This is like a 2 part Blog mostly about my day yesterday. We can consider it the nice part and the not so nice part maybe.
Yesterday (Wednesday Aug 8 2019) I arranged with my Christian Missionary friends Ian and Faith for them to rent a car and play tour guide for us gringo sailors. Mic and Ken have not been out of Luperon yet and wanted to see a bit of the country. So we hired my Christian friends to show us around the place.
After Yoga class in the morning we all piled into the SUV they rented. First we went back to their little place up on the hill so they could look after their dogs and get a bite to eat.
I know I have mentioned this before but this area is in the worst drought they have had in (apparently) 25 years. Usually these mountains are lush tropical green. You can see everything is brown withering and dying. They do have a spectacular view over the hills though.
From here we went to a place called Lagrua… it is a little Haitian village where they serve the children 2 meals a week and teach them about God. I am going to skip this part and save it for the end… it’s the not so nice part.
Next we had heard that there is a very famous tourist attraction here in the DR called the 27 waterfalls. We have heard about it and Mic says there are YouTube videos you can find online that show more about the place. None of us were prepared for a swimming day but I wanted to find the place and just do some recon, so when Elena comes back I know a cool place to take here to visit.
The place seems cool and worthwhile to check out. Basically for $27 per person they take you for a 2 hour hike up the mountain to see and explore these 27 waterfalls running in a creek down the mountain. At the top you put on a life jacket and a helmet and you get to float down the creek back to the bottom where they have lunch waiting for you. It seemed like cool thing to do and something I might want to try someday when Elena is back. There is a cruise ship docking nearby and it brings bus loads of tourists up to enjoy the place (it’s the primary lifeblood that keeps the place going).
We didn’t have the time or the money to do it yesterday though, so we continued on to Peurto Plata.
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Mic and Ken want to rent motorcycles here to explore the country. I was going to do it with Mic (until Ken came along) but I am pretty sure I am too chicken to try and ride thru these roads. Ian informed me that only like 20% of drivers here actually have a drivers license! There are almost no traffic laws just a bunch of suggestions. Mostly they seem like amazingly good drivers because they seem to operate on a Darwin principle here, bad drivers just die off. Without helmets, seat belts, lines on the roads or farm animal containment (cows and horses wander the roads where ever they please) I’m sure most accidents are fatal.
I love and miss my motorcycle… but I never rode without my safety gear (full body armour and helmet). I rode very fast on paved roads with clear traffic laws carefully enforced and followed. I never had to worry about hitting a random cow in a corner. If things did go wrong and I went for the big slide down the road at least my body armour would keep my skin on.
Here… I don’t have the courage to ride motorcycle here without the safety net. When things go wrong on a motorcycle they go very wrong very fast. Also here white people are targets for the police to try and get bribes out of… not something I’d be comfortable dealing with… In Canada Bribery would be very illegal.
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Anyways… We also knew that there was a cable car that you can ride up to the top of the Peurto Plata mountain top. This seemed like a cool thing to do and Ian and Faith (who have been here for 10 months) have never done it and wanted to see it (so did all us sailors).
You can see in the picture here the cable running overhead going up to that mountain in the background. The mountain top is 711 meters above the level of the bottom cable area and the cables are 2.7 kilometers long. The views were spectacular and poor Faith (who is afraid of heights) was very brave and did very well on both the ride up and down. Ken who is an elevator technician from Canada was probably as nervous about the safety of the lift as I was but all went well.
The views are amazing as you rise above the jungle and move into the clouds. The big relief for me was it was a tiny bit cooler. The heat here is still killing me. It is 30-35 degrees C everyday with the humidity between 60-70% everyday. Apparently it is cooler here than in either Florida or Texas but for this Canadian girl still too hot for me. So the relief up top in maybe 27 Degree C was much welcomed. What was great though was green lush vegetation.
At the top of the mountain there are fabulous hiking trails of just perfect beauty wandering thru the grounds. There is like 2 lagoons (ponds) with fish and turtles in them. There are amazing walkways carved into the hill sides and the gardeners do a terrific job of sculpting the vegetation.
They also have a statue of Jesus at the top of the mountain overlooking and protecting the city below. There is a special bench you can stand on and take pictures of yourself with Jesus. Here is a pic of me holding Jesus in the palm of my hand. I thought it was kind of poetic and interesting.
Ian was pretty motivated to find the cave and go explore it. He ended up asking a gardener because we all got lost and turned around in the maze of trails at the top. It was here that my heart condition started to get the best of me. Being at altitude and having not eaten yet and huffing and puffing up and down the mountain trails my blood pressure started to go funny. I am told my lights went out 3 times and pretty hard. I am missing pieces of time after this point in the adventure.
My friends were very kind and protected my head each time I fell over and got me back to the concession stand to feed me. That helped get my blood sugar levels up (part of the problem) and the rest got my heart rate back down. We later went to town below and found the Jumbo store (Dominican version of Wal-Mart) and bought some provisions. I bought Elena a Yoga mat so when she returns she can join me in Yoga class (which I enjoy immensely).
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POVERTY
We visited a poor Haitian village in the morning. I am very emotionally sensitive and this was one of the hardest things I have seen in my life. The experience really touched me and will take me a long time to digest.
See… I am apparently a very spoiled first world Canadian girl. Sure I have read about poverty in books, sure I have seen it in videos and documentaries…. but yesterday I saw it first hand.
ummm…. wow.
