Between the earth and the sky: Invisible Millions

Every society has its invisible class.
In America that invisible class are the homeless. Hundreds of thousands of living reminders of "there but for the grace of God I go." A sub-class living among us that working people don't even like to acknowledge out of fear.

I used to think like that before I joined the Peace Corps. That's when I discovered that being homeless was not the worst thing that could happen to you. Not even close.

When the pirate problem of Somalia broke into America's consciences following the 2006 invasion by Ethiopia, people had trouble putting into context. It seemed like something straight out of a history book.

You can put slavery into that same historical context. It's something from a very different time. Every nation on Earth, at least every one with a working government, has outlawed slavery.
Yet, the slavery problem has never been worse.

Despite more than a dozen international conventions banning slavery in the past 150 years, there are more slaves today than at any point in human history.

There are between 12 and 27 million slaves in the world right now, depending on who is counting. Slavery is the 2nd-most profitable criminal enterprise in the world, after drug-trafficking. The average annual profits from a slave were $3,175 in 2007.
The majority of the slave trade exists in south Asia and Africa, although it extends to most of the nations of the world.

In the western hemisphere the problem is slavery is mostly unsubstantial - with one big exception: Haiti.

Poverty has forced at least 225,000 children in Haiti's cities into slavery as unpaid household servants, far more than previously thought, a report said Tuesday.
The Pan American Development Foundation's report also said some of those children — mostly young girls — suffer sexual, psychological and physical abuse while toiling in extreme hardship.
Young servants are known as "restavek" — Haitian Creole for "stays with" — and their plight is both widely known and a source of great shame in the Caribbean nation that was founded by a slave revolt more than 200 years ago.

That survey came before the 2010 earthquake, which almost certainly made things worse.

The plight of the Haitians is a very personal thing for me because I am living just 5 kilometers from the border of Haiti. Many of my students cross the Dominican border every week to attend my classes.
Doing this has certain risks.

The police and enlisted men in the Dominican military are extremely poorly paid. I've been told their average pay is around 5,000 pesos a month (about $140). It's nearly impossible to live on that.
Thus they supplement their incomes by shaking down Haitian immigrants for bribes.

Instead of fixing the situation by paying the police and soldiers a living wage, the government created a special unit of police just for the tourist areas, called Politur. These police are better trained and better paid, in the hopes that they will be less incline to shake down the tourists that the economy depends on.

On a recent trip through Dajabon, my bus was pulled over by soldiers and all the Haitians were yanked off the bus. The bribe for not having a visa was 100 pesos. The bribe for having proper documentation was 50 pesos.
I can testify to the humiliation and intimidation of getting pulled off a public bus at a military checkpoint, and I look nothing like a Haitian. Unlike Haitians, I could appeal to the American embassy.

The "Haitians" I am talking about may have never been to Haiti, nor consider themselves Haitian.
The only reason they are considered "Haitian" is because of a quirk in Dominican law.

For 75 years the Dominican Republic’s constitution granted citizenship to almost everyone born in the country. But since 2007 the government has sought to deny the citizenship of people whose parents were illegal migrants, a policy incorporated in an amended constitution in 2010. Up to 200,000 Dominicans of Haitian origin may be affected. Almost 500 of them have complained to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) that they have been left stateless. The IACHR has condemned the new policy. But on December 1st the DR’s Supreme Court endorsed the new rule by rejecting a Dominican-born man’s request for a birth certificate.

[Being stateless is like being] "between the earth and the sky."
- Mohamed Alenezi, Bedouin from Kuwait.

Statelessness is a global problem effecting between 15 and 25 million people in the world.
These people live in a netherworld almost completely devoid of human rights and legal protections. In most cases, stateless people are invisible to societies.

