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Hello friends. Today was quite an impactful day because we all got to experience what true poverty is like. Everyone woke up at 7 and had breakfast at 8, which was a ham and cheese sandwich with mango juice. After breakfast we attended a seminar about poverty with our health coach, Tim, who led us through the five P’s of poverty (people, place, politics, past, peace). In this seminar, we were given a variety of different facts about events that have happened here in the DR. We were then instructed to organize them into the 5 p’s of poverty. After this seminar, we were supposed to go to a school in a poor community but we received news that there were no kids there today and there wouldn’t be a point in going. Instead, to make use of our time, a handful of glimpsers went out to buy supplies for our CAP project. The people who didn’t go out to buy supplies decided that some food would hit the spot. We found ourselves at a Dominican fast food café/restaurant down the street. We ordered different things and some of us weren’t quite satisfied with the food while others (like me) were. When we got back to the hostel, we had lunch and then got on a bus to go to the Constanza dump. When we got there, it was truly an impactful sight. It was a large space of land with every inch of it covered with some type of trash. We could see people looking through the garbage for anything useful as we approached the area. We were then split into different groups with each group having someone who lived in the dump as their guide. It was really a life changing moment after hearing these people’s life stories and seeing how they live. Personally, seeing all this has created a great sense of appreciation for what I have in the U.S..The man I was with told me he has been living in the dump for 22 years. It’s hard to even fathom how he could do that. It started raining pretty hard and it was time for us to go back to Dilenia’s. At Dilenia’s, we had dinner and then discussed the day in the nightly meeting. That’s all for now, goodnight folks!

  •  Eugene

Good night fellow Glimpsers, family, and friends today we learned and experienced poverty in the Dominican Republic. We first learned about poverty in the DR lead by our GG leader Tim. Where he taught us about how unfortunate the people in the DR are. A statistic that really surprised me was in 2010 “approximately 34.4% of the Dominican Republic falls beneath the poverty line.” When I realized that there are people living in worst conditions that the people have already visited made me realize that I have not truly seen poverty yet. Which made me want to see the gap between what we have already have seen. We were going to go to a school named Cecaini, however, the trip to the school was canceled because the students were not available to the moment. Although we did have a chance to visit the dump in Constanza which was honestly extremely hard to believe that people were living in that dump. There was millions of flies flying around, dogs eating what ever they can find and kids no older that 8 year olds picking up trash. When I saw that it just broke my heart seeing the children living in those conditions only wearing what they can find in the dump and some not wearing shoes while there was broken glass everywhere. The people work morning till night to make a living for their families and make just enough to feed their families. While we were there we met a guy named Juan Carlos where he has pick up plastic for a living and has been doing that for 12 years. He also told us he makes about 1300 pesos on good day which is really not much. After a small tour around the dump we asked him if he goes to church and he said no he does not because he drinks. The people that drink are not accepted in church. Which lead to us asking why don’t you just stop drinking then and he responds by saying that he wants to drink to forget about his life at the dump. When I heard that i realized that their life are 1000 times harder than ours and that we just do not realize that there are people are trying to feed their families by picking up trash. Around that time it started to rain which was also difficult to see because we had the luxury to leave while they had to stay and continue to work. I even saw a guy get some plastic and put it around himself to continue picking up that garlic off the floor. That visit to the dump was just drilled into my head. Which makes me value the food and clothes that is offered to me because they have to work all day to get almost nothing. I would like to thank you guys for reading the blogs and wish you a good night.

  • Ivan