Deconstruction & projects

They have started destructing a building across the street from my house in order to build a new high school. This is a big deal because our municipality has the worst school system in the country (so you can imagine how bad it is). The problem is, a new high school isn't really going to make the school system better, at least not in the amount of kids that stay in school or how much they learn, but that is for another discussion. My recent discovery is how you tear down a building in rural DR. First, you call the entire town to come watch. Fine, except in this culture, everyone's porch is for whatever passerby, so my porch is suddenly so crowded with people (as it has the best viewing spot) that there would be no way to leave my house if I wanted to. Then, they procede to knock down the walls (made of tin) and doors. Fairly normal, but all done by hand, there is no power equipment to do this sort of stuff. This was day one. Then, little by little, the concrete foundation is starting to be beaten down into polvo (dust). Again, this is done by men with hammers, not a mechanical jack-hammer. There doesn't seem to be any method to it either, it seems pretty random, people will just come up and start hammering at the concrete until they get tired and quit.

Next, the trees. They need to get rid of the trees on this property because the high school will be too big. I just kept thinking about how much protest there would be in the states if people cut down these trees (about 5 of them), but here no one cares. Then, they start a small fire around the roots of the tree to get them to turn to ashes on one side (could you imagine this in Custer?) Then, they hack the other side of the roots with an ax (without eye protection, OSHA would have a field day) and tie a rope around the tree to pull it down. I asked why they didn't tie the rope to a truck and just drive to pull it down and they said finding and relying on a truck driver to show up would be too much work. So, they do it all manually. Then, they burn the tree. Needless to say my house has been full of smoke lately and my cough has not subsided.

Good News: a pastor of one of the churches came up to me today and asked if I'd be willing to help him with some projects. One is a "sala de tarea", which is basically a room for kids to come get help with their homework. Many youth volunteers do this, and even though I'm not a huge fan of kids, organizing something like this would be fairly easy and helpful for the kids. The other project is for "actos de nacimientos"...AKA birth certificates. This is a huge problem in this country. If you don't have a birth certificate you can't go to school, get a bank account, or join many organizations. Getting a birth certificate can be fairly easy...if both your parents have one (meaning they were born here and aren't Haitian) and take the hospital slip within two years to the "courthouse."

The problem comes in a couple forms, first, you either need both your parents or your father to sign for you, you cannot be just a single mom and get a birth certificate. I was told this was not a put-down to mothers but to try and get father's to take responsibility. Well, that doesn't really work, there's no incentive to take responsibility for your child, and really, only the child is hurt in this process. Additionally, many people live very far from a "courthouse" to take care of this and getting to one is difficult, so they just never do it. It is not an automatic process like in the US. So, if you wait to do this until the child is older than 2, it costs money (apparently "a lot", but I don't know how much). When you kid wants to go to school you realize you should have gotten him a birth certificate a while ago. So, we are going to try and do a "drive" to get some kids their birth certificates so they can go to school and have a more normal life. Why kids should be punished for their parents lack of responsibility, I don't know, but that seems to happen a lot everywhere.