4X4 to Laguna Limón

A blog post by Melissa. A couple of weekends ago, Mina, Adam and I took a road trip in the clinic's 4WD truck to the north of The DR to kayak on Laguna Límón and stay at a rustic ranch. It was a three day weekend because Friday was Restoration Day, which celebrates the DR's second independence from Spain (I know, it's complicated, but if you're really confused, consult Wikipedia). The landscape was beautiful with lush rolling hills. 

The view on the way to Miches

Before we arrived at the ranch, we stopped in the coastal town of Miches and had a picnic lunch in the city's park. We then visited an artisan sanctuary and workshop. The founder, Cayuco, wasn't home, but his wife, April, welcomed us with open arms and showed us around. In the ceilings, walls and floors their was art. The kitchen was open to the air and had a deck that overlooked the river. April said that sometimes she kayaks out to the ocean from the river to watch the sunset. She probably needs the R and R because her three year old was a bit out of control. His name was Mayo and in the short time we were there, he urinated off the balcony onto the first floor patio and then spilled an entire plate of sliced avocados on the living room floor. 

The front of the main house at the entrance of the school.

Mina and Adam with Isidro, one of Cayuco's apprentices. They are standing in front of Cayuco's many carvings.

Saturday morning we went on a five hour kayak trip with Kayak Limón. It's a small eco-tourism guide company started by a Peace Corps volunteer. Actually, we were the first group of tourists they had that were not other Peace Corps volunteers. I think the main challenge for this organization is that no one really knows about it. But it's also really far off the beaten path. It was great for us. We paddled from Laguna Limón right out to the beach.

Our guide found coconuts for us on a nearby tree and chopped them open with a machete. First we drank the coconut water and then ate the meat inside. Delicious!

Here is Mina and our guide in the "Mangrove Cathedral."

On Sunday, we stopped by Playa Esmeralda. The road to get there was filled with puddles the size of lakes and hundreds of potholes. Mina put the four-wheel drive on and got us there and back in one piece. In fact she was four-wheel driving it nearly the entire trip. It was one big, bumpy and muddy ride.

Playa Esmeralda is one of the longest stretches of undeveloped beach in The Dominican Republic. We were the only ones there and the water was bathwater warm and calm. Our kayak guide told us that there are already plans underway to develop this beach as soon as a highway connecting it to the nearest city are complete. But until it is developed, it is a quiet little treasure that we were lucky enough to enjoy.

Way off the beaten path, Playa Esmeralda has a crescent shaped beach with a large pool of shallow water and mellow waves. 

The challenge of living (and washing)

A blog post by Adam. We've been back in the DR about a month and a half since our trip to the US. And of the many things that have struck me since returning to our temporary tropical home, nothing has been more ever present than the difficulty of life here. Unless you are among the super wealthy elite, most daily tasks are just more challenging than in the US.

Sometimes there isn't electricity and on rare occasions there is no water. When there is water it is always cold, including in the shower. And sometimes we get unsolicited water (and bugs) entering our glassless windows during torential downpours. Baking isn't possible because like many (perhaps most) Dominicans we do not have an oven. 

But nothing epitomizes the challenge of daily life like washing clothes...and we have a washing machine (sort of). Washing here is a several step process....

First we put our washing machine out on the sidewalk in front of our house. Next we fill manually fill the washing machine with water, soap, and clothes.

After the machine "washes" the clothes, we take out the clothes for the rinse cycle (i.e. put the clothes in a bucket of clean water and rinse them by hand).

Once the clothes are more or lense rinsed we dump the sudsy water into the drain in front of our apartment so that it can drain into the street.

From here the clothes goes into the washer's second chamber - the spinner.

After spinning for 5 minutes, we put it in a bucket and hang it up on the roof to dry. Usually within a couple hours it is dry and ready to go.

