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