Hey everyone, it’s Alex.
The first week has gone by pretty fast and there’s lots to tell. Hopefully I have enough time before we leave this gas station cafe with wifi to write it all down for you.
I’m gonna get straight to it for the first post. There are two main things we’re doing right now in the Dominican Republic. We’re staying in the city of La Vega and some days we help build a new house (I guesstimate less than 2000 sq.ft.), and some days we deliver water filters in poorer communities. I’ll talk about the house first.
So the organization we’re working with this month is called Global Effect, and in the DR they’re doing this nifty thing called micro-lending. Rather than hand out aid to people all the time and inadvertently teach locals who are in need to become dependant on charity, they select people to loan money to in order for them to start a business (There’s a lot of family businesses here), with the intent of them both becoming independent and even paying back the loan. The house we’re building right now is the result of a previously-homeless woman opening a restaurant via a ‘micro-loan’, and doing so well she’s paying back her loan ahead of schedule and now we’re helping build a new house in place of the shack she’s had recently. Though to be clear: There are two locals who are construction workers who know what they’re doing and are being payed for the work. These guys basically do all the skilled work/directing and we do all the manual labor we can for them. As of this post, we actually haven’t been to the house in a few days because they’re doing work we wouldn’t know how to do. All that to say: they’re professionals and they’re building a good house we’re just helping.
So when there’s less for us to do at the house, we go do water filters. Here’s how it works: the organization we’re with are also getting high-quality (Read: as good as medical dialysis) water filters to purify water for drinking, designed to attach to common 5-gallon buckets, be easy to use and maintain, and last for 10 years or more. So local pastors will give a presentation at their church about the filters and take people’s names that need filters, and as supply allows we go from house to house teaching each family to use and maintain their own filter. As families get filters, neighboring households will learn about them as well and get “on the list” for a filter via their pastor. We actually ran out of filters to give out today, and are getting a hundred more this week.
So how important are these filters? Well, some of these families or entire communities are very poor: A 5-gallon jug of purified drinking water costs as little as 35 D.R. pesos (~$0.55 U.S.), and still some families will risk stomach bugs and frequent diarrhea from bacteria in their tap water because they can’t afford it (And the sickness can be more severe for children). Or some families can afford clean drinking water, but it takes up as much as 25% of the household’s total budget. So for many families, these little filters are a God-send.
In the evening after my first time out delivering water filters, I was thinking about clean water back home. I thought about how surprised a Dominican who hasn’t been to the U.S. might be if I told him about how ALL U.S. restaurants always have clean drinking water, for free, by law. There are entire neighborhoods here that only have clean water if they have the money to buy it, or they’ve gotten a filter.
I mentioned earlier something about avoiding cyclical dependence on charity, but this is not one of those cases I’d say. Something as basic and necessary as clean water shouldn’t be complicated. And meeting these people, telling them their kids don’t have to drink dirty water anymore… the experience is like no other. You don’t have to speak the same language or have an interpreter to recognize the profound gratitude in their faces. Sometimes you get emotional with someone you just met, because you both know how much their life has just changed.
Going out and speaking to strangers house-to-house as a foreigner has been the hardest thing I’ve done here so far. But the result of it all has been emotionally fulfilling like little else I can recall in recent history. Just like I’d hoped from the start, this trip is changing me.
One week in and it’s been incredible already, folks. See you next time.
-Alex
