I know that the Baltimore riots happened a few weeks ago,
but I wanted to give a little bit of my opinion. Also, it’s really important
that we continue to talk about what happened—and the discrimination and police
brutality that continues even today.
Being the Wanderlust girl that I am, it’s really hard for me
to call one place “home”. I have fond memories of cities all over. But as
someone who lived outside of DC and Baltimore in my formative years, those two
cities have a special pull on my heart.
And when I think about it, Baltimore especially does.
Baltimore is where I first saw underprivileged people right in front of me. I
was leaving an Orioles game with my dad, and to my shock there were a plethora
of tattered individuals that had appeared while we were watching the action
inside the stadium, holding up signs begging for money. I observed them in
silence as we walked by, and my heart reached out to every individual there.
The next day I got on my computer and googled (or was it AOL
search back then?) what one can do for homeless people. The rest, you can say
is history. Well, to say that more accurately, my reaction was already
predicted by my parent’s raising me to care about people, my own ability to
empathize with people. But I just remember that being the pivotal moment of
knowing I wanted—no, needed—to do something. Perhaps I didn’t focus on
homelessness, but a general sense of responsibility and desire to do good work.
I spent the following years volunteering with my church youth group; everything
from working in a soup kitchen and the food bank to raking the leaves of an
elderly person’s yard. I wouldn’t say I was driven by an insatiable desire to
save the world; I merely felt that these things were more or less my duty as a
citizen and member of community organizations.
Police brutality and the murder of young black men by police
(and citizens playing at police) is nothing new. Let’s say it goes back to the
very first days of this country. The current atmosphere is not merely an
increase in those murders, but an upswing of attention and the boiling over of
emotions, all fueled by the ability of the internet to share stories and
smartphone videos to contradict the explanations of the police.
My heart goes out to Baltimore; the place that first showed
me real people in need. Not because it burns, but because the desire to burn
exists as a cry of pain. That desire comes from years of oppression and
continued police brutality. It comes from the lack of opportunity and the
treatment of citizens as the enemies in a war we invented.
Were the riots wrong? All I know is that the murder of a
human being is MORE morally reprehensible than property destruction. That there
ALREADY have been non-violent protests, community meetings and organizing,
discussions about the problem, and so on. But few people cared or even
attempted to do anything until property—a thing we value more than the lives of
young, black men—was threatened. Our country was built on riots (cough *tea
party* cough). How can you condemn a more contemporary riot that is fighting
for the freedom—just as the revolutionaries were?
And if we want people to not be violent, I think our first
duty is to ask the STATE from engaging in violence. It is the state that is
keeping our fellow citizens oppressed, carting them off to jail at alarming
rates, and shooting them dead in the street for no reason. The State is the
violent offender here, not the people crying out for reform.
But while I refuse to condemn outright the riots, I will
point out that, in fact, most people were peaceful. And the day after the
riots, thousands of people got together and organized a clean-up day. This is
the line I posted with this (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/04/28/baltimore-community-cleanup_n_7162666.html)
article on my facebook account:
“Don't HOPE/PRAY for
PEACE. WORK for JUSTICE.
‘Baltimore, the place
you can B-MORE than what the media says you are.
‘I admire the people
protesting, I understand the anger that caused (a small number) to become
destructive, and I love that this city has people that have stood up and said
that they will do right by their community. Now let's all get together and
clean up this mess of structural violence and police brutality.”
Peace is not enough in Baltimore. I don’t want peace. I want
JUSTICE. And Justice is everyone in that city to be able to support themselves
and their families, whether it is through temporary government programs or
increased opportunities. It is realizing those people are not lazy, but that in
fact their manufacturing jobs were shipped away, but they were unable to move to
a better place, thanks to discriminatory housing practices. It is ending the de facto segregation
that keeps poor black in certain neighborhoods, away from opportunity. It is
stopping the mass incarceration that targets black men in the drug war. It is
stopping police from gunning down or beating to death young black males. I want
justice for these men in the form of a better world (and in the form of their
murders being imprisoned). I want justice for black communities across America.
