Dominican Republic Thoughts #3

Two Christmas' ago, Jeff and I donated all of the money we would have spent and would have received on gifts to a water well fund.  It's important that people have clean water.  Yet, I don't think I truly understood that importance until I lived in it for a week. 

The community we visited in the DR is built on sand dredged up from the ocean floor.  Years ago, the city wanted to allow cruise boats and other boats to be able to dock in this inlet that the community backs up to, so they had to make the ocean floor deeper.  They dug and dumped the sand in what is now this community.  It become new "land" and many people came and squatted here and eventually built their "home." 

Until about the last year, the government did not acknowledge this area as part of the city - and only then did they acknowledge this area because there was a political election and it would look good for whoever was running to have done something for this community.  The government refused to have electrical lines run to these homes so the people put up illegal lines connecting with power lines further in the city.  The government refused to pave their streets - until election time and then some of the streets were paved.  They refused to provide them the rights of trash pick-up.

In the community we visited, the people don't have clean water running from their faucets.  They can't drink from their sink.  They shouldn't brush their teeth using the water running from their faucets.  Their 3 year olds can't drink the bath water (I hate when Siahna does this, but I only have to worry about soap in the water). 

And on top of this, there is little running water inside their home to begin with.  The back of the toilet has to be filled with a bucket of water before you can flush and then you're lucky if you can even get it to flush.  So, you can imagine what the bathroom looked and smelled like.

The water situation affected us every day in the things we take for granted.

The houses in Puerto Plata are built very close together.  Therefore, trash trucks can't reach a large part of this community.  So, what do you do if you don't have trash pick-up?  You don't walk your garbage a mile to where there is trash pick-up.  You throw it in the river that's right out your back door.  Or you throw it on the beach because it's an open area with lots of room for trash.

After years of this lifestyle, the water is deeply contaminated and even filtering it or boiling it does not make it good enough to drink.  And it has affected the entire city.

This is the river that runs behind the community.  Houses are built right up to the river and each year more and more of the land erodes and homes are falling into the river leaving families without a home.  Sandra, the woman we worked with is slowly relocating these families but there is little room to build and hard to leave the community with no money.

Power lines haphazardly placed.

Just some of the trash in the river and if you look close enough, you'll see some chickens walking around on top of it.

A home to the left and behind this trash pile.

The "beach".  Five years ago when our church first started visiting this community, the trash on this beach covered the entire beach and was 2-3 feet deep.  Many people have come over the years just to do trash clean-up.  However, the people still dump their trash in the streets and on the beach because habits die hard.  The beach is no longer usable and the kids can't swim in the ocean because of all the garbage in this area.

Trash on the beach. 

 All of their drinking water has to be bought - which actually leads to more trash.  Jeff and I did the math just to compare it to what we spend on water each month.  A 5 gallon jug of water in the DR costs about $1.  That's .20/gallon.  This last month we used 3,000 gallons of water.  Our water bill was $67.  In the DR, it would have been $600.  Granted, they don't take 10 minute showers (they don't even have hot water) and they don't have lawns to water so there's no way they would use this amount of water.  But, it put our water usage and our clean water at the tip of our fingers into perspective.