If there’s one English term that doesn’t translate to Dominican Spanish, it’s “personal space.” The DR is a country where packing three adults and a chicken on a motorcycle becomes a quotidian activity, where your neighbor’s music becomes the soundtrack to your evening, where your skin touches strangers’ skin, your voice mingles with other voices, and even your sweat is subsumed by the collective sweat of the crowd. It is a country of gossip, a nation of open doors, and an island of close quarters. Arriving from the States, it is an assault on the senses, a maddening crowd.

However, over the past few weeks I’ve taken notice of exactly what this seeming cacophony consists of – the shouted salutations, the clattering of Dominos, the inquiries about neighbors, the rhythm of merengue – and I’ve come to realize that the sum of these parts isn’t the chaos I once imagined, but rather a sense of community I’ve never felt before.  Time and time again, I’ve been impressed by how virtually everything here belongs not to individuals or even to families, but to the community as a whole. Just this week, Meg and I trekked up to visit Mercedes, our community health worker in Arroyo de Leche, to find a huge lunch awaiting us. We not only ate with Mercedes’ family, but also with a host of friends and neighbors’ children that were there for the meal.  We saw that while people here do not necessarily have much, what they have is shared.

I’ve also realized that this sense of community is exactly what gives Meg and I hope for HHI.  We’ve seen our community health workers commit their time and effort to help those in need. Currently, they are working to give appointment cards for our September medical service trip to those who are sick, and long after our doctors go home, they will be working to ensure that those same individuals are taking their medicines correctly. Some are doing this work while raising large families, others in addition to working at free clinics, and still others while teaching at local schools. They are of the community and for the community. After these first weeks as IPDs, Meg and I are filled with gratitude for those that are putting the community in community health and making what was once a maddening crowd feel like home.

Saludos,

Nicole

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