I want better police and policing. I want better economic opportunities. I want
better schools. I want a better life for each individual in struggling
communities. There is work to be done here. Let’s come together to make this
happen.
No Justice, No Peace.
Know Justice, Know Peace.
Now back to my time in the DR:
After my fun time with Maria, I came back and kept working
on the Savings and Loans groups. My work just keeps expanding, and I fear it
will never truly be done. I started off simply re-working the accounting
system. Then I added a manual on training. Then I decided to make a detailed
instruction manual for the local coordinators/trainers.
When I presented the last part to the trainers, Franklin was
really put off. He looked at it, and how I’d presented a week-by-week plan for
teaching the group how a group functions. He said he couldn’t work with it; it
was too rigid and didn’t allow him to change up things for different group
circumstances. “No, this will not work for me at all,” he said, shaking his
head. I tried to coax out of him other suggestions, asking, “Okay, well then
what would work?” In the end we ended up making a checklist so the coordinators
could mark it once they went over a lesson. There was a suggested order, but
they were free to jump around.
The intern who had worked with the savings groups last summer came back briefly (Mel). She actually got a grant and will work with them some this
summer before starting her job (she just graduated college). We actually went
to see another employee of the organization I’m working for, named Kaylynn. She
is more or less in Lia’s (my supervisor) position, but in a different region.
When the three of us were talking, they also pointed out that the order I had
the lessons in was problematic, because it didn’t cover all the accounting
initially; I had spread it out over the 3 “Training” months. So we reorganized
it, and they liked the checklist idea.
Later, when I showed Franklin the changes I had made, and
pointed out that it was like he had suggested, he was a little put off. “Just
because I say something doesn’t mean you have to change it,” he said, alarmed.
We tried to explain to him that it wasn’t like that. But
that we were trying to be collaborative, and since he was the one doing this
work, he obviously has good ideas. Sometimes it is really hard to find this
balance, though. I want to get as many ideas as I can from the two local
coordinators Franklin & Nataly, but also they don’t have much background
with these groups, except for what they’ve been doing recently. Also, Franklin
doesn’t like to outright criticize me, so I have to pull it out of him. It’s
also sometimes hard to say, oh, well yes I did what you said, but also because
I thought it was a good idea!
I’ve also been developing some financial trainings for the
groups. The idea is that the Administrative Committee would be trained
separately on the actual accounting. But all members would get lessons with
every meeting regarding how the groups function, from reading and filling in
by-laws to lessons about how the savings function as “shares” in the group.
Additionally, they would receive some training about personal financial
management. Initially, I used a budgeting lesson that I’d developed while in Benin,
but the coordinators informed me it was too complicated for their often old and
illiterate members. So I included simpler lessons, including one on consumption
versus investments, and one on strategies for reducing spending. Also, I had
one lesson be a Feasibility Study, which looks at potential or existing small
businesses to see if they are or can be profitable and beneficial. I’d done
this with a few groups in Benin, but it was hard to translate it to Spanish and
the Dominican context. I definitely used my teacher, M., to help me with the
latter, after using Google Translate for the former part. Not that Google
Translate is perfect. But it gave me a good place to start. I could read over
the translation and think, “No, that’s not what I meant” and change it myself,
but not having to translate every word definitely helped.
For one day, I went to the capital, Santo Dominigo, where I
finally got to meet with the rest of the team, who are spread out in the
country. They had been there the whole week, discussing their work. Then I came
for the last day to present the work I’d been doing, and see what everyone
thought, and where it fit in to the organizational mission, and what I’d be
doing from here. Everyone seemed really excited. My goal has been to essentially
create a template which can be reproduced throughout the country, with clear
guidelines and ideas. And this is what they need. They have the desire to do
this, and I’ve created the basic tools. It was all very exciting.
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| My organization: American staff and Dominican counterparts |
Afterwards, I walked around the city, which has a lot of
architecture left over from the Spanish (including the oldest church in the
Americas), as well as various monuments to Dominican revolutionaries. Lia and I
went out dancing, which was super fun. Then the next day I spent a bit of time
at this small beach near the hotel before heading back to El Seibo.
