Experimentation

After spending Christmas in the States, I arrived back in the DR with gifts in tow. I could not possibly have come back empty handed to a chorus of Dominicans asking, ¿Que me trajiste? (What did you bring me?). This is a phrase we volunteers hear more often than we would like. Sometimes after just a quick trip to the Capital for a meeting the local children will ask what we’ve brought back for them. A trip to the giant mall of a country that is the US would surely attract much ¿Que me trajiste?.

I obviously couldn’t bring something for everyone and focused my give-giving solely on my host family. I found many trinkets and toys in the US that would be perfect to momentarily peak the interest of local children with short attention spans while also buying things with few parts and little monetary value for when they were inevitably broken. I found crayons, kaleidoscopes, baseballs, candy, etc. And I bought some Christmas stockings for my host family in hopes of sharing some American customs and culture.

Since Dominicans do not traditionally exchange gifts on Christmas but on Three Kings or Epiphany Day (January 6^th), I was able to partake in the gift giving in both the US and the DR.

My most daring purchase was something I planned to buy long before heading back Stateside. Quite often groups of American missionaries pass through my community and other area bateyes and almost literally dump gifts into the hands of Dominican children. (This creates a dependency and makes our job harder - but that rant is for another time.) The most prevalent of these gifts are knock-off Barbie dolls that little girls cling to. They spend hours on end combing Barbie’s bleach blonde locks until the have removed each and every hair on the doll’s head and lose interest. Not even batey children want a bald Barbie. The doll is always the same: white skinned with blonde hair and impossible measurements.

The gift I planned to buy each of my 3 young host nieces (ages 8, 6 and 5) was meant to be somewhat of a social experiment. I bought each of them their very own Barbie or baby doll, but each of the dolls had black skin, just like my nieces themselves. I knew that one of two things would occur.

1) The girls would love their dolls and relish the fact that the dolls ‘looked like them’ in some way.

2) The girls would be quick to label the dolls as ‘ugly’ or in some way inferior to the cheap white Barbies they have grown accustomed to.

I once watched a video in a college class dealing with this exact issue. When given a choice between white and black dolls, both white American and African American children overwhelming choose the white doll. They say it’s better, it’s prettier, it's nicer and generally preferable to the other. I was interested to know that while this may hold true in a multi-racial United States of America, would it also ring true in a developing nation of dark-skinned people?

While I had obviously hoped for scenario 1 to take place, I knew that the more likely reaction was that of scenario 2. And, lamentably, scenario 2 is exactly what unfolded. The 8 and 6 year-old nieces feigned interest in their Disney Princess Barbie for a moment before quickly moving on to the white Barbie knock-off their parents had gifted them. The 5 year-old wasted not a second to label her doll as fea (ugly) and has never touched it since. Experiment failed.

Unwanted dolls aside, my host family generally enjoyed their gifts and a successful holiday was had by all.