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