Mission: Possible

By Colin “El Gigante” M.

Usually, I don’t wake up to all of God’s creation, including the sound of 30 roosters and a snorting pig to start the day. Nor do I normally sleep in a two “room” shack with a tin roof and a concrete floor.  As the sun rises, I can see in-between the slats that make up the walls of my bedroom. The room heats up and I immediately begin to sweat in the hot, humid, open air of the small town of Altagracia, Monte Plata, Republica Dominicana. But this was how the day started, every day in the D.R. I woke up, got dressed, and walked down the dirt road with my roommate to our group breakfast before starting our first project.

This was my first time to the Dominican Republic. It was also the group’s maiden trip after several years of service work in Honduras. Therefore, none of us really knew what to expect, nor did we know what type of work we would be doing. We finished breakfast as a group and proceeded to the field near there.

Our first task was simple. We were going to build a fence around a big piece of land on the edge of the town. The first step of this process was to obtain the wood that would serve as the fence posts. While we ate breakfast, a number of the men in town began to hack down branches from large trees.

It is very important to note what most of the fences in Altagracia are made of.  Fences are not just made wood slats. The crucial component to the fences was the posts, which were special pieces of wood called “palo vivo,” which roughly means “live stick” or “live branch.” Palo vivo is special because you can chop a branch off of one palo vivo tree, dig a hole, and stick it straight into the ground, where it will then grow roots, branches, and leaves, like a normal tree. As one of the host mothers told us, the locals use palo vivo for many reasons. For one, they use it because it is aesthetically pleasing, with trees all in a row. Also, it is intriguing to see these fences everywhere, with fence posts growing to full size trees. But most importantly, it is a sustainable process. It is a fast growing, sustainable wood, that does not die, but lives on. One post turns into a tree, from which more posts can be cut, to plant more trees, and make more fences.

The first day of building the fences was spent carrying the wood from one end of the village, to the other. Some massive logs required the strength of two or three people.

It seemed that everyone in the village was involved. A few men perched in and around the trees, surgically cutting with their axes and machetes. Women, children, and Mission Possible helped to carry the wood to the field. Little kids would direct us where to go, pointing us in the right direction. After a couple of hours of transporting the wood, we were all exhausted and beaten down, but this was only the beginning.

The next couple of days were filled with digging holes, planting the branches into the ground, and tying them together with barbed wire. Digging was not at all easy, especially with the tools that we had. There were no shovels in the town at all. All they had were digging tools, which the people there called “coas,” which were big, heavy, metal, long-handled instruments used to dig holes. They only had a couple, so we gave one of the housefathers money to buy a few more in a town nearby. With more tools, the process was expedited, which allowed more of us to dig holes to complete the fence.

We also had to be careful, as there were several dangers inherent to this work.  Machetes are an easy way to lose a hand. Fire ant hills were everywhere and some of us stepped directly on them, acquiring hundreds of little red bites.  Barbed wire was strewn about, catching on clothing and scratching skin. Razor grass stuck out and clung to us, stinging our legs. Constant digging meant blisters on the hands of some, as the sun blazed all through the day.

It seemed as if the entourage of workers never got smaller. This helped because Mission Possible volunteers would often split up; half of us would teach at the local school, while the other half would keep working on the fences. But young children, adolescents, men, and women of all ages would stop by and help us.

Even if locals were busy in their yards or homes, they would stop and waive, yell out our names and say hello. It was easy to do this work, as we were being cheered on by the townspeople. It felt like we were celebrities.

Also, the women of the village would be there with us, working hard (often times harder than the men). While they would be dressed in their most beautiful clothes, they would magically NEVER get dirty.

One of the host mothers, Cenia, was quick to tell me that I had either dug a hole in the wrong place or was not digging properly. I think she was getting frustrated and finally took the coa from me, digging much more efficiently than I could ever imagine.  She smiled and pointed at me, declaring in Spanish, “you owe me a Gatorade later!”

It did not take long before one of us would get tired from digging holes. I would stand there, wiping the sweat from my face. “Hay que terminar!” Deybi said with fervor. He could tell that we were all tired, sweaty, sunburnt, and dehydrated. Deybi was a man with a small frame, who didn’t seem to sweat much in this blistering, humid heat. He continually smiled, joked, and laughed, but you could tell he meant what he said.  “Hay que terminar!” he said again. The phrase doesn’t directly translate into English, but being one of the only members who spoke any Spanish at the time, I had to let everyone know that he said, “We need to finish.” For a man of such small stature and easy-going nature, it was incredible to watch him work; his stamina and work ethic was astounding.

