Creativity now

Seeing what others don't see:
We look at a used plastic oil container and see junk. These boys see a potential toy. Why is it that we missed the toy, waiting to be brought forth?
Cultivating creativity:
Would these boys show the same interest in discarded plastic if they lived in an environment where they were surrounded with ready-made toys? Does the will to play, in the absence of prefabricated choices, count as the prime stimulus to the creative act?
Dead soccer ball:
Today we watched a group of children and one adult kick around a soccer ball that had no air in it. They played on a rocky road, with weeds on both sides. How come they did not complain at the outset and refuse to become engaged in playing with a ball that has no bounce to it?
Economic creativity:
One of the perverse obstacles to long term development of Paraiso is the lack of jobs for youth. And yet the community has the means and intelligence to create a host of new jobs! All it would take is for the local people to shift awareness away from products that must come into the area from Santo Domingo...to products that local entrepreneurs can create.
Fruit wine, instead of Barcelo rum:
The Paraiso countryside is excellent for producing oranges, grapefruit and lemons. The soil has wonderful drainage properties and thus the roots do not suffer from rot or diseases that thrive in soil with stagnant water. You would think that the people have long ago become accustomed to drinking fruit wine instead of importing products such as Bermudez or Barcelo rum or Presidente beer into the area. But the reality is the opposite.
Hardwood walls instead of Koury cement bricks:
In decades past, the Paraiso area benefited from projects to plant hardwood trees with certification for cutting, once they matured. Given that the Dominican Republic finds itself in an area with a long history of earthquakes, one would assume that people prefer to purchase the local wood products instead of cement bricks with questionable resiliency in the face of geological stresses. However the local production of hardwood does not develop, since people prefer to import the Koury bricks.
Prejudice against creating local jobs:
From creating toy racing cars to creating jobs for life: a transition which this part of the Dominican Republic urgently needs. But a major obstacle in the way of that development is the local distaste toward things or materials made in the valley. It is not that people deliberately choose to disfavor local products...but rather that a process of indoctrination is at work. For example, people are brainwashed into judging that Presidente beer is inherently better than a local sangria, when in fact, both are simply acquired tastes.
Looking ahead:
The capacity for creativity is there. (One only has to notice how the boys can become engaged in playing with material that others would immediately pitch into the waste bin.) The Spirit of the Lord of creativity is alive. May people become aware of the brainwashing!

Coffee children

Yes:

The children in our parish schools, as well as the immigrant children who have no access to education, do manual labor. When the children in El Ingenio respond to the question: "What do you do outside of school?" they respond with the following: pick coffee, pick guandules or pigeon peas, get water, get firewood, pick avocados, etc. They work to help their families.

Child labor:

Some organizations find ways to inflame the indignation of folks by decrying child labor. But when you talk with these children and note their reactions to working in the same plantation as their moms and dads, you'd have a hard time finding troubled looks or signs of "forced labor".

Coffee as a blessing:

This crop is labor intensive and thus provides opportunity for work in the mountains. If all the land owners had a crop like avocados growing on their properties, they could eliminate lots of "bateyes" or the residents where numerous Haitian families live together. If the land owners planted only trees for exportation, the number of Haitian families would drop to almost nothing.

Different kinds of coffee:

Coffee growers from as far away as the Cibao (200 miles away) want their coffee to be labeled as "from Barahona" because of the distinctive flavor which is found in the traditional coffee from this region. The traditional coffee plant is low producing but long lasting. It requires less care than hybrids which "out perform" the traditional in terms of quantity. The traditional bushes grow taller than the "advanced" types and have deeper roots. They show stronger resistance to the bugs and diseases. Some coffee farmers want to plant the "caturia" variety in order to have a larger harvest, but most understand that they will benefit in the long run by keeping the traditional variety alive.

Working children:

On most small ranches in Nevada, the children learn to work at an early age. So it is with the Haitian immigrants in the mountains. What would you rather see: children working, or children begging on the streets of a large city like Santo Domingo? The coffee work can be compared with cutting sugar cane. The latter requires long hours in the sun, whereas coffee in this region grows under shade trees. Sugarcane cutting covers one with stingers plus an outrageous number of biting ants. Coffee picking can be done without these hardships. A coffee picker works at his or her own pace. Immigrant parents have not been spotted driving their children to over work or meet repressive quotas. The kids play as they work and work as they play. Yes, school attendance can suffer in the month of October, since people face the pressure of picking the ripe coffee beans before the rains and drying them out as best as they can, using any available road or concrete open space. Without coffee, many of the immigrant children would be either stuck in Haiti or living in a more difficult environment, such as the heavily chemical dependant agriculture projects in Constansa.

