Interesting Observations

Over the course of this trip I have seen many aspects of the Dominican Republic. The cities, the villages, the resorts, the beaches, these things are all part of the life that people on this island live. When I was on the plane coming over the ocean to be here, I asked someone, I don’t remember who, how big the Dominican Republic is compared to Virginia, because I wanted to use a metric that I was more familiar with. I think I was told that it is the same size, maybe smaller, as Virginia, but after being here for a week I really don’t think that it feels that small. There are many differences here that make me feel this way, like the modes of transportation that people have, the forests here that seem like vast jungles, and the cities and villages that seem like they could stretch on forever.

In my mind I imagined the people of the Dominican Republic in their villages and cities, walking to most places or driving cars and trucks. However, upon coming into the cities, both of these modes of transportation seem pretty rare. There were some people who looked like they walked everywhere, and there were some cars that would take up the narrow streets, but what I saw most was motorcycles. There were ones of all different colors, designs, and speeds, clogging up the streets. I don’t think I went anywhere in the city here without having a motorcycles be somewhere I could see it. I was told, I once again don’t remember by who, that someone here could buy four motorcycles for the same amount of pesos that one could buy a car. While it seems like a lot of aspects of the places people live here are disorganized and maybe less advanced, the jump to motorbikes seems like a natural leap to me. I can imagine the people here riding horses before having motorcycles be made available to them, and then riding the motorcycles like they had horses, advancing in technology. There were even pens, or corrals, for motorcycles outside of buildings in the city. I don’t know, that’s just something neat that I found here, something I didn’t know before.

Everywhere we went on this trip, we saw trees. There weren’t any roads right beside the beaches because that is all land that belongs to the resorts. We took a bus almost everywhere, and we were either looking at the surrounding city or jungle. The only time I really interacted with this jungle was during the day camp when we went on tours. One of the tours that we went on, the one for the more farming based industries like the bees and crops, had many paths that we had to walk along to get to the different stations. The forest wasn’t anything dangerous, it was just ever-present. I was always seeing different plants while we walked on the tours, ones that I had never seen before in Virginia. I don’t really know what property lines look like here in the Dominican Republic, or if there are even property lines, but that was something else I was thinking about while here. In Virginia, more specifically in Shenandoah County, almost all of the land in the valley is divided up into farms, towns, and homes. There isn’t a path I would follow off the road where I wouldn’t be stepping on someone else’s property. Here in the Dominican Republic, it seems like anyone could cut through the forests and carve their own path, just have an adventure. One person could spend a lifetime just exploring places that nobody else has really been here, and that’s something that makes me feel like it’s way bigger here compared to Virginia.

               
One of the most fun parts of this trip besides holding the day camp was exploring the city of Higuey and the village of Domingo Maiz. It might just be me, but I felt like both of these places felt and looked very similar. Everywhere I went in either place looked worn down. Places had pieces of stone or concrete missing, the sidewalks were cracked on the edges, stuff like that. While that may seem like something really sad, I thought that it was really just interesting. Even though the people of these places lived in a place that looked like ruins in some places, they still kept on living with buildings of cheery colors. I’ve been to a few American cities before, like Detroit, New York, and Houston, but the city of Higuey was unlike any of them. With the cities I had visited before,

everything was separated into squares surrounded by roads. The buildings that were the tallest were located in the center and the size of these buildings decreased as you went out into suburbs. Here the city was very different. The roads and sidewalks, though they looked worn, were like, folding into each other or something. Instead of separating buildings, they joined them together. Buildings here were of similar heights, something that made the city seem like it could go forever. Even though the American cities I’ve been to are way larger, the city here has a certain quality to it, like it feels like it could go on forever, just repeating.

While I’ve loved being in a different country and seeing different things, I’m pretty excited to get home and rest. It’s been a tiring week, just going nonstop, but I would do it again, I think.

Submitted by James Eaton, Shenandoah County

 

My favorite things

My best part of this week had to be when I went to the beach with the Dominican kids. The kids were nice, playful and energetic. Since they all looked up to us they would listen to us.  My teammates and I would all play chicken with them because it seemed that it was their favorite game, and you don't even need to speak Spanish to understand what they wanted to do at the beach, which I thought was wholesome. Even when a counselor would go take a break they would start playing with each other and they never wanted to leave. That part of the week was the best and my favorite.

Maybe a tie with the beach was honestly picking up trash with the kids. As soon as I showed up they were around me and even when we went picking up trash I still had a little army cleaning up. About an hour later we went to have lunch and I gave a kid a drink flavor packet and about 3 minutes later all his friends came up to me wanting some because they have drink flavor packets like we do. It was just an eye opening experience for what little they have compared to us.                                                          

Submitted by Nick Pulizzi, 

Shenandoah County

Higuey

Today we visited a city called Higuey, which is the capital of the province of La Altagracia. We started off the day going through the farmers market. The smell was as exactly as I would have expected it for it being my third year visiting. I also saw an all-time trip record of 3 pig heads hanging in the market. Then we went to the many souvenir shops and bought souvenirs. The Dominican teens did what they could to talk the vendors down to selling their merchandise at a lower price. Then we had an amazing lunch at Welinton's parents home out in the country. The mangos and limoncillos were still amazing there.  There is nowhere else that I can get those in great quality. Then we went to Iberia, which was like the Walmart in the Dominican Republic. There, I bought some beverages for my room and two bags of potato chips. Over the years, I have enjoyed going to Higuey and seeing all of the interesting merchandise there and all the delicious food. I am already looking forward to returning there next year.

Submitted by Danny Cayelli, Fairfax County

The Ridgeway Hawk Project in Punta Cana

The Ridgeway Hawk Project is a project dedicated to increasing the native hawk population in the Dominican Republic.  We met a researcher from Argentina who has dedicated his time to this project for many years. The project aims to help the population reach its proper natural population with as little human involvement as possible. Some of the problems they have faced include electrocution, hunting, and parasites.

When the hawks sat on power lines and they touched a negative and one out of three positive lines at the same time, they died, so the Ridgeway Hawk Project partnered with a local electrical company and made the lines safer for the birds. In the Dominican Republic, one’s animals can be their livelihood; therefore, when the hawks would eat the young chicks, they would be hunted and killed. So the project builds chicken coops for the locals to protect their chickens from the hawks, indirectly protecting the hawks themselves. Their most relevant problem right now is a parasite called Bot Flies which infect the Hawk’s nest. The flies lay their eggs underneath the skin of the birds and the larva live off the blood of the young hawk causing them to die of anemia and other related health issues. Their solution was to climb a tree to the hawk’s nest and remove the larva from underneath the hawk’s skin. This causes severe stress in the hawks and was not a sustainable solution. The project was inventive and created a method to treat the nests in a preventative measure, however it was still necessary to climb the nests to treat it. They are currently trying to explore more sustainable methods to treat this parasite epidemic.

Submitted by Catherine Klinkam, Loudoun County