Constructing buildings, future
DOMINICAN REPUBLIC — Pink backpacks slung over chairs, pencil-biting grimaces and little ducks cut from yellow construction paper could appear in American schools.
But on this Monday, these 265 children — donning azure blue uniforms, toothy grins and the aforementioned educational trappings — began the school day seated at desks in the small Dominican Republic town of Villa Hermosa.
A group of Americans, responsible for constructing the school a year earlier, interrupted lessons to peek into the classrooms.
The group, volunteers from Butler, Allegheny and Armstrong counties, returned to the community Feb. 19 to construct a building for an electric generator.
Construction on that building, as well as lessons inside the school, paused as the children greeted volunteers with giggles, pointing fingers and offering funny poses for photographs.
"It's such a blessing to see them being taught for the first time," said Barb Schworm, 45, of Saxonburg, who'd worked on the school in the past.
While at school, students also receive food, immunizations, clothes and vitamins. The volunteer group hopes to add a second floor to the school and classrooms for older students. But that work will wait for future visits. Dominican Republic rules say there is to be no construction on schools during the academic year.
Offering an education to the children of this poverty-stricken barrio is one leg of a vision of the community shared by Schworm, local church pastor Santiago Gil and Dr. William DiCuccio of Adams Township.
Gil explained that the rejuvenation of Villa Hermosa was his dream ... literally.
One night, he said, he dreamed of a beautiful little church and school built by missionaries, helping poor people. When he awoke, he said he wondered about his dream as he had "no money in my hand."
But Gil said DiCuccio, who'd visited the community earlier, called the very next day and asked, "How can I help the people of this community?"
Gil responded, "With anything. They need everything."
DiCuccio and his family first met Gil, then a bell captain, while vacationing in the Dominican Republic. When Gil later turned his life over to ministry, he engaged the DiCuccios to visit his then-budding church in Villa Hermosa.
DiCuccio, the medical director at Sunnyview Nursing and Rehabilitation Center, is otherwise retired. Having passed his successful medical practice to his son in 2005, DiCuccio now dedicates a good deal of his time to his vision of Villa Hermosa.
DiCuccio recruited both World Servants of Minnesota as construction managers, and the Dorseyville Alliance Church, which he attends, to help.
Ironically, Gil was convalescing in Butler County while the group from Butler County was visiting his home. A traffic accident in the Dominican Republic left Gil with a broken arm and wrist. With little hope of medical care in his country, Gil traveled to Pittsburgh for emergency surgery.
Gil was to return to Villa Hermosa March 12.
DiCuccio on this trip traveled to the Dominican accompanied by his two daughters, his son-in-law and longtime friends Joan Chew and Van Peterson of Butler.
Chew, a former Butler County commissioner and school teacher, specifically visited to see the school and students.
She and Peterson, a former college professor, have sent financial support to the school for the past three years.
"It is absolutely wonderful," she said. "These people are so happy."
Vickiana, 25, walked through her neighborhood in Villa Hermosa, sucking a piece of fruit picked only minutes earlier.With the assistance of a translator, she explained she was eating the fruit because she is one-month pregnant with her second baby."All of them," she said of the Americans working side-by-side with her husband, a 21-year-old construction foremen, "have been nice, gentle and humble. We are grateful they have come here. They leave their homes to come here with the dust and the rocks and their hands get cut."The group of volunteers eventually plans to construct a medical facility in the community. During this trip they worked on a generator building that will power the facility and cleared an adjacent lot, where the medical facility will be built.Although seniors who have trouble getting around are receiving no medical care here, Vickiana said she is able to get prenatal vitamins by traveling to a medical clinic in a nearby city.But, she said, she cannot escape the dust.It's ever-present and exacerbated by the steady breeze and lack of paved roads. Vehicles, including motorbikes and sloppy old trucks, kick up a fresh round with every pass.Dust here, said a Dominican woman studying to be a doctor, gets into people's lungs, falls into people's food and water, and cakes onto their clothing and hair.Sanitation also is an issue.Brightly colored bits of trash dot otherwise vacant lots as cows, goats and hens graze at will. Garbage removal is available, but too costly for these people.One woman, who invited DiCuccio into her home, lit a small pile of garbage on fire to make heat for cooking. She made a porridge that appeared to contain water and banana-like yet starchy fruit called plantain. She then served it in a bowl to a hungry 4-year-old on the floor as lunch, which is this culture's largest meal.In addition to farm animals, domesticated animals — mainly boney terrierlike mutts, but also an occasional cat — roam in and out of barbed wire strung as fencing around properties.DiCuccio said the wire is cheap fencing and without it, it's likely a squatter will build a home on your lot.When wheel barrows are not available, women carry plantain or plastic shoes they hope to sell, in buckets balanced on their heads.