Given our space challenges and our economical ways we further complicated an already complicated situation by buying the smallest and cheapest washing machine we could find. For this reason we are only able to wash one sheet at a time, or maybe a couple towels at once. It leads to a lot of loads and a lot of time. Following camp, Melissa cleaned our entire home and made two meals while I spent at least four hours straight on 15 loads of laundry (not including the time waiting for the clothes to dry). Just another long Sunday morning in the sunny DR. 

Back from camp

A blog post by Adam. We've been away from the blog because we've been away from everything...from our phones, from television, from the Internet, from daily salads, from contact with family and friends. For fifteen days we were away...at summer camp.

Campamento Esperanza y Alegría (http://camphopeandjoy.wordpress.com/), or Camp Hope and Joy, is a summer camp for kids with HIV sponsored by the clinic where I'm volunteering. In its ninth year, the camp hosts 80 kids over a two week period, with younger kids coming the first week, and adolescents arriving the second week.  Melissa and I were among ten international camp counselors, which included five Peace Corps Volunteers, and five additional Americans. The rest of the staff were Dominican.

The camp was like the major leagues of Dominican culture. In other words it was like the DR on steroids. The joy. The dancing. The singing. The starchy carbohydrates. The power and water outages. The yelling. All of it was bigger, more colorful, and a whole lot louder.

The bus ride from La Romana set the stage for fifteen days of souped-up Dominican life. The music blared full blast while one person played the drum, and another played a güira (a metal Dominican percussion instrument). Everyone spilled out into the aisle and the dance fest commenced. It was, well, like nothing I had ever experienced.

By the time the campers arrived after three days of preparations we were starting to get our Dominican  groove on.  The kids, however, really pushed us over the edge. Their enthusiastic energy coupled with their incredible dance moves took the camp to a whole new level. They were so much fun and they were so exhausting. 

Still, what stuck me most was how loving they were to each other and to the counselors, regardless of how well we understood them. There were a few campers with disabilities...deafness, developmental delays, and physical disabilities. And rather than facing ridicule and abuse, the typically developing campers treated them with respect and love, particularly when they performed in the talent show - the loudest cheers were always for the kids with disabilities. It was a wonderful display of the very loving Dominican culture.

Nevertheless, as each week of camp came to a close, the underbelly of Dominican life emerged, just as much on steroids as the rest of camp. This was the harsh reality facing so many of the campers back at home. Many had lost one or both parents to HIV. One evening a camper asked which counselors would return, knowing that many us would not be back next year. Sadly, for some, camp's ever changing counselors mirrored the lack of consistent adults they experience in their lives outside camp. For others, returning home meant limited access to food - one camper told me he often didn't take his morning HIV medications because he did not have the breakfast that was supposed to accompany the pills.

It was a bittersweet ending to what had been a great week for the campers. Tears filled the eyes of the younger campers as their bus pulled away from camp. And in their own way, the older campers seemed sad that the camp had passed by so quickly. For me, it been had a great learning experience and yet another reminder of the tremendous joy and sadness that seem to be so ever present in the DR.

Race

A blog post by Adam. I woke up a week ago Sunday to the unfortunate verdict in the Trayvon Martin murder case. Given all I had read over the previous three weeks, I wasn't surprised. In fact I would have been shocked if the jury had found George Zimmerman guilty. Still, I was disappointed. Reflecting on racism in the US made me think about race in the Dominican Republic.

Much like in the US, race isn't a very popular discussion topic here. It has come up on a few rare occasions. For example, one of Melissa's teachers in Santo Domingo denied that racism existed in the DR. And then there was the time our socialist host brother talked about the racist policies of Trujillo, claiming that Trujillo would have killed our host father had he been in the wrong place at the wrong time simply because our host father is too Black. Our host father politely disagreed with his son's assertions. Sometime later, at the Museum of the Dominican Man, our tour guide and Melissa's professor talked about how they both had really "bad" kinky hair. We tried to disagree but they said we couldn't understand because we had "good" hair. Since this last interaction more than a month ago, I've had very discussions about race with Dominicans.