The children of El Ingenio

Climbing up to school:
It is 1 PM and the teacher has just walked past your home. Your job now is to get the children ready for school, even though this is the hottest time of the day. Fortunately for you, the children want to study and it is no trouble getting them to change clothes and grab their backpacks.
One classroom with a view:
The children arrive in groups, with most of them coming up the steep, rocky road pictured above. They range in age from six to sixteen. Almost all of them are of Haitian descent. Before class they speak Creole and the teacher has to call their attention back to Spanish. But what a classroom! It has no walls and plenty of fresh air comes in under the zinc roof. The view is a fantastic panorama of the entire valley of the Nizao river watershed.
A challenge to the teachers:
Instead of having the teachers (in the majority) settle into giving classes at 2 PM to the children and then at 4 PM to the adults, we want teachers to serve the children with four hours of classes, between 8 AM and 12 PM. The kids are hearty and used to rough treatment, but short-changing their education with only two hours in the hottest time of the day (so that the professor can immediately switch into the adult education class and collect another check) is a situation that requires reform.
History of mission creep:
When the parochial schools began, the teachers first hired were high school students or recent graduates with little background but a willingness to be in the mountains with the children. Some lived in the mountains; others would leave their homes on Monday and not return until Friday. They'd teach in the morning and then plant beans or tend other crops in the afternoon. With time, they opted for the ocean front towns and continued their education in Barahona. Thus began a process of distancing themselves from the families in the countryside. As the sponsor program lost children (who either moved away or became in-eligible for the program) the parish schools became more reliant upon fewer sponsored children and thus the salaries of the teachers froze... together with their stamina and motivation.
Tough choices:
The children in this picture have wonderful intellects and a zest for learning. They deserve a good chance at developing their minds. To this end the program will go in one of two directions: either back to less educated teachers, motivated to put in four hours of teaching per day, or push the present teachers (who have grown accustomed to giving the children only about 6 hours of classes per week) out of their comfort zone.
Incentives:
At present the mature teachers have scant reason to advocate change in the system. They know that the primary responsibility for education in their country rests with the government, but they do not press their political leaders for change. When we present to them the stark need for changes that aim to benefit the children, will they adapt or leave the program to less educated people who will either live in the rural communities or climb the mountains or ride up on motorcycles in the morning, rather than during the noonday heat? Within the next month, we will have a showdown. One thing is for sure, we can not augment the salaries of the teachers without controls which show us that they are giving the children four hours a day.

Wanda

In the hospital:

Wanda was two years old and never enjoyed good health. Now her Mom and Grandma hovered over her hospital bed, sick with worry for the child. As her condition grew worse, they could barely stand to be in the room with her, helpless to bring her some comfort.

In death:

She died at 8 PM on Sunday evening. When the pediatrician on call at the Barahona regional hospital came in the room to speak with Wanda's relatives, she could not speak Creole and the Haitian immigrants could hardly communicate in Spanish. The first thought of the family was to take the child out of the hospital and back to Paraiso for burial. The doctor communicated that this was impossible. The Haitians interpreted this to mean that they would never get the child back for burial. They fled the hospital.

The next day:

On Monday morning, after Mass, the family came to the parish rectory desperate for help. By this time they believed that the hospital personnel had thrown the child out into a dump. The inability to communicate plus the anxiety over this tragic death had multiplied their fears.

Back to the hospital:

We all drove down to Barahona and eventually located the hospital staff. It turns out that the doctor was only advising the poor family that it was against the law for a family to carry a dead person by means of public transportation. The doctor signed the official paperwork to release Wanda's body from the morgue.

Searching for a casket:

We spent the better part of two hours searching for a casket. The family had been so convinced that Wanda's remains were lost forever that they had not considered the possibility of being able to bring her back to Paraiso. During the search for a casket, the memory of Brother Chris in Las Matas de Farfan came back to us. He ran a woodworking shop and always had caskets on hand for emergencies.

Wanda of the mountains above Paraiso:

It took God 13.7 billion years of careful transforming of the universe in order to bring forth Wanda. We who have been blinded by the super-abundance of life on our most blessed planet, perhaps have no idea how precious human life is in our home galaxy. When our descendants venture beyond our solar system and experience countless barren or semi barren worlds, will they begin to appreciate the miracle of each human life? The pediatrician guessed that Wanda suffered from heart ailments which complicated her ability to deal with scarlet fever. We believe in a God who cherishes her life and embraces her beyond the grave.

Cristiana Sanó

The story of Cristiana:
A young woman grows up in Haiti, but she is unable to have children. Her parents die and other relatives move on with their lives and the young woman becomes an elderly lady in her early 70's. She often has to beg for food, since she has no husband or children to help her out. One day some individuals invite her to sell her meager belongings and join them on a trip to the Dominican Republic, in search of a better life. She then sells her tiny home, furnishings and sets out on the journey.
Worst day of her life:
Cristiana is tired of walking up and down mountain trails. She is thirsty and hungry. If that were not enough, the individuals who coaxed her to sell her things and share the money with them... now abandon her on the road. She is left alone in a foreign country where she does not know the language, nor has any friends waiting to receive her.
How they found her:
The people of Lanza Arriba awoke one day to find this elderly lady half-dead and wandering along on the main road of the village. The Haitian women notified Anita, who is the leader among the Haitians. She takes the lady to her home and gives her food and then discovers her story. By this time the individuals who abandoned her are long gone down the road and there is no way of knowing who they are, nor to report them to any authorities.
Liturgy:
When the priest arrives in Lanza Arriba for the afternoon liturgy, he finds the people united under a thatched roof and singing hymns. The first thing that the people want to do is tell Father about Cristiana, and in the process asking if he can help them with her. It turns out that the local Dominican plantation owners do not want her living on their property, because she is too old to work and has no money.
The poorest of the poor:
All of the Haitians in Lanza Arriba are poor by Dominican standards. But among them there are degrees of poverty, and at the bottom of the list is Cristiana. Single people in the "developed" world find ways to be self-reliant; yet the lot of an impoverished, single elderly woman without children and living in a foreign land without long established friends...this is a reality we can hardly begin to comprehend.
How beautiful:
What a blessing it is to come upon a community whose first thought is not for themselves; for something that they need, but rather for a complete stranger whom they wake up to find in their midst! God sent her to be among them... and they did not turn away nor hide their faces from her.

