Above: A picture of the current water station in Cien Fuegos.
Cien Fuegos:
When I first decided to take on this project one of the first things I did was try to google Cien Fuegos Dominican Republic, very little came up about it. I tried to find it on a map, no dice. It seemed like this place didn't even exist when I first started. I wondered what the town was like and how many people live there and how they lived. Over the course of this project I have found out all of that.
Cien Fuegos is a town on the far west side of Santiago. The town itself means 100 fires and is home to about 300,000 people. The people have access to sewers, which back up all the time, city water, which is not safe to drink, and "paved" roads. The politicians seem to ignore this town and do everything they can to keep these people hidden from sight while giving them just a glimmer of hope of a better future.
The town got its name from the many fires that happen at the landfill. They said that at night it looked like a place with 100 fires all burning at once. Most of the town relays on the landfill for jobs of some sort.
A team of nurses and dental hygiene students and facility from IPFW recently went down to Cien Fuegos to give check ups and preform basic medical needs to the people there. The stories they came back with were surprisingly shocking. They were blown away by the fact that everyone they met had very clean clothes, in fact they kept about 3 outfits very very clean. They keep the things they have looking very nice. While their homes may not look like much the IPFW team was amazed at their hospitality.
I get to find out in a few days what I can expect for myself. I leave tomorrow for Bavaro Dominican Republic where we start work on a place for youth with no home to stay. It's not a youth home since the kids can come and go as they please but it's as close as I can describe it. Bavaro itself is a tourist town surrounded by some of the most pristine beaches in the world. We will be working with a local school in Friusa. What we will be doing exactly is unknown to me.
Our trip there is mostly to see first hand what the Dominican is like and help us to better understand the way they construct buildings and also see how they use different equipment. We plan to update this blog and take lots of pictures while we are there. Seeing first hand how the people in Bavaro and Cien Fuegos live should be an eye opening experience.
isaac
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