08405
May 23, 2008
Droplets of hope
SDOP is partnering to bring clean water to poor villages in the Dominican Republic
 SDOP’s water project seeks to improve the lives of residents like this woman at Batey Palmarejo in the Dominican Republic. Photo by Evan Silverstein PALMAREJO, Dominican Republic — In this poor shanty village or “batey” hidden along a dusty dirt road that ends where despair begins, Andres Ramirez says he’s found hope.
That’s a word seldom heard amid the rows of dilapidated wooden barracks and tiny dirt-floor shacks that house the mostly Haitian and Dominican sugarcane cutters and their families at Batey Palmarejo, where each day is a struggle just to survive.
Ramirez, who lives in the settlement with his wife and three children, glanced skyward as the bill of his New York Mets baseball cap shielded his round brown eyes from the sun.
The attention of the 37-year-old was squarely trained on a blue and white cinderblock tower and its three large circular tanks designed to pump thousands of gallons of life-sustaining drinking water to the batey’s 4,200 inhabitants.
But the water station hasn’t worked since it broke down two years ago because its pump was too small. The loss was a serious blow to the community since it has no other regular access to sanitary drinking water.
 A water tower, dormant for two years, will once again pump clean water soon to residents of the shanty village or “batey” in Palmarejo, near the Dominican Republic capital of Santo Domingo. Photo by Evan Silverstein That means residents must either buy purified water, which they cannot afford, drink dirty rainwater or collect ground water, which often is contaminated. The batey has no sewage facilities and many residents suffer from gastrointestinal problems that frequently cause serious illness or death.
Food, jobs and electricity are scarce with basic medical care non-existent, and there are virtually no educational and training opportunities of which to speak.
Despite the squalor, Ramirez is optimistic about a brighter future since he knows the water station will soon be operational again thanks to a grant from the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) Self-Development of People (SDOP) program and help from one of its Dominican-based partner organizations.
“Water is life and the whole community is very grateful for the assistance,” said Ramirez, who will be charged with keeping the water station working once it’s repaired. “Without water there’s a lot of illness and all the other dirtiness. But with water it gives us hope.”
SDOP, funded primarily through the One Great Hour of Sharing offering, helps Presbyterians and others establish partnerships with oppressed and disadvantaged communities by providing grants to groups that create and manage local development projects. The investments are intended to help poor people reach their potential and gain independence.
“The whole community is going to benefit because the water is going to go to each house,” Ramirez said in Spanish with his words translated into English by Cecilia Moran, an outgoing SDOP national committee member from Stockton, CA.
 Andres Ramirez (right) says clean water will bring hope to Batey Palmarejo as Montserrat Rodriquez describes the suffering of residents there. Photo by Evan Silverstein Last week, Moran and six others from SDOP visited the settlement where the group is partnering with the Movement of Dominican-Haitian Women (MUDHA) to fix the crippled water station and build a new one at the site in Azua province, located about 10 miles west of Santo Domingo, the Dominican capital.
“The water is going to make them healthier, it’s going to help the economy,” said Sirana Dolis, who runs the education programs for MUDHA, a local non-governmental organization promoting the rights of Haitian and Dominican-Haitian women. “It’s going to help the families because they won’t have to buy the so-called pure water. It will produce better food and irrigation.”
Dolis led the SDOP leaders through the narrow streets of Batey Palmarejo where they saw garbage strewn about, naked children playing and a rundown school house where MUDHA is working with the Dominican branch of Education Without Borders to arrange more resources.
 Sirana Dolis of MUDHA said water from the SDOP project will help make residents of the batey healthier and the economy stronger. Photo by Evan Silverstein The group also saw residents sweeping dirt floors with brooms trying their best to make their wooden shacks as homey as possible. Some even removed their shoes before entering.
There are reportedly more than 500 bateys across this Caribbean island-nation, housing mostly Haitian and Dominican sugarcane cutters and their families. The inhuman living conditions repeat themselves at almost every site.
When the country’s State Sugar Council went bankrupt in 1999, the Dominican government privatized many sugarcane mills. However, private owners failed to improve the living and working conditions in the bateys. Many have stopped the production of sugarcane, thus leaving residents in an even more perilous situation.
Following the last sugar harvest in 1999, the men of Batey Palmarejo have eked out a living by traveling to the city to work in construction. To make ends meet, the women work as domestics, small traders or prostitutes.
“Since the sugarcane has disappeared, this whole community is like a community of orphans,” said Montserrat Rodriquez, a 60-year-old resident of Batey Palmarejo, who joined Ramirez at the water tower.
Children in the batey attend school only through the fourth grade and young people have no opportunities to work or acquire job skills leaving them with little or no hope, Rodriquez said.
