July 23rd, 2024

Hello family and friends!

It’s Destiny and Natalie, your Leaders of the Day!
The next day of our culture immersion trip to DR consisted of Immigration Day (the eighth day). Today was an especially packed day but we were more than excited to dive into learning more about the community and its history that we will be working in.

As leaders, we made sure to wake up at 6:30 am so that our fellow glimpsers were up at 7:00 am. Because of our packed day ahead, we had to be down for breakfast by 7:45 am while completing our warm-up of the day. We started off our day with a delicious breakfast, we were able to choose from cornflakes, frosted flakes, and fruit loops, with a serving of scrumptious mixed fruit. As we ate our breakfast, we completed our warm-up for the day. We spoke about information regarding what our day was going to consist of and what we were going to be exposed to.
We learned about today’s main organization called ASCALA (Asociacion Scalabriniana al Servicio de la Movilidad Humana). An organization that aids immigrants from all over the world in receiving the help and aid they need. They focus on areas such as Immigration, Documentation, Discrimination, Organization, and Labor Law–just to name a few. There we met Hermana Ignecia, who has been in ASCALA for 20 years. She talked to us about the objective of the organization and explained to us how important it is for us, the youth, to be educated about immigration outside of the US to make a profound impact on humanity.
We were introduced to promoters of the organization who are also immigrants that came from Haiti and are currently working with Sister Ignecia to help incoming immigrants from all over the world. They shared their personal experiences such as the intersectionality they faced being immigrants from Haiti, their personal passion, the discrimination they’ve faced, and the specifics of what they are doing for ASCALA. We learned that there are a lot of Haitians who face hate while in the DR because of past political matters and collisions.

After this heartfelt and informative meeting, we then headed to the guagua to meet up with Don Domingo for a visit to the Sugar Cane Plantation in Patey Margarita Consuelo. We were amazed at the sizable plantation and even more shocked to find out the working conditions for the workers. Don Domingo shared a little bit about how sugar cane grows, who cuts it, the working conditions, wages, and the extraction and distribution. We were able to capture a photo with the sugar canes that Don Domingo so generously cut for us.

Then, we headed back to Los Cocos and enjoyed some free time. Some of us went into the refreshing pool while others played at the pool table or took a much-needed nap. At 6 pm we had our daily reflection in which we discussed our observations throughout the day. With lots to share, we had a communal discussion about how immigration affects Haitians and their life quality.
At 7 pm, we had a yummy dinner that our kitchen staff so kindly provided. Hotdogs and fries were served while everyone enjoyed time with one another.
Lastly, at 8 pm, we gathered for our nightly meeting and voiced our rose and thorn, plus and wish, big love, and “pass the torch” to our next lovely leaders, Kaylee and Anaiah.
Thank you for your time and attention, stay tuned for tomorrow’s blog!