Voluntourism

My batey and others like it throughout the Dominican Republic are well accustomed to having groups of foreigners (almost exclusively Americans and Canadians) drop in for visits. It is almost always a Christian group on a service trip or from time to time a group taking a day trip from their all-inclusive Caribbean vacation to see how the other half lives. The visitors usually make a loop around the batey, snap a few pictures with children, hand out some new toys or used clothes and promptly return to their beachfront hotel feeling very good about themselves and the momentary impact they have made on people living in poverty.

I have very mixed feelings on these frequent visits. While these visits can potentially be positive cultural exchanges, there is rarely an actual exchange that takes place. The visitors rarely speak Spanish. They are only here for an hour or two, an insufficient amount of time to exchange names and phone numbers, let alone culture. The visits often amount to nothing more than a group of white people dumping off loads of used stuff and coming dangerously close to what I would define as exploitation.

A good (and admittedly cliché) way to look at Peace Corps service and an overused Chinese Proverb says:

“Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day,

Teach a man to fish and you teach him for a lifetime.”

I have two years of Peace Corps service in which to share some culture, drop some knowledge and, with some luck, make an impact on a number or individuals or (with lots of luck) an entire community. Whether it is through basic literacy, sex education, gender empowerment, volleyball skills, proper marshmallow roasting or English language curse words, I’m trying to teach something and create sustainable projects and knowledge that will continue long after I’m gone.

Few things can be more undermining to that process than for a busload of Americans to pull into my site every two weeks and hand out free fish of all shapes, sizes and shiny colors. I can’t compete with that. I have no fish to give away. And I don’t blame the people here for preferring free fish to the hard earned kind. Life is already hard. Why complicate it by learning new skills when someone is going to give you what you need? After tourism, the second highest form of income in the Dominican Republic is receiving remittances from friends, family and myriad baseball players in the U.S. and other countries. This is a culture well accustomed to and very comfortable with waiting for help from outside and not always willing to fix problems from within.

This past Friday I had a chance to host and plan a productive visit in my community with a group of study abroad students from Virginia Tech. The students are spending the semester in the DR and, as part of a course on agriculture and economics, they wanted to visit a batey / small agricultural community and see and hear first hand how difficult the life of a cane cutter or of people living in bateyes can be.

Having an opportunity to actually plan the activities and arrange for community members with intimate knowledge of local agriculture and cane cutting to lead and participate in activities made for an excellent opportunity for experiential learning. My superstar youth and community leaders gave a tour of the batey while I translated. We visited a nearby parcel of land where the community members communally grow all different kinds of crops and food. We walked through sugar cane and later had a productive discussion about the life of a cane cutter, life in the batey and life in America. Later that afternoon the students visited the batey of a neighboring volunteer and learned even more.

It was an extremely positive experience and showed me how productive these visits by gringos can be under the right set of circumstances and with some guidance. It hurts to know that after this productive visit, it is just a matter of weeks before a new group of white people shows up and puts us a step back after a large step forward. So it goes.

Peace Corps as an organization has 3 simple goals:

1. Helping the people of interested countries in meeting their need for trained men and women.
2. Helping promote a better understanding of Americans on the part of the peoples served.
3. Helping promote a better understanding of other peoples on the part of Americans.

The visit by the Virginia Tech students succeeded in fulfilling both Goals 2 & 3. All in all a successful day in the life of a Volunteer.

Tour of Batey Cachena

Community leader Wilfrido showing off guandules (pigeon peas) and discussing local agriculture.