On integrating

I came back to the Capital to the original training center for language training this week. I was so nervous to come back and visit my original host family. You may remember them as having two adorable girls, ages 3 and 13. I wasn’t able to have serious conversations with them before due to my lack of language skills and I haven’t talked to them since I left in May. I had forgotten how much I adore them.

During this experience as a whole it has not ceased to astound me, how easily we as human beings can move in and out of people’s lives regardless of our temporary dependence on them or their feelings for us. There are volunteers who chose, during this in-service language training, not to stay with their original host families. There are volunteers getting ready to leave this island after working for two years in a place, who consider not telling the people in their community that they’re leaving forever… I do not understand this.

I am not one of these people. I honestly and whole-heartedly put myself into this work and value the incredible friendships I’ve made. I’m not sure that someone can do successful, sustainable development work without gaining an appreciation for the actual people. Not like “Oh those Dominicans are so crazy,” or “I felt bad for this boy who was shining shoes.” Not the people you feel like you know because you see snapshots of them in the brochure and you think that bachata music is really special. I mean the women I know who have unnecessary hysterectomies, who lose babies born alive because their doctors need just a little more training or a few more supplies. I’m talking about the kid in my English class who wants to learn English so bad he pays his weekly earnings to travel an hour from home for a class that’s less than an hour long every week, never missing class. I know the group of 20 or so high school aged guys who ask me every day when we’re going to have another environmental club meeting and when we’re going to pick up all the trash.

These people are not starving to death, they don’t need handouts, they are not poor people living on the other side of the world who you wish that there was something you could do but you never really follow up on the emotion. These are friends of mine, they are the people who support me physically and emotionally day in and day out, they are family now. I have gained more from them than they will from me, or at least as much.

This trip to the Capital has been one of appreciation for the special things I missed before. I gave it another chance, and thanks to my host family and good friend and volunteer mentor, Ryan, I have come to appreciate it a great deal though of course there is much work to be done.