So, strange as it may seem, I've learned most of what I know about race in the DR from a book written by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. of Harvard. The book is interesting although it seems to be based on a trip to the DR that was at most one week long (how much can you really learn about such a complex topic in such a sort time?) Among the book's most fascinating claims is that the majority of Dominicans define their race as Indio (Indian), despite the fact that within 100 years of Columbus' arrival to Hispaniola, there were no Indigenous people alive on the island. By American standards most people here today would be Black, but according to book, nobody wants to define themselves as Black (that's a term reserved for Haitians), so instead people identify as Indio.

I asked someone at the clinic about this, and he said he himself identified as white. He acknowledged that in the US he would clearly be African American, but because he had pale skin he was white in the DR. When asked about the term "Indio," he said it didn't actually mean "Indian" but was just a descriptive word for brown skin. He followed this up by saying that racism didn't exist in the DR, and that what might first seem to be racism was really just classism. Dominicans don't like Haitians not because they're Black, but because they're poor and from Haiti.  I wasn't convinced....

On my first day at the clinic where I'm volunteering, a man stopped me in the waiting room and asked if I would talk to him about his illness. I informed him that I wasn't a doctor and couldn't help him. I tried to convince him that the clinic's doctors were experts in their field and could provide excellent care. He said he didn't trust Dominican doctors, but realizing he was getting nowhere with me, decided to go ahead and wait for a Dominican doctor. Did he stop to talk to me because my clothes screamed successful physician or because I was white? If you've seen my wardrobe, you should be able to answer this question without thinking.

Then a few days ago, Melissa and I went to a see the local basketball team play - the Cañeros del Este. Last year they were Dominican champions. This year they are in last place. Still, we wanted to show our support, and so we bought the cheapest tickets they had - $2.50 per ticket. The arena was pretty empty, and we arrived early, so we wandered a bit and inquired about buying some Cañeros T-shirts. We were directed upstairs where we found nothing for sale. A few minutes later the man we first asked about the T-shirts told us to return downstairs. When we arrived downstairs we were handed two free shirts and directed to the VIP section of the stands, one row up from the court. It may have been the best $2.50 value of my entire life.

Adam poses with VIP swag from a recent Cañeros game.

With a nearly empty stadium, the upgrade to courtside seats made sense, but why give us free T-shirts? What made us VIPs? Could it be that we're white? 

I know the person I had spoken to at the clinic would say I received special treatment because I was American, but would I have received the same treatment if I was African-American? Would the patient in the clinic have approached me if I was Black? To both of these questions I think the answer is no - sadly both in the DR and the US.

Welcome to Guaymate

A blog post by Melissa. I'm officially into my second week with 180 Degrees (http://180grados.info/en/our-work/) in Guaymate. I take a "guagua" or small bus for 45 minutes out of La Romana each day to get to the 180 Degrees office. The environment in Guaymate is absolutely stunning. There are acres upon acres of canefields with a backdrop of rolling hills, lush greenery and tropical fruit trees. The air here is cooler and fresher than La Romana.

Photo from 180 Degrees facebook site.

But if you scratch just a little bit beyond its beautiful surface, Guaymate has a darker side. The children born in the bateys to Haitian parents identify themselves as Dominicans, although they are not recognized by the government or by other Dominicans as such. As Adam had described in his blog about the protest in Santo Domingo, having the proper documentation in the DR is a big deal. Without documents, youth (ages 30 and younger) of Haitian parents are unable to go to high school or university. This makes it very difficult to get out of the intergenerational cycle of working in the canefields.

I have been out in the bateys for most of my time and staff are introducing me to the locals. I really stand out, since white folks rarely visit this part of the DR. One infant was frightened of me because he hadn't seen a white person before. The cane workers, live in their communities provided by the sugar plantation as long as they are working in the fields. They are paid enough money to buy some, but not all of their food. They are indentured servants. Yet, the residents tell me that the conditions in the bateys are better than the living conditions in Haiti.

