A grand return, but nothing has changed.

It was early in May and I was trying to finish editing the documentary I started last summer about people living from a landfill in the Dominican Republic. Some of you may know more about this project than others. I realized I needed more footage, the kind which I had just *not* been able to get the year before because of a lack of connections, and a lack of trust from the community. The year that had elapsed since I went had opened more doors, however, and I decided to go back and see what I could get.

I have been keeping up with events in the area by calling a few contacts and asking for any updates or news they had. My best source does not own a telephone, and I have to call the colmado (small neighborhood store) across the street from his house. They shout his name across the street until he comes for the phone. Apparently the government filled in the dump with dirt to abate the smoke, and they bought some new trash trucks. “They are bright green and orange,” Jose said. So some of the smoke is gone, but not much else has changed. “Are you sure?” I asked, aware of all the plans the government had told me were going into action this year. It didn’t sound right. But I wanted to document how this had effected the lives of the people.

Upon my arrival, I indeed noticed how much better the smoke was. My arms and face didn’t go black anymore when I walked through the dump. But the essential problem of the dump hasn’t been addressed: there is a lot of trash, it’s not going away, and they need a place to put it. The trashflow is not being tackled on the front end: for example, reducing packaging materials, or, say, consumer recycling in homes. Oh yeah, and the buzos are as disempowered, poor, dirty, uneducated as ever. They have NO opportunities. There has been a lot of money thrown at the situation and very, very little has been done that can be accounted for. The money the sindico (mayor) has supposedly allotted for the project (75 million pesos) has produced green-and-orange trucks and one-time-dirt-fill. That’s about it. It’s a fascinating case study of politics, and also incredibly frustrating.

The situation stinks. The trash is putrid. Kids dirty with slime and black ash from head to toe still work in the dump. If the buzos find any food worth eating, they stuff their mouths straight from the ground. Poverty abounds, multiplying with every child born, misery in every nook and cranny. At a political level, the situation is also rotten. It has become a political battleground of wills, possible (definite) corruption, with the buzos lost somewhere in the middle. In fact, almost no one think about the buzos. They are nonexistent. Undocumented, illiterate, unskilled, they have no political power. They are ghosts in a system of grand corruption. Hey, guess what? I made a documentary about ghosts.

But I really enjoyed my stay there - I got to reconnect with all the different characters I had interviewed last year (Santos, Ignacio, Bedona, Diego, Ramon, Chivito, Pablo Esteben, etc…) and I also interviewed a host of more official characters such as the mayor himself (Jose Sued), the subsecretary of the environment (Ernesto Rayna), two doctors who have done health studies on the population surrounding the dump (Arsenio Estevez, Juan Rosario), two journalists (Maximo Laureano, Miguel Ponce) and more.

I feel like I really have a complete set of tools to finish the documentary now, a lot more information, and a better grasp on the situation. I also have some exceedingly juicy footage of the dump.. I got right into the trash along with them.

It’s a scandal, what’s happening. I don’t have a lot of power to change any of it, but I hope I can make some waves. Now comes the editing.

Oh and a big shout out to Ernesto, who was my translator. I can speak Spanish well, but when it comes to communicating complex ideas (”What do you think of the cycle of poverty that is perpetuated by the illiteracy and lack of political will from the state?”) I need a lot of help. He really enabled the trip and made all the interviews come alive.

More soon. Photos will be up shortly.
Besos,

Isabelle

I measure the days by spitting on my thumb and tracing a path of black on my arm. Today I wrote the letter B. B for bad. The lady selling me water pointed to a hose. I climb up a steep slope of black-rust mixed with broken glass. My feet anchor on patches of dying grass and long strings of old plastic bags, clouds of soot blowing in my face.

Ignacio shouts my name and jokes, “Everyday, you look more like us… Soon we will have to dig to find your true color!” What is he talking about, I thought?… Oh. Blacker. I look blacker. Later he unclasps his watch, and shows me his tan line, “This is what my skin really looks like. I’m darker now because I work in the sun all day picking this trash.” Somehow, I can sense, this should change my opinion of him. Another slap in the face. For I am beginning to understand: The whiter you are, the luckier you are. I hadn’t realized racism came in such precise shades of skin. The insidious tentacles of racist history yet had their hold, even the “75% mixed” population of the Dominican Republic. I told him to put his watch back on, unable to articulate my sorrowful disgust.Ignacio leads me through the landfill, stooping for pieces of metal. Trash becomes more recognizable; cans, bottles, needles, boxes, plastic bags, dolls, telephones, shoes, mattress springs, plastic gallons, paper… it fades from being picked-through burned rubble to piles of steaming fresh trash. Today we stayed away from people, and unfortunately downwind of the fires.

