noun: the origin or mode of formation of something.
We are one month into our "Dominican Experience" and we are finally getting into a quickly forthcoming routine. We moved out of the house we were taking care of for a time and moved into our permanent address while we are down here. We have made a few changes to the house to make it more of our own including adding wireless internet - sweet! -, stocking the shelves with food, baby proofing what we can (Abriel is quite the mover now) and learning the sounds of the house settling (and the street rocking!). It's kinda fun to make something your own. It brings me back to buying our house and trying different furniture arrangements to see what would work best.
This morning we went for a family run *ahem* walk. We are hoping to make this part of our routine at least two or three times a week to stay/get in shape. There isn't much in the exercising department right now. I have met with a guy (David) who is going to help me start an ultimate league but, as with everything else down here, it's a slow starting. We have picked a place to play and it is SWEET! We will be playing on the beach right next to the ocean with a big rock cliff on the other side. When we actually get down there to play I'll attach a picture. You will be so jealous. Even if you don't like frisbee you would play just so you could go there.
We are also starting our tutoring classes tomorrow (Thursday) at the Congrejo school. We will be doing an evaluation for the first session and then starting to teach regular classes next Monday. We are teaching grades one, two and three the Spanish alphabet and how to read. Each of us (Keeleah, Myself, Olivia, Francois and Arula) will have 4 kids we will tutor for two hours on Mondays and an hour on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I'm pretty excited about it. As with most things I start I have visions of everything going smoothly and the kids loving to learn and hanging on every word and by February all my kids can read any word you give them. Reality might be very different but I'm going to go in with a super positive attitude. We will also be tutoring math starting in a few weeks which is a bit easier to teach than reading so that will be a welcome break.
SHM is setting up an after school program for students in a village called Cevere ("sev-are-eh"). I was up there today with the two teachers seeing what needed to be done to the building they are going to rent before we can start up the program. We need to put up a few walls, fix a few spots on the tin roof, throw some privacy curtains up, make some chalkboards, build a bathroom and create a storage place. It seems like a lot but the teachers are itching to get in there. They have such a love for education. One of them teaches in the mornings at the Congrejo school and has been a huge help to the other teachers there. It was great to see them eager to get their own space where they can teach the basics and be able to offer "social studies" which will teach the kids about other countries including the neighbouring Haiti where the main teacher is from. It's neat for me to be able to be a part of a new school right from the get go.
On a different subject, while we were out for dinner last night a shoe shine boy came by and asked if we needed our shoes shined (we were wearing flip flops and Toms at the time). There is background behind this profession. A lot of the time these boys are taken from their homes and forced to make money for someone else. They are usually between the ages of eight and fifteen. Sometimes they are forced to meet a quota before they are allowed back into the place they call home which means they not only shine shoes but will do "almost anything" to meet their quota so they can go home and eat. It's sad and horrible. We have learned through various trips down here that most of them will speak and understand enough English to have a conversation with so we took the time to get to know Miguel. Now Keeleah and I have seen these kids shine any type of shoe so we knew the quality we would get but Francois was a little more skeptical that Miguel could get his Toms clean ("They are cloth shoes! How will he shine them?"). We assured Francois his shoes would be well cleaned and asked Miguel to shine our flip flops as we struck up a conversation. We asked him where he lived and went to school and he told us he lived in Monteanllo which is an area about a half hour drive from where we were eating. We asked him how old he was and he said he was eleven. We made jokes (in Spanish) about how gross Francois Toms were and he came back with "Ahora feo ("now ugly") but soon beautiful *italian meatball kiss*". He was a confident worker who took pride in his work. He was funny and charming and smart. And he was working alone in the bar district of a city half an hour from his home and he was eleven.When he had finished one of Francois shoes he held it up beside the dirty one and we couldn't help but laugh at Francois and Olivia's reactions. The shoes were completely different. The old one was greyish with stains and dirt all over it and the finished one looked brand stinking new. Miguel had converted another skeptic of "odd shoes to shine". We asked him how much the cleaning was and he humbly said "whatever you want". We paid him $100 pesos (about $3 CAD - which is about a days and a half's wage) for our flip flops and said thanks. He took the time to shake everyone at the tables hands (including Abriel's) and walked down the street into the night with a "God bless you".
There is a good chance we probably won't see Miguel again but we will definitely see many, many boys doing the same thing he does with the same great attitude. I can't fathom the life these kids live. A life of fear; of adventure; of horror; of stories. If you are a praying person and you are looking for something new to pray about pray for the shoe shine boys of the Dominican. Pray for their safety. Pray that what they do after school won't affect their education. Pray that they make enough money that day. If you ever get the chance to talk to a shoe shine boy in the Dominican or somewhere else take it. Listen as they tell you of good times and of unthinkable times. You will learn something about the human spirit. You will learn something about serving others.You will learn something about hard work. You will learn something about sticking together.
And you will definitely walk away with very clean flip flops.
Thanks Miguel!
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