On our way home!

We have arrived at the Punta Cana airport and are all checked in. Our trip home has officially begun!

Day 8: Wrapping up

Today was our final day of work, and it was a good one. One group continued work on the latrine in Punta Fuera. By the time they left, the roof was up, and three of the four exterior walls were plastered. All that remains is the plastering of the final wall and a coat or two of paint, and then Emilio Luis and Orlando will have access to their own latrine.

The second group finished laying the cement floor in Yesimena's house in Monte Coca. She lives in the two-room home with her husband and four children. The space is cramped but will be much improved with the new floor. Her youngest child is only 5 months old, and we can only imagine that a smooth new cement floor will be a better place for a baby to learn to crawl than the previous dirt floor.

After a late lunch, we traveled about thirty minutes to a nearby national park, the Cueva Maravilla. We toured the underground cave system, which was used over a thousand years ago by the indigenous Taino people for religious ceremonies. The environment in the caves, cool and wet, has preserved cave paintings of symbols associated with the elaborate funerals performed underground. The ride to and from the caves took us along the coast, where we saw resort complexes on one side of the highway, while cane fields lined the other side. Knowing now what those cane fields mean, the juxtaposition of those two worlds was striking.

We ended the night with a wrap-up discussion of what we'd like to do with the funds that we raised before coming and how we'd like to carry this experience into the future. The kids are all inspired to make some changes in their own lives, both personally and to benefit others. We are excited to see what the future holds for this group.

Tomorrow we'll spend the morning at the beach and the afternoon touring Santo Domingo, some well deserved down time. And then Thursday we head back to the States. Time flies!

Day 7: Two groups, three sites, one rainstorm, and many animals

Today we braved the unpredictable weather, again making changes when necessary. The first group spent the morning working in Montecoca on a house that is in the process of being built. The cinder block walls are up, and the group applied plaster to the interior walls, to give them a smoother texture. They quickly discovered that the tasks involved -- mixing the plaster and then applying it to a vertical surface -- were trickier than anticipated. After navigating a steep learning curve, they made good progress until the lunch break. Shortly thereafter, the skies opened, making it impossible to return to that task after lunch, as there is not yet a roof on the house to shield the plasterers from the elements. After lunch, the group moved to another neighborhood in Montecoca, putting a cement floor into a home that previously had only a dirt floor. The work was gratifying, but even more gratifying were the interactions the group had with the residents of the neighborhood while they worked. They practiced their Spanish, helped the neighborhood children practice their English, and enjoyed the companionship that transcended the language barrier.

The second group returned to Punta Fuera, the batey we first visited yesterday morning. They set to work building a cement block latrine for one of the families of the batey, with the help of Domingo, the expert stone mason. By the end of the day, nearly all of the cinder blocks had been lain, preparing the structure for the next steps: plaster application to the exterior walls and the construction of a tin roof. Over the course of the day, the group members enjoyed spending time with Wilki and Luca, two of the children in the batey, as well as a host of animals who wandered through the work site. Orlando, a 20-year old whose family will use the latrine when completed, participated in the project. He shared that he is currently in his final year of high school and hopes to attend university next year to study to become a physical education teacher.

This evening we heard from Idalina, the Scalabrinian nun who helped found ASCALA, the organization hosting us in the bateyes, about the work done here and the many challenges facing Haitian immigrants. Her work is about responding to the needs of the community, and those needs are extensive: documentation, education, health, hunger, labor rights. She shared that since the first of the year, 12,000 people have sought assistance from ASCALA. It was inspiring to hear her passion for doing all that she can to address such overwhelming, systemic problems.

Tomorrow we will return to two of these three sites, depending on the weather, for the first half of the day. The afternoon will involve some sight-seeing before our final evening here at ASCALA. Here are some thoughts from Emily '16, who was a member of the first group described above:

Today was one of the more exciting days we have had here in the Dominican Republic. We all woke up and started putting on our shoes to go out and work. Isaiah tried to slide his foot into his boots when he felt something that he thought was a rock in one them. He placed the shoes outside and tried to take it out. I jumped in and tried to help shake out whatever was in his shoe, when a huge, hairy, tarantula jumped out of the shoe the whole group screamed and jumped back. On the plus side, everyone was wide awake after this happened. The group split in two and I went in the group that went to a house to put down cement floors. The highlight of my day was finding a kitten in the house. The group named the kitten Otis, from the movie Milo and Otis. Sadly, we had to leave the kitten at the village. Tomorrow the group is going back to finish cementing the floors, so hopefully I will be able to reunite with Otis! 

The ladies add concrete to strengthen the cinder block walls of the latrine.

Salma '16 expertly applies plaster to cinder block walls.

Isaiah '16 makes new friends.