Ten of the 25 DRST 2016 Watkinson School travelers shared stories from the trip at an all-school meeting in order to share out work with the community and kick off the application process for the 2017 trip.
If you are considering joining us for Thanksgiving week in La Romana in 2017, please watch this video and read the stories they shared below as, just like the pieces that create a mosaic comprise something whole, these images and stories cobble together to convey a sense of the complete experience.
Hannah
Sweat, mud, teamwork, friendship, love, playing. I could go on and on about how to describe working at the school in the D.R., but those are the words that come to mind when I think about it. Here is a story: the day before we were leaving, I was freaking out in my mind. I had never been to a place like the DR! At first, when I got there, I was worried about getting sick, or choking on a malaria pill... but all the worrying was so worth it. Like Michaela, I mostly worked at the school. Our group was removing the pile of dirt/mud— we were shoveling and moving the empty buckets back to the ledge so another could fill it up with dirt again. Everyday when our work was done, we would get on the bus – a muddy and filthy mess — and the kids from Kilometer 6 would wave and follow the bus. It was also there where I met the sweetest baby named Rebeca. The most rewarding part of the day is getting to play with the kids and how they just hold on to you and hug you.
Cassie
I remembered before I went to the D.R, I was kind of nervous because of the language. I didn't speak Spanish, and they didn't speak English nor Chinese. I was thinking about: what if I didn't understand what they said. That would be so awkward. But the truth was that it was not. I went to the school on the first day. As soon as I arrived there, those kids rushed out and hugged me for a long time. Just at that moment, I felt like all my worries had gone away. So during that day, I really had a good time with them even though we spoke a different language. Someone said that to me once, “all those kids want is just a smile and a hug”. Btw, I was proud of myself that I even learned some Spanish.
Cameron
After learning that we would not be returning to Batey 50, I started my week very sceptical about what I wanted to do while I was in the D.R.. Once arriving and hearing about the new site called Batey Pepita, which means small potato, I instantly wanted to get right into working on that. On the batey, Mr. Crosson and I spent over an hour cutting the long metal rods, called rebar, and carrying them over to the workers to help build the foundation of one of the new houses. This trip is important because it builds self awareness around the poverty and real need these people have. They have little to nothing and it is rewarding to give back to them open heartedly. You don't have to give a lot, mostly your time and commitment. All contributions, big or small both make a difference.
Edith
Before I went to the D.R., I doubted if I could really help the people there. When I was in the med clinic in the first day, I saw a newborn baby with burn marks and he hadn’t gotten any regular medication. At that moment, I realized how important our doctors and medicines were. Many people in the villages didn’t have enough money for the hospitals; or they didn’t understand the concept of needing to get medical treatment when they got sick. Everyday, our med clinics treated more than a hundred patients per day, and we just may have saved many lives there.
Jessica
This was my fourth year on the trip and I spent most of time in the pharmacy working along students, UCONN doctors and nurses and translators from the DR. This year, we traveled to familiar places where we knew the routine. How to set up and what to be prepared for but we also went to new places and had to navigate the med clinic in small crowded spaces. But we made it work. The doctors treated patients with all kinds of ailments, high blood pressure, diabetes, skin conditions and stomach ailments. We gave out medications to the young and elderly. Working in the pharmacy can be confusing, chaotic and mentally draining but I enjoy the work. It is a time to be focused on others and help people with their most precious commodity…their health.
Alina
Traveling to the D.R. was my first time going on a service trip. I was in the school construction site for 4 days, and every day is was really hard work, but definitely worth it. Everyone worked as best as they can, and no one complained about the bad weather or physical fatigue. The kids in the school also helped us working, even though they could only carry a little amount of sand or soil, they never stopped helping us. After the long workday, the tiredness is part of what showed our day was meaningful. While we were there, we didn’t always have wifi...without the continuous use of devices like phone and computers, there was more communication between us. Our Life was simple but substantial in the DR.
Clare
I was a little nervous going on the DR trip for the first time, thinking that the language barrier would be difficult to overcome and wondering how everyone’s stories from years before had even happened without a shared language. On my first day I was assigned to the construction site, but I spent a good part of the day meeting the people on the batey. When I sat down next to a few of the kids on the ground, they were pretty shy and didn’t really acknowledge me. In an effort to entertain them, I started to pile up small rocks scattered around us into little towers. At first most of them ignored me, but a few minutes later I felt a small tap on my shoulder. One little girl, Johania, was standing behind me proudly pointing to her own rock tower that she had made a few feet away. Soon there were five or six kids surrounding me, all fascinated with the rock towers and building their own as well. After this, the kids were much more comfortable with me and would follow me around, grabbing on to me and playing with my hair. When I returned to the batey on the last day of the trip, I found the kids sitting on the ground, still making rock towers. I learned that sometimes even a small interaction, verbal or non-verbal, can impact you in more ways than imaginable.
Ryan
This being my first service trip ever, I had no idea what to expect. One story that I’d like to share is when working on the batey one day a woman was standing outside the home we put our bags and water in. My friend Alex from the university high school and I went to take a break — we had been pick axing the ground to dig a foundation. The woman engaged us in conversation using our limited Spanish we put together she was not from the batey. She comes to the batey to help, she teaches the kids, helps organize mission groups, and she is also a pastor at the church. The people on the batey had very little, but outside the bateys people were not that much better off. She did not come from wealth, she was trying to make ends meet too. The fact that she spends her days helping others while not having the most herself was inspiring. This woman taught Alex and me that service does not need to be done by those who can afford to travel from Hartford to the DR, but can be done by anyone anywhere. Helping others is so rewarding, so why not do it any and every where you can.
Jen
Imagine for a moment this is your life: the physical structure you call home is made up of leftover scraps (cardboard, corrugated metal sheets and wire), with a dirt floor, no running water or electricity and shared with multiple family members: adults, children, and elderly all together. Your meals, if you are fortunate enough, consist of small portions of legumes and rice or bread and if you’re lucky a very small portion of meat once a day. The water you drink is fetched from a running stream where bacteria and disease are the common components. Your workday is under the beating hot sun, cutting sugarcane by hand with the swing of your machete. Work that your livelihood depends on, but it can’t afford you medical care or treatment for emergencies, illness and much less pre-existing conditions. However, at the core of it all is this deep rooted faith that God is looking after you and you hold on to the hope that someday you might be lucky enough to have a better life. WE are that hopeline; our work, our contributions and fundraising efforts provide some of these people with desperately needed improved life conditions and the HOPE that it can be better. Join the team and help keep the HOPE alive.
Natty
Much of my time in Dominican Republic was spent working in the medical clinics and i just have a short story about one patient we saw. On our last day of clinic a patient came in towards the very end of the day with a blood pressure that was something like 70/40 which is dangerously low. We tried to start an IV on him to give him fluids and antibiotics but we were unsuccessful because his veins had collapsed from the dehydration and sepsis. We learned that this man had been in the hospital just a few days before and had been discharged even though he was not improving. Cases like this are avoidable with proper medical care and access to medications. This life-threatening scenario could have been solved it had been caught weeks earlier in its early stages. The more people that can get down there and see these patients and help these people get access to something that is a basic human right, proper medical treatment, the more lives can be saved. It is not just those in the medical clinics helping to improve health, everyone did by simply getting people to smile and laugh which sometimes does more good than a pill ever could. So if the one thing holding you back from going on this trip is that you feel like you will not be useful that is not an excuse. Every single person that has traveled to the Dominican Republic makes a difference in their own way and every one of you has the potential to make your difference. All you have to do is make someone smile!
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