El Maniél, Paraíso

El Maniél:

Above Los Blancos is a high plateau at 2,750 feet. The area is perfect for coffee and there are five large plantations which take up the majority of land. The people here shown at Mass live on those coffee farms.

First Holy Communion:

The ten children are celebrating their first Confession and First Holy Communion. Here are their names: Akilina, Anita, Nadeya, Alisia, Kerben, Yrde, Enso, Yancales, Teice, Cristela, and Jeremis. Their lives contain extraordinary elements.

No TV:

Imagine a group of children who by the time they reach 16 years of age have seldom watched television. Their experience of life does not include commercials, violent movies, or incesant messages that proclaim "You need to be entertained by us". At night they see one another by candle light and if they listen to anything other than human voices and the sounds of frogs and birds, it is the occasional radio program in the homes of people who can afford batteries.

Dancing at the offertory:

Imagine further that these children have no inhibitions about dancing at the offertory of a Mass; that they have no expectations of gifts or presents to mark the occasion of their First Holy Communion; that they will be looking forward to dancing into the little parish school building, carrying the offerings of yame, yautia, platanos (all are vegetables) and oranges... rather than having their pictures taken by lots of relatives.

Such is life:

By modern standards, such a life for children would be considered a severely deprived existence, and yet the children reflect happiness and contentment with life. Perhaps they come into our awareness to challenge us when we fall back upon acquired tastes, mistaking them for essential goods...when in fact they simply represent privileges or luxuries.

The dance:

To witness children dancing to the sound of drums and strong voices within the context of the sacred is a mind-expanding experience. We of European descent tend to isolate dancing from the holy... as if they belong in separate worlds. We don't realize our bias against the dance, even when we read that King David danced before the Ark of the Covenant. These children have a different image of God. Their God loves dance and invites them to celebrate His love with rhythm, music and movement. And their dance is totally natural! It is not the result of a project or a liturgy plan; or a liturgy convention where the "experts" seek to instruct the un-initiated into the finer points of "advanced" worship.

CODHA

Who are these people?
These are the men and women of the Dominico-Haitian committee who meet every month in the human rights building in San Rafael, Paraiso. They come from local towns and remote villages in the area and work in the coffee plantations and other jobs.
What concerns them?
Most of this particular gathering focused upon the lack of documents for their children. The CODH leaders stressed the importance of using their proper names on any birth certificate, instead of attempting to translate their Haitian last name to one that is more acceptable in the Dominican Republic. Also the people listened to the leaders emphasizing the need for each man and woman to have an official document from Haiti, which they need to carry around on their person.
Horror stories:
Haitians have migrated to Santo Domingo and worked on construction sites. Some have fallen from great heights and died at the workplace. When the other workers and emergency rescue people search their persons for identification, they find nothing. Thus these men end up being buried without anyone knowing who they were or being able to notify family members. In the above group, about 20% have no official identification from any source. They walk around without any established method to "prove" who they are.
Official robbery:
When these people struggle to have an official identification, the biggest obstacle they have faced is from their very own country's government. Tinapue said in the meeting, and he had some proof to substantiate his claim, that almost 11 thousand Haitians applied for passports in the Dominican Republic but their own Haitian representatives, consuls, took their money and then never gave them passports.
Sacrifice:
When we in the USA have meetings we often have refreshments after only one hour of work, or even before we start meetings. These people left their homes without having anything to eat and stayed in their seats for the entire four and a half hours -- and they had no break for a piece of bread or even a glass of sugar water! Perhaps Codha can set records for the organization with the most members and the smallest budget for food: zero.
Venting:
Towards the end of the meeting, one man stood up to share his story. He is the president of an association of Haitian workers in Platón. The day before, he had received three little pigs from Fundeprocunipa (the tongue tying name for the local parish animated NGO) as part of the project to develop alternate sources of income in the Rio Nizao watershed. No sooner did he take possession of the pigs, then a group of local Dominican men came by and openly stole the pigs, saying that they are for Dominicans and not for Haitians. The Association President immediately went back into town to get the NGO director and together with the police they retrieved the pigs. But the bad feelings in the community will not be resolved by the police and this story points to the uneasy relationship between the two groups.

Sister Yolanda

What is behind this picture?

In 1903, Father Luis Variara found himself torn between different emotions: a deep sadness, anger, empathy, and recklessness. He had just listened to a group of young women who had been sent home from different convents in Colombia, because they had leprosy. He worked in "Aguas de Dios" which the lepers started after being forced out of a neighboring town. In those days entire families were uprooted, if even one member had leprosy.