 More than 500 bateys are believed to exist across the Dominican Republic, such as Batey 43 in Villa Altagracia in San Cristóbal province. Photo by Evan Silverstein “They don’t even have daily bread. There is a lot of misery,” said the father of five. “We have gotten used to the hunger. A wagon of fruit comes around every day but no one has money to buy anything.”
Meanwhile, SDOP is teaming with Batey Relief Alliance Dominicana to construct a clean water system at Batey Bosque in the Monte Plata province. And SDOP has approved funding to establish clean water systems at two other bateys next year.
Much of the $141,726 budgeted for this year’s projects will go for building or repairing water systems, administration and maintenance and educational opportunities dealing with the value and health benefits of clean water. An economic plan will provide a road map for generating sorely needed income for residents of the communities.
“We can’t change the whole world, but as Christians and as Americans and as humans we really should not stand by and do absolutely nothing when we see these kinds of injustices,” said John Etheredge, SDOP’s outgoing chair and member of First Presbyterian Church in Rocky Mount, NC. His church is planning a mission trip to the Dominican Republic next year.
Even with new water systems, SDOP committee members cautioned that numerous challenges remain for the enclaves.
The Rev. Lutrelle Rainey of Dayton, OH, an SDOP committee member who toured the batey, said he hopes the committee’s efforts to help will spur a modern-day feeding of the multitude, where one act of kindness moves others to share what they have.
“We’re hoping that from the little bit that we can do as a small denomination that other denominations would step up to the plate and share from their plenty, and that we can make this a place where people can live and grow,” he said.
And there’s another problem facing many batey residents, according to Dolis, whose family left neighboring Haiti in the early 1950s in search of economic opportunity by working in the Dominican sugarcane industry.
Dolis told the group that for the majority of Haitians and those of Haitian descent born in the Dominican Republic it is very difficult to get Dominican documents.
She said the Dominican constitution provides citizenship to persons born in the country, but not to children whose parents are “in transit” in the Dominican Republic. Migration authorities consider irregular migrants as “in transit.”
As a result, the majority of the Haitian immigrants and their descendants remain virtually stateless.
Later the group visited Batey 43 in Villa Altagracia. The struggling community in San Cristóbal province received emergency funding from SDOP to help rebuild homes and purchase supplies, such as clothes and food, after being hit hard by tropical storm Noel late last year.
The group toured the batey and a newly constructed home there before meeting with the Farmer Women Federation of Cambita — also in San Cristóbal province — where several communities were pounded by the storm. Members of more than 10 families were reported killed and hundreds of houses damaged in the disaster.
SDOP approved a grant of $49,610 for the federation to help them rebuild two homes, repair roofs, floors and walls of 15 houses, purchase mosquito nets, mattresses and bed sheets along with rice, oil, salami, milk and chickens.
“We saw places that were just washed out by tropical storm Noel,” said SDOP committee member Dianne Kareha of Allentown, PA. “A woman who was pregnant and her two children died when their house collapsed on them. Another family of seven, their house completely went down the side of the mountain. They were all wiped out. But these people have high hopes in the rebuilding that we’re helping to make possible.”
Meanwhile, about 33 other people from SDOP traveled in two buses to separate sites around the Dominican Republic.
One group stopped in the small Dominican Republic town of Guerra where SDOP assistance helped a group of women expand a cramped, stuffy room in a tiny house into a spacious building for making candy and bakery goods.
The improvements quickly led to increased business, an island-wide distribution system for their merchandise and enough income for them to support their families. The women also established a successful mini-market and a cinderblock factory.
“Everybody was really grateful for what we had given,” said SDOP committee member Susan Freed-Held of Colton, OR, who was on that trip. “They said it had helped them to improve their own personal lifestyles and that of their family and as a result within their community.”
Another SDOP group traveled to San Rafael del Yuma, a municipality of about 17,000 people in the La Altagracia province of the Dominican Republic. They met with a women’s federation that with SDOP help started a rotating funds business that provides credit to members for starting small businesses.
The Dominican group also provides cows and calves to families and helps with raising livestock. Funds are also provided on a rotating loan basis to repair homes, finance health treatments and purchase school supplies.
The women have also undertaken a youth project where they are training young people in the area of violence prevention and HIV prevention, according to SDOP committee member Michelle Uchiyama, who resides in Atlanta, GA.
“They said, ‘We women are growing in age so we have to be responsible to train our youth,’” Uchiyama said. “What they’re doing is training the youth so that they can go to the schools and speak about violence prevention and HIV among their peers. So they’re doing a lot of peer mentoring now. That’s so important.”
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