A funeral

When someone dies in the village life goes on hold at least for a few hours. Everybody here seems to be connected in some way and so when there is a death it affects a large proportion of the village.

On Wednesday night a man from the village died quite suddenly of a heart problem; he was only 45. One of his older daughters is in seventh grade at school and so at 10am all the children lined up and walked down the road to pay their respects to her and to the rest of the family.

It was a fairly intense experience, everybody filed through a small room with an open casket in the centre. It is customary to have an open casket here, regardless of how the person died. 

Children, even the smallest ones are not sheltered from death, kids from pre-school and first grade stood in the corners of the room in their school uniform, fascinated by the sight of a dead body. Shuffling past the open coffin we paid our respects to the six children seated in numb silence round their father's body. We were then led into a bare room where women sat in plastic chairs around the wooden slatted walls. Their grief was tangible, infectious. I didn't know the man who had died but just being near the women who had loved him - mother, sisters, wife, shaking with grief, tear stained faces pressed to mine as I hugged each one - I felt my throat tighten.

Outside in the sun the oppressive, grief-laden atmosphere lifted. People sat in the shade in plastic chairs some laughing, some quiet. The children from school milled around, chatting, gossiping the smaller ones running to the shuttered windows to peer in when ever cries of grief resonated from the house where the body lay, curious about what was happening.

There was a real feeling of community. Whilst lots of people there were relations, friends and neighbours also came to offer their condolences. People drank coffee, a group of men played dominoes under a tree, children played in the sun, chickens strutted around scratching in the earth and a cool breeze made the roof of the marquee flap and the palm trees sway.

It felt like a very Dominican experience. Like most things here there was no hiding: when people grieve they grieve publicly and without shame, children aren't sheltered or cushioned from what’s happening around them, when something happens the whole village turns out, and of course, there is always coffee and dominoes.

International Children’s Day

Whilst children here can be... challenging they are all really great. You have to remind yourself that their behaviour isn’t always their fault; some if not most of them have pretty tough home lives. Infidelity, alcoholism and domestic abuse are huge problems here and its common for many men to openly have more than one wife or girlfriend. As a result lots of children are missing solid role models and be it because of that or lack of economic stability, their home lives are often far from stable.

It was International Children’s Day on the 20th and to celebrate, as well as doing the weekly mural, I have been doing art projects about games and playing. Like for most children in the world playing is an important part of life. There aren’t a huge amount of activities to get involved with here, especially for kids. There is no play equipment and many cant afford toys so they will literally make games out of anything. The big craze at the moment are small socks filled with rice which the boys play keepy-uppy with but they will also play keepy-uppy with juice cartons, small stones, bits of the bread rolls they get in school, plastic bottles crayons in my classroom... you get the idea. My art projects have focused on chichiguas (kites), which was a fad a few weeks ago - I’m a bit behind the times I know but I thought they would look nicer on my wall than small socks filled with rice.

In the village and in Barahona kids make kites out of sticks with the plastic from plastic bags stretched across them. Driving through Barahona there are always a couple of homemade kites that have found their way through the maze of wires that crisscross the streets and flutter on the skyline.