A new congregation:

Father Luis went against prevailing ecclesiastical wisdom. In the process he almost got booted out of the Salesian order... but he became a pioneer in the modern approach to leprosy. Instead of agreeing with established policy, he broke free and encouraged the young women to band together and form their own religious order. By 1905 the "Daughters of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary" came into existence. They included both women with leprosy and women who had family members suffering from this disease. As you can imagine, their first priority was to serve the sick and live among them in the isolated townships that the Colombian government set up to keep the lepers away from the general public.

Sister Yolanda:

The town of Paraiso has three Sisters who come forward on the path which those early leper women started. None of them has leprosy, but their hearts are still linked to this remarkable flaring forth of a religious identity. They work as catechists and take the lead in managing the parish schools which serve the Haitian immigrants. Sister Yolanda is the youngest member of their Paraiso community and the only one who comes from Colombia.

On the endangered species list:

The Dominican Republic has a strong formation program for diocesan priests and the numbers indicate that they will continue to grow for some time in the foreseeable future. Nuns like Sister Yolanda are a different story. The congregations of women dedicated full time to the service of the poor have suffered big setbacks during the 1980's and 90's. Many causes are offered as explanations for the decline.

A rare blessing:

When one considers how few young women discover a mission to dedicate their lives to the service of the extreme poor, the presence of this Colombian sister becomes all the more remarkable. An obstacle on her path is the prevailing indifference to one religious belief system as compared with another. It's a new kind of "leprosy" where the incredible diversity of local beliefs leads to a numbing effect: people lose the sensitivity needed to appreciate the power of a lifestyle that runs counter to the culture.

The spirit of the founder:

Sister Yolanda carries around within her the spirit of that Italian missionary who loved music and shocked even the lepers when, in the presence of his children's band, he took a trumpet which others had been using and played it himself. Father Luis Variara broke the taboos which kept "healthy" people at a distance from those condemned to a life marked by disease and social stigma.

Palo 30 School

Adoption needed:

Would anyone like to adopt the "Palo 30" school? It has two cement classrooms, a storage room, a well made out-house and a water storage tank. The building is in relatively good shape, but does not have desks or benches. By the way, a teacher for the school would be nice, since it has been abandoned by Public Education for the last few years.

Rapidly changing demographics:

This school was a serious effort by Public Education to reach the children who live in the Palo 30 community. It took many trips of engineers, dump trucks carrying materials, and other inputs to create the school. It is the only hurricane proof building in the area. But what the Education Planners did not take into account was the phenomena of rapid immigration from the countryside to the towns and cities along the coast.

Flight:

Parents have incentives to move into the towns. The biggest one is the educational wall which confronts their children if they remain in the countryside. After the primary grades it becomes more and more challenging to reach the secondary schools. By the time an adolescent is ready for high school, the distances become an insurmountable burden. Also, the towns have electricity, running water and access to clinics or hospitals. Even as the school reached completion, the exodus from the campo to the city accelerated.

New need:

The Palo 30 school is not without children and youths surrounding it, who need an education. Today there are new families in the area: Haitian immigrants who work the coffee plantations and grow the crops for Dominican landowners. You can find between 40 and 50 young people in the community who would benefit from literacy classes in this school.

Work Plan:

Next month we will return to Palo 30 and meet with parents and children looking for a functioning school. We will plant the idea of forming a Committee of parents and students to fix the doors, clean out the classrooms and do other repairs. If we can encourage the local community to fix up the building to the best of their ability and resources, it will be a sign to the Department of Public Education that this community is committed to educating their children. But the real test will be in February.

Who will be gone?

Along the East Coast there are towns which empty in the winter months, only to be renewed by the time summer comes around. With Palo 30, the cycle has to do with the coffee crop. The greatest demand for workers living in the community is in these months leading up to January. When we count the number of Haitian and Dominican children in the community in the month of February, we will have a solid number of residents who are not transient visitors.

In the mean time:

A solid but empty cement school building is an excellent challenge for community organization. If the local people respond to the need for self-sacrifice in order to repair the facilities, we can celebrate with them the Word of God as it connects with their experience of learning to be a dynamic community. Will we find a "Moises" who leads his people out of apathy?

Youth and PAP

Your choice:

You can stand outside the PAP Hospital and focus upon all the people who stayed home on cleaning day; all the youth who preferred to do nothing or else indulge in some small self-interest project...or you can focus upon the youth who did show up to work along side Tinapué, mothers, grandmothers, and fathers.

Red Cross and Civil Defense Youth:

Most of the youth in the above picture are connected to either the Red Cross or else to "La Defensa Civil" organizations. These groups are able to hand on to the next generation a spirit of self-sacrifice and volunteer service to the community. This is a remarkable achievement when one considers the huge propaganda machine on both the radio and television which seeks to indoctrinate youth into becoming mindless consumers of pleasure items like rum, beer, expensive vehicles and places of recreation.

Consistency:

The spirit of volunteer work which is evident in this photo forms part of a larger pattern of service. When the last hurricane came close to the Dominican shores, the youth in the above mentioned organizations were mobilized and spent many hours on duty, protecting children from the dangerous tides and high winds. They rode into the mountains to warn people who have no radios about the approaching storm.

