Nearly three months following my first trip to the DR and I'm still finding that I don't really have the words to succinctly answer requests like "tell me about your trip!" I got swallowed up by daily life and stopped writing my piece-by-piece examination of the trip. Time to recommence.
I've written about the daily journey from Santo Domingo to Villa Mella and about three of the four communities in the barrio of Paraíso. Now I'd like to take you down the hill from Altos to Esfuerzo, so I'll go back to the beginning of the trip: Sunday, Jan 2. I'm bouncing around in time and place because physical context feels most important to me. Now that I've given you the lay of the land, I feel like we're ready to go into Esfuerzo and start to talk about the work done there.
That Sunday morning began with clinic preparations at our hotel, including making prescription labels and counting pills. Everybody chips in. I counted and bagged vitamins when I wasn't taking photos, and I've heard that when the president of W&M joins the crew, he works alongside the students. That sense of everybody looking around and pitching in wherever they're needed is pervasive within the team. I don't believe this effort would be successful without it.
After organizing the clinic supplies brought with us from the States and receiving cartons of medications from Dr. Ramon Lopez, we packed the bus for the trip to Altos. As described earlier, Altos is the community at the top of the highest hill in Paraíso and home to the school which hosts the SOMOS clinic. On our first day in the community, before the clinic was set up, we took a walk around Esfuerzo to say hello to the residents, as well as to get a look around the community to refamiliarize SOMOS members who had been here previously or to give a sense of place to those of us who are visiting for the first time. The photos below are from that afternoon and subsequent trips into the community.
Esfuerzo is down the hill from Altos and across a flood plain (la canyada) that separates it, geographically, from the rest of Paraíso. It's very isolated, compared to the other three communities.
There is a natural gas filling station at the bottom of the canyada. Here you can see it on the left.
I'm told that during severe flooding a couple of years ago, the canyada was under 5-6 feet of water, nearly to the top of the red gas pumps in the filling station. Some of the homes in Esfuerzo are on a slight rise, while some on the periphery of the community are on lower ground.
Entering Esfuerzo via its main road, we cross over a drainage ditch that borders the community on its East side. This ditch carries runoff from the other communities in Paraíso and joins the river that flows around the West/South sides of Esfuerzo. The bluish structure slightly above/right of center is an animal enclosure. In the foreground you can see trash/waste collected in the ditch. Mark commented that the ditch never truly drains because there is a slight rise in its path, which creates a small dam effect and hinders efficient flow of water away from the communities and into the river.
The main road into Esfuerzo is lined with homes that sit close to the street and relatively close together. Most have fenced yards; the fences are usually a combination of pickets with barbed wire and pieces of corrugated tin. The homes themselves are mostly cinderblock or wood structures, built on cement slabs. Most are one story; some of the cinderblock homes have a second level. The roads are dirt and gravel with occasional cement curbs.
In the center of the community, there is a crossroads of the two main streets. At the crossroads sits a gallera, or cock-fighting ring. Many of the men raise roosters and participate in the fights. The yard around the gallera, which includes a small building for concessions, served as a community meeting area while we visited Esfuerzo. I am not certain of the exact uses of this area during the rest of the year.
Leaving the center of the community and moving toward the outskirts, we pass small patches and larger fields of gandules (pigeon peas) and a church. I had expected Catholicism to be the main Christian denomination here, but instead find that evangelical Christianity is common.
Toward the periphery of the community, the wider roads give way to narrower dirt paths and homes are more spread out. In general, homes toward the periphery of the community were less likely to be made of cinderblock and more likely to be on lower ground.
Here aand there are half-built cinderblock homes, one floor built or walls halfway up, but unfinished and overgrown. Some bear For Sale signs. Others simply seem forgotten by all but roaming hogs. They may have been abandoned due to flooding, or due to lack of materials. Around Santo Domingo, unfinished cinderblock buildings fringed with rebar has become a familiar sight to me.
Those homes closest to the periphery of the community are also nearest to the river. During this time of the year the water is low, but during the summer, the river will be much higher and may even overflow its banks significantly. At those times, Esfuerzo becomes quite insular, surrounded by the swollen river and the overwhelmed drainage ditches that flow into the flood plains.
In general, from what I gather from observations and from what the more experienced SOMOS members describe, the people living on the outskirts of the community seem less likely to have significant social status within the community, and are also less likely to participate in discussions involving the community. This is, of course, a generalization. There are exceptions, such as Nani, who lives in the home pictured above, and who is currently Esfuerzo's representative to the Junta de Vecinos (a neighborhood council made up of representatives from individual communities).
None of these homes have running water. Human waste is deposited in pit toilets or collected in containers in latrines. Some of the homes have electricity; toward the crossroads, official-looking telephone poles bear electrical wires. Toward the periphery of Esfuerzo, makeshift bamboo electrical poles hold wires connecting homes.
This is almost certainly pirated electricity, but then again, the homes themselves are of dubious ownership; Dr. Aday indicated to me that nobody seems quite sure who owns the land on which Esfuerzo stands. Technically, they are probably a community of squatters. The circumstances surrounding this are entwined in the challenges that meet the residents of Esfuerzo in maintaining a healthy, self-sustaining community. Later I will explore three manifestations of this challenge: trash, water, and health care.
This post is a mere sketch of a community as intricate as any other. If you have a question about something you see or are wondering something about Esfuerzo, please ask it in the comments so that I can answer as best I can, and so that the experience for other readers is a little bit richer. Thank you.
