Dominican Republic. I can’t believe its been 8 months since we arrived there. It seems like lightyears ago but also feels like it was maybe two weeks ago.
Everything was fresh and new. I felt like I had a clean, white slate to scribble all over for the next 9 months where messing up was ok and I had the prettiest of colors and nicest paintbrushes given to me. I was hesitant to scribble and mess up at first, but once I started going for it, I never wanted to go back. Why hadn’t I lived like this my whole life???
The mountainous, lush green landscape was the best classroom I could’ve ever been in. I learned so much, mainly about intimacy with the Lord and seeking Him above all else. I learned about the triune God (the Father, Jesus and the Holy Spirit). I learned about myself. I learned about community and its importance. I learned about grace and freedom and joy and life and more than I could ever type out for y’all to not get bored.
Community. It was hard. I mean getting thrown into a foreign country with strangers was not easy, especially when you’re still trying to figure out who you are and who God is to you and everything. Some nights I wanted to scream at the top of my lungs because of loneliness and being in the awkward ice breaking stage with so many people and being easily annoyed and confused. Some nights it was going to bed at 8 to avoid anyone. But other nights it was staying up till the middle of the night on the swings with Daven and Dasia, telling our testimonies and funny stories. Or sneakily eating oreos and peanut butter in the pitch black room with Kara Murray when she moved to the bed next to me. Or scraping the flooding water out of your room during a hurricane with 3 other girls so our stuff didn’t get soaked. (I’d like to that this parenthetical phrase to thank Kara Murray for being the same person as me and getting me. I needed you the first month, and God knew. Thank you for being one of my people. You’re a gem and I couldn’t have survived without you.) but I knew I wanted to fight for this, I saw the fruit of good community in 3 weeks and I was ready for it, even if it was weird and lonely sometimes.
This was the first time that I also learned about human trafficking. Like I said in a previous blog, I had heard about human trafficking and knew that there was still slavery in the world but thats the extent of my knowledge. One part of our ministry was working on powerpoint for our host, Vicki, who was going to raise funds for building safe-houses on their property to women getting out of human trafficking. We learned that the Dominican Republic was the most popular place for sex tourism in the world. THE WORLD. Tucked away in the little mountain town we lived in for the month was nowhere near the action of human trafficking, but when the month was up and we went down south for final debrief, we got smacked in the face with the reality of it.
Our debrief as a squad in the DR was in the number one city for sex tourism, Boca Chica. We saw gross men whistle at us and hiss at us and stand far too close to us, but we also saw white men on the beach lounging with 1-4 Dominican women at one time. Those were things we could just walk past on the beach and try not to watch, trying to make ourselves feel a little better than the helplessness and heartbreak we were actually feeling. It wasn’t until my team of 8 was at dinner at a pizza parlor, just a couple minutes walk away from our hostel, that we actually didn’t know what to do about this whole human trafficking thing. There was an old American white man sitting next to us who was taking a young Dominican girl (probably around 20) to dinner planning what their night was going to look like. They used google translate to talk to each other and the things we heard were gruesome; far too much information about what was going to happen later that night in their hotel room. (If you want to hear more about it, read http://kylasill.theworldrace.org/post/pizza — a teammate’s blog about it when it happened)
It sparked something in all of us. We were not happy. We were all actually filled with fury when it happened and didn’t know what to do so we all sat in Paige, Ky and mine’s room and talked about it with our mentor and squad leader. We were all angry, but I think it ignited passion in all of us for women across the world and the problem of human trafficking. It was something that we saw that was real and raw that we knew we couldn’t turn a blind eye to ever again.
I think my whole world was unknowingly flipped upside down that month. I thought I hated the DR until a few weeks ago, but hindsight’s 20/20 right? im thankful for the DR, even if it sometimes felt like the first day of middle school for a month straight. It was hard and it really did suck sometimes, not gonna lie. But it was great, a good start to the rest of the Race. Its funny to think about who I was then and who I am now.