"One of the big problems we have is that this simply is not recognised as being a major issue globally," said Mark Manly, head of the stateless unit at the U.N. refugee agency UNHCR.
"In the media there's very little discussion, in universities there's very little research and in the U.N., until relatively recently, there hasn't been a lot of discussion either, so the effect of all that is that we still have major gaps in our knowledge," Manly told AlertNet, a humanitarian news service run by the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
Statelessness exacerbates poverty, creates social tensions, breaks up families and destroys children's futures. In some cases it can even fuel wars when disenfranchised people pick up weapons, as has happened in Ivory Coast and Democratic Republic of Congo.
...
The effects vary by country, but typically stateless people are barred from education, healthcare and formal employment. They often can't start a business, own property, hold a driving licence or open a bank account. They can't get married legally or travel abroad to work or visit family.
And they can't vote, which means they can't elect politicians who might be able to improve their lot...
Stateless people are vulnerable to exploitation, including slavery and prostitution, and risk arbitrary detention. Their lack of identity can make accessing legal help impossible -- no one knows how many stateless people are locked up worldwide.

Statelessness, along with extreme poverty, is a leading factor in the global slave trade.
Generally you never hear about stateless groups until people start getting killed.
The biggest stateless problem in the world is the Palestinians. While large stateless populations exist in Europe and Africa, most of these invisible populations live in Asia.

There is one major exception to this Asian-centered trend - Haitians in the Dominican Republic.

In the DR birth certificates are needed for such matters as buying a mobile phone, enrolling in school or getting married. Absurdly, they must have been issued no more than 90 days before; the state makes money by charging to renew them. People who had previously replaced their certificates many times were suddenly rejected.
Officials deny that these people are stateless, saying that as the children of Haitians they can apply for Haitian citizenship. But many no longer have any ties to the country of their parents’ birth.

“There’s an entire blackmail industry around the Haitian immigration in the country”
- Jose R. Taveras, Immigration Agency director

I was hardly surprised the other day when my Dominican neighbor told me that "Todos los haitianos son ladrones" (All Haitians are thieves). I've been repeatedly warned to stay away from Haitians neighborhoods.
Since I used to live in a San Francisco ghetto, I shook off the warnings as just racist slanders.
Then, during a visit to a Haitian mercado last week, I discovered that a pocket of my pants was slashed with a razor in the hopes of getting my cell phone to fall out. I thought that was a pretty bold thing to do.

To be fair to Dominicans, their country hardly has the resources to deal with its own people, much less the massive immigrations flows from Haiti.
The Dominican Republic is a "boat people" nation. In just the last three months there has been two tragedies from rickity boats full of desperate Dominicans fleeing to Puerto Rico sinking. Most Dominicans I've met do not know how to swim.

Much needed perspective

One of the reasons I joined the Peace Corps was that I felt the need for more perspective on life.
Two years in the Peace Corps, living in a different country with a different culture, learning a different language, will give you more perspective than the average American can handle. You have no choice but to broaden your mind, both to the bad and the good of your host country, and of your own country.

I am here as a teacher. My specialty is computers, although I do lots of other teaching.
This has presented me with two major obstacles to overcome:

1) How to teach students about computers when electricity is undependable? For instance, this past Saturday there was absolutely no electricity all day. When computers break in this country it is usually the power supply that goes bad because the electrical current fluctuates so much.

The lack of electricity and water is not unexpected, and is something you just have to get used to.
So is the fact that my Spanish is muy pobre.
The other obstacle, however, is much more difficult to overcome:

2) The educational system here is an absolute disaster.

People in The States like to talk about how bad the American educational system is. A single day in a Dominican school would change their perspective. The Dominican Republic has the worst public education system in the Western Hemisphere. Yes, that includes being worse than Haiti.

[public expenditure for education] is 2 percent of the GDP, compared to 4 percent average in the region. There are not enough infrastructures to provide access for all children. As a result, students only receive about two hours of education a day in overcrowded classrooms.
...
According to the United Nations Development Programme, the United Nations' organization that connects countries to knowledge, experience and resources to help development, by 2006, only 56.9 percent of the professors had levels equivalent to bachelor's degree and less than 5 percent accomplished the official scholar curriculum.
...
Those who cannot afford private school might not graduate from high school since only 48 percent of the matriculated students get a high school diploma.

As bad as that sounds, in reality it is much worse. Here are a few anecdotes:

I overheard a teacher telling her students that there are two continents in the world - the west continent and the east continent.

I am planning on giving a workshop to the high school teachers on how to use Microsoft Word. I decided that it would be great if I took one of their current exams and converted it to Word, thus showing how the knowledge could directly make a positive impact in their work (they currently use exams created on a typewriter, or handwritten, and then photocopy it). So I asked for a copy of a current exam.
The exam is full of misspellings.