In each batey, the population ranges anywhere from a couple hundred to 800 people, depending on whether they are cutting cane or not. They access water from 2-3 taps that are centrally located in the community. The community members bring buckets of this water into their homes for all their needs since there is no plumbing. The water is not safe to drink and they must somehow treat the water (boil, filter or treat with chlorine) or buy bottled water. All of these options are expensive and since families usually cannot afford it, they drink contaminated water and diarrhea, dehydration and malnutrition are common.



Here a young woman fills up water containers for her family from this batey's tap. Photo from 180 Degrees staff. 

When I was talking with one of the staff at 180 Degrees he said that he thought if the owner of the plantation was aware of the living conditions, he would help them immediately. Unfortunately, I think the owners of the plantations are well aware of the living conditions and benefit greatly from their cheap source of labor. A "good" cane worker can cut two tons of cane in one day. Cane workers are paid $2.25 (American dollars) per ton they cut. The next harvest will be in November.


Men harvest cane by hand with machetes and load the cane into mule wagons. Men work as long as they are physically able. This is a picture of a man from the 180 Degrees website. He is over 60 years old. The resiliency of human beings is unbelievable at times. Many cane workers have lost toes and fingers from years of working with a machete.

A wedding and a root canal

A blog post by Melissa. Last week we were in LA for Seth and Ngoc's wedding (Seth=Adam's cousin). The Halperns had a strong presence in the wedding festivities. At the rehearsal dinner, five people from Adam's family gave toasts out of nine toasts (in case you're wondering there are five people in Adam's family). Then we were the only ones who signed up to entertain the bride and groom. We read them limericks. What happened? Did we scare everyone away? The wedding was beautiful, atop a hill in Malibu overlooking the Pacific. Seth and Ngoc did it their own way, incorporating spiritual beliefs from several different religions and personal vows. It all played out beautifully.

The wedding was a great chance to catch up with Adam's family and meet member's from Beth's side of the family. The day after Seth's wedding, Beth's cousin Bernie took us for a hike with a view of downtown LA, then he and his wife Sandy had us over for bagels and lox, which you might be surprised to find out there is not a lot of in the DR. It was DELICIOUS.

The next day, Adam and I left for Seattle and had time for dinner with his Aunt Margaret and Uncle Sid that evening. We know that their days are limited and we were happy that we both got to spend more time with them. Ron and Lois hosted us at their place and stayed up late talking with us to catch up. The next morning, I had my long awaited root canal, which was painful but also a relief after a two month long toothache. The dentist commented that he, too, had been in the DR at a resort playing golf. The whole conversation at the dentist's office was a bit surreal. The price of my procedure was several times what a sugar cane worker makes annually in the DR.

I was in Seattle less than 24 hours and right after the root canal, Adam and I headed south. He went to Olympia, while I drove on to Oregon to see my side of the family. I was even able to get in a "water kids" class with my niece.

Emma was ready for her dips when she put on her goggles.

After brief visits with family,we were back in LA, boarding the plane to The DR. I thought about all the places we have seen in such a short time. We started our journey on April 13th. Ten flights later we have been to Germany, Israel, the Palestinian Territories, Jordan, the Dominican Republic, the US then back to the DR. People seem to want the same basic things, like peace, safety, good health and a community where they can thrive. Our ability to achieve these things is mainly (with exceptions, of course) on where we are born and who our parents are. Does that mean that people in this world with safety, peace and a community have an obligation to raise up others around them up? And if not, why not? I don't really have any answers to this, but since it's impossible to help everyone, I think about people I have helped and people I have not. How did I make distinctions about who was deserving and undeserving of my support? All social workers wrestle with these questions day in and day out, but there are no logical answers. Adam and I have met many people who inspired us and made us ask questions of ourselves and how we want to live our lives. During our journey, life was made so much simpler just by having easy access to clean water, and this is simply not a reality for the Bedouin we met, and for so many people in the Dominican Republic.

