Profe in the DR 04

Profe in the DR 04 

I finished my training and swore-in as an official U.S. Peace Corps volunteer on Wednesday, Oct. 27^th.  On Friday we had a meeting of all PC volunteers in the country to talk about cholera.  There is a cholera outbreak in Haiti now and it is expected to come this way.  This is a result of so many people left homeless in Haiti after the earthquake.  I had cholera when I was a PC volunteer in Guatemala, so I was asked to speak about my experience in front of all 200 people at the meeting.  (Talking in front of large groups makes me nervous.)

  Saturday morning I left the capital and headed 4 hours by bus to my site, Batey Isabela.   Like I mentioned before, a batey is a small community that was formed by the sugar companies in the 1920’s to house sugar cane workers.   The workers were treated practically like slaves.  They were forced to work all the time, and were paid almost nothing.  Guards walked around to make sure all the men were out in the sugar cane fields working.  Even children were forced to work, unless they could find a place to hide.  The sugar company ran this batey up until 1998.  Things have improved a little since then, but bateys are still some of the poorest communities here in the DR, with very high rates of unemployment.

Batey Isabela has a population of 7000+ people (and a lot of goats!)  There are houses here made of mud and palm branches, palm wood with corrugated metal roofs, and cement block houses.  There are also a few dorm style houses from way back.  The streets are dirt and rock.  The batey is shaped like a rectangle with all the houses crowded one next to the other.  There are very few trees, and almost nothing else growing here.  There are goats and chickens roaming around everywhere, and dogs and pigs lying about. 

 

The house of the family I am staying with for the next 3 months.  The walls are made out of palm tree wood, including the walls inside of the house.  The house has 4 bedrooms and one bathroom.  There are 13 people plus me living here.

My room, the bed is up on blocks to avoid moisture that comes up through the cement floor.  I have a mosquito net over my bed.  There is no dresser so I put my clothes on the chair.  The room was too small to take a better picture of it. 

This is the elementary school.  It only goes up to 7^th grade.  Students either go in the morning or in the afternoon.  That way they can use the same building for twice the number of students.  Classes are overcrowded with 40-50 students in each class.  There are not enough desks, and the teachers don’t have any materials.  There is nothing hanging up on the walls, no books to read, and no lights