I got a global map in both English and Spanish and showed it to the neighborhood kids. I asked them to find the Dominican Republic on it. Since American students fail this test too, it didn't surprise me that the kids couldn't do it. What did surprise me was that the kids had no idea what I was asking them. They had no concept of what a map was and what it was used for.

Despite all these shortcomings, the current students are obviously the best educated the Dominican Republic has ever seen. Much of the adult population is functionally illiterate. It's a sad statement that mi pobre español is superior to most native speakers in my pueblo when it comes to literacy.
The libraries here, when there actually is one, is full of brand-new books. They've never been used. Go into anyone's home and the only book you will find is the Bible. There is no tradition of reading here.

And yet I still feel lucky. The students I have are generally respectful and eager to learn. Other Peace Corps volunteers tell me horror stories of students that are out of control and make teaching a class impossible.
Classes here can't last longer than a hour because students simply shut down after 45 minutes. They've never had to concentrate on anything longer than that.

Which brings me to an epiphany I had the other day while visiting another volunteer's site.
His casa is about 100 feet from a local escuela. We were sitting outside watching the kids in the playground. They were running around hitting each other with sticks and throwing rocks at each other. It went on for a very long time. There was no supervision.
When it finally came time to restart classes, the teacher tried to organize the kids into lines. It was an impossible task as the kids either ignored the lines, or tried to knock each other out of the lines.

That's when it occurred to me that I had seen this before - with Dominican adults trying to get on a transit bus or trying to buy things at a store. They have no respect for lines or waiting their turn either.
Then I had my epiphany: simple things like respect for your fellow man and waiting your turn is learned behavior.

Imagine a world where you don't know where you exist on the planet, and no one around you does either. Imagine a world where you don't know what is happening in the world, and no one around you does either. Imagine a world where you don't know how to read, and no one around you does either.
Now here's the important part - imagine a world where none of this is strange because this is the way it has always been and may always be.

How would this limit your view of what you can become? Where you can go? What you can accomplish?
I come from California (which to Dominicans is a suburb of Nueva York). I may as well have been dropped from outer space. After living here nearly a year it occurred to me that no one has bothered to ask me, "What is it like where you come from?"
Isn't that strange? Dominicans have no frame of reference to even ask that question.

Now circle back to my epiphany and ask yourself if this limited view of the world isn't also true for America, just different?

In the Dominican Republic there are almost no homeless people. Imagine that.
A country this poor and lacking in basic services can still take care of their own.
Oh sure, the homes may lack windows (and in the case of Haitian immigrants, floors) but nearly everyone has a roof over their heads. Family takes care of family, including extended family.
Now ask yourself what is so sick and twisted with Americans that we can't do this too?

In the Dominican Republic everyone knows their neighbors. Imagine that.
People here leave their front doors open all the time. You are expected to simply walk into other people's homes, unannounced, even if you don't know the person, and introduce yourself. No one gets excited about it.
Now ask yourself what is so wrong with Americans that we can't do this too?

In the Dominican Republic everyone wants to share what little they have. Imagine that.
If you stop in someone's casa they will inevitably offer you coffee. And if it is around meal time, they will insist they feed you. If you are on a bus (or GuaGua), and someone has some food (or moonshine), they will offer it to everyone.
Now ask yourself what is so wrong with Americans that we can't be like this too?

My point isn't that one culture is better than another. My point is that when it comes to societies problems that we classify as "human nature" is mostly just culture. It can be changed, if we wanted to change it.
What is needed is for more people to ask "why?" Why are things like the way they are? Why can't we change them for the better? And don't tell me it's because "people are like that" because I know that isn't true. People have been trained to be like that, and they can be untrained. Or better yet, they can untrain themselves if someone would just show them how.

Christmas and Religion

You might think that Christmas in a country as religious as the Dominican Republic would be a huge thing, and you would be right. However, you would be right for the wrong reasons.
Now that I've spent my first Christmas in this country, I can tell you for a fact that there is almost nothing religious about it.

