Embracing the unexpected
Learning about the wealth of the heart in the Dominican
January 23, 2008
Amy Barker
Being trapped inside an insect-infested mosquito net, praying for five minutes of silence and craving something as simple as an ice cube is enough to make people think that my time in the Dominican Republic was nothing but uncomfortable. I could suppress the fact that much of my experience was indeed uncomfortable and resort to the typical “it was amazing,” but in order to express the impact that 30 days in the Caribbean had on my life, no emotion can be ignored.
Last May, I set out on an adventure with 10 other unexpecting, Trinity Western University girls that had a hunger for the same passion: loving people. We knew we were going to live in a mountain community for three weeks with Spanish-speaking families. We knew we would be helping in the community gardens and teach classes for the local Kid’s Club. We knew we were getting ourselves into situations never experienced before and we knew that we would be stretched far beyond a condition that would allow us to shrink once again into our pre-Dominican selves. But, oh, what we didn’t know.
I had taken seven years of Spanish, was working toward my Teaching English as a Second Language certificate and I enjoyed “roughing it.” I was prepared for the Spanish immersion, the English teaching, the lack of electricity and the high probability of contracting a parasite.
I saw, tasted, heard and experienced many new things. Some I wish I could rewind and erase and others I pray will be branded into my memory so that I can readily access them. Watching a cock fight (well, half watching through my hand-covered face), witnessing my dinner being slaughtered, de-feathered and boiled, and having my Dominican mom demonstrate the use of a bed pan are visuals that I wouldn’t mind fleeing my memory. I will never eat yucca or mais con dulce (made with five pounds of corn and five pounds of sugar) again. I actually wouldn’t mind being told that I look like Wonder Woman again, but I would willingly dismiss the opportunity of sharing a backyard with the most demonized donkey in the history of pack animals. I might rethink swimming in that river if I had known that the butcher’s shop upstream unashamedly mistook it as communal waste. Perhaps I would not have had to experience having an IV in my hand for three days in the missionary’s basement miles away from my team members.
Despite these events, I fell in love in the Dominican Republic – not with one of the many cat-calling men, but with something that to this day I cannot concisely put into words. An overwhelming compassion, perhaps, or an indescribable love affair with the human condition. To say the least, it was a transformation of the heart. The village of Los Higos, where we lived, was indeed impoverished and I was overcome with my inability to help with their situation. But that was just it. Their situation was, in many ways, much richer than my own culture. I realized that I was deeply impoverished and deprived within my understanding of humanity. Somewhere along the way, I overlooked the importance of deep relationships, simplicity and community; while I may be monetarily comfortable, I only hope that I can be as content in my skin as my friends in the Dominican. That is the meaning of rich.
Now you go...
Got something to say?