Sustainable Development

Day 6 – from Puerto Plato to Constanza

After a great day on the northern coast of the Dominican Republic in Puerto Plata, enjoying the beautiful cliffside view of boats anchored just off the rocky coast and an incredible sunset view last night, we jumped back on the “WaWa” (what we affectionately call our bus) for the 4 hour drive back to Constanza. Students were able to purchase snacks and refreshments at our bathroom stop—a roadside rest area and supermarket—while our driver pulled over and purchased chicharrones on the drive as well. Though we arrived back at our villa resort somewhat fatigued from the long drive, we really enjoyed getting a chance to rest, relax, and replenish ourselves of energy before diving headfirst into the second half of our trip: a tiring, exhaustive project involving the paving of cement floors for three families high up in the outskirts of Constanza.

https://youtu.be/ZGrUDLR2Iic

Back at our Constanza villas while we enjoyed our lunch of fried chicken, plantains, rice with beans, and salad; we enjoyed our fellow glimpser Amanda sharing a piece of her writing that really inspired and moved us as she shared her reflection of the first half of our trip thus far. You, the reader, may get to hear the final version of this sometime later in the blog!

La fundación Alegría

After lunch we met with Bernardo Pastiño – President of The Alegría Inocente Foundation, a non-profit organization in Constanza that works to improve, enrich, and contribute to the quality of life of the less privileged through partnerships with organizations like Global Glimpse and organizing our Community Action Project that we will be doing over the next three days. Pastiño explained that in addition to their work with Global Glimpse student delegations during the summer, the foundation also works with local organizations and donors to organize thank-you events to appreciate the mothers and children in the area and donate warm clothing to the locals when the weather gets chilly (sometimes below zero!!) between the months of November and February. The really big wow-factor was that earlier this summer, Pastiño was able to completely destruct and rebuild a dilapidated, old house from the ground up in 16 days with the help of four different Global Glimpse delegations, with a goal of being able to do the same task next year with just two delegations. To top it all off, the video of the family entering their renovated house for the first time left us all with a smile and a warm heart.

Surprise! – Shopping in Town

Our Program Coordinators surprised us with a quick trip into Constanza’s city center for souvenir shopping. Many of us bought souvenirs, coffee, clothes, magnets, and more. A few students opted to get drinks, including dragonfruit refreshers, mango juice, and Coca-Cola (made with real cane sugar instead of high-fructose corn syrup here!) Some of us were even surprised by the variety of foreign selections available, such as the characters that appear in Line (a messaging app akin to iMessages popularly used in East and Southeast Asia) appearing in keychain form, Taiwanese instant spicy beef noodle soup (a staple in any Asian convenience store), and the same tin of blue Danish-style cookies for 160 Dominican pesos (just shy of $4 USD) that one would find in a domestic supermarket. Best of all, tax was included in the price, and everything was cheaper than what one would find domestically!

Design and Deliver

With no time to spare, our group returned straight to the meeting room to plan for the next three days of hard work for our Community Action Project. Given the constraints of not having many tools available, we divided ourselves into four groups and agreed that we would switch out every fifteen minutes to prevent us from getting too fatigued. We appreciated how our Program Leaders trusted us in the process of planning for the task at hand instead of simply leading us through everything; learning how to facilitate a group discussion and planning session is no small feat, so thank you Pam and Emilia for letting us take the initiative!

After an island-inspired dinner of fried salami, cheese, potato pureé and chicken and vegetable soup, we celebrated reaching the halfway point of our trip singing our hearts out to karaoke, including “What a Wonderful World,” and playing a round of “Just Dance” to end the first half of our trip with our spirits high and in a good morale. Unfortunately, Ms. Jenkins, our very enlightened Health Coach, had to leave the very next day; as a gift, we all were able to sign our notes sharing our “Big Love” for her before her departure.

As we end the first half of our trip absorbing knowledge about how the “other half” of the world lives with such few resources and reflecting on how we can carry this new knowledge about society back into our day-to-day lives, we want to close this blog with the concept of privilege: Every individual has privilege in some way or another, and we should be grateful to have many privileges in the world that we live in. It’s really not about the big numbers and materialism and independence that we get to enjoy back at home, but rather it’s more about community and realizing how the people we meet don’t get the same privilege of getting to be so independent and instead relying on each other to live. As such, we are excited to use our privilege to our advantage to help the local communities in Constanza with our cement-floor project in the coming few days.

¡Gracias por leer nuestro blog!

Alex, Andrew