El campo

Friday morning after we finished with our service sites, we drove approximately two hours to La Ceiba- a very small community located in Northwest  Dominican Republic, very close to the Haiti border. Here we will spend the weekend, staying with local families and then providing treatment to anyone in the region that requires PT.

This was quite different then any other home stay I have experienced, First, I was with four other girls(two of whom had some Spanish speaking ability). Second, instead of spending days with my host family, I spent the day with my PT group as we treated various patients, and only returned to my homestay at night.

My homestay family was quite well off for the community; they had a kitchen, living room, and two bed rooms, each with 2 queen size beds in it. They had electricity, and some running water- but the bathroom was literally a square concrete hole in the ground, and the "shower" was a scoop and a big bucket of water. The family dynamic was interesting, and I never quite figured it out. But I believe that our host was Ramone, who lives with(and is taken care of) his mother and a slightly older gentleman who I think is Ramone's father. Adult children living with parents is fairly common as family is very important. Also no one spoke any English (though we did teach Ramone how to say "good morning" or "Ud norning"

We were welcomed into their home with open arms. DR hospitality is amazing, As soon as someone shows up at a house, chair magically appear, coffee is offered, and the host stops whatever they were doing to attend to their guest. It is almost unerving how much they cator to guests. The children here were very dignified and respectful. They were almost stand-offish compared to the adults. However, I won over the local boys by demonstrated my loon call. They loved it, and I had to spend my spare time teaching it to them.

Romone taught us a DR card game- just don't ask me what the name was. It took a few rounds for us to understand, but once we got it, he was estatic. However, he did make it extra difficult to learn as he kept changing the rules on us. Today (our last day) he actually tried to cheat and we caught him at it! In exchange we taught him how to play Go Fish. I can only imagine how he felt as he was teaching four of us his card game, because trying to teach just him a card game was difficult!  I especially  had trouble with this because, even through I know my spanish numbers up to 14, everytime I opened my mouth to say something French would pop out! Yikes!

I am extra-excited to share pictures of our homestay because we were in the mountains. We literally drank coffee on the porch everyday looking over the DR/Haitian mountains. It was unbelievably pretty. The land is parched though, May is supposed to be their rainy season and they are in a heavy drought. For an agricultural community that already lives in poverty, this is hard. It actually rained for about ten minutes when we first arrived, In celebration, the local church organized a walk to pray and celebrate the gift of rain. It was humbling to watch and celebrate with them.

We  are back in Santiago tonight, however leave first thing in the morning to Santo Domingo. We will get to spend the night in a hostel, go to the beach and be touristy for a bit!