In the Streets of Higuey

The morning started off just like it had the rest of the week, waking up with too little sleep (in my opinion). I had no idea what to expect of the trip we had planned for the day. We were going to Higuey to see the farmers market and do a little shopping.

Before we did anything else we went to Veron to take the school supplies we had collected to the Colegio Elizabeth, which was a very small elementary school that had five rooms and taught nearly 200 kids. After dropping off the supplies we went around the village giving candy and toys to the local (and some naked) kids. This was a way of slowly showing me what their lifestyle was like there.

Some of you might be thinking that the farmers market here just sells fruit and vegetables in the lazy summer heat. Well I can tell you it is nothing like that. At Wal-Mart, or wherever you get your meat, you have the prime meat looking nice, neat, and covered in plastic wrap. But this market had every little piece of the animal hanging from hooks, displayed in the most unappealing way, with their insides just sitting on the cutting table or thrown in pots to cure. By now you are probably kinda' grossed out and don't want to read the rest but there is more to the story. Now that you have an image in your head I can tell you about the smell. The word that comes closest to the description of the smell is horrific. The smell was absolutely unbearable and it came from everywhere, not just the market.

Also in the streets was trash. Everywhere you looked there was trash. Trash in the sewers, trash in the street, trash stacked in piles just anywhere. Then there were cars (mostly motorcycles) that would just weave in and out of everything not caring about any regulations. I know if it was like this in America we would all be involved in major accidents almost everyday. "We crash enough just when we are alone on the road," said Cody Ross. There is one word to describe it, absolute mayhem.

Now I get to talk about haggling with the local gift shop owners. It was great to get close to the price that you want for whichever item you are getting. For example, I got a necklace that might cost around $10-$15 in America, but here they put the price at $20 and I brought it down to $10 plus two free necklaces. It is all about how much you want to pay for the item.

After all of this we went to the supermarket to buy whatever we wanted. Most of us went for skim ice (frozen ice pops), coffee, clothes, or Dominican candy. I can tell you one thing, everything there was pretty cheap. George bought a 3 Liter bottle of Pepsi for $2.

Then we went back to the resort to have a Dominican dinner at the employee restaurant, and we settled down to wait for the Dominican teens to come back and dance with us in the lounge. They were so late that we almost thought that the staff was going to close the lounge for the night. We had been waiting to dance in there ever since Friday night.

Jon Vaus- Highland County