Struggle:

The founder of the Jesuits, St Ignatius of Loyola, created an image to describe the titanic struggle between good and evil. Being a former soldier, he imaged the encounter as a battle with two armies approaching from different directions on a vast field. One army had its general in the very front of the army. He wore the clothes of a servant and led through love. The other army had its general in the background and he whipped his soldiers into the fray by means of fear and hate.

Conviction:

In a country torn by political parties that have lost authenticity and the respect of the people, due to their unbridled selfishness and greed, the youth in this picture can be convicted of struggling on the side of the general who leads by service and love: Jesus Christ.

Next Step:

After a thorough cleaning of the hospital, we now await the arrival of medical functionaries from Salud Publica (Public Health Department). They need to look at the facilities and then grant their approval in the form of a license to offer emergency medical services to the surrounding community. We hope they will come today, but we have no way of knowing for sure, since all too many political functionaries are quick to give their word as a firm promise ... and then do something else.

Tinanpué

Haitian ambassador at large:
If you traveled to all the 30 communities around Paraíso and asked who is the Haitian immigrant who has the most impact in the daily lives of the people, the person whom over 90 percent of the responders would mention is Tinanpué. He arrived like so many immigrants -- with nothing. The big motive for his flight from Haiti was the revolt against the first freely elected President, with its vicious aftermath of human rights violations.
Human Rights Champion:
Tinanpué is the personal force behind the organization called CODA. It is composed of Dominico-Haitians and immigrants who work to resolve conflicts between land owners and workers; the military and the immigrants; fathers of families and mothers.
This morning:
Today, Tinanpué is among the first people to arrive at the PAP Hospital, together with a group of other Haitians. Right along beside local Dominicans, they will be working all morning to clean the facility. It is this kind of leadership and participation with the local residents which earns Tinanpué the respect of this municipality.
Small victories:
There was a time in the recent past when Haitian immigrants were robbed, ridiculed and even violated by local land owners, residents and the military. It was an awful time of insecurity and humiliation. But Tinanpué organized his people to develop a creative resistance to the oppression. The Church became involved with CODA and international supporters from groups like Doctors without Boarders and Engineers without Boarders helped to pressure the high military officials to punish the offenders. CODA worked with the local land owners to improve relations and correct abuses of the Haitian workers. As a result, the relationship between land owners and Haitian workers is immeasurably better than it was ten years ago, when Tinanpué was just starting out on his blessing path. May the Lord raise up other leaders like him!

Doña Enma, The Church

Can you hear her singing?

Long before Paraiso had a big church building and a priest living in the community, on Saturday mornings way up in Cafe de las Mujeres (which is about 2 miles away) you could hear Doña Enma ringing the old church bells and singing praises to God. To this day, she has a powerful voice and naturally commands the respect of people in this town.

Surprising abilities:

Over the decades she has demonstrated remarkable leadership qualities, by organizing groups and dealing with problems that came up in the community. Today a man came in from the campos asking for medical help. When told that he was unknown by the present pastoral team, he disappeared for a few minutes and returned with Doña Enma. She commented that the gentleman truly did have a long history of medical problems and that she would help him out and send him around to different people in the town so that together they could raise money for him to purchase medicines or go to Barahona and the regional hospital.

Remarkable intellect:

Whoever tells you that a poor woman who never went past primary school and now is over 84 years old...that such a person would have no ability to sum up a sermon or create powerful prayers based upon the gospel readings...simply has not met a person like Doña Enma. Without missing a beat she can interpret a homily and sum up its main message at 7:30 am and then adapt the thoughts to a prayer. Her voice is strong and steady; her thoughts are easy to understand.

Doña Enma the Church:

It is easy to make the mistake of identifying a church with an imposing building. But this amounts to an exercise of intellectual laziness. Most people, if you ask them where is the Catholic Church in Paraiso, would give you directions to the visible structure. Yet if we do a little digging under the surface observations, we discover a living Church.

God blesses us by way of people:

When we ask God to bless the Church, He does not respond with structures. Instead He blesses us with people who come forth as prophets, teachers, healers, preachers or a little of all these gifts. The people of Paraiso have been singularly blessed with an extraordinary woman of great courage and consistent example. It so happens that she is one of those multi-talented folks who can not be described as having one or the other gift.

Can you hear her singing?

The next time you are in the area and are climbing up the very steep road towards Charco Blanco, why not stop and listen carefully. In your imagination you can begin to hear that one solitary voice, crystal clear, calling out to an entire population: come let us praise the Lord!

