Day Three at School: Nearing Completion, Then a Fun Afternoon

We continue to make great progress at the El Hato School.  On another sunny, warm day, we got off to an earlier start and arrived at the village home of Anna Maria, the community parent leader.  We dropped off several bags of donated clothing and dental supplies, knowing that she will carefully distribute these to needy families.  We then walked to the school, a 15-minute journey taking us past pastures with "living fences"  of carefully cropped trees strung with barbed wire.  We arrived at school to a slightly different atmosphere.  It was a regional teacher workshop day, and not an official school day.  Children had been encouraged to come, and many of them showed up wearing "regular" clothing and not their blue uniforms.  Several older children were also there, curious to see what our visit was all about.

Several of us got to work on the next step in the library/learning center.  Peter and Caroline carefully stenciled flowers and dragonflies on one of the newly-painted walls, and Molly painted a wonderful rainbow.  Your scribe gingerly peeled away all of the making tape from the edges of the newly-pained areas, scoring the edges first with his trusty Swiss Army knife.  In the meantime, Tracey Smith began a new project in an adjoining room, helping the children bind miniature books.  The children were told that their own stories were just as important as the ones in the new library books, and that they could be authors.  Back in the library, Mary Miner was carefully completing a catalogue of every book that we had covered the previous day.

Outside, another detachment of Hanover students broke out the bubble wands and bubble solution,    and the playground was filled with bubbles of all shapes and sizes.  Continuing the slightly carnival atmosphere, Marion, Mia and Andrea began a face painting station.  Harris carried a large selection of coloring books into a classroom, and soon a group of children was eagerly coloring.  Harris assured them that it was ok to go outside the lines, just the way he used to on occasion.  Sam Strohbehn had brought a miniature soccer ball, and the conversion of this corner of the DR from baseball to soccer continued on the hot, dusty playground.  One of the parents groups a treat for us:  sugercane!  The raw cane was delicious,and a nice mid-morning pickup.

Wilhelmina, Beth and Ruth led a group completing the beautiful wreath composed of dozens and dozens of colorful felt hands, arranged in a large circle.  The wreath, celebrating our join efforts in this community, will be hung on the wall of the learning center tomorrow.  Before we left for the day, all of the children and volunteers gathered together and the children, led by some of the older girls, sang several songs for us.  Pleased with our full morning of work, we hopped onto the bus and headed back to Cotui.

After lunch, we took a short bus ride to the Colonia district, and stopped at the community center, home of a womans' collective that for the past decade, supported by the local Lions Club as well as Rita and the Norwich Church, has created steady income for a number of local families by fabricating sturdy, attractive shopping bags made out of recycled plastic bags.  This description does not do them justice.  The finished products are amazingly well-designed and well made.  Your don't have to take our word for it.  Many of you may be seeing these as gifts, or for sale in your local church.

From there it was a short walk to the local high school, complete with an outdoor basketball court.  Naturally, Caroline Rodi is well suited to describe what happened:

"Since about half the crew plays basketball we were lucky enough to be able to throw together a pickup game in the courtyard of the high school. As expected though, it didn't go as originally planned, and actually almost didn't happen. It started by running through town looking for the keys to the school. That was followed by the needs for us to hop the fence into the court. No injuries, though! And then Sam Ives' favorite thing; waiting. Once in we realized we had no idea how to get a ball. Local kids and the rest of our crew began to gather for the game, hopping the fence one at a time, so we definitely had a fan base, but all we needed was a ball. Sam Strohbehn led a dunk contest with sneakers to pass the time. Eventually we found a ball, and the game began. A local boy took it upon himself to set up even teams, equal dominicanos y americanos, 6 v 6, on a 9 foot rim.  Everyone had fun, and there were stars on both teams!"

Next, it's Marion Miller's turn to describe what followed:

"After a great game of basketball the group was sweating and ready to cool down. Rita gave us a surprise ice cream trip into town led by the best guide, Luis. We walked for ten minutes until we reached the center of Cotui where the ice cream shop was located. Looking around the town square there were people sitting on all around. Outside of one shop there were hundreds of girls in line giggling. We looked to Luis for direction to the ice cream place and followed his eyes and grin to the mob of girls outside the shop and that's when we knew that the shop they were standing in front of was the ice cream shop. But not to worry, our guide then took the lead saying 'I will fix this' and walked right through the girls to the guard in front of the door.' When he came back we learned that a famous boy band was having a signing at the moment in the shop. We walked around looking for another ice cream place but at the end of the day we ended up eating ice cream in the parlor with the boy band, and getting a picture with them. Rob even bought their calendar as a trophy. What an exciting end to a great day. "