In the fall of 2006, I was at a crossroads. I had just quit my job and was about to begin a career as a freelance designer (which would eventually turn into a permanent gig at OnWired). A few people from my church were heading to the Dominican Republic for a short mission trip, and they asked me to tag along since I speak Spanish. I’ve spent a lot of time in Mexico over the years, and I even led a Habitat For Humanity trip to El Salvador one time, so I’ve seen plenty of people living in rough circumstances. In the Dominican Republic though, I saw some things that broke my heart.
The first few days of the trip felt very familiar to me. We visited a church, a few schools, and a nursing home in some small towns. Those areas certainly weren’t up to par with our American standards, but they were pretty typical for rural areas in Latin American countries. People didn’t have much, but they were proud of what they had. The one interesting thing was that many of the people we encountered were Haitian, not native Dominicans. They had come in search of a better life.
On one of our final days there, the missionaries we were visiting took us out to a remote village where they do quite a bit of work. We spent the last half hour of the trip in the back of a four wheel drive pickup truck, traveling down muddy roads through miles and miles of sugar cane fields. After some pretty intense off-roading, we finally arrived in Gallareta — a wide spot in the road with a handful of concrete row houses. Small villages like this are scattered throughout the Dominican countryside, remnants of the country’s large sugar cane production industry (which had apparently gone defunct in recent years). The people who lived there — again, mostly Haitians — had come to this village to work the sugar cane fields. When the industry dried up, they were basically abandoned by their employers and by the government.
As we jumped out of the back of the truck, our driver told us to keep our water bottles hidden. I thought it was a strange request, then he told us why: there was no water in Gallareta. They had a pump that in years past had brought water from another small village several miles away, but it no longer worked, so people had to walk miles each way to bring buckets of water back from a river just to have enough for survival. Keep in mind that we weren’t in America. Most of you who are reading this would refuse to drink water taken directly from a river or lake, and that is in a country with environmental laws and anti-pollution programs. Drinking river water in a developing nation is an entirely different experience. By taking a sip of that life-giving liquid, you could be consuming toxic chemicals or exposing yourself to any number of bacteria or diseases.
Looking around, I quickly realized that the people in Gallareta were in a dire situation. Aside from no running water, there was little food and only enough electricity to illuminate a few bulbs around the village. In the small concrete houses, the people had literally nothing other than the clothes on their back (and there were quite a few children who didn’t even have clothes). Most of them were sleeping on the ground and cooking on open fires. We heard about illnesses and injuries, but there was no medical care available. One small girl — maybe three or four years old — had a terrible tumor growing on her neck. If it kept increasing in size, it would eventually kill her. This was poverty like I had never seen before. The tragic part? Most of these people had voluntarily come to Gallareta to get away from even more extreme poverty in Haiti. I couldn’t imagine how much worse it could get (although Haiti is officially the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere).
Fast forward to 2010. An incredible earthquake strikes Haiti. Thousands and thousands die almost instantly. Many more die over the coming days due to lack of even the simplest medical care. Those that survive will be left with nearly insurmountable odds as they try to recover and rebuild. My first thought upon hearing about the tragedy was “what can I do to help?” It isn’t much, but I took a few hours and designed a shirt, which I’m selling in an effort to raise money for Doctors Without Borders (
http://HelpHaitiNow.net). The child pictured on the shirt is a Haitian boy I photographed in the Dominican Republic. Hopefully he is still in the little village where I first saw him, far away from the death and destruction in Haiti. And hopefully my small act — lending my skills and my time to raise awareness and money — will help provide some much needed medical relief in a country that so desperately needs it.
If you have a few spare dollars, I urge you to give. Skip that super-grande skinny caramel mochaccino tomorrow morning and send the money you saved to help someone who literally has nothing. And in a few weeks after people have stopped thinking about the earthquake victims in Haiti, I encourage you to keep giving to a humanitarian organization working in developing nations like Haiti and the Dominican Republic. The money you give could help provide clean drinking water in a village like Gallareta. You won’t miss a few dollars, but it could literally be the difference between life and death for someone else.
I’ve included a few pictures from my Dominican trip, including the photo of the boy featured on the shirt.