As we move on to the next phase of this trip, which is to volunteer work for the next 8 months, I will take people's stories with me. With any hope, I will learn from them.

Cockroaches and Ants

A blog post by Adam. We have arrived in La Romana, our home for the next 7 months. It's the Dominican Republic's third biggest city and has been my sister Mina's home for the past four years. I'll be volunteering where Mina works, La Clinica de Familia La Romana (www.clinicadefamilia.org.do) and Melissa will be at nearby 180 Degrees (http://en.180grados.info/). We're excited about settling down and putting together our first joint apartment.

We rented the apartment prior to going to Santo Domingo. It's a one bedroom in the same building as Mina's apartment.  When we first looked at the apartment it wasn't in the best of shape. It was dark and dirty. But by the time we left for Santo Domingo it was mostly repainted and was looking good.

Good looks, however, can be deceiving. When we first re-opened up our apartment the freshly painted  walls looked great. Then we opened our boxed up washing machine. And then a bag of random things we had left behind during our month in the capital. And then my large external frame backpack. In our absence, all of these locations had become breeding grounds for cockroaches. And boy did they ever breed. We did not count them, but there were many, many, many roaches of different sizes and colors.  It was incredible. It was disgusting. It was hands up-in-the-air shriek provoking. 

Have you ever taken a brand new washing machine out of a box that is crawling in little black critters? I'm guessing not. And I don't suggest you do, unless you are up for the fight of your life. With the aid of super poisonous "Baygon" spray and some quick foot stomping action, fight we did. We killed lots that first day and quite a few the next (on the second day we had a colony of cockroaches coming out of the kitchen sink).  Since then, we've killed several every day. Welcome to the tropics.

A dead cockroach on our kitchen floor.

Then last night, to accompany our evening roach, we had an army of itsy bitsy ants using our home as a thoroughfare. They entered through a small hole near the kitchen sink, snaked their way around our stove and refrigerator, went through the bedroom door, up over the bathroom door, across an entire bedroom wall, onto another wall, over our closet and out a hole on the other side of the room.  Given their small size this long distance was likely equivalent to us running at least a 10K, possibly more. We do not know where they were coming from or going, but they were moving at a frantic pace. We put a little poison on the path's entrance and within a half hour the thousands of ants were gone.

We will be leaving our apartment once again for more than a week, and we've decided we've had enough. We have nothing against exoskeletons, but we would prefer to live without them. We will have our place fumigated. It's probably not the best plan of attack for our physical health but I know it will do wonders for our mental health. There is nothing like the deathly fear of crossing paths with a harmless bug the size of a nickel during a mid night pit stop.

On a positive note, I learned that my external frame backpack is very easy to dissemble and wash. For the first time in nearly 20 years I took it apart and washed it. It looks amazing and smells pretty good too. Plus, I think I washed it so well, it could easily go another 20 without seeing a washing machine. Melissa may disagree.

A final walk in Santo Domingo

A blog post by Adam. Four weeks goes by quickly. This is how long we spent in Santo Domingo.

I reflected on our time in Santo Domingo as I took a final walk in my favorite part of the city - Parque Mirador del Sur.  Each morning and afternoon the main thoroughfare though the five kilometer park is closed and it becomes a biking, walking, jogging and skating paradise. It's like Green Lake without a lake, wider walking paths, no cars within sight or sound, large flowering trees, and 90 degree/90% humidity weather. It is a unique oasis from hectic, noisy, and polluted Santo Domingo.

Bikers riding past a flamboyan tree in Parque Mirador.

The "Free Gym" inside the park.

Yet, as I strolled through the park our final morning in the capital, I couldn't help but acknowledge that Santo Domingo is so much more than first impressions. Like Israel, I've been touched by the people we've met here.  Our host family has been amazing. They've taught us so much about Dominican culture and cooking, and completely welcomed us into their family. Melissa's teachers and the staff at Entrena have all been equally welcoming and fun loving. 