During the interview, smoke billowed through, hiding Ignacio behind a windy curtain of grey. He looked as if he would disappear altogether, and I asked him, “So where do you see yourself in 10 years?” After a long pause he said, “I’m standing on my grave.”

A storm blows through, torrential rains pouring from the sky with no remorse. The road has become slippery mud. Afterwards, clothes hang from barbed wire fences as makeshift drying lines. In the guagua** I sit like a sardine between two blaring women having recognized each other only halfway through the ride. My ears start to hurt. I lean forward and see the busdriver’s hands are thick with a double-skin. I ask him what he used to do; he says he picked and sold plantains. This job is better. I shake his rough hand when I step off the guagua.

Dragonflies fly alongside us on the motorbikes. I thank them for eating the mosquitoes that have feasted on my legs. I trust that my driver will deliver our non-helmeted heads to my destination, and not the graveyard. This is as close as I’ve ever come to believing in a miracle. He asks me about my life, where I’m from, my name, my age, where I live, and “Do you have any children?” I laugh and tell him no, I’m too young. He does not comment on this. I arrive at my destination.

She is 24 years old, and has 8 kids. Across the dirt-filled car tires stairs is her neighbor, who is 30 and has 7 kids. They live within 6 feet of each other, with only a path separating their lean-to, tin-roof, wooden-slat houses. The 24 year old won’t look at me in the eye when I introduce myself. I am not sure what to think. Does she despise me? Is she ashamed? Is she just shy? Is she psychologically detuned because of her hazardous surroundings? Then I think her husband gives me a clue. He is gruff, silent, appraising. He is a buzo, a “diver”, a trash picker. They are very poor. Coming back from work, he wears two different kinds of shoes, both caked in a thick, black, unnatural mud, and his white pants aren’t white. The wife yells at one of her kids crying in the house, “¡Ay Dios, callate hijo!” (Dear god, shut up son!). The path that separates the two families is the locals’ entryway to La Rafey, Santiago’s garbage dump where they scavenge their survival. Picking through lost opportunities.

Weeks later I return to the 24-year-old with her 8 kids at the bottom of the rubber tire staircase. I take out my video camera, and interview her about matters she has never been asked about. It takes a long time for her to answer my questions. She is uncomfortable, awkward, shy. Her children crawl around her, their messy mouths fuchsia-red from popsicles.

The neighbors have gathered around to watch, sitting farther up on a small mountain of trash and rusted bedsprings. The man who made a slit-throat motion to me the first day I came here weeks ago is now smiling at me kindly, holding his daughter. I wonder, is he the same guy? I’m pretty sure. I am aware that I represent an empire of wealth they will never have. How to mediate this?

You tend to get a little spit on your cheek when you kiss someone here: they really mean it when they say hello or goodbye. I realize how superficial greetings are in the US, a wave across the room satisfies saying hello, or a caved-chest hug followed by a light pat on the back. Here, validating a persons’ presence through a greeting is the most important thing to establish before a conversation/connection. I grab people’s hands to lead them somewhere, I touch people’s arms when I’m making a point, I put my arm around the ladies to make a joke. They reciprocate this with vigor, and so I know it is important for them I do this. I do not try to keep my distance from them, I shake their hands and hug their sweaty bodies, and pick the naked kids up without a second thought. I hope to build trust, just as I am starting to trust them.

*A cheap big van-bus that is used for public transportation. They will fit up to 19 people (4 in each row), plus the driver, and the comedor, a man who leans out of the open-door moving van to get more customers, and to collect the money once they are inside.

Dumping trash straight into their hands

Ignacio; heavy fires today

Rare photo of me filming; too muddy for tripod

Dolls, needles, cardboard, shoes…

One minute to the next; smoke billowing through

Backdrop of her home

She could be my daughter

Ignacio; climbing up the mountain of trash

There is death in mystery

Production shot; interview of Ramon

Tough bare feet that walk on glass

Tearing open a section of my hand with glass and unveiling bone on Tuesday morning while washing dishes gave me an unexpected tour of a private Dominican hospital. My doctor spoke English, had done a residency in Omaha, and served me immediately upon entering the emergency room. 11 stitches later I was out, with a bill that would make an American audience laugh, or cry. I was happy to pay ~$100 for the prompt care, attention and medicine I got. I’m not sure how affordable that is for the average Dominican however, though I’m told they have insurance.

