Today was out first reality challenge experience that allowed us to gain insight into how the people of the Dominican Republic work. We began the day bright and early with a 6 A.M. wake up call to get ready for the long rough day ahead of us. After breakfast we arrived at the greenhouses after a bumpy bus ride by our good friend Sandy. We were taught by locals how to pick weeds from long rows of cucumber plants. The sight was absolutely amazing, the greenhouses were filled with tons of plants solely for the growth of cucumbers. The work was long and strenuous, constantly bending over and squatting in order to separate the weeds from the cucumber plants. We only ended up working for about two hours, however, the locals will work about 8 hours a day, every day. We couldn’t believe the conditions they had to work in: a hot, closed-off greenhouse with hardly any breaks and were expected to meet certain quotas within a short amount of time. It took us two hours to finish three 50 yard rows in groups of five, but they are expected to finish one row by themselves in only seven minutes. We met someone our age named Michael (hopefully correct), a 17-year old who works 40 hours a week to provide for his family and barely scrape by. For them, there is no option of college because they don’t have enough money to even consider the possibility of furthering their education. Our delegation realized how much we take things such as school and job opportunities for granted as Michael was telling us about his experience. We also talked to another young woman, a 20-year old who also worked in the greenhouse. We asked her if she had any children, ad she responded with how she has a five-year old and a two-year old. Learning about their lives and the amount of work they do, we all realized the importance of being grateful for what we have no matter how much or how little it seems we have. We are very fortunate to be living in a place like America where college is accessible and where our low income jobs aren’t nearly as strenuous. Especially talking to Michael, we felt his struggle between supporting his family and his education as he moves into senior year just like us. While we are debating which college we wanted to go to, he’s worrying about his family and supporting multiple people on his $8 a day salary.

Chucho: Foreman at greenhouse

Michael: Farm worker

After that, we went to the World Argo marketing exports where they were processing cucumbers that get exported to the US under the brand Mama Mia. Here we learned about the process that the cucumbers go through and the amount of rejected cucumbers because of the strict requirements set by US companies not only to ensure quality, but, more importantly, because American consumers are so used to perfect looking fruits and vegetables. We realized that we were so used to having perfect looking vegetables that we never considered that all the ugly or imperfect vegetables all get thrown away. This put into perspective the impact of the US’ influence on exporting goods from the Dominican Republic. This pattern not only repeats with just Persian cucumbers but with every type of fruit and vegetable and from hundreds of other places around the world. We met the World Argo marketing supervisor Luis Ayala who has worked there for 15 years and made us realize that with big American companies ruling the Dominican Republic economy, brings problems to the do local companies because of their high, unrealistic expectations. It takes  so much effort and determination to export simply one crate of cucumbers. In one of our activities we had to sort out “good” from “bad” cucumbers and found that from an entire 40 pound crate of cucumbers only a handful were chosen to move onto the exporting market.

Finally, after a very long and tiring day, we had our last English class of the week where we continued to teach our students English phrases and things of that sort. We got the chance to teach our new students about simple English phrases and the alphabet and I was surprised to see them connect the words in their head and further develop their speaking skills. We try to have fun with our class and it always results in a very rewarding and deeply enjoyable experience. Today, we had many new students that needed to catch up and were surprised when our older students stepped up to help us.

Overall, it was a great day and we’re all very tired and it’s almost midnight so we’re going to sign out since we’ve been up since 5am. All the glimpsers miss their families very much and tomorrow is out free day and we will be able to call home so expect calls and emails to come.

Vivienne Dimalanta and Vivian Le