Profe in the DR 12

Profe in the DR 12

I attended a meeting the other day about documentation.  A group out of Chile was doing surveys about un-documented people living in the DR and the problems they encounter.  The DR is one of the few countries in the world that does not recognize citizenship of someone for simply being born in the country.  According to the current law, your mother has to be a citizen.  The law seems to have been made to keep children of Haitians born in the country from becoming citizens.  However, there is an ever-growing amount of Dominicans who are undocumented because somewhere along the line someone did not register the birth of child.  If a mother does not have documentation, then none of her children can get documentation either.  Without documentation, not only can one not vote, but you can’t obtain legal documents, such as certificates of marriage or death, or register for high school or college.  In the bateys this is big problem since most of the people who live here have Haitian heritage.  Also, most people here are born at home and not in a hospital.  Lack of money to travel to a location to register a child, discrimination, and corruption are other obstacles to obtaining documentation. 

Saturday I was in Bahorona with my project partner when we decided to check out the beach at San Rafael about 20 kilometers away.  Neither of us had ever been there before and it is probably one of the closest beaches to us (about an hour and ¼ away.)  The beach is rocky and made up of very fine black gravel.  It is surrounded by mountains that come down sharply to the ocean.   The water is very blue and it is quite beautiful.  The waves however, break on the shore with great power, and toss you about pretty good.  It was very difficult entering and exiting the ocean.  The waves would knock me over, then the undertow would prevent me from getting to my feet, then I would get hit by another large wave again.  Once I finally got past the break, it was ok, but I couldn’t touch the bottom anymore and so I couldn’t stay out forever.  I then had to run the gauntlet again to get ashore.  Still, it was nice to be at the beach, and it was extremely beautiful.

Sunday the boys soccer coach (a 53 year old Haitian man) got upset with the boys and quit.  He was upset over the lack of respect the boys showed him.  He said they treat him as if he were one of them, and are always arguing with him.   I convinced him to stay on as coach, and we came up with some changes for the team.

On Monday I held a meeting with the boy’s soccer team, and we discussed some new rules and what is respect, and why it is important.  While we were talking it began to rain pretty good.  Although we were under a roof, we were still slowly getting wet.  When the meeting ended, I convinced the boys to go out and play soccer in the rain.  (Doing anything in the rain is not normal in the DR; they don’t even go to school if it is raining.)    We played for about an hour and a half in the rain, mud, and very flooded field (There were places where the water was more than a foot deep.)  Every one was slipping and sliding around, and falling down.  It was a blast.  Several of the boys cut their feet on glass, but they were having too much fun to care.  Afterwards, we all ran to my house and I took a photo (posted on FB).  Of course everyone in the batey thought we were crazy.

With all the rain, the batey was looking pretty flooded.   Today there are still large puddles and tons of mud everywhere.