Starting at the begining... Why did I decide to get involved in a trip to the Dominican Republic? Well, it all started with a suggestion from Laurina to go and sit through an Alternative Spring Break meeting around September. I was not sure what to expect, but it was worth going to see what it was about. There were 60 to 70 people at the meeting and they discussed trips to the Dominican Republic and Guatemala. Both places were equal to me since I had not been to a 3rd world country before. The meeting covered the application, expenses, agenda and team organization for the trips.

    All in all, the trips definitely sounded interesting. I had never been able to go on one of these trips before because of work, school, money, etc. Always something. Now I can finally afford the time and money to do it, so I applied. After a week or two, they went through an interview process and then I get a call a week later saying that I'm on-board for the Dominican trip.

    December rolls around and we begin our monthly team meetings to work out the money issues and to get to know each other. Being a 3rd world country means lots of health concerns. I had to get 4 different immunizations before I was fit to travel. We did some group activities (car washes, raffles, letters to companies) to raise money. We also did a volunteer activity to see how well we handle being part of a group. I attempted to have a few social outings for the group, but ended up with little response. I was trying to get to know some of the group before spending a week together. By the time we left on the trip, I could remember most of the names, but that was about it.

     We flew from Raleigh to Miami, regrouped, chugged some beverages between checkpoints and then boarded in Miami. We reached the Dominican Republic around 8 PM. There were some nice folks from the local Habitat group at the airport to greet us and show us to the hotel. We stuffed ourselves into a couple vans and endured the half hour to the hotel. Little did we realize that those vans were probably the most comfortable transportation we would have on the entire trip...

     At the hotel, we sorted through some room difficulties, divided ourselves up and then set our stuff down. We loaded back into the vans for a quick drive to a local Dominican restaurant for our first foreign grub. The restaurant was very nice with a buffet, some music, and decent service. We sampled most of the food, enjoyed the music (there's a movie of Christine dancing...) and then paid the high price for the place.

     Once back at the hotel, most of the crew just went straight for bed. The hotel had a pool, so I jumped in for a quick swim. It was cold, but very refreshing. It felt good to not have to worry about anything back home for a full week. Plus I had not had much sleep the night before after staying up all night to have a heart-to-heart with a friend. Sleep is a precious thing. So after a swim, I curled up on the couch of our hotel room and passed out.

     The next morning, we were supposed to be packed and on the bus around 10. Well, we went for breakfast at the hotel restaurant and got a huge dose of the difference between American and Dominican attitudes. There is definitely a relaxed mood here. Being in a hurry means it might get done today. But I would not count on it. Diana can wait all she wants, but she still is not going to get any toast.

     We finished breakfast around 10:30 and still no transportation. Turns out a flat tire was the culprit and we were stuck for another few hours. We left our luggage behind the hotel counter and then went for a walk downtown. None of us were sure what to make of downtown... there was some really trashy parts right next to some clean stores. The traffic is just awful, the traffic laws (if there are any) are not really enforced, so people just do whatever they feel the need to do. Looked like downtown New York City at times. We hit a major monument that was built to honor the founders of the Dominican Republic and then went walking around looking at shops and other historical sites. Turns out the first church of the Americas was built near the city center. I don't know if Christopher Columbus himself built it, but it was supposedly shortly after his arrival. I was in shorts, so I was not allowed in these places. Shorts are not considered appropriate wear for a memorial (or a church).

     We did more walking around, some shopping and then grabbed some lunch. I stuck with something I could recognize, like a chicken sandwich. Still different than I had ever tasted back home, but delicious. We stocked up on water and our bus arrived at the hotel around 3 PM. Not the same transportation we had earlier. We had 19 of us on a bus built for something other than Americans with lots of luggage. At least we all had a seat. We watched the varying scenery scroll by and stopped for refreshments once along the way. (I can say that anyone who rode on that bus will never complain about my driving ever again.) You can tell that Santo Domingo is like many American towns: it has its good parts and its bad parts. It is different to everyone who sees it, the imaginary boundaries move, but stay in the same general locale.

