Celebrating Diversity

Warning: Contains warm and fuzzy feelings!

Three days in August I spent with 50 Dominican youth and the 25 American volunteers who brought them all together to learn and share in a mountain retreat center. As you can deduce by the numbers, each volunteer could only bring two youth and with a group of 20 enthusiastic young men it was a decision I took very seriously, but ultimately was easy to make. Number one was the guy who is always driving the adults crazy, riding way too fast on his motorcycle, but who’s always showing up at my house asking when he should round up the boys for a meeting. This trip would be a just reward for his dependability. The other was my younger brother; a boy who stops by his house only to sleep, attends alternative high school and raises fighting cocks. I believe that people often become what others think and say about them, so I have always called him mi angelito – my little angel. He has an excellent demeanor, dependable and thoughtful, but he’s almost as racist and homophobic as they come. I thought a diversity conference would be an excellent place for him.

The week before the conference they were both beside themselves with excitement, according to their mothers. They needed to pack their best t-shirts and buy a new pair of jeans, of course… for the first time in a long time they would be seeing people they hadn’t known for their entire lives.

On Monday morning when we arrived in Santiago I navigated the city streets and negotiated taxi fare in my tough Dominican Spanish with the two young men, ages 16 and 19, standing behind me. I could feel their surprised looks through the back of my head. It quickly became clear to the three of us that I was the mama duck and they were my pichones – hatchlings. I was certain though, that when they found all the other youth, the females in particular, they would leave the nest and I would have to cling to other abandoned volunteers for comfort.

During the three days we attended workshops on diversity, Haitians, Muslims, Jews, Koreans, American, AIDS, clean water, Kung Fu and disabilities. We did activities about countries around the world, economic disparities and what they want to do in their own communities. And most importantly we played games and sung songs. During all of this my pichones never wandered far. I lead yoga at 7am, one did yoga, and one came to watch. We were 3 of the top 4 in limbo and my angelito and I took third place in a crazy partner game. They never ran up to me saying how awesome it was or how grateful they were to be there, but they were happy and they were totally into the workshops.

After the workshop about Haitians and Dominican immigration law the racist one came up to me and said, “You know that’s right because we want our children to be born in the States but when they (Haitians) have babies here we won’t even register them!” I just sipped my juice, smiling inside and nodding as he spouted more of what he’d learned in the workshop.

On a wall near the main classroom there were envelopes posted with all of our names on them and papers and markers to write positive notes to others during the 3 days. When I took my envelope down at the end of the conference only 2 of the 75 people there had written me… my 2 baby ducks. The two notes said something like this:

‘Daniela, I am writing to tell you how pretty you are. Your parents should feel so proud to have a daughter like you. From someone who loves you a lot.’
‘Daniela, Thank you for thinking of me for this trip. The truth is that I feel proud to be here with you.’

I nearly cried.

And so with 75 people on the big bus back to the city we had to sit three to a seat, but as we dropped people off and other seats opened none of the 3 of us moved into the empty ones. We stayed squashed together, dancing back and forth and joking about random things until we got home.

The morning after I wandered around my house not knowing what to do and wondering what my baby ducks were up to. I found my younger brother putting his new certificate proudly in an old frame and when I entered he asked me how we were going to improve our group and teach more people about all the stuff we learned.

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I know that it filled quickly after I wrote about it but THANK YOU to any of you who donated, or tried to donate, to this conference fund after my last blog entry!