The next day I found myself going back to the barrio with the team to narrate in Spanish a short play we made up about teenage pregnancy. Before that I was asked to choreograph a dance for the girls, on the spot, to kill time while we waited for more children to come to the sexual health session. I tried to dig through my Spanish vocabulary for dancing (spin, turn, duck down, on 3!) and blundered my way through, wounded hand included. Half the 13 year olds had miniskirts and low heels on however, which I kept forgetting about as I showed them ways to contort their bodies to the beat. “No podemos hacer!” I kept hearing (We can’t do that!).

Public health work can be challenging in ways I hadn’t thought of: Crossing Borders, the NGO that I am working with from home here, is partnering with another NGO, International Child Care (ICC) which has been based in Dominican Republic for some time now. We are in conjunction running a sexual health campaign in the barrios using different and varied methodologies. I am traveling with Crossing Borders as a team member, participating in most activities with this project, but I am also going to be slowly but surely spending more time on my own filming a documentary.

Lastly, on that same afternoon, we visited the landfill I had previously referred to as Cien Fuegos (100 Fires). I climbed down the side of a neighborhood, crossed a small but highly toxic stream, to climb back up a hill that gave way to piles of trash. Shoes, plastic bags, pill bottles, jeans, cans, “disposable” plates and cups: anything you could imagine. People picked through the garbage that was the freshest, with a long L-shaped pointed metal pick. Some wore protective clothing and rags over their mouths, and some others went nearly uncovered, including a kid who couldn’t have been older than 8.It’s one thing to see something in pictures all the time – people picking through trash at an uncovered landfill – and another to be in the thick of it. I am going to be returning many times to this site, hopefully investigating with the county, city or state about the landfill’s history, system, rules, expectations, expiration date and the like, as well as performing interviews with its many and varied occupants.More poetry later, for now I am still shocked by the reality.

Besos y abrazos para todos

Isabelle

PS. Escríbame en español si quiere porque necesito practicar en cualquier manera posible!!!

6 brothers and sisters who all sleep in the same bed

“Daniel Peluqueria”

Brothers in front of their house

Space between the houses

Big Haitan family living under one roof & me

Family in front of house, 5 to a bed

Looking like parents already; playing with a white doll

Showing me their cool card moves

Dirty, oversized dress

Pots and pans to make the house look nice (a tradition)

Grown old and still alive

We ride from paved to unpaved road, the houses turning from cement blocks to wooden slats. This barrio, called Cien Fuegos (100 Fires), is just like any other. Climbing the side of a hill, the view is one of distant mountains, clouds, and a smoking landfill (hence 100 Fires). Birds fly over the fray like flies. I’m visiting Santiago’s trash soon, up close and personal: details to come.

Santiago, Dominican Republic, is a city of about 800,000 people. To be honest, I’ve only gone into the barrios so far, outside the city, taking a plunge directly into the kind of work Crossing Borders will be doing most of the summer.

Kids scramble about houses here, barefoot, some naked. I wish it wasn’t so stereotypical; I remind myself that it’s summer and school’s out. Trash abounds the streets, I don’t quite know how it ever gets cleaned up. It’s all about the same color with the dust blowing about. Plastic bottles, lonely shoes, banana peels and the like accumulate on curbsides.

Girls play in the streets with a jumping rope made out of a heavy electrical cord. Tree trunks twist terribly up to the sky, tormented torsos without arms or heads, roots buried by cement.

Without making any generalizations, this reminds me of Nogales, Mexico, where I actually did a homestay with a family who lived in a bordertown barrio. I briefly experienced what it’s actually like to live on “borrowed” electricity, no running water, an expired outhouse and the like.

This time I got to go home at night, take a cold shower, get on my computer and write.

No pity. Just empathy.

Con abrazos, besos y todo mi amor

Isabelita

 Teaching an impromptu dance class

 Showing me her house

 By request, my hand

 Toxic stream

 Blowing up her find in the landfill

 Picking his way through

 No more than 8 years old

 Dumping fresh trash; Around each of these loads, a swarm of people surround it and immediately pick through what has been just dumped.

 He looks like a veteran; He was not the only one which wore long sleeves, a jacket, and a rag over his face, but they were not many. The landfill is a hill in full sun, and along with the smell of the trash, at the height of the day it is suffocating to be there. I cannot imagine wearing all those clothes and something over my breathing on top of that.

  Going home with a day’s worth

 Diagonal Curiosity 

 Her Name is “Lady”

 One of the ninas attending our HIV/AIDS sessions

 Playing with what’s around

 Stairs to the Roof

 Ninas y Yo

 Taking a walk beneath laundry

 Streets of Santiago