But Deybi was not the only one working hard. The senior of the crew, Don Ramon, was the man in charge. He was directing all of us. We would call him “Don Ramon, El Patron,” which is a Spanish reference to the patriarch of the village. He would say, “Everyone here is my family, all of you, my sons and daughters.” The fact that he was at least 70, and completely running the show, working as hard as anyone else in the group, was a testament to his strength. We all looked up to him, and we were careful to follow his orders, as the wise elder of Altagracia.

Everyone helped; townspeople and volunteers, women and men, senior citizens, and young children. We were all making the work lighter for the next person and for the community of Altagracia. We would take shifts to go take water breaks at the small “Calmado,” (store) where they kept Gatorade. Sometimes a truck with a PA system mounted on it would drive by, selling us freshly picked fruit.

After a couple of days of hard work in the sun, the fence was complete around these couple acres of land. The next step was to clear the land of all of the garbage that was layered on top of it.  Plastic bottles, old shoes, doll parts, plastic bags, even hypodermic needles. The land was covered with a layer of all of this garbage.

Garbage disposal is not like it is in the U.S. Sure, the locals can recycle. But the majority of people cannot pay to have their garbage taken away. And garbage trucks and companies certainly do not venture out this far into villages to pick up all that is necessary. I asked one man why there was so much garbage on this particular field. He answered the question in a gruff tone, gasping initially with frustration, “Lots of Dominicans are poorly educated. They don’t understand the effect that this has on the land, and on the people.” No further explanation was needed.

The main focus for the next few days was the final stage of our project: to plant trees all around the community. We focused initially on planting on the land that we fenced off, which was now clear of garbage and ready to be utilized. We also planted in various other sites, such as the schoolyard and around the community center.  We were careful to dig the holes, plant the saplings, and water them. A few trees that we planted were pines, which are purely for aesthetic purposes. However, the majority of them were fruit baring trees that the people would use for food.  Fruit bearing trees were everywhere. It seemed like at every moment there was a child from town offering me a coconut, tamarind, star fruit, or sugar cane, as a little treat. Therefore, it was easy to understand how much they actually utilized their land. It is something that they truly depend on to feed themselves.

One of the final days in La Altagracia, late in the afternoon, we gathered with the Women’s Association, which are the women in charge of development in the town. We filed into a small, one-room building, with only the dying light of the sunset dimly illuminating the room. Unlike the normal tone of the small village, which was filled with laughs, jokes, dancing, singing, baseball, and music, this meeting had much more of a serious tone.

These people have a loving, generous, bright, and beautiful way about them. Their attitudes are as warm as the sun that shines in the heat of the day. But their lives are as real as the beautiful little girl with leukemia who could not afford her treatment, or the immobile old man, stuck in bed, paralyzed from the waste down. Or the young man who can’t afford to go to college, so he rides his motorcycle every day to baseball practice, in hopes of one day making it in the big leagues. Their problems are serious ones.

They expressed to us that the whole reason we spent so much time fencing the land and planting on it was because the government owns title to the land, and can take it away from them at any time. For such a small community, so dependent on the fruit of the land, this would be devastating to these loving, generous, and beautiful people. They told us that if they utilize the land and fence it off, as we did, the government is less likely to come and take it away from them.

We were only there for one week, but through our projects and sharing time with the people of Altagracia, we were all truly changed forever. The seeds we planted and the fences we built were more than just the work that we did. It was a reflection of a gracious culture, open doors, and generous, loving hearts. It was an exchange of hopes, struggles and dreams.

On the last day of our stay in La Altagracia, we said goodbye to our new friends, many of us with tears in our eyes. Trees protected by a new fence lined the field that was once covered in garbage and open for the government to take. Little saplings were sprouting all around the schoolyard and community center, enhancing the beauty of the town.

I handed my knife to Deybi because I knew he would be much better at using it than me. He asked me if it was time for us to leave. I told him we had to leave, but that we wanted to come back to see them. He smiled and said, “Si Dios quiere,” meaning, “If God wants.”

Although we were the first set of volunteers to La Altagracia, we left hoping that the presence of Mission: Possible would be as sustainable and resilient as the palo vivo, growing roots and breathing new life into their community. But it is not just the locals who benefited from this trip. The people of La Altagracia breathed new life into our hearts as well. In 2013, we hope to return and continue a fruitful relationship with our new brothers and sisters in La Altagracia, Monte Plata, Republica Dominicana. Si Dios Quiere.