La confluencia

Waterfall along the Jimenoa River

At "la confluencia" of two rivers that empty into the Atlantic Ocean, Jarabacoa is a city of beauty and unsightly, of rich and poor, just as so many other places on this earth.

The immense range of these opposites impresses upon the soul. People dig through a garbage dump to survive, while others live in beautiful homes on the mountainside. Trash is thrown along the street, while a majestic waterfall flows just outside of town.

It's what makes the work of Doulos Discovery School - in the middle of all of this - so profound.

This place, this oasis, brings together kids and families from a wide spectrum of socioeconomic backgrounds - kids whose parents drive fancy cars, to kids who live in neighborhoods without running water. The work has not been, and will not be, easy.

But it's making inroads, taking hold.

Of 29 Doulos graduates, 26 are in or graduated from college. The promise of students St. Paul people met there is as bright as their smiles. Lucy dreams of being a surgeon, Ysmayar an architect.

As founders Krista and Chad Wallace begin to bring new leadership on to move the school into its next decade, deep excitement for the mission mixes with a bit of fear of continuing the course well.

With the St. Paul team, we didn't finish building the greenhouse at a neighboring school. We didn't finish the complete scrub down of the second new bathroom facility set to open soon. We didn't finish the curriculum transcription. 

All of it is a work in progress. 

Doulos really is an experiment - an important one. Will the dream of growing servant leaders for the Dominican Republic really become a reality? 

No one knows for absolute sure. But there is hope, because at "la confluencia" of change, Doulos is thriving.

On the mountain at Jamaca de Dios

Dinner at Aroma de la Montana

From Jarabacoa, lights from new houses on the mountainside flicker at night.

These are luxury homes, part of a new development that includes a beautiful restaurant and a lodge overlooking the city.

The development is called Jamaca de Dios. It's the project of a couple who operate a nonprofit clean water organization called FilterPure. FilterPure works with local people to manufacture and distribute low-cost ceramic filters in the Dominican Republic and elsewhere, including neighboring Haiti.

Michael and Lisa Ballentine lead the initiatives. They first came to the Dominican Republic in 2000 on a one-year mission trip with their family. They returned in 2006 for good.

Tourism (specifically ecotourism) has a growing presence in Jarabacoa, and this development is part of the momentum. With warm days and cool nights nearly all year round, wealthy Dominicans and American tourists are coming to Jarabacoa for hiking, rafting, mountain biking, horse riding, and to visit coffee farms. Pico Duarte, the highest peak in the Caribbean, is nearby. Thousands of visitors come each year.

The homes at Jamaca de Dios are architecturally grand (see the Dorothy Mansion here) and advertised as environmentally respectful. The development's restaurant is called Aroma de la Montana. It's view is breathtaking, especially as the sun sets to the west over the mountaintop.

On the last night for St. Paul people in Jarabacoa, we went to have dinner there. For 985 pesos ($23), a three-course meal is served.

The restaurant sent a young woman to our table to help us understand the menu. She recognized us. She's a Doulos student.

That very morning, she was in a physics class that Dan and Melissa Pepper helped guide. She works at the restaurant as a cashier and in the accounting office.

A letter bound for Davenport

Heather Hamby teaches a class on hitting a ball

Heather Hamby, a physical education teacher at Doulos, asked if we could mail a letter to her sister Mallory when we arrived home. Mail is sometimes unreliable in the Dominican Republic, she said.

The address? Davenport, Iowa - just a few blocks west of Davenport West High School.

Heather is a graduate of Grand Valley State University in Allendale, Michigan. She came down to the Dominican Republic on a couple of mission trips through Young Life, an organization that builds faith in youth. She also spent time after college working at a Young Life camp in Colorado.

"I was convinced that I would never move to another country after my first trip down," Heather said. She returned again in March 2011. Her group stopped at Doulos before heading out of town. That is when she began to explore what it might look like to teach at the school.

"Things fell into place, and it was just the right thing for me to do." This is her third year at Doulos. She has signed on for a fourth, living with two fellow staff members in an apartment nearby. Like all staff members, she raises her own salary.

On a recent day, she led a lesson on the six steps it takes to hit a ball with a bat. First, a little instruction, then it was time to spread out on the basketball court to give hitting a ball with a tee a try.

She loves to see the kids picking up a new concept.

"Now that I've lived here, it's really hard to think about leaving," she said. "Everyone is treated equally no matter who your family is or what you have. At Doulos, it doesn't mater if you are rich or poor. We are all children of God and that is all that matters."

Photo album online

A photo album of the trip to Jarabacoa is online now. See the people and places St. Paul people encountered in this Dominican Republic city.

Watch for a few more posts about the trip, coming soon.

Lights out

Overlooking Jarabacoa, at night

Sometimes the electricity just goes out in the Dominican Republic. No warning. No estimated time of return. Some places have generators, some don't. So the St. Paul team packed flashlights and headlamps for our week-long stay.

The power went out just once - for a short amount of time as we were getting ready for dinner one night.

