Today was a day dedicated to experiencing the community of Ouanaminthe. Our partner CES who work with us to teach the financial literacy class at the factory organized our experience.
It began with the group leaving the factory on foot and walking over the bridge and through the outskirts of town. On the bridge were hundreds of people waiting to see if an opportunity to work in the factory would present itself. As we crossed the bridge they are staring intently at us. It's a rare sight to see fifteen "blancos" walking over Massacre River.
Our walk took us along the dusty streets lined with trash and stray pigs, horses and goats. Families are in open cement structures peeking out as we move closer to the center of town. There are a few paved streets in town and they are filled with people walking or speeding on motorcycles. It's starting to get hot and the humidity is high so the group is starting to sweat. Our first stop on the walk is to tour a private international school funded by missionaries. It's clean with many facilities including a bakery, a private well, and a vocational center. We stopped for fresh baked goods and peered at the temperatures. Inside it was almost 85 degrees.
From the bakery, we hopped into trucks and drove to the CES offices to prepare for the afternoon lessons. Breaking into two teams we were going to two different private schools to meet with the administration to discuss the availability of clean water at the school, install a water filter and discuss hygiene and sanitation with the students.
We prepared for our visit by practicing our focus group techniques, learning a hand washing song in Creole and preparing a Jeopardy style game for the kids to play that consisted of questions in Creole about when, where, how long you wash hands and other sanitary practices. We were ready.
Before we entered the schools we took the group to lunch in town. And we ate the best spicy cabbage I have ever tasted.
Fueled from lunch we broke off into our teams and headed to the schools. Our school was the Eureka school a private school of 1200 children. The conditions of the school were more primitive than the school we visited in the morning. It had a deep smell of urine throughout the building. They had four toilets but no running water. We spent the first part of our visit meeting with the principle discussing the water filter we donated. We also set up one of our tippy tap washing stations in the playground to help the kids wash their hands after they used the bathrooms. From there we went to the playground to meet with the kids. We played a few games and sang some songs and got the kids to try our hand washing station. Engaging with the kids, getting them to communicate with us in a mix of Spanish, English, Creole created an afternoon that our group will never forget.
We regrouped after our day to discuss what we saw, the challenges these schools face just in trying to maintain the water filters and the tippy tap washing stations. We discussed how to address the problems of sanitation and how could we connect these schools to the crude water system that does exist in the town. Progress is slow and requires a huge amount of innovation and patience.
As we got ready for dinner a massive rain shower unleashed at least an inch or two of water over an hour. It was raining so hard outside that the water leaked into my bathroom shower. The stream of water was so heavy I didn't have to use the cold in my shower it was that fierce of a drip.
Our evening ended on the shores of the Dominican Republic where we went to dinner at a restaurant close to where Christopher Columbus landed when he sailed to the new world.
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