What if they gave a paradise…

Like it says...

Meet Boti, she's seven.

So, you've got this pond and it has weed on it that doubles in coverage every day. In 100 days it will be completely covered. On what day is it just 6% covered?

                I’ve been walking with my host mom’s (my doña’s) father. Her son and I were walking back from the basketball/volleyball court and met him walking carrying their chiouaua. We went into the Jehova’s Witness’s compound and up to the door of a house I hadn’t noticed. It is hidden from the main road. It is beautiful, a masterwork of stone and half round wood clapboards such as one would see in the hills of the rural western US. It looked fun to build, an exquisite version of the shop I built, a three season building. I saw again how easy it would be to live well in a climate that was subtropical, protected from storms as this area seems to be. The windows are not tight. Mosquitos could pass through, the only animals one might wish to keep out being human or on that order of size. Rats, squirrels, whatever could easily come into this house I’m living in and that nice one, too.

                So, what if they gave a paradise and everyone came…and stayed, and had children and they stayed and so on. That’s what I think happened here perhaps hundreds of years ago. It must have been marvelous for a while. This place has been raped by those who came through after this and that since Christopher Columbus. We’re way late here. Our diagnostic results fall within the general statistics for the country. In one of our group’s surveys 49% of the people were under 18 years of age. And 3% are 65 +. Things are going to change quickly for that street and I’ll bet other streets here are similar. I think we’re sitting on a population bomb. The DR, it seems, is on the edge of its resources and nobody seems to notice it. Even in this poor community, a significant percentage of income comes from remittances (money sent back here from abroad…i.e. New York City.) It’s not supporting itself and things are going to get worse. I suspect the world’s answer is going to be tossing more money at it to keep a lid on the problems and kick the can farther down the road. After all, Haiti was like this, then went further downhill and was undone by the earthquake and hurricane. This place is next. That’s my bet. And there may be nothing that can realistically be done about it. I don’t know what Peace Corps is doing here. I just don’t have the perspective to tell if what we’re doing is really going to be doing any good…other than helping people hang on a little longer. I may be shown that this impression is wrong. More than likely, I’ll never know, not from this low station. I’m too close to the ground, lost in the forest among the trees. The best I will be able to do is to have fun, meet people, make friends and learn some skills. Let’s see if this changes over the time I have here…however long that is.