Christmas is a reason to party. The already loud music is even louder. The drinking, which is already excessive, is even more excessive.
It's more like Super Bowl Sunday than a religious holiday. Plus, it goes on for at least a solid week.

This was a surprise to me because all my experiences up to this point led me to believe that Dominicans would be spending their days and nights in religious services.
Let me give you a couple examples from just my trip to Santo Domingo two weeks before Christmas.

On the trip down the mountain from my pueblo there is a small Catholic shrine to the Virgin Mary. It was built alongside the main road and there is nothing within at least 5 kilometers of it. Not even a campo.
By Dominican standards it is pretty nice. I'm sure it costs more than most of the houses here. Why it exists there? I have no idea.

On the morning GuaGua down the mountain, the driver stopped at the shrine. He got out, along with two other passengers, and spent 10 minutes praying at the shrine while the other twenty of so passengers waited for him to finish.
There was nothing special about the day. The driver gave no reason to the passengers why he had to stop there. No one complained. It is just part of living in the Dominican Republic.

A few days later I was leaving Santo Domingo. It is a 7 hour bus trip back to my pueblo, which is exhausting. So I got on the bus early, grabbed two seats for myself and tried to nod off.
As the bus started to leave the station I heard some woman in the front of the bus saying something about "somos nada" (i.e. we are nothing). This caught my attention so I looked up.
The woman was giving a fire-and-brimstone speech about how we were all damned if we didn't embrace Jesus. It went on for about 20 minutes. No one complained. It is just part of living here.

This isn't unusual in the slightest. Dominicans get VERY excited about their religion, especially the evangelicals. What's more, they like to amplify themselves. So going to an evangelical church means your ears will be ringing for hours later.
A Pentacostal service I went to in El Seibo involved some woman screaming at the crowd for over an hour (she was amplified, of course). Since the woman never stopped screaming long enough to take a breath, I kept waiting for her to pass out from lack of oxygen. Unfortunately, only the church members were doing the passing out.
This was followed by a concert that was, amazingly, even louder.

So you don't want to go to an evangelical service? No problem. They take their messages into the street too. This involves the renting a truck stacked 5 and 8 foot tall with speakers, and a preacher screaming at the entire city for two or three hours.

So what do they scream? Bible verses? Nope. Some moving message of hope and redemption? Nope. Perhaps some social commentary? Please.
I've heard a preacher scream "nombre de Jesus" over and over again for 10 solid minutes. MLK he was not. It seemed to get the crowd excited, but it didn't convince me of joining his church. His "sermon" is fairly typical here.

While the content quality is lacking, Dominicans certainly make up for it in volume and enthusiasm.
As with everything in this culture, their religion experience involves music and dancing. So its hard to criticize it.

The glory of a health care system free from government

I was visiting one of my project partners today.
She has two daughters, the youngest of them 6 years old. While we were talking the girl from next door, about the same age, came over to play with the daughter.
I couldn't help but notice the fresh dime-sized scabs and scars all over her lower legs. It was some sort of skin disease.

What is it from? No one knows. Has the mother seen a doctor about it? No. Why not? No tiene dinero.

It's as simple as that. This is the Dominican Republic. This is a third-world country. There is no real public health care system. It is almost totally private, and thus inaccessible to most of the population.

A short while later, my project partner pulled out a box and showed me what was inside. It was bandages and sanitary napkins.
They are for her brother. Last year he was a security guard at a bank when it was robbed. He was shot twice and nearly died. He was taken to a hospital who told them that there was no hope.
Then the hospital found out that he was injured on the job, and thus had health insurance.
Suddenly there was hope.

Many months later he's still in bad shape, but alive. However, the insurance doesn't cover everything. That's why my project partner is taking clean bandages and sanity napkins to his hospital.

Hospital care in this country varies entirely on the ability to pay.

I live about 100 yards away from a small, local hospital. I hadn't gone into it until two weeks ago, when the father of my host family contracted influenza.
He would up in the hospital, hooked up to an IV.

The day after he was admitted, his wife showed up at my door. She needed a bucket of water. Why? Because the hospital didn't have any water to bath him with.
Needless to say, the hospital also doesn't provide food. Families do that too.

My host family doesn't have health insurance.