"The power sector has been a bottleneck to the country’s continued growth," according to Closing the Electricity Supply-Demand Gap, a report from World Bank. "Reliability and quality of supply were, and continue to be, major issues in the power sector."

Power shortages have plagued the country for decades, the report says. Reform has increased capacity, but poor service and high prices have prompted theft through illegal connections and unpaid bills. Shortages often affect the poor, rural, and small communities the most.

In 2010, the World Bank concluded a $10 million project to strengthen the regulatory system, improve policy, design a transmission grid and wholesale power market, increase the quantity and quality of electricity for the poor, and protect the environment.

The power outages are just one issue listed in the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID's, strategy for Dominican Republic. Work supported by USAID is happening throughout the country, including in Jarabacoa.

The goals for the year 2018 include helping youth finish school and develop better life schools, improve crime prevention, boost reading skills, incorporate climate change information into land use planning, and reduce the transmission of HIV/AIDS.

The Dominican has the largest economy in the Caribbean, according to USAID. While it is considered an upper middle income country, more than 40 percent of Dominicans live in poverty. The average unemployment rate for men is 9.9 percent; for women, it's 25.3 percent.

Gangs, drug trafficking, sex trafficking, and violence against women are significant issues. People with disabilities do not have many places to turn for services.

The country is one of the 10 most vulnerable to climate change in the world, organization leaders say. Public health issues are significant.

And education? The country ranks rock bottom in the quality of education worldwide, USAID said.

This brings us back to the headlamps. The Dominican Republic has the highest priced energy in the region, USAID says. "The inefficient supply of electricity and ineffective governance of the sector suppresses overall economic growth in the Dominican Republic."

A trip to the landfill

A woman sorts through trash at the Jarabacoa landfill

One on side of Colegio Timoteo in Jarabaco, is a greenhouse under construction. Built from plastic pop and water bottles, the dream is to use it as a place for the students here to learn about recycling and agriculture.

One the other side of the school is a heap of debris. A crew worked side-by-side bringing it up a hill and into the back of a truck.

(Colegio Timoteo is down the street from Doulos. We spent the morning there Wednesday because school was not in session at Doulos.)

Ray is the truck’s owner. His family goes to the church, and his son goes to the school. He and his construction crew donated their time today to remove the heap and take it to the landfill.

With two men on top of the heap, and three people riding in the front, we’re off to see the landfill.

Down a single-lane dirt road, the smell emerges as the sight of the landfill emerges. Landfill is too nice of a word. This is a dump. Cows eat from the trash. People – including a girl who looked no more than 12 – are there, working or sorting through the trash trying to find things to sell. Huge white bags collect recyclables to be taken to the big city to sell, too.

As the truck backs up to the trash heap, the people digging through the trash surround us, hop onto the back of truck. They want first pick from the heap of wood, plastic, broken things. Their voices grow louder as they battle out who will get what.

Ray knows a lot of them. He says they will use the money to buy drugs, not food.

This place, this landfill, this dump, is why Doulos and Colegio Timoteo are so needed in Jarabacoa.

Garbage is a problem here. It’s dumped along roadsides, in the courtyard of the public high school. Recycling is not common. The collection rate for the country is just 69 percent, according to the World Bank. It's waste is comprised of 39 percent organic matter, 14 percent paper, 36 percent plastic, 1 percent glass, 1 percent metal, 10 percent other. The plastics rate is one of the highest in the world.

At Doulos, a fourth-grade teacher leads students on a unit about trash – a unit which brings them here to this landfill to see what is thrown away. At Colegio Timoteo, there is this recycled greenhouse under construction.

But most importantly, the reason for these schools are to prevent people from having to dig through garbage to survive.

Augie grad finds home at Doulos

Brad and Emily Holehan

Brad Holehan didn’t even have a passport when he attended Augustana College.

But then he met a woman named Emily, who was working in the Dominican Republic for an international youth-faith organization named Young Life. And the rest, as they say, is history.

A 2008 graduate of Augie, Brad is in his second year as the high school math teacher at Doulos.

“All right God, we’re just going to step out and do this,” Brad remembers thinking when he quit his teaching job in Yorkville, Illinois, just short of tenure and made the commitment to come to Jarabacoa.

Brad teaches math to grades 10-12 at Doulos. The abilities of his students varies significantly, but because of small class sizes he can customize lessons for them.

But most importantly, the culture in the Dominican and at Doulos in particular, allows him the opportunity to build relationships with students, he said. Brad and Emily invite kids over for dinner, hold Bible study with them, meet them for ice cream.

“We’re encouraged to have relationships with students,” he said.

Brad, who was a member of the track and cross country teams at Augustana, is particularly thankful for St. Paul member and Augustana coach Paul Olsen, who built a strong relationship with him when Brad was a student.

The couple lives in a casita – a little house – on the second floor. He drives a moto, she drives a RAV4 because her work sometimes takes her into the city.

“We have a really great community that surrounds us,” he said, adding that here, individual aspects of life often spill over into each other – work and personal.

Emily added: “It’s a very intentional community.”