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| The first church in the Americas And a statue of Christopher Columbus, who ironically wiped out almost all of the original inhabitants of this island |
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| A view of the capital from the top of our hotel |
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| the nearby beach (one of very few in the capital that was actually clean) |
A few days later, Mel (the intern who helped start the groups)
arrived. We started working on some stuff, and then for two days we went and
visited Kaylynn. She is in a region in the south. It was a bit far away, but I
was stoked to see another part of the country. We ended up staying in a little
town south of Kaylynn, in a house/hostel that sat on a cliff overlooking the
beach. On the first day going there, we ran into traffic caused by beachgoers
coming back after their weekend trip. People parked on the side of the road,
aka in the road, with no regard for those actually trying to move the vehicles.
It was a mess. Mel and I actually ended up getting out and walking. It was only
about a 30 minute walk up a very steep hill. We were worried that we wouldn’t
make it until nightfall, and were worried that we had our computers and cash
and everyone around would be a little drunk. We made it to the hostel and got
to watch as the traffic finally dissipated after about 2 hours. By that time we
were already well-fed by the woman who was running the place and were just
soaking in the view.
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| Nighttime looking over the water |
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| Sunrise over the ocean |
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| Me, posing, at the cliffside |
The work we did was mostly about looking forward. I of
course would be leaving in a little over a week. And Mel was leaving soon,
coming back for only the month of July. The organization (Kaylynn,
specifically, who will be taking the lead on this branch of work) needed to
know exactly how my system work, and talk about exactly what she needed to see
moving forward. So we discussed what I had, the changes I needed to make, as
well as the input I would need from Kaylynn and Mel on specific items.
The next week and a half was basically finishing everything
up. Mel and I met with Franklin and Nataly to discuss their thoughts and moving
forward. Then she left, and I finished up everything I could, printed out
everything that needed to be printed, and finally had a meeting with Franklin,
Nataly, and Lia, leaving them with my final work and instructions, ideas etc.
So the first week(ish) of May is “Patronales” in El Seibo,
where they celebrate the patron saint (Santa de la Cruz) of the town. This is
done, apparently, by having bullfights. Not bullfights where the bulls are
actually killed or anything, but simply let into the ring to be harassed by
drunk assholes. One bull actually “Noped!” right out. He ran out into the ring
when they opened the gate, and upon seeing the hoard waiting for him, turned
around and ran right back. It was fun to see this as a cultural thing, but I
didn’t really much care for it, even if the bulls weren’t being hurt. Then some
fights broke out, and Lia and I noped right out of there once someone brought
out a machete. The police were kind of keeping order, but then piling all those
fighting into the back of the same pickup truck.
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| Bullfighting (ish) |
We contented ourselves,
instead, with walking around, observing the men riding around on horseback.
While this is somewhat normal in the DR, it wasn’t so much in El Seibo, except
for this week. There were also carnival rides and people selling cowboy hats.
I had one last meal with my Spanish teacher. It was fish
cooked in this coconut sauce. Delicious! And she gave me some “Dulce de Leche”
actually made in El Seibo right before I left as a parting gift, and one to
share with my family.
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| Yummy! |
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| Working hard! |
My host family threw a going-away dinner for me, complete
with my favorite food: tostones. These are plantains that are fried and smashed
flat. They are wonderful. Lia was there and helped me pack a bit. After she
left, my host mom came in and told me that she was really going to miss me, and
stroked my hair and cried a bit. She also gave me some little souvenir gifts,
which was really nice of her.