     After cleaning the fruit and cheese plates we grab our stuff and get back on the bus for a short ride down the hill to the hotel. We meet quickly about the plans for Sunday and figure out room arrangements. The hotel was much nicer than I had expected. We were just hundreds of feet from the sea and the openness of the hotel is awesome. Some of the group calls it a night and some stay up writing. I join in on a Spades game with Christine, Jacob and Nathan. The game started out nice and friendly, but after several days it did not end that way. Everyone called it a night and I finished my writings around 2 AM. Too much change and excitement to get a good night sleep.

     Sunday is the Sabbath and religion is very important to this community. We will not be doing any work this day, we found more relaxing ways to spend the day. The first thing in the morning was our first hotel meal. Since we were the only non-locals at the hotel, we had their complete attention. The first thing after the meal was visiting churches. Our group divided up. Gibran and one group took a taxi to Barahona and visited the Mormon church while another group went to the local church for the Sunday service. Since I probably could not understand a word said and not much of a morning person, I elected to stay with a few who stayed around the hotel. I cleaned the cameras and attempted to reply when the locals talked to me, but I wasn't able to say much.

     After the group from the local church returned, we walked around the town for a couple hours. It felt damned good not to have to worry about work, computers, email, voicemail, or anything else technological for this trip. We took a stroll covering the part of the town around the hotel, and we took the time to stop by the local health clinic. We went inside and talked to the resident doctor for a bit and then looked at the expansion to the hotel that is being built. When it is complete, it will be staffed by students from Pennsylvania. It will be a huge benefit to the local health care system.

     At the end of the stroll, we stopped by the beach to talk to a group of fisherman to see about a ride on the sea later in the day. We got a good deal and a 4 PM shove off time, so we had a few hours to kill. We stopped back at the hotel, grabbed some lunch and then left to go play in the sea at a local public beach. We piled everyone (minus the group that was still in Barahona) into the back of a pickup truck and drove the few miles to the beach. The beach here is nothing like the beaches in America. Instead of sand there are pebbles... lots of pebbles. A few of us jumped into the clear water and played around for a bit. The rip current was STRONG. Jacob and I got caught out in it and had a rough time getting in to shore. A few minutes later, Beth really got caught up in it. The group that went to Barahona then joined us. We took a few minutes and played in the still pond that was nearby and then headed back to the hotel. The girls were getting quite a few comments about their bathing suits. Not the normal beach attire for that area.

     A quick stop at the hotel and off we go again. This time to a boat ride on the bluest body of water I have ever seen. We toured up and down the coast around Paraiso, just taking in the sights. I got some pretty cool pictures from the boat but somehow made myself ill in the process. Oh well. It was very amazing scenery. Postcard perfect. We stopped for a bit to let everyone swim. My first Caribbean Sea swim. The waves were rough and the sea was as salty as any I have ever been in. After the swim, we beached the boats and hit the hotel again for dinner.

     Onto Sunday evening... We sat and socialized for a while, trading a few massages while we sat. Around 9 PM, we left for a local discotech. I like latin music from time to time, but this was not one of those times. It started out LOUD and then after a small spat between a couple broke out, I was no longer in the mood to try to dance. This is definitely NOT the U.S. Small spats do not end with the 'boyfriend' punching his girl in the face once... and then again as she is getting up. We all wanted to do something (and if we were in the U.S., we would have) but it was not our place and we did not need to get involved in trouble. We finished our dancing and walked back to play some Spades.

     The game went okay with some personal grudges between Jacob and Christine. We (Chrstine and I) stomped some ass and then I had a brief change to really socialize before everyone went to bed. We really do have an awesome assortment of people on this trip. I tried to learn a little bit about everybody on the trip and I accomplished that, but I ended up learning a lot about some and only a little about others... I could only wonder what would happen if this group was put under pressure to do something. Everything we're doing on this trip is relaxed and laid back. Dominican-style!

     The day was filled with simple tasks... mixing cement, filling buckets, laying blocks, filling in mortar joints, cutting rebar, making rebar columns, etc. At the site I worked at after the dirt bike ride, the owners were very friendly and kept us laughing (after some translations!). I even received a marriage proposal... a very pretty girl who was 19 and had 2 children. She was decked out like she was going to a club here in Raleigh, even though it was a fairly warm day. (Well, warm by North Carolina standards.) This all happened through public translation, so it was a good laugh for everyone. I'm sure I was blushing.

