Tag: Dominican Republic

   I was visiting one of my project partners today.

She has two daughters, the youngest of them 6 years old. While we were talking the girl from next door, about the same age, came over to play with the daughter.

 I couldn’t help but notice the fresh dime-sized scabs and scars all over her lower legs. It was some sort of skin disease.

 What is it from? No one knows. Has the mother seen a doctor about it? No. Why not? No tiene dinero.

 It’s as simple as that. This is the Dominican Republic. This is a third-world country. There is no real public health care system. It is almost totally private, and thus inaccessible to most of the population.

   I was talking with my brother the other day about the pathetic state of the local campo dog that wants me to be its owner. It has a badly injured foot that is beyond treatment. It needs to be put to sleep, but there is no vet within two hours of my Dominican pueblo.

  He asked me what the locals do in such cases. Generally the dogs are poisoned or simply left to slowly die. Then I responded with my blackest humor: “Dogs here are treated almost as badly as Haitians.”