As a Peace Corps volunteer, I have health insurance. Fortunately, I haven't had to use it so far (knock on wood).
One part of the training was a tour of a hospital in Santo Domingo that the Peace Corps uses. It was as clean and modern as any private hospital in the United States.
The Peace Corps uses this hospital (and one in Santiago) exclusively. I've been told that no matter how sick I am, they will not let me be admitted to any other hospital.

I have health insurance and Devil take the hindmost.

Little Haiti

I was talking with my brother the other day about the pathetic state of the local campo dog that wants me to be its owner. It has a badly injured foot that is beyond treatment. It needs to be put to sleep, but there is no vet within two hours of my Dominican pueblo.
He asked me what the locals do in such cases. Generally the dogs are poisoned or simply left to slowly die. Then I responded with my blackest humor: "Dogs here are treated almost as badly as Haitians."

You can always tell when you are in a Haitian neighbourhood in the Dominican Republic. Dirt floor shacks, naked children, and worst of all, the sense of hopelessness. Unlike Dominican children, Haitian children are typically shy and very cautious. It's Mississippi in the 1950's times 1,000.
It's not like the Dominicans are rich in comparison. They also live in houses with tin roofs and eat the same food. However, almost every Dominican I've talked to has warned me not to go into the Haitian neighbourhoods. Why? Because there are Haitians there. I've been told that Haitian have no concept of hygiene or respect for the environment.
But that is merely the start. A fellow Peace Corps volunteer and friend in the southern part of the country told me that when a Haitian tried to board a GuaGua he was on, all the Dominican in the bus demanded that he be kicked off. Several said the Haitian "fouled the air".

Dominicans have had an issue with Haiti for nearly two centuries. Independence Day wasn't the day that the Dominican Republic cast off the oppression of Spain (twice). It's when it drove the Haitians out in 1844. The hatred of Haitian immigrants was best exemplified by the insanity of The Parsley Massacre.
No nation is more hostile to Haiti and Haitian immigrants. What's more, things are getting worse.

I just got back from Dajabon today. It's a town on the Dominican/Haitian border. Every Monday and Friday there is a huge mercado.
I cannot describe the Haitian market and still do it justice. It has to be experienced, but I will try anyway.

Imagine, if you will, a blazing, hot sun and dusty, dirt roads. As far as the eye can see there are stalls where people are hawking their wares. There is no real pattern to how the stalls are arranged. Sometimes their goods are on tables. Sometimes just spread out on tarps on the ground. Sometimes tarps have been strung up to give a little bit of shade, but the ropes are so low that you have to be careful or they will hit you in the face as you walk.
The whole market is crowded beyond capacity. Every hundred feet or so you will need to physically push the people around you, or get pushed in the back. Every third person is someone hawking goods, traditionally by shoving them in your face. Just saying "no, gracias" or "no quiero" won't convince them to get the boxer shorts out of your face. Some of the stalls have people yelling prices into megaphones.
Meanwhile, there are motorcycles with faulty mufflers running through the crowds, often with huge bags of goods on the back. With only between five to ten feet between the stalls, that means the motorcycles literally have to knock people out of the way.
The smell of exhaust and pollution in the hot, dusty air is sickening and the sound is deafening.

So why would anyone go there? Because of the dirt, cheap prices on clothes. I'm currently wearing a pair of jeans that I bought for less than $3 and a t-shirt for about 70 cents. I don't know where the Haitians get their goods from, but they must get them for next to nothing.

The reason why I am talking about the trip is both because the Dajabon Haitian mercado is a fascinating place for the study of the third world, but also because of what happened while I was returning to my pueblo.
The GuaGua ride from Dajabon to Loma de Cabrerra is about 21 km. The thing is, Dajabon is a major human trafficking location, so the Dominican military has set up multiple check points on any road leaving Dajabon.

At the first military check point, the soldier looked in side door and openly threatened anyone who looked Haitian that they better have their passport with them, or else. There were about 12 people in the minivan (crowded by American standards, but not by Dominican standards). The Haitian-looking woman next to me didn't have her passport, and so got pulled off the GuaGua.
At the next military checkpoint only one person got asked for identification - me. The whitest, most American-looking person in the minivan (which means I'm the one most likely to have dinero). Obviously the soldier was hoping that I didn't have identification, because then I would have to bribe him (the bribe is widely known to be 100 pesos). Unfortunately for him, I remembered to bring it. As we drove away I loudly said, "Solo me" and all the Dominicans on the GuaGua burst out laughing.