     Well I dodged the request, but I wasn't the only one who was offered a spouse. All of the girls suddenly adopted boyfriends back home. I was asked if I was Beth's brother. I can't really see the connection, but we do get along fairly well. I've been going on and on about these people but I've yet to mention the names. I'll post the list at the end of this journal. After a few hours of working we moved back to our original site.

     We just were not welcomed by the owners and others at that site. They were not very talkative even after we let them know that we understood their language. It took hours before they were really willing to let us help. Even then they were not very talkative. At some point, we had lunch which was very tasty. They did try their best to feed us well on this trip! It was funny having chicken for lunch and having a chicken run around under the table.

     We finished around 5 PM. Our group merged with the second group to help do some finishing touches on their site and then we all hiked back to the hotel. Once everyone was back at the hotel, we packed us all into a truck (we were getting really good at this!) and headed down to an awesome little water hole, named San Rafael, for some COLD fresh water swimming. The place was at the outlet of a mountain stream that had been turned into a man-made pool right next to the ocean. Most of the group played in the pool, then we all went out to the ocean and then back to the pool to rinse the saltwater off. After that... another truck ride home and then dinner. We only had water at the hotel at certain times, which made us schedule showers and toilet flushings. Their septic system is a bit different as well. No paper of any kind is allowed in the toilet.

     After dinner we had reflections. We discussed our first impressions of the place and how they were different from what we had pictured before the trip. My mental image of this place before the trip was something out of a Sally Struthers' commercial where everyone was barely living and trying hard just to survive. Nothing like that at all. Sure you see some kids running around without clothes and they don't have the toys that our children here have... With this temperature... clothing is optional. There are gas stations, night clubs, a Western Union, several small banks and lots of people sitting around doing nothing. If they worked they could do some really impressive things from time to time. There are some relatively nice houses here. It just seems that the people are not motivated by the same things that Americans are. Money is nice to them, but it is not everything. These people seem happy as they are... some of them need and want assistance, but there's definitely no rush. When working on things, there are a lot of people sitting around doing nothing. Just no motivation. Maybe they just want to see American women work!

     The reflections went well. We probably could have talked for much longer than an hour, but everyone was pretty exhausted. We ended and lots of people went straight for bed. A few of us traded the much-appreciated massages. That was the first real dose of manual labor that I have had in months. I slept mostly well that night. The sleep would have gone better if the electrical system was the same level as the U.S. Unfortunately it is not. It rained HARD that night. As the rain was dying down the fireworks began. The power lines here do not handle rain well. Something happened and the sparks started flying from the transformers on the utility poles. When a transformer shorts, it is no small thing. The sparks from one explosion started a small fire, but since it was still drizzling, the fire was soon quenched. Those arcs make really loud popping sounds, so everytime it happened, I was woken up. The power flickered quite a bit because of this. Eventually it stopped and I fell asleep again.

     I took some time to go grab pictures from the other sites. It was during this time that we got to see our first real justice being served. I was preparing the camera for a shot when a local ran past. A few moments later, 2 other locals moved past with machete knives in hand. From what I understand, there was a fight (stabbing?) the night before and these two were going to go rectify the problem. This is how crime is handled in some cases. Just another normal thing in the lives of the Dominicans. I finished grabbing the photos and went back to work.

     Jerry attracted the local kids with bribes of candy. I moved on to the third group's site at the top of the hill. A long walk ending in another dirt bike ride! We wrapped up work around 3:30 and headed back to the hotel. We did not have a chance to clean up because of the water schedule. We changed clothes and headed out for a hike. A short drive down the beach and then a hike up a hill.. roughly a mile or a little more. Several of us took some pictures and then we all chilled on the hill for a half-hour. After coming back down, the group played around on the beach. I grabbed a few more photos for the "Habitat for Humanity - Dominican Republic Swimsuit Issue".

     Back to the hotel... Dinner time! We ate quickly and some of us were able to get a shower before our guest arrived. The Catholic minister from the local church stopped by for a visit. He talked for a good hour, keeping Gibran very busy translating. He discussed the economy, crime, social status, religion, community structure, law enforcement and a few other topics. It was a highly informative visit. It replaced our normal reflection time.

     After he left, our group finished getting showers and then sat around socializing for a while. The Spades game began again... this time to the finish. What started out as the best 2 out of 3 became the best 3 out of 5. The majority of the ladies had a gossip session in their rooms while most of the guys were asleep. Our game went well past midnight and up to around 2 AM. By the end of the night, we didn't care who won... well, I guess we still did, but we just did not feel like fighting as much for it.

