I haven't written in such a long time! Blame it on the GMAT! Between studying for the GMAT, fulfilling my duties at work and job hunting, it's been a busy couple of months. As I start to reflect on my time here, so much comes to mind. If I could, I would write about 10 posts right now.....but I'll just stick to one that's been bugging me for a while.
Let's talk about bateyes. A batey is a "town" where sugar mill or ingenio workers live. They are typically found in Cuba and the Dominican Republic. I call them "towns" because they aren't what you would typically think of when you think of a town. For example:
Towns aren't comprised of rows of rooms that are, on average, about 10 x 12 feet big.
A Little Bit of History:
Bateyes in the DR came about in the 1930s when sugar production was big in the country. Because the sugar harvest (zafra) lasts about 6 months, seasonal workers were needed to do the arduous task of cutting sugar cane (cause God forbid Dominicans would do that type of work!) The expectation was that they would leave at the end of the season (tiempo muerto). Ingenio owners would hire headhunters (buscones) to round up large number of Haitians and bring them to the DR to work. (Is this story starting to sound familiar to you? - i.e. those that leave in yolas to Puerto Rico from DR or coyotes who help Central Americans cross the border into the US, etc.) Haitians were promised the moon and the stars but arrived to deplorable conditions. They had to work long hours cutting sugar cane, which is probably one of the hardest physical jobs out there, and couldn't leave until what was assigned to them was completed. What ended up happening was that many of these Haitians, who in many cases did not have any formal documentation proving their Haitain citizenship, ended up staying past the harvest and starting families and communities. These folks are labeled "in transit" and thus do not qualify for Dominican public services like education and health services (not to mention that their physical locations make services difficult to reach them!) Because the sugar industry in the country is no longer profitable, ingenios have shut down, leaving these communities so incredibly vulnerable with no means of income or livelihood. A lot of NGOs have set up shop in or near bateyes to provide services to these communities.
In Comes Poverty Tourism
The organization I work for, The DREAM Project (dominicandream.org), is one of these NGOs. We operate a Montessori program in a batey called Caraballo, which is near Cabarete. I remember when I first went to Caraballo. It was during orientation. I remember sitting in our hot van in disbelief, even before I even got to the actual batey. We entered through a (real) town called Montellano. We crossed a one-vehicle-at-a-time, corroding bridge and then proceeded to drive through what felt like a maze in a sugar cane field. The driver couldn't have been driving at more than 15 MPH on a rocky, unpaved road. The heat was also unreal. The sky was as beautiful and blue as can be but there was not one ounce of shade anywhere in sight. I just imagined working unhuman hours in that type of heat and instantly felt a thousand times hotter. When we arrived in Caraballo 40 minutes later, we visited our Montessori school. We then went on a "tour" of the town and were instantly bombarded by locals selling us handmade crafts made out of recyclable materials like can tops. Our guide said something like, "we should buy something because this is the only way that they really make money." At the time, this didn't sit well with me. In fact, the entire "tour" didn't feel right. But there was a side of me that was curious to see what it was like in a batey.
In fact, every time I travel to a new place, I stay away from the resorts and often go out to explore what real life is like in these places. I should have been a cultural anthropology major because there is something about exploring different cultures that makes me tick like a crackhead on good crack. When I talk about exploring, I'm talking about befriending locals and asking questions about their every day lives. Or contributing to the local economy by consuming meals at a local spot or partying at a local nightclub. But it's a two way street: I love to teach others about my own culture - Dominican, American, and the mix that the two make - and to make parallels between our cultures, customs and traditions. I didn't do any of this in Caraballo.
According to Wikipedia, poverty/slum tourism "is a type of tourism involving visiting impoverished areas," and it's been happening since the late 1880s. What Wikipedia doesn't talk about is how this type of tourism plays out nowadays. Imagine big tour groups, of mostly white folks, walking through really poor communities, taking pictures of homes or with members of these communities. I wonder if that act validates these people as good people? (I also wonder if I can roll up in Riverdale, Greenwich Village, or Orange County and ask for a tour of their community? But I digress...) I heard the term soon after this trip and I felt like such a chump! I was a consumer of poverty tourism...after all, I did walk around the batey snapping pictures of their realities and in doing so, taking a little bit of their dignity. The term is a topic of much controversy, and rightfully so. Those that defend the practice cite that it provides jobs and income, helps create interest and, presumably, investment in the area. Critics of the practice cite that it provides entertainment and a temporary "feel-good" moment at the expense of those living in these areas and their conditions. I'm a critic of the practice. It's dead wrong.