In addition to the way we've been treated, a common bond among most of the people we've met here is that they come from somewhere else. It is, in a sense, a city of immigrants.  Some are from other parts of the Dominican Republic and others are from Haiti. The capital is more than just the seat of government or a historic center. It also represents hope for a better future for millions of Dominicans and Haitians. 

Santo Domingo, with its wealth, is the chance for a better life for so many. Our host parents are the perfect example. They were born in the poor countryside, moved to the capital, and now have two grown children who are highly successful professionals in law and banking.  Things can get better here.

Still, the poverty, the crime, and the lack of access to health care are all staggering in the DR.  I've written about the high unemployment and the challenges facing Dominicans of Haitian descent.  Compared to Israel, things here often feel far more hopeless. The problems are just that much greater. And yet, people have so much hope that things will get better. That if they work hard their lives will improve. That if they keep pushing, justice will prevail.

I saw this when I attended a recent protest of undocumented Haitian Dominicans in the capital. The mostly young adults who led the protest were full of life and hope that things would change, that the Dominican government would do the right thing and they would get documents. The hope was intoxicating. Interestingly, in private conversations with the few Americans at the protest, we heard a different story. They were completely pessimistic that things would ever change.

Dominicans of Haitian descent protest outside the National Congress.

Police stand guard at the peaceful protest.

And so as I took my final steps in Parque Mirador, and looked up at the beautiful flamboyan trees overhead, I thought to myself, am I on the side of hope or despair? My Jewish American background usually leads towards despair, but looking around at everyone exercising in such a wonderful park, I think that for today, at least, I will side with the Dominican Santo Domingo. I will choose hope.

Foreign aid

A blog post by Adam. Over the last month I've been volunteering for Entrena, the same organization where Melissa has been taking Spanish classes. Entrena administers several large grants related to children's education and youth engagement.  I've supported two grants by writing "success stories" of past participants, current participants and prospective participants.

It has been an incredible opportunity.  I've visited more than a half dozen communities in and outside of Santo Domingo, both urban and rural, all impoverished. I've spoken to many youth (some of whom I could barely understand), as well as educators, psychologists, and social workers.  

In Santiago, I met the director of Ninos con una Esperanza (http://www.kidswithahope.com/), an organization that works in the neighborhood at the edge of the city's dump.  "Overwhelmed" grossly underestimates my feelings as I sat with the dump in the background, hearing stories of kids who searched the dump for food they might eat and trash they might sell.  And then there was a young man in a rural Dominican town who shared his story of multiple surgeries, a single mother, eight siblings, and an extremely dilapidated house without a functioning bathroom.  These were just two of many unique experiences that have forced me to confront the Dominican Republic's seemingly insurmountable challenges.

Amidst this harsh reality, I was tasked with writing "success stories." Since one grant (from USAID) is rather new, the success stories focused more on prospective participants' hopes. The other grant, however, is several years old and there were more opportunities to find "success." Funded by the Inter-American Development Bank, the grant supports A Ganar, a youth employment program that combines sports, leadership development, and job training (http://www.partners.net/partners/History1.asp#.Ub2iceccdsk). It's a great concept and the youth I met seemed to generally like the program. As might be expected, the goal is to help youth get jobs, which is critical given the fact that young adult unemployment is astronomical.  

Sadly, after many interviews I have yet to meet a young adult who has kept a job for more than a couple months after completing the program. Today, I did meet a young woman who had secured a loan and opened her own successful corner grocery store since completing the program (a real success!), but she was smart and ambitious and I have little doubt that program or not she would have opened her store. She admitted she had asked the program for help with the loan, but was turned down so she found a loan on her own somewhere else. 