The city I come from is a little city called Welland in Ontario Canada (near Niagara falls Canada). My town is considered one of the poorest in my province. I had mentioned before that when our government signed free trade deals with the US and Mexico our heavy steel industry evaporated. We are tied for the highest unemployment rate in the province. I have worked hard at crappy low paying jobs for years just to pay my rent. I have had to go to the food banks several times. I buy all my clothes at the goodwill because I could not afford to buy new clothes. I thought I knew what it was like to be poor.
Here are two picture I will show you of the slums in my home town. This is where the poor people live. These are the bad neighborhoods. These two areas are the most dangerous place in my city you could go walking at night, where the real poor people are.
This is my Canadian idea of what poverty looks like.
YEP…. this is my Canadian idea of what poverty looks like. I had never even met a homeless person until I went to the United States.
Well… ummm… I guess I had no idea what poverty looks like.
See I had a very hard time when I came to Luperon and saw the rusty old shacks these people live in. It shocked me. It has taken me a month to get used to. I am now more able to see thru the rusting dilapidated structures and see how good the people are. I am starting to appreciate their culture a little bit. This has been an unexpected giant step in my education.
Well… yesterday I learned that the Dominicans in their shacks are living like kings compared to the Haitians living here.
Ian has been very helpful in edifying me. Here in the DR they view Haitians the way Americans view Mexicans or Europeans view Polish or Ukrainians. (Canada has no such parallel to use). They view them as lesser than. They pay them less than. They treat them less than. As a Canadian this is a hard concept for me to grasp because we don’t have this idea in Canada. We view all people as being of equal value. Canada is full of people from every part of the world. No one region of the world is seen as breeding superior humans in our eyes. So without the concept of superior we have no concept of humans that are inferior.
When Ian pulled the SUV off the main road and started going down a dirty track towards some scary looking slums I got really nervous. Oh crap where are we going.. is this going to be safe…?
Ian and Faith assured us that we would be perfectly safe here. This is the Haitian village of Lagrua that they serve. Everyone here knows them. These Christian missionaries ride here twice a week on their motorcycles and deliver 80 meals to the hungry children and teach them about God. The villagers Love Faith and Ian.
These are the lucky Haitians who got out of Haiti. They are living well compared to being back home in Haiti… ! The government of the DR built this place a few years ago. There are 2 rows of concrete buildings divided into single rooms where entire families live. Then of course there are many slum shacks built onto everything.
They are all uneducated. They live like animals. They breed like animals. They have no concept of birth control. They cannot even feed themselves yet sex feels good and they keep making babies they cannot feed. The children run around in packs and the adults sit around doing…? well…. I’m not sure what they do. I hear that sometimes Dominican companies will come by to hire a few of the men and pay then less than half what they would pay a DR citizen and work the Haitians at the hardest and crappiest jobs.
The two boys Ian is holding are twins. Their father died and 2 months ago their mother just left and abandoned them. The village kind of looks after them collectively (sort of). You can see all the kids around Faith trying to hold her hand. They feel safe around her because Ian and Faith have always been kind to them.
Ian tells me that Haitians treat dogs very badly. Like he says there are a lot of Neglected dogs in the DR but the Haitians will actually walk 5 feet out of their way to kick a dog. Ian says it is pretty hard to watch. I watched an old Haitian woman beating a little boy while we were there. They lack the education to understand that corporal punishment fosters angry violent adults later.
They live dirty and literally in the dirt. The children just wander around in packs all day entertaining themselves with no schooling and no goal and no purpose in life other than to stay alive. They live with animals. We saw chickens pigs and dogs living among them. Imagine it like literally living in a barn. They have no hope and no future. Once the kids realized us big scary white Gringos were with Faith and Ian and we were not a threat they started to flock around us too, wanting to hold our hands and just be close to us for safety and protection.
You cannot help but cry when you see this. It will affect me for the rest of my life. There was one little girl who sought me out to hold my hand that Ian said was malnourished and starving to death 2 months ago, now they noticed she has a sore developing on her chin that is infected. She was maybe 3 years old and probably destined to just die there soon. Its normal to them and perfectly accepted.
This White building on the right with the Blue and red stripe is a lottery gambling house set inside the slums.
(A little side note here… gambling is a popular tax on the poor and stupid people here in the DR… these Lotaka’a and Banco’s are everywhere… like almost every block, no matter how poor the government is happy to take what little money they have for the slightest glimmer of hope)
Ian showed me that 150 meters away (where the comparatively wealthy Dominicans live) there is a Loteka already. But ever willing to fleece the poor the government built a lottery house literally right beside Haitian slums so they poorest of the poor don’t have to walk 150 meters to part with whatever money they may have made that day. You know… to encourage strongly they remain as poor as possible, wouldn’t want them to save any money for a future.
It is a sickness I have never seen before, an affront to decency and humanity. Capitalism at its worst maybe.
The poverty of this Haitian village shocked me. Humans living like animals is something I have never seen before. It is something I cannot comprehend. Why…? Why is this allowed..? Why do they choose to live like this? Why does the greater society not fix this?
What can you say or do about this sort of thing?
How can a human being deal with this?
Why does this not provoke rage in all of you?
How can we all sit back knowing we could make all of humanity a better place yet we ignore it and do nothing about it?
What can we possibly do about it?
I don’t know… I gotta cry for a while.
Cheers…
Captain Lexi the sad and heartbroken