A big problem in the Dominican Republic is people not being registered. The Peace Corps encourages every volunteer to help people get their birth certificate. Most people don't have them simply because getting one at birth costs money, and there isn't a lot of that around.
By not having a birth certificate a Dominican cannot vote, get a passport, or open a bank account. It is a huge hindrance.
But that is nothing compared to what Haitians face in the Dominican Republic.
As far the Dominican government is concerned if your parents were born in Haiti, then you are Haitian. This applies to people who have never been to Haiti. Thus the hundreds of thousands of children of people who fled oppression or violence in Haiti and were born in the Dominican Republic are children without a country.

Sonia Pierre, a Dominican human rights activist, says the changes in Dominican citizenship laws have made hundreds of thousands of Dominicans of Haitian descent, in effect, stateless. She points to a landmark international court decision in 2005 calling on the Dominican government to end its discrimination against this population. But the government did the opposite - it hardened its policies and began retroactively withdrawing citizenship from Dominicans of Haitian descent.
Claiming that it is only trying to "clean up" its civil registry rolls, the government now systematically refuses to issue identity documents to Dominicans of Haitian descent. Officials often deny these documents because someone has a Haitian-sounding last name or "looks" Haitian.
Sonia Pierre's organisation, the Movement of Dominican-Haitian Women (MUDHA), has documented thousands of cases where the government is systematically denying rights to Dominicans of Haitian ancestry. Those affected come from all walks of life - schoolteachers, lawyers, community organisers, doctors, entertainers, caregivers, students, and military officers. Now these people are in danger of becoming stateless in the country of their birth and residency.
Many are facing deportation to Haiti or a life outside the law. "If I don't have my ID and I'm walking down the street, immigration may grab and deport me like they do with many Haitians," says Daniela Siri Yan, a vivacious 18-year-old who studied computer science at the local high school.

I've already made the decision that this isn't a battle that I'm going to fight, because I can't win it. If I fight for the Haitians then I will lose the Dominicans in my community, and they already need more help than I can give.
At the same time, it's hard to see the discrimination every day and not have it tear at your heart.

Sin Agua

I woke up in the middle of the night. Something was different.
It wasn't different in the same way last week was different - when I felt a 3-inch long cockroach crawling across my neck (lesson learned: ALWAYS tuck in your mosquito net). No, this time it was different because it was the sound of running water.

It had been 10 days since I had running water. So when water started coming out of the faucet I jumped out of bed, ran to the bathroom and opened the taps wide. I was suddenly wide awake and happy beyond measure.
The first thing I did was fill the back of the toilet with water and flushed it. The smell improved immediately. I then did it again, even though it no longer needed it. Then I did it a third time just because I was getting giddy.

I then emptied every bucket of water in the house and cleaned the buckets thoroughly before filling them with fresh water. Next came the counters in the kitchen and bathroom, and finally the floors of the apartment. It was 3 a.m. and I had never enjoyed cleaning so much in my life. It's amazing how the little things in life can suddenly mean so much when you don't have them for a while. Getting some perspective on life was one of the primary reasons I joined the Peace Corps.

Now if I only had some electricity...

When I talk to my friends and family in the States, they always ask me the same thing: "How do you manage without running water?"
Well, for starters, you catch rainwater. Fortunately it is the rainy season here in the Dominican Republic, so it rains about every other day. Everyone here has large buckets and barrels in their homes. When it starts raining, people run out of their homes, buckets in hand, to whatever storm-drain is available. The only problem is that the rain also washes off whatever filth was on top of the building, so you usually end up with a bunch of clean water and a layer of dirt in the bottom.

You don't drink this water. It's for bathing and cleaning only, just like whatever comes out of the tap. You buy bottled water to drink because the tap water can't be trusted.
This is typical for 3rd world countries. Undependable water is a way of life for 3/4 of the people on this planet.

