Wednesday - LaChichigua

This is a day in the life of our Humanitarian Group

Today we are working in LaChichigua. This is a Haitian Batay. It was previously active when they harvested sugar cane. As sugar cane is no longer harvested here, the Batay still has the workers and their families but they no longer have any source of income. When these Hatian's did harvest cane, each man could do about 3 tons of cane a day and was paid about $3.00 for a day wage. It was obvious that this community had no real leadership.

And so...It's 6:00am and everyone is up....

Off to breakfast before 7;00am
Here is a Dominican Map...we are working in the Puerto Plata area.
And...on the bus by 7:30am
And then an introduction to the day by Dr. Roy

The roads are so poor that we cannot travel all the way by bus. We load these Safari's when we leave the paved roads.As we traveled to the community today we stopped behind this blue truck. The community has no available water source so their water must be purchased and delivered each few days by this truck
We were greeted by this group as we arrived.
This was our work building today. It was really the only building in the community. It has recently been built by a group of Canadians as a school. Unfortunately they do not yet have enough money to hire a teacher so this building is still unused for the purpose for which it was built.

We have seen poverty in many forms and in many places in the Dominican Republic...but never more evident that in this community. Here are five photos to give you an idea of what we experienced today. We were grateful to be able to serve here today but in many ways it is heart-breaking to see how humble their circumstances are.

First thing after the work areas are set up we have a morning huddle with a message from an associate, a thought and a prayer.

This is the hygiene room. We have eight stations and see about 120 patients in each community.Today we had three rooms and 12 doctors working each with at least one assistant.

Time for lunch...it's about 12:30. We're all packed in together under a tent.These guys joined us.
We usually break for 45 minutes to an hours and then it will be back to work.

First group heading back to the bus on our Safari
It takes two Safari's to hold our entire group of 62 today...this is the second group loading up to head back to the bus
Even the supplies need a place to travel. Everywhere we go, all of our equipment goes with us in two vans. It includes all of our portable dental equipment, generators, compressors, tables, chairs and all of our disposable supplies that are so generously donated by Henry Schein.
Getting off the Bus
We arrive back at our Hotel