A letter from Jenny Bent in the Dominican Republic
June 2012
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ,
On February 29 this year my family and I flew on COPA airlines from Nicaragua to the Dominican Republic, a country that shares the island of Hispaniola with Haiti. If geography interests you, you will find that Nicaragua really is not far from the DR. Nicaragua is a little to the south and west, but both are in the subtropics of the Caribbean. Both countries are hot, especially this time of year and especially where we are living, in the city of Barahona, located in the southwestern edge of the country—one of the driest and hottest parts of the Dominican Republic. Barahona is not too big, but not small. It has a seaport and a sugar refinery, which people tell us is owned by a Guatemalan company. Barahona also has a beautiful tree-shaded central park, which is really the heart of the city. All of the major stores are next to or very near it.
The city is surrounded by mountain ranges covered in emerald-green forests and frequently encircled by white clouds, making us think it is going to rain where we live down below. It only does sometimes, though. It rains a lot up there in the mountains; there are dozens of streams or small rivers flowing down the mountain slopes into the ocean. Ah! One thing about those rivers—the water is cold, cold enough to send shivers through every fiber of your body! I have tested the temperature of the water with the tippy tips of my toes and you can be sure that I have not yet had the courage to jump in. Yes, I say that, knowing that I am a disgrace to my people in Nicaragua, the Miskitos, a people who have always lived along the coasts and the rivers of Central America. Perhaps my saving grace is that my two daughters jump into that water without a qualm.
At least three times a week I take a public bus to go to my work at the mission clinic serving one of this area’s bateys. Batey is a Tahino word for “living area,” but it has come to mean a small town where sugarcane workers live. Often the bateys are designated with a number, rather than a name. The clinic where I am serving is in one known as “Batey Seven.” The clinic provides health care services for the sugarcane workers and their families, most from Haitian background. I have begun setting up a medical laboratory there and I am helping develop a plan for a community health program. There are many aspects to community health, but in this context what we mean is we will be working with the community providing basic information and training that can help the people take control of their health. The clinic where I serve, El Buen Samaritano (The Good Samaritan) is part of the mission of the Iglesia Evangèlica Dominicana, the Evangelical Dominican Church, or IED. The IED is a partner church of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) here in the Dominican Republic.
Any four-wheeled vehicle that provides public transport in the DR is commonly referred to as a guagua (gwá gwa). The guaguas don’t have any schedule that is terribly exact and they don’t have stops that are particularly specific. Every day on my way to work, I do just like Dominicans. I go to the main street, where one of the guaguas I need will go by, and then I wait until one appears. You have to keep in mind that the guaguas can be anywhere from 10 to 30 minutes late or early. But usually I don’t have to wait for more than 15 minutes on my way to work. Once I am on my way toward Batey Seven, we go by fields of sugarcane, mango tree orchards, and plantations of banana trees. Several times we cross the railroad tracks for the trains that haul the sugarcane into the refinery. From time to time we pick up a passenger. An important thing to know about the guagua system: they may seem to be full, but the driver can always find space to fit in one more.
Once the guagua reaches Batey Six, I have to get on a motorcycle taxi to make it to the clinic in Batey Seven. The road into Seven is dirt and gravel and once I am on it, I am completely surrounded by sugarcane. At this point my eyes can’t find any end to the cane fields; they seem to stretch unbroken to the edge of the majestic mountains in the distance. Some days as we drive through I detect the sweet, sticky smell of sugarcane juice being clandestinely cooked into molasses. As we pass through the fields, we often see farmers herding their goats and cows, taking advantage of the grass growing on the edge of this ocean of cane.
During the six months when the sugarcane is being harvested, called the zafra, there is more activity on this road. You will see big tractors passing by periodically, collecting the long stalks of cane and loading them into the trains, trains that look like they could be the same ones that carried the cane to the refinery 50 years ago. And of course you will see the sugarcane cutters, walking with their machetes along the road, or in the fields, already cutting. These workers come from Haiti to work during the zafra and most return home when the harvest is finished. An agronomist friend of ours who works for the sugar company told me that every year they bring at least 400 workers from Haiti to cut the cane. Ernesto says that the sugar company collects the workers on the border in big yellow buses—buses that originally took students to schools in the United States.
When I reach Batey Seven it always reminds me of a baseball pitcher on his solitary mound of clay in the middle of a large green field, but here there is no audience to applaud if the pitcher makes a spectacular throw. Batey Seven is not strictly just a mound of dirt, though. It does have a few trees, but there is no grass to green up the yards of the houses. Aesthetically, it is not really a nice-looking place. The sun beats directly down all day, the heat is intense, and there is a lot of dust during the dry season. The community here has many needs, but thanks be to God, the people do have the Good Samaritan clinic, and health services is not one of the things lacking.
The clinic serves all of Batey Seven—the whole community, be they Haitian, Dominican or Dominican-born of Haitian descent. As a member of a minority group in Nicaragua, I can compare my own experiences of discrimination with what Haitians and Haitian-descent people deal with here in the Dominican. I need to say that what I have seen has left me with a bad taste in my mouth. But in the bateys, with all their limitations, there is what feels to me like a sacred space in the middle of a very difficult situation, a space where there is respect and tolerance between neighbors, regardless of their color or origin. This is something that inspires me in my work with the Good Samaritan Clinic, which keeps me dedicated to being an instrument of God’s work here. It is like a dose of hope that allows me to see clearly, hear keenly, speak wisely and feel deeply in my heart. By God’s grace, may I continue to be able to share this vision, with my colleagues at the clinic, with my children and my husband, and with you.
Jenny
Mark, Jenny, Keila and Annika
The 2012 Presbyterian Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p. 12
blog: http://markandjenny--pcusa.blogspot.com/
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