It would probably surprise a lot of people in the Unites States that you can get by without running water for several days without any real problems. It would probably also surprise people in the United States that civilisation doesn't end when the power goes out. You simply have to spend more time talking to your family and neighbours.
People in the 1st world have convinced themselves that they absolutely must have access to their electronic toys all the time or something terrible will happen. It's a false scenario. Those electronic toys are separating us from what really matters in life.

Before I joined the Peace Corps I used to hear the term "3rd World Hell Hole". As if anyone not living in the 1st world was living a life of absolute misery.
The thing I discovered is that people in poorer, more isolated nations are slightly happier than people in America. They don't worry about the news because there is no power for the TV most of the time. They don't worry about crime because they know all their neighbours. They don't worry about protecting their "stuff" because they have little worth stealing.

One of the most surprising things I discovered when I got to the Dominican Republic was the almost complete lack of homeless people. Many of the houses may be shacks, but almost no one sleeps without a roof over their heads, and very few go hungry. Family and friends look out for each other.
Why is this true in a 3rd world nation, but not in a the United States? Well, everyone here talks to their family and friends when the power goes out (which is every day). So is it a blessing or a burden to have electricity all the time? Is it a blessing or a burden to have so much junk that you need to rent storage to put it all somewhere?

It really is an amazing concept to consider - that stuff does not constitute real wealth, and does not lead to happiness.
Sure the people of the D.R. want stuff. Sure they envy what they see on American TV shows, but then so do Americans. Maybe there is more value in the fantasy than in the reality.

Dominican Roulette

I was sitting in the back of a Daihatsu pickup truck with Damian, another Peace Corps volunteer, when I realized the absurdity of my situation.
We were coming back from spending the night in Rio Limpio, a beautiful mountain community with spectacular views. However, there was only one road and it wasn't paved. The recent rains had created more washouts and ravines than road. Even at 15 kmh we were getting tossed around the back of the truck like rag dolls. My wrist was sprained from a failed attempt at trying to hold onto the side of the truck. I had bruises all over my back and arms, and we had another 30 minutes to go before we reached the main road.
But that wasn't the crazy part.

There was another 10 Dominicans jammed into the back of that truck. Shortly before leaving Rio Limpio one of them had bought a couple bottles of claren, Haitian moonshine, and was passing it around. It was 11am and everyone was already drunk.
Two of the Dominicans were from the national guard. If you've never been to the Dominican Republic then you wouldn't know that national guardsmen, and even private security, walk around with shotguns loaded and not holstered. One of of the guardsmen had laid the shotgun on the bed of the truck so that he could text a message on his cell. Amazingly he seemed to be nodding off while he was doing this. Meanwhile the loaded shotgun was bouncing around, periodically pointing at everyone in the truck. Damian called it "Dominican Roulette". No one seemed to care about the shotgun but us.

It was at this point that Damian turned to me and said with a straight face, "I just realised that we aren't wearing seat belts." That's when the absurdity of the situation hit me and I started howling with laughter. Unfortunately I let go of the truck and the next bounce threw me against the side of it, nearly knocking the wind out of me.

The trip to Rio Limpio was part of an Ecoclub trip. There was supposed to be charlas about deforestation, but the moment we got there the Dominicans broke out a set of dominoes and a couple bottles of Brugal. Preventing deforestation would have to wait for another day.
That night the Dominicans broke out some huge, hand drums and played some music that I had not heard in the four months that I have been here. It had unmistakable African roots, and must have been some sort of blending of Haitian and Dominican cultures. Combined with some traditional dancing that wasn't barchata or merengue, it was easily the best night of music I had heard to date.

Later on, I was talking to one of the locals who told me that someone in the village had been arrested for "stopping the rain". I had to ask him to tell that to me several times before I realised that I had heard it right. He also mentioned a woman getting arrested for "flying and eating children."

On the way back we stopped to pick up a couple bolas (i.e. hitchhiker). It was an old man, so old that he had to be physically lifted in and out of the truck, and a young boy carrying a chicken. They didn't appear to be related.
Despite a general atmosphere of intoxication, we stopped the truck at a colmado and bought some food for our hitchhikers and waited for them to eat. I don't think they had eaten in a few days.