The Uptons in the Dominican Republic

This summer, we had FABULOUS interns here.  One of them, Daniel, came down to run a soccer camp for the 7-12 year old boys in Montellano, Chichigua and Pancho Mateo, three areas where our school aged kids come from.  He took the kids from a neighborhood of chaos and brought them into a world where sportsmanship and working as a team matters.  Beyond soccer, the kids also learned bible verses as Daniel taught them about salvation.  Soccer camp ended a few weeks ago, but the memories will endure.

Daniel worked with Cakito, a 17 year old Haitian boy from Pancho Mateo who was part of the original Makarios school.  They led 5 teams of boys for practices and scrimmages for 4 weeks, before having a final tournament!

Game 1 of the Quarterfinals: Montellano vs Pancho Mateo (Red vs Green).  The game started out with bright blue skies and a relatively green field.  It had been raining all week, so this was about to change.  The teams played hard, and ended up in a 3-3 tie at the end of the game, prompting a shoot out.

With more rain and more soccer playing comes… more mud.  But what is more fun than a muddy soccer game to a 10 year old boy?  The Semifinals brought Chichigua, Montellano and Pancho Mateo together in a mudfest. And the team from the Austin Stone was there to cheer them on!

The second semifinal game was put on hold when we weren’t allowed to use the goal on the field.  With only two games left for the summer, what was there to do but make new goals?  A quick trip to the Makarios house, some 2 by 4s and large screws later, and voila!  Soccer goals!

Ultimately, the Pancho Mateo boys won the day.  We had a ceremony where each kid won an award, with the top two teams receiving extra fun medals.  The boys demonstrated their summer learning by reciting their memory verses while Daniel gave a great mini-sermon on our need for Jesus.  And to end the summer… Popsicles!

A big thanks to Daniel and Cakito for all they accomplished over the summer!

School is out now, but the kids still get to come to summer camp.  This consists of 3 days of learning about letters and numbers and such, and then one fun day!  MonteLlano is 15 minutes from the beach, but many of our kids don’t get to go very often, so we get to take them!  We loaded 25 3-5 year olds into Juan’s guagua and off we were to Long Beach in Puerto Plata.

After getting the kids all unloaded and ready to go, we ran to the beach!

One of the fun games the boys had was rolling in the sand to get as dirty as possible, then running and jumping into the water to rinse off.

A few of the younger kids had no desire to get in the water.  Johan tried to get Jemsy to get his feet wet, and eventually succeeded.

Darling Frid also had no desire to get wet, so we built sand mountains instead and put various “cosas” in them (her name for everything unknown… una cosa).  Jemsy helped by bringing water one spoonful at a time.

Some of the other ones built sand structures as well.

And of course, we just had fun playing in the water.

Wilton really loved the water, and rolling in the sand.

Leuri, Yasmaidi and Antony also enjoyed their time.

All in all, not a bad day’s work.  Summer camp starts again next week for the older kids!

So, school ended a few weeks ago…. a perfect time to show you what we do every day at the beginning of school!

We start of the day welcoming everyone to school. Buenos dias como estas?

After a few more songs, our closing song to prepare to pray.

And then, one of the best singers of the day gets to pray!  This is precious Junari who is in Profe Kim’s class, with some slight prompting from Antony.

Papa Dios (Father God)

Te damos gracias (We give you thanks)

Por la comida (For the food)

Por el agua (For the water)

Amen

Not bad for a 3 year old!

Yesterday (May 16th, a Sunday) was election day in the Dominican Republic.  For the past few months, we have been inundated with music, posters and parades touting one person/party or another.  And after today, hopefully… peace and quiet.

There are three main parties in the DR: the white party, the purple party, and the red party, with a few other people running for the green party.  The white and purple parties are enemies, and the red party is friends with everyone.

Elections around here were for Senador, Diputada (like a House Representative), Sindico (mayor), and Regidor (city council, I think).  They occur once every 4-6 years, depending on the position.  The president was elected two years ago to a four year term, so we have Leonel in for the next few years if not longer.

The main election we heard about in Montellano was for Sinidco.  Chino Rojas (purple party) vs Omar Sanchez (White party).  In the US, you might get a flyer, see a TV commercial, or get a phone call from the candidate.  Here, it’s all word of mouth.  The candidates remake popular songs to have their jingle in them, and then cars that are full of speakers drive around blasting the same song over and over and over, for weeks on end.  I think everyone in this country will probably be deaf by the age of 40 simply due to the music.   The driving by with the music started at 730 am and ended daily around 11.  The truck below is filled with speakers.

Omar Sanchez’s jingle was “Hay viene Omar, Hay viene Omar, Hay viene Omar Hay viene Omar.”  (Basically Omar is coming).  It is kinda hard to pick out the lyrics though, and for the longest time all I heard was “I give you pan.” (pan=bread)  I knew this wasn’t right, but I still have to work hard to hear the correct lyrics.  You can hear the jingle in the following video  of a parade going by our apartment.

Chino Rojas had a jingle that I believe went “Va a votar por Chino.” (Rough translation: you are going to vote for Chino.)  Or maybe it was “Va a venir con Chino” (I’m going to arrive with Chino).  And another one that just said “Chino” over and over during the song.  Chino recently paved the road into Los Ciruelos where the Makarios house is, hoping to buy votes.

We had the single cars going around blasting their music, but for the past few weeks, we have had parades.  People bust out their white shirts and flags, or purple shirts and flags, pile into whatever moving vehicle they can find and then go down the road, be it highway or through the streets of town, at about 5 mph.   My favorite parade we passed was on the way home from Sosua one day, when the purple party had probably 5 miles worth of people lined up in this parade, going frightfully slow.  We were on our moto and were thus able to scoot around the side of the parade.  You’ll also see red party cars, since they just want to get out and have fun.

However, my favorite “float” that we saw in these parades was in the white party parade last Friday.  The parade came down our street for 15 minutes, during which you cannot hear yourself think or talk over the car horns and music playing from the cars.  Toward the end came… a decorated Caterpillar front end loader, with people hanging off all over.  Awesome.  Cat, if you need a new idea to pitch for selling more heavy moving equipment, just show them this picture.

Yesterday was election day, and today was hopefully the final day of parades, celebrating Omar (white party) winning his bid for Sindico, and Francis Vargas (purple) winning for Senador. A grand total of 3,300 votes were cast in the Montellano area… I wonder what the vote to money spent ratio ended up as.  I’ve been told that it doesn’t matter who wins, no one will do anything for the community.  We’ll see.  I just would like someone to use that front end loader to knock down the big piles of rocks on the side road to the Mak house….  Chino didn’t quite finish it.