Dominican Journeys

Friday, February 10, 2012

The whole team went to Ascension Village for the morning. About half of us walked up to the top of the village to see what had changed over the year. There is still a feeling of tension, even 2 years after a murder occurred and the Dominicans and Haitians battled over it. At the time, the village was about 80% Haitian, but many were driven away so that now it is closer to 50%. This village has the unfortunate disadvantage of being rather isolated. It costs about $3 to get a motor taxi ride to town and back and many jobs don’t pay well enough. There is one old man who has a garden which is a 4 hour walk away. He leaves at 5 and returns at 7 each day.

Our purpose today was to help serve lunch to over 200 village children, which is done twice a week under a program run by a couple from B.C. It was accomplished very efficiently with children rotating through the ‘dining hall’ as spaces became available. Today’s meal was rice, beans and vegetable stew. Water or juice is provided and each child gets a vitamin pill as they leave. The meal is often a very hearty soup made with packages of dried beans and vegetables from ‘The Gleaners’ in Cambridge, Ontario. Our team brought several hockey bags of this soup. A 3 kg bag will make enough soup to feed 100 kids.

Another program in the village works with maternity. About 90 babies are born each year. One of the challenges, apart from providing nutrition, is to educate girls about birth control. Average birth weight has increased from 4.5 pounds up to 6.5 pounds over the last 2 years, which has greatly reduced infant mortality. This has been a mixed blessing.

We ate lunch aboard the bus on our way to ‘Paso Valiente’ village, where we packed and distributed 250 bags of food. The local pastor identified the neediest families and issued each a special ticket to be exchanged for food. The beans, rice, pasta, tomato paste, sugar, oatmeal and cooking oil is enough to feed a typical family for 1 to 2 weeks.

Following the food distribution, we went to ‘Nest of Love’ school in the village of ‘Emanuel‘, where we dropped off a hockey bag of school supplies and 2 refurbished laptop computers. This new school is still under construction but its first classes are already operating. Two years ago classes were being held in a house and the teachers were receiving almost nothing. The school is being funded by 'The Samaritan Foundation'.

Our final stop today was in village ‘Paraiso’ (Paradise), where we got to see the new technical school being built. Classes are already being taught in Tailoring (2 classes of 25 women each day) and woodworking. Bea donated a lot of material from her sister in law. Shops for teaching electrical and plumbing are nearing completion. We were given a tour of Paradise School, run by Kim and Josie Pensinger of ‘Dominican Advance’, a nonprofit charity organization based in Vermont, USA and in Cambridge, Canada.