My Thoughts
I have been fortunate enough to work in Caraballo. I work with a current Peace Corps volunteer who is assigned to that area and together, we work with teachers in the only public school in Caraballo. We provide workshops around literacy, math, and classroom management in hopes of making them stronger teachers and consequently, providing a quality education to the students they serve. The first time I visited the school, I little girl came up to me and asked for 5 pesos. I was shocked, not because she asked me for money, but at the facility and normalcy with which she asked me for money. I inferred that this was something she was accustomed to doing. I didn't entertain her question, but rather asked her what grade she was in. She then looked at me as if I was an alien and asked if I was Dominican. I told her I was and she said that I didn't look like I was Dominican. She then went about her business as usual. Granted, I get that all the time. What really bugs me is the perpetual effect of poverty tourism on this community. It sets them up for failure. Aside from poverty tourism being super messed up and creating this sort of sensationalism around poverty, it creates a dependent relationship with any foreigner that visits the town. It's like they are always given fish instead of being taken to the river and shown how to fish for themselves. If that's the case, what motivation do they have for improving their current conditions?
I said I was fortunate to work in Caraballo because I feel like I am genuinely empowering a community through education. What I do has a longer-lasting impact than buying all the can top bracelets available in all of Caraballo. This experience has also allowed me to witness a type of simultaneous vulnerability and resiliency that I have never experienced before. Needless to say, it's humbled me beyond words. I remember arriving from Caraballo one day and calling my mom in tears. I couldn't even speak from the emotion. I saw an elderly lady, she must have been in her 80s, who reminded me of my grandma. She clearly needed a walker or some other type of walking aid and had on shoes that were at least twice her size. They had a little heel which made it extra difficult for her to walk. I looked at her face and all I could think of was the word "struggle." Yet she was plowing through with a smile, walking slowly with amazing confidence. The tears came from a mixture of powerful and contradictory emotions: sadness, gratitude, humility, helplessness, and hope among others. My mom said, "witnessing, experiencing and dealing with the realities of impoverished communities is not for the faint of heart, especially in a country like ours. Take it in. Cry. Let it do what it has to do for you." I didn't understand what she meant then, but with time, I have some to understand her message clearly.
Hola Mi Gente!
I ran across an article yesterday that really hit home because it reminded me of my journey in figuring out my identity. Growing up, I was hyper-conscious of my hair. It was "malo," which is why my mom relaxed my hair at age 5 and continued to do so until I was old enough to work and cover that cost. Relatives would joke about my hair being so "bad" as a child that "water wouldn't pass through it." My mom would relax my hair at home sometimes and after the lengthly and painful process, look at my hair with such pride and joy and say, "que bella! ahora pareces una china!" The next day I would go to school so proud to have super straight hair that I could comb my fingers through. Being accepted at school and home made the painful and sometimes bloody scabs from scalp burns totally worth it.
Fast forward to 2005 when I studied abroad in Brazil. During our 6 month program, we spent a month in Sao Paolo and the rest in Salvador, the capital of the state of Bahia and a place known around the world as the hub for Afro-Brazilianness. I remember being in Sao Paolo and feeling so disconnected to everything and everyone. I lived in an upper-middle class community with my host mom/sister (she was 27 at the time) who was fair-skinned with green eyes and dirty blond hair. My Portuguese was decent at best so my communication was limited to my other study abroad-mates. At week 2, I was ready to begin the real study abroad program. I was done with the easing-in-process.
When I got to Salvador, however, everything changed. While I still lived in an upper-middle class community, this time with an older host mom who was fair-skilled with green eyes and dark blond hair, I attended University with people that looked like me. My Portuguese improved trememdously, I started to make Brazilian friends, and I started to train capoeira. I also went to beach...A LOT. Salvador itself is on the northern-most part of the country and I was lucky enough to live in a neighborhood that was literally 2 blocks away from the ocean. The first time I went I was so surprised because I saw dark-skinned people tanning. Yes, TANNING! I thought to myself, "they are buggin'!" Now. You have to understand that as a child, I would come to the DR during summer vacations and my mom would slather sun screen lotion on me WHERE EVER we went. Not because she was afraid of sun damage but because she didn't want me to look Haitian (read: Black) (I've spoken about Dominico-Haitian relations in another post). Naturally, I couldn't understand why in the world people who were already dark wanted to...dare I say it?!...get darker. Interestingly, in time, I too started to be okay with being darker. After all, in Salvador, as negras são gostosas lol (dark-skinned women are desirable/sexy/fill-in-any-positive-adjective-here) But jokes aside, in this part of the world, it was okay to be dark....to be Black...to be of African decent...to be all the things that for 20 years, directly and indirectly, I was told not to be.
