street especially.” I had my laden backpack with me as I crossed the city, a habit developed from having to trek for an hour from the foundation to my barrio and having to be prepared for work, travel, and emergencies in whatever circumstances I find myself in around the country or in the unpredictable and sprawling cement city. I glower inwardly when Dominican strangers think I need their advice but luckily I was smart enough to heed him. We heard a dull “thunk” and by the time anyone could identify the source of the sound a thief had slammed the teen’s hand against the car’s exterior, ripping the Blackberry out of it. The poor youth had to listen to the two in the center lecture him the entire way home about how “Did you hear what I was just telling her?!” The big man asks, jerking his thumb rabidly in my direction “Wow!—Haven’t you taken this route before? You should know better—you have to call customer service right away” and from the crazy doña —“that’s exactly why I don’t want one of those expensive cell phones, for what?—So someone will kill me to take it??! Just buy me one of those cheap ones that just make calls, that’s what I told him…There’s rampant delinquency nowadays, people just act up and have no respect—before, you knew all your neighbors and everything was fine, but now, huh! There’s these three tigueres that live by my building and I don’t want anything to do with them…” But my mind was racing with wonder at the close call, how it was not the first nor even the fifth time that I have felt cared for, as if someone was watching my actions here, intervening….
***
The all volunteer conference had just ended and I was relieved to be leaving the tropically humid training center, its grounds crammed with 250 bodies. As I made my way up the familiar slope up to the freeway I heard a voice behind me “Are you Natasha?” A volunteer asked hesitantly, introducing herself as a business volunteer. “I was in the east for patronales and a Dominican boy came up to me and asked if I was a volunteer. He asked me if I knew you and said that a year ago you guys had worked on a movie project together and about how much fun it was. He said he’s doing junior UN activities now, he remembered your guys’ names and everything. I just wanted to let you know.” I remember the movie project as our first real assignment in country, intended to acclimate us to working with Dominican youth, our group deciding to create a documentary on two iconic companies—one that made a famous soft drink and another that made traditional candy. The movie was fun, but it was the kids’ personalities that stuck out to me—wonderful kids who mysteriously defied the blame that Dominicans (and Americans) place on the younger generations for the problems plaguing the societies they claim were once utopian. They were kids who had a couple of people believe in the fact that they could be good, and one year later, they still remember people who spent time with them, who played a couple of team building games and gave them a chance to create.
***
I know I should write, but every time I set my fingers to the keys a nervousness surges into my stomach. What if I can’t get it quite right? What if I’ll never be a good enough writer to do justice to the experience? What if the beautiful brown people turn out like simplified caricatures? What if I keep tapping the backspace button on the sad parts and the unfurling moral ambiguities because they seem dramatic or the true revelations because they seem cliché?
A girl, riding in a pick-up truck all over this tiny island with frothy water-white rock beaches that crash wooded cliffs, who’s slanted sunlight make it look like the alien planets we’ll find but that also feels like the only world she’s ever known; the memories of the other only tricks of the mind, wisps of ghosts and acrid familiar scents and déjà vous. She finds spread before her a bounty of two-day connections with people who want to help their communities and beam with the sacred and un-dousable light of creation, regardless of the crushing weight of circumstance and those who would not give a care if nothing ever changed, and she feels an ardent love for these people, so much so that after trainings she wants to sleep for days because unknowingly she has given them everything—with encouraging smiles she wants to lift them up, the hundreds of them, over her head and carry them; with the transfer of her energy she wants to fill each one them up with the beauty of the education she received—and also unknowingly she is sad that this is all she can give them. And the flashes, oh the flashes of poeticism that do not fit logically but are the only things worth writing—like the present he brought her of a tiny rainbow colored mango that, when held reverently in the palm of the hand, revealed its one smooth, flat side like that of a river rock that she slid her finger over. Can he even be permitted in this narrative of selfless living? Can he survive the deep silent snows and the people who lock themselves away in their three bedroom, two bath homes with running, hot water and predictable electricity instead of walking tropical heat streets playing dominoes with their neighbors and speaking Spanish late into the night in voices that carry through the cratered streets and up over the palm fronds and into the mango tree where the bats flutter...
How will I give you the eyes to see what I’ve seen and continue to see—I, a strange twine of foreigner and resident who wants to be HOME, a representative, one who is called out as Chinese by strangers and resents it, one who sits and listens to Dominicans speak of America and Haitians and always regrets her hesitation to comment, a little girl of 25.
