M'Pale Kreyol

The further south you go in this country, the drier it gets and the poorer it feels.   When people talk about the southern Dominican Republic, they mean the southwest, between the Haitian border and cities approaching the capital.  San Juan and Azua are considered the south, and my town is located between the two – so if you’re thinking of a tropical paradise with constant rains and lush green, you’re not thinking of where I live.

Tabara doesn’t quite feel like a desert yet.  It rained plenty during the rainy season, but that ended in October and it hasn’t rained since, so it’s probably only a matter of time before the fields turn brown and dust takes over.  But I am lucky to have even this much rain, this much greenery.  I’ve traveled further south on two occasions, both to visit the bateyes around Tamayo, and just an hour in a guagua brings me to a world that is drier, dustier, and even hotter than my community.  In the summer there is no relief from the heat, not even at night, but thankfully December brings a cool night breeze.

I spent last week learning Haitian Creole in Batey 9.   It was kind of like summer camp – five days spent eating, sleeping, learning, and playing games with seven other volunteers and our teacher Getro, a capitaleño Haitian who speaks four or five languages.   Our host was the evangelical pastor, who told us a little bit of Batey 9’s history – of slave labor and killings, of distrust between Haitians and Dominicans.  Problems between the two groups reach back to before the border existed between their countries, and these fears persist today.

Bateyes, by definition, are communities based around sugar cane production.  They have primarily Haitian or Haitian-Dominican populations, and are some of the poorest places in the country.  There are clusters of bateyes in the south and also in the east (not so far from Punta Cana).  In the south, many don’t even have names, but are just numbered Batey 1 through Batey 9.  Until recent decades, these could almost be considered slave communities.  Haitians were brought across the border and dumped into the cane to work, receiving little or no pay and fearing the Dominicans they might encounter if they tried to leave.  Today, many men still work endlessly in the cane, seven days a week from dawn until dusk, but the bateyes themselves have developed as communities.  Resources arrive through NGOs, The Church, Peace Corps Volunteers… bateyes aren’t the easiest places to live, but volunteers generally have a lot of success working in them. 

I frequently find myself defending Haitians to my Dominican friends and neighbors.  A good friend of mine, a police officer, recently said:  “Yo no quiero nada que hacer con ellos.  Te matan!  Crecen como animales, y creen en brujeria!”   I don’t want anything to do with them.  They’ll kill you!  They’re raised like animals, and they believe in witchcraft!   These words came from a person I really like.  And I still like him, despite his small-minded perspective of the world.  I haven’t found many friends who aren’t bigoted, though I think I am changing a few perspectives – at least those of the people I am around a lot, those who are willing to change.  It’s a constant conversation, and I mostly hear the Dominican side.  My community doesn’t have a large Haitian population – the Haitians here literally just walked over the mountains to come work in the fields.  They are straight from Haiti, maybe speak some Spanish, probably have no education, and are at the lowest end of the social ladder.  If Haiti were the richer country, it would probably be the exact same situation in reverse.

But anyway, I learned some Creole.  Now I’m searching for a Haitian buddy to practice with. 

Kids...

The batey's "play" (baseball field).