How much are these programs really helping? Even if some of the youth had secured jobs, wouldn't that just mean another Dominican was left unemployed? It's not as if there are thousands of openings here without applicants.  According to some non-reputable sources, people with university degrees can find themselves working at McDonalds because there just aren't jobs. It's true that many people are unprepared for the job market.  Unfortunately, the job market also seems to be unprepared for more workers.

I don't know what the answer is. But as far as I can tell the only ones who have secured stable employment through A Ganar are the ones employed at the various NGOs coordinating the project. Not that they don't need jobs too or that they're getting particularly rich...I briefly visited the house of a social worker today that was among the poorest I've seen - limited old furniture, appliances in disrepair, and tiny rooms.  Maybe they should just use the programmatic money to pay the NGO workers more since it seems that investing in job training without jobs doesn't work so well. I wonder, how do you create jobs in a poor country? 

Boca Chica - Third time's a charm

A blog post by Adam.  Third time's a charm. I know it's a cliche. But in the case of Boca Chica, it works.

The first time we went to Boca Chica was in January 2012. We were with Mina, Jorge and my parents, and we went for lunch on our way from the airport to La Romana. It's located just minutes from the airport, and it has a beach and plenty of restaurants. After being hounded by a few restaurants and by many others selling things along the beach, we picked a restaurant at the end of the beach and consumed large quantities of fish and fresh juice. When the bill arrived, Mina exploded. The price was double or perhaps even triple what she expected.  She bargained hard with almost no result. We left a little less then pleased.

The second time we went to Boca Chica, it was a week later and the day before we were flying back home. We had an early morning flight and it seemed like the most convenient place to stay, given its proximity to the airport. At first glance, the hotel looked nice. But at 2:00 am, when the music at the bar next door was so loud we thought we were inside of the bar, comfortable was not the adjective that came to mind. After a sleepless night we boarded a plane hoping to never utter the name Boca Chica again.

The third time I went to Boca Chica was yesterday. I was not looking for food or place to stay, but a story. I've been doing volunteer work for Entrena, a Dominican organization that both offers Spanish classes to foreigners (like Melissa) and administers several large USAID grants throughout the Dominican Republic.  I'm helping collect oral histories for their newest grant, which focuses on youth violence and crime prevention. My goal is to collect inspirational stories to help kick off the grant, which brought me to Boca Chica, land of the Dominican tiguere.

What is a tiguere? According to UrbanDictionary.com a tiguere is "sneaky" person or a "thug". Think of a kind of sneaky thug...someone who is out to get you, but in a smooth kind of way.

Anyhow, in order to find an inspirational story in a place seemingly devoid of any type of inspiration I contacted Caminante (http://www.caminanteproyectoeducativo.org/), a grassroots youth organization.  Caminante staff connected me to Sony, a 34 year-old man who had lost both parents by age 14.  Shortly thereafter, he quit school and began living and working on the beach. With support from a nascent Caminante (he was one of the founding members), he went back to school, got a job at a nearby hotel, and then transferred to the restaurant business. After endless years of hard work, he now owns one of the larger restaurants on Boca Chica's beach. He admitted that without the support of Caminante he would either be dead or in prison. Instead, he is the father of four and a generous business owner, regularly providing funds and time to both Caminante and his church.

Sony talked about how youth continue to run Caminante and a staff person who was present during the interview conferred. They shared a story of how after hurricane George the youth decided to use the money the organization had raised for a summer camp to buy beds for people who had lost their homes. The youth went so far as to raise additional funds, and eventually provided 200 beds to community members. The staff person acknowledged that not all their stories ended so well, but that there were many positive endings (for example, her own...she too had been a former youth participant in the organization).

I began seeing Boca Chica in a new light. It wasn't just a home for tigueres, but also a home to deeply committed community members. It wasn't just about pushy restaurant owners trying to make a quick buck off of tourists, but hard working people trying to provide for their families and community. I now wonder how many other Boca Chicas I've visited where I've been too close-minded to see the inspiration that lies just beneath an ugly surface.