My trip to the Dominican Republic took place as part of a mission trip with my old high school teacher's church. We went down there as a group bringing clothes, toys, medical supplies, food, and more. While in the DR our group teamed up with The Good Samaritan Hospital to conduct medical clinics at some bateys and barrios in rural areas far outside of the capital. As well as conducting medical clinics our group was able to interact with the people there and get a taste of life in extreme poverty. The people there worked in the sugar cane fields earning 33 pesos a day, that's a dollar a day. We worked with the people there and played with the kids while their parents were at the medical clinic.
Working in the medical clinic, writing prescriptions and directions in Spanish, I was able to see a wide variety of people. There was even a 100 year old lady who was in nearly perfect health! Anyways, although these people were very interesting and deserving of equal opportunities of those living in the rural areas, they were not receiving these opportunities. I encountered children asking me for shoes and food which I couldn't give them at that time. It was a hard thing to see and understand.
One of the main things that ties in with this blog is the education systems in these areas. The children that I had the opportunity to work with LOVED school and were very excited when asked to talk about it. This was exciting that they were receiving some sort of education but the education in these areas was beyond mediocre to the education in the urban areas near the capital. The buildings were tiny, out of date, and normally doubled as a church for the batey or barrio. Here is one example of this:
(This school/church was never even finished being built)
Besides this, the boys in these areas could normally only attend school to the age of 7 when they had to go work in the sugar cane fields to earn money for their family. The girls normally finished grade school but were less likely to further their education beyond that. The people in the urban areas talked about college and technical schools of all sorts that they had the privilege to attend. This is the inequality that drove me to examine the education systems in the US. There have proven to be many differences in regards to poverty level, race, and age that play a factor in the inequalities present in the rural education system. The thing that's left is to figure out how to solve this problem.
As for now, I would like to share some pictures of these people's way of life in comparison to their rural counterparts in the DR.
These previous pictures are examples how rural Dominican residents live in the bateys. In some cases their houses are only big enough to fit a queen size bed in and the whole family lives there. Following are some examples of houses in the rural areas. These are some of the nicer ones but they cannot be found in rural areas.
These are just some examples of the apparent unequal distribution of wealth within this country. It is also apparent within our country that an unequal distribution of wealth creates some of the same inequalities between rural and urban schools.
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