Immigration Day (No. 10)

Hey all!

It’s Julia and Rosie!! We were the leaders of the day today and it was very fun. Here’s a little bit about what we learned and did today!

Whoever is reading this: feel free to comment on any of our blogs! We will read them to everyone at our nightly meetings :)!

Today was a very busy day. We started off our morning at our first hotel, where we had a very nice breakfast of eggs and toast. Yum! After breakfast, we took a bus to the sugar cane fields, where we met a lovely man named Domingo (his nickname was Dictadura lol). He is a sugarcane worker and he explained to us all about what the workers in the Dominican Republic have to endure. We learned how the workers are taken advantage of by the accumulated wealth generating inequality. These workers are mostly immigrants from Haiti and do not have other opportunities for jobs, so they are left in these extremely hard conditions of work and do not get paid nearly enough. Domingo explained to us all about this misery through first-hand experience. After he talked to us, we asked him many questions, gave him our sympathies, and Hinisha was the first one to thank him for taking the time to show us all about the sugarcane fields. We even got to try the sugarcane! It was so cool!! KJ absolutely loved it and kept asking for more. Yesterday night, we had a guest speaker, Harry, who talked to us and explained all about the history behind Haitians and Dominicans, and how because of the rivalry between them, Haitian immigrants end up suffering inequality through labor and maltreatment.

On our bus ride back from the sugarcane fields, we saw many of the community members outside, and we even got to wave to some of the little kids we saw. We also got to see many mango trees! It was so full of mangos, our mouths were watering. Unfortunately, we were unable to take any of the mangos to eat :(.

We ate lunch at a restaurant called La Concon, which was a pizzeria. It was delicious. We had 4 different pizzas to choose from. After lunch, we went back to our hotel and we got our luggage together. Very happy to say that most of our luggage was found!!! Some are still missing, but hopefully arriving very soon. Then, we took the bus to Jarabacoa. It was a 4-hour drive, but we bonded and a lot of us took some much-needed rest. Julia and Rosie made friendship bracelets, and we taught KJ how to make one too!! He is making one for his mom. We eventually got off the bus and arrived at our new hotel, where we ate a very delicious dinner. We had fried yuca, fried chicken, salad, mashed potatoes, and bananas. It was so so so good. Then we had our nightly meeting and said goodnight to everyone.

There are a lot of bugs here, so we’re always wearing bug spray.

And from all of us, we want our parents to know how much we miss them <3.

Big big love,

Julia and Rosie <3

Us at the sugar cane fields with Domingo!

Your very own leaders of the day, Julia and Rosie! ?