Caraballo: A Day in the Life (written September 10, 2008)

I wake up about 7:00 a.m. and get myself as presentable looking as possible with a freezing cold trickle of water. It’s usually a chilly morning. Then I leave the apartment with Jessi and Candace and head towards the team house where the gua-gua (think: mini van developing country style) lives. We leave the team house and pick up several other Dominican teachers in town and then head through the sugar cane fields to Via Ascension.

(Via Ascension is a settlement that was created by missionaries. It is located near the village of Caraballo, which exists becuase sugar companies came in many years ago and built houses for the sugarcane workers. Shanty towns (made mostly of wood and tin) have sprouted up around the structures built by the sugar cane companies. And I found out that no one has harvested the sugarcane for several years now, because te industry has moved to the south. Most people that live in Caraballo don't have any work at the moment.)

As we drive further into the sugarcame fields, motorcycles carrying people and other miscellaneous objects pass on the left and right down a dirt road that doesn’t even have invisible lanes. Some of the kids we pass attend the Care Center in Via Ascension and others are on their way to the highschool in Montellano. Only one high school, which is public, exists. So, all the highschool age children living among the sugarcane fields either walk or ride on a moto to Montellano for school. Many kids stop attending school once they reach high school age.

When we arrive at school at 8:00 a.m., there are already some children waiting outside the gate. School starts at 9:00 a.m. The teachers have a short devotion and then we go about preparing for the school day.

If you walk around the Care Center, you will see a mess hall, several classrooms, and an office/ clinic/ storage area combination. There are construction projects that include an addition to the building. This will allow the Care Center to have at least two more classrooms.

You will also see a few mangy dogs and one very cute puppy (the only survivor of a full litter) moseying around the grounds of the Center. The grounds also hold a gazebo and plenty of room for the kids to play wiffle ball and tag.

When class starts, the kids come in and have prayer and hand sanitizing time (I’ve used more hand sanitizer in the last three days than in the last year). Then the kids push, kick and fight (anything but walk in a quiet, straight line) over to the mess hall. Once seated, we pray as a large group and then have breakfast together. Breakfast is a roll (which resembles a dinner roll) and a cup of either hot chocolate, sugary, milky coffee, or oatmeal. (All of these hot drinks/ foods are made with cinnamon and cloves which is a Dominican speciality). This may not be the healthiest, but when would I ever complain about hot chocolate.

After breakfast, there is a very brief “recreo.” The thing about recreo is that you never know when or if its going to happen. Sometimes we go into class and spend 5-10 minutes trying to calm everyone down. Once I think we are set and ready to learn, someone will inform us that its time for recreo. And today no one had recreo because apparently the kids were more misbehaved on Wednesday than Tuesday (In my opinion, they were bad enough to miss recreo both days). So, I am getting used to this and hopefully soon I will have it figured out.

The morning recreo ends about 10:00 a.m. and we start our morning session. The younger kids come to school in the morning. I am helping in the third grade class until I get my feet wet enough to have a class of my own. I love the third graders. The little girls are super sweet and quiet. Most of the boys are really bad, but they have their moments and for some reason I am drawn more to the ones that have behavior problems than the ones that seem to have it together. I’ll write more on individual kids later- there’s a lot to tell!

The morning group finishes at 11:30 a.m. and we have another recreo. After recreo ends, it’s lunch time. The older kids come for lunch as well, so we have about 200 kids in the mess hall at one time. One word: Mayhem.

We’ve had some really interesting lunches and I’ve only been here three days. On Monday we had a mixture of rice and black beans (mostly rice) with assorted chicken parts on top. Fortunately, I was lucky enough to have a entire chicken foot on top of my rice and beans. The Care Center raises their own chickens so I don’t really need to describe to you just how fresh the chicken is… Tuesday, we had rice, beans and induveca salami cooked together with some sort of salad on the side.. Induveca is a salami brand down here. It’s not my favorite, but lunch turned out ok. And today, we had spaghetti (strangely, is tastes a lot like chef boyrdee…spelling?) with rice and soupy red beans. I’ve never had rice and spaghetti in one meal, but it was surprisingly satisfying.

After lunch, all the kids have devotions together in the mess hall, then each class has bible study After this, we have recreo...again. About 2:30 or so, the afternoon session starts. The older kids attend the Center in the afternoon and I work with the 7th graders. I’ve never worked with middle schoolers before. At the moment, I am helping with this class because it’s a pretty wild bunch of kids and they need an estra set of hands. The older girls here are really aggressive and violent with each other. The boys are aggressive too, but mean little girls are a lot meaner than mean little boys. Or at least this is my experience. I'm still getting used to this age group...

The first few days, we didn’t have materials for the 7th grade class. This was difficult, because the first day of school of so important. If you want to pray for something specific for me, pray for the 7th grade kids (specifically Pamela) in Caraballo. They are dealing with a lot of crap at home and they definitely bring it to school with them. They are so bright and eager. They just need some encouragement and direction AND DISCIPLINE.

Between 3:30 p.m. and 4:00 p.m., school is over. It has been at a different time each day. We leave school and head back to Montellano…

That’s all for now. I’ll try to keep things a little more brief in the future, but I wanted you to have an idea of what I typical day is like...

Much love,
GA