     We hit the sites and put in a relatively short day of work. We combined the group back into one work force and stayed at the site near the top of the hill the whole day. We did some work as smaller groups on the sites, but we were all in the same area. Shawn and I ended up filling in quite a bit of dirt while a group of the girls put some music and dance to the test. (The Dominicans working with Shawn and I were really enjoying the show!)

     Wrapping up the work around 2 PM we were told that we were going to go swimming at a new place. We hit the hotel, changed, and pilled back into the truck. Luckily this truck was big enough to hold us comfortably, but we had no idea we were in for quite a ride! We drove for about 30 to 40 minutes into the midst of nowhere... a place called the "forgotten city". It was a brackish pond. Several of our group refused to wade into the pool. I joined the group in the water and walked around for a bit. We stayed at the pond long enough to be polite and then took off back to Paraiso. We drove through some of the nearby villages on the way back and even gave a few local people a ride back to town. At least there is something better about this place... people seem willing to help each other out quite a bit. It is something you don't see as often in the U.S.

     That brings us to the Wednesday reflections. Not much before that but dinner and some showers. During reflections we covered how this trip was affecting us personally. What are we learning about ourselves? What really matters to us? Have we really helped? Have our values changed? What are we taking away from this trip? Is economic development needed? What are we really here to do? Lots of good questions and everyone has their own set of answers. I'll spare you mine. If you want to know, ask me sometime in person. It is just difficult to convey in simple words. After all the talking, we socialized a bit more and called it a night.

     We showered and packed and took some final group shots with the hotel and habitat staff before leaving. It was a sad moment to leave the place, but it was also good to start the journey back to the U.S.

     We stopped in Barahona on the way back. It is less than an hour away from Paraiso on the way to Santo Domingo. We hopped off the bus and wandered around the town for about an hour. Our group divided and the small groups went their own directions. I hung out with Jerry, Gibran and a couple others for a bit while we did some quick shopping after changing some money. We went into the local Western Union and there was a guard just playing with a shotgun... it can make you nervous when they just swing it around and polish it at random. Their law enforcement is quite a bit different than ours. If someone were to hold up the bank, they would have a hard time tracking them down after they left whereas in the U.S. we have the FBI and all sorts of technology to our advantage.

     Barahona really was not much to talk about. The ladies had the worst of it with all of the locals making cat-call noises and following them around. We only wandered for about an hour and then regrouped for dinner. A little hole-in-the-wall pizza parlor was our source of food. It was fairly sketchy, but it would have to do. Jacob ordered six 'pizzas' for us. We waited a while for the food to be served and when it did, I lost my appetite. Pizza is definitely not a universal stanard. The ingredients they used just left me wondering. I tried a half of a slice and gave up. I was ready to go home for some real food!

     Wslept well and rose early for the flight home. No major stuff to say about the journey home. The flights went well and we were all very glad to land in Miami! Home Sweet Home!

     I must say that for only being in a foreign country for a week, we were able to experience a great many facts of their culture: religion, recreation, social conduct, economic practices, some moral issues, crime, punishment, and more... It is hard to say how this trip affected me. I've been back in the U.S. for a while now and I don't think that I am perceiving things any differently. I still have a great appreciation for what I have.. and I've never complained about what this country has to offer. From what I've seen, there are places that are quite a bit worse!

     For me.. it is back to the work and school grind. Keep the axe sharp on both edges... and when all else fails... smack 'em with the handle!

     Quotes of the trip:
    I don't want to hear another word about sandbags and tricks unless there's a flood or someone is need of a hooker! -- Beth
    Sex in a bottle. -- Diana

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     Ann Howard Banzet, Team Leader
     Carrie E. Fesperman, Team Leader
     Jerry Barker, Team Leader
     Jacob M. Hooker, Team Leader
     Nathan D. George
     Donna M. Mays
     Norman N. Barbee, Jr.
     Jennie K. Grammer
     Shawn W. Jones
     Beth C. Morrell
     Brandon J. Ellison
     Susan R. Hunter
     Kiel A. Chapman
     Laura C. Gilmore
     Tony L. Williamson
     Gibran Z. Castillo
     Diana M. Koucheravy