Water

Saving water:
Most of us think of saving water in dams behind huge reservoirs or big tanks above ground. In Charco Blanco, the people store rain water in pits lined with cement. These have open tops and thus are breeding grounds for mosquitoes. There are two springs about a mile and a quarter down the mountain road from Charco Blanco. The families travel down the mountain to get "good water" for drinking and use the pit water for washing their all important coffee crop.
School alhibe:
Pictured above is the "alhibe" or water cistern that is located right behind the school. It was built by the local community with the help of Fundeprocunipa or the local church sponsored NGO. Rainwater from the school roof is channeled into the cistern. Unfortunately the hand pump is broken and the people say the cistern leaks. Yesterday it held only about a foot of water.
Drinking unsafe water:
The man pictured above is almost blind and can not afford to travel down the mountain and get clean water at the spring. He is taking water from the cistern for every use in his home. Sandra, the mother whose home is beside the school, says that the water is unsafe to drink because dirt from the school roof accumulates in the cistern.
Need:
This cistern, as well as others in the mountains, needs a filter system, so that the rainwater will be somewhat purified from dirt before it falls into the tank. Also the cistern needs an aluminum ladder so that the farmers association members can climb down into the tank and clean it out or do the maintenance. Furthermore, the cistern requires a reparation project to locate the leak source and then seal it. These needs suggest that many good projects in the mountains end up in disrepair because the maintenance requirements are either beyond the skill level of the local community; are too costly for them to deploy; or are not clearly explained during the construction process, with adequate access to spare parts.
Future plans:
This January we will start an exploratory well in Charco Blanco. The community is organizing a water committee composed of three men and three women. Among them, two will be Haitian immigrants. This committee will be elected from the Coffee Growers Association members. This kind of work is needed to determine the viability of other methods of obtaining water. In order to lower exposure to mosquitoes, the open pit cement catchment systems need to be closed down...but a water replacement system must be up and running. If the well project fails to find sufficient water, the committee will begin drawing up plans for a solar energy system to pump the water up the mountains and then have it fall by gravity to the school. The vertical distance between the springs and the school is close to 600 feet, and the water volume at the best spring is 8 gallons per minute.
Concentrated effort:
In a municipality like Paraiso, with over 20 rural communities, there is a sustained tension between trying to concentrate development efforts and attempting to reach all of the communities at the same time. The story of Charco Blanco is similar to that of El Maniel, La Canoa, La Malanga, Leonardo, Barrio Nuevo, La Vibora and other mountain communities. All produce coffee. All of them use the dangerous system of open cement lined pits to conserve water. All face clean water shortages and none of them has attempted to dig a water well to explore other options for finding good water.
Fundeprocunipa:
Father Antonio started this NGO and it has two agronomist engineers on staff, one accountant, one professional educator and two semi-employed agronomist engineers; a secretary and a driver. This organization, together with the local communities and financial help from outside the Dominican Republic, has built schools, alhibes and other resources for rural development. They do marvelous work, but are short handed: when one compares their human and capital resources to the projects they want to maintain or initiate. But they move ahead with what they have and they give good example to the town of Paraiso.

Nuestra Señora de la Altagracia Church

Our Church building:

Is the biggest one, right in the middle of this picture. Do you think it was built by the parishioners, all getting together and raising money for the structure? Think again. Some people call the "concordat" between the Dominican Government and the Vatican a blessing. Others call it a curse. Perhaps the truth is in the middle. There are many ways in which the Government helps the Church and gives it many opportunities to do its work, but it's also true that you can kill someone with kindness.

Let us do it for you:

There are little Catholic churches which have been built totally by the local population. They are some of the most interesting churches that you can visit in the country. But when the Government steps in and says: "we will build your church for you", it reminds me of a hand dug well project that we were working on in Jovayal, Las Matas de Farfan.

Jovayal:

The community had no adequate water source and so they decided to dig a well. We brought in a twenty foot steel tube tripod with a pulley and the Association of farmers organized the men and women for the work brigades. They did a fantastic job of digging their very first well. None of the people had ever did this before. They went down fifty feet and ran into a hard rock surface. For two weeks they chipped away at the rock, progressing only a few inches per day. But they knew they were only a few feet away from a strong water source...

Centralized planning:

Just when the Jovayal community was a week away from victory, in comes a drilling rig sent by a government bureaucracy. They immediately set up about fifty yards away from the community dug well and within two days they had water.

Community building dynamics:

When the government gave Paraiso a brand new, big church building, they cut away a tremendous opportunity for community growth. The people were taught a terrible lesson: all you have to do is beg the government and it will eventually build you your church.

Ownership:

When the people of Jovayal were digging their well, they truly "owned" the work. It was in their blood and on their hands. They had previously built their own church and the well was part of a process of community growth which placed responsibility on the local leaders. But with the advent of the governmental planning and drilling rig, this process was short circuited. The same thing happens when communities dream about having a church and then leave it to the central planners.

Today:

The original "let's get the government to do it" spirit that went into building the Paraiso church is difficult to replace. There are beautiful examples of self-reliance and growth in local leadership with other projects that the Church has launched... but the principal structure still reflects its origins.

What would you prefer to visit?

Given the chance to see the tiny church that the people of Jovayal developed all on their own...or the chance to visit the big, spacious church which the government built for the people of Paraiso, which one would you choose? The people of "Charco Colorao" in Ranchito of Las Matas de Farfan once put together their own tiny church structure. It amounted to branches thrown up over a depression in the ground and tiny, crude benches. The entire structure was easy to miss since it had natural camouflage! But it was so much fun to visit and share in the excitement of the people: "We did it!"

PAP Hospital

Reality:

The town of Paraiso does not have a hospital. Anyone in the surrounding mountains who falls off a horse or needs emergency care has to travel to Barahona or Enriquillo. People have died because the distance to medical care was too great. Just two weeks ago Remigio, a hard working director of the local Church developed NGO, almost died from an asthma attack. He was blessed in that the day clinic doctor happened to be staying over for the night and was able to give him a life-saving injection.

