Clean-Up Crew

The past week has been our busiest yet. Our weeks in the capital were spent doing very general and primarily language-based training. Here in Constanza, things are getting far more specific. We are learning the tools we will put into action after swearing-in as volunteers.

After a week of getting to work, a group of us Peace Corps Trainees had a chance to get out of the city and see our youth groups in action. The majority of the youth groups we are working with are Eco-Clubs focused on tackling environmental issues. Saturday was the International Day for Cleaning Coastlines (at least that's what it says on the free hat they gave me). Since there are no coastlines up here in the mountains, we drove into a nearby national park to do some trash pick-up. Sounds cool enough, right? Enter el camión.

The camión is a type of flatbed truck commonly found here in the DR, usually used to transport food. On Saturday, it was used to transport humans. Twenty-five humans to be exact. We, Americans and Dominicans alike, piled into the back of the truck and set off on the most uncomfortable ride I can fathom in a moving vehicle. I now know how livestock feel in semis.

We were initially under the impression that we were heading 45 minutes into the mountains and picking up some trash. That seemed feasible. Discomforting in the back of a camión, but feasible. We should have known better.

Three hours later we had maneuvered through the unpaved mountain passes and arrived at our destination. We spent about 45 minutes picking up the trash that didn't exist because we were in the middle of nowhere and there were no human beings within a 50-mile radius to produce any trash whatsoever. In the 9 hours the trip took, we could have cleaned entire neighborhoods in the city and made an actual difference rather than picking up imaginary trash. Priorities seem to be an issue here.

The whole thing turned out to be somewhat of a publicity stunt, complete with television cameras capturing the picking up of trash. In fact, some of the Dominicans poured out their bags full of trash just so the cameraman could get a shot of them picking it up and putting it in a bag. Pretty random stuff. To boot, the trash we were able to find had to be taken back to the city to be properly disposed of. How was it going to get to the city? With us in the back of the camión of course. What was a cramped ride before had become far worse as we had to share our limited space with garbage bags leaking garbage juice.

I currently look and feel a bit like Quasimodo, with a hump protruding from my back due to being slammed against the railing of the camión time and again. I cannot and will not be able to sit properly for a week due to a bruised tailbone. My ribs are sore. All in all, a fantastic DR experience.

While I sarcastically bitch, the trip actually was very fun and the breathtaking scenery made it all worthwhile. We were literally walking in the clouds we were at such a high altitude. We got to see the monument that marks the exact center point of the country. We got free hats and t-shirts. We got to know one another on a more intimate level due to the close quarters and entangled bodies. It became one of those situations where you just have to laugh because it is so absurd. I expect many more equally absurd experiences in the years to come.