3rd Day in Santo Domingo - Project Canaan
Trip Start
Oct 15, 2007
1
6
14
Trip End
Oct 24, 2007
Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic
Thursday, October 18, 2007
As every morning we have breakfast in the hotel & Juan pick us with the car. Today we visit an other project! The project "Canaan". It's circa an hour from the center of Santo Domingo located. It's more in nature than the El Piņo project & it's less urban.
First we attend a school. The kids sing for us and tinkered some flowers. We distribute some Sugus and Ballons & talk with the teacher. The children are so cute and they take much pleasure in our photos. They always want that we take a picture of them and then they want to see it on the display of the digital cam! We attend also an other school. The kids bring a poem forward.
After this we come to a room with many people from the project. With locals. There are pastors, teachers, mothers & fathers,.... Several people which help with the new project. Canaan is a new project & now they were for 1 year in the set-up period. In this group with the local people they tell us what they have done in this last year, what they want to do in the future and what the next steps are. Everybody wants to report us what their job is, her motivation, her proud of all this,....! It was a long meeting and either didn't we understand very much .. 'cause they speak just Spanish and Juan wasn't able to translate the whole meeting (was just too much stuff...) But it was very impressive to see and hear how much their dedicated!! At the end they say thank you for like 100 times! They hug us and I really see that they mean what they say... Impressive again...
After this it's already lunch time. So they bring many meals for all and we have lunch with them. We talk with several people & many kids come from the school to this place. We make photos and had a good time. Especially one girl (see photo --> Carolina) is so cute and ya... very pretty.
In the afternoon we visit different families. Families with horrible, unimaginable destinys...! A mother of 3 children... her husband were shooted! Without any reason.... A Mother with 10 kids.... the husband splitted... some of the children of her are ill... herself is ill...! We visit a teacher and around the house stand 3 boys... Juan tells us, that we have to hide our digicams.... after the visit we get in the car and drive forward. The boys are still behind us... Juan is uneasy and worried! He doesn't want that we go out of the car anymore!! So... we drive around... one employee of me (a man) goes with a local employee to an other family. We stay in the car!
After the last visit we drive back to the hotel. Take a shower & Juan picks us up & drives with us through the city. He shows us some places like the palace of the president and then we drive to the sea to a sea-food restaurant! The fish looks really *bombed* ... but it's good. :) Then, Juan shows us the red-light milieu of Santo Domingo. He drives us back to the hotel and we go to the restaurant "Harry's" to have a drink together and enjoy a Flamenco-performance.
Back to the hotel, write my impressions down & sleeeeep.... Impressive day ... as all the others... and all the eyes of the kids.... just amazing... really... indescribable!...
