I’ve been pushing off my blog post because I wanted to wait for a day that hit me the hardest or challenged me the most. Originally, I thought I would write about the orphanage experience, but for many reasons I found that experience......eye-opening and enlightening. I was thankful for the care and joy the nurses show to the children day in and day out. I’m not minimizing the children’s situations at all, but the fact that they have food, shelter, and love is an amazing thing to think about.
Anyways, back to my actual topic. I sit here at the end of our trip and I’ve decided to share my thoughts on the New Creation batey.
This is my journal entry from February 25th - Day five of our trip:
“The day started off well. After finishing our last bites of breakfast, we were told where we would be going for the day. Greg, Megan, Erin, Sarah, and I were off to New Creation, a Christian school in a little batey about 20 minutes away from the Santo Domingo base. I was excited to teach at a new school, but also nervous because I still didn’t feel like I knew enough Spanish to be able to actually teach them anything.
Greg and I were teaching partners for the day. We were thrown right into a classroom with kids that seemed to be around the ages of 8-12. Our starting point was to introduce ourselves. The kids would repeat our names back...well they would try, my name became “Alice” and Greg...well from what I remember they all just stared with puzzled looks on their faces and said nothing. We taught in three different classrooms till lunch. A mixture of the alphabet, animals, and numbers would do the trick as teaching material for the day.
After lunch, we walked through the batey. In the moment I just watched and soaked it all in, but reflecting afterwards was a bit hard. As we walked, kids flocked towards us, grabbing our hands and latching onto our clothes. Any little bit of touch from the “Americanos” spread smiles across their little faces.
Some of the faces I recognized from teaching in the school earlier, except now they appeared different. Their faces still smiled wide, but they had put on their non-school clothing, well not really much clothing at all. Some kids walked naked, some in just underwear, others in shorts with holes, and still others in ill-fitted dresses. The houses were made of whatever seemed to be available, cardboard, tin, wood, and block. Bottles, wrappers, and glass lay all over the street as the scent of burning brush and garbage filled my nostrils. I continued to observe.
One little boy grabbed my hand right away. He would not let go as we sat on the ground of the courtyard he babbled something in Spanish and pointed at his shoe. He slowly started to take it off, then ripping off his sock revealing a toe that was completely destroyed. The tiny toe was red and raw and it looked infected. He just looked up at me with his big eyes. I didn’t know what to say, mostly because I can’t speak Spanish, but also because I couldn’t do anything to help him.
As we waited for the taxi to come take us home we sat on a curb near the school as young girls braided our hair. A tiny girl in a ragged red dress and jean shorts gazed at us from a distance. She was small in stature and timid. I would guess she was around the age of two or three. She slowly came towards us and tugged on Megan’s shirt to try to get her attention. I watched, but with two girls doing my hair and one clinging to my chest it would be nearly impossible to get up and reach for her. I smiled and waved her over, in no time she was in my lap clinging to me.
She would not talk. I asked her what her name was, but no words escaped her mouth. She seemed content to just sit and she was not bothered by the other girls around her. Once the taxi arrived to pick us up, I slowly made my way over. Her grip became even tighter and a Compassion child held my hand. I knelt down and said “adios, hasta luego” (goodbye, see you later) to help them understand that it was now time for me to go, but they were not going to make this farewell an easy task. I let go of the Compassion child and tried to set the little one down on the ground, but her legs buckled every time. I let go of her completely, but her tiny legs still wrapped around my waist like a little monkey. “What am I supposed to do?” I questioned out loud. Not many seconds after, an older boy was ripping her off of me and saying something fast in Spanish as she cried and screamed. I knew she would be okay, but her desperate cries made me wonder what her everyday life is really like.”
I have now visited New Creation many times and each visit has new surprises such as jungle walks, baseball games, magical shrinking plants, or fishing for minnows with the kids. I won’t share more journal entries, but my perspective has changed. My first impression of the batey was sad because it is a very poor area, but now my outlook is a bit different. Although the kids don’t have much they are so happy and they are thankful for even a little bit of time and attention you give to them. The smell of burning garbage fills the streets, but the kids are always smiling and full of energy and for that I a very thankful.
P. S. The children in the pictures are not the specific ones I wrote about in my journal entry, but are other children from the batey near New Creation.
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