NOT your average day

posted by sharla

Last Saturday I had the chance to do something that now stands out in my mind as one of the most significant moments in my life.

Makarios has purchased six acres of land for a small farm. There is a small pink house on this land. It's very basic, but it's a good house. The land needs a lot of work - it is overgrown and has just a few mango trees growing on it. We need to clear the land, we need to plant trees and other produce, dig trenches, put up a fence.

Once we received the check from the Great Society Fund (from the LBJ School at UT), we were able to begin this process. We had already hired Ruben to oversee the project, a man who has already been working with us on a number of projects. Now we were ready to bring a family out of the squalor of the bateyes (villages for Haitian sugar cane cutters) and into this little pink house. We were ready to offer this family a job and vocational training.

We had come to an quick decision about who we should hire. Wisley is Haitian man in his thirtees. He is married and has twin six month old babies. He is a hard worker, but is only able to make $5 a day doing yard work at an upscale housing development. This is the going wage for Haitian workers in the Dominican Republic. He had to take out several loans to support his family, and there was barely enough food for him and his wife and formula for the twins (his wife had been sick for a while and was unable to nurse the babies).

I left the Makarios house on Saturday morning with a list of things I needed to do. Talking to Wisley was one of them. I knew he would be excited about the new job, but I wasn't prepared for just how life changing this would be for him and his family. He couldn't believe that we were offering him a chance to get his family out of the batey, to have a job that would allow him to support his family, and to receive training in farming skills that will give him the potential to farm his own land in the future. He will be able to send his kids to school, something he wouldn't be able to do if they stayed in the village. This job will literally change the lives of the four members of this family. Hopefully this is the first of many jobs that that we will be able to provide on the farm.