iBlock: Duquesa

This was an interesting day for me. Not only was it our last day in Sabana Grande as a whole group, we also had a new experience on the way back to Santo Domingo. We had to say goodbye to the family there, but before we left we were taken around town one last time. We were asked if we wanted to see the big houses in town. I’d seen them before, but decided to go anyways.

On the edge of a group of Dominican style houses there are 3 or 4 huge houses. I would consider these houses huge in Canada. They had green grass lawns and beautiful trimmed palm trees. They seemed way out of place to me and I couldn’t stop myself from thinking about how people could live in those house right next to the poor and not feel guilty. The sad thing about this is that isn’t what ground my gears that day.

The drive back to Santo Domingo was really nice. It felt like I was driving home from a camping trip on a sunny summer afternoon. It was peaceful. While most people slept or listened to music, I stared out the window at the beautiful scenery that passed by my eyes. I spent time thinking about what I knew was coming later in the day. I’ve heard stories about the “dump village” and was anxious for the experience.

We turned off the highway, onto a small dirt road, and went up a hill. At the top of the hill we were given a great view of mountains, but not the mountains we’d been seeing for a couple of weeks, these were mountains of garbage. We were not at a dump like I had thought we’d be at, we were at a landfill. I had written earlier in my journal about the “lack of waste” in the country; I had to re-think that after seeing this. We turned right and drove down the main road of the village. I could hear plastic bottles crumple under the tires of the van. I was looking out the window and saw wood shacks, with tin roofs, and anything the families could salvage from the landfill to make their tiny houses. There were small stores and children running around the van as we drove by.

What I saw in the middle of town didn’t make me very happy. I saw a modest, but nice, brick house painted pink, with glass windows and tile floors. It pissed me off seeing these things. How could there be such extremes right next to each other. Again, how could someone not feel guilty living in that house right next to the small shacks where people struggled to feed their families?

The rest of the day filled me with mixed emotions. I had lots of fun playing with the kids. We went on an adventure through the bush. We walked out of the village with a large group of the local kids who had joined us earlier. I followed as some of the kids and some of our own boys led us to a small path leading into a large patch of trees (a small forest). We hopped over small streams filled with standing water and garbage. A large pig was tied to a tree beside the path and a man was trying to do something with it. We continued along the path and popped out right near the basketball court where we had first stared with the kids. When we got back we played a game of baseball in the basketball court. Even though I had fun with the kids I wouldn’t say I enjoyed our day in Duquesa. I spent a lot of it thinking about what I had seen that day. The extremes of rich and poor weren’t sitting well with me. In the same country as starving families live families with money enough to feed themselves and own whatever they wanted.