The volunteer group took a work break that Wednesday, traveling into the country's capital city, Santo Domingo, and separating for two activities.One group went to the market, where aisle after aisle of vendors vied for the Americans' dollars. Or, in this case, pesos. The other group toured the "Old City" neighborhood, where monuments tell the nation's history.They later reunited and traveled to a public beach on the Caribbean side of the island. The water was blue, warm and clear, but not clean. Pop cans, electric wire and syringes mixed with corral bits swept in by group members.Although February is the coldest month in the Dominican Republic; on this day the temperatures are in the 90s.Later that night, the group of volunteers dined for the first time at a restaurant and selected a meal from a menu. Most members of the group did not speak Spanish and were pleasantly surprised when their order arrived.Port wine ended the meal, but the group made one last stop, for ice cream, before returning to camp.
"Dios esbueno Alavale."Upon returning to the work site the next morning, the group discovered someone left this Spanish message in red spray paint of the side of the building the group had just constructed. The translation is: "God is Great. Praise him."This was the last day of work, and the group said it's teary-eyed goodbyes to the Dominicans."I think that the highlight of the trip was to help the people. When we were building I felt like I was helping the people and so that made me feel pretty good," said 16-year-old Rachael Hill of Cheswick, Allegheny County."And being with the kids, just loving on them .... I loved to love on them and I know that they loved the fact that I was loving on them. But in the end they are the ones who helped me because now I look at things differently. I am thankful for all of the stuff that I have."
The group packed its luggage to return to Pittsburgh, leaving behind socks, bedding and trousers for the residents of Villa Hermosa.It made a quick stop at a tourist draw: Cueva de Los tres Ojos (the cave of three eyes) before being greeted by a surprise at the airport: The flight home was canceled due to a snowstorm at their layover point, JFK International Airport in New York.Instead of flying home that day, the group stayed at the stuffy, bustling airport, with only two members making it out of the country on standby flights to Atlanta. The remainder of the group spent the night at a second campsite, much less comfortable than the original, in Jaunaita.Making the best of the detour, the group took a bus to "Rancho Baignate" in the town of Jarabacoa. There, half the group went on a horse ride. The others went "canyoning," a three-hour activity that includes a combination of rappelling, swimming, hiking and riding a zip line over water in a canyon.Returning to camp hours later — even with the best intentions — members of the group were homesick.Calls and text messages are costly there: $1.99 a minute. So group members huddled in areas where Internet service was available for free and sent messages home over social networking sites.Instead of waiting until that Monday for their promised plane out, the group, running low on shampoo and deodorant and washing clothes in the sink, returned to Santo Domingo airport Sunday. After different rounds of promises from airline officials, the group flew into Atlanta, then to Pittsburgh.Daybreak Monday morning they saw snow for the first time in 10 days.
Even before the last suitcase was unpacked, group members were assembling a new trip to Villa Hermosa in July.DiCuccio said another church, the Living Word Evangelical Church in Butler, plans to join the effort and send representatives.When construction of the generator building is completed, the church and school both need to be expanded.But, while still in Butler, pastor Gil said what he wants most for the community is a new wave of hope."Get the people to care for these kids," he said.Officials are establishing a means for community members to pick a child from the community and donate to that particular child. For more information, contact gschworm@consolidated.netOr, the group is establishing a link through solidrock.org: where participants can choose children to help from My Eternal Refuge School in Villa Hermosa.The goal is to get all of school's students sponsored."All children are my children," Gil said. "All of the children's problems are my problems."But, Gil said he has faith in the future: "When you believe in God, all things are possible. He's so big and so good, you have to believe."