A few months into my program, one of my capoeira instructors expressed interest in me. He was light-skinned with green eyes. When he expressed his interest, I was in disbelief. I couldn't believe that someone like him could like someone like me. It wasn't because I wasn't pretty, spunky, or funny. It was because I couldn't belief that someone who was lighter than me could be interested in someone of my skin color. Let me put that another way: I didn't think I was worthy of dating someone lighter than me. Of course, at the time I didn't internalize this situation in this way. But as I started to learn more about myself and my culture, I realized that the self-loathing doctrine that was ingrained in my grandmother from growing up in the Trujillo era was also ingrained in my mom and later, me. (The brainwashing is real, ya'll! There has been so much written about the link between hair and psychology). Unlike them, however, I have been fortunate enough to have had experiences to help me see this foolish reality, and reverse what would have been an inevitable cycle of self-hate and deprecation with my own children. Living in Brazil was incredibly transformational for me in more than one way. I left Brazil feeling so proud to be Black....yet I still relaxed my hair. Some may say that hair is just hair but let's face it, it's so much more than that.
You see, the process of accepting my Blackness, of self discovery, happened in pieces. I've always been pretty adventurous with my hair. One year I cut my hair three different ways. I sported Rihanna's asymmetrical bob for a few months and then her subsequent pixie cut. One time I washed my hair and noticed that my hair curled like crazy where it was shorter (aka the "unrelaxed" part). It made no sense to me for I had cabello "malo" and this type of "bad hair" just doesn't curl. Common sense told that, well, if that part of my hair curled, all of it would too and I did the big chop (I cut off all my hair). For the next couple of months, I got to know my hair like it was the curly long-lost sister who I always wanted. It was amazing! People ALWAYS asked me what I did to get such an amazing curl pattern and, gleaming with pride, I would say, "nothing! It just happens that way!" I also felt angry. Really angry. I was angry at my mom for putting me through all the pain and suffering of relaxers. I also thought, "dang, you know how long my hair would have been now?!" lol. But seriously. I relied on blogs and the internet to learn how to care for my hair and about the natural hair movement in general. As I started to learn more and more about it, I started to feel less angry at my mom and started to feel more hopeful for me, my friends, and our young girls who will inevitably find themselves in the same predicament I was in. I realized that it was an ignorance problem. People just didn't know any better. That means that there was is a solution. All hope was is not lost.
Like Tejada says in her article, "...I am Black because I am Dominican." I am Afro-Dominican. My personal journey has allowed me to "decolonize my identity" and reclaim what's rightfully mine: mi negritud.
Happy New Year, everyone!
It's funny how some folks wait until the new year to set up goals, focus on doing all the things that they didn't do the previous year, get a new body, blah blah blah. I, myself, was suckered into this for a while until I became a teacher. When 10 months of the year revolve around setting up goals, constantly measuring progress towards those goals and adjusting accordingly (talk about TFA jargon!), all the reflecting that only happens on Jan 1st of any given year for most folks is just a normal, everyday item on our to-do list. While I was in NYC for Christmas and had a lot of free time in my hands, I started to think about my own goals that I had set up for myself and where I was in relation. The funny thing is that all the while I was in NYC, I kept thinking was "I really want to be back in DR!" Sure, it was cold and ugly in NYC but it was more than wanting to be near the beach and in 70+ degree weather that made me feel that way. When I was DR I couldn't wait to be in NYC but when I was there, I couldn't wait to be back in DR. Why did that happen? Was it a matter of habit? Or, had my quality of life changed so much that I craved to be back in a fulfilling and stress-free environment? Better yet, was it both?
Habits/Routines. I started to think about habits and how a lot of what we do as human beings revolve around this notion. Someone somewhere said that it usually takes 21 days for a new habit to take form and become a staple in someone's life. While I can't say that totally happened for me when I first moved here (it took me about two months to fully adjust!), I now realize that I need routines. When I was in NYC, it was nice to wake up whenever I wanted and do different things on different days, but after a while, I became restless.....although all I could do is rest. Funny, right? While I love, love, love NYC and it will always be home, the reality is that Cabarete is my home now and thus my routines and habits are all here.
Quality of Life. I had a 4 week vacation...but I couldn't wait to be back at work. (Blasphemy, I know!) I remember when I was a teacher and dreaded being back to work after a 1.5 week break. Back then, I would kill for a 4 week vacation. Upon more reflection, I realized that part of the reason why I wanted to be back at work was because my work here is fullfilling and demanding, but NOT DRAINING. I know there will be some sort of stress related to any job but life here is just so easy. So simple. It makes work so much more enjoyable. Mind you, my job responsibilities have changed and acutally increased: I coach teachers, develop and deliver professional development workshops, and I devise curricular materials. Even so, I love it here. My work is fulfilling, I know I am making a difference in not only the lives of our students but also our teachers, and I am happy. Isn't that all that matters?
When I return back to NYC, I want to bring back this lifestyle with me. I want to be in a fulfilling and challenging role while still living a stress-free life. I know it will be a challenging in a place like NYC, but I will make it happen. Watch.