Presumption:

A group of faith motivated Americans came down and found the PAP hospital abandoned. It had only one floor and almost no equipment in it. The group which is based in Kansas City decided to make the reparation of the hospital their priority. They assumed that the townspeople would organize around this goal and provide full support for their efforts.

Flat tires:

When the American volunteers returned from one trip of hard work to fix the hospital, they found materials had been stolen and that funds had been misused. This reality was like a flat tire that was totally unexpected.

Perseverance:

The Americans had a choice either to abandon this project or else stick it out. They decided to continue, but with a new emphasis. They would take into account the local culture and lack of training in vigilance for public property. They found an excellent NGO in Santo Domingo that was "street wise" and had the accumulated wisdom to know how to move a process forward that would empower the local population to accept the responsibility to watch out for the hospital.

Important Decisions:

The volunteers decided to give their full support to the foundation of a Patronato or Governing Board that would over-see the hospital and make sure that the donated equipment and funds would be wisely used. This Patronato is close to being a reality and the local population is taking increasing steps to safeguard the investment.

Repercussions:

PAP International (the volunteers from the USA) has addressed a critical shortfall in the local environment. Here is a list of the governmental investments that are either in ruins or in danger of not being competed because of a lack of "Auditoría Social" or a local watchdog group that makes sure that materials are not robbed: high school, primary school, multiple sport arena, municipal market, regional hospital. In the case of the high school, for example, people have witnessed the robbery of PVC tubes, bags of cement, toilets and windows. Those who do the robbing allege that they are members of the ruling political party and that they have permission to use the materials for other governmental "projects" but in reality it is for a selfish purpose of re-selling the materials and making a quick profit.

Hope:

By not giving up and going elsewhere; by changing tactics; the American group has encouraged a positive change in the local mentality. They are not alone. The European Union is sponsoring a project to build a "matadero" or slaughter house on the outskirts of Paraiso. But they demanded that the local people establish and run an "auditoría social" group to keep tabs of the materials that arrive as well as the work that is done. Thus we have a double push for change in the way projects are done in Paraiso. This is a very positive development.

Riosito primary school

Riosito at 10 AM
From Paraiso you take the main street and keep heading back into the mountains. You reach Riosito after about thirty minutes drive. Then you must cross the stream and climb steeply for about six hundred yards, and then you turn right and start down the hill towards the stream. Finally you come to the school, which is on your right.
Why a Catholic school:
This community is considered too small by the Dominican Government to have a teacher paid by the state. However there are children who need a education and they live over seven miles from the nearest public school. Furthermore the Haitian children often have difficulty attending school since they arrive with no documents. Literally, they are people without a trace; having no birth certificate either in Haiti or in the Dominican Republic. In response to this situation, the previous pastor of Paraiso, Father Antonio, asked volunteers from Kansas City to help establish little rural Catholic Schools. This building in the picture is one of them and the students before it are all active in the school. Other children from this school were in the mountains above it on this particular day, since the teacher had a meeting in town and could not show up on time.
Structure:
The school, as you can observe, is a very simple affair. It has a cement floor, a zinc roof and a zinc storage room where the desks and a few books are stored each afternoon, after class. The teacher lives in Paraiso and rides out to school every morning on a little motorcycle. He earns around U.S. $135 dollars per month, which barely covers his expenses. The money to pay the teacher comes from sponsors for a few of the children. The sponsors' funds are used to buy uniforms, food and to pay for the teacher. This year we will have classes until the end of April because we will run out of funds to pay for ten months of teaching (the whole year) and we are required to pay three extra months salary as part of the agreement with the teachers in the ten parish schools.
Need:
We wonder what it would be like to have groups who sponsor a school, rather than a child. The benefit to the children is continuity. The sponsor project is fragile since children and sponsors move away, sponsors retire or lose income available for their sponsored children, etc. What would happen if a community group sponsored a school? Maybe they would come down and visit their school; perhaps they could become involved in establishing add-on projects like teaching the children to raise rabbits for food or to have a garden. What would happen if a USA class of children adopted one of these little schools? Maybe they would follow it along as they journeyed through primary school, etc.
Simple beauty:
In an age when there are so many meetings, paper work, forms and guidelines for a teacher, here is a starkly simple arrangement: one teacher for a group of students who walk to school, often without much of a breakfast. Our teachers are students themselves who attend classes on weekends in the University at Barahona.