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| Teaching Sammy to fetch |
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| Pictures with my host mom and her two granddaughters |
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| Me with my host sis and the dog we both love, Sammy! |
Friday, after I’d printed out some last-minute things, I
went to Miches, the beach. It was so wonderful. I stopped in at this little bar
right on the beach, and got a coke to mix with rum that I’d brought. I asked
the people there to watch my bag as I swam in the ocean. The water there is
this gorgeous turquoise, with very calm waves. I swam “laps” back in forth, I
floated on my back; I simply enjoyed with glorious calm, warm water for a long
time. The beach was completely deserted, except for the occasional moto that
passed by. After an hour, I went back in, and made myself another drink. I also
brought a book to read, so I was enjoying that. Then I was offered a free drink
by the owner, which I graciously accepted (obviously). I went back out into the
waters almost bursting of joy for my incredible, amazing life. When I went back
in again, the owner offered me another drink, and I stood and talked with him
and the two female bartenders for a while. Also there was a kitten, which I
obviously played with and petted for the whole conversation. The owner asked me
what I thought of Miches and I told him it was tranquil and beautiful. “Like
you.” He responded mildly. I just smiled and went on petting the kitten.
Eventually, I did have to leave. The man asked me to tell
all my friends about the place. So here goes. If you ever find yourself in
eastern Dominican Republic (which you probably should work on), go the Miches.
It’s gorgeous. Specifically, go to the Playa Arriba, just over the river, and
go to the very first bar you come to (NOT Coco Loco, which is the next
bar/hotel). The one I’m talking about has a horse painted on the side, because
you can actually get a horse ride along the beach. I never got to do this, but
oh well. Maybe next time.
Saturday I boarded a plane and returned to America. I still
had some unfinished work, so I sent all that over the internet to Lia and
Kaylynn in the next few days, in addition to a very thorough write-up on instructions, suggestions, observations, etc. It feels weird, because I feel like the (development) work is
never truly finished. But for me, on this project, it is.
And thus ended my amazing experience in the Dominican
Republic.
What’s Next?
So as I was living in the DR, I took the time to apply for
various jobs. The goal had been to stay in the DR in some way, but that never
worked out. So I applied for one job in Africa, and a few in the D.C. area. I
only got one call for an interview, from a small international development
consulting firm in Northern Virginia. So I did one phone interview, one Skype
interview, and after checking my references, they decided to hire me. I got the
call exactly a week after my last trip to Miches.
So now I have a real, salaried, 9 to 5 job in the DC metro
area. It’s super exciting, but also feels weird. Like I will actually be living
in one place in America for probably a good amount of time.
I also feel incredibly blessed. My life has been truly
amazing—well, forever—but especially over the past 10 years. I fell in love
with College of Charleston. I applied to this school and once I found out I got
in, I didn’t even bother to apply anywhere else. A few months later they handed
me a full tuition scholarship. I had always wanted to go to France. I went my sophomore year. I
decided West Africa was calling my name. I went my senior year. I wanted to go back to West
Africa. I went there for two years, after finding and completing this great, relatively
inexpensive Masters program in Oklahoma, where I met some of the most wonderful people ever. I decided I wanted to learn Spanish and live in the DR and I did (obviously). Then I
decided maybe I wanted a real job with real money, and a within a week of
leaving my internship, I had one. I’ve worked hard, obviously for all of this,
but I also know this shows that a little bit of privilege goes a long way. I
have had incredible opportunities and my ability to experience them was
definitely helped out by my position in life. And every day I am grateful for
that. I want to continue working hard to hopefully make a difference in someone
else’s life.
And I want to thank everyone who has supported me over the
years. My parents, obviously, my grandparents, my sisters and other family.
You’ve always been there to encourage me, help me, listen to my stories. All of
my friends who have done the same. To my professors, you have been amazing, and always encouraged my love of learning and inspired me. And thanks to everyone reading who has
donated to some project or journey of mine, thank you again. You’ve made my
vagabond lifestyle possible and most importantly helped the individuals and communities I strove to improve.
Thanks everyone for reading my blog. My strong opinions, my
struggles, my joys. It has been a pleasure writing this and sharing my
experiences. I hope you’ve been able to learn and enjoy. And I hope it inspires
you in some way as well!!!
I assume this will be my last blog for a while. I have to
actually accumulate vacation days now, not just head off into the sunset
whenever I feel like it. I would love to stay in touch, even if I’m not off gallivanting
with cool stories to tell. But when I have a new travel story, I’ll be sure to
write about it and share once again.