Loving Music

What would you do?
If you loved music but did not have the means to purchase a good instrument? Would you settle for no music at all, or would you take this path? The above musician lives in La Vibora, which is a community over 2,400 feet above the valley floor. Ludet is not alone in his passion for music. I saw another person, a Haitian youth, strumming a "guitar" made from a big can of cooking oil, plus a wooden frame as pictured above.
Invention:
This guitar works. It sounds like a weak banjo. La Vibora has cool nights, with temperatures dipping into the 40's during the winter. Ludet works both picking coffee and raising vegetable crops on rocky soil. We are waiting to see if his community repairs the meeting place that was blown down by the last hurricane. The structure serves a double purpose: shelter for the meetings, as well as a catchment source for rain water.
Water:
Moist rain clouds come off the ocean and climb up to La Vibora. They often pass over as mist or sporadic rainfall. Because the community is at a relatively high elevation, there are no springs or streams where the people can easily find water. They must do all they can to conserve rain water.
Reliance:
Just as a musician can decide to build his own instrument, or wait until some benefactor comes along to donate one, the community in La Vibora has the means to fix its water catchment system or else leave it in disrepair...hoping that the Church or (even less likely - the Government) will come to the rescue. Our natural inclination is to rush up the mountain with whatever resource available and contribute to a rapid fix.
History:
Father Antonio (from Spain) worked with the Haitian community in La Vibora to build a large "alhibe". This is a partially submerged cement holding tank that can hold thousands of gallons of water. It was linked to a pvc gutter which ran below the roof of the community meeting structure (made of a wooden frame and a zinc roof).
Challenge:
Even though it pains us to see the large holding tank empty because the people have not yet taken the initiative to re-build the community meeting structure, we decide to wait them out. The alternative is to contribute to a dependency which in the long run is against their own better interests and the functioning of this parish.
Elegance:
What is more elegant? To see a man playing his own guitar or to see a man asking for a hand-out to purchase a factory model?

temporary home

About twenty years ago,
this property would have been managed with the Dominican owner living on his coffee farm and one of his sons living in the little house pictured above. The cement platform in the foreground is used for drying the coffee beans. Also present on the property but hidden from view is a rain catchment system, since there are few rivers or streams in the limestone mountains.
Today:
The lady in the picture is from Haiti. Together with her family and other friends or relatives from Haiti, they occupy the home of the Dominicans who have since moved into Paraiso or Barahona or even further away. As you may note, little effort has been put into renovating the buildings. This holds true for the coffee plantation. Because of falling prices over the years, coffee is considered to be a marginal source of income for most Dominicans. They do not want to invest in keeping up their buildings or the plantation since the profit margins are so low or even non-existent.
For the Haitians,
work on a coffee plantation is better than no work or exploitation on a soil eroded farm in Haiti. But the drawback is that the Haitians rarely earn enough to purchase property in the Dominican Republic. Without that incentive, it is difficult for them to establish roots. Our 10 small catholic schools have mostly Haitian students. They might stay for the entire school year, but then again the incentives for their parents are often in the form of migratory work. Thus the children often end up moving to the next job site. The coffee beans ripen earliest in the lower elevations. They are picked off the bushes and then the pulp is removed in a grinder. After that, the beans are placed in the sunlight on a cement surface to dry out. Then they are bundled and sold to middle men. There are other methods to prepare the beans for sale, and the best one is called the "organic" method. Our parish groups and the farmers' associations are working towards that goal. One benefit would be higher prices for the coffee beans and thus more funds to better pay the workers and invest in the coffee plantations.
Long term:
The best outcome would be the Dominican owners returning to their land and being able to make a decent living on it, together with their Haitian laborers. A big obstacle in this process is the huge propaganda on radio and TV against a rural life style. Children and youth are brainwashed into judging that rural life is a waste of time and energy. If you drive around Paraiso you will see many men and youths who do not work or who have sub-employment, as in being a motorcycle taxi driver.
Light:
There are projects in the Dominican Republic which have actually produced a transformation, with campesinos returning to their lands from over-crowded city slums. One examle is the work of Father Luis Quin in San Jose de las Casas. Wouldn't it be awesome to witnss such a change in the mountain villages of Paraiso!

Our International Faith Community

Who we are:

We are a Roman Catholic Faith Community composed of Dominican and Haitian residents. The parish is a patchwork of thirty small villages and towns, served by a Religious Sister from Colombia, two Sisters from the Dominican Republic; a seminarian from Puerto Rico; a priest from Nevada/New Hampshire; another seminarian from the Dominican Republic and two youth volunteers: one from Japan and the other from the U.S.A.

Where we gather:

We come together in chapels, schools, and homes. Most of our people work on coffee plantations, while others fish from small boats, close to shore.

September 2007:

Each day the Haitians who live in the mountains surrounding Paraiso are finding work since the coffee crop is ready to be picked. They earn about $2.00 per day, and this is considered a "good" time, since by the end of December the employment dries up and the same people who go out to the coffee farms today will find no work. By then, numerous families in Haiti will be waiting for the return of their sons or fathers who will cross the border and bring much needed cash to help their families and relatives.

One of our goals for the down period in employment (which lasts from January to June) is to dig at least one "experimental" well. The surrounding mountains have no wells and the limestone geology makes us wonder if we can find underground water. Our idea is to try an experimental dig in Charco Blanco. There is a spot where the ground slopes downward towards it, from all directions. Perhaps we will find underground water in that spot. If not, maybe we can build a well which has water at least in the rainy season. Anything will be an improvement over the present situation, which is limited to a few pvc tubes which collect the rain water off the school roof and channel it to a cement holding tank.

We choose Charco Blanco before other places for a number of reasons. One of them is the way the Dominicans and Haitians live together. During the last close call with a hurricane, the Dominicans opened up the church-built public school room that was reserved for the teacher. They let a young Haitian mother and her baby spend a couple of days there, safe from the howling winds; rain and partial destruction of their home. This was an act of empathy and loving concern which shows that the community has leaders who act to protect those who are most at risk, regardless of their nationality or the color of their skin.